by Eric Gurr
She pulled the nine-millimeter gun from her other pocket and fired all ten shots towards where she thought the police were. The police fired back.
Colby knew as soon as the tear gas went off what was coming. He backed quickly towards the capitol steps. When the crowd was preoccupied with what was happening he slipped out towards his rental car and drove away.
In two hours he would be in the Financial District in San Francisco. He was scheduled to meet with Scotch Anderson, the governor of California, and a few other prominent politicians and power brokers.
Colby was greeted at the lobby of the huge office tower. A friendly woman ushered him to the top floor in a private elevator. The doors of the elevator opened to a small waiting area. She ushered him to the left through two huge wooden doors into a wide open lounge area. It looked like a living room. There were four huge sofas arranged so that they all faced each other. Scotch Anderson walked up to meet him.
“Colby! We’re glad you’re okay. What happened there? It looked like the crowd got out of control.”
Colby had easily anticipated this. He looked around the small group and spotted the governor.
“It wasn’t the crowd. It was her Gestapo! He pointed accusingly at the governor. We were going across the street to protest in front of the Hotel and they stopped us. Then they fired some kind of gas at us. I thought it was tear gas but my lungs started burning. I don’t know what the hell they were doing. Then they started shooting at us. I jumped in my car and left.”
“Bullshit.” The governor stood up and started towards Colby.
He immediately knew she wasn’t going to be a pushover like the ones in Portland had been. She pointed her finger directly at his chest.
“You did this. You riled those people up and charged the police. What the hell did you think they were going to do, you idiot?”
Colby was momentarily stunned. This was the first real resistance he had faced.
“Well, you wouldn’t know seeing as you weren’t there, would you?”
“I wasn’t there because you wanted to meet me here you half-wit. I think I’m done with this meeting Mr. Anderson.”
Anderson tried to calm them down.
“Okay. Well, just, hang on a second. Why don’t we all sit down and take a deep breath. I’m sure Mr. Ohlbinger is frightened about what happened. We’re all on the same side here.
Racheal can you get Mr. Ohlbinger a drink. Colby what’s your poison?”
“I’ll have a diet coke.” He wanted his mind sharp.
“Governor, I’m sure you don’t want to accuse Mr. Ohlbinger of starting that riot. And Colby, I’m sure you know the governor is in favor of social justice and some expanded programs, so let’s get beyond this.”
“I do accuse him of starting a riot. You saw him. He riled those people up and egged them on.” She replied.
“Someone needs to rile them up governor. Look, we’re tired of this. We’re tired of the empty promises from politicians. We’re tired of the lip service.”
“You are full of it young man. You have no idea what you are doing. You spout slogans about free healthcare and higher minimum wages. But you have no idea how any of this works. I’ve worked my whole life for those things and we have made great progress. You think it happens overnight and you can pay for it all with monopoly money. Then when you don’t get your own way, you cry like a petulant child and create chaos.”
Colby was becoming frustrated and angry. He wanted to pounce hard. But he didn’t know what to say. Anderson came to his rescue.
“Madam Governor, Colby is really passionate. He is working hard and with his help, we can overturn this election. I know you want that” he smiled as he said it.
The governor just shook her head. “We all want that but this violence isn’t the way to get it done. Look at Indianapolis and what your rhetoric caused there.”
“We, did, not, do that.” Colby said sternly.
The governor laughed out loud.
“Young man. Don’t ever think that we buy the bullshit you sell down on the street. We know better.”
Colby stood up. His fists were clenched. He walked out of the circle of sofas and towards the window to look at the city below and the ocean in the distance. He was beginning to lose control when it mattered most.
“Look Colby. I’m behind you. You know that. But the violence is bad. It’s real bad. If we can’t do business, how do you think we can fund you? How can we help if you bankrupt us?” Anderson said.
As he talked, Colby listened and thought. He was standing away from them just staring at the ocean formulating his plan.
Colby Ohlbinger could have been a great doctor, engineer, or chemist. He was incredibly intelligent. But this is what he wanted. This is where his mind worked best. He was close. He just needed to bring it together. As Scotch Anderson continued to talk he said something that sparked Colby’s mind. And he knew he had them.
“Hell Colby, my own car was hit by a rock from some protester just yesterday. And it’s mild here in the city compared to other places. I mean, some of my friends are already thinking about bugging out to New Zealand until this blows over. I’ve got a place over there myself and I have to admit, I’ve considered it. You’re going to start a civil war if you don’t tone this down a bit.”
A broad smile came across Colby’s face. He saw a lone small wooden chair sitting off to his right. He walked over to it and picked it up. He carried it lazily to the center of the sofas. He put it down and turned it around so its back was facing Anderson and the governor. He lowered himself to the chair and crossed his arms over the back of it resting his chin on his arms.
“You people don’t understand a damn thing. Do you think this isn’t already a civil war?”
