Free Oblivion by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch

camera.
    She didn’t want them taping the rally. She knew what they’d do. They’d send it on, make her a laughingstock or, worse, sic the government on her. Kill her. That couldn’t happen. Not yet. Not this early.
    The blond man had gotten to the bandstand. He looked like a take-charge type.
    “Hi,” she said. “I’m Vivian Hartlein. I’m the one who called this here meeting.”
    “Jake Styles,” he said.
    “Well, Jake Styles, there ain’t gonna to be nothing happening here if them reporters stay. Think you can get them to go?”
    He looked over his shoulder. “Why would I want to?”
    “Why’re you here?” she asked.
    His blue eyes darkened. “My daddy lived on the California coast”
    “My daughter and her babies did, too,” Vivian said.
    They stared at each other a moment. Bonded. She felt it. The loss created a link between them. Without saying nothing more, he turned around and walked toward the reporters.
    She’d picked well. He had a charm about him.
    More and more cars came. There was maybe fifty people here now. Some she knew, most she didn’t. The ones she knew belonged to some of the same groups as Dale. They looked surprised to see her without him.
    She wasn’t speaking for him today. She was speaking for everyone. And for her dead daughter and grandchildren.
    The woman reporter laughed and then patted Jake Styles on the arm. Oh, charm was useful. But not everything. Still, the reporters got back in their car, backed up, and pulled out of the lot. Jake Styles stood at the edge of the lot until the car disappeared.
    By then, her entire crowd was sitting on the dew-damp river grass or standing at the fringes, leaning on trees for support. He came back, shrugged amiably, and said, “I don’t think they’re coming back.”
    “What’d you tell them?” she asked.
    “That this was the traditional singing rally for the Baptist churches in the area. We’re just organizing, and we’d hope they’d come back when we’re getting ready to sing in the big sing-a-thon in July.”
    “You didn’t,” Vivian said.
    “I did.” He grinned. “They said that explained the strangeness of the announcements they’d heard on the radio, and they were sorry for troubling us. And they got the date of the big sing-a-thon. They were embarrassed they didn’t know about it.”
    “I can’t believe they believed that.”
    “People believe anything, you say it with enough conviction.” His eyes seemed to bore right through her. He was right, of course. That was what she was here to talk about. “You know, if you’re gonna talk about how awful things are and not give no ways to resolve things, I ain’t staying.”
    “We got to take things into our own hands,” she said. “Things?” he asked.
    “What do you do?” she said. “You ain’t government, are you?”
    “If I was government, you think I’d be here?”
    “Them reporters was.”
    He took a battered wallet out of his back pocket. Inside was his electricians’ union card, tattered now, and a driver’s license, a few ripped photos, and nothing else. None of them credit cards or them identification strips that had a person’s entire medical history on it. No electronic slider cards at all.
    The casual way he handed his life to her was just as it should be. A code among compatriots. A way that believers knew they weren’t alone.
    “I been thinking about this a long time,” she said. “Studying it. Not just when them so-called aliens came, but before. You want to listen?”
    “Yeah.”
    She nodded toward the people before her. “Join them. When I get ’em fired up, I’m going to find out how many of them is truly interested.”
    “In doing what?”
    “Crippling the government. Getting rid of all them who killed our family and aim to kill our country. I know the perfect way to do it.”
    “Them reporters would say that the government is our only protection.”
    “Yeah,” Vivian said. “They would. They’re the ones who aired