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The Divided States of america
Volume 1
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Edited by J Alan Erwine
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Copyright 2018 by Nomadic Delirium Press

All stories and poems are copyrighted in the names of their respective authors

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informational
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storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except by a reviewer
who wishes to quote brief passes in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine,
newspaper, broadcast, etc.

Nomadic Delirium Press

Aurora, Colorado

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 Contents
An Introduction to The Divided States of America 4

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The Dustbin by Tyree Campbell 5
The Wall is Beautiful by Mike Morgan 13
Green in 2110 by Debby Feo 25
It’s In the Water by J Alan Erwine 30

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What Lies in the Wastelands by Ian Brazee-Cannon 40
Calivada Dreaming by Debby Feo 47
Can’t Go Home Again by Ian Brazee-Cannon 52
Where Do You Go From Here by Ian Brazee-Cannon 60
A Cavallo by Debby Feo 70
Back to the Old Ways by J Alan Erwine 75
Delivery by Lorelei Suzanne 80
Alaskan Everglades by Debby Feo 89

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Trail of Payne by Ian Brazee-Cannon
Behind the Scars by Ian Brazee-Cannon
Frozen Ambitions by J Alan Erwine
Path to a New Life by Ian Brazee-Cannon
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 An introduction to The Divided States of America:
No one can say with any reasonable certainty when the United States of America began to fall
apart. Many point to the presidential election of 2016, but most believe the breakup started long
before this. Now, in the year 2110, the former United States is made up of 13 nation-states and
The Wastelands. Some of the nation-states have prospered under self-rule, while others have
declined. Some nation-states are very accepting of outsiders, while others trust no one…sometimes
not even their fellow citizens. There is chaos in some places, and order in others…sometimes too

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much order.
The first state to break away from the USA was, not unexpectedly, Texas, and from there,
things continued to spiral out of control as the national government tried to hold on to control that

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the state governments wanted back, and eventually, the federal government was no longer able to
control the states, and the break-up came about.
Some of the nation-states kept the name “America” in their new names. Some did this as a
tribute to where they had come from, while others did it to remind their citizens of what they were
breaking away from. Others adopted new names, or took on names that were given to them.
Borders in some areas are heavily patrolled, even walled in places, while other borders have
no protection at all…mostly it depends on the views of the new government and its citizens, even
though sometimes those two groups still don’t agree. Let’s face it, greed and independence are
bred into the human race, and even allying with others that have similar viewpoints does not

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necessarily mean that they will always get along.
If interested in learning more, please
http://www.nomadicdeliriumpress.com/dividedstates.pdf to see a map of the new nation-states and
to read a little about each of them.
click
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 The Dustbin
By Tyree Campbell

As Pierce reached the crest of the hill, he caught a flash of pale flesh, a spark of hair the color
of fresh copper, moving fast through the forest several hundred yards away. The glimpse was
enough to give him the impression of the runner as a woman, supple and slender. He heard shouts,

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a rifle firing. Soldiers had flushed their quarry and were running her to ground.
Ahead was a Y intersection, the two dirt roads leading along the north and south slopes of the
valley. She was running toward the south. The soldiers, then, had come from the north. Pierce
knew that road, and surmised that they had stopped along the shoulder on the rise to the bridge

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that crossed the river. Since the end of the Wisconsin glaciation the river had cut through limestone
on its way down the valley to the Missouri River. Likely the woman lived in one of the caves,
fishing the river, perhaps husbanding a dispersed kitchen garden. Now that part of her life was
over. Without his intervention, probably all of it was.
It was not his concern. People died every day by murder or misadventure. Weariness in his
very bones made it easy for him to dismiss her plight. His five-year quest for revenge completed
now, he longed for nothing but a peaceful place to lie down and pass on. He was done with it.
Done with it.
Still he looked. She continued to flee.

