Allan Hancock College Santa Maria, California
Ozias “Ozzie” James Walker drove into the campus parking lot in a black Oldsmobile coupe. It was not his vehicle. He had hot-wired it two hours earlier. One thing he loved about old cars –- they’re easy to steal. None of that high-tech anti-theft jazz. All it takes is a dent puller and a screwdriver. Whack off the outer ring on the ignition switch, screw the dent puller into the key slot, and give it a light tap. Boom — free car. All for a two minute investment.
This one sported a custom dual exhaust that made it growl like a beast of prey, and it had a killer sound system. He owned a car of his own, but preferred using stolen vehicles when he was ‘working’. He was on a mission, and didn’t want the police or anyone else to associate his license plate or get a description that implicated him with his highly illegal ‘job’.
Ozias pulled out a glass pipe as “Weed, Whites and Wine” played through the car’s Bluetooth. Stocky, clean-shaven, with a head of thick blonde hair, Ozias Walker could pass for a typical Hancock student. Except for his attire: he wore a black hoodie, black cargo pants, and black tactical boots. A black neoprene ski mask covered his mouth and nose, and wraparound sunglasses obscured his eyes. He looked like the Unibomber – a calculated effect which was exactly what he intended.
He took a deep hit. Crack cocaine, his favorite. Cooked it himself. Four parts coke, one part baking soda. For him, as easy as rolling a cigarette.
He peered out the windshield at a line of students outside the Student Health Center. It was the first day of school, and vaccines were mandatory. Fucking sheep, he thought.
None of the students milling about noticed the intruder. They lined up, eager to get their shots out of the way, randomly chatting to dispel nervous tension: what classes to take, which professors to avoid. What majors pay off. Date rape and consent. Birth control. Which bars might let you drink without ID. Where to get fake ID.
Ozias kept track of the people entering the vaccine line. Every time someone new showed up, he tallied a new chicken scratch on his phone. Every now and then he snorted in disgust as the numbers climbed. So many fools! He hated vaccines with a visceral passion, and that animosity spilled over into contempt for people who took them.
In a perverse way, this was his form of idealism. Years of viewing “antivax” websites had him convinced that vaccines were the thin end of the wedge, a means for the elites to render the populace docile under the tyranny of global dictatorship. He considered anyone who went along with vaccines to be collaborators, tools of insidious evil.
Oz Walker wasn’t one to sit by and watch the ruling elites take over the world. He meant to do something about it. His chosen method was to act alone, like his heroes, all of them lone wolves. He was a believer in “leaderless resistance” and saw himself as a someone like Jesus, doing God’s work.
His views were not shared by very many college students. After the COVID pandemic waned, college campuses were hit hard by an assortment of epidemics: bird flu, meningitisC, coronavirus-2027, a new variant of polio and Ebola.
The North American Ebola epidemic marked a sea change. Not as deadly as the strain that caused previous outbreaks in Africa, the American strain it didn’t kill off its hosts rapidly. It allowed them to walk around shedding virus and thus it was able to spread far and wide. It replicated rapidly and caused considerable damage and when its victims finally became overtly ill their death was slow and painful.
The Ebola first appeared in and spread in the Great Lakes region and then throughout the Midwest. After eighteen agonizing months, a vaccine came out, just as the virus moved into the Bible Belt. Until that point, preachers and politicians considered it to be a regional problem.
Reverend Anselm was more strident than most. He claimed that laying on of hands would prevent his followers from falling prey to the virus, and they flocked to his chapel in Denver, Colorado. His liturgy echoed ancient themes.
“The Lord is manifesting his wrath at the woke liberals of Chicago and Detroit.”.Public health officials were aghast as his sermons appeared on cable TV and syndicated radio across the nation. “Only if we repent and cleanse our country of sin will the good Lord lift his hand.”
He never quite came out and said it, but his followers interpreted his call for sin-cleansing to mean ridding the streets of immigrants, the homeless, and anyone exhibiting any outward indication of deviation from gender norms. Hate crime statistics spiked, and the LGBT community picketed outside Pastor Anselm’s headquarters. His base of operations, originally a small chapel near the more weather-beaten part of Commerce City, moved into spacious accommodation at the Convention Center. The congregation grew to nine times its previous membership of around two hundred and fifty parishioners. Some of them were beginning to refer to Anselm as “the Prophet.”
When the vaccine came out and received Investigational New Drug approval, there was a collective sigh of relief and a stampede of politicians seeking to take credit. Public figures who had ridiculed public health practitioners were falling over one another to pose in front of scientists. Vaccine-refusal pundits now all of a sudden claimed to have had a hand in the breakthrough.
Senator Glenn Fairborne had attempted to block appropriations for Ebola research in his capacity of chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Now he strutted before the cameras, surrounded by technicians in white lab coats.
