The Red Line: The Red Line Trilogy, #1

By William Moland

When the country has been taken over by a dictator that uses credit to enslave its people, who is going to step-up and stop them? A teenage boy and girl find themselves at the heart of the revolution to stop the State from continuing their destruction of the United States. The Reds are those who have been enslaved, and the ones who try to escape are taken by the Red Line to the free states in the Northwest by the revolution. Those who are trying to escape have been imprisoned by the State because they let their credit go into the red. An army of revolutionaries, led by a faction bent on ridding the country of this atrocity, fight with the help of anyone brave enough to join them. Aaron Aldridge is thrown into their world and learns more about the revolution then he ever wanted to know. Join him on his journey through it all in this riveting story of love, betrayal, and coming of age with a strong male and female lead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Moland
• Release date: Aug 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386825647

Book preview

Chapter 1

My life was always good.  Not great, but good.  My parents never beat me. I never got into fights.  And I had a few good friends who never judged me.  Unless of course I wore my Alabama Crimson Tide jersey.  My parents were Auburn fans, sad, I know.  My family was not poor either, not rich, but not poor either.  We lived in a small town in Alabama called Anniston. It was small but close enough to Birmingham if we needed to go to a larger city for something. We got the things we always wanted as kids; a bicycle for Christmas for my brother, a remote-control car for me.  It was not bad at all growing up in the Aldridge household, but that’s because my mother had training in accounting, and my father was a businessman, even though he worked at a garage.  They knew how to manage their money.  And if you don’t know how to manage your money, you can end up in the red. 

I was seventeen, about to graduate high school, and two months from turning eighteen when I got my first real introduction into the adult world which came in the form of mail.  I had just come home from school, it was a B day, and I hate those classes, but everyone needs math, especially these days.  When I got home I checked the mail box as I always do and usually there is mail in there of some sort; advertisements, bills, a news mailer trying to get you to BUY!!! BUY!!! BUY!!!  WE ARE GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!!! OUR LOSS IS YOUR GAIN!!!  In other words, it was never for me, unless I changed my name to resident or current occupant that is.  And sometimes my mom got home early and got the mail as well.  But today my eye caught the Aaron Michael Aldridge in bold letters across the front of the envelope.  I had never received mail before.  Well, I did get the birthday card from my grandmother every year for my birthday up until she passed away.  It always said the same thing, To Aaron, take this $5.00 bill and keep it safe.  One day you may need it.  Love, Grandma.  But today I have this letter, and it looked important.  I took all the mail into the house and set it on the kitchen counter next to the big red IN basket and took my letter out to take to my room to read. 

Our two story house is not very large, but my brother and I do have separate rooms, we have to share a bathroom for the whole of the house, but that is fine since my dad gets up earlier than anybody else to go to work and my mother leaves after I go to school.  My older brother, Allen, he has his own room and is in college right now on the pay to stay program so he lives at home to save money and not use those college debt places.  Those places are real killers he always said.  The house was brick on the outside, no garage or carport, just a short driveway coming up from Highbridge drive, or as Allen likes to call it with all his buddies, Dry-bridge Drive because of all the yards and trees always being brown and there is never any green growing anywhere near it.  My dad says it is because no one can afford the excess water needed to irrigate and no one wants to put in those expensive irrigation systems anyway.  You have to do that on credit, and make payments for 3 or 4 years and that’s one more thing that can put you into the red. 

The house is modest, small, but we have all the basics to keep us happy, so I never complain about it.  I have seen the Richies, those kids on the other side of town.  They have cell phones, cars, green yards and much better clothes of course.  But having that kind of money can be a bad thing sometimes too.  Especially if you think you have more than you actually do.  You start getting more things with credit, and over extending your cash flow to pay bills.  And if you miss one or two payments, things can go bad real fast for you.  So I was happy with what we had, and I never asked for anything more.  I knew I was about to be eighteen soon, and that with growing up and becoming an adult, things would change for me.  I just had to be careful about what school I decided to go to, and what, if any, credit I might take on.  I wanted to emulate Allen and stay home.  Allen was my older brother by two years who goes to the local college.  I can save up and move out on my own when I graduate college and start my life somewhere exciting, and as far from Alabama as I could get.  I did not mind being in Alabama, it is not a bad place to live, but it is where I lived my whole life and I wanted to see much more.  I wanted to travel.  I wanted to see the world if I could afford to.  But that was not in my cards as they say.

