The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  Point is, this guy walks out one cold morning. Food around the nation is rationed. He's still keeping his ear to the ground about farming. Things are looking like fucking nightmare.

  And here he is looking at what is quickly becoming some of the most arable land in the U.S. Rainfalls have been, for the southwest, nightmarish. The "arroyos" are rivers. Standing ones. He's not a climatologist but he's thinking they're going to stay that way. Sort of what the long-range forecasts, the good ones not U.S. Met, are pointing to.

  Now, if he only had . . .

  A big tractor.

  Plows.

  Planter.

  Fertilizer.

  Herbicide (still a bunch of that pesky sage around).

  Pesticides . . .

  Hell, it's a long list. If he only had everything he'd left up in North Dakota. And some weather numbers he could count on.

  Oh, seed . . . that would be helpful.

  So I'm leaning back in my chair, trying to stay awake and wondering how in the hell I'm going to get out of durance vile. There has to be a way. Marry a general's daughter? Nah, he'd think I did it to stay in the Pentagon . . . And I couldn't come right out and say "I married your daughter so I could get some career progression again, sir. Not that she's not a nice piece of ass but could you maybe call branch and get me the fuck out the Pentagon?"

  "Yes, sir . . . I understand that, sir . . . Sir, we're not here . . . I don't think we have any actual equipment available, sir . . ."

  I figure it's a tofu-eater. Let Smedlap take the heat. That's what enlisted guys are for, to take the fire.

  "Sir, let me transfer you to my supervisor . . . No, sir, I'm not 'passing the buck.' He's a farmer, he might have some idea what you're talking about!"

  Fuck.

  "Major Bandit Six. What?"

  "Do you know what time it is? I've been on this damned phone all night looking for somebody in the U.S. government who has a brain! I doubt it's you but maybe I'll find somebody sometime and I'll stay on this phone all night if I have to! I didn't pay taxes my whole adult life to get the run around!"

  "All of which told me nothing about why you've called. So if that's all you've got . . ."

  "My name is Farmer Bill. I've been retired for five years. I moved to Arizona and bought a spread. It was desert. It's not, anymore. I don't know what your bosses are saying, but as a professional I can tell you, sonny, that we're going to be short on food as a nation next year. So I don't see why a bunch of prime farmland should just go to waste. Can you understand that or are you as dumb as a box of rocks?"

  "Hang on . . . No, seriously, I'm looking at the damned climate plat, okay . . . ? Yeah, Arizona's forecast for long-range increased precipitation. Gimme a township plat or your GPS location or, hell, your address . . . Okay." Tap, tap . . . "Yeah, you're right. But we both knew that. I see your plat. You're now the proud owner of four thousand acres of prime wheat, corn or soy farmland. Congratulations. And, yeah, Department of the Interior and the USDA both still have it marked as desert, the dumbasses . . . I'm not using their climatology models is why . . . Because I'm not as dumb as a box of rocks . . ."

  Farmer Bill was a character. Called me every week or so just to chew me out. Reminded me of my dad if Dad had been a motor-mouth. It was heartening. I got to looking forward to his calls for the comfort zone.

  Took me a while to find what he needed but the Army had "stood-up" a "military farming support network." And eventually I found everything.

  Look, an army travels on its stomach. Soldiers are always the last people to go hungry.

  In most societies, that's because we've got the guns. But the U.S. Army tries, very hard, not to steal all its food. (Sherman's March to the Sea being a notable exception.)

  But our models were forecasting "chronic, serious and endemic nutrition shortages" in the U.S. That's a fancy way of saying "famine." It was classified Top Secret because the Policy Makers were saying everything was coming up roses. I saw the actual reports. And as the growing season of 2020 went on, the reports were getting worse and worse.

  So the Army had set out to rectify that as well as it could. It was stepping all over USDA at that point, but it didn't care. Soldiers were going to eat. If for no other reason than so that they'd have the strength to stop the food riots that were coming. Without killing the rioters.

