The Last Pilgrims

by Michael Bunker

  Our Vallenses were far from perfect. They made mistakes and paid for them as we all must, but they had their own advantages, not the least of which was their insistence that they produce more than they consume, and that they not rely on unsustainable and unviable systems for their survival. Their thirty years in Central Texas never corrupted them to the point that they insulated themselves from the production and preservation of good food and clean water. Now, as has so often happened, tossed about by the caprices and greed of tyrants and men, they became pilgrims in the land and exiles from their own homes and hearths. This too was hardly without historical precedent.

  The flight of the Vallenses from Texas to parts north is now the stuff of lore and legend. For months they struggled against the harsh terrain, the brutal weather, and their own natural desires for home and hearth; and, for the most part, they overcame. The Vallensian pilgrimage became the largest mass migration of a nation of people since the collapse. Viewed historically, however, the pilgrimage would have to be considered almost commonplace.

  There were losses along the way. The pain and suffering and toil of migration took its toll among the Vallenses. Many of the oldlings died along the way, and were buried in graves stretching from Texas into Missouri. There were attacks by bandits and raids by thieves, but the Vallenses were a resilient people, and they were looking for a peaceful place to call their temporary home. Unhappily, when God sends a people into exile for His own purposes, things often get worse long before they get better.

  In January following the exodus of the Vallenses from Texas, the now 20,000 pilgrims were surrounded by military forces operating under the auspices of the de-facto “King” of the North. Their militia escort had been forced to turn back weeks earlier due to dwindling supplies and other necessities. After failing to convince the Vallenses to stop or turn back, the militia regretfully informed the Elders that they must return to Texas.

  General Amos DuPlantis, a former National Guard officer based at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, after having seized power in the vacuum created by the collapse, had declared himself the military leader of the North States. Suspicious of the peaceful claims and aims of the Vallenses, General DuPlantis ordered the Vallenses to be driven into a massive work and internment camp located southwest of what was once Springfield, Missouri.

  The Vallenses, unable, unprepared, and unwilling to fight, were herded wholesale into a massive “resettlement” work camp for refugees and potential subversives, and once again their hearts were humbled and their future looked bleak.

  Tired and cold and decimated from four months of hard travel, the Vallenses were forced to wait in insufferable lines in the freezing weather of winter, in order to be processed into the camp.

  Mr. Byler the oldling Cobbler, one of the few Vallenses old enough and historically literate enough to understand the true meaning of the words, looked up before walking through the gates of the camp and his fading eyes fell upon the ironic sign there posted:

  “WORK WILL SET YOU FREE”

  The adventure had just begun…

  Addendum

  Jonathan’s Letter

  TO

  HIS GREAT MAJESTY

  RICHARD the FIRST,

  KING of the SOUTH STATES

  Sir,

  At the hazard of relating events and history that are already well known to the King, it is necessary that I provide you with a brief (or as brief as will suffice) summary of the recent history of our people and our lands before and after the collapse of the United States of America only twenty years ago.

  In the intervening decades, despite hardships and difficulties—not unlike those faced by others that survived the upheavals that followed the collapse and dissolution of America and the industrialized civilization throughout the world—our people have not only survived but have thrived in what was once considered the inhospitable land and climate of Central Texas. For this reason, it pains me to say that our land is currently and unhappily under the thumb of the Kingdom of Aztlan and his puppet, the Duke of El Paso.

  The world knows of the continuing miracle of our preservation and success, of the growth of what was once a nominal and largely unheard of sect into a mini nation-state of many thousands of souls, and of the proliferation of Vallensian colonies in Texas and elsewhere in North America. Prior to our lands coming under the pretended civil control of the Kingdom of Aztlan, we were sought out, and appealed to, by virtually every ruler and nation in North America, your own nation not excepted, to remove ourselves from Texas and to relocate to their countries. They valued our wisdom and hoped that, with our help, they too could bring the wilds of their own lands, now uncultivated and unproductive due to massive depopulation and a lack of expertise required to survive in the current climate, under that benevolent dominion and tillage for which our people are now universally famous. Notwithstanding the numerous generous offers—including that most graciously made to us by your own respected predecessor—we have chosen to remain in our own lands, believing that God Almighty has given these plains and hills unto us in order to magnify His own glory in the taming of such a supposedly inhospitable place even in this difficult time. This is our home.

  Our people have overcome so many adversities, as well as the attacks and genocidal intentions of our enemies; and, having endured it all, we again stand in peril of the loss of our lives and lands.

