The Hasten the Day Trilogy

by Billy Roper

  The trains were running again from Center City to Pennsauken on the other side of the Delaware, but the main problem here, as all through the forever urban sprawl, was food. Oh, and clean water. Cholera and dysentery had ravaged Cherry Hill and Camden. People were collecting rainwater on rooftops to drink, or melting snow when the temperature hovered below freezing at night, and because of the uncontrolled fires raging in many places, much of that rainwater and snow carried toxic pollution, too. It still amazed Gerta that most urban dwellers simply sat and starved, or looted their neighborhoods and hid in the ashes.

  There were few attempts at mass exodus from the cities, except by the Whites. Some of the earlier birds to fly had found sanctuary in upstate New York or Maine or westwards into Amish country, but those welcoming doors began to swing closed after carload by carload of refugees flooded in. Finally barricades, blocked roads, and County Sheriff’s department led posses were necessary to stem the tide. Small communities built walls and posted sentries, and ‘trespassers’ started being shot on sight. It was like the British longbows raining hell down on the French at Agincourt. That eventually turned the tide of refugees back on itself, and set off ethnic cleansing of skipped over enclaves along a two hundred mile front. It began as fighting over food and water and fuel, then drifted into mass rapes by the blacks and racial genocide in response by the Whites. Gerta had spent her life thinking of the Americans as being too cowardly to ever stand up for themselves, but some of them had, when it mattered most.

  So many Americans had guns, that the skinheads and their militia allies were better armed than most armies. Many of them were veterans, too, and trained in small unit combat tactics. They had been brutal and ruthless and efficient. When the fighting petered out, clumps of hardened survivors from all sides held their ground jealously. Those in Scranton and Manchester formed city-states for a while, and fared well enough. The devils stuck in Alexandria and Herndon died like flies, as they were overrun by the masses from Georgetown. So died megalopolis. Gerta had noticed the frenzy quieten as early winter moved in, at least in the area where constant peacekeeping force presence had re-established law and order and full bellies. Things were relatively copacetic throughout Manhattan. All was cool on Staten Island.

  Unfortunately, Russia was feeling her oats, and had declared a thirty percent increase in natural gas prices and for heating oil being pumped into Central and Eastern Europe. The Ultra-Nationalists in charge there were rapidly consolidating their control over the ‘Stans and Ukraine. With Brussels already on the ropes economically since Wall Street had become, well, just another dark street needing armed patrol, now, she wondered how long it would be before enthusiasm for condescendingly helping out their fallen big brother would fade for many Europeans. The Indians and Russians certainly hoped it would happen soon. No matter how many mind-numbing briefings Gerta attended on the Chinese occupation of Vancouver or the forced enslavement of Whites in Charleston, she couldn’t care less about New African requests for diplomatic recognition, or the polar opposite New American tentative dispatches from St. Louis. She had her hands full enough with what was right in front of her, and she didn’t mean the German tanks disappearing northwards in the distance as they packed up to tail the convoy.

  Right now, what was in front of her was the somewhat ragged looking former Deputy Mayor of Philadelphia, crestfallen that he hadn’t had a chance to present the Germans with a key to the city. He awkwardly shuffled back and forth from one foot to the other. “Not so good with heights, so?” Gerta asked.

  “N-No, not really. So, they aren’t going to stop for a welcome ceremony like we talked about?” he asked for the tenth time.

  Gerta sighed. Even when they had nothing left to govern, politicians still politicked. “Sorry, but no, Mr. Mayor, we have to meet them up in Germantown, they have been assigned to secure the Queen Lane Reservoir.”

  “Oh, well, okay, let’s go then, I guess,” the downcast former city leader relented. “After you, Mr. Mayor”, Gerta replied, gesturing to the Black Hawk perched like a feeding insect behind her. Her fingernails dug tiny crescents of blood out of her palms as she smiled diplomatically.

  In the reservoir parking lot a tall, blonde German Major, Major Strosser, she had remembered, leapt down the last step from the commander’s position in the squat lead tank and smartly stepped up to the group of U.N. ambassadorial bureaucrats and local dignitaries, including three from the Nation Of Islam, and two from the New Black Panther Party, since they were still major players in what was left of Philadelphia. Schmidt looked like an SS Panzer poster boy, the interpreter noted approvingly. Gerta stamped out a warm flutter in her stomach as she made the introductions. The former Deputy Mayor hesitantly stepped forward with his ridiculous huge fake key. Her emotions swinging, the interpreter rubbed her eyes and the bridge of her nose as a stress headache threatened. Well, at least she didn’t have to solve the world’s problems. All she had to do was translate them.

