by Billy Roper
The East River Mountain checkpoint aside, Burkesson and Warren were partners in controlling the surrounding small towns of Princeton and Rocky Gap, on either end. They, like the West Virginia Guard and the Rebel Brigade Knights, were a part of the Unified Command of New America, but they also held their private fiefdoms like neofeudal warlords. That was the only way that the larger cities of Lynchburg and Roanoke had been ethnically cleansed of their New African citizens and tribal warriors, just by sheer force of arms. Every White family that was liberated from the yoke of New African oppression in Virginia became eternally grateful, and indebted to the Deerhunters. For now, The Big O held Highway 29 as the North-South boundary of the cleansed New American domain. When they pushed further towards Richmond and the huge numbers of blacks which starvation and inter-tribal warfare had not killed off, there, Burkesson knew that they would need more fighters. That was why he was recruiting young men as warriors from the farms and villages under his control. Earl had set up a basic training school in the tunnels for them, and every few weeks a new class of twenty or thirty was ready to join the ranks of the Deerhunters, and carry the Griffin forward.
Burkesson’s dream was to be the first New American commander to liberate an Atlantic port, and so break the nation’s dependence on the St. Lawrence Seaway route. It would sure be good not to have to play so nice with those frogs up in Quebec. The large red-bearded Viking had his eye on Norfolk. It might take a while, but if Earl Warren kept training the troops for him, Burkesson knew it was just a matter of time until he did on this end of the continent what the Mormons had done on the other end, and driven all the way to sea.
Sistine smile, you'll never know the trap it's set and if you did you'll never look into its eyes…
It was on a hot Tuesday afternoon, just after the fifth anniversary of Cinco Day, when Ben overheard two of his students talking about a ‘final solution to the Muslim problem’. The tone and the phrasing sent chills up his spine. Rosenfeldt didn’t consider them to be the brightest kids in his class, but they probably didn’t care as much about his business course as they did biology and chemistry, based on their schedules. They had lingered after class was over, and were either too enthralled with the notes they were making, adding to a diagram of protein bonds, or they just didn’t care if he overheard them.
The former New Yorker knew that a few thousand Russian Jews, booted out by the ultra-nationalists after they had called for the New American mercenary legions to be arrested rather than allowed to leave, had arrived in Haifa over the last couple of months. They were still squawking about how Ferguson took orders from anti-Semites long after the point became moot, so they were deported to what was left of Israel. A handful of them had begun doing genetic research there at Haifa University, so he assumed they had done similar work in Russia. “Hit zikh, du host zikh shoyn eyn mol opgebrit!” he said to the two young men, but with a smile to take the sting off of it.
“This time we have the three most brilliant minds in the Russian Academy of Science on our side.” Yitzak answered him, in Hebrew. “The stupid Slavs didn’t know what gems they were throwing away!”
“They could have taken care of their border problems themselves if they would only have let Dr. Azarov and Dr. Magen have a free rein,” the second one, Moshe, added. “ Especially with Professor Rabinovich’s membrane sheath for the stability of the cell nuclei…” Ben nodded as if he understood, but science was really not his thing. Besides, if he missed his bus, he would have to wait an hour before the next one ran south to Atlit. He told the boys ‘Shalom!’ and gathered up his books.
The next day as he pulled weeds in the communal garden and watered the compost piles of recycled waste, Ben thought about what they had said. When he got back to the Chateau Pelerin where he shared the tower with a cat to keep the mice down, and few others, he searched the castle until he found an old book he had remembered seeing among his eclectic collection. It was a banned book here, but ‘The Other Side of Deception’, when he finally found it, did have a passage about the Nes Tsiona biological warfare laboratory. The head of the science department had told him openly over lunch one day that he used to work there, but it hadn’t clicked. They had used captured Palestinians and Iraqis to isolate Arab genetic sequences so that a virus could be designed specifically to target that population group. He tried to understand what he was reading, but he learned just enough to be able to talk about it intelligently.
