The Rez-Rim Highway wasn't built for high-speed chases—it was paved with good intentions, cracked by budget cuts, and littered with the skeletal remains of "shovel-ready" projects that never got their shovels. Tonight, under a sky smeared with the casino's dying fireworks (red bursts for rage, white for surrender, blue for the unpaid electric bill), the Eagle Van was doing its damnedest to rewrite the road rules. Jax Hawthorne mashed the accelerator, the old beast groaning like a senator caught in a live mic gaffe, while the Thunderbird mech-eagle loomed in the rearview—a feathered Fury Road reject with wings that clipped billboards and a beak that spat seeker missiles like bad policy soundbites.
"Hold on to your shortstacks!" Jax yelled, yanking the wheel as a missile streaked past, vaporizing a "Vote Virtue, Not Vices" sign into a shower of ironic sparks. The van fishtailed, tires screaming hymns to underfunding, and Jax couldn't help but fourth-wall a quick aside to the heavens. "Author, you sadistic hack—if this is your idea of 'pacing,' next time throw in a rom-com subplot. Or at least a coffee break. My caffeine's colder than bipartisan compromise."
In the back, Theo Beaumont clutched the glowing drive like it was the One Ring—precious, plot-driving, and probably cursed to turn them all into frothy-mouthed election deniers. His glasses had fogged from the adrenaline sweat, and his free hand fumbled with the tablet, trying to decrypt the thing mid-mayhem. "Jax! It's encrypted with... oh god, it's a quantum hash of the entire tax code crossed with Cal's golf scores. If I can just—"
A wing-slash from the Thunderbird carved a gouge in the asphalt beside them, sending the van airborne for a heart-stopping second. Lila Vargas, wedged between ammo crates and a half-eaten taco tray, whooped like it was the world's shittiest rollercoaster. "Yesss! Eat road rash, birdbrain! Debtzilla woulda clawed your eyes out for less!" Her pet hamster, tucked in her bandana pouch, chittered agreement—or indigestion; hard to tell with furballs. Lila rummaged in her feather-shedding headdress, yanking out a compact mirror rigged with a jury-rigged EMP grenade (courtesy of a "borrowed" casino souvenir). "Theo, gimme a sec—reflect this bitch's laser right back at ya!"
Big Bubba O'Malley, braced in the cargo bay like a human bulkhead, braced his bat across his knees and squinted through the smoke. His cigar had gone out somewhere between the vault breach and the "oh shit" revelation, but he relit it with a Zippo engraved "Lock Her Up... Or Him. Whatever Sells." "Kid's got spirit. But that tin turkey's got friends incoming—see the drone flock? Looks like Cal's personal flock of flying fuck-yous. ETA two minutes, tops."
The Thunderbird screeched again, a war cry amplified through subwoofers stolen from a monster truck rally, and dove low. Its talons raked the van's roof, peeling metal like a tin can of sardines—er, freedom fries. Eddie, their cursed eagle sidekick, was nowhere in sight; probably off photobombing the chaos from a safe cloud perch, the traitorous featherweight.
"Plan C!" Jax barked, spotting a side ramp off the highway—an abandoned overpass from the "Great Infrastructure Fiasco of '18," now a graffiti gallery of "Taxation is Theft" tags and crude caricatures of past prezidents mooning the moon. He cranked the wheel, the van launching onto the ramp with a metallic thwang that made the suspension weep. Below, the Thunderbird banked hard, momentum carrying it into a billboard for "Cal's Wall: Now with Moats and Crocodiles!" The impact was biblical: feathers and fiber-optics exploding in a pyre of proprietary tech, the holo-projection of Comb-Over Cal flickering out mid-rant—"You'll never—argh!"—replaced by a loop of his infamous "covfefe" tweet, eternally misspelled and eternally mocked.