  We find ourselves, as a peaceful and passive people, under the threat of annihilation and genocide by the treacherous King of Aztlan, who—despite our peaceful ways and productive lives—desires to bring us into subjection to his own mind and sovereignty (via his pestilent hirelings). He aims to impose upon us his oppressive military tyranny, as well as his own religion—one that is abhorrent to our people and inherently contrary to our own.

  We came into this land over 30 years ago, separating ourselves from the Kingdoms of This World, in order to live our lives peaceably, producing our living from the land by the sweat of our own brow. By choosing this simple way of life, we were no burden to any man or government. We lived and worked with the intention of being a blessing to those ‘round about by making our poor desert rangeland good and productive soil, and by being an example of good stewardship and responsibility to the people who then lived in the cities and towns around us. This we did diligently, obeying all of the rules and requirements of men and magistrates that were not specifically contrary to the commandments of our God. Our own countrymen that have relocated into Your Grace’s country may bear you witness that our conduct has always been pure and holy and that we in no way have tried to gather unto ourselves power, prestige, or position. We have not, heretofore, born arms against the King of Aztlan; rather, we have submitted ourselves (as much as we are able)—according to the commandments of our God—to those civil magistrates with whom God has seen fit to burden us.

  During our first ten years on the land (the decade before the collapse), we worked tirelessly, and had managed to build our infrastructure—constructing barns and out-buildings, and working to make productive soil out of what was once marginal range land. We captured rainwater by building ponds, tanks, and cisterns. As much as we could, we relied on our own productivity and the improvement of our lands in order to provide the basic life necessities for ourselves. We weaned ourselves from the common culture of consumption, and, in effect, created a viable, alternative society—one based on production, rather than consumption. During this time, we devoted much of our own precious time and resources to teaching others to do as we did, and actively participated in helping others to learn to survive and thrive in the difficult times that were certain to follow.

  When the collapse came, we were not taken by surprise, as most people were; and though we had no way of knowing exactly when that collapse would come, we were absolutely certain that it would come and therefore we had prepared diligently for it.

  Following the initial maelstrom of violence that accompanied the collapse of the system of consumer supply, there were unco
untable disasters, systemic failures, and civil wars leading up to the inevitable dissolution of the civil governments based on that system, and a restructuring of the global political landscape. In the aftermath, many disparate fiefdoms arose, each vying for civil power and authority in the vacuum that resulted from the collapse. We took no part in that struggle for power and in no way sought to gain from the global demise.

  The tragic die-off and depopulation of the continent; the end of the availability and ubiquity of inexpensive electrical power; the re-localization of just about every resource; and the subsequent restructuring of society along the lines and model of medieval Europe—all of these factors brought about a ‘New World Order’, only it was a world order modeled after the monarchial system that has reigned among men for most of history.

  Although we were not untouched by the global tragedy, and have suffered greatly, we praise our God that we were protected from the bulk of the violence, anarchy, and bloodshed that destroyed much of the former country in the aftermath of the collapse.

  The primary area in which we were correct concerning the manner of the collapse was in our prediction that there would be a loss of power on the global scale, rendering most “modern” technology unusable. The massive loss of life and infrastructure brought about by the collapse (or rather, the inevitable destruction that followed) was beyond what most people imagined. I praise God for sparing us from the worst of it, protecting us via our remote and seemingly unattractive location, our predilection for preparedness and sustainability, along with the many other deliverances we experienced via Divine intervention.

  As we had rejected most modern technologies long before the collapse—deeming them detrimental to our safety, our security, our peace, and the simplicity of our lifestyle—we had many advantages in the very hard years that would come.

  After a year or so had passed from the worst events of the collapse, many cliques, sects, and entities started vying for power. Our own region first fell under the pretended authority of the first Kingdom of Mexico, a realm hastily thrown together by criminal political and military groups south of the former border, in an attempt to fill the vacuum of power left by the dissolution of the government of the United States.

  Our lands were in the far northeastern region of this dominion; thus, owing to difficult travel conditions, we were mostly left to ourselves during the few years of this period.

  Moral judgments aside, the first King of Mexico did us little real harm—though I am certain he would have consumed us and/or enslaved us for our productive capability had he been able or permitted to do so by God.

  Shortly after, the power of the King of Mexico waned due to the over-extension and over-reaching of his grasp. He was unable to control his northern reaches (especially the drug cartels and criminal enterprises) any better than the nation of Mexico had done prior to the collapse. Thus, when he had run out of ammunition for his guns—and when most of the more productive citizens had been killed or had fled from his poor management and insatiable greed—the King of Mexico was overthrown by the citizenry of his own realm. The new power vacuum didn’t remain for long and, within a year, the people of Northern Mexico (the former border states) found themselves overwhelmed by the onrushing invader from the West.

