Dark Road

by David C. Waldron

  …

  As she approached the end of Snow’s shift, Mallory had made contact with a total of eleven Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and Coast Guard units in seven states. They were in forts, bases, air stations, armories, and a hospital.

  Mallory wasn’t feeling nearly as isolated as she had when she sat down a couple of hours ago but had a rather full plate of things to think about. Everyone had mentioned the directive at the end of the ARCLiTE orders to be on the air at 18:00 Eastern on September 10th and, to a man—or woman in more than one case—it struck them as odd.

  Col. Olsen hadn’t mentioned it to her, but several of the others she’d spoken to had recalled him mentioning that he didn’t know when or even if there would be any additional contact. Either he had lied or he hadn’t read all of ARCLiTE himself—which wouldn’t actually be all that surprising. Then again, he may have just been playing the politician when he’d spoken to the others and meant that he wouldn’t be the one contacting them.

  The next couple of days would be interesting, to be sure, as she thought about what she’d heard on the non-military channels, though. Snow had mentioned that there was a lot of chatter on a number of the HAM bands, from HF to VHF, and she couldn’t make any sense of it.

  Radio operators didn’t seem to be concerned about the FCC coming after them anymore based on a couple of things she’d noticed. There seemed to be both obfuscated—and even more interesting—encrypted, messages on a number of frequencies. Both of those had been serious no-no’s when she’d been an active HAM twenty-odd years ago.

  As Snow’s shift finally came to an end it was obvious that the guard to the tent hadn’t warned his relief and he was surprised to find the Major manning the radio.

  “Ma’am,” Sergeant Evan ‘Sparky’ Lake said as he came to attention.

  “As you were,” Mallory said as she got up and turned on the external speaker so she could talk with Evan but still monitor what was going on. “Just the person I wanted to see.”

  “Ma’am?” Lake asked.

  “I’ve got a problem,” Mallory said, “but not that kind of problem. I want you to think about something for me…”

  …

  The summons to Mallory’s command tent hadn’t come as all that great of a surprise to Sheri; in fact she’d been expecting it for some time.

  “Have a seat, Sheri,” Mallory said as she was shown in.

  “I’ll be blunt,” Mallory said once she’d sat down, “mostly because we’re short on time.”

  “I’d be worried if you were anything but,” Sheri said with a wry grin.

  “That’s fair,” Mallory said. “But seriously, can we vote on The Framework tomorrow?”

  Sheri exhaled loudly. Mallory wasn’t kidding when she said she was going to be blunt. “Can we? Yes. Should we?” Sheri folded her arms and leaned back in the chair, rocking back like she used to do in school and sighed. “Probably, no definitely. We’ve just been so scared that we’ve made a mistake and are going to screw something up. We’ve been paralyzed by fear.”

  Sheri looked Mallory in the eyes and asked, “Why now, why tomorrow, specifically?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Mallory said. “It’s not that I won’t tell you, it’s that I really don’t know for certain.”

  Mallory shook her head. “If it turns out that my gut is right, though, I think The Framework should be in place by tomorrow.”

  That sent chills up Sheri’s spine. If something was spooking Mallory, and that’s exactly what it sounded like was going on, any mortal would be running screaming. “In that case, yes. I’ll let the Block Moms know to start spreading the word and we’ll get everyone together at 9:00 tomorrow morning.” Sheri stopped, but it was obvious that she had more to say.

  “Go on, what’s on your mind?” Mallory asked.

  “Well,” Sheri said, “one of the items we’d planned on proposing, along with The Framework, was to establish a civil governing body. We hadn’t decided yet between a Mayor and a City Council.”

  Mallory made her thinking face for a few seconds and then asked, “Are you asking for input or simply stating a fact?”

  “I’m asking for advice,” Sheri said.

  “I would agree with the need for a civil government,” Mallory said, “and I don’t personally think that the community is large enough for a city council. I think that a Mayor would be fine to begin with but that it could change with a majority vote at the election year, or something along those lines. How were you going to take nominations?”

  “We were going to allow people to nominate at the meeting with a second and a third.” Sheri said.

  “That could get out of hand.” Mallory said.

  “If it did we would cancel all nominations and require a written nomination with petitions.” Sheri said. “It would take longer but would keep every third person from getting nominated. We’ll announce that we’re going to be taking nominations at the meeting and hopefully people will start to talk about it ahead of time and keep the number of nominations to a minimum.”

  “Who will be allowed to vote?” Mallory asked.

  “Every one of the current legal voting age,” Sheri said. “Including military. The vote won’t happen at the meeting because too many people would end up being excluded. Our first act after ratifying The Framework won’t be to disenfranchise people—not going to happen.”

  Mallory smiled. “Glad to hear it. Sounds like you’ve given a lot of thought to it and I’ve provided a sufficient kick in the pants. I don’t think you need to worry about screwing it up. Thank you. We’ll see how things go tomorrow morning.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sheri left the command tent and went to get Karen and Rachael. After all, she’d just committed them to tomorrow morning’s meeting, and ratifying The Constitution and nineteen amendments—with very little of the original wording modified.

