by Billy Roper
The Hasten The Day Trilogy
Dear reader,
The first installment in the ‘Hasten the Day’ trilogy was published in September of 2014, with the sequel, ‘Waiting For The Sun’, going quickly into print barely a month later. The third and final installment, except for a chapter-length excerpt from the ‘Hasten The Day’ universe which was included at the beginning of the otherwise nonfiction ‘The Balk’, was then published in January of 2015 under the name ‘Wasting The Dawn’.
Interest in the characters born in the series grew, as did fascination with the scenario envisioned, to the point that ‘Hasten The Day’ has remained the best-selling of all of my books, fiction or non-fiction, from its inception to the present.
For the one year anniversary of the first installment ’s original publication, after many requests for an anthology, I relented and agreed to reformat the trilogy in a single volume. This, then, is the newly revised, edited, and updated ‘The Hasten The Day Trilogy’. I hope that first-time readers will be as moved by the tale told as I was in its telling, and that those who are revisiting the story as old friends will find something in it that they missed the first time; either because it wasn’t there at first glance, or they missed it in distractedly wondering how I was going to manage to pull of those myriad characters together into a woven tapestry of intertwined fate, after all. Either way, step forward with me now into a future that may be all too real, all too soon.
-Billy
“Hasten The Day”
The First Year Of The Balkanization of America By: Billy Roper
The following book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance, in whole or in part, to any events or persons, living or dead, is strictly coincidental. Stop reading into things because of your paranoia.
Dedicated to my beautiful wife Tina, who inspired and encouraged me to leave some of myself behind in words. ‘Wyrd bid full araed’, Baby Doll.
Grateful acknowledgements to Bob, Doug, and all of the other friends and patriots who gave their time and energy to help edit, revise, proofread, and give clarity to my vision.
“Always take care of the most important things first. The little things will take care of themselves.” -last words of Dr. William L. Pierce to the author.
Chapter One
Luke 12:51
King James Bible
“Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.”
Eight Miles High And Falling Fast
“Tell the little thug that I’m not Dr. Dolittle.” Captain John W. McNabb stuttered through his chattering teeth. His young corporal Kip’s face tightened, then eased in understanding a moment later.
“Right, you don’t talk to animals, Sir?” his XO asked.
“You got it in one, Kip.” He turned back towards the wood burning stove warming this end of the officer’s tent, wondering how bad off the eleven thousand ‘youths’ nominally led by the Chicago New Black Panther Party must be without heat, power, and much food…not to mention indoor plumbing…now that winter was closing in. Food must be scarcer than hen’s teeth, as his downstate cornbelt momma had always said, for Kwaise Memf-whatshislips the third to send a scared gangbanger across the two mile noman’s land of impromptu funeral pyres and scrap metal piles to the Indiana National Guard picket line. But, what was there left to talk about? McNabb’s Hoosiers (all three hundred and fifty of them), combat hardened in the fires of Peoria, just had to continue to hold Gary and this northeast end of the circle slowly choking down the Windy City until the Colonel said to let up. Nothing but a thing to John. Going on snipe hunts for ‘youths’ was what he did. He was a glorified cop, a peacekeeper, a stabilizer, and a first responder with air support…well, sometimes.
The grimy desk calendar held down flat on the split webbing of a lawn chair by his helmet told him that they had been here for nearly two months. Every time he staggered onto his cot to snatch an hour or two of regulation coma, he saw the pages staring at him accusingly. October winds blew chill off Lake Michigan, and the first snowfall could come at any time, so the sleeping bag covers were cool and damp beneath him, inviting. John said a quick but sincere prayer over his simple evening meal. He poked at the mystery meat on his tray with a fork and tried to recapture the last five months of downward spiraling chaos since Cinco Day. America had come under attack by minority insurgents. The nonWhite revolutionaries had nearly destroyed his nation. Only men like him, now, stood in their way. He added a prayer, postscript, for America.