  The next evening, she was back at the U.N. complex off First Avenue amid the squabbling Congressmen and Senators and other useless American politicians. Many of them demanded transportation (and security details, of course) back to their home states to reunite with their families, or their property, or to empire build back at the ranch. Some had families or mistresses and staff with them. They all wanted to go home. “Me first”, Gerta said to herself, as she interpreted their requests in a straight-forward manner to the U.N. Expeditionary Force’s Chief of Staff’s secretary. At least they were giving up on wanting to be any kind of government, and just wanted out. That was a sign of realism, or resignation. There might be lights back on in Times Square, but the last ball had been dropped. Fumble, turnover, first down.

  If The Bible Tells You So

  Former Governor Ike Huckleberry had no idea how many living rooms in America still had power tonight. For those who did, most didn’t have the time to watch television, even if their satellite t.v. provider was still broadcasting. What he did know was that his engineer told him that they could still broadcast, the satellite could still bounce the signal back to whomever was watching, and his voice and image might be the only thing on the air. He thought it was worth a shot. He was going out live. Things were well in hand now in coastal Texas, from Houston to Port Arthur his followers held the line against La Republica del Norte while playing the “God Loves Everybody” tune, full blast. He was the most powerful religious leader on the continent these days. Like the medieval popes, he intended to transmit that spiritual influence, and translate it into some secular power, starting now.

  His cute young makeup girl caked on the base. He pulled the napkin tighter over his chest. At one time he had been very obese, but the Governor had lost a lot of pounds in hopes of turning his new, more t.v. friendly profile into a Presidential bid. Moving to Texas last year and setting up a televangelist church of his own had turned out to be a stroke of pure genius, and perfect timing. Ike was a man of many parts. Former Governor of a small southern state. Pastor. Author. Guitar player. Broadcaster. A man of the people. He was ready to shine, again. This time, for all the marbles. Now he was ready, makeup done, hair perfect, jaw squared. The countdown began…the green light flashed on….LIVE.

  “Brothers and Sisters, I come to you tonight in supplication. As you all know, when I was Governor I sponsored legislation to give in-state tuition rates at state universities to illegal immigrants, and I’m proud of that. I opposed racists and haters and denied having any memory of any association with them, once I found out who they were. I embraced all of God’s creatures, great and small. Many times, while I was President of the state Southern Baptist Convention, I asked all of the White people in my audience and congregation to be especially friendly, generous, and welcoming to the Hispanic peoples coming to this land, to make up for the collective sin of slavery which we committed against blacks in this country for so long. I told you that we needed to welcome them into our homes, into our churches, and into our nation. I begged you
to open your heart to God’s innocent children from abroad. Well, too many didn’t listen, and the mortal sin of racism and hatred has now torn this once great nation apart. In order to get back to God, we need to pray for redemption, we need to ask for forgiveness from those we have wronged, and we need, most of all, to fulfill our Biblical duty to support Israel, God’s Chosen People. As many of you may have heard, the Battle of Armageddon has been fought in the Holy Land. God’s people have been attacked from all sides, and injured, grievously so. Much of their territory has been overrun by Godless Muslims, and occupied. Their capitol was been bombed, and much of their land has been made radioactive. They need our help now, more than ever. Remember that the scripture says of Israel, “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee.” The Lord knows in his wisdom just how much we need a blessing on our land, right now. Thank you, Jesus. We have received your correction, Lord, and kneel before you in repentance of our sins, Hallelujah. But we know, Father, that we have to prove ourselves worthy to be called your disciples, Amen. We have to stand up for your people, for Israel, in their time of need, Praise God. We know that you want every God-fearing listener within the sound of my voice to seek out diligently for a remnant of your Chosen People in their communities, Lord. They need to look hard for any Jewish people left, anywhere, and find them, Holy Father. These, your holy and Chosen People, need to be saved from this new Holocaust, this new Tribulation which is upon us. Don’t let them be lost, we beseech you, Jehovah. Help us, Jesus, to find the Jews among us, wherever they may be, and bring them forth, Almighty God. Dear Lord, we know your will is that we help them make their Holy migration to your Holy Land and your Holy City Jerusalem. Amen. And so I ask each and every one of you to save the Jewish people! Find them, anoint them, and bring them unto me, brothers and sisters. Bring God’s own Chosen People unto me, and we will take them home, to the promised land, home to the Holy Land, home to Israel, Amen! Bring the lost sheep of the House of Israel to Beaumont, Texas! I know it’s a long way for many of you. I know it will require hardship and sacrifice. But the Lord himself is calling for a pilgrimage to escort his Chosen home. Here in Beaumont, we have the port, we have the shipping, and we have the U.S. Army’s 842nd Transportation Battalion keeping the port running and secure. The Commander is a God-fearing Christian man who supports our holy mission, our crusade to help the Chosen People home. Israel is fighting for its LIFE over there, and desperately needs all Jews to come home and help them win the victory for the Lord. We will be sending food, we will be sending ammunition, we will be sending weapons, but most of all, with your help, brothers and sisters, we will be sending God’s Chosen People themselves! Help find them, help round them up, help bring them here to Beaumont where they can go home to the Holy Land. Tune in this time next week for another broadcast, and may the Lord God Almighty in his infinite mercy cast His blessings upon you, your families, your communities, and our nation during this time of Tribulation. We humbly ask all this in sweet Jesus, our savior’s precious and blessed name, Amen!”