The drone swarm buzzed in like angry hornets at a picnic, but Lila was ready. She kicked open the back doors, wind whipping her purple mane into a Medusa of mayhem, and hurled the mirror-grenade. It arced true—because in Shitholia, spite had its own physics—and detonated in a pulse of electromagnetic heresy. Drones fritzed mid-air: one plowed into its neighbor, another looped into a kamikaze dive at the overpass support beams (which held, barely, thanks to rebar reinforced with "stimulus pork"). The rest scattered, rebooting their firewalls with confused beeps that sounded suspiciously like "Error 404: Dignity Not Found."
"Yes! Take that, you winged wallets!" Lila fist-pumped, then winced as the van jolted over a expansion joint. "Ow. Note to self: Next gadget needs more padding."
Theo, finally prying his fingers from the drive, exhaled shakily. "We're... clear? For now. But this thing—it's not just Phase One. It's a manifesto. Or a menu. 'The Whopper Hoax'—Cal's master plan to 'rebrand' the election. Step one: Rig the rez votes to flip the Rustbuckets. Step two: Flood TweetFart with deepfake scandals—think Snooze-Fest Sally caught in a 'hot mic' moment cursing out kale, or the Green New Deal guy promising free ponies that turn out to be tax liens."
Bubba leaned forward, cigar ash dusting the drive like unholy confetti. "And step three? The kicker. 'Ballot Burgers'—a nationwide chain of 'pop-up polling stations' run by his cronies. You vote, you get a free Whopper. But the machine? Scans your biometrics, sells your data to MegaCorpse Inc., and auto-fills your ballot with 'Cal or Bust.' Genius, in a 'Satan's MBA' kinda way."
Jax eased off the gas as the overpass spat them out onto a backroad lined with cornfields genetically modified to glow under moonlight (a "farm bill perk" that mostly just confused the fireflies). The van wheezed to a stop behind a derelict silo spray-painted "Don't Tread On My Weed," and the crew spilled out into the crisp night air, which smelled of diesel, desperation, and distant deep-fried regret.
Liberty Landing was still a good hour's hike, but Jax had contingencies: a burner safe house in the form of "Auntie's All-Night Diner," a 24/7 grease trap run by a conspiracy theorist who moonlighted as their fence. "Wings and wifi, coming up," Jax said, holstering Liberty's Edge under his Hawaiian shirt. "Theo, plug that bad boy into the diner's ancient rig. See if it coughs up more dirt before Cal's goons triangulate our tailpipe."
Inside Auntie's, the vibe was pure Shitholia: checkered floors sticky with syrup of unknown origin, booths scarred by knife fights and love declarations ("Cal 4Eva" scratched next to "Fuck Cal"), and a jukebox crooning patriotic polkas remixed with trap beats. Auntie herself—a battle-ax of a woman with a tattooed eagle clutching a Molotov—slid them a pot of joe without a word, her eyes narrowing at the drive. "Trouble? Again? Last time you lot were here, I had feds sniffing my pie crusts."
"Only the edible kind," Lila quipped, commandeering a booth and commandeering a menu like it owed her money. "Gimme the 'Liberty Load'—fries, shake, and enough nachos to fuel a filibuster."
As Theo jury-rigged the drive to the diner's wheezing terminal (a relic from the dial-up dark ages, fortified with VPNs and spite), the screen flickered to life. Not with ballots, but blueprints: holographic overlays of polling precincts nationwide, dotted with "insertion points" for ballot-burger bots. Audio logs crackled—Cal's voice, oily as a lobbyist's handshake: "Listen up, you beautiful bastards. The rubes want simple: Big Mac for breakfast, big lies for lunch. We flip the script—make voting fun. Free eats, free fixes. By November, they'll thank me for the grift. And if they don't? Well, that's why we got the moat."
Lila slurped her shake, brain freeze be damned. "Dude's got a burger fetish. Kinky. But seriously— if this drops, it's game over. No more 'every vote counts'; it's 'every Whopper counts double.' We gotta leak this. TweetFart it from the rooftops!"
