The Hasten the Day Trilogy

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The Hasten the Day Trilogy Page 15

by Billy Roper


  McNabb felt bad for his aide. “Kip, remind me this afternoon to send through a promotion request to Harrison for you, and we’ll make you a Sergeant. The way they hand out promotions around here, you can be an officer by next week”, he said self- deprecatingly.

  “No thanks, Kip replied, only slightly mollified. I’d rather work for a living.” They both shared a grin, and relaxed. Kip kicked aside some Busch beer cans, the expected debris of bachelor quarters, especially since the brewery had resumed local production. He shared an adjoining room with one private, while the other three had to bunk two doors down. Most of the time, of course, all the shared room doors were just left open. That made it seem less claustrophobic, and helped the security team ‘guard their delicate flower of a Lt. Col.’, as they described their mission, jokingly.

  Except for when he had taken to sneaking out alone for some privacy, John usually left three men behind to guard their rooms: one out front, one on the roof above their top floor accommodations, and one inside. Kip and one other guard, on a rotating schedule, were his only full time shadows, and when he needed a driver, one of them served. Kip and John stepped outside into the cold morning rain while Glenn, today’s driver, brought the car around. They were quickly waylaid by a short, pixie-like platinum blonde he recognized from network news from before. Her almost white curls clung to her shoulders damply where they strayed from underneath the hood of her raincoat. Makeup ran down her face, leaving black trails from the corners of her eyes. That did nothing to detract from the look of determination she bore. When their eyes met, she transformed into a smiling, eager professional.

  “Good morning, Colonel! Happy New Year!”

  “That was last week, and it’s just Lt. Col., ma’am, but close enough. Thank you.”, he responded, attempting to sidestep her on the sidewalk as Glenn idled in the middle of the street. This was obviously the reporter who couldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Lately she had been doing the evening news on the PostDispatch’s t.v. channel, in between Emergency Broadcast System announcements. She was a feisty little thing, for sure. Kind of like a young Meg Ryan, McNabb thought.

  Carolyn stopped them and planted her petite form in between them and the Mercedes. “Col. McNabb, can I buy you breakfast and talk about your armed forces integration theory vote tomorrow?” she asked.

  “The ‘Unified Command’ is now policy, not theory, ma’am, unless you’ve missed hearing the jets coming in over the last two days? But I’m late to give a speech before the convention delegates, if you don’t mind a brisk walk in the cold rain, you’re welcome to step on over and listen.”

  ‘Nailed it!’ Carolyn thought, but then she pushed it further, looking forlornly up into the drizzling rain and shivering visibly. “Well…I’ve already been out in this for a long time, waiting for you, I’d probably get somewhere warm and dry….”

  Glenn was getting anxious at the wheel. Kip was standing there in the rain, holding open the door. He saw the look in John’s eyes, and knew what he was going to do, but before he could say anything, the Lt. Col. had already said it: “Okay, get on in, you can ride with us.” Carolyn beamed and hopped into the back seat before Kip could open the door up front for her. It was a short ride, but getting out in front of the other media clustered at the Old Courthouse was going to be awkward. It would like McNabb was playing favorites, or worse.

  On the way over, she smiled and straightened her hair and wiped off her ruined makeup with the clean handkerchief her prey gentlemanly offered. While in the traffic holding pattern she peppered him with questions about what he hoped to achieve through a unified command, and the roles he foresaw for different elements of the military within it. She knew those weren’t the kind of questions she was expected by her editor to ask as a city reporter, but she didn’t want to write for the city page, anyway. They were the questions people wanted to know, and McNabb answered her, line for line, as she held a small microcassette recorder between them. As they slid into a parking space, a throng of cameramen and other reporters hustled over, trying not to slip in the freezing rain and slush puddles. Rapidfire questions about today’s speech and the upcoming vote came at him breathlessly from the mob. Flashes caught Lt. Col. John W. McNabb, convention delegate from Indiana and war hero, helping a young blonde out of the back of his black sedan. Moments later, as she ‘slipped’ on the ice, cameras caught her held tightly in his arms. The British tabloids had a new front page picture. When her editor saw the photograph, she had her post as national affairs correspondent.

