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I'd been preparing for this day for literal years.

Dating all the way back to 1990, when the emerging regime forced a few of my colleagues to relocate to the 'quarantine camps', I spent the previous seven years preparing. In all honesty, I thought the day would never come. No, I hoped it was all a waste of time and money. I prayed that one day, I'd be able to joke about my paranoia to friends and university staff during an academic Christmas party. Everyone would mock me, saying, “Frank Faber, did you really spend most of your savings on a remote, untraceable cabin near the Canadian border?"

I would confirm it. They would call me a paranoid leftist. I'd laugh, and then we would reminisce about the nightmarish period of political upheaval and religious zealotry that had been engulfing the United States since the rise of the Revenant Party. Sadly, we didn't wake up from that nightmare.

Rather, it had gotten much, much worse.

My whiskers shivered on my snout and fingers trembled at the wheel as I drove in the dead of night. A long stretch of black highway seemingly curved forever along the Lake Superior coastline. To my left were swaths of ragged woodland belonging to Superior National Forest, and to my right an occasional tree line dividing me from a dark inland sea. Most of it appeared to be frozen under the moonlight, but at certain angles, it was hard to tell the difference between solid ice and brinish water. The January cold clung to my visible breath, even with the heater on high. Trickles of lake effect snowfall kissed the truck's windshield, and I imagined myself not fleeing for safety, but going on a hunting trip for feral game.

Yeah, that was it. The fantasy did help warm me, even temporarily.

Driving all the way from Chicago and across Wisconsin all the way into Minnesota, feeling my old life drifting farther and farther away with every mile traveled, my tiger tail would not stop wiggling behind me. Twitching and swishing between my back and the Junkyard Dog's driver seat, my unkept tail reflected my mood: nervous, excited, and like I expected to see several goons in government vans pull me over any moment.

“Get a grip, Frank," I murmured, keeping an eye out for the correct intersection.

Maybe the radio would calm my nerves. With one paw still gripping the wheel, my eyes still fixed on the icy winter road, I turned the knob.

“—President Hedge is keeping yet another one of many promises made in his inaugural speech this week," a female voice I recognized as an NPR host chimed in. “Despite facing incredible backlash from Democratic and Libertarian congressmen, as well as intense scrutiny over the violent tactics employed by the newly adopted 'Covenant Guards', the new Revenant President and his cabinet were seen at the White House celebrating a new executive order. This one is set to start replacing the Bill of Rights with—"

Scowling, I shut off the radio and instead started relishing the windy ambience outside.

***

The small lakeside town sitting between me and my safehouse didn't seem like much. It contained the bare minimum for independent living, with a tiny town hall next to the post office, a single grocery store, two competing bars bustling with activity, a gas station, and several houses as old as the town itself. Remembering that I needed a few more supplies, I reluctantly parked underneath the gas station's rusting metal canopy. I averted my eyes and forced myself not to grimace at the unpatriotic thing waving on the wall-mounted flag pole.

Gone are the fifty stars, I thought melancholily. That cross doesn't belong there.

Shaking my whiskers, I refocused on the task and entered the store. My winter hat, jacket, and muzzle mask remained on. The tired young badger sitting behind the counter clearly wasn't interested in me, but I didn't take any chance in standing out. In the weeks leading up to Inauguration Day, photographs and videos of the Revenant Party's most vocal critics being arrested and detained had been circulating around non-government news agencies. Several of my colleagues had even discussed it in university emails. That had been the catalyst of what led to me decided it was time to leave.

As far as the University was concerned, I had gotten severe food poisoning and would be returning from my home to work again by the following Monday. In the meantime, I'd converted all of my emptied savings into cash, packed up all of my belongings, and would be making it to my new home very soon. The last thing I needed was to be caught when I was so close.

After grabbing a cup of fresh coffee, some extra tooth paste, bars of soap, and all of the ramen I could carry in my arms to the register, I decided to buy a bottle of whiskey. Why not? My trips into town would be few and far between save for huge outings to renew supplies. Thank Christ that being in my early forties, I didn't need to show any I.D. The less evidence of my being there, the better.

“Evenin' stranger!"

I jumped from my winter jacker and whirled around, not expecting to see a yawning but friendly-looking she-wolf in a poofy blue jacket. Not too far behind her stood a disinterested wolf her age, hyper-focused on a newspaper rack.

“Evening, ma'am," I greeted, laughing nervously. “You startled me there."

The wolf behind t

“My apologies," she giggled in embarrassment. “I didn't mean to scare the bejezzus out of you. I just wanted to say that's a lot of food you're buying. You going out hunting?"

“Yes," I lied.

The badger behind the counter either did his scanning incredibly slowly, or time crawled like molasses.

“Oh, that's lovely!" she said, beaming. “Well, we have plenty of hunting grounds around here! Where you from? What brings you all the way out here?"

“Springfield," I lied again. “And I just…wanted to get away from everything."

“I can't blame you, dear!" she sighed. “These are some scary times we live in. You bringing the family with you? Got a wife?"

“Not on this trip." I shook my head. “It's just me."

It was wise to pretend I was married. Better to pretend than admit I happened to be single. Truth be told, I never planned for it. I just never cared about marriage. I wasn't antisocial or hated mammalkind. I just didn't find much value in romantic relationships compared to platonic ones. That didn't stop me from facing rumors or scrutiny though, especially from coworkers and a couple of the more 'devout' colleagues back in academia. If being vocal against Christian dominionism in my lectures didn't lead to my arrest, then suspicions of me breaking the federal sodomy laws would.

That had been yet another catalyst for why I chose to leave.

