The Hasten the Day Trilogy

by Billy Roper

  The narrow space under his bunk was the only place to squeeze into. After a few minutes he heard cell doors being experimentally pushed back. At first there were a few quiet footpads out of cells, up and down the tier. None of them approached his cell. More and more doors were dragged open. Whispers rose to talking, then shouting. Hooting and hollering sprang forth where just hours ago had been whimpers and crying and prayers and cursing in despair. In the chaos, some of the voices were jubilant, but a few were angry. Rival gangs and cliques were calling out to each other and meeting in the open, without C.O. supervision. The sounds of struggle, grunts and yells and thuds, came from both ends of the row. Jeff pulled himself into a tighter ball in the darkness.

  He had no idea how much time passed. After the last footsteps faded into the distance as the walking felt their way to the exit, the moans and sobs of the wounded continued. He slept for a bit, and woke again, to silence. Moving slowly and quietly, Jeff crawled to his cell door before standing up. Keeping one hand on the bars, he slid his back against the wall and began walking towards where he knew the gate to the yard to be. Twice he stepped in wet patches of stickiness, and once he kicked into a body that he had to step over. A grasping hand tried to grab his ankle from the open door of a cell he passed, but he skipped over it easily enough. Eventually, he reached the commons gate, which was open, and then he could see the faint light ahead.

  After finding his way to the yard, where a few groups of inmates sat sullenly in clumps eyeing one another, Jeff thought things through. The guard towers sat empty. No C.O.s walked the yard or the perimeter. They were on their own. As he looked around, a lone Hispanic inmate was being kicked to death by a ring of blacks in one corner. Nobody intervened. They all just looked away. Only two members of his C.I. congregation set had made it out, and the three of them agreed that they had no interest in going back to the blocks to find any of the other brothers. They did agree to stick together and go back in to turn the other way, towards the visitation and admission wing. Several unaffiliated Woods followed them back in, since they were outnumbered by the black cons in the yard. Manchester was a medium security facility, but there weren’t many innocent angels residing there.

  It took Jeff’s group half a day of feeling their way in the dark, interrupted by a blind fight with another group they met along the way that left a couple down and dead. At the end they pried out some plexiglass from reinforced frames and squeezed through into the processing section. There they found soft drink and snack machines they chinged open. There were seven of them left, all together.

  Once they got into Manchester, the group split up. Three of the cons wanted to start living it up and taking advantage of their newfound freedom. To them, that meant looting. One of them talked about finding girls, and what he would do, when he did. Jeff’s C.I. congregation members and one of the others just wanted to keep moving and try to get back to their homes. Only looting for the food and water they needed to survive, they traveled quickly. They saw people from time to time, always armed, and usually looting, themselves. Often they heard gunfire in the distance. Always, they avoided speaking to anyone, or coming close to other people. Even with the world in obvious anarchy, and even with new clothes, a part of them still felt like prison escapees. Like cons. Getting caught and sent back, strangely, felt like a real fear, for a long time. They stayed together until they reached the Tennessee state line, which was patrolled by state police on horseback, of all things. The oldest of their group decided not to risk it. He’d turn back and take his chances. There, they had to split up to slip across at night.

  One of the three cons must have been caught trying to cross the state line, because only Jeff and his buddy Kenny Wayne met back up across the line on the other side of Bristol. The yellowing newspapers in their stands told them enough of what had happened after their news had been cut off for them to know why it was only White people they saw first in Kentucky, and then in Tennessee. The only nonWhites they had seen, once they had cleared the prison wire, had been corpses. Many had apparently been lined up alongside the road and shot. Most looked to have been made to kneel first, and some of those had their hands Tyveked, handcuffed, or just tied behind their backs. That explained a lot. More than they needed to know, really.

