American Apocalypse IV - Chapter 13c - by Nova

We rolled pretty good for about forty five minutes.  Then traffic, which had been light but steady, came to a gradual halt.

"What's up G?"

"Roadblock is my guess. Maybe something else." I slid one of the Rugers out of it's holster and dropped it between the door and the seat with the barrel jammed between the seat belt holder and the seat.

"Lets find out."

I hit the lights, pulled over to the side and ran along the stalled traffic grinning.

"I love this shit." I told Zane. He was grinning too and Woof was barking in the back.  That's when I eased up on the gas. Why? An Abrams tank with it's main gun moving in your direction will do that.  The soldier in the orange safety vest holding up his arm for me to halt made the decision even easier.

"Damn Zane. We got a problem."

"What's that G?" He wasn't grinning anymore.

"We got a Nazi deer hunter up ahead."

I didn't have to look at him to see the blank expression on his face. 

A couple more soldiers popped up including one from inside the tank.  I hit the brake and came to a stop about fifty paces in front of the guy in orange. I stuck my head out the window and yelled "US Marshall. How the hell do I get through this shit!"

One of the soldiers behind the deer hunter spoke into a radio, then told him to wave me through. I stuck my head back in, hit the gas, and rolled on up while I powered Zane's window down.  When I pulled abreast of the Nazi deer hunter I yelled "Just roll around the tank?"

"Yes sir. Pull up by the Highway Patrol vehicles. They'll process you through."

"Right."

The trucks had blocked my view of the actual roadblock. It wasn't a quickly thrown up affair. This had been here for awhile. Then Ohio had been the first state to charge a toll to out of staters just to drive down their roads back when states were trying to fill the holes in their balance sheets. I hadn't seen a Ohio state police vehicle yet.  I wasn't surprised to see they were white. Otherwise the troopers, or what ever they called them here, looked like the Virginia ones we had worked with once. Same gray uniforms, that dumb ass Smokey the Bear hat, and big guys who looked like someone broke a shovel off in their ass.  Yeah, I didn't like them. Some of them were okay once you got to know them but I had found that they often got a bit of an attitude with small town cops like I had been once. Oh well. That was then and this was now.

They had one of those mobile home/offices that construction sites had with a bunch of antennas and a generator truck next to it. There was two Highway Patrol cars, a HUMVEE with no gun on the mount, and a couple of trucks pulled in front. I told Zane "Betcha desert they call that the command center."

"Hah! No way. No bet G. That's what it is."

The choke point had the civilians set up on the side I was on.  In the middle of the Interstate the military had setup, they had their own spiffy trailers, and another Abrams. I could see a gunship coming in low about two miles away and maybe a mile off the Interstate. That was interesting.  The far side had more prefab buildings but these had bars on the windows and more soldiers who looked alert .  This was more than a stop and stare. It was a processing center of some sort and it was far more fancier than anything I had seen even in DC.  The American flag was run up and flanked by what had to be the Ohio state flag and another flag that I had never seen before.