“Thanks in no small part to my appropriations bill, the NIH has developed a cure for Ebola.” Of course, a vaccine is a preventative, not a cure for existing disease. But Fairborne didn’t know what he was talking about. His lack of knowledge was no obstacle to his continuing pontification.
“This new marvel of science will eradicate the virus and allow our economy to move forward in this great country of ours”.
He was wrong on that count, also. Neither the vaccine nor any treatment had the power to ‘eradicate’ the virus. All the vaccine did was prevent vaccinated people from becoming seriously ill and it made them less infectious to others.
Ozias Walker monitored these developments from the moment he woke up until he fell asleep at night. After the Ebola storm subsided, there were many raucous public meetings where a growing consensus emerged: the public demanded mandatory vaccine schedules. They wanted it for the school system from kindergarten all the way to doctoral programs.
Despite being outnumbered by the nearly universal support of vaccines, Walker continued to wage his crusade against them. He attended many public meetings where he demonstrated a talent for oratory which, unfortunately, was not matched by any aptitude at comprehending the intricacies of vaccinology and public health policy.
“If we don’t resist the imposed vaccine card we are like the Jews who lined up for the gas chambers of Auschwitz:
Statements like this triggered a response from Rabbi Ishmael Baruch, who drove all the way from Los Angeles to Sacramento testify at the hearings of the State Assembly.
“The vaccine is designed to help people, not hurt them. It is a good thing, not a bad thing. For this, we are grateful to the science and medical community and the National Institute of Health.”
This statement provoked Ozias and a few other people who had come to protest against the vaccine mandates. Ozias forced his way back to the microphone and shouted into it. Before they cut power to the mike, he quoted Ronald Reagan and his statement became iconic as various conservative news outlets gave it front page treatment.
“In other words you are saying ‘we’re from the government, and we’re here to help you.’”
This was obviously a quote by Ronald Reagan and it resonated deeply with the American right. If it wasn’t for his criminal record, Ozias Walker would have become a media star. The dominant ‘conservative’ cable news channel, Pepe News, scheduled him to appear. But a left-wing journalist uncovered his unseemly background and the story was picked up by MSNBC. Pepe, also known as Frog News, didn’t mind that he had a domestic violence conviction – they adopted mens' rights extremism and would see him as a victim of “ball-busting feminist prosecutors”. But the meth charge was too much for them, and his appearance on Pepe was canceled.
After years of anti-vaccine agitation, public opinion had shifted in favor of immunization.. The remnant anti-vaccine movement was widely regarded as lunatic. Most people were grateful to public health leaders. In this context, university rules had been tightened
No one was permitted to attend class without a Proof-of-Vaccine card from the Student Health Center. Covering seven mandatory vaccines, it was officially called an POV-7. Ozias called it “ze Death Paper”. He was convinced the certification was a draconian imposition straight out of Nazi Germany, and he affected a German accent whenever talking about it.
He set up card tables on the campus “Free Speech Walk”, a pedestrian path outside the main library. He provoked heated arguments with outrageous signs predicting mass death from vaccines.
“Got Jabbed? Might as Well Get Stabbed”.
The poster showed multiple chalk outlines such as might be seen at a crime scene. A hypodermic syringe dripped blood over half a dozen such outlines. Barbara Daugherty, a professor otherwise notorious for using pornography in her classroom, tried to have him removed. The administration, wary of the ACLU, declined to ban him. It was, after all, the “Free Speech Walk”. Walker got a somewhat perfunctory mention on Frog News, largely due to the notoriety of Professor Daugherty.
“Porn Professor: Free Speech for Me, Not for Thee.”
This became a repeated talking point on the right wing talk circuit. The story died down when the university declined to ban him, but Walkers’ online video channel, “Wizard’s Point”, gained hundreds of followers. Ozias recorded his many arguments on campus and posted the most entertaining exchanges online.
These antics were fun for a while but many other people complained about his conduct on campus. At first, the Hancock College Police Department treated him with bemused tolerance. Complaints kept coming in and this became an avuncular concern. Archibald Withers, Dean of Campus Affairs, who found none of it at all amusing, called Allan Wayman, Chief of Campus Security. Wayman played it down.
“Mister Walker is just a young buck sowing his wild oats. For some kids, it’s soccer. For others, it may be rock and roll. For him, obviously, it’s his crusade against the cabal.”
The chief’s oblique reference to the cabal annoyed Dean Withers, but there wasn’t much that could be done as long as Ozias Walker was merely expressing his views. Thereafter, even Chief Wayman became concerned and then alarmed as derogatory reports piled up. Someone notified them of certain videos which had been downloaded from Ozias’s website and these showed him knocking a woman’s phone out of her hand. In another, it looked as if he might have slapped someone of indeterminate gender. And in yet another he shook his fist at a professor who was just walking by. The Dean called Wayman and was livid.