  "Stuff" for farming was available. Dealerships had gone into receivership. Stocks weren't getting distributed. Seed that was "genmod" was just sitting in warehouses and getting ready to go bad.

  The Army was handpicking some farms to make sure soldiers ate. It might not be perfect, but soldiers would have something to eat.

  I really think it was mid 2020 when the coup was closest. (Other than at the election and I'm getting ahead of myself again.) The Joint Chiefs were looking at the fucking country starving and the President and her advisors leading the charge into famine. But they didn't revolt. They held firm to the concept of The Society of Cincinnatus. Civilian leadership control never truly broke. But they did whatever they could under the table.

  Farmer Bill became one of those "under the table" deals. He got what he needed from "seized" stocks that were just sitting around. He sold his food to the Army when it came in. Quite a few soldiers ate actual wheat bread during the winter of 2020–2021 because of Farmer Bill.

  Enough of Farmer Bill. This is about me.

  It took several months for the general's schedule to open up enough for some chit-chat time. And it was late when we started and I had duty that night. He had my predecessor sit in for part of my shift. We talked late.

  He really was interested in Khuwaitla. He wanted out of this rat-fuck, too. But we both agreed we were doing useful work even if we hated it. So I talked about Khuwaitla. And he agreed that Abrams were tough and thought it was funny that I was so ambivalent about them. I pointed out he'd never had to fight them. He laughed.

  We talked about getting them over the Taurus and the Anatolians and he thought it was funny that I'd gotten the routes mixed up. He told a story about when he was commanding a brigade in the Entry Phase in Iraq and despite GPS getting on the wrong road and running into a hell of a firefight. I told him about swinging wide on Mosul, which I'd gotten from that op. And some reading over the years. We talked about Slim and he'd read "Unofficial History" and he recommended a couple of others that turned out to be excellent. Slim was big on logistics. We segued from that.

  He asked me if I'd seen the classified reports on food production.

  I admitted I had.

  He asked me if I had any suggestions. Beyond expanding the "food for soldiers" program which was already as big as we could do and get away with under the table.

  I said I'd had a lot of time to think on night shift.

  And?

  What? You want the full PowerPoint presentation?

  That's how I got into Plans and Ops of ESM.

  Not that that was a lot better. Every answer came down to the same equation: H.R. Puffinstuff. We could do a little, but we weren't going to be able to do enough.

  Things were totally and completely screwed. Factor after factor was building up. The Plague. The bad weather. The false forecasts. The utter stupidity of the Zimbabwe Plan. USDA being forced to give all the wrong suggestions. "Organic" uber alles. Remember my rant about "Organic." Three times the tilled land for the same amount of food. We had less tilled land and mostly organic and all natural farming. "Farmers" breaking stuff for which the parts were becoming scarcer and scarcer and scarcer because the factories that used to make them were abandoned and the rate of breakage was beyond belief. And the "farmers" didn't know how to fix anything. (Okay, by 2020 the worst of them were gone. Most died in the winter of 2019. But then they got replaced by a new crop of idiots.)

  Any single one would have been bad.

  The combination had things totally and completely FUBARed. Fucked Up Beyond Any Recovery.

  And we knew deep in our bones that as soldiers we were going to be
left holding the bag. We'd be the ones that people threw stones at when there wasn't even the food for the soup lines. Or shot at.

  The economy was still not coming back. Stocks were trading, commodities were trading, banks were sort of getting their feet under them again. But the damned "nationalizations" had people running scared. Say you bought stock in a company then the next day it got "nationalized." Know what you got? Nada. Nichts. Nothing. Nobody wanted to invest under those conditions.

  And in the meantime anyone who was paying any attention to the news could see that the coterie around Damen Warrick was getting fatter and fatter and fatter.

  Hell, if people had had the energy there would have been a flat-out revolt.

