America 2009: Survival of the Underclass

"You have to give me $500, boss!" The two had just stepped into the warehouse hand in hand when John excitedly reached out his hand.

"Give me a reason, Mr. John Smith," he nodded, teasingly.

"Someone showed me your picture and asked if I'd seen you before. The reward was a quarter pound of top-grade heroin. I didn't tell you that. You have to pay that kind of fee, you know, uh, the fee for not telling anyone." John finished speaking quickly, looking at him happily.

"Really?" Karen asked seriously before Leon could ask.

"A close-up! Very, very clear! Even the color of the pupils is clearly visible!" He nodded, his tone certain.

"Come in with us, Mr. Smith." Li Ang, who was secretly clenching his buttocks, calmly raised his chin.

The three of them quickly went into the next room. Li Ang took out a plastic bag from his pocket, put it on the desk, and pointed to the bag, saying to John, "This is enough to pay your hush money and today's wages."

"Thanks, boss." John nodded excitedly, reached for the plastic bag, and his face instantly turned pale. He exclaimed in shock, "Mother fucker! This...this...!"

"What's wrong? Not enough, Mr. Smith?" He led Karen to sit on the bed and looked up to ask.

"That's enough, but these are all goods from dead people, aren't they?" He gritted his teeth, nodded, and asked.

"You're a homeless man, you might not even be alive the next second? Why are you afraid of dead people?" Karen lay on his lap and teased him.

"Yes! I'm a homeless man! What do I have to be afraid of!" John said with a look of sudden realization.

"Put it away, you lazybones. You're coming out with us in a bit." He stroked Karen's face and scolded her, putting on airs.

John nodded, gritted his teeth, pulled down his pants, and shoved the contents into his underwear.

"Can't you at least try to avoid people? Lazybones!" He shook his head helplessly and teased.

The funeral home morgue only received four gold teeth and two plain gold rings, which are worth about $550 on the market.

Although there were other odds and ends, they were too lazy to take them because they were too troublesome. They figured they could just leave them as they were worthless. They figured they'd rather use that time to open a donation box than to ship them out.

……

"You're getting more and more of a scumbag, Mr. Smith, haha." Karen laughed after hearing his plan.

"There's nothing I can do. It seems GD isn't going to let me off the hook. Although I don't understand why a lowly underling like me would be sent all the way from the Great Lakes to the West Coast." He shook his head with a wry smile.

John sat in his chair, looking at the two people, one lying down and the other sitting, completely bewildered, forgetting to chew the grain energy bar in his mouth.

"Because you're a white trash, and GD is a thick-lipped gang." She rested her head on his lap and looked at his chin as she spoke.

Li Ang pondered for a few seconds, then nodded in realization, "I understand."

"Then let's get started now, Mr. Smith," she said with a smile.

"Okay, Ms. Smith, John, you can leave now." He helped her up and turned to John, who was still sitting in the chair looking bewildered.

"Okay, boss!" John immediately snapped out of his daze, got up, and walked out the door.

Karen opened her suitcase, took out a brown trench coat and put it on, then put on jeans over her yoga pants and tied her hair back neatly.

After putting on masks, the two walked out of the cubicle hand in hand. John locked the warehouse with the key, and then they headed towards Second Street together.

"Gay priest! Fuck you!"

"The Catholic Church is a den of gay men!"

"Your pulpit is a quagmire for sodomists!"

"Gay priest! Fuck you!"

"He spouts praises of God, but secretly engages in sodomy!"

Three people leaned against the fence of a small paid parking lot, watching with amusement the chaotic scene across the street.

A dozen or so men and women, looking excited and dressed in extremely conservative clothes, stood in front of the Roman columns on either side of the white St. Vibiana Cathedral, holding various signs and shouting all sorts of aggressive slogans.

Two elderly white nuns from the church stood calmly by the open doorway, while four or five burly policemen crowded under a tree on the left side of the sidewalk, and passersby were scattered around watching the spectacle.

Some passersby even shouted a few slogans as they hurried past.

"Jesus, that's funny. The mad dogs of the Sibolo Baptist Church have all the way to Los Angeles," Karen quipped softly.

"Boss, what's the situation with this church?" John asked, turning his head curiously.

"Extremely anti-modern, extremely anti-military, extremely anti-gay, extremely anti-Catholic, basically extremely anti-everything. Oh—" Karen paused, her laughter deepening, "If you join the army and they find out you're gay, hahaha."

"The Lincoln Park funeral thing?" he asked uncertainly, looking at her as she couldn't help but laugh.

"Yes, that's it." She nodded.

"What is it?" John asked, even more curious.

