Liberty or Tyranny (4 page)

Deni had come with the squad. She wore her best uniform, worn but clean. It was all she had. She stood between Nate and Brian, her arms hooked in theirs. Kendell stood off to the side, looking around at the crowd for any sign of trouble. Mel roamed through the crowd, searching for two thin young men in black hoodies. Tyrone and Atticus stood by the grave, both crying unashamedly.

Nate expected Lieutenant Colonel Mike Donovan to attend. Chesty and Donovan hadn’t known each other long, but they had worked closely together from the day the Army arrived in town until the night Chesty was killed, and they had grown to respect each other. The fact Donovan wasn’t there made Nate nervous. There could be something serious going on that had kept Donovan away.

The preacher spoke of a life of service to others and years of dedication selflessly given. Then he read from the Bible. Nate didn’t hear much of his words. He thought of all the good people he had met and lost to both the plague and violence. Weariness seeped into his bones and chilled him more than the wind. He wished to God there was someplace he could take those closest to him, some place where they would be safe. But he knew there was no such place on earth.

Deni gave his arm a squeeze, as if she had read his mind.

Chesty’s closest friends grabbed a shovel and went to work. The crowd thinned as people quietly walked away. Nate and Brian had to finish the job when Tyrone and Atticus turned their faces into the cold wind and stood in quiet grief, their shovels forgotten.

Brian handed his shovel to the man who had brought them, then turned to his father. “We seem to always be burying someone.”

Nate put a heavy hand on his son’s shoulder. “I know I’ve been saying this for over a year now, but someday it’ll get better.”

“It’s not like it’s your fault.” Something behind Nate caught Brian’s attention. He nodded. “Soldiers. I think they’re looking for Tyrone or you.”

Nate turned to look. “Yeah. There must be a reason why Donovan didn’t show. Something’s up.”

Deni said, “My thoughts too. Never a dull moment around here.”

Fifty yards away, a young private talked to Mel, who pointed toward Tyrone and Atticus. The soldier walked briskly up to Tyrone. “Sir, Col. Donovan requests that you come with me to his office to discuss an important matter.”

Atticus had his shotgun slung across his back, out of the way. He soon had it in his hands. “Terrorists again?”

Tyrone nodded toward Nate. “He’s the acting sheriff. You should be talking to him.”

The soldier glanced Nate’s way. “Nate Williams is to come too. And Sergeant Heath.”

“Did he say anything about a senile old man?” Atticus asked.

The question seemed to throw the young soldier off his stride.

“Uh,” Tyrone said, “we’ll follow you in our vehicles.”