As his Thursday business class ended, he casually walked up to Moshe and asked him, “So, let me guess… glycoprotein gp120?” The cryptic sounding question elicited a grin and nod from the student.
“Yes, and a ‘stealth’ antigenic determinant to enable the biological agent to breach the host immune defenses.” Moshe said, proudly. Ben whistled appreciatively, but nearly threw up, a little bit, in his mouth.
Rosenfeldt couldn’t think of anyone he could trust who would listen to him. After what the rump state of Israel had been through, most of the remaining Jews would consider what the virologists were planning a great idea, he imagined. They had only stopped slinging nukes because they had run out of them, after all. What was going to happen next could make what had happened to Beirut, Damascus, Cairo, Tripoli, and Amman look kind. He felt a great weight of dread. This was the kind of thing he wished he didn’t know. It was something, though, that couldn’t be forgotten or unlearned.
As the days passed and turned into weeks, he began to think that maybe the biological warfare work had simply been theoretical, or wish-fulfillment fantasy. Perhaps cooler heads had prevailed. Then one day a ‘smog alert’ was announced for the strip of coast still in Jewish hands. That was a first. Citizens were advised to remain indoors until a low pressure inversion moved off into the Mediterranean. The clear blue sky, looking like it always did in this part of the world, gave the lie to the government’s warning.
The bad thing about having such a small country was that it was impossible to hide it when your guided missile cruisers launched their racks northeast and southeast in great plume-trailing arcs. Dozens of them. Ben knew what they meant. He could only pray against his own people, that their plan failed, that the bioweapons didn’t work. The wait for confirmation was brief. In days, the BBC reported a virulent influenza strain was ravaging Baghdad, and had sickened thousands. Before the Islamic State could enact a regional quarantine, it had jumped to Basrah. Within days it showed up almost simultaneously in Homs, Aleppo, and Adana. Down-sized Israel, with its ten mile wide no man’s land buffer zone at the fringe of their borders in every direction, sat back and watched. The disease destroyed the immune system like latter-stage HIV, and hit the respiratory system like an enterovirus, but affected the internal organs of victims like Ebola. By the time it manifested in Mosul and Arbil, it was clear that this was an airborne pathogen, and had a 90% mortality rate.
Russia shut down its new borders, as did Iran, but ten thousand were dead in Tehran in a week. Greece and Bulgaria put tanks on their frontiers with the Islamic State, and all European airports shut down. Travel restrictions went into place across Eurasia. Somehow the genetic indicator for the specific Arab genome mutated in the slums of Karachi, and became more generalized, less specific and recessive in its targeting. Any genetic haploid group X hosts, suddenly, would do. That meant that anyone in the world with any Asiatic ancestry was susceptible…including East Indians, Chinese…and Ashkenazi Jews. Vi me bet zikh ois, azoi darf men shlofen.
And in the streets the children screamed The lovers cried and the poets dreamed But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken…
The Russian Ambassador knocked hesitantly on John’s outer office door. Sergei Sergeivich Krispov had been up for nearly three days and nights, monitoring reports from home. All of the best doctors from St. Petersburg to Kazan were compiling their field research and statistics from the outbreaks in Saratov and Omsk. He welcomed being summoned to a conference with the New American Speaker on the situation as a break
from the grim numerical horror.
The newest strain of the Turkish Flu which was virulent in the southern and far eastern reaches of the Russian Federation seemed to only be affecting those with Haplogroup M, an East Eurasian admixture, representing another mutation of the virus. Of the Eastern Slavs, this only meant that 2.2% of the population was susceptible to infection. The original virus only affected 9/1228 samples (0.7% of the nation’s population) which fell into haplogroups C, Q, and R2 that were specific to East and South Asian populations. By his calculations, that collectively amounted to almost 3% of the Federation population.
