...Dust

The Story of Vic Johns

The New Confederacy struggled for money. It was no surprise. They had struggled for money before, only able to balance their budgets on the money that came from states like California and New York. Those in power realized that the country needed taxes to run everything. Taxes to pay their paychecks, of course, because corporations led them to believe there was no such thing as having too much money.

Then things began to deteriorate... as roads and bridges do after wear and tear and no one to maintain them.

The government knew if it imposed a tax on its citizens that their delicate paradise could explode. Still, someone, anyone, had to pay.

Then it dawned on them...as the state coffers ran dry that those whistleblowers and peace disturbers could serve a purpose: They could be an exploited labor force. Isolate them socially, exhaust them physically and mentally, and weaken their bodies. Then they will stay in line. 

Make them suffer, and they will be too worn down to rebel.

They searched for answers and none were forthcoming.

The plutocrats were hoarding money, trickling it down in low wages to their workers and claiming the people who were working for a few cents an hour simply weren't working hard enough.

People believed that, too.

As money was hoarded by the plutocrats the roads disintegrated. Infrastructure crumbled.

Schools and prisons used to be low-priority things for the New Confederacy. If someone wanted an education, then their parents had to afford it. If their parents couldn't afford it, then they needed to work harder. One could never work hard enough in the eyes of the New Confederacy.

The prisons only became an issue when a convict escaped.

He was in on a charge of grand theft. What did he steal?

Bread.

A modern-day Jean Valjean.

Even now, I remember his name from the whispered tellings of the story, and I thought it fitting. Vic Johns. John, the Anglicized form of Jean. Vic, so much like Victor Hugo who created Jean Valjean.

Vic Johns who stole bread to feed those he loved.

The press had made him sound horrible: He had stolen loaves of bread at the bakery where he had worked, thousands of dollars' worth of bread!

What the press didn't tell you was that the bread was past its sell-by date and was in the trash. It was perfectly good bread, it was just no longer fit to be sold to the public for what Walker Brothers Bread would charge for it. He refused to throw it away and distributed it among his family and neighbors.

One night he was caught. Charged. Convicted.

Only then did Walker Brothers Bread care about what happened to its day-old bread. They only cared because they realized they could have made money off of that bread. Especially since they manufactured all of the bread in the New Confederacy in their 12 manufacturing bakeries. If Vic Johns did it at one bakery, how much money were they losing at their other locations?

The injustice of it all was too much for Vic Johns. He knew his family and friends were starving. He was furious that he was in prison for what was essentially garbage. Garbage that only mattered once it was realized that people were eating and the bread did not enrich the Walker Brothers Bread Company.

If they could make a cent off of it, it was theft to them.

So Vic Johns escaped one night. He had smuggled Walker Brothers Bread bags from the commissary and broke into the house of Rick Walker, one of the CEOs of Walker Brothers Bread. He had found Rick Walker where he expected him to be: In his office looking at illegal movies that were deemed "immoral" by the government and banned.

Vic Johns had snuck up against the weak, reptilian-looking man and whisked the bag over the man's skinny bald head. Before Rick could even make a sound of protest Vic Johns had twisted the bag tight and suffocated the slippery man until his bulging eyes became lifeless. Rick Walker was asphyxiated in a bread bag from his own company.

He took the keys to Rick Walker's car and made his way to the mansion of Perry Walker.

He caught Perry Walker in the tool shed, polishing illegal guns.

Vic Johns was shot fifteen times and still he managed to quash the life out of Perry Walker. He found the strength to smother the man in a Walker Brothers Bread bag before his blood left his body. His thick brown hair was the only thing that looked alive on him when the bag was finally cut from his neck.

Perry and Rick Walker were mourned by the raconteurs on the radio. How dare a thief like Vic Johns steal money from the people who work so hard at Walker Brothers Bread! The money made from the sale of that bread could have gone back into the community for more jobs! Walker Brothers even helped pay for that new highway that helped transport goods across the New Confederacy and were generous enough to allow the public to use it for a fee of $2 per mile!

Vic Johns is a silent hero to the working man.

However, his ghost still haunts the minds of the plutocrats. His spirit was certainly kept alive in those fretful days after his escape and killing the two Walker brothers.

The wives of Perry and Rick Walker wanted nothing more to do with the bread company. It was too dangerous. That was when it was sold to Sheldon Incorporated for a price so high that no Walker would ever know hunger again.

The Walker family had even bought their way out of the New Confederacy. The Walkers and their billions left the New Confederacy for Monte Carlo.

Those billions would never come back to the New Confederacy.

That money was gone, just like Rick and Perry Walker.

That was when the people cried that something had to be done to keep the prisons safe...

If a non-violent criminal like Vic Johns could escape and become violent, kill off two dear businessmen who had given so much to their country, what would the dangerous felons do to other businessmen who wronged them?

Someone had to pay and it wasn't going to be the plutocrats.

That's when the whole thing began...