  The King of Aztlan—whose power was constituted mainly of the heavily armed drug gangs once at war with one another along the border between America and Mexico—sensed the weakness of his own kinsmen within the first Kingdom of Mexico. Upon the fall of the King of Mexico, he swiftly moved his armies westward from what was left of California and, through murder and violence, absorbed the northern portion of the Kingdom of Mexico into his own Kingdom. Regardless of what Aztlan has claimed, the King was only able to maintain any real control of the former border regions from California to as far as El Paso in Texas, including the southern Rocky Mountain areas in the former New Mexico that he had first conquered with his initial northward push during the early days of the collapse.

  On the foothills of the Sangre de Christo mountains (in a place once known as Taos, New Mexico), Aztlan constructed their new capitol which they named New Rome.

  The collapse marked the end of more than just the industrial, digital, and consumer revolutions. The drug revolution died with it too. This, in my view, was a foregone conclusion, given some very important and inescapable facts:

  The population of North America—according to rather conservative estimates—was reduced by almost 90%, thereby destroying the primary market for illicit drugs. Admittedly, these numbers are estimates, since we have very little information from any of the areas in the northern regions of North America.

  There was no coherent, recognizable, accepted currency for many years that followed. Even corrupt farmers were unwilling to dedicate hundreds of acres to drug production when most of the people were starving, and when there was no easy and transferrable means of exchange.

  In the absence of the soul-deadening comforts, artificially created and sustained by the former social, cultural, economic, and financial system, very few people who survived were tempted to use drugs. Moreover, former drug users were ill-prepared for the new hardships, and they rarely survived. Thus, the problem took care of itself.

  The collapse of the former, rather lucrative, means of support for the Kingdom of Aztlan meant that evil had to seek other financial opportunities. Kings and nations generally resolve to follow one of two policies as it pertains to feeding and supplying the people:

  Supporting and protecting the productive capabilities of the people, encouraging them and incentivizing them to work hard and be productive, or,

  Reliance on consumption, specialization, aggression, tyranny, and military conquest in order to maintain and expand the Kingdom.

  Every nation-state—whether its citizens realize it or not—travels down one of these two paths. While it is obvious that your own highness has chosen the former and most godly route, the King of Aztlan has openly chosen the latter.

  We have not accepted this usurpation, though we are officially under his dominion. Our lands were our own and were worked and improved by our own hands long before any usurpers came to claim divine right over our soil.

  As Your Highness knows, we have been courted by many monarchs because of the inherent value that is annexed to our right management and benevolent dominion of our soil. What, then, can be the reason that the King of Aztlan and his wicked magistrate the Duke of El Paso, despite all of the benefits he, his fiefdom, and his people would enjoy by dealing benevolently with us, have determined to destroy us unless we succumb to his rule?

  Why does he deal harshly with us, when we seek nothing but peace, and—if left in peace—we might help feed his people and help his Kingdom to prosper? Is it not that the King of Aztlan and his compatriot, the Duke of El Paso, seek to pacify and homogenize the entire rightful Republic of Texas in order to use it as a launching pad and base for the invasion of your own realms? If my assumption is incorrect, what other benefit could there possibly be to this usurper King?

  Would your own highness waste resources and manpower to subjugate or obliterate a peaceful and productive people in your own realm? Of course not!

  The belligerent actions of the King of Aztlan only make sense if it is his intention to unite himself with his co-religionists in Louisiana to move militarily against a more profitable foe. It is our belief that our destruction or subjugation is only an intermediate step by the King of Aztlan in his overall plan to make war against your own Kingdom—a fact your highness ought to urgently consider.

  Our people, who are ever grateful to Your Highness for any benevolence shown to us, are not willing to make war against the King of Aztlan, although many would have us do so. We are peace lovers and we believe in eschewing all violence. We believe that the ‘sword of just defense’ lies in the hand of legitimate civil magistrates, and, before God, we call upon those magistrates to do what is right—to protect the innocent and punish all evildoers.

  W
hile we do rely on Providence and the goodness and mercy of Almighty God to defend and protect us, we appeal to you, His servant, that you might be a sword and a scourge in the hand of the Mighty King of Kings, to protect His beloved.

  Help us.

  I am your obedient servant,

  Jonathan Wall – Elder and Pastor among the Vallenses

  Make sure to be looking for Book Two of The Last Pilgrims saga…

  Cold Harbor, by Michael Bunker

  www.facebook.com/coldharborbook

  Coming Soon!

  A Must Read Non-Fiction book by Michael Bunker:

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  ISBN: 0615447902

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