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Five years in paramilitary service had familiarized Pierce with all the good words, and he
knew how to cluster them together with hyphens for best effect. Several of them seethed from his
mouth as he slammed the gearshift into second, flattened the accelerator, and gunned the jeep down
the hill and onto the south road. In decades past the county would have dispatched road crews to
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spread fresh gravel, trim back the trees, and mow the grass and wildflowers that grew along the
roadside. Nowadays the road passed through a tunnel of vegetation, dark as dusk, before it emerged
into the valley on the other side of the forest. The jeep's shocks were more than a match for the
uneven surface, and Pierce pushed the vehicle past forty, gripping the steering wheel with hands
at ten minutes to two, as the manual recommended and as few people heeded, fighting with the
wheel as potholes and ruts tried to alter his course. If the woman kept to her pace and direction,
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and if she weren’t caught or shot, she would reach the south road in another minute, perhaps less.
Over the noise of travel, he heard another shot. A single shot, not automatic fire: they weren't
trying to kill her, merely to wound her or to bring her to a halt. If possible, she was to be taken
alive—although perhaps to some of the soldiers her condition upon capture would not have
dampened their interest.
At the bottom of the hill Pierce rounded a gentle curve where the elevated roadbed took him
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a dozen feet above the forest floor. A sharp turn of the wheel and a firm boot on the brakes sent
the jeep onto the graveled shoulder on the oncoming side of the road, the north side, where he
reckoned the woman would emerge. With the gearshift in neutral and the idle low, he cocked an
ear, listening. The forest here was almost black some five yards into it, so thick was the vegetation,
but Pierce thought he heard muffled thrashing, a body thrusting past leaves and branches. A shout,
and another. Probably by this time her pursuers were closing on her. He squinted, seeking nuances
of movement through the leaves, swatches of pale flesh through the trees. She had to be in there
somewhere.
Suddenly she was there, as if she had materialized at the bottom of the slope. She rushed up
the incline toward him, just as two of her pursuers emerged from the forest with rifles at port.
Already Pierce had unslung the pump-action crossbow and nocked a bolt. Her climb blocked his

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 view of the soldiers, and his aim.
He barely had time to register that the oncoming young woman was worth looking at. The
flash of her seared his mind. Tallish, slender, breasts the size of oranges and as firm, full pubic ruff
almost as coppery as her hair, pale skin splashed all over with large, pale freckles, eyes dark in the
shadows, though they might be green, thin lips slightly parted to draw the breaths necessary to
maintain her flight, hair and body wet as if she had been bathing when flushed out by the soldiers,
eyes wide and then narrow as she found him and took him in.

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“Down,” he yelled, and immediately she spilled forward onto the lush wildflowers. The
implicit trust astonished Pierce, but he had no time to evaluate it. He aimed, fired, drew the cocking
slide to nock another bolt, aimed, and fired. Thung snick snick thung. Neither soldier had time to
bring his rifle to bear before the envenomed shaft struck him in the face, where the skin was bare.

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Both pitched forward directly where they were struck.
“Climb in,” Pierce yelled, still aiming at the forest.
The young woman rose and scrambled up the remaining slope and into the back of the jeep,
clambering over the passenger seat to sit down beside him. Already Pierce had the vehicle in
motion, his eyes both on the road and in the rearview mirror. The woman reached behind the seat
and seized the M16 there, and the two thirty-round banana clips duct-taped together. While Pierce
sent the jeep hurtling through the tunnel of overhanging branches, she cleared the weapon, inserted
the clip, and chambered a round—left-handed, Pierce noted—and took up a watch aft, protecting

knew some good words, too.

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against pursuit. She was mumbling to herself, barely audible, but enough to tell Pierce that she

The road gave onto the valley without warning. In one moment, the forest concealed them; in
the next, they were exposed. Almost as if the soldiers had been waiting for their emergence, a
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mortar round erupted a hundred yards short of the road several seconds later. Pierce flinched, but
kept driving. The woman twisted in the seat and brought the rifle to bear on the bridge almost a
thousand yards away. Pierce glanced at the bridge. A covered deuce-and-a-half truck was parked
just short of it, and several soldiers were pointing their rifles toward the road. Pierce heard the tell-
tale crumpf of a mortar being fired, and this time the round landed closer by half. A few shards of
metal struck the jeep. One sliced across the point of the woman's left shoulder, and a line of blood
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welled. The wound was not deep, and she made no sound of complaint, or gave any sign that she
was in pain. Clearly she wanted to return fire with the rifle, but that meant firing directly above
Pierce's head.
Another glance told Pierce that the soldiers were reboarding the truck. Evidently they meant
to challenge the woman's escape by taking the valley's north road until they gained a more
favorable position. Pierce pulled the jeep to the far side of the road and stopped. While the woman
looked a question at him, he unlocked the magazine of bolts from the crossbow and inserted
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another magazine, cocking a fresh bolt into place, this one a much darker brown than its
predecessors. As he climbed out of the jeep, the woman came around the front of it.
Pierce took aim at the far abutment of the bridge just as the woman began firing. The
unanticipated reports of the rifle distracted him, and when he turned his head to look at her, the
view of her took his breath away.
She was standing frontally toward him with her feet shoulder-width apart, wet copper hair
plastered to her shoulders and back, the butt of the M16 socketed into the corner of her left
shoulder, right arm bent, rifle barrel fitted into the V of her right thumb and fingers, left cheek
against the stock, sighting at the bridge and the soldiers on it. Carefully she squeezed off round
after round, her breasts below the rifle trembling slightly with each recoil.