Dominatus by D. W. Ulsterman Page A

almost every other cabin in Dominatus has a small coal burning generator.   Super efficient units the Old Man had brought in from a supplier in Asia years ago.  There’s wood burning furnaces also hooked up and ready to produce power if needed. They aren’t as efficient - more for emergencies.  And we even have a little refinery to make our own vehicle fuel.  You’ll get the tour on all that later.  All this stuff, we are a lot more developed up here than you would think, and certainly more than the New United Nations knows about.”
     
    With my bowl of breakfast and last sips of coffee now gone, Mac took the dishes and washed them quickly in a small sink behind the bar.  He looked up at me and asked if I was looking forward to meeting the Old Man and others who called Dominatus their home.
     
    “Yeah, absolutely.  My dad told me about this place a lot, but he was only here once and that was a long time ago.  I’m sure it’s changed a lot since then, lots of new faces.”
     
    “Your dad was here…man…that’s been almost ten years ago now.  He was amazed at this little tavern.  He loved the idea of me hanging out here.  Him and the Old Man had a long talk together, and a couple days later he had gone back home.  He contacted me a few times after that, but in the last couple years of his life I think I only heard from him once.  The time I promised to watch out for you, he said you wanted to see this place for yourself too, that you were doing some kind of underground report, getting the word out to people like us who wanted to remember how America used to be.  So, I gave him my word, and here you are.  Here we are, and it looks like you brought a bit of trouble with you.”
     
    Mac saw the concern spread over my face and waved it away with his hand.
     
    “Shit kid, we’ve been on borrowed time up here for a long time now.  No sense blaming yourself for Carol’s visit yesterday.  And he won’t do anything for a few days yet, maybe longer.  We’ve been preparing for a fight, knew it was gonna come to us eventually.  I was starting to think they were waiting me out, waiting until I was too damn old to put up a fight, so I guess part of me is glad I still got a little fight left in me.”
     
    “What kind of outcome are you expecting, Mac?  Is everyone here really willing to die fighting against the mandates?  Against the security forces?  Is there another way out of that scenario?”
     
    Mac’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses, and his head shook briefly from side to side.
     
    “The only way out of this is that they leave us alone.  Let us live and die up here on our terms, on our time.  That ain’t gonna happen now, is it?  They’ve been pushing us more and more lately. The drone fly overs, the visits by Carol…last summer it was Carol and another fella, big bastard from the N.U.N. office in Anchorage…he laid it out for us then.  Said we had one month to vacate the area or they were coming in and shutting this thing down.”
     
    “But they obviously didn’t – what happened?”
     
    Mac shrugged.
     
    “I’d guess the Old Man paid somebody off, bought some more time.  He’s been doing that kind of thing regularly since this place first started.”
     
    “But Officer Carol said yesterday the Old Man was running out of resources, that he wouldn’t be able to keep all of you safe anymore.”
     
    Again Mac shrugged.
     
    “Sure, bound to happen sooner or later.  He runs out of influence, or whatever he’s used to keep us safe, or he dies.  None of us are getting any younger, so the end result is the same.  If people want to keep living free up here, they have to fight for that privilege.  Freedom ain’t a right in this world anymore.  America gave up on that concept years back.  2008…2012…2016, we had our chance to save it then and we didn’t.  We sold it and everyone with it down the river for a little piece of mind, the promise of being taken care