The Mother Warrior
Copyright 2018 by Marilyn L. Donnellan
ISBN 978-1-5323-645904
ISBN 13: 978-1986279246 CreateSpace
ISBN 10: 1986279243 CreateSpace
Cover by Robin Vuchnich
Published by CreateSpace
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.
The Book Liberators Series
The Book Liberators: The White Warrior
The Book Liberators: The Slave Warrior
The Book Liberators: The Mother Warrior
The Book Liberators: The Daughter Warrior
For my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Hess, and all the teachers after her who encouraged me in my imagination and passion for reading and writing; I am stronger for it
The Warrior
By Marilyn L. Donnellan
I fought the good fight
And now I am tired
I only want peace
Regardless the liars
I am a warrior
A warrior at heart
I am a warrior
A warrior at heart
Prologue
Escaping after ten years in a brutal slave camp deep in the Mississippi bayou, the White Warrior must now figure out what she will do with the rest of her life. Physically and emotionally weakened by her years as a warrior and slave, now, as the Mother Warrior, she faces an entirely different kind of war; a war that could pit her against her family, friends and even the Book Liberators she founded.
Chapter One
The Journal
I write with the nub of a pencil in the margins of a dusty old book, one of thousands stacked in sealed boxes around me in the cave where I huddle. I have been fighting most of my life, but for the first time I don’t think I can keep going. I am so tired; tired mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically.
Am I the only one left who cares about the things that brought me to this point? I don’t know, but it is possible everyone I love is dead. Still, I write this with a flicker of hope faintly burning like the old kerosene lamp I use for light and heat; maybe someday, somewhere, someone will read this and the books that surround me in this silent cemetery of books. It is arrogant but as have all writers who have ever lived, I hope these written words will outlive me.
I pause for a moment in my writing and nibble on the remains of the protein bar I am trying to make last. I wonder how one begins to write of the end of things?
I tightly wrap the thin solar blanket around me to ward off the chill. How best to chronicle all that has happened? It has been so long since I’ve been able to write. Now that I can, I struggle to start.
The year is 2138. I am only 44 years old, but I feel much older. Most people today live to be well over 200 with life-extending drugs. I have never had the drugs. I escaped from a slave camp about a year ago. And I don’t think I will live much longer. God help me; I’m not sure I want to. My long shaggy hair is white, as it has been since I was in my 20’s from the horrors I have seen and experienced, I’m sure. I have lost a lot of weight. The rags I wear hang loosely on my 5’11” frame. But the weight loss helps to disguise me. The rare people who see me cannot tell if I am a man or a woman. They see me only as one of millions of hobos who roam the empire, scrabbling for food and fighting to survive among a lawless and starving population. My bones ache, remnants of the horrendous months in the emperor’s prison, mind-numbing years in a slave camp, the rough life I have lived since, and the thousands of miles I have traveled. Now I am back where it all started.
I have no access to electronics, so I don’t know what month or day it is. But as I look outside the cave entrance in the deepening twilight, I can see the stubby trees dotting the Texas hill country beginning to lose their vibrant green. There is a chill in the air. It must be the end of summer or early fall.
Maybe it will be easier to write about things of which my nightmares are made if I write as though from someone else’s perspective. Maybe it will help to bring me some peace before I die if I put in writing why I chose the life I lived and the reasons behind the terrible mistakes I made, putting my friends and family at risk.
And so, I begin to write the story of Brogan Finlay-Douglass, the first White Warrior. It is my story, but also the chronicle of the insidious deaths of reading, writing and of millions of free people in the American Empire.
That was how I started my story. It took me a year to write it. I began writing in a cave near Austin City, then after a few months traveled to Van Horn and eventually to the Caverns of Sonora to continue the writing, primarily because there were too many of the emperor’s troopers near the city. I survive by scrounging for food the same way the other hobos do who are scattered around the rail stations close to Austin City. We look for boxes of bruised and discarded produce thrown by the side of the road or at the loading docks from the produce trains. Occasionally there are even packages of freeze-dried protein to be found.
I need time to grieve for all the rebels killed in the massacre of the Book Liberator rebel army in the Missouri farmlands in 2126. Through the hobo grapevine I hear the remains of the rebel army fled to Mexico City and the former Central American provinces. I have no idea how many rebels, if any, continue to fight.
When World War III started in 2045, President Joseph Altero used an executive order to dissolve congress, appoint himself prime minister and consolidate the fifty-one states into four provinces. He established a governmental system like the old British Empire. Alaska seceded. Hawaii was destroyed by a nuclear bomb and nearby islands sank into the Pacific Ocean from resulting massive earthquakes and volcanic action.
Altero assimilated Mexico and Central America after destroying all drug cartels and terrorist nests. He cut off sea access on both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico with giant laser fences and destroyed the Panama Canal to prevent access to the west coast from the Atlantic.