  “I’m not really surprised,” Karen said.

  “Yeah, it’s about time,” Rachael agreed. “I wasn’t going to bring it up to Mallory because, like you said, we’re no shrinking violets, but I really don’t want to be the one who suggested a change that was wrong or screwed something up.”

  Sheri rolled her eyes and then went on. “So, after we vote on The Framework and the Amendments, how do we present the modified UCMJ?”

  “First of all, we don’t call it that.” Rachael said. “Even though we know it’s the Uniform Code of Military Justice now I had no idea what it was when Karen brought it up, and neither will most of the non-military families, most likely.”

  “True,” Karen said. “And even though we’ve taken out most of the military-specific language and policies, if it’s presented as having come from the military it might be seen by some as the military having too large a hand in the creation of the government and the legal system.”

  “Ok, so my question still stands.” Sheri said. “We know what not to do tomorrow morning, what do we do?”

  “We just present it as a logical set of laws to live by; rules to maintain order,” Rachael said. “Most of what we’ve kept is just common sense. The consequences for infractions are reasonable, and escalate with repeated violations.”

  “Frankly, it’s a lot more realistic and usable than the complicated mess that was in place six months ago.” Karen said.

  “Good points, both,” Sheri said. “The next thing we need to discuss is civil leadership…”

  …

  “So, where’d you run off to all the sudden?” Joel asked when Rachael got back a couple of hours later.

  Rachael didn’t make eye contact when she glanced at Joel. “More stuff about The Framework,” she said. “We’re going to vote on it, along with a few other things, tomorrow morning at 9:00.”

  “Wow,” Joel said. “I knew you ladies were working on it but I didn’t know how far along you were. You never really talk about it.”

  “Well,” Rachael paused, bit her lip, and finally looked at Joel, “we’ve actually been basi
cally done with everything for a couple of weeks, including a simplified set of community laws. More than anything, we didn’t want to be responsible for making any huge gaffes.”

  “That’s fair.” Joel said. “It took a long time to hammer out the original—and part of that was making sure that what they had was as good as it could be. I’m sure I’ll be proud of you tomorrow morning.”

  “I hope so.” Rachael said. I really hope so.

  …

  Word spread of the first ever community-wide meeting that would even include a live radio connection with the town of Redemption (previously named Gratefille). Although The Framework wasn’t spoken about openly, it was one of the worst kept open secrets in the community. The assumption was that the meeting would at least be about The Framework, and possibly even be to vote on it. It was also announced that they would be taking verbal nominations for a mayor of the civilian community, which would include everyone under the current protection of the Guard.

  Oddly enough, not a single person in Redemption seemed to want to throw their hat into the ring, or nominate anyone from within their ranks for Mayor. There was plenty of discussion in Promised Land as to who might be nominated in the morning, though.

  A couple of military folks were mentioned as possible candidates, but in many cases the names were met with blank stares because the majority of the population didn’t know who they were. The community just hadn’t had the opportunity to interact with certain members of the military very much. On the other hand, three names from the original group to come out with the Guard unit kept coming up over and over.

  They were fixtures in the community and everyone knew who they were. You went to them for advice, or to help resolve a problem. Combined, they had been involved in virtually every project since the beginning of the community. They were already the de-facto leaders in the community; it was high time one of them became the official leader in name as well.

  …

  “Good Morning!” Rachael said into the microphone which carried her voice not only to the largest crowd she had ever addressed, but also to Redemption via a CB radio.

  “GOOD MORNING!” Was the deafening response from the gathered group, which caused a feedback loop on the speakers from the link to Redemption.

  “Ok, wow.” Rachael said. “I am not going to use the old ‘I can’t hear you’ line after that,” which resulted in laughter from both the local and the remote crowds.

  “As most of you have guessed,” she went on, “we are going to vote on what we’ve dubbed The Framework this morning.”

  More cheers from the crowd, even though they weren’t entirely sure what they were going to vote on. After about fifteen seconds, Rachael held up her hands and everyone quieted down.

  “Now, just so everyone knows what it is you are voting on,” Rachael smiled to more laughter, “we based it on The Constitution.”

  “Hell YEAH,” came from the middle of the crowd followed by applause.

  “Um, that was pretty much how we felt.” Rachael said and took a deep breath.

  “We will be doing this in two phases.” She said. “First, we will be voting on The Constitution, immediately followed by nineteen out of the twenty-six amendments. That is why we called it The Framework rather than…something else.”

  “The original vote was not private, it was not secret, it was held behind closed doors—but that’s because they were representatives sent to do a job.” Rachael said, and made sure to stand up as straight and tall as her height would allow. “Still, for those who were sent to do that job, it was all done in public. This will be no different. This country was founded on freedom, and as such you have the right and the responsibility to dissent. Nobody will be punished or become an outcast if they choose to either abstain from voting, or vote against—but this will be a public vote.”

  Rachael held up a printed copy of the original U.S. Constitution, in color—and hadn’t that caused a stir to use up that much ink!

  “All in favor of passing the Constitution, knowing there will be amendments forthcoming, raise one hand.”

