by Billy Roper
It had really stunk having to say goodbye to Rick, after all the two of them had been through together, but Tommy had been reassigned to some top secret new intelligence gathering division for the New American government. It was rare for an order to come directly from Admiral Robert Woods to a lowly E-6, but his intermediate superiors in the Seventh Fleet had been made more curious than indignant by the leapfrogging of links in the chain. After all, they were supposed to be making an effort to show cooperation with the Unified Command in St. Louis. Here was their chance to prove their loyalty. Tommy was leaving Newport, where the dredging operation was almost complete, and taking a ride south to Sacramento with a Marine convoy. His new assignment was to intercept and monitor Chinese radio transmissions in central California. It was time to brush up on his Mandarin.
Bullens was to be in direct communication with a Captain Rogers with Ferguson’s legions, who were spending their New Year’s holiday in the outskirts of Erzurum. His other contacts would be with a Marine Corporal in Pretoria, a Naval E-5 in Perth, an E-6 in Darwin, another on a destroyer in New Zealand, and two E-4s, one with the Fifth Fleet in the Mediterranean and one with the Sixth at Oahu. Of course, he also had to maintain direct communications with Admiral Wood’s Petty Officer First Class communications officer in Seattle with the NAS Lincoln. They would all report to Marine Lt. Gen. Mark Smith, the Secretary of State, in the capital.
Tommy would be working with the Bear State Militia directly, too, passing on reports from their reconnaissance missions up to and behind enemy lines directly to St. Louis. Along with the new assignment came a promotion to Chief Petty Officer. That was the equivalent of a Gunnery Sergeant with the Marines, so he would be one of the big men on campus. He also would be the highest ranking field operative in the New American Unified Command’s Intelligence Division. It was about time Tommy got some respect, and a little closer to the action. California had to be warmer, too, right?
Guess who just got back today ? Those wild-eyed boys that had been away Haven't changed, haven't much to say. But man, I still think those cats are great…
The Manitoba state line had been moved 500 kilometers east to just the other side of Thunder Bay when the other half of Ontario had been ceded to the Republic of Quebec. Or, about 300 miles, Paul reminded himself. They all used the American system of measurement, now. This line was drawn in St. Louis through an agreement co-signed by the Governors of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, and the Territorial Governor of Whitehorse. The same agreement, called the ‘Canadian Division Accord’, extended the boundaries of the four Canadian states of New America straight up north to the Arctic Circle. The Territory of Whitehorse was defined as extending from the Alaskan and British Columbian borders to the Mackenzie River. The French Ambassador to New America, Monsieur Philipe de Monde of the Front Nationale, negotiated this accord, because the Republic of Quebec pledged to open their new territories to French homesteaders and immigrants from the mother country.
Paul Martin sat back in the saddle, changing the position of his sore back. The Second Lake Winnipeg Cavalry Company had plenty of fuel to transfer back over to motorized transport, with the shale oil fields down south in Dakota. They just didn’t have the heavy trucks needed for this kind of weather. Early January snowfall had been even heavier than usual, the first week of the new year. Paul was wrapped in a heavy parka against the wind. As his huffing horse high-stepped it from one knee-deep drift to another, he considered whether there were enough tracked vehicles left in the state to equip their forces…or even in all of the adjoining states, for that matter. The lanky Sergeant had been with the Second three years ago, when they had fought the second campaign against the Sioux, down across the old border. The First Nation Aboriginal Army had suffered greatly for their acts of terrorism in Dakota. At that time the Sioux Valley group west of Brandon had kept out of it. Four years without any government handouts, though, and the tribe was growing desperate. The 1500 of them that were left had started raiding, or at least a couple hundred of their braves had. They would raid Dauphin, then run and hide in the Riding Mountain wildlands. Then they would raid Minnedosa or Neepawa, and run back to their hideout. The citizens of Brandon, expecting to be next, demanded action. Well, they were going to get it.
