The Great Bifurcator, Part 2

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Miss Part 1? Catch up before you start part 2! If you like the first two, check out Part 3 and Part 4!

Part 2. Collateral Damage

Abramson spit.  He was well practiced, and the fluid projectile maintained its structural integrity as it traced its parabolic course through the air before puddling in the dirt.  It was mostly just a way to expel the sand that continually collected on his lips, but there was a hint of disgust behind it as well.  This was the hardest command he'd ever been ordered to undertake by the United States Armed Forces.  God knows it was necessary for the protection of flag and country, but everything about it made him feel awful inside.

He took stock of his platoon as they all sweltered together under the oppressive midday heat.  How many of them were happy to be twiddling their thumbs in the middle of the desert in Southern New Mexico?  Nothing about the weather was appealing, even for a life-long Arizonan like Abramson.  If any of his soldiers was excited for the assignment, it was only because they'd lost people, and working the border patrol offered a significantly higher prospect of spilling blood.  He knew Eckersley's sister had been shot.  Then there was Thompson; both of his boys were on a school bus that ran over an IED.  Those first weeks after the Trump Declaration had been absolute Hell.  "I'm calling on all true patriots to rise up in defense of the values our country has held sacred for hundreds of years.  We're taking back America for the real Americans." Rifle-toting nuts had come out of the woodwork all over the country and turned nearly community in America into an abbatoir.  Campus massacres, library bombings, housing developments burned to the ground, overnight homes became war zones.  Of course people with a little melanin in their skin got it the worst, but no one had been safe.

Some people couldn't even begin to wrap their heads around the fact that a bunch of rednecks could do so much damage to the law-abiding citizenry of the country with the world's most powerful military.  Abramson couldn't believe it himself.  Of course, it had only been possible because President Sanders was unwilling to unleash hell on people that had been American citizens the day before, especially since it couldn't be done with french-frying the same innocent civilians that he was trying to save.  National Guardsmen had been called in and the military deployed, evacuation routes were secured and streams of refugees came pouring out to escape the self-destructive carnage that Trump's stooges were inflicting on their own homeland.  They might have seen it as a fight for freedom, but that was a fool's delusion.  Whether or not they realized, Abramson knew these ignorant fools were committing bloody, dramatic suicide.  They were a gang of suicide bombers, initiating an unwinnable conflict because they'd rather die than learn how to live in the gentler, more tolerant future that came crashing down on them when Sanders swept the election.  "We always become what we hate the most, don't we?"  the lieutenant chuckled to himself.

That's what worried him the most when his mind swung back to his platoon.  Some of these men were ready to take a pound of flesh from the monsters that had killed their friends and lovers and parents and children.  Stuck out in the middle of nowhere on the road to Las Cruces, sweeping for raiding parties poking their noses across the Texas border, Eckersley and Thompson and others like them were ready to use the long guns they were toting to turn some redneck bastard's head into confetti.  If their trigger fingers were too itchy, they might end up shooting down some of the stragglers that were running for their dear lives to reach free, democratic American soil.  It had been eight days since the Trump Declaration, and four since President Sanders had issued his own ultimatum.  That meant there were still three days left for anyone that wasn't part of Donnie's gang of murderous secessionists to get their asses over the border, or at least away from any population centers.  Abramson prayed to God that the leaflets drops and radio broadcasts had reached everyone that was stuck on the other side.