  McNabb stood at the podium in front of the seal of the state of Missouri and addressed the delegates. After a low murmur of dying conversation, he had their full attention. He also had the attention of the media crowded along both sides and in the center of the aisle, snapping and recording every word.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, when I look at the faces in this room, I see the same faces as the people who crossed an ocean to bring civilization to this continent, and then, as the Arch down the street symbolizes, crossed the prairie to reach the very end of this continent, ‘from sea to shining sea’. I see the people who came together at the first Continental Congress, when our nation was young, and who together Declared their Independence, then again met and, through delegates and conventioneers not unlike ourselves in language and heritage and ancestry, drafted a Constitution to form a government. In 1790, in the Naturalization Act, they defined who could be a citizen of their new nation, but over time those values and ideals of our Founders were eroded, and subverted, by the enemies of our nation, and of its’ founding people. Now, that erosion of values, that corruption of principles, has cheapened the meaning of citizenship to the point where it is meaningless, and our one nation, indivisible, has been divided. For the last few months, we have fought to save a terminal patient. That struggle, sadly, has been lost. It should not come as a surprise to any of you to hear me say that the United States of America no longer exists. It is dead.”

  Some groans and grumbles erupted from the delegates, but McNabb continued. “Yes, friends, it is dead, and none of us can revive it, even if we wanted to. But even if we could, why should we, with the cancerous seeds of its’ destruction still not fully removed? I submit to you that multiracial democracy, as our country had become, cannot fly. What cannot fly, should fall. And what is falling, we should still push, and say, fall faster!”

  Many of the conventioneers were looking down at their feet. This was a hard thing to hear, and a harder truth to swallow. “All of us have lost loved ones over the last year, because of the folly of multiracialism. Now, the formerly United States of America have Balkanized, and like the old song says, ‘breaking up is hard to do’. But it is done. We have been humbled. Our country has been torn apart, but our country is not our nation. Our people is our nation. The people who founded the United States before they lost control of it, are still here, throughout the land, and in this room. They still have hope, they still have a future, and they still need our leadership. Whatever our challenges or our triumphs in the future, they will come as a new nation, a new nation returned to the original ideals and principles of our Founding Fathers. Here, right here, now, right now, we are building a new nation, a new future, a new America!”

  Every head in the room raised up, to meet his eyes. Kip stood, on impulse, and began to applaud. Singly at first, then in clumps, the delegates rose, and began to clap. It was slow at first, but built to a crescendo, then cheers and shouts rang out, for the first time in the convention. It took five minutes for them to quieten down enough for McNabb to wrap things up, anticlimactically, by asking them to vote in favor of the unified command resolution the next day. They remained on their feet for that, then gave him another ovation. The measure passed without dissent.

  General Fred Grace, the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, and the only surviving member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff not involved in the Offutt cabal, sent a personal letter of commendation to the Lt. Col., from Camp Grayling in Northern Michigan, and ple
dged his support to the cause. That got the headline banner, right over the competing story about the 2nd Winnipeg Infantry defeating the First People’s Liberation Movement guerrillas at the Battle of New Town, in North Dakota, despite the high number of Sioux casualties.

  Carolyn felt like she might swoon. Not only had she been named the National Affairs Correspondent for St. Louis Post Dispatch, EBS TV, and EBS Radio St. Louis, she had a new office, a doubled salary, and her own secretary. Not that she spent much time in her office. She was really intrigued by the dynamic, charismatic Lt. Col. who had given her career such a boost. He was good looking, in a scholarly way, and definitely a man on his way up in the world. Especially after that speech was put on a rebroadcast loop for two days on the radio and t.v., and reprinted verbatim on the front page. They even played the whole thing on the BBC North America broadcast, and newspapers reprinted it in London, Glasgow, Belfast, Calgary, Edmonton, Anchorage, Sidney, Auckland, Melbourne, and Perth, as well as most of the still functioning newspapers in North America. The whole world also thought that she and McNabb were an item.

