LAURA WAS NERVOUS — HER FINGERS WERE TWIDDLING WITH THE MIMI PENDANT that she wore on her neck. Her other hand stirred the stew in the pot. Big Joe was beside her, pusillanimously watching at the rest of the guys — who were looking down from a perch of a hill.

Reeves was looking into his detached rifle scope — while Troy and True Bob exchanged their sightings into the field-glass — the three Intersexuals were spying below at the small US Army base in Montana — that blocked the road, leading to the US-Canadian border Immigration.

Troy checked on his laptop and positioned the location out as in a diagram. “Reeves, that is 10 miles beyond this base right to the US-Canada border. Even if we slip by these US Army bitches here — we still we have to face more guns, at the US Immigration at the end of the road.”

Reeves peered into the scope at a water tower and a satellite radar tower in the Army base compound...

“Let’s worry about getting outta here first. Looks like it a small base — with probably, say about 20 soldiers.” True Bob differed and gave his observation, after looking at the base’s empty parking bay...

“More soldiers will return later after patrolling, even if we were to make our break at night. Their number — will be up to 30 or even 40 by then.”

The sun was setting when they all stood up and headed back towards the Mustang. Big Joe who was listening to them, he then spoke up nebulously...

“We are outnumbered — whether we make a run, day or night, yeah?”

Reeves laughed — and tapped Joe’s back playfully.

“Yeah, you are rationally downright, Joe — even without your meds. That is some dinner table conversation where we ought to do the math now. Come on, let’s go eat, Big-man — I am hungry.”

He knew Joe was still mortified also for being the butt of the jokes that Troy had cloyed ever since they left Wellsville, where he was constantly ridiculed for having more than an eye for Carrie Eastman — it even humoured Laura listening to their bawdy coital jokes, especially learning more about the sex dolls ‘daily routine’ in Tombscradle.

But both Reeves and True Bob kept their lips sealed from the rest, about their intimate carnal exploits, that happened at the Eastmans’ farm some nights ago — in the food trade they made for the team.

A pot of beef stew with potatoes and corn was warming to reduction, on a portable butane gas stove. Reeves was the first to dig in, and he got a plate of the thick chunky slop. True Bob served the rest of them. Everyone was morose — they all ate quietly, sitting on the frozen rocks.

Bob looked at the leftover in the pot. “Come on guys, there is more. I have cooked our entire ration — and how come, no one is hungry now?”

“I will finish the rest of the stew in your pot. I read it somewhere once that, it is good to die with a full belly rather than on empty, coz the chef in hell, only serves vegetarian.” Reeves replied in a cheery voice — and only Bob laughed and teased...

“Now we already got our Big Joe’s cog-wheels turning here — to eat every burger and Wellsville pussy — before heading to red paradise.”

Everyone else was discomfited of Reeve's jovial blithe mood — in their presence.

Troy too read somewhere that people who were about to die — supposedly would behave refute, and erratically — and sometimes were cloyed in extremely good spirits — it explained Reeves’ comport that was usually the quiet, stolid person — who was hardly the ebullient sort, like the rest of the team...

It was like how he had recently gone into a sudden eccentric mood while posing as a drunk at the Jamaicans campfire at the lakes, and managed to deceive the enemy with the hallucinogen Ayahuasca spiked moonshine offering — Troy then dismissed the thought of death — maybe Reeves was probably nervous himself about tonight’s mission — or maybe was clueless too, on how to reach the Canadian border like the rest of them, and maybe humour — was a device to mask his incompetence.

But Reeves was their innate and precocious leader — he would eventually patent an inexplicable way — and he would eventually get them all alive into Canada.

Joe lost his appetite and did not go for his usual seconds. Laura too hardly touched her food, and she occasionally wiped her tears. Troy placed his hand on her back and whispered...

“You okay, Laura?”

Reeves overheard that — and he grinned, observing her fretting...

“Hey Mimi, why the long face? Get excited, will you? Are we not finally getting crossing the border tonight, as planned? I wish I had some beers here, to celebrate this occasion now — I hope the beers in Canada are as good too.”

True Bob laughed out. “Yeah, that will be awesome, right Joe?”

Bob too was antipodal of what Canada had to offer them — once they had made the successful hegira — and most importantly, they didn’t hunt shemales as terrorists over there.

But, the docile, red-haired, fat youth did not respond back to them, in his usual self. Laura stood up, and looked at them seated on the ground, laughing, she raised her voice...

“Stop it both of you — I cannot do it, Reeves!”

“Cannot do what? We are following the plan to cross over to Canada — so what’s wrong with it today? You have cold feet now, Mimi?”