Things had already been bad, before last Christmas. The country had been more polarized and divided than since the last civil war. Another round of corporate and big bank defaults, bailouts, failures, and closings. The U.S. budget deficit topping twenty trillion, with no end in sight. Congress refusing to act to limit the growth of government spending. They were afraid of upsetting the entitlement majority in their constituencies before the next election. The President was seen as weak and vacillating abroad, and abrasive at home. She had lost everyone’s respect.
Partisan politics had become so divisive that no middle ground was reachable. There was no more moderate middle, no more room for compromise. The Islamic State gained ground in the Middle East, mocking America as being cowardly and impotent. Another round of amnesty for illegal immigrants, under the guise of ‘immigration reform’, by Executive Order. Red State vs. Blue State. International banks, then foreign monetary exchanges, devalued the dollar three times in less than a month. The Federal Reserve responded by dropping interest rates to zero, but they couldn’t pay people to take dollars. The real crippling agent was hyperinflation. John remembered the rising sense of fear as people scrambled to buy anything tangible, physical, of value. In descending order all of the gas, guns, ammo, and grocery store shelves were bought out. Either in a matter of days or hours, there was little left to buy, depending on where you were. Still, inflation soared. Many people took the chance to pay off their mortgages, car loans, and credit cards, but none of that really mattered, any more. The dollar became worthless. By February, hyperinflation had ended most consumer production and bitten deeply into slumping retail sales. The national unemployment rate reached fifteen percent. The Fed printed paper like it was free. Next, the stock market slipped, caught, and slipped again. Heating oil prices doubled in the northeast. As Spring came, it seemed that there might be some respite. Then, somebody decided to kick us while we were down, McNabb thought bitterly. First Mexicans and other Latinos, and then blacks, attacked the U.S..
It had been a real stab in the back. The next illegal immigration amnesty plan was being opposed so staunchly by most White Americans that the “Secure Our Border” demonstrations made national headlines and led the t.v. news’ top stories throughout the month of April. Clashes with immigrant counter-protestors spread. Much of the opposition to more immigration was due to the nation having the highest rate of unemployment since the Great Depression. Admittedly, some of the resentment was due to racial tension, as well. The Mexican media and government responded by calling the demonstrations racist and antagonistic. They called on Mexicans on both sides of the border to resist, and fight back against ‘Yankee racism’. The rhetoric escalated quickly into violence. A group of elderly Tea Party activists protesting illegal immigration were savagely beaten by a group of Hispanic activists. Emboldened by that success, another group of Hispanics tried the same trick on a different anti-immigration group, but came away bloodied. One of the protesters was a concealed carry permit holder. Eight of the Latino gang members got to stay in America, the hard way. Some law enforcement agencies had abdicated their duties and responsibilities to the people, just as King George had done before 1776, in the Captain’s opinion. The people,
then, had to do their jobs, for them.
On May 5th, organized and well-planned chain-fire counter-protests had ripped across the cities, from the southwest to the northeast. Rioting led to looting, and worst of all, to police departments being overwhelmed and in a couple of cases, simply outgunned. In several urban areas in border states, National Guard units were called up and just as quickly locked down because some units started shooting the protesters…or joining them, then shooting each other. The mass, organized rapes of White women and girls by Hispanic gangs began, as a terror tactic to drive Whites out. The growth of White militias exploded, in response. Unlike the anti-government fantasies of some ironically selflabeled ‘patriot’ groups, the reality of the situation was that most armed Whites became de facto White Nationalists, and most White Nationalists became counter-insurgents, counter-revolutionaries, fighting against the rebels. In most cases they found themselves fighting against those who were intent on destroying America, by fighting to defend whatever vestiges of law and order remained. It was the compassion and love of brave White men and women for their people, that drove them to defend their nation.
