Jill's leg was badly battered and the pain was excruciating. But somehow or other, mainly thanks to the adrenaline boost she was guessing, Jill was able to limp off to her bicycle with the video tape in her possession. With the lights dimmed, Jill knew she would be impossible to track. But more importantly, Jill needed to see what was on this video tape, what evidence the Social Justice Army had that they thought implicated the Free State of Iowa in any way. Jill had done everything in her power to prevent the Free State of Iowa from being caught up in her shenanigans. As much as she felt for her friends in Oregon right now Jill knew she had to insure the safety of the Free State of Iowa first. Countless lifetimes of hard work had gone into making this place a functional beacon of hope in the darkness of the new world. Jill couldn't let that be extinguished in any way.
Jill made her way to the nearest safe house, wincing in pain all the while and gradually slowing her pace to compensate for the pain. It was only, what, thirty kilometers? Jill had undergone more severe situations than that. One time she had been mauled by a prairie lion, and had to spend three days dragging herself back to base camp. That was a very stupid day for her, leaving without telling anyone where she was going. At one point Jill got stuck between a rock and a hard place and had to contemplate cutting off her own arm with a machete.
Jill abruptly realized that these were perhaps not the most optimistic thoughts to keep in her head at a time like this, when she desperately needed safe shelter and a place to wait out the pain. So she started thinking about the safe house itself. The building was a legacy from her father. Or, well, Esther's father anyway. Jill had always thought of Esther's father as being her own father. Jill had no idea who her own father even was and really, Esther knew about as much of her father as Jill did. She couldn't remember him. Their mother couldn't be counted on to reliably remember what country he had even come from. Eventually she had settled on describing him as coming from a mysterious, untouched paradise of the original humans, uncorrupted by civilization, how he had come to fulfill a prophecy about saving the world.
Jill chose to believe this story, even as Esther dismissed it as absolutely preposterous, a consequence of their mother having so badly damaged her mind with opiates that she could no longer distinguish fairy tales from reality. The last time Jill had seen their mother, actually, she had specifically asked about the story. But their mother herself, even after years of being clean from drug use, insisted that she could remember no other story. Of course it sounded implausible to Jill now, as a woman now approaching old age, yet it was unfortunately the only one she had. And of course, the destruction of all electronic records during the Great Blackout guaranteed that neither Jill nor Esther could ascertain much about Esther's father as adults.
Jill noticed a sign which indicated she was already several kilometers closer to the safe house than where she started. Wonderful! Jill hadn't even gotten to the part about safe houses yet. Jill loved rehearsing these memories in her head, a kind of oral tradition that maybe she would share with the younger generation someday. Assuming she ever lived to be that old of course. Assuming she even lived past today.
Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, Jill thought to herself, as she kept pedaling through the night. Esther's father, as it turned out, was not a big fan of electronic records in the first place. He avoided giving out any more information about himself than he had to. So he also made a point of holding on to all the physical deeds to the houses he purchased. That was his scheme, his plan to provide for his family. Their father would buy out these random large farmhouses in the middle of nowhere, farmhouses not even attached to land, or attached to land of so little value no one wanted it. His big dream was to renovate these places, turn them into isolated cabins of serenity away from the Internet, away from the dissatisfaction of modern life. His business had already started and was doing quite well.
But then the stock market crash in 2008 happened, and he didn't have enough money to pay off all the mortgages just yet. Everything was foreclosed. But the banks never found the deeds. Nor, for that matter, could they find all the houses. They were all located in very remote areas that couldn't be easily found on public maps, only the special maps designed by Esther's father for this purpose. The authorities might have succeeded in forcing this information out of him eventually, except that his death guaranteed these secrets.
Their mother still had the deeds though. And scrawled on the deeds were detailed instructions for how these farmhouses could be located, the strange landmarks necessary to locate their arcane street addresses. Esther always referred to this part of their life with scorn. Jill could barely remember it, but she rather liked the idea of going about to a new house constantly. It was like a game. They were fugitives on the move, or maybe traveling princesses surveying the realm.
In retrospect Jill could understand Esther's frustration with the situation. When Jill came back to Iowa as an adult she realized that most of the farmhouses had been converted into opium dens, some of which were still in use. Jill had been able to use her father's maps to compile a network of the safehouses. This proved essential over the course of the Great Blackout. What once were opium dens became bases of operation for the Hunters' Guild.
First the Hunters' Guild was just trying to feed people. Then as the situation worsened, the safe houses took on military significance. The Hunter's Guild could locate any police station, any armory, any National Guard base, easily from the maps available from the old world. But underpowered as the Hunters' Guild was, the lawful authorities, or more accurately, the brutes pretending to be the lawful authorities, could never find them. Bit by bit Jill acquired new followers in the Hunter's Guild and bit by bit she inspired them to take on bigger targets, until finally, the Police State of Iowa became the Free State of Iowa.