Reeves then glanced towards at the equally scared and submissive Troy and Joe — he was laughing at their present effeminate weakness...

“So you are all fag-chickens now, too afraid of dying too. What happened to all that bragging back at the lake — about celebrating Laura’s ‘14th birthday’ once we hit Canada then?”

All of them looked distressed after Reeves had said that distraught remark. Laura raised her voice again...

“Dammit! Stop acting like an asshole, Reeves!”

“Yes, I know — farcical is usually Big Joe’s department, now I am stepping into it, and doing a shitty job,” Reeves was back humouring again with scorn.

Laura spoke out again...

“Look, I am not afraid of dying, Reeves — I have cheated death by jumping out of a cliff to save my mother — but now — I cannot bear to see any of you boys get hurt — or even killed, when we attempt to cross later.”

Reeves knew that Laura’s valiant personality would take a bullet for any one of them in the team but —she had to stop playing the protective adverse mother-hen to her chicks — and dissenter on their agreed plan, to gain their freedom. At this encroach adversity point of no return — everyone would have to work together, and look out for each other — so that all of them, could cohere and survive the onerous ordeal, during their attempt crossing the border later.

Reeves placed his plate down — and stood up to Laura...

“Okay, look here everyone, let me put this straight — I am not the Preacher to give you a divine justified sermon — saying that the voices of angels are going to help us, to get over to Canada, okay? The late-Preacher so to speak, sold them a promise — and everyone stood by it, and they all went to his holy-war with the Snake-bitch and her army. Well tragically, in the end, he died — and many others went down with him too — now that same fucking scenario here...”

“We all made pact to go to Canada together — and tonight is the end-game — let's grow some balls to fucking go out there, to finish the race — and start a new life over there.”

He looked at the seated guys. There was still no response from any of them...

To them, his plan seemed equally suicidal as the Preacher’s encroach cause — to fight against Cory’s high-tech military Army that something deathly as they too would be facing, once they made their present run to the border.

Another half-baked strategy option was still cooking in Reeves’ mind at that nadir moment — when Laura spoke up again...

“But I love you all, so let’s not cross over there. We all can keep on moving, and we can keep hiding — we can even go back, and stay in Wellsville or somewhere far away — we can survive this, boys.”

Reeves saw the insensate Joe and Troy nodding back slowly to her. Reeves laughed again — and shook his head in cynicism at her itinerant suggestion, based on her maternal instincts...

“Hey, Laura, where else can we run and hide in this country? Our enemies are everywhere. Where ever we go, they will be just one step behind — to hunt us down!”

Reeves pointed his finger towards, the army base — and at Canada beyond...

“But once we cross that border, everything changes — because the Snake-woman cannot touch us, once we are there!”

Laura raised her voice to his response. “Please Troy, you go and tell him, and make him understand — that you all can be dead by tonight!”

Instead, Troy went to her side...

“Then give yourself up Laura. President Cory just wants us — all she wants are the Preacher's rebels — and not you. Go back to Roberta Jensen — and she will take care of you.”

Laura pushed Troy's hand away...

“How will anyone of you sleep well at night, once we are in Canada — if one or two of you get killed tonight? I would not — O God, I really would not...”

Everyone was back quiet, in loathing thoughts of being fugitives in their birth land...

The motley thinking Reeves was not particularly religious — but he had once heard ‘the late Doran the Preacher’ — telling this exact unity-story — in his perorated sermons one Sunday morning, back in Tombscradle. He could not remember names or exact details but the gist of it was about — this-holy-dude who promised to lead his tribe to the land of milk and honey — but his people got off track — and divided among themselves during the passage...

In the end, not every one of them reached their final destination of the promised-land. It was because —midway in their journey, they had lost their faith in their holy-fucking leader...

Reeves was now walking in that same holy-fucking guy’s shoes of anguish — maybe it is best again that they all went their own separate ways like they almost disband at the lakes. He was saddened by the thoughts that Laura — would not be with him, once they made the vote later.

Reeves looked perturbed at them, turning away — he distanced himself, and clout his fist on the car before he sat on the hood of the Mustang — but he could not shut-up — he rattled out the gamut of his heart content, on his lost hopes and reality’s letdowns of his past...

“Okay everyone makes up your own mind — and come up with a decision if you are coming. Well me, I have made mine up a long time ago, when I was growing up in that screwed-up, Wesleyan University shit-hole. Even back then my timer was ticking, when I knew very well that I am a freak — of this fucking new-breed species that will only survive for a single generation — I very well cannot have a male shemale son too, and neither can any of you guys here — coz the fucking Medusa has cursed us all, with another way to die, without a trace...”

