A man in an American eagle mask walks past carrying a flamethrower. He’s dressed in a red and blue blazer covered with white stars. This is sedition as live-action role-play, a fictionalized version of real events supplanting the events themselves. A cartoon race war, or a choose your own adventure game, in which the first step is to design your avatar.
Some patriots didn’t get the memo and have dressed for war in basic flannel with red baseball caps or slumped hoodies with neck gators. Others wear homemade costumes that look like they were jerry-rigged at the last minute: ski goggles, bike helmets, and hockey pads, masked men wielding axes with motorcycle gloves. But for each of these there are ten Travis Bickles with black mohawks, camouflage body armor, and grenade launchers, or five founding fathers in white wigs and capes, tricorn hats tucked under their arms, firing replica flintlocks. A group of luchadors in thick spandex and leather face masks chant loudly while rocking an army truck back and forth, trying to tip it over. Nearby a clot of Templar knights with metal helmets and broadswords harass a group of military prisoners, men in army uniform forced to kneel with their heads bowed, as the knights take turns anointing them with their swords.
There is blood in the gutters, mixed with the vomit of weekend warriors sickened by their first taste of killing. Dead soldiers lie sprawled on the concrete, limbs folded at unnatural angles, their lifeless faces pointed toward the sky. A Viking prince with a gaping chest wound lies in the rut where the front gate rolls closed, the fence nudging him over and over like a dog that’s lost its master. All the while, clouds of Mace and bear spray waft on the wind overhead, until even the strongest man is weeping.
And the beards. So many beards. Chin straps and goatees, Vandykes and Grizzly Adamses, braided beards, ZZ Top beards, beards bleeding out from behind grinning skull balaclavas, neck-bearded warriors with bowl haircuts in homage to a famous spree killer, hirsute, heavyset men straining the confines of T-shirts that read FREE KYLE or VISIT DACHAU! A group of shirtless beards stand by a burning helicopter, modeling CWB tattoos, tattoos so fresh they still bleed.
Over by the barracks a group of “young Republicans,” torture prisoners and giggle—clean-shaven, twentysomething white men in suits and ties, who sprint across the tarmac and deliver flying karate kicks to a group of soldiers that have been tied to the perimeter fence with their hands behind them. “USA,” they chant, pounding their pocket squares.
Most seem shocked by the speed of their conquest, the way the army base just folded, but of course they had help from the inside, corporals, privates, and captains who knew the hand signs and opened the gates. You see them now, throwing fascist salutes and shedding their old allegiances. They pass out alcohol and smoke electronic cigarettes. Black and brown soldiers have been rounded up and assaulted, first verbally, then with fists and flagpoles. Asian soldiers are forced to strip naked and walk on their knees, begging for forgiveness for the Chinese flu.
The battle is over.
The torture has only just begun.
Everywhere Felix looks the symbology is dense and varied—Gaelic runes, tattoos of the Viking tree of life, Pepe the frog T-shirts, the obligatory confederate flags and swastikas, mixed with the three interlocked triangles of the valknut, the number 14, sometimes written next to the number 88, the arrow cross and the Aryan fist, the words blood and honor, not to be confused with the blood drop cross, fasces symbol interspersed with the black and red H8, the Identitarian lambda and the imperial German flag, the Jera rune and the wide-set League of the South X, the life rune and the moon man, the noose and the not-equal sign, the Othala rune and the sonnenrad wheel, ROA and RAHOWA, SS bolts and St. Michael’s Cross, the Triskele and the Tyr rune, the Wofsangel, WPWW, and one shirtless dude with a warped belly tattoo of Adolf Hitler, the words Jew Mad, Bro? written underneath.
The women tend toward Statues of Liberty and Black Widow from the Avengers. They are no less cruel, taunting their terrified prisoners, questioning their manhood, and Macing their weeping eyes. The men who hold Felix and the Prophet are a mixed bag. A couple of boogaloo bois in Hawaiian shirts, two full-on clowns, and three shirtless bald teenagers, their skin chalk white with ashen eyes.
“We took city hall just now,” says a militia Batman sauntering past with a SAW M249 light machine gun pitched over his shoulder, “and I hear in Austin they stormed the Capitol from the inside. The fucking legislators took it themselves, shooting state troopers in the back. This is national, bro.”
A man with a patch that read ZOMBIE OUTBREAK RESPONSE TEAM walks down a line of prisoners, spraying them with a fire extinguisher, staining them white, perhaps to make the captives seem less human.
The boogaloo boi in front of Felix spits on the ground, studying his two skinny, handcuffed captives.
“What’s this?” he says, confused by the harmless-looking boys trapped in the van.
“More Feds,” says a chalk-white teen.
Their guns come up, ready to execute Felix and the Prophet, but then— “How come their hands are cuffed?” asks a bearded clown.
“We’re prisoners,” says Felix, struggling to sit up from under the Prophet. “Not with them. We’re not with them.”
The insurgents stare at their captives, then the tallest lowers his rifle.
“Welcome to the revolution, LOL,” he says.
They pull Felix and the Prophet from the back of the van, get them on their feet. Federal bodies lie prone on the runway.
“Prisoners for what?” asks a heavyset clown with a mop of frizzy hair.
“We’re on a mission from God,” says the Prophet.
“Cool. But crime-wise, what did you do?”
“Nothing,” says Felix. “We’re innocent.”
The revolutionaries laugh. In their eyes no one is innocent anymore. The tall clown lights a cigarette.
“Which side are you on?”
“Which side?” says Felix.
“We have no side,” says the Prophet, “in your war.”
The tall clown puts his cigarette between his lips, lifts his rifle.