Last fall Paul, as a Corporal, had participated in the reprisal raid that had burned the tribal town of Griswold. The Sioux had abandoned the place before the Cavalry had arrived, but at least they had sent them a message, even if it was one that the warriors had ignored. The sixty-seven men riding through the snow and ice to confront them again were determined to make sure that they would be unambiguous, this time. They had been on the trail all day, and his cheeks were wind-burned by the cold. The night before had been spent in Gladstone, but tonight they would be camping in the open, which meant that they would have to stop soon.
Sergeant Martin’s chestnut mount, the third horse he had ridden since they had left Winnipeg a week before, stared at him accusingly as he passed the flaming torch close to the gelding’s mane. The ice lodged in its hair melted and ran off. Once Paul was finished with one side of the animal’s body, he gave the same treatment to the other, before brushing the hair clean, and leading the horse around the fire, first in one direction and then the other, to warm and dry him. The other four men in his squad that shared the fire did the same thing, and around and around they went, in the bizarre dance of thawing. Once the horse was dry, Paul picked compacted snow and ice from his hooves, then doled out half a scoop of grain feed followed by an armload of hay they’d brought along for provisions. The animal ate as Paul poured the other half of the scoop of feed into the bucket of snow rapidly melting over the fire. By the time he’d changed into dry clothes and hung his socks near the flames to dry, the porridge was ready. The five men ate quickly, then melted another bucket of snow for their horses to drink. Then another. Then another. It took a lot of melted snow to satisfy a horse’s thirst. At fifteen other fires within their perimeter, other squads all did the same chores.
When they woke, they repeated the routine from the night before, adding to it an inspection and cleaning of their rifles and saddlebags. They made good time that day, and the wind was slower, as they said it locally. The next night they camped again, at the edge of a frozen lake. One of the pack horses lay down as soon as they stopped, and wouldn’t get up. The next morning it was dead, so they butchered the animal and enjoyed a meaty soup before they set out northwards. That afternoon they spotted their first sign of the savages. It was a group of spent brass 30.06 casings in the snow. Someone had shot at something here, maybe a moose, judging by the tracks. They’d gone away hungry. The hunt continued.
It would have been a closer jump to have stayed in Minnedosa their last night. That would have cut a few days off their trip, and more importantly, a few nights in the cold. But Lieutenant Wilkins had felt that they stood a better chance of closing with the Sioux undetected if they stayed off the roads and away from the closest towns as they moved in on them. It took them six days and nights to reach Wasagaming, the only town in Riding Mountain’s former park, on the shore of Clear Lake. The seasonal town showed signs of recent occupation. They were excited to find that the Sioux had been here recently. Since there were hundreds of tourist cabins and cottages empty, Wilkins decided that they would stay there and wait for the hunting or raiding party to return, then surprise them by having occupied their camp in their absence. The men were freezing and bone-tired, so they were grateful for the chance to sleep indoors.
The next day they killed three more packhorses and had a cookout, then broke up furniture in the unoccupied cabins to provide dry and seasoned firewood for the newly occupied ones. After tending to their horse and their guns out of habit, they explored the cabins and the theatre, where the Sioux had left behind grisly trophies. Among these were the snow preserved bodies of two young White girls who had been raped to death. The Lieutenant estimated them to be around eight or nine years old. They matched the descr
iptions of two girls missing from a farmstead south of there. It was a sobering moment. Paul and his buddy Vincent volunteered to help bury them in snow, since the ground was frozen too hard to dig. It would have to do, for now. The other cabins occupied by the Indians were full of war trophies such as jewelry and dresses, strangely, more than food or weapons. Only a few firearms and a few hundred rounds of ammunition were found, much less than Paul had expected from the camp.