Public utilities began to fail, including fire, police, and water and sewer treatment. Power plants failed when employees stopped showing up for work because their pay, if it came at all, was worthless. The coal or fossil fuels used to fire many of them stopped being delivered. Riots, looting, and ethnic violence destroyed power lines, substations, and transformers. Some of it was deliberate sabotage. Electricity went out, and stayed out, in many urban areas, and across most of the nation. That was the end of law and order and civilization, except in isolated pockets where Whites preserved it by strength of arms. How had it happened? How had it all come undone so quickly? It was a blur. That’s why Cinco de Mayo was burned into John’s memory as the day it all went south. Like any divorce, though, the breakup had been anticlimactic in and of itself, and a long time coming.
Only the last three calendar flips since he’d been called up from his daytime gig as a High School principal were clear. Following orders, giving them down the line, and the routine boredom punctuated by moments of high pucker factor created real clarity. How he had gotten there, the secessions and declarations and ethnic cleansings of the heartbreaking summer were a smear on the lens of his glasses, and he refused to wipe it away. He liked things blurry, when it came to memories of what had happened, what was happening, to his country and his state. Better to keep moving forward. Like a shark. Better not to stop and think. Or sink, and die. Twenty-three million Americans had stopped swimming while he was on his little campout here. And sank.
The Captain hoped that Kip wouldn’t literally shoot the messenger this time, but McNabb could hardly blame the kid, if he did. His grandparents had been snowbirds, living just north of Phoenix. They had gotten caught behind enemy lines when Arizona went over to Del Norte. Now they were permanently retired, he guessed. No Anglos had squeezed out of there, except for a few Mormons who’d skedaddled to Utah, since about onethousand six hundred ‘displaced persons’ were released by La Republica del Norte paperpushers in Tempe as a “goodwill gesture” on the 4th of July. McNabb noted the irony of that. But all that he, and the Corporal, and the rest of their volunteer militia reinforced company of weekend warriors could do about that was here and now. That, and pray for their future. John had never thought of himself as a religious man. He had taken his girls to church, and prayed before meals, of course. Where he came from, that’s just what people did. But not seeing his family for so long, and being at risk of dying every day, sure made a believer out of you, he considered. What was that old saying, ‘there aren’t any atheists in foxholes’? They could pray. They could also snipe at this other enemy, and especially savor the occasional Mexican they found that the blacks hadn’t already shot up. Every Mexican was an MS-13 member, and a terrorist. Some of them swore in broken English that they weren’t, but everybody knew how Mexicans lied.
Most of the time, all they could do to vent their frustrations was send forays across the lines to sweep for White refugees here, and hold the line. Eventually, some bureaucrat in Springfield or Indy or St. Louis might broker a human cargo trade deal between the Chicago pocket and a few thousand White scarecrows holding out on the Gulf Coast, or in Detroit, if any were left there. Little Alamos and Littler Big Horns. Rumor had it that was the kind of thing they were trying to do, on both sides, where they were able to talk without gunplay. That seemed reasonable. People often weren’t reasonable, in McNabb’s experience. Any way it went, that kind of decision was above his Captain’s paygrade, not that he or any of the rest of them had seen a paycheck since August. Some stuck around because they still got fed and they were safer together than alone. He had a job to do. That helped keep his mind off of his wife Cindy, and their two girls so far away in Ft. Wayne, tonight.
The Best Lack All Conviction
Kelly Johansen was working the second shift again, typing in new recruits for the Latter Day Saints Security Forces. She absent-mindedly hummed an old Metallica riff, then caught herself and glanced around the state police headquarters office to make sure that nobody had heard her. People in Salt Lake had begun to tattle on each other for things like that. Theocracy tends to make people petty, she amused herself by thinking. In between calls to officially annex Mormon communities in bordering states and disdainfully declaring the national government to be in abdication of authority, calls for renewed morality and traditional values were daily heard on state radio broadcasts, the only source of news sanctioned by the Church. ‘It’s become like Salem around here since the national networks quit broadcasting’, Kelly continued in her mental conversation with herself….’and a lot like whatever place Orwell was writing about in England in ‘1984’’. All of the other stations had signed off, one by one, six weeks before. She was glad, in a way, that the internet was either down or jammed by the Church, depending on who you listened to. It kept her from being distracted from her work, and Kelly had another coffee mug high stack of paper enlistment applications to transcribe. Only when she reached the bottom could she take her place in line at the Tabernacle-run cafeteria two blocks down the street, and they closed for the night in three hours, no matter how many hungry and cold folks still stood in line when the bells rang.
