THE STORYLINE

I used to live by four words: One shot. One kill. Those four words have changed.

I can still see their faces, you know, dozens of confirmed kills, many more unconfirmed lying and baking in some unnamed stretch of desert or boiling in some forsaken jungle. I always wondered what thought, if any, filled their heads as my single lethal bullet tore through their brain and shattered their skull. Did their criminal lives flash before their eyes? Did they feel regret at the eleventh hour for the poisons they stuffed into kids’ veins or the souls they destroyed with drugs and violence?
It hardly matters, though. I followed orders. I squeezed the trigger. I ended their evil lives. One shot. One kill. End of story, game over, one life to save millions.
Am I a hero? I never thought of myself as a hero. Just a soldier. Just an American.
Now, I’ve been called a rebel, a “Patriot,” and my tan camo designates me as a traitor, or a terrorist. I’m to be killed on sight. There’s a beautiful irony there. I killed whatever was in my sight and now...well, not so beautiful, I guess. Disgusting, maybe, like when I returned home from overseas, still finding sand in ominous places.

I was told by my wife that she’d had to get rid of my gun collection...some nonsense about gun safety. Guns don’t kill people. I do. Even my grandfather’s Smith and Wesson! And if this bullcrap wasn’t enough to have me reeling, our baby had a serial number inserted in his arm. My wife told me it was to “help find him if he got lost or abducted, and it was to keep him safe.” Safe? Why did it remind me so much of a Nazi war camp? My son is not a number! He’s an American, like me, like my father, and his father before him. This was just too much.
I admit I raised my voice that day. Who wouldn’t? You dodge mines and bullets and mortars and come home to find the lives of those you love have been changed. The lives, the only thing that a soldier thinks about all day to keep himself sane and alive, the lives he can’t wait to get back to, have been...corrupted. So, yeah, I raised my voice. I may have yelled a little. I complained about the government’s complete disregard for the Constitution--that piece of paper that holds this country together like concrete and steel. What about our rights? Our freedom? So many brave men and women payed the ultimate price for us and now the powers-in-charge are dancing and spitting on the fallen heroes’ graves!
My wife quickly hushed me, saying that the new anti-terrorist technology can pick up and record my words through wireless devices, like cell phones, computers, radios, video game consoles.
So now the government is spying on their own?
It turned out someone else was spying on me that day--that day a year ago when my life changed forever.