Their second night in Wasagaming, the Sioux attacked. Much less stealthy than their ancestors had been, they made so much noise knocking in the doors and shooting through the windows of the first few cabins they came to that all of the Second Lake Winnipeg Cavalry were awake and fighting back in mere minutes. A couple of the first hit cabins were set on fire from the fireplaces by the attackers, but the extra light made them easier targets for the defenders, who picked them off from their windowsills. Cavalrymen from the far side of the occupied cabins were able to saddle and mount their horses, then gallop through the playground and around the visitor’s center to hit the Indians from behind right in the middle of the parking lot. Caught in a withering crossfire, the Sioux hesitated, then most rushed north towards the beach, while a smaller group threw down their weapons and begged for mercy, and some scattered. The Cavalrymen closest to the parking lot shot dead the Sioux attempting to surrender, while the rest dressed and gathered their horses to hunt down the scattered tribesmen. Those of the Second already mounted, led by Lieutenant Wilkins, pursued the Sioux down the hill and onto the beach. Some Indians died there at the frozen lake’s edge. Others died in the enclosure for six tennis courts nearby. A few made it onto the pier and ran out to the marina. Some of these escaped over the ice, but how far they got before the cold claimed them, the conquerors never knew.
Paul had been in the second row of cabins attacked, as his bad luck would have it, so he’d barely had any time to wake up and start shooting. Really he had only seen shadows and silhouettes running every which-away in the night. Most of the shapes he’d been afraid to shoot at, in case they were his own troopers. He did get in on the shooting of the ones who surrendered, though. Vincent burned his arm trying to put out a burning cabin, after the shooting was over. Paul himself was unscathed.
The next morning, a few more Sioux were found hiding in the bottom of a drained swimming pool, and shot. All told, the bodies of forty-nine Indians were collected, all warriors. The rest had escaped. Fourteen Cavalrymen had died, and eight more were injured, mainly from burns. It would count as a victory. The fifty-three survivors burned the bodies of friend and foe alike, but not together. Lieutenant Wilkins decided they should stay there for another few nights, in case any of the Sioux returned. When none did, the Second spent two days burning every structure in the town, to deny the savages any shelter. It only took them four days to get back to Minnedosa, where they were hailed as heroes. Paul didn’t really feel like much of a hero, but he’d never been one before, so who was he to judge?
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile…
Taneisha sat on the banks of the Pontchartrain, enjoying the cooler winter weather. It was nice to fish without sweating, and they were hungrier this time of year, too. Her fish market in Mandeville was doing well, and so long as she paid her taxes to the Chocolate City Crips, she could trade for all kinds of stuff she’d never had before. She already had a new Escalade in her yard and a surround sound audio system in her apartment over the fish market. They said that someday, if that nice honkey preacher had his way, they’d have electricity and gas again, too. That’d be fine, Taneisha was tired of having to go fishing every couple of days because the ones she caught kept getting ripe. Then her customers would start whining, and she’d have to threaten to stab somebody. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
It was a two day walk into New Orleans from her place, so she only went once every couple of months when she needed to trade for things like salt and rice, but Taneisha had heard the Church of the New Dispensation missionaries herself, the last few times she’d pushed her wheelbarrow across the causeway. She hadn’t stayed to listen to them long the first time, because she was a good momma and wouldn’t leave her babies alone for longer than a couple of days at the time. She had plenty of chances to think about what they were preaching on as she rolled the load of bags from Mexican and Cuban traders north, though.
She was able to remember how things were before all the White people left. Things like hospitals and air conditioners and t.v. would be nice to have again, some day. But she didn’t want to get repressed or oppressed or depressed just to get them. About a year ago she had seen a one page, front and back, newspaper all the way from Atlanta, which people said was the capital city of New Africa. Taneisha had never seen anybody from Atlanta, herself, but she knew it was a real place, from before. She was a light skinned girl, her momma had been White and only left her with her Auntie when the neighbors beat her up too many times. That was way before the government had quit. Being light skinned meant that the boys all chased Taneisha and the women all hated her. She didn’t know how things might be in Atlanta, but that’s how it was, in Louisiana. The paper calling for black unity didn’t change that.