I took my letter into my bedroom, laid down my Roll Tide! Backpack, it had nothing but my physics book and two notepads, a leftover juice box, and two pencils in it this time of year.  I was almost done with high school and most of my classes were free periods, study halls, and math.  Everyone needs good math skills my dad says.  Without them, you cannot get very far in this world.  I did not like the preaching, but I loved math.  Numbers came to me like other people play guitar naturally.  It just flowed from me.  I opened the letter and what I saw inside was;  Mr. Aaron Aldridge.  We have a special offer just for you!!  Are you planning on going to college?  Getting a new car?  Buying a house and getting married?  We are here to help!  Fill out the attached form and mail it in for your credit rating and see if you qualify for a line of credit!!  We are here to help!!  Signed, The State Credit Agency.

I was dismayed of course that it was not something more important to a kid, nay, a man of seventeen, who would be more inclined to read, and or, want in their life, but it was still an official letter to me as a man.  I was going to keep it and have it to look at forever because it was my first letter in the mail as an adult that was not from grammy.  I usually get into the house around three-forty-five p.m., school gets out at three, and I walk home because keeping a bike at school is showing off my dad would say.  So I walked.  And sometimes I would stop with Bill and K.T. at the park near the closest spot to all of our houses so we all get the same distance to walk from there to our perspective houses.  Bill, or William Reader, was seventeen and one month younger than I was, he had dark hair, kept short because his mom cut it to save money.  She did a great job, and I even have had her cut my hair once or twice when I stayed over his house.  I liked Bill’s mom.  She worked at the high school as a counselor and when we saw her at school, she would pretend not to know any of us, even Bill, so we did not have that stigma at school of the mom being there to watch over us. 

Bill was the kind of kid who loved technology.  What kid does not love tech, right?  But he LOVED it.  He would read all the tech magazines he could get his hands on, he would try experiments with whatever he found electronical.  He took apart their toaster, which pissed his dad off because things are not free in this world, and we have to pay for them in this household young man, kind of preaching you get from your dad.  But Bill made it right because he put it back together and it worked better than it did before.  Something about the heating coils being too far apart or something. 

And there was K.T., or Klevin Terrance Reed who we called K.T. because of his obviously odd first name.  K.T. was going to be 18 next week and was always the leader of our little group. I think his leadership, or strong headed-ness came from being named Klevin at a young age.  His dad always liked to say that he was named for a Klevin way back in the Reed family tree, and that he should be proud for having been named after such a great man as he.  But K.T.’s mom would tell the truth about it.  K.T. got his horrible first name because his father was drinking with some friends watching Monday night football, got a little too drunk when the call came that little Klevin was on his way.  He went to the hospital via a sober friend to meet his baby bursting wife and made it just in time to see the doctor holding little Klevin up with the umbilical cord still attached, so it counts as being there he said. 

When the doctor asked later for the name to be written on the birth certificate and the NICU name tape, Klevin’s father was drunk and slurring a few words here and there.  He looks the doctor right in the face and said, Hish name will be Klevin, doc.  Of course that should have come out as, HIS name is Kevin doctor.  The doctor had smelled the alcohol, and asked if he was sure about that, even showed him what it looked like written down, but K.T.’s father read it, and said yup, it is an old Reed family name of course he must have been seeing blurred or maybe just not reading it at all, so it went on the birth certificate, and the NICU tape on the baby bed.  It was three days of them both calling him Kevin when the birth certificate came in the mail saying Klevin instead of Kevin, which turned into K.T. when friends and family came over. 

They called the hospital and tried to get it fixed but they would have to come down and pay the thirty-five dollars to have the certificate changed, and that would go into state records and would always show as a first name for little Klevin and that if he changed it, it may one day affect his credit.  Or at the least show up as a blip for his future credit reports.  No one likes blips, so they left it alone, and little Kevin started being called little Klevin and then K.T.  Daddy started lying about the name, and mommy kept on reminding everyone that it was a drunken mistake, the name, not the baby of course.

Today was the kind of day where K.T. and Bill seemed like they were out of gas, and the dry dirt park was not much of a park most days, but today it seemed like it was even more dilapidated.  So we broke up our little party early with promises of getting together later, and that’s how I got home early enough to check the mail before my mother did today.  I went to the kitchen and made a snack of potato chips and a glass of water, watched some T.V., we had the digital antenna because we could not afford the cable or satellite boxes since they cost so much monthly, we had very little in the way of monthly left overs for entertainment.  On the news they were reporting that the Free People of Earth, or F.P.E., were fighting to maintain control of the northwest United States.  They say that being free was every man’s right.  And that the country is stuck in the past.  Of course the State news reporter went on to say that everyone does have a right to be free, they make choices and when they make poor choices, they give up that right for freedom. 