The next day I bought a six-pack and after whining about the excessive price and the sky-rocketed taxes being inflated, sat at my worktable in the garage to drink them. I still had a few weapons stashed in the garage that my wife didn’t know about and I began to clean and check them. It usually calmed me, the cool steel, the rhythmic motions, the care, the respect for the guns was therapeutic.
Halfway into my domestic beer six-pack (none of that foreign urine water for me), the automatic garage door opener started raising the door from the outside. I felt guilt about breaking a gun law and tried to hide my gun parts, then I felt angry that I even had to hide what’s mine.
A man in decorated tan camo stood in my driveway. I must have made a “who are you and what are you doing here” face because he raised his hands and said, “Not here.”
He motioned toward the car, and the GPS and said, “It’s not safe to talk. Come outside.”
Perhaps both the smartest and stupidest thing I’ve ever done: I went outside with him. He kept his eyes covered by dark sunglasses. I saw him remove the battery from his cell phone. I may have seen aluminum foil lining his pockets. Maybe it was a trick of the sunlight and the beer.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” he said in a cryptic “I kill kitty cats” sort of way. I noticed my hands had balled into fists. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “I’m a friend.”
“Friends don’t creep around outside their buddy’s home,” I said. “What do you mean, ‘we’ve been waiting for me?”
He smiled a mysterious smile, shook his head and said, “I can’t tell you everything. Not here. I can only tell you we need good men. Men like you. Soldiers. Patriots. My organization has been watching you. We knew when you arrived back in the States by your airline purchase. We heard you yesterday, knew you bought a six-pack, know you still have your sniper rifle and a couple of handguns. We can track you like them. Your credit card, your GPS, your phone, your computer--”
“And here I thought I only had to hide the porn from my wife,” I said, my guard up. “You’re spying on me? If this is about my overdue library book--”
He chuckled. “No, and in case you’re wondering, your library fine is up to three hundred dollars. It’s not about spying. That’s what they do,” he said.
“They? Who’s they?”
“The government. Congress, the Administration, hell, even the IRS. All of them. They’re herding the American public, brainwashing them, making the average citizen overspend on gas, food, any trinket they can force down America’s throats as being necessary to survive. Big Business is buying out all the ideas, shutting up the true thinkers that could actually help.
The economy is shot. Washington molds the lower class into dependent sheep, sheep that will do anything their politician tells them to do to keep the “check” coming. Make the public hunt for jobs that don’t exist until Joe Q. Public gives up, discouraged, and falls into the system of unemployment, welfare, and government aid. It’s not aid: it’s control.
In the past it’s been subtle--cameras on street corners, in banks, ATMs. Lately the government has been becoming more aggressive. Gas prices tripled in the last ten years. Taxes raised on products that only working class people are eligible to buy, with actual money leftover from incredibly high mortgages. Bailouts to the companies that sleep with the politicians while the average American goes bankrupt and has no “big brother” to help them. Unemployment rate soars, dependence on the government rises. Can’t pay the mortgage? Banks can. They’re happy to foreclose on you and force you into low income housing, low income that they supply.
It goes so much deeper, but I can’t tell you all of it. Not now.”
“What’s this got to do with me?” I asked. “I still work. I can still afford baby food and diapers. I pay my taxes.”
Another strange smile crossed his face. It sent a cold shiver down my spine. “We know,” he said. “How is your son’s arm? Is the infection gone yet?”
How did he know? “How do you know about that?” 
“Simple. We can trace all medical records, too. Just like them. By the way, there never was an infection. Pharmaceutical companies are in bed with the government. They claim all babies are infected so you spend more money on medicine. The needles are full of salt water. It goes so deep...”
“Wait! What are you saying? That there’s some huge cover-up and the government’s turned on its own citizens?”
“That and much more. You’ll be briefed at this address.” He handed me a business card. “Since they’ve outlawed the right to assembly this information must remain secret. If you choose not to go, and, yes, you can choose, please burn the card. If, and I hope you will, you choose to come, I will see you there.” With that he walked away, whistling the Star Spangled Banner.
I could have left it alone, could have chosen to remain ignorant and kept my head in the sand, stayed status-quo and in the dark.
I am not a mushroom.

I went to the meeting, all members wearing tan camouflage. I learned how the government was making a weapon under the guise of a medical breakthrough. The weapon was not a cannon or a missile. I learned it was some kind of chemical, dirty bomb or something. I learned the truth--that our freedoms were being stripped from us.
And yes, it went deep, deeper than I could have imagined.
In the months that followed our army grew. When soldiers learned what I learned at that meeting--the truth--they flocked to our cause. We became known as the “Patriots,” a name meant to demean us, but which actually praised us and our cause, and the cause of our forefathers.
My training was intense and extensive. The army was made from all walks of life, all branches of the service, all joined for one noble cause--Freedom.
And on that fateful day when our plans came to fruition, as I watched my brothers-in-arms charge the castle-like base cloaked as a science lab from my sniper God position, I felt pride. Proud to fight alongside this brave group, proud to shoot and kill the green camouflage wearing true traitors.
It was easy to charge into the smoke and death when back-up was needed. The screams of my brothers and the smell of blood and ozone, powder and death accompanied me into the heart of the base--to the lab where the dirty chemical was being made.
When I shot the soldier guarding the scientist, the brilliant and evil Dr. Joseph Stemcell, I killed for the cause.
When I got shot in the forehead and lay dying on the cold lab floor my life didn’t flash before my eyes. I did have a thought, however. My final thought lingered on my new motto.
I used to live by the four words: One shot. One kill. My new four words, the words I take to the grave, are: Live free or die!