It wasn't all thanks to Jill of course. She had her uncles to thank for a lot of this. They never stopped believing in her. Whenever Esther was on the road, the uncles prepared Jill for her role in the new world. They never stopped training her, or filling her head with dreams, or telling her she had a destiny. There was no reason to believe that anything like this would come true in the old world, yet somehow, Jill believed them, right up until the Great Blackout happened and all of the uncles needed to believe in her.
The campaign took years, and it was still fragile. Ever the optimist at heart, Jill insisted on allowing former fascists to join up with the Hunter's Guild. This had created an ideological problem, as the increasingly authoritarian faction of the Hunter's Guild questioned their need to follow the orders of civilian leadership at all. But that problem fixed itself in Chicago. The former fascists had disobeyed Jill's orders. They tried to use civilians as human shields. What few survivors there had been of that despicable tactic looked at Jill differently from that day onward. They no longer saw her as a naive little farmgirl who had founded and expanded the Hunter's Guild by luck and happenstance. They looked upon her as a God, whose punishment they dared not risk defying ever again.
With those last rehearsed memories Jill finally found herself at the safe house. Her injury still hurt, but it was much better now, improved and inspired by her mental pep talk. Jill was still having trouble fully processing everything that had happened with her sister. Jill realized now that Cassidy was right, that Esther was no longer the shining heroine Jill had believed in ever since she was a kid, assuming Esther even had been such a purpose. And Jill saw in Barack's eyes that he absolutely would have killed her if if Joel hadn't tricked her into fighting him with every last dirty trick she had.
But whatever lies and misunderstandings had led Jill to becoming the leader of the Hunters' Guild, to her role today, none of that mattered anymore. Jill had become the heroine of Iowa not because she had to save the people of this state, but because she wanted to. Jill would save all of the United States for the same reason, whatever it took. And whatever was on that video tape was the key to figuring it out.
Jill limped in to the safe house, ignoring the surroundings, ignoring all the weirdly kitschy decorations. The moose head on the wall. The carefully curated collection of chipmunk figurines. The inspirational framed pictures. Jill was furiously attempting to find the video tape player, and then fumbling to try and connect it into a working TV. Though Jill had just returned from a massive firefight, the singular importance of this moment kept her going, kept the adrenaline flowing.
It was only once Jill found both a working video tape player and a working TV with the right inputs to support it that she finally took an actual look at the video tape. Between all the excitement Jill had failed to notice something that all of a sudden struck her as extremely obvious. This was not a video tape at all. It was in a video tape sized case, but it was much smaller than that, and surrounded by padding to keep it from bouncing around. This was a cassette tape.
Jill slowly started realizing, to her horror, that this cassette tape felt awfully familiar. Shaking, and fumbling, Jill tried in vain to find a cassette tape player. She knew that one had to be around here somewhere. But Jill couldn't bring herself to finish the search. She started weeping. After all this time, after all she had gone through...how was this possible? How had she managed to steal back her own cassette tape from Barack Worthington? Where did he get it? Why did he think it implicated the Free State of Iowa in anything? This was what she needed, all she needed, to prove that Jerry Shankar was not involved with anyone in the Free State of Iowa. That she wasn't working with him. That she and the Rainbow Shirts could be allies.
Jill started laughing bitterly at herself. Allies! How long ago had it been- an hour? Two? That she was inconsolably attempting to murder Barack Worthington in cold blood? What was she hoping to accomplish anyway? What if she had succeeded? Jill's own body had betrayed the stupidity of her own motivation, giving her away when she had a clear shot right at Barack Worthington's head. Jill didn't kill people in cold blood. By the time the fight had warmed up enough that Jill's reflexes couldn't betray her Worthington had stumbled into nearly every trick and trap she could think of but was still standing. What would he have done if their positions had been reversed? Would he have hesitated?
Jill was so consumed and guilt-stricken by these thoughts, by these reminders of her own failures, that she didn't notice the approach of an unwelcome visitor. By the time Jill had turned around, she found a laser gun pointed straight at her head. And just far away enough that Jill couldn't make a fast move.
"Any last words?" asked Huma Reid.
"How did you find me?" asked Jill, perplexed.
"Same way you found Barack," said Huma. "I was staking him out. Then I put a tracker on your bike. So this is where fascists live."
"I'm not a fascist," said Jill. Then, she suddenly got excited. "I can even prove it! This tape! Just listen to this tape!"
Jill slid the tape across the floor. Huma did not take her eyes off of Jill for a moment as she picked it up, eyeing it curiously.
"A cassette tape, huh?" said Huma. "So is this how you fascists communicate to each other?"
"I'm telling you," said Jill, "I'm not a fascist. If we can just find a cassette player I can-"
Huma cracked the tape apart with her bare hands. The laser gun was off Jill for a few precious seconds. But Jill was so shocked it didn't occur to her to make a move.
"No!" she screamed. "No! Why why why why why!"
"I know all about exploding tapes," said Huma. "You can't trick me, fascist. I'll find all the evidence I need in this house, sooner or later. I'll expose all you rotten fascists for the whole world to see. But first I need you to shut up."
Jill saw a bright flash of light. It was the last thing she ever saw.