The Hasten the Day Trilogy

by Billy Roper

  Maybe it was her self-imposed isolation, or denial, or culture shock at what had happened to the world, but Kelly began to lose time, especially at home where there was nothing to distract her from her thoughts. Her memory failed her on things large and small, more and more, day by day. Her favorite sweater had gone missing, she knew she had put it back in the closet. She didn’t remember walking to work, this morning. There were huge blank spots in her past, that she couldn’t begin to recall. When her co-workers in the Department of Public Safety one-upped one another with stories of misplaced relatives, they meant that the phone lines, postal service, and direct communications with anyone further away than Ogden or Provo was hit or miss, these days. Kelly felt cheated to not have any family or friends to worry about. She had forgotten Karen.

  The height of naughtiness for departmental head Claudia, her boss’s boss, was to nudge-nudge, wink-wink pass around week old issues of The Denver Post smuggled in by peddlers. It was strictly unapproved, unedited, and uncensored. Kelly devoured each issue with gusto. From the Post she learned the reason why the sunrises had been redder than usual lately. Putting the pieces together from several articles, it seemed that the North American Air Defense molerats under siege at Cheyenne Mountain’s complex in Colorado Springs had claimed to be the legitimate chain of command for the armed forces, with two of the surviving Joint Chiefs of Staff (the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps) holed up there. By the time she read that issue, the Deseret News had reported that the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, barricaded in the U.S Strategic Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha with most of the rest of the surviving Joint Chiefs, had declared the usurpers to be seditious traitors and mutineers, and dropped a strategic bomber load of alpha male onto Colorado Springs, making Cheyenne Mountain into a very hot lake for a very long time. The wind had shifted from the East, and it rained red clay silt in Salt Lake. But at least because of the Post articles, she understood the back story, at least academically. A governmental advisory urged everyone to stay indoors for twenty-four hours, until the fallout plume subsided or moved on. The muddy rain lasted half the day, and stained the streets outside red like blood.

  Having the day off unexpectedly gave Kelly an opportunity to think about the other news stories in the Post. She wondered how many of them were true. She took the rumpled and faded newspaper out of her purse and smoothed it out reverently, re-reading each dramatic article, one by one…

  “Brazil has announced that they have followed the lead of other Latin American countries in officially recognizing the sovereignty of the Republica del Norte , and will establish official diplomatic relations with the new nation as soon as such action is approved by the Chinese peacekeeping authority responsible for security in the Bay Area of California.”

  Okay, pretty straightforward there, and likely enough, but with a weak tone. The Mexicans were placing second fiddle to the Chinese, and so were the Brazilians?

  And then…

  “In Atlanta, tribal leaders of the New African government participated in a wreath- laying ceremony at a memorial honoring the 30,000 black victims of the racial cleansing in Los Angeles this summer. In a gesture of goodwill between the two nations, over 5,400 more Hispanic survivors of similar operations in the former state of Georgia were released from detainee camps and marched to the Hispanic controlled zone in Florida, to be released there. Presidente Rodriguez of the Republica provisional government welcomed the move during the tense negotiations between leaders at the ongoing peace conference in Baton Rouge attempting to settle border disputes along the Orlando-Tampa front.”

  That was just weird. Kelly had no frame of reference to know if it was true or not, but it somehow sounded contrived, as if somebody was trying to play peacemaker, but why she couldn’t fathom, from a ‘quo vadis’ standpoint. Who would benefit?

  THIS was interesting, if a bit desperate sounding: “find out how you can help in the resettlement of refugees from ethnically cleansed areas, just by donating your unused living space.”

