WARNING! THE TEMPERATURE HAS NOW CROSSED THE FATAL THRESHOLD. IF YOU ARE OUTSIDE IN THIS WEATHER YOU WILL DIE. GET INSIDE OR GET UNDERGROUND IMMEDIATELY. WARNING! IF YOU ARE OUTSIDE IN THIS WEATHER YOU WILL DIE. THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SURVIVE. LEAVE THE HOUSTON DALLAS SAN ANTONIO TRIANGLE AS SOON AS YOU CAN. THE HEAT WILL NOT RETURN TO A SAFE LEVEL OVERNIGHT. YOU ARE AT RISK OF DEATH IF YOU REMAIN IN THE TEXAS LOWLANDS. WARNING! YOU WILL DIE IF YOU –
Felice turned off the radio. It was the woman's voice again, urgent and commanding. Felice had turned the radio back to the emergency station in case there was anything on it about traffic conditions or emergencies, but the broadcast remained steadfastly focused on the heat.
"Is that your friend's station?" Mini asked, referencing their conversations when Felice had been planning this getaway.
"How do you know her?" Aaron asked when he saw Felice nodding, leaning forward between the front seats of the small car.
"That's not Raven," Felice told him, not bothering to dispute the assertion of a relationship with Raven that went beyond professional entanglement. "I haven't heard them on the station. But their group runs the channel." Sparing him a sideways glance and seeing his head cocked in interest, she continued. "I did pro bono legal work for their group. They're a kind of environmental group. The government was trying to shut down their radio, but it's covered in the federal first amendment ruling."
"What's that?" Aaron asked, glancing at Mini.
"A Supreme Court ruling," Mini told him, "special Presidential request a few years ago, when some states were trying to shut down militia broadcasting channels. The Supreme Court ruled that if a political organization needs to defend itself on first amendment grounds then law firms over a certain size have to provide free representation." She giggled. "It's meant to protect militia but 'Lise's client used it."
"That's why I got the job," Felice added. "My firm was forced to cover the case but Raven's organization isn't militia at all –" she put stress on those last words, remembering Raven's appearance at the law firm as she spoke. Androgynous, dreadlocks and vivid-coloured extensions mingled with long black hair, smelling of incense and amber, dusky skin of their arms lined with tattoos in strange symbols and characters "- so they gave the job to me because I was the most junior in the office."
"And she won!" Mini added proudly. "Caused a bit of trouble in the office."
Felice nodded confirmation of Mini's story. "I was meant to lose I think, or find a way to make them pay. But it was a real case! Open and shut first amendment interference." She remembered the hours spent in the office with Raven, going over documents and transcripts, building strategy, arguing over politics. Raven had not bothered separating the court case from the broader goals of their movement, and their persistent idealism had opened Felice's eyes to many things – or, perhaps, forced her to stop looking away from things she already knew were true. "I haven't seen them since," she added, voice trailing away.
"Sounds weird," Aaron summarized, and sank back into the rear seat. Characteristically incurious, and happy to let Mini and Felice return to the separate world of their friendship.
They had exited from the Loop a short while back and now were on a two lane carriageway. The traffic was light, the heat outside so intense that she could barely make out details more than a hundred meters ahead through the haze, which turned all the scrub and farmlands beyond into a psychedelic vision, crowned with the sweep of the blue sky blanched almost white by the sun. They drove in near silence, their mood stifled by the apocalyptic emptiness of the world outside and the still-stifling heat in the car. Felice's doubts about the propriety of this journey were being burnt away by the uncharacteristic early morning heat, and she was surer than ever that even if this heat were not fatal as the radio station predicted, at least she and Mini could get a respite from it at their destination. Even three days of this would be exhausting.
She drove slowly, worried about the air conditioning overtaxing her little car, her pride and joy that Jared had once joked offered a choice of "aircon or going up the hill". In light of his morning messages it irked her to admit he was right about something. His own car was much grander, of course.
"Felice?" Mini's uncertain voice interrupted her reverie. "Why is your gas so low?"