Kelly wasn’t a long -time member of the Church, but she had joined in late July before applying for this state job, instead of joining the thousand other girls her age who now spent their days cooking and serving food to the masses for their own meals. Better them than her, she felt, but they kept the hive fed, and the men and boys patrolling down south near the state line appreciated the day old leftovers convoyed out to them as field rations. The canneries were shifting gears already, to accommodate that need. No wonder gas rations had been tightened twice again, she considered seditiously. Scuttlebutt around the office was that the state legislature would vote on secession within a few days, and a bill to change the name from “Utah” back to “Deseret” would probably be formalized by Halloween…a holiday which she was unlikely to ever be able to celebrate again, she realized ruefully. At least, not publicly. She was about as likely to abandon her favorite time of the year in her heart as she was to give up the single life and become some elder’s new sister wife. That wouldn’t happen, even if they did bring back polygamy, as some were saying, and even if they did close the cafeterias and she got really, really hungry again. “Hear her roar!”, she chuckled quietly. Kelly had been celibate, by choice, for a year, not that she didn’t have opportunities. Men were men, in the best or the worst of times, even if she hadn’t been well-developed and cute in an unintentionally gothic sort of way. She just wasn’t interested in that sort of drama in her life. People were too erratic to be erotic. Kelly laughed in her head at her own wit. Oh well, focus, girl, get this paperwork whittled down and get to go home, she resolved.
Passionate Intensity
Thomas “Tommy” Vinson was a Prius driving, aging and balding queer with a feminin
e pony tail. Just your classic liberal homosexual hippy. His Prius was covered with all kinds of leftist life philosophies which could be summed up on a bumper sticker... ‘equal’, ‘coexist’, ‘erase racism’,’ ban guns’, blah, blah, blah. The biggest sticker, which distracted from all of the rest just because of its size, read “Love Your Neighbor”. It was Tommy’s favorite, and had a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on it. It was one he had gotten from his local Task Force On Ethnic Relations meeting. Community activism was Tommy’s passion, along with well-muscled young men. The younger, the better, as far as Tommy was concerned. That was why he hated watching the news, it was too depressing. Like a lot of Americans, Tommy went through his life more concerned about celebrity gossip and drama and reality t.v. shows than the economy or current events.
He had been hiding out in his mom’s basement as the anarchy crept into their home town of Covington, Kentucky. The town was so homophobic, according to Tommy, that it was easier to live with his mom, than trying to rent his own place and facing some Bible-thumping gaybashing landlord. He hadn’t heard from his boyfriend, Nate, in over a week, and feared the worst. The wannabe wench was probably cheating on him at the gym, again. Probably with that runt, Chad. Rock climbing, my butt. Or his, Tommy thought in jealous anger.
His mom really got on his nerves once the cable stopped working. She missed her programs. All she wanted to do was talk about how disappointed she was that she wouldn’t ever have any grandchildren. All of her friends had grandchildren. Then somebody must have driven into a light pole because the electricity blinked and died. She griped at him to check to see if she had paid the bill. Their heaters went off, and it got cold, fast. He picked up the phone to report the outage, and it was dead. His mom nagged Tommy into going out the next day to get some food that would keep, and some flashlights and batteries. They bundled up and shivered through the night, and the next day Tommy’s Prius eased over the Ohio River Bridge.