  His engineer had been right. With no competition on the airwaves, tens of thousands of Americans had left their tv sets turned on to scan for a broadcasting channel. They had seen his sweaty, frothing broadcast. Many times more than that heard about it, and tuned in the next week, if they were able. Even based on rumor and word of mouth alone, fundamentalist Christians began doing Ike’s bidding. They were looking for a way to fight back against the more militant, anti-minority Christian Identity churches that were gaining members all around them. It took a while, but in two months over 102,540 Jews had been railroaded, driven, or force-marched into Beaumont for involuntary Aliyah. Most of them were none too pleased about the blessing. Many had died while resisting detainment, or along the way, despite the best intentions of their benefactors. Thanks to the former Governor, the Theocracy under his command in Beaumont, and the defunct Norwegian, Royal Caribbean, and Carnival Cruise lines, almost 100,000 of those Jews were shipped off to Israel. There, they faced the fury of the Islamic State. None of them ever came back to complain, though. Never again.

  Turning And Turning In The Widening Gyre

  The kind of fury building up in Captain John McNabb brought to mind the old poem about when the Saxon came to hate. Kipling, wasn’t it? Most people he had known were a mile wide and an inch deep, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. All show and no go. He had never liked drama. Others could hate you one second and love you the next, but McNabb didn’t get his temper triggered quick, and didn’t get over it quickly, either. People had been known to say that he could hold a grudge, and that once he turned cold to you, it was relentless and forever. That may be, but people knew where they stood with him. He knew that it was unChristian to let anger take control, but his Jesus was a god of war. The moneychangers in the temple had learned that, the hard way. Letting it get personal, and allowing his emotions to overpower him, was dangerous for any combat commander, though. With his command, now numbering about three-hundred and fifty combat hardened soldiers after the swearing in of the militia volunteers and a week of crawling advances westwards across the state line separating Indiana from Illinois, word had come down that he was receiving a battlefield promotion to Major, in a week or two. He could really care less.

  His wife and kids were stuck in South Bend, so far as he knew, after moving there to be closer to him. He missed them. Not just in an, ‘oh well’, casual, ‘hope to see you soon’, way. They were on his mind every hour of every day, no matter how busy or exhausted he was. Their names were on his lips in prayer, every night. The idea had been that he could visit them there, and he had been able to exactly twice before being ordered to clear out all “criminal resistance” between Gary and the Illinois waterway which had connected Lake Michigan to the Illinois River, and from there to the Mississippi. Folks down in St. Louis seemed to have decided that if the red states or flyover America or the Heartland or whatever they were calling it today was going to be a going concern, it didn’t need to be a landlocked one. John could see the sense in that. Heck, he could even understand why a Great Lakes route to the Atlantic was the best option, for now. Especially once Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and the other big cities around the lakes were cleared out. Like everybody else, he had heard the horror stories about how fast the lower Mississippi Valley was descending into voodoo ritual killings and human sacrifices. Everything below the mouth of the Arkansas River, really below Memphis, was a no-go for anybody as pale as him, these days.