  The rest of the world seemed to have gone batsheiss crazy, too: “The Islamic State and the Palestinian Authority reported on Monday that the genocide trials of Mossad agents responsible for the deaths of civilians in formerly Israeli occupied territory will continue this week, despite suicide attacks by holdout I.D.F. units against Palestinian patrols in the less radioactive suburbs of Tel Aviv. Guerrilla resistance by Zionist zealots, using tens of thousands of American Jewish volunteers with little left to lose after their financial and political base has been uprooted, as cannon fodder, is expected to continue until the last of the foreign-born insurgents have made Aliyah. Prime Minister Mohammed Ayiid of the Palestinian Authority bitterly criticized the U.S. government for actively encouraging American Jews to go fight for Israel. Ayiid accused America of “trying to pass their problems onto us to get rid of for them”, unquote. In a conciliatory gesture, the European Union ambassador to the Palestinian Authority, Mr. Hans Oberstorn, publicly offered to help negotiate a return of all Muslims in E.U. countries to their native lands of origin in the Middle East in order to help revitalize the newly emerging Islamic State with skilled workers and capital.”

  Ummm…what American government? There wasn’t one, that she could point to. It was quite a stretch to blame the U.S. for anything the Jews and Muslims did to each other, now. That one seemed to have been reprinted from the London Times, so no wonder.

  This piece was bylined from the Sidney Morning Herald: “The governments of Australia and the People's Republic of China reached a diplomatic accord last Tuesday, mutually agreeing that the territorial integrity of Australia would continue to be respected, in exchange for a removal of all trade tariffs between the two nations, and the expulsion of all Japanese nationals from the Northern Territories, where they have been at the forefront of promoting recent antiChinese protests.”

  And originally from the Global India Newsline: “In southern Africa, the Orange Free State offered to provide food supplies to those starving from famine resulting from the effects of the deindustrialization of the farmlands throughout the rest of Southern Africa, along with free compulsory sterilization of those who accept the food aid. The Boers, representing the only remaining government below the equator on the African continent not under direct Chinese influence, have recently completed discussions with India to establish trade relations and mutual recognition treaties.”

  Politics did indeed make strange bedfellows, Kelly snickered. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as somebody brilliant had once said. Well, what she really preferred was nice escapist fiction, but even that seemed more real than what was before her. One thing was for certain, Kelly knew that Denver was about seventy-five miles due north of where the Air Force’s continuity of government center had been at Cheyenne Mountain. Depending on which way the winds had been blowing, this might be the last issue of the Denver Post she would ever see. No more Broncos games, either.

  Okay, she was a news junkie, always had been. Now her life might depend on it. She didn’t need another smuggled newspaper to tell her that her country had just nuked itself, and that brought the cold clammy tightness rising up from her belly that she had been craving. Finally, as slightly radioactive silt and pulverized rock pattered onto her apartment roof, Kelly felt the sense of loss that she had been looking for. Idly, she wondered if the Sea Gull Brigade, with their backs to Lake Powell, had been caught out in the open by the fallout, and how many of them would never come home. You had to live long enough to get cancer, before you knew. As she fell asleep to the sound of the chunky rain, she remembered her sister. Kelly wondered how and why she had blocked Karen out of her thoughts while everybody at work had been sharing their stories of family missing or lost. Was that a defense mechanism? Did it mean that Karen was dead? Would she ever know? Kelly was scared that she might be having a psychotic break. How do you forget that you have someone who you might not have any more to miss? How do you order a nucle
ar strike on your own country over a chain of command breakdown? So much had been put away, denied, and forgotten. You couldn’t just get it back. No take-backs. No do-overs. No regrets.