The Book Liberators started just before Altero was assassinated when he pushed through Statute 648, banning all reading, writing and religion. It was his extreme strategy to prevent radical ways of thinking from taking over; the kind of thinking he believed led to WWIII and almost destroyed America.
I am one of six original BL members who helped to develop the peaceful protest movement, believing in the importance of freedom of thought, religion, speech and the freedom to read and write.
General David Priest’s consort, Sandra Bernhardt, assassinated the prime minister and he appointed himself emperor after killing all members of the House of Lords and Houses of Commons in each province.
Today, Emperor Priest rules over the few remaining major populations centers with ruthless fists of iron. There is no more freedom of speech, formal trade or any type of education. Anyone caught with printed material is executed on the spot. Education and indoctrination rely totally on neuro-implants, or I-chips, with the information on the intelligence chips determined by a small group of the emperor’s lackeys.
Behaviors the dictator emperor finds abhorrent are controlled by forcefully implanted B-chips or by execution. Anyone with a disability preventing them from being a productive citizen is executed, their vital organs first harvested for the national organ bank. Only the emperor knows the definition of “productive.” Every citizen is tracked by T-chips implanted in their hand. Hobos and BL rebels know how to circumvent the transaction chips by surgically removing them and replacing them
with forged chips when necessary.
Citizens in rural areas live on what they can scrounge or grow. Urban citizens now live at the mercy of lawless gangs of thugs demanding exorbitant payoffs to leave them alone or pay them a portion of anything they manage to sell or trade in the black market. The emperor’s troops do little to control the lawlessness.
I have been too worn out and, to be honest, too depressed and physically weak to make the trip to Cosala, in the Texas Province, northwest of Mexico City, to check on my beloved daughter, Emily, my father, Frank and my father-in-law, Stephen. I’m afraid of what I might find when I get there. For all I know they are dead.
The use of electronics has become more and more difficult for everyone. Not only does the sham of an emperor, David Priest, control the airwaves, but rebel engineers and people who know how to repair electronics have been executed or fled south to what used to be Mexico and Central America. Only engineers loyal to Priest can live. Even if I had access to a vid-phone, which I don’t, it probably would not work or could be easily hacked by the emperor’s cyber team. I can’t take that chance.
Not only do I want to get away from Austin City and the far-reaching grasp of the emperor’s troopers, but I need to go home to Van Horn, more than 500 miles west. I haven’t been there since my parents were captured and taken to the notorious Alamo Prison Intake Center in San Antonio more than ten years ago.
The Book Liberator’s council members, with the help of local BL members, rescued all but six of the fifty remaining prisoners, including my father, Frank. The other 50 were executed in Van Horn, the first BL martyrs. My mother, Emily, died in the horrible prison from the beating she received as well as from the leukemia she contracted as an energy grunt living and working around solar panels all her life. Her body was thrown like a piece of trash into the crematorium along with the other five rebels who died at the prison. Bryan, me, my father and a few other prisoners escaped, thanks to the help of the remaining council members and local BL members.
I need to go home to Van Horn before I look for my daughter and father; if for no other reason, to set up memorials to my mother and my beloved partner, Bryan. I want to see if there is anything I can salvage from my childhood home in Van Horn. Then I will finish writing my memoirs in the Caverns of Sonora, another 500 miles south.
I hope the very act of writing will destroy, or at least diminish, the hold the demons have on me: demons of regret, hate, pain and revenge. Now they rule my nightmares. I need to lay them to rest before I look for my daughter and father. If I find them, I refuse to burden them with my emotional baggage.
There wasn’t much left of the house I grew up in when I arrived in Van Horn late one chilly, dusty, fall evening. It looked like it had been hit by a tornado. The frame of the house leaned to one side, the roof fallen in. I knew it wasn’t safe to enter, so I didn’t. The shed, where my father had built toys for me and did repairs on solar equipment, was still standing. It was east of the house. The door hung open and all his tools were gone; probably stolen.
As I stood in the doorway of the shed, the evening sun shone through a broken window pane, highlighting the dust motes dancing in the air. My throat choked, and tears filled my eyes. So many hours I spent with my father in this shed, handing him the tools he needed while watching him turn scraps of metal into tiny, exquisitely detailed toy cars and trucks fitting perfectly into my small hands. My love for engineering grew from those memorable moments.
I lost track of time as memories flooded my mind; so real I waited expectantly for my mother to call my father and me to supper. Not wanting to face reality yet, I spread my solar blanket on the floor of the rickety shed and wrapped myself in it as I laid down. I slept and dreamed of happier family times, the demons staying away for once.
When the morning sunlight squeezed through one of the broken slats on the east side of the shed and awakened me, I set to work to fulfill the two reasons I came: to find the Bible my parents gave me and Bryan the day we pledged our love to each other, and to build memorials for my mother and Bryan.
Bryan and another BL council member, Janice, died when we were betrayed by the newest member, Sandra Bernhardt, at our last council meeting in Mazatlán. None of us knew Sandra was Emperor Priest’s consort.
