The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  On October 29, the last working day before the week of the election, Executive Order 5196 was issued ordering a "suspension of all Federal elections for the duration of the current emergency." At the same time, the news media released "secret testimony" indicating that Carson had been involved in "redirection of essential disaster relief material." It was on every remaining network and front page news in every major newspaper.

  On Tuesday morning, November 2, 2020, people started lining up, early, at the polls. Most places it was snowing or freezingly cold. Right down to the bottom of "Sector Three." It didn't matter. People lined up in droves. Soup kitchens shifted over to polling places.

  Almost every polling place in the U.S. opened on time. And the areas that did not? Well, they were the ones that were controlled by very hard-core factions of the Democratic party. Das (feminine) Fuhrer had said that there were to be no more elections and so there vere no more elections! Alles in ordnung!

  The census of 2020 had never been completed. Nobody was absolutely sure what the population of the U.S. was. There were some areas where there were questions about voting. People had moved around, a lot. Documentation was sketchy. There were a lot of "questionable" ballots that had to be set aside for determination. A lot.

  Things were not as efficient and fast as they'd been before the Plague. Ballots were primarily paper. Returns were slow coming in.

  Warrick ordered the military to shut down polling places. She also ordered local police to do so. She went on television under the Emergency Broadcast rules and ordered it.

  Flash Order CJCS Number 2187-20, OpPlan Open Polls, ordered local Regular and National Guard troops, by unit down to platoons (it had been written months before), to move to polling places and "ensure security and continued function of same." In any area where polling was not open they were to "find local polling officers and escort them and any necessary materials for polling to the designated polling office and ensure function of same until the normal close of polling."

  Mutiny? Oh, hell, yeah.

  Coup? No. That would have been what was contemplated for November 3 if the vote didn't go off.

  Flawless? Not hardly. Nothing had been close to flawless since 2018 and that was a pretty fucked up year all things considered.

  Good? Good enough, anyway?

  Yeah.

  The news media held its ground as long as it could. It was still declaring for Warrick when Army numbers showed California had gone to Carson. So had every other state in the nation except Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

  Carson was still unavailable to comment. He was in jail.

  Warrick refused to concede. The vote was "illegal." The person elected a "criminal."

  (Warrick, by the way, was one of the people to first castigate against "the politics of personal destruction.")

  Not even the SCOTUS could take that one. November 23, when all the states had certified their results, they declared the vote valid and binding. 8–1. They ordered the release of the President-Elect on a 5–4 vote for.

  Warrick said that nothing was going to change. She ordered the arrest of the CJCS and the members of SCOTUS, all eight, that had certified the vote.

  The Capitol Police ordered to arrest the CJCS went to the Pentagon, took one look at the troops guarding the doors, and went away.

  So did the ones that went to the Supreme Court building.

  So did the ones ordered to arrest more Republican congressmen and senators.

  We'd turned over most of the emergency resupply duties. The troops were just sitting there. Might as well camp out on the doorsteps of various "distinguished persons." Hell, we even had teams around the Democrats. Fair and balanced and all that.

  The Secret Service brought Carson to his home in DC. He gave a very nice acceptance speech. Finally. He also mentioned that he'd been well treated during his "unfortunate stay in federal custody" and was pretty humorous about it. You got the impression he'd been at a resort.

  Warrick threw the Secret Service out of the White House. She brought in a private security firm to protect her. She also never left from before the vote until January 20th.

  Food was getting very scarce. Nobody was talking about it in the news.

  The Carson "transition team" got underway. The word was out that as soon as Carson was in place and things were relatively stable, the Joint Chiefs were all going to resign. Carson wasn't having any of it. But they were pretty adamant. They'd performed a sort of de facto coup. And they weren't going to continue with power under those conditions. It couldn't be seen as a good thing. They were not only going to resign, they were going to forego any government service for the rest of their lives. They were going to disappear and live off their meager (for the job they do, anyway) pensions.

  I felt really sorry for Carson in a way. He had a lot of picking up to do and there wasn't any good news in the near future. Projections for 2021 and 2022 were for colder and colder temperatures. Ice age here we come.

  December we started distributing Kula Bars and the public view of the Army hit an all-time low. Everybody knew we'd saved the election but . . . Kula Bars? Fuck 'em. It kept people alive.

  We were still in the "taking care of everybody" business and starting to get sick of it. We wanted things to start getting back to any semblance of normal so we could get back to learning how to kill people and break things. That didn't look to be happening any time soon.

  India sent us grain shipments. India. My grandmother used to say "Eat all your food. There are starving children in India." By then there weren't starving children in India. But there had been in her memory and Grandma was a little besotted by then. Back when she was no more than middle aged, we'd been sending grain to India to help out with their famine.

  Now they were sending us grain. We made it into Kula Bars. When they found out, they got a little testy. Till we explained the rationale.

  Oh, India was an interesting case. But this isn't the time for that. Maybe later.

  January 20th. Inauguration Day. Cold as a witch's fucking tit. I was part of the security. I know.