I turned the channel.  I hate watching violence, it makes me depressed.  I found my channel, the local one with all the right cartoons.  Yes, I am seventeen, almost eighteen and I enjoy cartoons.  I watch the Anime, the Japanimation from the eighties’ and nineties’ are my favorite.  You cannot go wrong with the Thunder Cats. Cartoon violence is not the same as real life violence.  I was settling in and watching my second episode of Thunder Cats, it was the good part, where Lionel would put the sword in front of his face and say, Thunder, Thunder, THUNDER CATS, HOOOOoooo!!!!  It was awesome.  Watch out Mombra, Lionel is pissed.  My mother came home first.  She is 41, still beautiful without makeup, long brown hair, thin glasses, light complexion, and thin.  Not frail, just thin.  She likes to run in the morning before work.  And she tried to get my dad to run from time to time, and he does, whining about it the whole way she says.  But it is good for him either way she would tell me and Allen when he was not around.  She came in and asked about my day as she always does, and said that she will get started on dinner if I would come and empty the dishwasher please.  I got up with a little moan she didn’t hear, or at least I think she didn’t hear, and went in to do my nightly chore.  While I was finishing the dishes, she came back in from the bedroom she shares with my dad and had her off-work clothes on, a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and a pair of thick socks with the skid stop pads on the bottom, and she came into the kitchen to begin making dinner, meatloaf tonight. 

How was that physics test today? she asked.  Fine, a little bit of a challenge since Mr. Donavon was trying to push us a bit now that it is the end of the year and he wanted to see who stood out or something, I don’t know.  How was your day?   She sighed, so I knew it was not the best day.  She works at the State registration office where all credit claims are filed when they are ready to be turned in to the Red department.  She goes over the files, makes sure they are ready for claim and that all attempts to recover the debt has been made, that all the files have been through the court system and that a judge in good standing has made a decision on the case and claim.  If all the I’s were dotted and all the T’s were crossed, she forwarded it to the Red Final Decision department and they can hear any claims of wrong doing, appeals that may have been filed, and then they make a decision to make the debtor Red or not.

I know she hates the job, she hates having to be a part of the system and it can weigh heavy on her some nights.  But it is a good paying job, and it’s with the State.  You cannot do better than that.  Good benefits, medical, dental, eye.  A lot of places these days do not offer such great benefits any more, she would say.  But she stays because she can find mistakes which can help debtors out of going Red.  And she does quite often. 

I am just tired today I guess. she said.  Too much paperwork and those damn F.P.E. people filing claim after claim for all these people who I know for sure belong in the Red.  I do my job well, and I even find those errors which keep people from being in the Red, or at least a delay in going Red.  And now I have to check them again when they come back in the appeals files which I think are just attempts to buy someone out of going Red from someone who is not in the Northwest area.  A wealthy family member, or State member, who is trying to get Johnny Jr. or Uncle Steve out of debt.  I think that is fine, if they pay the entire debt off for them, but trying to make it look like I made the mistake, or someone in my department made the mistake?  That is a bit of a downer there sunshine.  She used my childhood nickname, Sunshine.  I hated it, but it was still a bit nostalgic for me I guess, so I let I go.  They called me Sunshine because when I was a baby, I was learning to crawl around at 6 months old or so, and I would crawl to wherever the sunshine was touching the floor through the windows.  I was always in the sunshine, so they started calling me the sunshine baby, and that turned into just Sunshine as I got older.  Yeah, a bit fem for me, but what could I do?  They were my parents.

Well, maybe after college I can get a job there as well.  And then I could take charge of the place and send those appeals back with a great big ‘Kiss my ass’ on the envelope for you.  She laughed and said, Watch your mouth Sunshine, stop trying to grow up so fast.  Is your brother home yet? I told her no, and that he may be coming in a bit later tonight then usual since he is going to be going for an internship with a law firm in Birmingham and would have to take the bus.  She smiled and had a flash of a dark look cross her eyes as she did so.  Well, I hope he gets the job, it pays nothing as an internship, but he can get in on the ground floor and maybe they will sponsor him for law school.  That firm has five students a year they sponsor, and he is a smart young man.  Best in his class.  They would be stupid not to.  I just nodded my head thinking about all the new pressures for Allen and finished the dishes.  I was about to go back into the living room, with our open floor plan, that was not too far away from the counters she would be preparing dinner on, when the door opened and my father walked into the house.  He was smiling and humming a tune I have never heard, but with dad, he lives in the old days.  He likes the old music of bands long gone, Nirvana, Metallica, Guns and Roses.  I never liked those old style musicians and the way they dressed, let alone yelled when they sung.  But he loved them, grew up on them he would say.