  Chapter Three

  Matthew 15:24

  King James Bible

  “But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

  Fire Is The Devil’s Only Friend

  The ugly brown river just north of Fresno was as good enough place as any to set up a demilitarized zone, Hu thought to himself as he looked south towards the straggling line of sweat-soaked green uniforms trying their hardest to look like a disciplined military escort. The overweight Mexican diplomat, until recently a professor of Latino Studies at the University of California’s Davis campus, resented the line being this far south. The Chinese diplomatic delegation had graciously offered to extend their humanitarian administrative control to the rest of the Central Valley, and that had settled that. Hu still wondered whether the man took his orders from Mexico City or Los Angeles or San Antonio. If he took ten steps down this concrete embankment, would he be in Mexico, or the U.S., or a new country, entirely? It looked like California, to him. It made his head buzz, and not in a good, opium way, either. Every morning as he sat and drank tea, he read the official news releases from Beijing’s state run information agency. Hu had to shake his head in awe. Report after report slid by, in ten second blocks. Ten thousand dead in race riots between Cubans and blacks in Miami and Dade County. A dozen Midwestern states calling for a new Constitutional Convention. At first, he had smirked to hear of the U.S. government’s decapitation. Washington burned, the President dead, and the rest of the national leadership had fled their own capitol to hide under the skirts of the United Nations in New York. But then came the insane bombing of Colorado Springs, and armored blitzkriegs into East St. Louis and Kansas City. Then the mutiny and coup inside Offutt Air Force Base. He had no idea who was responsible for the string of coordinated terrorist attacks and sabotage on the port facilities of every major trading hub from Norfolk to New Orleans, but he suspected the Americans themselves. They were crazy. Hu couldn’t understand them, but he knew they were weak and unpredictable and undisciplined. Discipline was remembering what it was that you really wanted. Hu really wanted to kill round-eyed fat White demons. Vermont and New Hampshire seemed like the other side of the world, and might as well be, from Hu. He could care less whether they voted to join Canada, or Quebec voted to leave Canada, or not. But, the hair stood up at the back of his neck at the thought of those unaccounted for nuclear bombs.

  Ugh, that reminded him of all these White women throwing themselves at his soldiers, and how hairy they were without razors. At first he had begun to fear. Not the women, no, he had razors. Then, he began to dread. It wasn’t the E.U. troops pouring into every dock from Boston to Baltimore wearing their silly blue helmets that frightened him. It wasn’t even worries closer to home, like the resistance growing in the Williamette Valley up north. The unorganized partisans might slow his humanitarian mission, but only temporarily, no matter what that crazy man on the radio said. What kind of kept Hu up at night, aside from the endless parties, was trying to guess how many nuclear tipped missiles were loose in captured or abandoned silos, bunkers, and hangars within the borders of the formerly United States. And on the submarines still at sea? How many fingers on the triggers? He chewed on a peppermint for his heartburn, and tried to listen patiently to what Juan Aliz de Castrano was saying.

  “Like you, I am a biological racist, my friend, es verdad? I care nothing for language or culture or heritage, bah! I would rather the whole human species go extinct except for one Latino boy and one Latina girl raised by wolves, than to see Chicano culture bastardized and adopted by Gringo Taco Bell, or see more of our women marry White boys. So yes, let us carve this up. Let us have peace, without the Gringos….” Hu hid his contempt for the dirty dog waving his arms in front of him quite well. Yes, he assured him, Hispanics in Northern California would be guaranteed safety, but they would be encouraged to rejoin their people south of the Fresno line before the year ended. Yes, yes, the People’s humanitarian mission would continue for at least that long, he emphasized, smiling. Perhaps indefinitely. The quick scowl that gained from under the droopy mustache was priceless. Yes, he had heard of the massacres of Latinos and Asians (was that supposed to trip his anger?) in what had been called Utah by religious extremists. No, he knew of no reason why the People’s humanitarian mission would extend over the Sierra Nevadas and across the desert to get involved in that, thank you. Yes, he had heard of the guerrilla attacks of the racist skinhead gangs against Mexican soldiers protecting their citizens in Long Beach, that was deplorable. Rounding up and executing another nursing home full of Tea Party members might put an end to that, he advised.