  Oh, Mama I’m Coming Home

  Four days later, Jeff and Kenny Wayne hitched a ride with a Tennessee National Guard platoon on one of their three trucks, moving south from Johnson City to Asheville. Most of the refugees were headed north, away from the fighting around Charlotte, but their cover story of looking for their families who they had gotten separated from seemed plausible enough to the Staff Sergeant in charge of the platoon. From Asheville, they were on foot again. Jeff’s plan was to work his way back home to his mother and his sons in South Carolina. The only drawback to this plan was that there was a broad and ambiguous front line and no man’s land area between Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina. When they entered the zone, it stretched from Shelby to Greenville. Kenny Wayne’s home was in Dahlonega, Georgia, which was still under White control at the moment, although fighting between the local militia and Mexican insurgents there was the problem, not the blacks who had declared their independence. The situation varied widely all over. It was really confusing to both of them. Jeff knew that he would be headed alone into black controlled territory. When Kenny Wayne decided to turn West in the outskirts of Spartanburg, they shook hands and wished each other luck, In Yahweh’s grace. That was the best they could do. Travelling alone was much harder, and riskier, for Jeff. He only moved at night, laying up in empty buildings or homes during the daytime. As he moved further south, he heard the sounds of heavy weapons: machine guns, and even artillery, around Moore. That convinced him to swing East, and cut through the Sumter National Forest. Following Hwy 121 East about fifty yards parallel to the road, he was able to observe patrols of armed black men, for the first time, moving in convoys of several civilian vehicles. He became even more careful, then. Travelling at night, Jeff was able to jog along the road, and see oncoming vehicles by their headlights for far enough ahead of time to be able to hide in the treeline along the shoulder. A few times he had to dive in the ditch and lie still as unseen vehicles passed, sometimes several in a group. He could even see the lights coming from behind him, if he stayed alert. Considering the alternative of becoming one of those bodies along the side of the road, he did. Two days later, Jeff was home. Both of his sons and his mother had survived the collapse, so far, but were glad to have him back. Food was short, as was their bottled water. His mom was out of her fluid pills. Local authority had collapsed, and the black and White citizens were avoiding confrontation, or any other interaction. When they saw each other in groups, it was like two dogs sniffing and circling. You could feel the growls building in their throats, and their hackles rising on the nape of their necks. Charlotte and Columbia had both fallen to the black insurgents, though, and the future of the White minority in Chester seemed to be in question. Word of atrocities against Whites in both cities had already filtered in from the north and the south. Jeff thought the best bet was to get his family out, before the winners had time to take the spoils of war from the losers. He worried whether his mother could make the trip, but he knew that if they didn’t try, she wouldn’t last long under the New African regime. None of them would. Any of the folks around those parts who were whistling ‘Dixie’ had better make it the short version.

  Birds Flew Off With The Fallout Shelter

  Something was wrong. Okay, take that back. A LOT was wrong, but something was really wrong right here, right now. Trouble, with a capital ‘T’ and that rhymed with ‘P’ and that stood for ‘police state’. From a block away, Kelly could see three patrol cars perched menacingly in front of her apartment building. They looked like they were just waiting to pounce when she came home from the cafeteria. Dinner had been a hunk of bread, canned spinach, and fried potatoes trucked in from Pocatello. It would have been disappointing faire, but it had
been food and her stomach wasn’t as picky as her eyes. The servers kept promising that they would be getting hamburger any day now, but maybe Wyoming and Montana were less eager to do business with a bunch of Mormon wingnuts frothing about hidden gold tablets and angels than Idaho was, Kelly surmised. She’d kept that guess to herself as she showed her government identification and found an empty chair in the crowded, noisy auditorium, and dug in. Ten minutes later, staring down the street at Salt Lake City’s finest, she considered going back for seconds. But, you can’t postpone the inevitable forever, she thought. Besides, it was closing in on dark, soon, and cold.

  She had her door key out and ready and a look of bewilderment pasted on her face as she deliberately jaywalked across the street towards her front door. Guilty people follow all the rules, she knew. As if she had nothing to hide, Kelly smiled uncertainly at the young cop blocking her from going in. “What’s happening, Brother?” she asked, pushing her brown hair back and giving him the submissive little girl look that had always served her pretty well with men for a quarter century. “Is something wrong?”