My dad was forty-two, looked like he was thirty-eight at most.  He wore a mustache, and wore it well the ladies would say (or he would say they did anyway), he shaved his head bald since he was losing his hair anyway. Don’t worry son, it is on my side of the family, not your mothers, so you have nothing to worry about with baldness.  I still worried.  He wore his jump suit he always wore to and from work at the garage.  He was the supervisor now, but still liked to get down and dirty with the other grease monkeys. He was a full six foot three inches tall and compared to my mother’s five foot five inches, he looked like a giant to me my whole time growing up.  But now that I am almost six foot two myself, not so much anymore.  I think he will always be a giant to me though.  At least in my memories.

Aaron!!  Did you pass? he says as a greeting.  I did good, and I did pass.  I had some hard times with the more advanced problems, but I did get a B, so no complaints.  No grease today?  I asked because he always comes home dirty from being under those cars and trucks all day.  No, I had to sit in on a meeting today about change of ownership to the garage.  It may be going to Dick, but they said I am in the running as well, since I have been there for over fifteen years and know it better than anyone.  A flash of what?  Horror?  Fear?  from my mother, but she changes her face quickly when she sees that I have looked in her direction.  It froze the smile off my face for my father’s good mood.  But he had caught the look as well.

Don’t worry Alice, the garage is always in the black, and has a good standing with the State.  If I get it, it will be a good income for this house and maybe we can actually get a second car?  Or maybe a few other things we need around here?  My mother did not answer. She just smiled and nodded her head, turned back to making dinner and that was it for the conversation.  Or at least the part I heard.  I am sure it continued on later that evening, in the privacy of their room.  They never really argued in front of Allen or me.  But we always knew when something was going to be discussed later in the bedroom.  Oh yes.  You could feel the tension right up until bed time. 

Over dinner we did the basic chit and chat.  We discussed our days, and my plans for college coming up.  I think more than anything that they were checking to make sure that I have not changed my mind and decided to go off and be a race car driver or work at a fast food chain somewhere, not that there are many of either these days  But we were talking and my dad noticed the envelope I had left on the couch, since you can see it from the dining room table, only being about 4 feet away at most.  He asked me what I got in the mail and I went over and picked it up and brought it back to him. 

My father held the envelope for a bit, reading it, and his eyes were already starting to turn to anger, and maybe a little fear?  He stood up quickly and asked, Is this the first one you ever received?  I said Yes, that’s why I was keeping it, as a souvenir.  He bellowed a bit, trying to keep his voice down, I could see he was trying to anyway, This is garbage, and needs to be thrown away, I will burn it for you and that will be that.  I asked him why I could not keep it and he said, To remove the temptation son, to remove the temptation.  A little quieter as he said this.  But dad, it is my first mail as an adult, or as the world sees me as an adult.  I wanted to keep it to remind me that I am no longer a kid.  He was staring at my mother, as if to say, Say something, help me out here.  My mother, Aaron, you know I deal with these kinds of things at work, and I do not ever want to have to be the one who has her own child come across her desk.  I cannot ever imagine what I would do if you, or Allen, or anyone I know whose name came across my desk.  I live with that fear every day.  Please, just let it go, and trust that we know what is best with these kinds of things.  Stay away from credit, stay away from any debt.  If you do not have the cash for something, then you do not need it. That’s an old, yet very wise, saying. 

I knew they were thinking about the Reds.  Everyone sees the Reds at the grocery stores, the fields, the car washes.  They were everywhere.  Reds are people who have gone into debt and they could not repay it.  And if you could not repay your debt, and after your trial, your appeals, and the office of second chances, as my mom called the State Credit Bureau’s Remission Division, you went into a State prison to await purchase.  You wanted your debt to be purchased, because you could get out of prison.  The prison system made you stay in there to repay your debt for a few dollars a day, which could take an entire lifetime to repay.  However, when your debt gets purchased, you go to work for whoever buys it for 10, 20 or 100 dollars a day, depending on the amount you owe and the sentence the judge hands down. 

Someone with a hundred thousand dollars in debt could repay it in a thousand days at one hundred dollars a day a day, if that is what’s sold to the client.  And the prisons are overfilled, crime-ridden filth.  People die in there.  And no one cares.  Except the F.P.E. of course.  That is their mission in life.  To free all those in prison and those working off their debts.  Some people have had such debt as to never be able to work it off in their lifetime, and in those cases, family members must step in to fulfill the remainder.  Your son, daughter, wife, husband.  And no one wants that.  The Reds are easy to spot, they have bright Red collars around their necks.  These are tracking devices, and 2-way communication to the owners of the debt.  So if they were out, and the owner needed something, they could call their Red to do something, since giving a Red a phone is illegal, this works best.  If a Red tried to run, and they sometimes do, their collars make a high pitched beeping which could damage the ears of the Red, but is meant to alarm others nearby of a runaway.  If it is attempted to be removed, it will explode.  Not much of a bang, but enough to sever the right arteries and kill you. 