  Another half hour of standing there, sweating and smiling and nodding, and the conference was over, with the understanding that from this line, Mexicans would be shipped south, Chinese shipped north, and no questions asked by either side about what went on beyond their vision, otherwise. Hu wanted a cold shower and massage, and maybe a phone call to his father, in the twenty-two million strong capitol, Beijing.. Well, two out of three weren’t bad. He was a long way from home, but closer to peace with every Mexican re-migrated, and every line drawn. Now, what to do with the close to a million Whites who hadn’t left town when his landing crafts entered San Francisco Bay? Maybe truck them up, a few hundred at the time, to that big lake on the map, on the border with the state of Nevada. Just in case those lunatic Mormons looked west. A buffer. Hu had been concerned that if they remained in the Bay area, some of them might have formed a fifth column working for the rebels in Oregon who were a notch separating his zones of pacification. Yes, gather them, detain them, bus them to Sacramento, then put them on trains to lake Tahoe. Then, tear up the tracks.

  As for the blacks, after three weeks of intensive cleanup efforts in Oakland, that sector had been depopulated. The old Alcatraz prison island and twenty concentric rings of trash barges around it had been piled high with corpses. The Chinese were a civilized people, Hu observed. Only barbarians would use a nuclear weapon when it wasn’t necessary. As he began to climb back into the back seat of his commandeered Mercedes staff car for the ride back north, Hu’s mind hummed with the numbers and logistics of rounding up 800,000 people with the most efficient use of manpower. It could be advertised as a relocation program to a new food distribution and housing area. In a way, that’s exactly what it would be, too. Otherwise, they could be offered the Alcatraz alternative, and would line up to get on the trains, voluntarily. He brightened at the thought. Sometimes it was helpful to have set an example. Even the round-eyed devils could learn.

  We Sang Dirges In The Dark

  The arrival of more soldiers speaking her native language greatly reassured Gerta, in spite of her chosen profession as a linguist. All German children were taught to loathe and fear any nationalistic feeling within themselves, but she felt like giving the forbidden salute when she saw the Heer rolling up Passyunk Avenue. Probably clever of them to bypass South Philadelphia, for now, she thought approvingly. The whole peninsula was a warzone of feuding gangs who would have reverted back to cannibalism, as similar areas recently had in Bedford, Newark, and Trenton, without the International Red Cross floating relief vessels disgorging bags of rice by the ton and pallets of Ramen from their anchorages at the Navy Yard. They were guarded by about three quarters of the remaining operational U.S. Coast Guard forces on the Atlantic side from the Training Center at Camp May and the Loran Support Unit, as well as the 87th Medical Group from Fort Dix, stationed onboard the USS John F. Kennedy. Gerta’s mind skipped back to her study of the Hessian involvement in their Revolutionary War here, when America was born fighting against Great Britain. Now the British were back in Boston, and boys from Hess, and Frankfurt, and Dusseldorf, were headed straight towards Germantown, once again. Their Leopard 2A6 main battle tanks carried the cri
sis intervention force left onto Broad Street via Snyder and Jackson, and a group of black youths loitering around the high school grounds had to clear the street for them.

  Gerta and her team were positioned on the roof of the Kindred Hospital, the tallest building in the area, which gave her a perfect vantage point to watch the impromptu military parade. Even after so many months, the smell of death lingered here at the jumped up nursing home, where the patients had been left to die in their beds. She must be terribly tired, to have to fight back one of those all too human urges, the momentary impulse to step off the roof. Go ahead. ‘Flowers on the razor wire’, like the old song said. ‘Love is a many splintered thing. Don’t be afraid, now, just walk on in’. Not enough sleep this week, or this month, old girl, she cautioned herself. Sometimes she felt in her heart that it would be a lot better if she could just scream, but there was nowhere left to go to be alone. Sometimes she tried biting into her thin pillow at night to stifle a good cathartic animal screech. That helped her sneak a couple of hours’ grace.

  Snipers held their positions on the corners of the roof, keeping an eye out for trouble below, but the locals seemed to be impressed by the armor grumbling in and through their barricades, pushing aside stalled cars and twisted wreckage without slowing. The U.N. contingent was here as overwatch, and to monitor the situation. Their dual mission was augmented by similar positions at the Schuylkill bridge, the 347 overpass, and on up the line north. It was a bitterly cold place to be, with the wind whipping in around her.