  In a blinding instant her overactive imagination pictured stormtroopers clumping down the stairs bearing armloads of books on paganism, mythology, fantasy, and herbalism, accusing her of witchcraft and dragging her off for an Old-Salem style interrogation. The witch trial from ‘Monty Python’s Holy Grail’ ridiculously popped into her mind, flashing in. She shook it free, and it flew away. Breathe. Focus. Instead of asking for her name, Officer Newton, as his nametag proclaimed, blushed and smiled. “Well, ma’am, err, Sister, we are currently apprehending a dangerous fugitive at this time here, but the situation is under control. You are perfectly safe, I promise, Sister.”

  “Oh, Thank you, Brother,” Kelly gushed, as if he were knights in blue polyester. “I was scared there for a minute. Is it a terrorist?” Officer Newton beamed and leaned in towards her.

  “Kind of. A real subversive type, using suspicious means to broadcast treasonous and seduct…uh…seditious lies about Deseret.” The boy in man-pants blushed at his own near Freudian slip. Kelly pretended not to notice, and upped the ante by placing her gloved hand on his arm.

  “Oh, wow. What did he say about us? To Who?”…Newton was about to speak when he straightened up at the sound of boots on wooden stairs, behind them. An older, angrier cop came out, followed by two more, dragging her downstairs neighbor Jimmy, his hands zip-tied behind him.

  Jimmy was a thirty-two year old gamer and website designer who had asked her out, painfully awkwardly, soon after she had moved into the building. She had considered telling him that she was a lesbian, or that she was surprised because she had thought that he was gay, just to shut him down and be left alone. In the end, though, she was curious enough about his passive aggressive skulking and stalking of her in the laundry room to agree to go with him to get a pizza around the corner. He had been too scared to pursue things any further, and Kelly had been relieved. Now she couldn’t help but feel sorry for the pathetic, lazy loser, both his eyes swelling shut as they sought hers. One of them was bloodshot solid red. Oh boy. Awkward. He looked like his face had been used to polish their boots, and was dripping snot and blood onto the sidewalk. Something about his expression looked resigned, though, even brave. That shocked her. An internal strength might be there, buried deep. “Kelly, please feed my cat, okay?” Don’t let ‘Mr. Freebird’ go hungry, okay? Please!” THAT got her the older cop’s attention, fast.

  “Do you know this man?”

  “Yes, sir, he’s my downstairs neighbor.” What was it that people were expected to say in a situation like this…oh yeah. “He seemed like the real quiet type. I don’t get it!”

  “Well, not quiet enough, apparently” the veteran cop said. The other two chuckled as they half dragged Jimmy away, his eyes still locked onto hers, imploringly, as if trying to send her telepathic waves or something. “So, you’ve lived here for how long? And can I see some I.D., please, Miss?”

  Her government employee card relaxed him somewhat. DPS, like him. Status. She tried not to watch as they shoved Jimmy into the back of the nearest squad car, or think about where he might be taken. Probably to a shallow grave in the desert. I thought you were supposed to be trying not to think about that, she chided herself, her nerves jangling. She felt dizzy. The older cop was asking her if she had ever seen any suspicious activity going on. Had she ever seen any strangers coming or going from the building? No, not before today. Had she ever heard any unusual late night conversations, maybe one sided? She answered ‘no’ to everything, then, feeling unsteady, she asked Sgt. Kelly, the veteran, whether Jimmy was in bad trouble. “Yes, ma’am, pretty bad. I’d say that he’s going away for a long time.” Taking a gamble that old didn’t mean dead, Kelly gave Sgt. Kelly ‘the look’ and said “Wow, your last name is the same as my first name!”

  “Yeah, well it sure is”, he smiled more easily, looking down and leaning back. “What do you think about that?”

