The Crest

The Antisis Press Corps, all one of them, gathered in the deserted town of Ontario in Eastern Oregon. Tumbleweeds bounced down the empty streets like they were props in a spaghetti western movie. The searing wind blew a steadfast thirty miles per hour and the temperature lingered at 121 degrees. This was serious hot, like Arabian Peninsula melt the seat of your pants hot; even dromedary camels wouldn’t scoff at this heat.

The journalist cum photographer followed the Antisis leader as he strolled around town and stood for photos. The journalist was named Vark, short for Aardvark, on account that he had a big nose and big ears. He used an old school 35 mm Nikon with black and white film. The digital photography world now gone the same way as the internet. Not quite the dark ages, but close, Vark thought.

“Let’s get some ass-kicking climate shots for the crowd back East,” Vark said. He motioned. “Stand in front of this Chamber of Commerce sign with the bullet holes. That should make a statement about nasty corporations.”

The leader stood with his boot on the sign.

“Okay, now hold your rifle and look badass,” Vark told him.

The Commander did what Vark said, and he took the photograph.

Vark knew that stories didn’t come easily these days, but the one thing he understood was that the masses loved his days of reckoning facade. God, they ate that shit up and he was good at conjuring it.

“Good. Now, a few more. Antisis are anti-city, right?”

“Correct.”

“Okay, why not a cameo in front of the smashed-in mayor’s office.”

“Okay.”

Vark could not only frame the perfect apocalyptic picture, but he could write about it too. He used smooth words like: technological singularity, existential crisis, prophetical, nihilistic, eschatological, and Götterdämmerung.

He could wordsmith an ‘end of days’ sentence like nobody’s business. The interesting thing was that while the people across the continent were dying from the Shift, they were reading about it too from Vark. It was like they couldn’t torture their planet and lives fast enough; now they ingested the written word. Suffering became addictive; reading apocalyptic porn, all the rage. Vark reveled in the moment.

Vark could take the Apocalypse of John in the Book of Revelation and spin that too. “And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him.” He gripped them with his prose, indeed the pale horse has arrived. Vark perfected the scripts for the End Times believers. He retained a following from the revelation-as-prophecy crowd and the not so religious, light-hearted, I’m gonna fuckin die anyway so I might as well go out with a bang populace.

They walked to the abandoned city hall building. Vark took a photo of the leader holding his weapon. In the background were the words Mayor’s Office emblazoned on a fractured window.

“Perfect, now I want bodies, dead bodies. I want photos that will make a coyote sob tears of despair.”

“We killed a bunch over at the police station. They were holed up there.”

They walked over to the police station. There were dead police bodies everywhere in blue uniforms, a huge flock of turkey vultures fed on the corpses. The stench was unbearable.

Vark shot the images of the dead policemen. He got a close-up of their badges and their tortured faces. Morbid, he thought. But it will sell. The world came to that. Taking photos of dead cops, not his cup of tea, but that’s how he got paid and he followed these Antisis looneys across the country.

Somebody had to tell their story and it might as well be him. He’d covered the burning of the capital building by rioters in Washington DC. He photographed the president of the free world dragged out of the White House and into the street. Oooh, the Antisis public got horny for that shit; they clamored for more. He shot a picture of a freighter sitting in a dried-up Lake Erie. He thought the freighter was a great frame, he’d work hard on the lighting and the rats running across the deck. Brilliant!

Several years ago, when he captured that perfect ravaged climate image, his page hits and viewerships skyrocketed. He raked in the dough on his online account. Life was good for a while. But then the Shift hit and social media and the internet stopped altogether. He thought, well shit, I might as well shoot the Shift and write about it,and what better way than to follow the revolutionaries around the country. So, he did that.

When most of the cell and internet technology went into the toilet, the modus operandi was back to the middle ages with broadsides. It was just like in the days of Paul Revere and the American Revolution. He shot photos and wrote stories and printed them on broadsides and nailed them to trees and buildings. He pumped out the Antisis propaganda, pushed their anti-science agenda, but also wrote his own dark side byline. The world came to that.