The Chocolate City Crips had let the first Church of the New Dispensation missionaries come in out of curiosity. They’d let them stay and continue to preach unmolested because of the bribes they received in food and drugs from them. Now, it wasn’t strange to see White folks dressed in their black church robes walking around everywhere. It used to be that you wouldn’t see a White face in New Orleans. She didn’t know what the world was coming to.
Her first baby daddy, Ray-Ray, had been a local boy who hit her up when she was fourteen. He got drafted into the New African Army when a group of tough looking black soldiers wearing camouflage uniforms and carrying all the same kind of guns had come through and picked up new recruits to help them fight the White folks refusing to give up Gulfport. She’d seen pictures of it one time, and she thought she wouldn’t just give that place up, if it was hers, either. Of course, it seemed to take a lot to get White folks to fight. As she remembered it, most of them just lit out and left their stuff behind. They didn’t have much…what was the word that smart Nation of Islam professor had used in his speech when he stopped to campaign for governor? Oh, yeah, enough…’testicular fortitude’. Taneisha didn’t know exactly what that meant. She hadn’t had a lot of school before it closed down. The words sounded tough, though. She liked them.
Anyway, she finally got a letter from Ray-Ray. The man who came by fixing broken stuff and delivering mail along a circuit route gave it to her, about a year after Ray-Ray had left. Her Auntie helped her read it. It turns out that he had ended up getting put on a bus in Mississippi and being driven all the way to a place called Fort Benning in Georgia. She thought it must be close to Atlanta, since the capital was in Georgia, too. The letter had gone through three fixit man’s circuits before it had made it to her. Imagine that! A bus ride! Of course, she was already pregnant again by then, he had been gone for so long. She hadn’t tried to write back to him, and hadn’t gotten another letter. She figured that he’d got himself killed in one of the big fights they’d had out East where there still some White folks at.
Taneisha’s second baby daddy had been different, he was a real loser that got her drunk on some old vodka he’d looted from somewhere. He’d left as soon as she showed, saying he was going to the state capital in Baton Rouge to get a government job and make a lot of money for his boo. She never heard from his sorry self again. She wasn’t sure exactly who her third baby daddy was, but her baby was so light skinned that he could almost pass. She bet the daddy was that White missionary she’d given a date in trade for telling her about his church. If what he’d told her was true, their territory where different kinds of people lived together would soon be spreading th
is way. Taneisha wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about that. She sure knew that the New African government wouldn’t care for the idea. She didn’t know where they were, these days, either, though.
Pulling out her line, she tightened up the string of catfish and drug them along behind her up the road to her wheelbarrow. They fell in with a wet plop. Taneisha felt good today. Not as good as she had when the missionary man had given her the stuff from the little bag he carried inside his robe, but as good as any sixteen year old had any right to be with three hungry kids and an Auntie at home to feed.
And the people bowed and prayed, to the neon god they’d made And the sign flashed out its warning, in the words that it was forming…
Hope couldn’t get a job without a passport and a visa in England, and without a job she couldn’t eat, so finding a place among the large number of American refugees and expatriates living in the city became a higher priority for her than finding Nigel. For a couple of weeks the money she had left sustained her, but it soon ran out. She had placed ads in newspapers and hired posters to be put up, to find her love. None had panned out, so far. Without revealing her identity, she didn’t know how to proceed. For the first time, she realized how much power and prestige and ease her family association had given her in life, over the last few years. She continued to use an alias and a cover story that had nothing to do with the most powerful man on another continent.
The multiple languages Gerta had taught her made it possible for Hope to get a position working for a group advocating for the rights of displaced Americans with the British parliament, called ‘Americans Abroad’. Because they couldn’t vote and didn’t have much in the way of financial resources, the amount of influence the American expats carried was minimal. But, they did like to present themselves as a bonafide official organization, so Hope found herself becoming a spokesperson for the special interest to non-English speaking newspapers and other media from France, Greater Germany, Switzerland, and the North Italian Republic.