I forced my mind away from the terrible loss and turned to the tasks I set for myself. It did not take me long to find what I was looking for. I managed to move the very heavy lathe table and pulled up the floor boards in the shed. I climbed down the ladder to the old root cellar, where my Father told me the books were hidden.
Books lined the shelves on both sides of the cellar. The dry atmosphere underground protected them from disintegration. As I trailed my hands along the spines of books, my childhood companions, my eidetic memory easily called to mind passages from each one. How blessed I was to have parents who allowed me to read such a wide range of books.
And then I found it, tucked in to a back corner of the top shelf. Carefully wrapped in the same beautiful paper in which it was presented to Bryan and me at our bonding ceremony more than seventeen years ago, was the old family Bible. I knew I was taking a big risk by taking the book with me. If stopped by troopers with it in my possession I would be executed.
But so much has happened in the past seventeen years. I have killed people. I have hated. I have been terribly angry. I abandoned my daughter. I labored for ten years in a slave camp. Now I need to find a new way of thinking. I do not want to be the White Warrior anymore.
While my photographic memory can easily recall everything I read, I want to have the Bible in my hands while I wrestle with some weighty stuff. I remember the first time I read the book as a child. There were a lot of passages I found hard to swallow, especially ones about God’s judgement and the slaughtering of whole nations; some passages which seemed to be more myth than truth. But I also remember reading passages about unconditional love and how to live together in harmony. I wasn’t sure if the dichotomies could be reconciled, but I had to try if I was ever going to permanently lay my demons to rest.
I tucked the Bible into the backpack I found in an abandoned hobo camp near Austin City, next to the journals I was filling with my thoughts and memories. Now I needed to accomplish my second task: build memorials for my mother and Bryan.
I took some of the beams of smoothed sagebrush from the nearby destroyed chapel in which Bryan and I bonded and used them to build two simple crosses, binding them together with some twine I found in the shed. I pounded them into the ground near what remained of the house, scratching their names into the wood, using one of the carving knives Dad hid in the cellar. I sat on the ground in front of the memorials and had a long overdue conversation with my mother and my beloved Bryan.
Tears streaming down my face, I told them everything: about all the people I killed, about being the White Warrior, about our daughter, little Emily, about the prison in Boston, the rapes and torture, the slave camp in the bayou, the friends I lost, and about the holes in my heart from their deaths and my role in them.
It was only after I was totally drained and had nothing left, I told them I did not want to be the White Warrior anymore. I want to figure out a different path for what time remains of my life.
I looked up from where I sat and could see the sun setting in the west. It was one of those spectacular sunsets only to be seen in the wide-open west Texas plains. As I soaked in the peace and beauty of the moment, it felt like maybe I could start over - a new beginning. I felt washed clean of everything before. The horrors would always be a part of me, but I would no longer allow them to control who I was. I had to forgive myself for what I did and all the mistakes I made.
I reached up and touched the smooth wood of the two crosses, closing my eyes as I said a final goodbye. I knew there was a very real possibility some emperor lackey would find the crosses and destroy them. But for now, it felt like mother’s and Bryan’s hands touched mine as I lingered over the memorials.
Reluctantly I stood, du
sted off my clothes, and said my final goodbyes, heading south to the Caverns of Sonora to continuing writing down everything which made me the White Warrior. Only then could I figure out who I wanted to be and do for the rest of my life; only then could I make the trip to Cosala and find out if the rest of my family was still alive.
When I was not writing, in those long quiet months in the Caverns, I read from the seemingly endless supply of books hidden there. The troopers thought they destroyed all the books in the Caverns of Sonora when they captured my parents in 2120 and executed more Book Liberators. Maybe that assumption will continue to keep them away from this area.
What the troopers never discovered, in every cave across the country including this one, where books were hidden by Book Liberator protestors, there were always second and sometimes third back caves where hundreds and thousands more books were stashed. Thanks to the BL council member and martyr, Janice Wu, millions of books were saved by her foresight and leadership. The front caves were rigged with explosives so if found by Priest’s troopers, it was destroyed, leaving the more valuable books in the back caves still hidden, protected in wax-coated produce boxes.
Now, in between my journal writing, I read dozens of the books to absorb everything I could about survival, philosophy, and every type of community building strategy I can find. I am determined to think differently about resisting the emperor and building a new way of life for me, what remains of my family, and anyone else who might want to join us. Violence has not worked and only produced more violence. There must be a better way for America’s citizens.
Chapter Two
An Emperor’s Death
No one knew it, but the elderly Esther Longstreet was a BL rebel spy inside Emperor David Priest’s bunker. She was the head housekeeper and the only person allowed access to the paranoid emperor after his glass pyramid was severely damaged by explosions more than twelve years ago. The explosives were planted by his former consort, Sandra Bernhardt and Claudette Burns, a rebel spy. Both women died in the explosion, martyrs for the BL cause. The cyborg army the emperor was creating were also destroyed in the blast.
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