As the elderly she-wolf started talking about a trip that she and her husband recently made to a national park across the state, I started to feel relaxed. My tail uncurled and the ringing at the counter started to blare less and less in my closest ear. However, I did feel my muzzle downturn beneath the face covering upon hearing the she-wolf's husband speak.

“You're from Illinois then, huh?" he asked. “Did you hear about those damned kids terrorizing the Chicago campus? I saw on FaithTV that they spraypainted Satanic symbols on the buildings. And in the Twin Cities, it's happening there too."

“I saw that protest. No pentagrams were drawn," I wanted to say.

Instead, I shook my head. “I don't watch the news," came my reply. “It depresses me."

The husband laughed, as did his wife. “Yeah, I getcha," he responded. “Thank the Lord that Hedge is finally doing something about it. We're finally being a Christian nation again, and by the time it's summer, all those homo atheists and gutter trash flooding our country will be long gone. We can actually visit family in St. Paul without worrying about damn protesters."

The urge to start an academic debate was strong. With gritted teeth, I held my tongue.

“Yeah…Damn protesters."

Suddenly, once the badger cashier handed me my change and the two stuffed paper bags, I felt the urge to start drinking one of the whiskey bottles. Drunk driving be damned.

***

During the rest of the drive, I let my anger burst into a one-sided conversation. I pointed out to the absent, unnamed wolf that the reporters and correspondents of FaithTV didn't care about the truth. They'd long since fallen in bed with the Revenant Party. To the absent wolf, I described what happened at those actual protests he mentioned, telling him that the students I witnessed led a peaceful demonstration. It only turned violent once the Chicago police department turned up in riot gear and began arresting them without just cause. They didn't even bother with arresting the counter-protesters holding up signs filled with vile language, calling the students everything from sinners to demon-possessed communists and pedophiles. I shamed the wolf and his wife for thinking that everyone opposed to the new regime had to be the enemy.

They're idiots of they think they'll be immune to this new dictatorship.

Regret filled me the instant that thought came to mind.

I silently chided myself, focusing on the road ahead. How could I blame them solely for the actions of Hedge, of David Farthing, or his Revenant Party? The wolf couple weren't the reason for all the madness. Whether or not they voted for it didn't matter. It was the new regime. They'd been slowly poisoning the country for years on a steady diet of propaganda, legislative wins, and a recovered economy. Then, the Revenant Party simply convinced everyone else to fall down the rabbit hole with them, and to abandon the old values we once treasured. Now, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness applied to those who followed Christian doctrine. Or whatever version of Christianity was being promoted.

Finally, as the time edged close to midnight, I spotted it through the moonlit trees: a tent-shaped silhouette within a small clearing, along with a box-like building mere feet from the structure. I felt my face brighten up beneath the muzzle mask as soon as I saw the metal fence between my truck and my destination.

The next few minutes became an excited blur, rushing out of my truck amid crunching dead leaves and swaths of frozen snow, unlocking the icy metal gate, pushing it aside, getting back in the truck to drive it inside the property, then getting back out to lock the gate closed behind me before guiding the vehicle up the hill. I remembered shaking either from the cold or addicting relief as I pressed the garage door button, then pressing it again once I parked the truck inside the box-like structure.

I wanted to fall asleep. I wanted to relish in knowing I made it safe and sound.

“Not yet," I told myself. “There's work to do."

The A-frame cabin stood two stories. On the outside, it looked like a regular old hunting cabin complete with feral antlers hanging above the front door, a shooting range on the opposite end of the clearing (which hadn't been used in years, even before I'd bought the property through a shell company), and a rustic picnic table carved from an old tree. Once winter ended and spring arrived, I looked forward to eating outdoors.

On the inside though, it wasn't a hunting cabin. The basement was packed with enough dried goods and non-perishable food to last me at least several years, plus packets of seeds I could start growing once spring finally arrived. I had radio equipment to listen in on the outside world, and one day, to possibly speak with other like-minded resistance. The guest bedroom had also been transformed into a library for every physical copy of media I'd managed to sneak with me from the University's library, dating all the way back to when the previous administration started forcing colleges to no longer have certain literature. I'd even gone out of my way to save books I didn't care for, like The Catcher in the Rye.

After turning on the outside generator and stumbling inside with all my belongings, I shed my winter clothing in the kitchen, and began to feel my body give out. Even so, I'd still managed to take my cup of gas station coffee with me and decided to crash out on the living room recliner. I paused though.

On one wall, mounted to it proud and true, was a familiar, friendly old flag. On a whim, I'd purchased it a year or so before the 1996 election, then decided to hang it up. The fifty stars weren't replaced by a cross just yet back then. After traveling all the way from Chicago to the northern curve of Minnesota, having seen so many bastardizations of the Old Glory and billboards with that new flag, celebrating the 'rebirth of a new Devout America', that seeing the original Stars and Stripes on my cabin wall led to me having an unexpected reaction. My tail curled downward. My frown turned into a smile. Tears started to form in my eyes, and I rubbed them away with a thumb as I sat down on the recliner.

Originally, I wanted to flee for Canada. It would be easier sooner than much later, if the new laws and restrictions were suggesting anything. I couldn't, however. I'd already been a coward by not speaking out beyond a lecture hall.

On that day, I made two promises to myself: one, I would do whatever I could to fight against the new 'Devout States' government. Two, I would survive the coming dark days ahead. For the moment, only one of those promises could be kept. And sitting in the recliner chair, a cup of coffee in one paw and my eyes fixed on the stars and stripes mounted to my wall, I felt I could fulfill that promise.