  What puzzled Carolyn was that, even though his security guys and aide made it obvious that they thought so, too, the Lt. Col. had never made a move, not even when they were alone. He had certainly had ample opportunities over the last week and a half. She had interviewed him three times, over dinner and even in his room.What was wrong? Nothing was more attractive, and intriguing, than a man who didn’t take the bait. She knew he wasn’t gay. Or dead. It must be her. What did it take to get some attention?

  What Rough Beast?

  Kelly finished typing in the classified casualty reports from the first assault on Hoover Dam. Losses had been light, thanks to their air support from Hill. It had been freed up now that the new Deseret Air Force had cleared Arizona all the way to Flagstaff. She switched off her desk lamp, burning her fingers on the hot, overworked light. Putting on her heavy jacket, she bundled up further with a took and scarf, before heading home. The DPS data entry clerk preferred to work late, after the rest of the office had left, and it got her noticed. That was why she had received clearance to handle the more interesting classified reports.

  In order to make it to her building by curfew, she’d have to wolf down dinner, tonight. The streets were filled with young men from the Mormon reaches of south-central Idaho ‘brothering’ and ‘sistering’ everyone to death in their enthusiasm to be in the center of everything LDS. They could be spotted as a swirling eddy of white shirts and black ties. Kelly wondered how many of them were in town to sign up as Gulls, and how many would never make it home. She, or another of the clerks, would type their names into the system one day. In a week they would be finished with their very basic training, and a week after that, they would be looking around at the desert sand while they marched towards Sainthood.

  Her primary social interaction recently had been Kelly’s one way voyeurism of the shortwave world. Last night she had listened to Stephen, a gas company employee near Mobile, as he described his frustrations that he was the only White worker left at the utility. The city council offered him bribes and rewards to stay, since even down south they needed natural gas this winter, but their affirmative action hirings and running off all of the other White employees had gotten bad. Most of the Whites who could, had outmigrated in the first couple of months after the state legislature declared secession from the ‘institutionally racist’ U.S., and the seizure of all formerly White owned commercial property as ‘reparations’ for slavery.

  White owned private property, including residences, was next on the legislature’s agenda. Stephen’s wife, who was diabetic, could no longer get more insulin, anywhere in the city, and was growing sicker each day. She was almost out, even though she had reduced her dosage to ration it. Despite his status as one of the handful of remaining White men who kept things running, he was fed up. Stephen had always been an antiracist, and believed in the best in people. Even after the secession, he had held out hope that a peaceful balance could be achieved. One morning, he noticed that all of the other Whiteowned houses on his street stood empty, their owners gone. He didn’t remember seeing any moving vans in the area, or hearing any of them talk about leaving. Not that he had talked to his neighbors, really. In a few days, the first black families began moving into them.

  Stephen and his wife tried to be friendly to the new neighbors, who were openly curious about how Stephen had kept his house. Their curiosity was turning to resentment at the exception to the law he represented. His wife was frightened, which didn’t help her blood sugar, either. They weren’t racists, many of their friends were black, but none of them came around, any more. That was heartbreaking.

  Not wanting to be confrontational, Stephen had a plan. He was going to take one fo the cabin cruisers still moored in a cove off the bay, and he and his wife and their little dog were going to chug over to the Florida panhandle, where a large White enclave of several adjoining counties still held tough. The only way that he could cover his tracks was by staging a house fire and playing dead. Kelly tried in vain to find any subsequent broadcasts on the normal frequency from Stephen. Late into the night she listened, but he never came on. She went to sleep dreaming of he and his wife and their little dog, sailing away towards the sunrise. A week later she heard a brief BBC North America report that hundreds had lost their lives, and thousands more were left homeless, when a raging firestorm had torn through a gulf coastal city in the southern U.S., which local authorities had been unable to bring under control. Kelly remembered Stephen, and mentally sent him a high five.