Nate, Deni, Brian, Kendell, and Mel hopped in one pickup. Tyrone and Atticus scrambled into a dirty white sheriff cruiser Tyrone had scrounged up. The soldier led the little convoy in a Humvee. The downtown streets had been cleared of nearly all abandoned vehicles and other debris, one of Donovan’s directives. This included only the downtown area, though, and just three miles out the streets were navigable only by threading a vehicle around many obstacles.

~~~

Donovan watched from the window of his office as a Black Hawk helicopter lifted off, carrying a team of soldiers, armored up and loaded for battle. It was obvious they were heading to a trouble spot somewhere. Donovan turned to the others. “Sorry I couldn’t attend Chesty’s funeral. We’ve found the rest of that gang of punks you ran out of town a while back. My soldiers are… uh… pacifying them. Unfortunately, most of them are too stupid to just give up. It’s gotten bloody.”

“They’re a bunch of idiots, alright,” Atticus said. “Real dead-end losers. I bet they’ve been giving people trouble wherever they’ve gone.”

“Where did you find them, on the interstate near the Florida/Georgia line?” Nate asked.

Donovan seemed surprised. “Yeah. How did you know?”

“Just a guess. Are there many women and children with them?”

Donovan tilted his head. He appeared to be wondering what Nate had on his mind. “Some. It complicates matters.”

Nate nodded. “Yeah. At least it does for anyone with a conscience. It wouldn’t be near a big truck stop, would it?”

The corners of Donovan’s mouth turned upward as he just nodded in silence.

Nate continued. “The women and children with them wouldn’t be part of the terrorist group we’ve been dealing with lately, would they?”

“Ha! I was wondering when you would get to that.” Donovan crossed his thick arms. “But I bet you haven’t figured it all out, though you may think you have.”

Nate coughed and shook his head. “No, I do not presume to think I’ve figured it all out. The fact is Chesty’s murder has kept my mind busy lately. Besides, we’re dealing with people who aren’t thinking straight. It’s not easy to understand people like that.”

Tyrone couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Figured what out?”

“Yeah,” Atticus broke in, “How about letting us in on the mystery.”

Brian and Kendell were all ears and eyes, as they looked around the room at the adults.

Deni finally spoke up. “I’ll wager that no one here knows as much as he thinks he does.” She folded her arms. “But I would like to learn what has you two looking so smug.”

“I had no idea that I
was
looking smug,” Nate protested. “Certainly, I have no life-changing revelation that I’m keeping to myself. I just connected the semis the terrorists have been using with interstate truck stops. They could’ve gotten stranded trucks at rest stops anywhere along the interstate, where they were abandoned when the traffic jams and massive pileups took place during the early panics. I also believe the terrorists and the youth gang we ran out of town are connected in some way.”

Donovan sat on the front edge of his desk. “It’s no big mystery, when you think about it. Some of you have already touched on the problem, days, weeks back.” He looked around the room at the others. “People have been forced to adjust to living without government, with no rule of law whatsoever and no government services, no so-called safety nets. They had to adjust or die, and by adjust I mean they had to toughen up and kill or be killed. The free-for-all that’s lasted over a year now has culled most of the weak, leaving behind the most vicious predators and the toughest survivors. The remaining predators will have to be dealt with, the survivors who kill only when they have no choice and do not take from others but work to survive and come by their food and other needs honestly are an asset, exactly what the human race needs to rebuild.”

Donovan waited for a helicopter to lift off and fly away, so the noise would fade enough he could be heard without yelling. “There is another group of survivors who are almost as dangerous as the predators. They have grown accustomed to living without any rule of law and do not want any government to tell them what they can and can’t do. For over a year, they’ve been living in the wilderness, or the Wild West, so to speak, and they’ve grown to like their newfound freedom, despite its danger and hardship. They’ve managed to learn how to provide for themselves and they don’t think they need a government anymore, so they want their Wild West to remain untamed.”

“That’s crazy,” Brian blurted out. “If we don’t rebuild the economy and government, we will run out of things that are already hard to come by, like medicine and fuel. Do they want to continue to see people die of sickness and injuries that could’ve been easily taken care of in a modern hospital? Do they want to live in a war zone the rest of their lives, forced to carry a rifle while plowing their fields behind a mule? Don’t they want life to be better for their children and the next generation? Why purposely go backwards?”

“They’re not thinking like that,” Donovan answered. “The horrors of the plague and its aftermath have twisted their minds.”

Deni said, “It’s only natural that some would blame the government for the plague and the lack of help for the people after. And it’s a given that some would blame technology, since there’s suspicion our own government manufactured the disease in a laboratory, or some other government did.”

“On the question of where the plague came from, do you have any info on that?” Nate asked Donovan.