Anderson and the governor both tried to interrupt and Colby just raised his right hand. “Stop it. Both of you. Scotch you need to know one thing. This is a civil war and if you leave, you can’t come back. If we win the resistance will say you were a traitor. If the right wins they will say you are the enemy. So if you leave, don’t think you can ever come back.”
Then he turned his head to face the governor. “And you have the audacity to accuse me of violence? Governor, you are either very stupid or insane. “
She tried to protest. Colby lifted his head from the back of the chair and screamed at her.
“Stop it! For years you were the one dividing this country! You told us every Republican was a Nazi. You told us they were out to get us. You said that elections were stolen. For years you told us we were the victims of social injustice. You told us they were destroying the planet. You filled us with righteous indignation.
And now? Now that we have listened to you, and start to fight for you, what? You want us to quit? You say they aren’t that bad and it takes time? You say we are crossing the line? You started this. You did this. Every bit of this is your doing!
You’ve lived your entire political life riling up people like me. Okay governor, it worked. Your soldiers are here now. And if you abandon us now, if you in any way shape or form get in our way, I will make sure I see you hung from the capitol steps.
And I’m not speaking metaphorically here. I mean I will see your old neck being stretched by rope.”
The governor was for the first time in her life silenced. She knew he meant business. And she also knew in some small way, that Colby Ohlbinger was right. He turned to face Anderson again.
“So it got too much for you eh Scotch? It’s not your company that you can control every little detail, is it?
You did this too, Scotch. I read some of your blog. You were smarter than all of them, weren’t you? Well, you won too. I am your soldier and I am here fighting for what you said you wanted.
Now leave me alone and let me finish it. Or leave. Go to your bugout mansion in New Zealand. But like I said Scotch, don’t think you can ever come back. And don’t think that your money is going to follow you. All that money you gave me? It’s gone Scotch. I bought rifl
es and ammunition with it. I’ve bought and stolen tens of thousands of guns.”
He stood up and pointed to the window.
“They’re out there now Scotch. The Governor’s soldiers are out there fighting for what she told us we should be fighting for. And we aren’t going to lose.
He turned around and looked at the rest of the silent and stunned faces. “You’re all in this now. Every last one of you.”
He pulled his phone out. Flipped on the camera and scanned it around the room. When he was done he hit send.
“Johnny, you get that?” Colby said into the phone.
No one was sure he was talking to anyone, but they were too afraid to question him. He hit the end button and put it back in his pocket.
“Now I have my insurance for the ones I don’t know. I need more money. I need millions. I need a million in cash and I need millions more in bank accounts that I can access from anywhere. Make it happen”
He started to walk towards the door and stopped.
“One last thing. Don’t any of you ever act like this wasn’t you. Don’t ever act like you didn’t do this. If it hadn’t been for you people, I wouldn’t be doing this. People have been killed because of your politics. Don’t ever fucking pretend that this is anyone’s fault but yours. All you have done here today is expose yourselves. I believed you.”
He took a short step towards them and they flinched in their seats.
“Do you know Steve Oxley?” He asked with tears in his eyes.
“I killed him. I did it because I thought he would threaten what you set me up to do. So, please. Either get the fuck out of my country or get behind me and do as I say. But don’t ever act like you are innocent.
He looked at the governor. Her entire physical appearance had changed right before his eyes. Her shoulders were drawn in and she was sunk deeply into the back of the sofa.
He pointed his finger at her. “You! I want a press conference tonight. You are to blame the police for this and tell them you are calling for an investigation. And at the end of that speech, I better be a national hero and my supporters all better look like angels.
He then looked at Anderson again. I need the money tonight. I’m at the Hyatt.”
As he walked out of the room, not a word was said. In the coming days more than a million immigrants would converge on Sacramento to join his army. He controlled the state of California.
Chapter 7
April: Civil War
Tanner Ritchie was with his people.
The news of Ohlbinger in California, and Hartwick and his group taking Indianapolis back did not help matters. He had been organizing for two weeks all over Missouri and as much as the south as he could reach. His army was over five thousand and growing daily.
Hartwick pissed him off further by calling himself the New Rebel Army. The south would always be the rebels and he wanted to exploit it. But he would not associate himself with the northern fighters. They were just as soft and weak as the resistance socialists and communists.
He had several lieutenants he could trust. They had all agreed not to make the same mistakes they had made in Indianapolis. Every night, small groups would enter St. Louis and kill. They were snipers. They would kill and move on.
Because of the activity in Oregon, Indiana, California and so many other places St. Louis had been ignored by the media. This worked in Tanner’s favor.
The riots in St. Louis had quieted down. And Ritchie took credit for this. The killings and harassment by his “White Army” would continue. This created fear and brought the protesters back out. But only during the day.
That peace dividend worked in Tanner’s favor as men from the suburbs began to join his army.