The other East Slavs in Belorussia and the Ukraine were reporting similar infection rates, but without the higher East Eurasian and Asian population groups that Russia had in the Stans and other border countries under their control or influence. They were working fast in Kiev, too. Sergei Sergeivich was not concerned with their problems, right now. According to the State Health Ministry in Moscow, at the current Turkish Flu mortality rate of 70-80% with modern medical treatment, Russia anticipated losing 3,432,000 of its citizens. Nothing compared to what North America or even China or India had suffered over the last decade, but devastating, nonetheless. ‘Well,’ he thought wryly as Kip buzzed him in, at least we will finally solve the controversy of how many Russians, and how many Slavs, for that matter, have a Mongol in his family tree’.
As John told the Russian Ambassador, the growing global health crisis had forced him to make nominating a Surgeon General to a Cabinet level position in his administration a priority. With five years left to go under the Provisional Government, it was nearly certain that the Turkish Flu would find its way to the continent before a new government would be elected. Seeing to it that everything that could be done was done in way of preparation for the inevitable was clearly his responsibility. According to Sergei, right now that meant developing nonantibiotic prophylaxis, anticipating mutant disease factors, and stockpiling oral electrolyte replacements, bronchodilators, and asthma medications such as albuterol. He mentioned that some success had been achieved with good old fashioned tetracycline, depending on how badly the host’s immune system had been degraded by the virus.
“Here, we only anticipate having to worry about those of our citizens who do have a real, rather than imagined or mythical, Native American admixture,” McNabb told the Russian Ambassador. “Realistically, that’s maybe two percent of our population, or less. We’ve begun mandatory D.N.A. testing of all of our national and state leaders and military officers, just to be safe.”
“So that none of your command and control is compromised when the Turkish Flu arrives, da?” Sergei asked. Kip had joined them for the discussion, a glass of water in hand.
“Exactly. They’ll be removed from their position, as a safeguard, if the D.N.A. test results warrant it. We will call it ‘proactive triage’. Anyone who starts coughing and has a fever is a carrier, but only to those who aren’t of wholly European ancestry. In fact, if the future vectors of mutation follow the current progressions, potentially the entire Mexican population with an Asiatic admixture would be affected. That’d be upwards of ninety percent of their people.” John commented, not sounding very concerned.
“And,” Kip added, “not just in Aztlan’s territory, but throughout Central and South America, too.”
Both of the other men nodded thoughtfully. “We know what it will do to our remaining American Indians, they’ll practically be extinct,” John said. “And the Eskimos, Inuit, whatever, too. But does your government’s research predict anything about any effect of the virus on Mediterranean populations?”
“Nyet, this has not been a priority for us,” Sergei answered. “But the North Italian Republic is undertaking some highly motivated research into that potentiality as we speak.”
“I bet they are,” Kip remarked. “What are the casualty rates looking like this morning?”
“Massive. The London Times and Le Temp give current losses at over twenty million in Iran, thirty million in the Islamic State, and ten million each in Pakistan and China and India…all climbing by the hour. Tens of thousands dead in the Stans, and thousands already in Russia, itself.” John quoted. Sergei cursed bitterly in Russian, shaking his head in a way that made his long moustache flop.
“What we’d like to know, if you know, is whether it’s true that this…Turkish Flu…looks to have been created in a lab.” Kip asked Sergei. The younger man ran his hand through his shortcropped hair in frustration at the idea. “Was it militarized?”
“From what our virologists can determine, da, this is so. If we could find the original strain before the mutations, the patient zero, they call this, then we could know for sure. But, our best people believe it,” the tired Ambassador confirmed.
“So, the next question must be, who could and would do such a thing?” Kip asked.
John took off his glasses and raised them up to the light, before pulling a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiping the lenses free of dust. “Quo Vadis?, always. Who benefits? Who had motive?”