  The next morning after Stephen’s last broadcast, Kelly awoke to the sound of a hacking cough from across the hall. She felt guilty that she had not stuck her head in to check on Mrs. Murphy last night. She had been too tired and it was too late when she had gotten home. A hard life and harder losses had taken their toll on her neighbor. Kelly knew she should go over and say ‘hi’. The ongoing trials and appeals processes of those facing deportation for having adopted nonWhite children would have traffic backed up for blocks around downtown, even up on the sidewalks. That would make her late getting in to work, too, if she didn’t got ahead and start her day with a bang…or a whimper.

  Mrs. Murphy missed her daytime soap operas more than anything else from before. The only officially sanctioned radio station in Salt Lake City filled some of that void by live broadcasting the trial testimony, day after day. Last week, she had kept the volume up to ‘eleven’ while Kelly made her dinner and sat with her, which kind of defeated the whole purpose of stopping in to talk with somebody, the younger woman felt. It made her fillings rattle to hear the female defense attorney whine on and on with the same tired argument for every client. Always, it was about compassion, and love, and Christian forgiveness, and loving the sinner but hating the sin. That woman was the next best thing to a feminist liberal that the new order would allow. Predictably, she would tell the judge that no sin was irredeemable. Then she would talk about Jesus’s forgiveness, and our need to not cut off those who could be saved. Finally, she would close by saying that “showing compassion to our people” was the best way to undo outsiders’ negative stereotype of Mormons, and win them over to faith. Win their hearts and minds, she said.

  The judge was a real crowd favorite. He usually responded to the defense attorney’s closing cliché’ by stating, right up into the microphone, that if you grabbed somebody by their throat, their hearts and minds would follow. His position on the newly recriminalized act of homosexuality, for instance, was rationalized by the brief historical lesson he offered to the live and radio audience, for every trial of a gay person. He would point out that Thomas Jefferson, while governor of Virginia during the first American Revolution, had helped draft a law which punished homosexuality with castration, while some of the colonies simply maintained the death sentence for the offense. All thirteen held same-sex relations to be illegal, of course, as had all fifty states, of course. General Washington had supported d
rumming homosexuals out of the Continental Army, even during the cold winter at Valley Forge when they were desperate for soldiers.

  And so, the judge would conclude, there was a long established precedent for even secular society to protect itself from the scourge of homosexuality. However, “misplaced compassion is no virtue”, his honor would often say, “but a vice of weakness and cowardice”. After citing the most recent statistics demonstrating homosexual’s greater proclivity to be pedophiles, and the first Chapter of Romans, he would administer the same sentence meted out for having an interracial dependent one was unwilling to disown, or being in a mixed race relationship: banishment. Kelly appreciated the humor in that. She could just imagine the Mexican Army reaction when day after day, week after week, a trickle of homosexuals and mullatos and race mixing liberals came staggering through the desert towards their lines, hands up and begging for water and mercy. It was a more efficient way of getting rid of society’s unfit than the mass graves of the first few weeks of independence.

  Kelly had her own, privately guarded theory about homosexuality, which was that it was simply nature’s way of removing those with defective genetic material from the gene pool, by preventing them from passing those chromosomes to the next generation. But the Church doctrine with Biblical support was predominant, so she kept her mouth shut and accepted the fact that sometimes even mother nature needs a helping hand in the evolutionary process. Being proactive, in a eugenic way, couldn’t hurt, either. And the mixed race people being exiled from Deseret to whatever fate awaited them? And those who created such hybrids? Well, maybe mother nature also had a way of driving some with defective genetic material to not keep it within their race, for the good of those who stuck to their own. It worked for her. But, the trial broadcasts hadn’t started yet, this morning.

 

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