  It was like looking out on the sea, and it brought tears to her eyes. She hadn’t made mention that only residents of previous legal voting age could vote, and she saw everyone old enough to hold up a hand do so. From where she stood, she didn’t see a single person abstain from voting.

  Rachael wiped her free hand across her eyes and turned around to Sergeant Pine who was working the radio to Redemption, and got a nod.

  “Very good,” Rachael said and the hands went down. “Now, as I said before, it is everyone’s right, duty, and privilege to dissent. The men and women in uniform that we work with every day, and who have died to protect us, did so for that right. Are there any not in favor of passing the Constitution?”

  Rachael waited for a count of ten and then turned to Pine again for confirmation. She got a head shake with a thumbs-up. No dissent, go on.

  “Ok.” She started, but was interrupted by a cheer that made the first one sound tame and nothing she could do could shut them up for almost a minute.

  Once they had settled down it was time for the amendments. “The following amendments to the Constitution are proposed…”

  The only changes that they had made were to raise the common law suit value in Article 7 from $20 to $150, abolish slavery outright in Article 13—instead of allowing it as a punishment for a crime—doing away with income tax outright in Article 16—but allowing for sales tax to fund the government as necessary, and to allow for a re-visitation of the rate every eight years—and to rewrite Article 14 almost completely to put to rest the issue of a Natural Born Citizen.

  The amendments voted on were Articles 1-10, 13-16, 19, 22 and 24-26. All passed unanimously.

  “Now it’s Sheri’s turn,” Rachael said as she handed the microphone to Sheri and took a seat.

  “And now we get to the only thing that you actually knew something about this morning.” Sheri said. “We will be taking voice nominations for Mayor before I hand the microphone over to Karen. Please don’t just yell names out, because we need to write them down. Raise your hand, as dumb as that sounds, and we will come to you with a microphone and you can say the name and we will get a second and a third for the motion.”

  Immediately there were a half a dozen hands up in the audience and a couple of the guardsmen were working their way towards the hands. The first person nominated was not a surprise, though the nominee was shocked almost to death.

  “Joel Taylor.”

  “WHAT!” was heard from the left side rear of the crowd.

  Immediately almost all of the remaining hands went down and over a dozen people yelled out second and as soon as those were done another dozen yelled third.

  “WH-WHAT!?!?” Again from the left rear of the crowd.

  “Motion carried.” Sheri said. “Are there any further nominations?”

  The two remaining nominations were Chuck Turner and Karen Gharity. Sheri was doing her best to ignore Joel’s raised hand but couldn’t, in good conscience, do so when one of the guardsmen handed him a microphone.

  “Major Mallory Jensen.” Joel said.

  Mallory asked for and received the microphone, and answered, “Yes?”

  “I wasn’t addressing you, ma’am, I was nominating you.” Joel replied.

  “Ah, I misunderstood, I apologize.” She said. “Unfortunately, I have to decline. You see, I already hold a position of authority and if I were to be elected Mayor, I would be in charge of both the military and ultimately in charge of and responsible for the civilian population, which is exactly the type of situation I’ve been trying to avoid all along. I thank you for the nomination though.”

  With the microphone back, Sheri was about to finish her part when one more hand shot up in the middle of the crowd.

  Sheri nodded to one of the guardsmen to take a microphone to them as she thought it was another nomination.

  “Aren’t we going to vote today?” They asked.r />
  “That wasn’t the intention, no.” Sheri said. “We don’t have everyone here and we don’t want anyone to be disenfranchised. The idea was for every eligible citizen over the age of 18 to vote, including all of our military personnel, and some of them aren’t here.”

  “I’m ready to vote right now, is anyone else?” The voice in the crowd went on.

  Mallory didn’t want a riot, so instead of asking for the microphone she climbed up on the makeshift stage and held up her arms as things were starting to get noisy. Everyone quieted down.

  “Everyone, first of all I want to say that I appreciate two things.” Mallory said. “First and foremost, I appreciate what Sheri is doing and where she is coming from. Secondly, I want you to know that I appreciate where you are coming from. It’s been a while since things have fallen apart and it’s time to put some real structure in place.”

  Mallory turned to Sheri and then to the crowd. “You need to know, and truly understand, something that has been forgotten. We in the military are subject to you, the civilians. While we come from the civilian population originally, we are in many ways set apart from it, and we deliberately and by choice set aside some of the freedoms and duties of civilian life.”

  She had the crowd’s full attention right now because they didn’t know what she was going to say or do. She went on, “I know my men and women. I know that some of them will be disappointed if they didn’t get to participate in the vote for their Mayor because he or she would be their Mayor just as much as they would be your Mayor. All three nominees are fine people and I know for a fact that every one of my soldiers will be happy with whoever is chosen, but they would be happier if they got to participate, especially in this first election.”

  “If you do decide to do a yeah/nay election today, I will direct the guard to recuse themselves because it wouldn’t be right to have part of them participate while some of them cannot, but that is your decision.”

  Mallory handed the microphone back to Sheri and jumped off the stage to stand back into the silent audience. The individual who had asked for the vote handed his microphone back to the guardsman and shook his head.