"These mad dogs went to the soldier's funeral to protest. One gay soldier was double-insulted and it blew up. Both sides pulled up crosses from the lawn and shouted that they were fighting for God." Karen stopped laughing and slowly recounted the story.

"They must have been badly beaten," John said confidently.

"No, they won, but they also lost." Karen shook her head, suppressing a smile. "Those soldiers were only twenty-odd men, while they had over seventy, but..."

Li Ang looked at Karen, who had turned to stare at him, and continued, "They went to celebrate their victory and were drugged with aphrodisiacs by an extreme gay organization. Uh... anyway, the situation on the scene couldn't be captured by the entire GDP of Japan."

"Hahaha, Jesus~Christ~ even his mother's wine bottle has been violated." She finally couldn't hold back her laughter.

"Oh my god!" John exclaimed, shaking his head frantically, trying to shake the image out of his mind.

"Gay priest! Fuck you!"

"Your sins will eventually be exposed!"

"God sees your dirty deeds!"

"To condone evil thoughts—blasphemy! Catholics—beyond redemption!"

"Gay priest! Fuck you! Fuck you!"

Karen frowned as she watched the increasingly agitated Siboro Baptist madmen across from her, chanting "Gay Priest! Fuck you!" in sync with the beat, and asked, "Mr. Smith, should we try another place?"

He looked at the chaotic scene opposite him, nodded, and said, "Let's change it. If this gets out of hand, the Bishop of Los Angeles will also—"

"Bang! Bang bang bang—"

"Ah—!" "Ah—!"

"Bang bang bang—bang bang bang—"

Gunshots ripped through the air.

On the sidewalk in front of the church, to the right of the Sibor Baptist congregation, a burly white man in a gray hoodie strolled over.

Three or four meters away from the crowd, he suddenly pulled two pistols out of his pocket, his index finger on the trigger practically sparking.

It wasn't until a few chubby policemen chatting and joking under the tree on the left side of the crowd reacted, drew their guns, and emptied their magazines at him.

Everything happened too fast.

Seven or eight people had already fallen in front of the Roman columns of the church, their blood adorning the white columns with a seductive rose-like stain.

The passersby who were watching the scene from a short distance screamed and ran away. After all, this was a country where "300 million people are free to engage in gunfights," and no one would risk their lives to join in such a spectacle.

The two men glanced at the gunman lying in a pool of blood, a bright rainbow wristband still tied around his wrist, and simultaneously curled their lips in a sneer.

Leon reached out and grabbed John, who was trying to run away in fright, and slammed him against the fence. He turned to look at Karen, and the two exchanged a knowing smile.

"You stay where you are and wait for us, you lazybones."

As soon as he finished speaking, the two of them rushed towards the accident scene across the road, shouting.

"Are you all alright?!"

The church entrance was in complete chaos. Fat police officers were rescuing the injured, and survivors were wailing over the dead. Even inside the church, which was being attacked by protesters, monks, nuns, and even the archbishop all rushed out in droves.

The church clergy closed their eyes and prayed devoutly for the dead and wounded, even though just a minute before, these people had been protesting against the attack on them.

They rushed to the sidewalk in front of the church, and stealthily slipped through the crowd to the church entrance. They all peeked inside, but there was no one there!

They nodded to each other, exchanged a fleeting glance, and he stepped into the church. After walking a few meters, he began to run like a madman.

Karen, a slight smile playing on her lips, leaned against the doorway, watching the backs of the church clergy and the chaotic scene before her.

He ran through the aisle between the brown benches to the altar beneath the statue of Jesus, reached out and grabbed the top of the small walnut donation box, and lifted it up.

He shifted the lid to the left, reached into the donation box which was about half full of banknotes and coins, and quickly stuffed them into his hoodie pocket.

In just over ten seconds, with a few coins left at the bottom, he closed the lid, looked up at Jesus' face, smiled, and whispered, "Thanks, Bro." As soon as he finished speaking, he turned and ran towards the door.

"Oh~ can you see~ through a ray of dawn~"

The sudden sound of the national anthem made the two people who were trying to slip away at the door pause in their tracks. They exchanged a glance, shook their heads helplessly, and began to enter the forced plot mode.

People within an unknown radius covered their chests and sang the national anthem devoutly.

John, whose legs were so weak he could only lean against the iron fence for support, suddenly straightened up as if his mother had been injected with chicken blood. He pressed his left hand tightly against his chest and shouted at the top of his lungs with utmost devotion.

As the song ended, blatant patriotic rhetoric and nonsensical slogans spewed from their mouths, polluting the entire space.

The two quickly slipped out of the crowd and walked across the street towards John, who was looking up with his eyes closed, completely absorbed in the moment.

"Let's go, Patriot."

"Don't you—"

"Jesus!! Shut up! Idiot!"