“No. It started in countries that are U.S. allies. That looks like terrorism. But then it spread around the world. If someone wanted to attack us, it backfired on them and killed their own people. Of course, it could’ve been a doomsday thing and they wanted to die along with everyone else.” He shrugged. “If Washington and the Pentagon know something, they haven’t told me. Either way, knowing how, who, and why the plague started isn’t going to solve our problems.”

Steering the conversation back on course, Donovan continued. “Hatred of government authority is growing all across the country. Americans have been and are still killing one another for little or no reason. I’ve been getting warnings from down the chain of command about warlords popping up and people forming their own little governments. Even some military officers have… Colonel Hewitt isn’t the only officer to go nuts. Societal degeneration is still a problem in many areas.”

“So this little community is actually doing better than some,” Tyrone said.

“Better than most.” Donovan crossed his arms. “Soldiers have found pockets of children who were left to fend for themselves.” He looked down. “It was like Lord of the Flies. Sure, people are getting their act together in some areas, but in other areas they’ve devolved back to medieval times. Some in Washington have deluded themselves into believing we’re well on our way to recovery. We’re not.”

“How about other countries,” Nate asked.

“I’ve been told that Americans are actually faring better than most.” Donovan moved to a map on the wall and pointed at the American South and West. “Those two areas are doing much better than the rest of the country and the rest of the world. We ‘ugly Americans’ have proven ourselves to be civilized compared to most of Europe. Jolly old England isn’t so jolly nowadays.”

Nate glanced at Deni and then directed his attention to Donovan. “Expect Washington to react harshly as soon as they have the means. As the people harden their attitudes toward troublemakers, so will government. The innocent will suffer along with the guilty.”

“I don’t think there’s any way to tell how things will go,” Deni countered. “Yeah, it may get worse before it gets better, but there’s no real reason why the government or the people should drag us backward. If enough people all over and in Washington fight for not only law and order but human rights at the same time, we should be able to stay on course. After all, most people are basically good.”

Brian looked worried. “I remember reading The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank in school. She wrote something like that even though her and her family were arrested and taken to concentration camps to die.”

President Russell Capinos sat at a large English oak table. Vice President Piers Trant sat on the opposite side, and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Shirley Montobon, sat to his left. Soon, her position would be obsolete, as the president planned to have the military take over most federal law enforcement and national security duties. Capinos hadn’t told her yet, but it was a done deal. Many federal agencies were going to be merged or shut down completely. Outside threats were considered to be nonexistent. It was hungry, lawless Americans Washington feared and needed to control. He still hadn’t decided whether to cut the NSA to a bare minimum or just close it down completely. There just wasn’t any Internet, phone, or anything else in the way of electronic surveillance to be done. Only fears enemies abroad might restart their most sophisticated technologies sooner than anticipated caused him to hesitate to close the agency down completely. They certainly didn’t need a massive NSA just to listen in on HAM operators conversing among the many small groups of survivors. Yeah, the government wanted to watch them closely, but a much smaller NSA could handle that easily.

President Capinos was forced to lean over to reach the table, as his prodigious belly kept him too far back. He and his family were among the few Americans who had not missed a meal over the last year, or lost a child to the plague. He wasn’t president when the plague hit, had never held any office before, and had never ran for as much as mayor of a small town. Until the plague, he had never needed to hold office to yield power. Satisfied to stay out of the limelight and keep his anonymity, using his wealth to control government officials as tools for his own plans, he had never needed or wanted direct political power. Indirect power had been much safer and in many ways less trouble, since he didn’t have to waste time running for and holding office and keeping up a charade for the public. Not an ideologue, he didn’t give a damn if the country moved to the left or to the right. He found political debate boring and inconsequential. No matter what way the political winds blew, he could buy anything he wanted, from a county commissioner to a president. Who gave a damn if the person you kept in your back pocket belonged to this or that party?

There had been many just like him, but then came the plague, changing everything. Wealth suddenly became almost meaningless in the post-plague world. When he saw others like him maneuvering to take political power directly by demanding special elections and then preparing to run for office, he knew he had no choice but to play the same game, but on the highest level, and he knew he had to win.

He and those like him had made certain there was a presidential election right on schedule, even though 95% of the American population had been lost to the plague. They made it a matter of pride in Washington that not even the Civil War had delayed an American national election, and they swore the plague would not delay this one. Since there were so many vacancies in Congress created by the high mortality rate of the plague, many special elections had been held to replace them. The result was an entirely new U.S. Government, one that had no resemblance to the old one, in organization or values.