"What?" Felice asked, taking her eyes off the road to check the gas. Jared had promised to refill it when he used her car for work on Friday. "What!?" She almost yelled and swerved the car as she saw the gas meter already reading three quarters empty. "It was supposed to be full this morning!" She did some rough calculations about the driving time and her little car's usually reliable efficiency. Had the aircon really drained it that much? Or waiting in the traffic? No, she was used to traffic jams, she knew how her car handled. "That bastard …" She breathed. Mini reached out to touch her arm reassuringly – Felice never swore. "Jared promised me he would fill it up when he used it last week!" She swore again, slammed one of her small hands on the wheel. Jared had used her car for a full day on one of his work visits, and not bothered to fill it up again even though she had made him promise twice to do it. Had she messaged him a reminder and he had said he had filled it up? Had he lied to her? She reached for her phone reflexively, but remembered she was driving. What did it matter? He had laughed about her idea of leaving Houston when she suggested it to him last week, laughed again on the weekend and not bothered to plan it with her. Somehow she just knew, deep inside herself, that he had deliberately chosen not to fill up the car. He always ignored her requests if he thought they didn't matter – this was just another example. Except now she was on the I-10 with a long journey to go. She slammed the wheel again.
Aaron leaned forward from the rear, seatbelt unfastened, to peer at the gauge. "You sure? Maybe the traffic jam used it up?"
"I know my car Aaron," Felice almost snapped, but calmed down when Mini touched her arm.
"Don't worry 'Lise," her friend assured her, her light and breezy tone unfazed. "There're lots of gas stations. We can fill up and get snacks soon."
"Is that one there?" Aaron asked, pointing to a cluster of dark shapes in the heat haze ahead before he sat back to resume his frustrated, patient waiting in the sweaty jumble of the back seat.
"I don't think so…" Mini murmured, leaning forward and squinting through the distorting shimmer of the heat haze. The dark shapes rolled towards them out of the haze as if they were emerging from another world, manifesting as two big, matte black official vehicles parked on the side of the road near a stand of trees. Men in dark uniforms clustered around the back of one of the vans, busy at some task.
"Customs and Border Patrol," Aaron observed, pointing to the white, grey and blue emblem on the side of the trucks. They were almost the size of small buses, with tiny grilled windows set high on the flanks of the rear cabins and the President's flag waving from poles set each side of the front cab. The rear doors of one truck were open, though they could not see inside. Some of the men were standing around, their dark uniforms a patchwork of heavy sweat stains, some drinking water and some touching their faces and hair with the gestures everyone in the car now recognized as discomfort with the heat. A few of the men were carrying objects of some kind, though the details were obscured behind the men standing around watching. It looked as if they were transferring crates or supplies from one van to another.
"Look like detention vans," Aaron observed. Felice drove even slower as they approached, strictly following the road rules about the speed of passing official vehicles. Nobody wanted to attract CBP's attention.
"Oh shit," Mini blurted. "I forgot my ID!"
Aaron and Felice both looked at her at the same time, Felice frowning and Aaron smiling. "Don't worry about it girl," he told her. "Nobody'd think you aren't American!"
"Yeah but 'Lise…" Mini began, and her voice trailed off. They both looked at Felice: her long straight black hair, the pale skin that was not white, her heart-shaped face and the round, characteristically Asian eyes with the stubby eyelashes everyone had made fun of at school. The kind of appearance that brought unwanted attention and extra checks from the authorities.
"It's okay Mini," she assured her. "I packed all my IDs. I take my national ID everywhere with me." She began to speed up as the CBP vans passed behind them, heart beating a little faster. Felice was US born and her Father too, her claim to citizenship was impeccable and aside from her appearance there was nothing to trigger any suspicion from the many immigration enforcement agencies – official and unofficial – that prowled the southern US, but they still made her anxious every time she saw them. Her mother's friends and relatives all had stories about mistakes made by those agencies, mistakes that could take months or years to rectify. When she was young she could remember other people who talked in hushed voices about those mistakes – cleaners and gardeners and receptionists at her first workplaces, who had now been replaced by sour-faced men and women in orange coveralls, or young American women with poor phone manners. Felice did not want one of those mistakes visited on her.
"They won't come after us in this heat," Aaron guessed, looking back at the vans as they receded into the seething air over the road. "I wonder what they're doing out here?"
As she watched them fade into the heat haze in her rear view mirror Felice did not wonder at their purpose. Unlike Aaron, she already knew, and breathed a small, subtle sigh of relief that their attention had once again not fixed on her.