Some who joined would quickly leave. Once they found out that Tanner and his White army really was an army dedicated to creating a white nation they left. But many remained.
He funded his army by robbing banks. They would hit them not with four or five men, but with five-hundred or more. Within weeks most of the banks around St. Louis were forced to close.
Across many other areas of the south, there were fellow warriors. White separatist’s armies were active in Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, and even Florida.
But none were nearly as big as St. Louis. While the left wing resistance was gathering in Portland, the separatists were gathering in St. Louis.
Hartwick’s new rebel army was, in the eyes of the media, the resistance, and the left, just another wing of the white separatist army of Ritchie.
This mischaracterization would prove to be disastrous.
In Indianapolis, the story of blacks, Hispanics and other minorities was much the same as it had been in California and other places.
The criminals and those who lived in poverty stayed out of it. The same was true of white people in the small industrial towns across the Midwest.
The white people who were poor and dying of Heroin and Fentanyl stayed away. Both groups, poor blacks and whites knew this wasn’t about them. They had been forgotten for decades and saw no reason to fight.
In St. Louis it was different. Black people from the suburbs joined the fight. They were educated and had money. They had good jobs and wanted them protected.
They knew what Ritchie’s army do to them, if he were to win. So they fought back.
The cultural gap between inner-city blacks and those in the suburbs was just as big as that between whites and inner-city blacks. Yet, they worked together.
Marvis Jackson was, as much as possible, the leader of the black resistance. He was an accountant and lived in an affluent suburb north of the city.
But he had been born in raised in some of the toughest neighborhoods in the city. He knew his way around, and he knew the despair.
His experience as an accountant helped more than anything else. He had organizational skills and was a spreadsheet master. The numbers he looked at every day led him to believe they would win. But it wasn’t coming fast enough.
Jackson figured correctly that at any given time Ritchie’s army had about five thousand people. He knew they would come and go. His own army numbered in the hundreds of thousands. But it was difficult to get them all on the same page at the same time.
Last night he had finally convinced a few organized forces of several hundred each, to work in concert. He had assigned some men to spy on Tanner’s army. He had even had success convincing a few white people to infiltrate the White Army groups. He knew that in the evening they would be sending out five groups of twenty to kill black people in and around the city. He knew where they were going and when. And he and his army waited.
The next morning Tanner felt the force of Marvis Jackson. All of the more than one hundred men he had sent out had been killed. They were ambushed before they ever made a single kill.
Making matters worse, the media had finally shown up. Not many, but a few reporters and their cameras were on the scene at one of the massacres. The entire affair would be used as propaganda from both sides.
Tanner was about to be interviewed for the first time since Indianapolis.
He made sure that two of his own men were behind the reporters filming. He positioned two pick-up trucks in front of the pile of twenty-one bodies.
He would only talk to the reporters if they filmed the bodies being loaded into the trucks.
As he spoke, behind him four men were working. Two would walk up to a body and lift it by the feet and arms. The faces of the dead could be seen. These men looked like average white men. The sympathy would be worth the cost in Tanner’s mind.
One of the bodies was that of a young blonde man. He had been shot once in the chest and a small circle of dark blood could be seen clearly against his camouflaged coat. His eyes were open. Tanner saw the cameras of all three news teams pan away from him towards the face.
He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and blew a puff of smoke to the side. Tanner was dressed in a tight-fitting army coat. The American flag had been pulled fr
om the sleeve and replaced with a conspicuous rebel flag patch.
“That young man right there,” He said. “was a brave kid. I think he was seventeen, but he told me he was eighteen. His name was Johnny Willis. The kid was always smiling. And let me tell you something else.”
He took another drag of his cigarette and looked intently into the camera.
“That kid didn’t hate black people. No, he just loved his family and his country and he was tired of what was happening to it. He wanted the American his daddy grew up in. Where white people weren’t afraid to go outside at night. Where he could get a good job and raise a family.
That’s all he wanted. He was fighting for a better America. He knew where the problems were. And he gave his life, so people, yes, white people, could live free and unafraid. You think he is some stupid redneck. You think he is just some racist. But let me ask you this…”
As he said it he used the hand with the cigarette in it to point to the camera.
“Wasn’t this kid Johnny here fighting for what you want?”
Tanner flipped the cigarette off to the side and went to help the men load Johnny’s body into the back of the truck.
The report the news played that night didn’t include any of the footage or of Tanner Ritchie interview. The story was that the rebel army of White Supremacists in St. Louis had tried to attack a peaceful black community and been defeated.
They also said that St. Louis was largely peaceful but that Tanner and his army had been trying to get into the city and do the same thing they had done in Indianapolis. Thankfully they had been unsuccessful and only three people over the past week had been injured.
This was also untrue. Tanner’s army had murdered closer to three-hundred black people, Hispanics, and ‘suspect white people’, in and around the edges of St. Louis.