During the elections, there had been little to no pretense of following the Constitution or rule of law. No one in Washington cared what the rest of the country outside of the Northeast thought. Very few outside of Washington even knew of the elections. The actual number of Americans who voted had been minuscule. Fewer voters decided who would be a congressman or senator than had voted for a local sheriff in normal times, and none of the voters actually lived in the state the congressmen and senators supposedly represented. It took only a quarter million votes (all from the Northeast only) to put Russell Capinos in the White House. By all reason, he should have been called President of the Northeastern States, not President of the United States. Nevertheless, once in power, he immediately decreed the already existing state of emergency permanent and removed what few constitutional protections the former government in Washington had left in place.

Because of the plague’s tendency to kill the elderly at a higher rate than the young, the Supreme Court Capinos inherited had exactly two sitting justices. He had no trouble convincing the new Senate to fill every vacancy on the bench by the end of the first month. They were all handpicked men and women who had little to no respect for the idea of constitutionally limited governmental power. For the first time in Capinos’ life, he would be pulling the strings with his own hands, instead of paying others to pull the strings for him, and he worked every day to consolidate his power. Power became his new drug, replacing wealth. His addiction grew stronger by the hour. So far, he had been able to hide its effects on his psyche, but he worried about the day it became obvious to those around him. Would they join him, or revolt and become his worst enemies? He had to choose his allies carefully. Until the day people began to see what he was up to, he would keep his demeanor as business-like as possible, portraying himself as a level-headed businessman turned political leader doing his best to help the American people and get the country back on its feet. Those times when he asked for more power – more exemptions from constitutional restraints – he would present a logical argument and make them see the necessity for such actions. After all, didn’t everyone want the same thing? Didn’t they all want to see America recover and the American people return to at least tolerable living conditions?

Fortunately for most survivors of the plague, Washington had not been able to reach into their lives as of yet. Government just didn’t have the resources or the manpower. Most people had not even seen a soldier or Guardsman since the plague, and certainly no federal law enforcement.

In modern America, most people lived in cities and had little idea where food came from. All they knew was you went to the store and bought it. The plague ended that. The stores had no food to sell in as little as three days in some cities and closed soon after. It hadn’t taken Capinos long to learn that food was power and he used it to keep a lid on a dozen of the largest Northeastern cities, though the pot did boil over on occasion and the streets were not exactly peaceful on the ‘quiet’ days. Trouble was, in recent months he had less and less food to hand out, and withholding food was the hammer he held over the people’s head to keep them in line. The other half of the equation – rewarding people with just enough food to keep them alive for being compliant – would soon be impossible. Threatening execution didn’t work. Starving people considered a bullet in the head to be a mercy, a painless way out of a slow, agonizing death.

Born into a family of means, Capinos was a man who had experienced the thrill of massive wealth his whole life, and wealth had become passé to him. As he grew older, he had turned to a new drug called power. Before the plague, the two came hand in hand, but wealth had not only lost its luster in his own mind, money had become almost useless in a society that was in survival mode. Addicted to power, Capinos wanted more, and that meant he needed more units of wealth called food. For the time being, food was more valuable than all the gold in the world. He needed more food, and he was going to get it. Given the choice of freedom or food, people would choose food.

The rural areas were doing a better job of feeding themselves and therefore were less of a drain on Washington’s resources, but they were also the least controllable. Control was what concerned Capinos. Reports from afield informed him millions of people had returned to subsistence farming and were just beginning to produce crops. Rural survivors of the plague and the violence that came after were enjoying the fullest stomachs, as many already knew how to produce food and had most of the equipment and fertile land. They also were the ones forming their own little governments and had the least respect for outside authority, especially from Washington. To make things worse, they tended to be much better armed than city people and were more likely to know how to use those guns. The rural South was infested with veterans.

Experimentation with new (and old) forms of government had become a challenge to Washington’s authority. Something had to be done. Yes, the old Constitution and form of government was dead, but it would be Washington that decided just what the new government would be, not little warlords and farming communities out in the far reaches of the country, deep in the backwoods and small-town streets of Jerkwater, U.S.A. But how to control them?