Theo shook his head, scrolling feverishly. "Can't. It's watermarked with kill-switches—post it raw, and it self-destructs into malware that turns your phone into a Cal campaign ad. We need a clean copy. Or a whistleblower with bigger balls than a Capitol cannon."
Bubba nursed his joe, black as his mood. "Whistleblowers get the whistle blown out. Remember that intern last cycle? Leaked the 'Pee Tape' remix—ended up 'suicided' in a moat with concrete overshoes. Nah. We go old-school: Hit the source. Cal's war room. Rumor is, it's bunkered under his Savanna estate—'Mar-a-Lagoons,' they call it. Gators in the moat, gold toilets in the tub."
Jax leaned back, shortstack bar halfway to his mouth, when his burner buzzed. Murray's number—the client. "Hawthorne? You got it? The Giveaway's in meltdown—cops swarming, rez elders chanting curses. And... heads up: Cal just went live on Bluster McScream's feed. Blaming 'alien agitators' for the 'terrorist taco theft.' Your faces are viral. Congrats, you're famous."
The diner TV flickered to life unbidden—Auntie's remote was possessed, or just prophetic. There was Cal, spray-tan glowing under studio lights, comb-over defying gravity and logic, gesturing wildly at a green-screen map dotted with red pins (Rustbuckets flipped to "Freedom First"). "Folks, this is war! Not on terror—on truth! Those ballot-bandits? Probably Mexi-Galactica spies, or worse—socialists with slingshots! But I promise you: We'll build that wall. Taller. Electric. With Whoppers on top for good measure!"
The crew groaned in unison. Lila chucked a fry at the screen. "Liar, liar, toupee on fire! That's us he's slandering. We look nothing like aliens—except maybe Bubba on a bender."
Auntie snorted from the counter, flipping a burger with flair. "Kid's got a point. But fame's a double-edged sword—cuts deep, bleeds cash. Feds'll be here by dawn. You lot need wheels. Real ones. Got a loaner out back: The Patriot Pickup. Bulletproof, bald-eagle hood ornament, and a hidden compartment for... extracurriculars."
Gratitude exchanged (and a wad of Murray's cash slid across the counter), they piled into the pickup—a beast of a Ford knockoff with more chrome than a stripper's conscience and an engine that purred like a lion with a grudge. Theo uploaded a scrubbed snippet of the drive to a dark-web dropbox, anonymous as a ghost vote, while Jax punched coordinates into the dash GPS: Mar-a-Lagoons, dead ahead.
But as they rumbled onto the highway—dawn creeping like a hungover intern—the rearview lit up again. Not drones this time. A black SUV convoy, tinted windows hiding suits that screamed "Secret Surfboard Service." And leading the pack? A sleek hover-limo with plates reading "CHESE1," Cal's personal chariot.
"Sonuvabitch," Bubba growled, chambering his bat. "He must've pinged the drive. We're tagged like salmon in a bear market."
Lila grinned, cracking her knuckles. "Then let's make it a barbecue. Jax—floor it. Theo—hack their brakes. Bubba—bring the boom. And me? I'll bring the fun."
The pickup roared, the convoy accelerating in pursuit. Missiles? Nah—this was a demolition derby of democracy, with stakes higher than a deficit ceiling. Jax glanced at the rising sun, painting the sky in stripes of warning. "Round two, Cal. But this time, we're not just stealing the punchline. We're rewriting the joke."
Behind them, the limo holo-projected Cal's face onto the road— a giant, sneering billboard on wheels: "Turn back, ronin! Or join the menu!"
Lila flipped it the bird. "Over my dead Whopper!"
The chase was on. And in the distance, Eddie swooped low, dropping a "gift" on the lead SUV's windshield—splat. Prophetic, as always: The first crack in the facade.
But cracks? In Shitholia? They always led to craters. And craters led to...