Kip and Sergei looked at each other. They were both were thinking the same thing. Neither of them wanted to be the first to say it out loud. “If you can prove this thing, what would you do?” Sergei asked.
“I don’t know,” the Speaker replied, putting his glasses back over his ears. “Probably send them a thank-younote. On the tip of an ICBM.” Sergei nodded, seriously.
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking. Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older. Shorter of breath and one day closer to death…
In anticipation of the arrival of the Turkish Flu, Deseret began finishing up the deportation of the last of their American Indian subjects from their territories. The Utes and Paiutes had been moved out, one way or the other, the first year after Cinco Day, to make room for newly arriving Saints from all corners of North America. The Navajo and Shoshone hadn’t been far behind. But now that the Mexicans had retreated from west- central Arizona, Kelly had to help coordinate the relocation of the Apaches, who were not as domesticated as she might have preferred.
Part of her job (in addition to spying on her boyfriend and betraying his trust, her brain screamed at her constantly) was forwarding intercepted communications by and to other factions and nations to the appropriate internal LDS governmental division. Usually, that meant the Department of Public Safety, but an item channeled to the Bureau of Displaced and Missing Persons caught her eye. As Kelly read the transcripts, her breath got short and her eyes began to water. She had almost stopped thinking about her sister. It had seemed stupid to keep Karen in her mind. Kelly had thought that she’d moved on. But if this was true, the odds were almost too certain. Karen was alive. Somehow, she had made it. Kelly almost gave thanks in prayer, but stopped self-consciously, then chided herself in annoyance and went ahead and did it, anyway. She had good reason.
Kelly felt like she had to tell somebody. As she went from office to office, she ended up telling everybody. In the aftermath of Cinco Day and the breakup, or the starving times which followed, they had all lost track of a friend or family member. The whole building shared in her celebration. She called Jimmy and told him, interrupting a meeting, but she didn’t care, and neither did he, once he heard what it was about. The New American Ambassador to Deseret was the next to be called. Although he was cautious about making any promises, he said that he would do his best to get word to the legion in California that one of the rescued prisoners had a surviving family member willing to sponsor her return. Kelly then phoned her liaison with the Department of Public Safety, a woman she had trained to fill her old position. She asked her to have the local Deseret Gull commander in L.A. get in touch with the legion as soon as was feasible, to arrange Karen’s transfer to LDS territory.
She couldn’t wait to tell Josh. He would be so happy for her, too. Thinking of him and his sincere love for her (there, she had said it, the
“L” word!) made her feel guilty for a second. It wasn’t enough to overshadow her hope and joy, though. Not even close.
Come on baby, light my fire Try to set the night on fire…
Just a couple of years ago, slaving had been a dangerous but profitable occupation. His father had proven that it was an honorable way to make a living. Even losing a crew to the savage Hawaiian cannibals had only cut into the corporation’s profit margin temporarily. That was why, as the eldest son, Hoji Kiramitsu was chosen to be trained in the family business. The Chinese occupation had dwindled away from the home islands as their power faded, then surged again. As the Spring had brought the blossoms back to the trees, so did the ships bring more Chinese from the mainland back to Japan. They were flush with victory from their conquest of Korea, and eager to reestablish themselves on Hokkaido. So many of the village had died from hunger since their first invasion years ago that there was little left to take. Only two businesses survived, a fishing company and his family’s import/export venture. Even so, they had diversified into human cargo early on.
The returning Chinese took over the fishing off the coast, to feed themselves, which ruined the other family owned business attempting that. The invaders travelled back and forth from the mainland to the islands, buying the slaves Hoji’s father provided them from his crew’s voyages and taking them back to use as entertainment or novelty servants. On their last visit, one of them had been rudely coughing during the negotiations. After the slaves were loaded, his father complained of feeling ill, and went to lie down. By the next morning, he was very sick, and choking. Hoji ordered a slave to make him some food, then went to select a crew from his father’s sailors. It was time for him to show that he could lead the family business.