Many people have hated the idea of Reds since its inception many years ago.  It is too close to the slavery our nation had fought hard to recover from.  Buying and selling people, them working for no wages is slavery.  But, it made it to congress and was unanimously voted into law because of one man, Earl Jacobs.  He was the one who came up with the idea, that it would save the country from living above our means, help with trade control, and stop crime in its tracks by eliminating classes.  The have’s and have nots.  But it really just made the divide much more...divided?  Those with money can have anything, not worry about making their next payment to the credit cards, the car payments, a mortgage.  Those like my family, we have to pay for things with money, not credit.  If we get too far into debt, we could get into the red. 

Our house was bought with savings from my grandfather and my dad.  They paid for almost a full half of the house in one payment, and now our mortgage is very minimum so it is manageable. And of course we do not have cable and other things like cell phones to worry about either.  There was a major fight on how to handle the new law, when to start it, who to start with.  But it all came in a rush, and those with debt they could not manage were put into prison.  Soon their debts were purchased and the first collars came out.  Those used to be just a GPS, so they could be tracked, but after a few escapes, they were modified with two-way calling and the high-pitched alarms.  After that the explosive pellet came into play.  The explosive was the biggest concern of the American people.  But without it, they could not keep the Reds from escaping.  So it was voted on, and it was put into action.  Escapes dropped by nearly one hundred percent.  And of course there are the Hunters.  The Hunters are a group of ex-military, ex-law enforcement, who hunt those who have already escaped before the pellets were introduced, and the few that managed a way to remove the collars after. No one gets away from the Hunters.

I knew my mother, and I knew she was worried that if I had one of these credit sheets, especially one from the State, that I would be tempted, just like my dad was thinking.  She said, Being young, you may think that you have the money to cover a monthly payment, and you may for a while anyway, but something could change, and then you are stuck finding a way to pay the next payment, or the next after that, and it all adds up.  And when it goes into default, they reclaim the car, or T.V., or computer, and your name will eventually come across my desk.  I do not want to see that.  Ever!  Your father and I work hard to give you and Allen everything you needed growing up.  But there were sacrifices, and we are able to give you a good life.  Not the best, but you have a good life.  Stay away from credit, stay away from anything you cannot afford with cash in hand.  Remember that Aaron.  I was a little upset with the speech.  I did not think I needed to be told it all over again, for the hundredth time since turning sixteen and they knew I was getting closer to getting these credit requests in the mail.  But I let it go, finished my meatloaf, with green peppers, yuck, and cleaned my plate in the sink.  I told them I needed to go upstairs and read tomorrows homework and left them at the table. 

After an hour of reading my Anime comics, I decided it was time to get out of the house for a while, the homework could wait until tomorrow, it was just English and a very short chapter on famous writers like Stephen King, Clive Barker, R.L.Stine, etc.  Your basic Boo!!  Scary books.  And I could have that finished by breakfast.  I called K.T. and Bill to see what they were up to, and they were looking to get out for a while as well.  We met at Oak Park, our usual place, and then started walking to the Appleton Mall which was about a mile and a half away and would not be a bad walk in seventy-two-degree weather for this fine spring day. 

While we were walking Bill said, My mom is cutting hair this weekend, me and Stu are getting ours, you guys want to come over and stay the night Friday?  Stu was Bill’s younger brother, and a bit of a hand full since he has A.D.D. or something.  Sure. K.T. said, I could use some tits rubbing the back of my head this weekend, I have had a rough week with all this turning eighteen shit coming up. Don’t do this, don’t do that, register for the military here, vote for this, credit, credit, credit.  Bullshit.  I thought becoming an adult would be the shit.  But it turns out it is a lot of work, and prepping to stay away from going Red.  Bill pretended not to hear the remark about his moms’ tits for the fiftieth time this year, I know, I am getting the third degree from my dad all the time about the credit mail. He says, ‘Do you want to be like your cousin Tony?’, and I say of course not, and I hate that you think you have to remind me every three days.  I mean, I get it right?

Tony was Bill’s cousin on his mom’s side, and he was nineteen when he went into debt, and then into Red.  And once in a while one of the Richies at school