Withholding food wouldn’t work on people who fed themselves. Damn independent people who provided for themselves, anyway. The only answer was to take most of their crops by force. Use the military for something useful for a change. The military would be the new IRS, collecting food instead of taxes. This would give the government food to hand out in the cities – or withhold until they behaved – and reduce the hicks’ food supplies at the same time, thereby increasing their dependency on Washington and forcing them to be somewhat more pliant, too. And if soldiers and Marines took some of the best food for themselves, so be it. Washington needed their loyalty, and food would work as well on them as the civilians. Normal military supplies were running out. Everyone must eat, and hunger pangs could be a great motivator.

“Let’s get to work,” President Capinos said, leaning on his elbows that were propped up on the table.

The unwashed bodies of heads of government agencies, many newly created, added to the smell of cold sweat in the air. The men and women in the room had been washing themselves from a bucket carried into their apartments for over a year, and they were hesitant to endure the cold water in the dead of DC’s coldest winter. Even so, they were lucky to have clean water and toilets that flushed by pouring water in from the same buckets. They even had people to carry the buckets of water in for them. Most in the city had no such luxuries. The smell from backed-up sewage systems was overpowering at times.

The White House was one of the few buildings in Washington that had fuel for generators and thus had power. The city water system had been shut down since early in the plague and had yet to be restarted. There were not enough workers left alive who knew how to operate municipal utilities, and there was no power for the same reason. Every city across America, indeed the world, had the same problem. The economy collapsed soon after the plague hit and then all the normal supply lines shut down for lack of manpower. Within days, there was no food, no fuel, no power, and no water. Then there was no police or fire protection and no law but the law of survival. Those early days were bad in the Northeast, but in many ways things had gotten worse in recent months, not better. Violent, feral teens, who had lost their parents and had not been to school or witnessed a working society for over a year, prowled the streets, killing, raping, and robbing people of what little food they had. Murder victims, or those who died of starvation or natural causes, were left to rot where they lay, threatening to bring another plague to the land.

Most of the men and women at the table lived in a compound protected by Marines. Washington was not safe, and they needed all the protection they could get. Twice, angry mobs tried to storm the White House. Capinos ordered machine guns used to sweep the streets of anyone standing, mowing down over two hundred rioters. The second time it happened seemed to have discouraged further such disturbances, near the White House at least.

There was an obvious look of worry on the face of everyone sitting around the table. No one spoke. Instead, they waited for Capinos to ask a question.

Capinos gave them all a cold stare, one at a time. “Well. Someone tell me what’s going on out there among the useless eaters, something I don’t already know.”

Army General Carl Strovenov, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sat next to the Secretary of Defense Martin Hackleman. He waited for Hackleman to speak, but when he didn’t seem to have anything to say, Strovenov started his situation report.

A barrel-chested tall man of calm demeanor and a thinning flat buzz cut, Strovenov’s voice carried well, even in a hurricane. He didn’t need a megaphone. In fact, he had to tone down the volume to prevent bursting eardrums in a room like he was sitting in. “Over the past six days, we’ve been receiving reports of a rapidly growing insurrection. Military outposts have been attacked and ransacked, supplies taken, and soldiers killed.”

“Do we know who’s behind it?” President Capinos asked. “This seems to be separate and apart from what we’ve come to think of as normal violence. I mean, actually taking on the military is something entirely different.”

The General nodded. “The attacks appear to be uncoordinated and lacking any kind of central authority or command structure. Based on what we know, it’s more of a widespread civil uprising than an organized rebellion. And, of course, much of the senseless violence among the civilians themselves is more about robbing for food, guns, ammunition, and other needful items. They’re hungry and desperate, and that makes them dangerous.”

Capinos pressed it. “But this is different, right? My question is: Are we seeing the beginnings of a rebellion of some sort?”

“It could be the early stages of one. We’ve talked about the threat of a Balkanization of America before. This is a sign it’s happening. At the moment, though, it’s more about people blaming government for the hell they’ve been through. From the start, rumors the plague was the result of a weaponized disease designed by our government or at least some other nation’s government, was on the minds, if not the lips, of millions. Certainly, many blame government for the hell they’ve been through. In short, there’s a lot of anger against government out there. People used to social safety nets and a relatively easy life suddenly finding themselves on their own in a hell that seems to have no end aren’t likely to be in a good mood.”