  People had moaned and cried and bought up bottled water and ammunition whenever blacks rioted from time to time here and there over cop shootings or basketball games won or lost. They hadn’t known how to deal when it had happened all over, all at once. Fair enough. But what he could not understand, or accept, why his line of advance had to be away from the people he had gotten into this mess to protect. That made him angry. Sometimes when he ordered his men to answer “hands up –don’t shoot” with “up against the wall” and a single volley, his mind drifted sideways into half memory. He was driving, holding Cindy’s hand as she sat in the passenger seat, looking out the window at cows in the field going by. The girls were in the back seat being endearing in their spoiled, ‘let’s see who can be more annoying on a long car ride’, fashion. Suddenly a split second blur of oncoming metal and another car smashes into them on the passenger side and everything blurs out. But, that had never happened. His mind was playing tricks on him again, or he was fooling it.

  Looking at her picture from his wallet while he printed, McNabb wrote another love letter to his wife, venting, then sealed and addressed it and gave it to a long-haired conscript driver carrying another truckload of sick and wounded soldiers back east. Only four, today, two caught by a sniper on a water tower who was eventually flushed out and ventilated, one who had broken an ankle climbing through a burned out convenience store checking for scavenge, and one who had come down with the flu. It was a bad strain that had cost him a d
ozen casualties this winter. This was the second case this week, and seemed to be abating, but they had lost twice that many last week because of it. No field hospitals or field clinics here, just pick your rifle up and move forward, son, or get out of the way. We have blocks and blocks of Glocks and docks, McNabb thought tiredly. And miles to go before we weep.

  Two weeks later he was sure that he would be eating Thanksgiving dinner alone. At least, not with his family, but instead with the three hundred and fifty dirty young men he thought of as his kids, now. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he had thought of his students as his kids. He wondered how many of them had survived since the collapse. When the Colonel pinned the Major’s gold oak leaves on, he’d handed his two bars off to a lieutenant who looked young enough to have been in his 9th grade Civics class. Attrition, right. Most informal promotion ceremony ever, he bet.

  Every time McNabb ordered a lieutenant to order a sergeant to order a platoon into a building held by hostiles, it felt like how signing an order of expulsion for a kid who didn’t deserve it used to feel. These guys, who a few months ago had been maintenance men and factory line workers and firemen and cops and retail workers never hesitated, and always made him proud. Yesterday, a former McDonald’s cashier had shot a teenaged black girl just before she threw a Molotov cocktail that would have killed him and his buddies, or burned them badly, right in front of the Major. High fives all around as she fell back and dropped the lit bottle, which burst and whoofed into a spreading fireball that swallowed her up while she screeched and thrashed out her life on the pavement. No rounds were wasted to end that early.

  That night they took Lockport. There was a holdout group of insurgents in a small church. The first bullets slammed into the ground right in front of their point man, who hit the dirt an instant before the rest of the group followed his example. John tasted gravel and dirt. Signaling for two men to stay prone and deliver covering fire to keep the hidden snipers pinned down, he motioned for three others to go with him. Sporadic firing continued as they crawled into and along a ditch half filled with trash and the bloated body of a large dog of undetermined breed. As quietly as they could, they elbowed it towards the rear of the building. The confrontation from the street intensified briefly, then suddenly cut off. McNabb rose from the ditch to cover the back door of the church just as a group of black youth ran out, straight at him. He knew without looking that the three men behind him were up and running, too. As he raised his M4 to fire, a huge black buck plowed into him, carrying them both back down and into the ditch while muzzle blasts ripped the air near his head. All of the breath went out of him through his Kevlar in a whoosh, and he struggled to stay on top. The momentum and weight drove him back and down into the mud. When he had released his grip on his rifle, it had simply swung down on the single point sling to his side, leaving his hands free. The beast on top of him was easily 6’4” and 290. It smelled like swisher sweet cigars, marijuana, and body odor. Taking a huge lungful of the stink, John wrapped his left forearm around the fat neck of the monster and began jabbing punches into its’ face with his gloved right fist, over and over, as hard as he could. The head under his arm tried to pull free. John felt meaty fists striking his ribs and sides ineffectually, and got his feet under him just in time to bring his left knee up quickly into the nose of his attacker. Again, as hard as he could. In one movement McNabb leapfrogged onto the black man’s back, by swinging to the right and stepping onto him with his right foot. The Major pushed the huge head away, and shoved its body forward, face first. Swinging around, he took a step back, drew his sidearm, and put three rounds into the back of the head and neck. The massive body thrashed around in the ditch like a dying alligator on that old tv show. He re-holstered his sidearm, then checked his carbine. John locked his hands behind his head to catch his breath. When he looked around, he saw all three of his men standing, one with a slight cut on his face, and five black ‘youths’ down and out. Say Amen.