He got paid by creating those large paper, single sheet news reports for the Antisis. People gathered around the trees, starved for news. He carried an aluminum plate lithograph machine. Hand operated, easy to transport in the back of his pickup. He developed his photos in a crude dark room, he hauled the chemicals in his pickup for that too.

As the solo Antisis press corps, el único, he was a jack of all trades. Not only did the broadsides but he managed the portable radio studio and interviewed the Commander. The Antisis used radio to communicate to the troops scattered across the abyss. Vark knew how to frame a good fucking story on the radio too.

The commander prepared for his radio broadcast. He sat on the tailgate of the old Ford pickup and held the microphone connected to the portable radio transmitter.

Vark held up five fingers and spoke, “We’re on in five, four, three, two, one. We’re live. To our listening audience across the vast lands of good old Oeste Americano. We bring you the Commander of the Antisis.”

The leader spoke, “To our fighting men and women on the frontlines. We are the sons and daughters born of the desert, and blessed by God almighty.”

The broadcast came across scratchy and staticky but intelligible. The Antisis fighters scattered across Eastern Oregon tuned in on their AM radios.

“We have liberated towns across the west from the shackles of science and technology. As we destroy the government and these institutions, society will remake itself. We will break into smaller units and the fruits of man’s labors will belong only to himself. God himself speaks to nature. Only through the complete liberation of nature can we improve the lives of humans and live more simply.”

“Tell me, Commander. How will you liberate nature, isn’t it gone for the most part?”

“Not so, in fact, the prairies, forests, and rivers will rebound. The animals will return. Science has destroyed it all, now we must destroy science and give the land time to heal.”

Others were picking up the broadcast too, even on the Crest. As the leader spoke, the transmission came across the handset of Ben and Lenore sitting in the flanking tower.

“What the fuck, listen to this,” Ben said. The pair moved closer to the radio.

The Commander continued, “As we remove the shackles of science, we contend that the population will not only survive, but thrive. Henry David Thoreau said it himself in 1854. “In Wildness is the preservation of the world.” But it is more than Thoreau, much more. Yes, there is simple living and self-sufficiency, but it is also a class struggle. Anarcho-primitivists favor decentralization, and minimal housing. Our main goal in this new world order is to remove centralized authority and take down the cities as well. We seek to remove the last 10,000 years of civilization. Soon we will be coming for the Crest.”

“Do you believe this guy? Remove the last 10,000 years of civilization. He’s nuts,” Lenore said.

“They’re serious, they’re coming and the Antisis think we’re pushovers,” he replied.

“They always think that. I’ll kill every one of those motherfuckers.”

“Geez.” Ben was unaccustomed to hearing Lenore swear.

Vark asked a question to the Commander on the air.

“What about food? How do you plan on surviving out in the great dystopian landscape that we now inhabit.”

“We don’t rely on corporate food stuffs from the likes of Permafrost, which we fully intend to burn to the ground. Out here, nature will provide. It always has. You must know where to find food. What root to dig up, what insect to eat, how to trap animals.”

“Is that a Marie Antoinette saying? Let them eat grasshoppers?” Vark asked, now on his comical shtick.

The Commander laughed. “No, I encourage our fighting men and women to secure what you need from the local populations. They will help you; they support your cause; you are their heroes.”

Ben listened and interjected. “Heroes? Are you kidding me? They’re not survivalists, they’re rapists and looters.”

The radio commentator Vark began to wrap up the show. “Any final words, Commanders, for our listening audience?”

“Yes, soon, we will control the west. Soon, we will recreate society. To those on the Crest, we are coming. I promise you mercy if you surrender, if not, we will tear you apart, limb by limb. And lastly, to our fighting men and women out there in the great sands of the west, I salute you. I leave you all with one final word. Remember the word peregrine. Peregrine has as its original meaning, wandering, migratory, or one from abroad. We are like the wandering tribe from the book of Joshua. The sons of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, living off the land. Like Joshua, we are throwing off our shackles of bondage. We have stood alone against those that said we could not create a new state. We are the peregrine generation and soon the peregrine project will come to fruition.”

The broadcast went silent. Ben and Lenore went back to their patrol.