Free American Apocalypse by Nova

side. Plus, all that black plastic. If I smacked somebody upside the head with one, I was afraid it would either break or, worse, not do anything. With a blade there was no safety, and the odds were pretty good that it was not going to break or jam at the wrong moment.
    The other problem with guns was some really weird government stuff was going on with them. The feds could not ban them without really stirring up trouble. You could tell they really wanted to ban assault and military-style rifles but those weren’t going anywhere for the same reasons. So what they were doing, and doing very quietly, was choking off the supply of certain ammunition. Only lately had it become noticeable enough that public questions were asked. The government said the war effort was straining production for certain calibers and that it should be resolved shortly. No one really accepted that for the same reason the public no longer accepted anything the
government said. Nobody believed them, especially after the bank nationalization fiasco.
    The bank nationalization probably didn’t even start as one. It was never even officially called that by name. We will probably never know, as the government still has not released any information on what they were doing or hoped to do. It was billed as an exercise in determining the current state of the bank’s balance sheets. What no one had realized was how bad a situation the banks were in. One of the examiners was a young lady named Meredith Gonzales. Meredith, who I watched being interviewed after everything broke loose on YouTube, was a fat, unattractive Hispanic woman with a bad accent; she was also a brilliant analyst. Her bosses had never gotten past her exterior to appreciate the interior, and she resented that. Rightfully so, I thought. Meredith had access to a lot of data, and no social life. She took the data from Citigroup, ran her own analysis, and uploaded everything to the Web. Everything meant the bank’s data, the government data, her data, and some really huge spreadsheets, which were later considered works of art by aficionados of that genre. The result was that she blew up the American banking system. Then the dominoes, which in this case meant banks, started falling all across the world—and they were still falling. Governments fell, and in a handful of countries they did not fall gracefully.
    So that’s why I signed onto Craigslist to find my weapon of choice. I was looking for a saber. I would go all the way back to medieval times for a blade if I had to. But a saber was my weapon of choice. I didn’t want to stick my attackers; I wanted to slice. I figured less chance of the blade getting hung up that way. I guess I could have
gone samurai, but I felt that was disrespectful. Why appropriate another culture’s tools, when yours had created ones that worked just as well?
    Craigslist was fascinating to me: the debris of a civilization being jettisoned overboard, where it could wash up on anyone’s cyberbeach. Craigslist reminded me of Hemingway and his great short story For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never used .
    The stories behind some of the flotsam that washed ashore had to be fascinating. “Wedding dress. Used twice. Size 12.” Also the engagement rings—a lot of heartbreak contained in those short posts. I found what I was looking for under “Collectibles.” I actually had three choices. In theory, posting ads for weapons was against Craigslist policy, but with the flood of merchandise and the ability to repost if an ad got deleted, you could get what you needed if you moved quickly. One ad was for a Marine Corps dress sword. Nice, but no. One looked to be a cheap Chinese stainless steel fantasy sword. The last one was good—very good. A copy of an 1860 U.S. Calvary saber made from carbon steel, with a leather-wrapped hilt. I sent the posters an e-mail.
    My reply arrived in minutes. They were in the area and willing to meet me in a public place close by. I suggested the