  Carson stood up, raised his right hand and then let loose one hell of a speech. He didn't even use old catchphrases that were perfect for the conditions. The closest he got was his "continued hard times that will require great sacrifice. We will face them together as Americans and triumph over all that stands against us."

  The guy had been an actor for a long time. He knew how to deliver a speech. He made even the weakest phrases ring with conviction that was so solid you could cut it and serve it as food. Better than Kula Bars, anyway. Could barely break those with your teeth. (Another "feature," not a bug.)

  Warrick was not present. Her VP was and gave a short speech praising the new Prez and wishing him good luck.

  Warrick had to be removed from the White House more or less with force. Actually, her personal physician sedated her and she walked out under her own power. She just thought she was taking a moonwalk or something.

  Chapter Three

  Gosh, Here's a Thought . . .

  A new Congress was in. The House of Representatives looked . . . somewhat different than before. It was incredibly white-bread. It was even short on females comparatively and it had never been a really heavy girl group. The Senate, of course, had less turnover. One election in six years. All the arrested Congresscritters who were up for reelection got reelected in a landslide and just about every Democratic senator got trounced. The new crop was also less than "collegial" with their Democratic colleagues seeing them as, essentially, lame ducks. The majority leader was not elected from the Old Guard. He was a former Congressman but he didn't play by the old rules.

  Carson asked for six months of continuation of the Emergency Powers Act. He went to Congress and asked for it, doing a speech on the floor. He explained that he simply needed the same powers to undo the damage.

  At the same time, the Joint Chiefs stood up and gave their retirement speeches. They explained that, as they saw
it for the good of the country they had violated the honor of their offices. Gordon was great.

  "Were I a Japanese General in World War II I would now cut open my belly to expiate the shame. There has been enough death. We ask to simply fade into history."

  None of them have ever, that I know, written a memoir. I wish they had. I'm reasonably certain there was a group planning the coup and I'd love to have the inside scoop on it. The most I ever got from a pretty good source was "Task Force 629."

  So far, nobody has ever geeked. Cowards. I admitted to creating the Kula Bar. How bad could it be to admit you were getting ready to take Warrick down? Hell, they should have given out medals for doing the tasking paperwork!

  Carson got his six months. And my God was he a busy little beaver. Or, rather, his staff already had been.

  They'd gotten the full list of seized farms from the USDA along with data on farm output relative to 2018. They also had a list of when farms were "family owned cooperatives" (we actually fell into that category, it was an actual line item under USDA rules) vs. really big farm corporations. And another list of farms that had been "moribund" due to the family or managers being killed by the Plague. And then there were the ones abandoned by "government cooperative associates" not to mention dead folk in them.

  Hey, presto! Add a few good database geeks and you had . . .

  A list of farms that were to be turned back over to farming corporations.

  A priority list of farms to be turned back over to owners.

  A list of farms that had been seized and turned over to new farmers but which were a) performing well and b) the owners were dead anyway.

  The problem in many cases was finding the original owners and/or managers of the farms. That might have bit us in the ass but, well, there were fewer people to feed. And we had some time since what with the weather, ground breaking was going to take a while yet for most of the major crops.

  People were dying, though, while he was giving his speech. And he knew it. Wasn't much he could do. Everybody who had a clue was already on the job trying to keep the death rate down.

  Businesses were "denationalized." Money, at this point more or less fiat money based on our really junky bond rating, was made available to get them back on their feet. Warrick's coterie was out on their ass faster than you can say "tofu." Most of them couldn't be prosecuted for what they'd done because, hell, it was a valid executive order. Fucked up as hell, but that's what happens when that many factors come together.

  The ag situation was still badly screwed. Everything was in short supply. India came to the rescue, again, with seed and pesticides. We actually ended up producing enough of the latter and herbicides by the time planting season came around. But they sent a couple of tankers full which were quite useful.

  They'd also opened up the Persian Gulf. My buddy the mullah down in Abadan had "expanded his sphere of influence." Mostly through negotiation and occasionally with a bit of fighting he and the south Iraqi "moderates" had taken over most of the Gulf areas of former Iran. But the "pirates" in the Straits of Hormuz (the ones on the Iranian side of the strait) were armed with the weapons left over from the Iranian military and liked owning the Straits.

  He didn't have a problem working with the "heathen" Indian military in straightening them out.

  And, okay, we punched some Marines over there to help, too. As the general had said to me on the phone, we were still playing world's policeman to an extent.

  Then my mullah friend said, effectively, "We've got oil and food. Y'all come on down!"

  The "Fertile Crescent" was getting extremely fertile. The same change that was going on in Arizona was happening in the Middle East. Which is why the PU has become a net exporter of food. And, hell, everything else. I'm wearing a jacket right now says "Made in Persia."

  And most of the minor little crap in the house says "Made in India."

  India. Okay, time for the digression.

  The Plague hit India hard. Real hard. Lots of vaccine distribution but it was Type One. Total death toll was right at fifty percent, which is a bit off the sixty but given their vaccine, spread should have been better.