  And, yes, that did break out in places in 2020. And as soldiers . . . we were left holding the bag. We were the ones that had to kick down doors and round up "insurgents." Our stock was starting to fall. We were going from saviors to "oppressors."

  People, we didn't vote for Warrick. Nor for the Dems that gave her absolute power.

  We just got left holding the bag.

  It was July of 2020 and I pulled an idea out of my ass. It was shit. I knew it was shit. And soon enough everyone in the U.S. and in several other countries ate my shit.

  I invented the Kula Bar.

  Yes, that's right, people. You can blame that abortion purely on me. I am at fault. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.

  The Kula Bar. The most reviled and despised food on earth, with the possible exception of Spam.

  The Kula Bar in all four revolting flavors: Piss yellow, leprous green, horrible horrible blue and that truly stomach-turning red. I cannot to this day get the taste out of my mouth. I refer to them as their colors because there is no way to explain to those who have not experienced them the taste.

  The sole redeeming quality? It kept the death rate down. Not gone, but down.

  Here are the factors that led to that monstrosity.

  Food was going to be short. Not "soup lines" short but "nothing" short.

  Fuel was going to be short. Not "perhaps we should use the hybrid" short but "we can't even boil a cup of water" short.

  It was going to be cold. Not "it's cool in here" cold but "if we don't get five or six people under this blanket we're going to be corpsicles in the morning" cold.

  With enough food energy and some common sense and shelter you can stave off the cold. But we were going to be low on food. And you can't just hand out a bunch of semolina to somebody and tell them to come back in a week to get more when they can't cook it.

  We needed emergency distribution rations that:

  A. Would keep for a long time.

  B. Contained a tremendous amount of energy so that people could use body energy to stave off the cold.

  C. Were nutritionally complete. Preferably one "packet" was enough for one person for an entire 24-hour period.

  D. Could be easily stored and transported.

  E. Were in a smaller packet than MREs. Preferably "energy bar" sized.

  F. Were as easy to produce from readily available materials (what there were of them) as possible.

  Oh. And here's the kicker.

  G. Tasted Bad.

  We didn't actually want people to eat them. We wanted them to be starving to death before they'd eat them. They were "the food of last resort."

  We were planning on passing them out in job lots. But we wanted people to eat anything before they'd eat the "Emergency Ration Bars." Because they were for even worse emergencies. Like, we're cut off in a blizzard and out of power and, fuck, all we have left is those fucking Kula Bars!

  They tasted horrible on purpose.

  We might have gone a little overboard on that one. I never saw any certified reports on it, but it was widely held allegory that people were found as emaciated skeletons with a pile of Kula Bars right in front of them.

  Ever have a Bandit Bar?

  It's a Kula bar with a different suite of artificial flavors.

  Gotcha.

  Do not mess with the Bandit.

  When we got the harvests in from the "farmers for soldiers" program we looked at projected needs for the next year, compared the total input from the program and saw that we had a surplus. A sizeable one. The FFS program used only trained farmers and every trick in the book. The FFS program proved that the famines of 2020 and 2021 could be laid squarely at Warrick's feet. Also classified at the time. It's been released since under FOIA.

  We poured that "excess" into Kula Bars.

  That was starting in September of 2020. By then it was Warrick vs. Carson.

  And then . . .

  I mean how stupid could she be? Yes, it was clear she was going to lose barring some miracle. That the Dems were, across the board, about to take a shellacking.

  But having her opponent arrested?

  Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely?

  I don't think so. I think she truly believed that She was Right and that The Way She Showed The Nation Was Just and . . .

  I think she was thinking in capital letters. And the advisors she had around her were so insulated from reality that they weren't going to tell her different.

  There had been a lot of quieter arrests. Commentators, reporters, minor political figures, even Congressional staff. Hell, members of the Army for that matter who hadn't obeyed her edicts and had been caught out. They weren't making the news because the MSM was still in her corner, I think horrified but horrified more of what would come out if she didn't get another term. They'd been covering for her and a change of administration was going to make that patently obvious.