“You see what this had lead to now? We can have him charged with assault.”
“Yes Dean, we can have him charged but you know the liberal prosecutors will drop the charges. He won’t do one hour of jail time for any of this.”
“That’s not the point. I want this character off campus.”
“We can give him the boot. But I can’t guarantee the ACLU won’t turn him into their poster boy. If the college gets sued, my hands are clean of it.”
“Just get him off my campus!”
The Dean hung up. It was an old fashioned land line, so he had the satisfaction of slamming the receiver down onto the hook. This was no small pleasure, and he reflected for a moment of how right it felt to slam the phone down. A bit of a Luddite, he took pleasure in old things, and didn’t care much for cell phones and technology.
That very moment, Ozias Walker had used his cell phone to hack into the school’s computer system and he changed the vaccine information page into a German version of the same page, except that he replaced the graphic of a smiling health care worker with a rotating skull. A detachment of officers walked up, unaware of what he was doing with his phone, and served him with a trespass warning. There were also some enrollees from the Hancock Police Academy present — it seemed like the perfect learning experience. The presence of all these cops was extremely intimidating. There were deputies-in-training from the Sheriff’s Department and officers from every city between Carpenteria and Guadalupe to Isla Vista.
To Ozias, their presence was confirmation that the deep state was all in on suppressing him. Ozias thought of contacting the ACLU but didn’t think they would support him because they were “new world order liberals”. He was going to handle this his own way.
He had a nail bucket filled with handguns and magazines: a Charter Arms Blue Diamond .38 Special and .44 Bulldog. The ‘dog was a Heller vs. Washington Limited Edition. Named after of the famous court ruling in which the Supreme Court made it easy for anyone to buy almost any kind of gun. Wildly popular among firearms enthusiasts, it was beloved for being ironically named after the controversial court case. This is a gun that will “own the libs” just by its very name; what more could a gun advocate want? It was his most expensive, most collectible revolver. Stolen, like most of the others.
A Galil sniper rifle occupied the passenger seat and a Mossberg 12 gauge lay on the floor, barrel neatly sawed off at 26 inches. Pistols grips are illegal on shotguns, but the Mossberg had one that was modified to exploit a legal loophole: it extended back to the end of the butt stock. Because of the extension, it was technically not a pistol grip. Thus, it was technically not classified as illegal. Ozias loved the way that modification figuratively gave the finger to the Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms.
Despite the cute work-around pertaining to the grip, the Mossberg was nevertheless illegal. The National Firearms Act of 1934 defines a sawed-off shotgun as 26 inches or less; the California legislature added four inches in the parallel state law such that the barrel needed to be at least 30 inches long. Under the Federal statute, twenty six inches are legal in Nevada but as soon as the gun crosses the state line, it becomes illegal.
All of this was aside from the fact that Ozias Walker was not supposed to own any guns in the first place.
He had been charged with multiple felonies: possession of methamphetamine; possession with intent to sell; operating a meth lab. All of these, of course, were merely “misunderstandings”, or so his defense attorney claimed. A stash of over-the-counter cold medicine could be used to manufacture meth, but with all of the diseases going around these days they could come in handy if there was a societal meltdown. In the ensuing anarchy, the argument goes, medicine would be hard to get; a personal stash of cold medicine could be a life saver. According to his attorney, Ozias Walker was merely a “prepper”, a survivalist who accumulated medicine to prepare for the pending collapse of society.
The judge wasn’t buying it: also found in Walker’s possession was phenylacetone, a tip-off he intended to make “biker meth”. In a last minute plea bargain it was arranged that Walker would plead guilty to mere possession. It was a felony, but he’d serve probation rather than serve any jail time. He also had a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction and had done thirty days for violating a restraining order. These convictions made him ineligible for gun ownership, and, for that matter, public housing and most jobs.
These restrictions didn’t get him down- he simply operated a business of his own. He dealt guns: hot guns, stolen guns, and on rare occasions, legitimate, lawful firearms. His specialty was “roll your own”, guns he made from scratch, with plans ordered online and specialty parts made with a 3-D printer. Including items that could be purchased at any hardware store, it cost about $400 to make a gun that sells for a thousand in profit. No serial number, no names — cash and carry.
Ozias Walker didn’t plan on using the weapons. Not this day. He was there strictly for purposes of surveillance.
Or so he planned.
This is Chapter Three of Anthropocene Memoir: Ghost of the Forgotten Snows. Revision of Jan 25, 2023, 10:36 AM.
Chapter Four here on my Author Page at Neocities.
Chapter Two: https://medium.com/@geofbard/icefjord-rendevous-9e38ad353eb8
Chapter One: https://medium.com/@geofbard/anthropocene-memoir-ghost-of-the-forgotten-snows-d4b6bd5d3276