  Anyway, the thing was "where'd it hit?"

  Well, everywhere equally. Right? Plague doesn't care if you're a king or a criminal.

  Sort of.

  Airborne spread flus have a harder time in hot environments. They don't last as long on surfaces, not even hands.

  But there were large segments of India, especially the very poor, who were in very crowded conditions. And they didn't, by and large, get vaccinated. It hit those segments at a rate of about 60% with secondary effects adding another 10% or so.

  Not to be coldhearted but what I'm saying is that it hit the least productive segment of their population the hardest.

  India, since it climbed out of socialism and got with the mainstream, had two problems. One, it was overpopulated and undereducated. They were working hard on the second problem even before the Plague but the first was making the conversion hard. Too many new babies being born to poor people who couldn't help either through taxes or direct payments to get them educated meant more babies that weren't educated and couldn't get modern jobs . . .

  It had a huge middle class, don't get me wrong. And they were functional and productive to their country and the world. Its middle class outnumbered the U.S. total population. But everything they did was against the inertia of this huge population of the poor. And other inertia.

  Despite all the surface changes of modernity ("India is the largest democracy in the world!") there were still huge and very definite class differentiations. And if you weren't from a certain "class" there was little or no chance of you getting beyond a certain point. It was glass ceiling after glass ceiling after glass ceiling.

  Don't get me wrong, most of the underclass wasn't going to produce Einsteins or Reagans. But it was going to produce some. But it wasn't going to happen as long as caste still ruled. And it did.

  Come the Plague.

  Most of the "upper class" no longer lived in daily constant heat. The heat that Kipling spoke of so luridly about India. India had discovered air conditioning in the 1990s and taken to it with abandon. At least if you could afford the enormous electric bills.

  But.

  Nice cool air-conditioned offices meant nice places for H5N1 to hang out for a bit longer. Yes, the "upper class" had gotten vaccinated. Most of the strains that hit India were mutated binding sites.

  The upper class of Indian society got hit nearly as hard as the very poor. It wiped out whole families that were proud of the fact they could trace their ancestors back five thousand years.

  It also took out about 30% of India's college graduates. Which was bad. But it tended to take out the ones with degrees in "English" and "Literature" and "Marketing" and "Social Finance."

  The less well paid "Engineers" and "Mathematicians" and such like had a much lower death rate since they tended to spend less time in air-conditioned environments.

  Before the Plague, despite all the changes, India was a fairly sharp financial and social pyramid. That is never good for a society.

  After the Plague the tip had gotten sliced and a big chunk of the base had gotten sliced. That made it a much more functional country than before.

  Oh, it was a maelstrom at first. Everywhere was. But it recovered faster than most of the rest of the world (including us). Well, there were still "issues" even when they were shipping us grain. "Restive local populations." (Read Moslems.) A nutball in Pakistan had seized that country's nukes. Various other "issues." (Including an abortive invasion by a Chinese general that never really amounted to much.)

  But India was, and is, a comer. Are they ever going to be a "super-power" to rival the age of Pax Americana? Well, when they do send "blue water" task forces over to play with the Navy, they still end up towing some ships home and often cancelling part way through. Nor can they field a supercarrier to save their ass. They still can't get what is calle
d in the military "systemology."

  But they're a comer. And, hell, we're not exactly out of the play-pen.

  But I'm getting ahead of myself again.

  Thing is, India was doing better than the U.S. in 2021. Part of that was they didn't have an idiot like The Bitch in charge. Part was environmental. But they were definitely doing better than us.

  However, they were also friends. It's not only okay, it's a good thing, when friends are strong. They were strong friends in our hour of need and I'm glad we're on such good relations. Hell, I helped to make some of them, I've got a vested interest. But I digress, again.

  I'm basically avoiding talking about Detroit.

  The economy hadn't started booming by any stretch, but people were "cautiously optimistic." Coming out of the Great Depression had required WWII. Coming out of the effects of the Plague only required a stable business environment. People wanted to get back to work and there was work to be done. It's just that nobody wanted to invest in anything when they couldn't be sure the government wouldn't seize it.

  But there was another problem. The cities.

  Many of the cities, especially in "red" states, were back up and functioning at some moderate level. They were, at least, as secure as they'd been pre-Plague. (Some more so since people were less forgiving of criminals. A lot of the stupid had been beaten out of the surviving tofu-eaters. And unless it was a religious thing, they were all willing to eat meat if it was available.) Red states had eventually sent in their own "security forces" to reestablish order.

  However, there were some cities that remained free-fire zones. Where gangs or even whole small organized "governments" held power that refused to recognize the authority of the feds or the states. Generally, those hadn't voted. You had to be under state and federal authority to vote. If you weren't, you didn't vote. Most of them were functional dictatorships, or de jure dictatorships, anyway.

  The list of cities that were definitely functional city-states is small. Chicago, Boston, Hartford, Newark and most especially Detroit. There was a list of others where order had broken down and never been reestablished. But that's different from "we have order, and we are the order."