  “I think it’s pretty neat”, she exhaled. “That means that if you married me, my name would be “Kelly Kelly”, she giggled, tracing his badge with one fingertip. The Sergeant blushed.

  “Well, my wife wouldn’t like that though, I bet, and I’m kind of an old fashioned guy, one is plenty for me, Miss.” They shared a laugh. Officer Newton wrote down his personal phone number for her, “just in case you think of anything you might have forgotten that was suspicious about the suspect, or get scared”, and they slapped each other on the back, then left. Kelly didn’t dare look at Jimmy as they drove away.

  The first thing to remember when entering a crime scene was to observe everything. Sweep the room with your eyes. The second was to not disturb evidence, Kelly thought distractedly as she climbed the flight of stairs from the landing. The door to Jimmy’s apartment was closed, but the doorknob was broken off and crime scene tape crisscrossed the doorway. She absurdly raised her hand as if to knock, then, pushed the door open with her toe, gingerly. Kelly ducked under and stepped over and was in, pushing the door closed behind her. Her pulse raced. She knew that the other tenants in the building would stay locked in all night, after the raid, fearing they might be next. Everybody has something to hide. Paranoid herself, Kelly looked around the thoroughly trashed room single room studio. Broken dishes, papers, porn dvds (which by themselves could have gotten Jimmy detained), and smashed computer monitors and towers lay scattered, covered, and smashed. She was surprised that they hadn’t taken anything in evidence that she could see, but apparently evidence wasn’t necessary when there were no plans for a trial. Two smashed shortwave transceivers in a corner seemed to have earned special treatment. Kelly guessed they were the weapons Jimmy had used in his heinous crimes.

  Of course she was going to raid his cabinets and refrigerator for any food he had stashed, and of course she had instinctively determined to loot the apartment for anything that she could sell. Hey, times were tough. But Kelly’s curiosity had been enflamed by Jimmy’s plea for her to fed his damn cat. Especially since the stupid thing had gone missing over two weeks ago, and never come back. That’s what you get living the next block over to a Chinese restaurant. Then she remembered the cat’s name. “Splinter”. Not “Mr. Freebird”. She turned to the pile of DVD jewel cases on the stained carpet. Here we go. Lynard Skynard. Uh-huh. Popping the case open, she raised an eyebrow at the CDROM labeled ‘HAM’.

  Turning a duffel bag full of dirty magazines upside down and empting it, Kelly dropped the CD and tipped the personal jewelry contents from a bedside table tray in, then began selective looting. It took her a few minutes to find the cat’s litter box in the gross little bathroom. Under the fresh litter, a third shortwave transceiver was wrapped in plastic and sealed with enough tape to strangle a cat. Now, she understood his weirdo request. She wished that she would at least have given the poor guy a kiss of something. Almost. How sweet. A present for her, as his dying act. Awwww.

  Jimmy had told Kelly that he was a HAM radio opera
tor, but she had just dismissed the hobby as another quirk of his nerdiness and social phobia. Kind of like she had dismissed his risky jokes about Prophet Rammell and the Coucil. Now, as she bundled the radio together with all of the food she could scrounge and a few other saleable trinkets, she thanked him for his generosity. Like a post-apocalyptic Santa Claus, she tied the corners of a bulging quilt into a bag and threw it over her shoulder, then, with the loaded duffel, mushed upstairs to her own little cubby hole to count her blessings and war trophies. Okay, dude, your cat has been fed.

  Finally, an hour later, Kelly found the BBC broadcast to North America. She was amazed to hear them playing Euro-pop top twenty songs. The normality of it seemed alien and offensive. For a quarter it was like the world didn’t know or care that its’ biggest superpower had imploded. Just when she had begun to think that she was in an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’, the top of the hour news chimed in. Russia blamed China for sabotage of some Siberian oil facilities and attacks on workers there. Vladivostok had been overwhelmed by thousands of illegal Chinese immigrants, as well. Kelly held her breath, wondering if that meant that the Russians might stand up to Beijing. Not yet, it seemed.