“...the truth is that — we will eventually die anyway — either tonight or at our old age — and with that said folks, it is the end of the irony freak-show, by your every decision of who’s going and who’s not...

“That was the same fucking reason too, I keep on jumping over walls to escape and to survive out there, whether I was in school or in prison, and now with that screwing border over there. Yeah, maybe that is my half-Hispanic fence-jumping nature, is at play here. Go ahead and laugh, all you fuckers…”

No one laughed...

Reeves also had thoughts of the regrets that he could not achieve some greatness as the last new specie — he had this short aspiration after he first met the now incommunicado Marlin — who lived in isolation in F-Block — where Reaves heard the weird and dark secret stories that Marlin told about some male scientists had survived the Medusa — and they were working towards a posterity cure in clandestine somewhere in New York — Reeves wanted to be part of that too...

He then thought of his recent exploits days ago, in Wellsville —where he was forced at gunpoint to impregnate a young woman — he hoped that she would bear that female child in his likeness — if in the case that he died tonight.

The misanthropist presaged again — to the unspeaking few, who were seated to his own sermons — voicing his allegories of the precipice bleak future ahead, as the fugitive species that they were enslaved now...

“Yeah, hail to the new-breed who will never surpass the single generation, even with that bitch Madeline Cory — who can go on about milking our semen like slaves-cattle in her prison-farms — so that they can reproduce more daughters on this earth — but mind you, there is no successful scientific breakthrough to preserve and extend the life beyond that — and my fucking guess is that — after a 100 years, once all shemales die — the last of all of the women will also die too next!”

Someone in the group snickered, Reeves was distracted — and sighed at Bob.

“...but I selfishly admit that — I don’t give a shit about that too, because to me — my time is now — I just want to live my rest of my short, simple and little life peacefully, for what that is remaining -- of my cursed single generation existence — hey, without the thought of looking over my shoulder while being hunted like a fucking rabbit, or going to sleep at night with an open eye for the rest of my life...

“Shit, I can’t live like that — that is the sole reason that I am going to fucking cross that borders tonight, and be a free-male over there — so, who is coming with me, and who is staying back?”

“Hell yeah, I am with you, Reeves!”

The vigour True Bob abetted, he stood up and went over to slap hard his back. Troy also nodded back at him...

“Let’s do it then.”

Big Joe replied next, softly. “I am with you, bro.”

They all looked at Laura — who came forward — and she hugged Reeves, and kissed his cheeks. Reeves asked her...

“What is this — your goodbye kisses, Mimi?”

“I love you all too much, and I will never abandon you, Reeves — and yes — we shall all cross that fishing-border tonight.”

Everyone coalesced — they came over and hugged Laura — and their maverick libertarian leader, with fervency.

***

It was now late in the evening — it had started snowing again. They were all back looking down at the lighted-up US army base ahead, Reeves gathered them all again...

“Guys listen, here is the plan — Bob and I will pose as soldiers, and we will go into their camp — when it is dark, to avoid detection. We will set up some C4 explosives, and we wreck the place up — to create a diversion, for the rest of you.”

Reeves pointed —at his quiet red-headed buddy...

“Hey Joe listen up, the moment you see that place blowing up — you drive like the crazy ding that you are, and you get past the guard barrier, into the border road — and listen to you fat-fuck, don’t stall as you did at the school wall! Remember this, you don't stop — till you get to Canada, okay?”

True Bob derided, “Joe will do fine, and bullets can’t penetrate the amount of fats he is storing there.”

“You Troy, you have to shoot your way up into the US Immigration. Once you three get to Canada —you all then surrender all your weapons to the Canadian authorities, and you get your own immunity.”

Laura interrupted Reeves...

“What about the both of you then?”

“Yeah Mimi, we will be following from behind alright — but we will try our best to hold the army back — as long as possible, so you three would reach to the border first.”

“That is suicide Reeves, how are you going to fight more than 30 soldiers that are pursuing us all?”

The concerned mother spoke out again — and was followed by the tensed looking Troy who acceded next...

“She is right. You both set up the explosives as planned, and you both get outta there. When the soldiers get astray by the attack, we all leave out at the same time.”

Reeves looked at True Bob, who nodded at him...

“Okay, Troy — and Mimi too — both your suggestions are taken.”

Reeves pretended to agree, and did not want to argue at this point — because ‘to suggest was easier said than done.’

In the tentative situation, many things could go sideways in the execution — and some tactical delays and improvisations would be needed, to stay on course...

It was also best not to complicate the plan too, with too many cocksucking-what-ifs...

Reeves discerned that everyone in the team had now got the bigger picture, of what to do for now — once the explosion-cue was given — and also they should try their best to look out for each other, to survive alive during the getaway.