  She arrested Carson and about a dozen other senators, all from states with Democrat governors, and shut down Fox News and a bunch of radio stations all at once. For "conspiracy."

  Yep, it was a conspiracy. It was a group of people coming together to enact political action. It's called a Political Party, you moronic Bitch!

  But, man, can you imagine being on the Secret Service detail?

  They'd already taken over security for Carson. He was the Republican candidate for President. They take over when a person gets close to that position. He's starting to be briefed in on peripheral matters, just in case he wins. (It's as clear as glass he's going to.)

  And they get orders to take him into custody. Total incommunicado. Disappear him.

  And they do it. Why?

  Because you obey orders. You obey the law. The Congress had passed a law saying that this bitch can do whatever the fuck she wants. The Supreme Court had not overriden it. They let the son of a bitch stand. (5–4 vote. The dissents are scathing. Read 'em some time. Scalia has a way with words. You can practically feel the spittle.)

  There's one other thing. One other reason to go along with the Bitch.

  Because on November 2nd, or maybe January 20th, it's not going to matter.

  Those are the drop-dead dates. Those are the dates when things are going to come apart.

  What if she fucks with the elections?

  I wasn't in on the "privy councils." They didn't even take place at the Joint Chiefs level. The JCS knew that if wind got to Warrick about any "special political operations planning proposals" that they'd be the first to disappear. It was going on at a much lower level.

  But Warrick was serene in her belief that the People Would Do Right And Choose The New And Fresh Voice for the 21st Century. That she had Conducted A Conversation With The People And The People Would Make The Right Choice.

  And she figured she'd assured it by sticking her political opponent in the Federal Prison in Marion, Ill. Right next to Manuel Noriega.

  Things exploded. The military knew all it had to do was hold on until the election. If she didn't fuck with that, we were golden.

  There were more than a few people who were tired of waiting for things to get better. And figured that if they couldn't kill Warrick they'd kill whatever representatives they could find.

  Quite a few of the tofu-eater farmers were "made examples
of." Democratic representatives, a few journalists.

  "Right-wing death squads?" Try people who are fed up with being in a tyranny.

  And the SCOTUS upheld the damned Act again!

  "Interference in Executive powers during a National Emergency . . ."

  Another scathing dissent. Thomas's was great, too. The "plantations" metaphor had a bunch of levels.

  There's a song that has a line in it: "Everything exploded and the blood began to spill." That was the autumn of 2020. We were damned short on food. Harvests were in all over and they were scanty. Distribution was still fucked. Fuel was short.

  The only thing that the U.S. seemed to have in abundance was anger and weapons and bullshit from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs finally had had enough. On October 5, he called for a press conference under emergency broadcast rules. He worded the order as if there was some new huge emergency and it was presented by the news media that way. So lots of people tuned in and turned on. Also simulcast over the Internet for those who had access and "Psy-Ops" units set up bullhorns near food lines.

  "This is General Gordon. I'm Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Department of Defense. I'm not here to declare martial law. I'm not here to say that an asteroid is about to hit the Earth, which is about the only disaster we haven't had. I'm just here to say this.

  "There are a lot of people who are very angry right now at the situation in the United States. I can understand that anger. But would you please quit throwing things and shooting at my soldiers? In less than a month you can feel free to express your opinion in a normal setting. It's called a polling booth. This is America. It is not some Third World dictatorship. Quit acting like it is and wait for your chance to be heard. Make the decision in the polling booths. And whatever the outcome, face it like Americans. Not terrorists. Thank you for listening."

  Things calmed down. The Bitch asked for Gordon's resignation. He told her to stick it. And a bunch of the brass sent word through their contacts that if Gordon left, the Society of Cincinnatus was going into abeyment for "the duration of the current emergency."