by Billy Roper
The slaves the hated Chinese paid the most for were the pale round eyed ones, especially females, especially if they had different colored hair or eyes. All of the small pockets of such people scattered in and near the home islands had been scooped up long ago. The nearest place he or any of the sailors knew of where they could be found was halfway across the ocean, in Hawaii. It was a strange, wild place, which they rarely visited. The trip was long each way, and it wasn’t easy to catch the White slaves alive. When they could be caught, though, they sold for a nice sum. With one boatload, he could become rich, and make his father proud. Hoji took two.
The trip to Hawaii, the older sailors who had been there and knew the way told him, could be sailed in two weeks, so they packed enough food and water for the trip, and set off eastwards. On the first day out, two of the deckhands on the other converted fishing boat became sick. It began with a wracking cough. One said he was too weak to row, and had trouble breathing. Hoji thought they must have caught the same cold that his father had gotten, probably from the Chinese traders. When he pulled alongside them the next day to ask why they were falling behind, half the crew was down with it. One of the men had died. His body was thrown overboard, into the sea.
By the end of the first week, all but four of the ten man crew in the other ship had died, after bleeding from all of their body openings. One of the sailors in his own complained of a fever, too. Two days later, only two were left in the second boat. Hoji had to make a choice, to either abandon it, or tow it. They were over halfway there, now, and towing it would slow them down too much, so he had his men load the supplies onto their ship, and set the other one adrift. The two men left from the other boat, and three from his own, began to worsen.
When they had been out for eleven days, one of the sick man had begun to regain some strength after drinking more water. Hoji ordered all of the sick to be given as much water as they could drink, to replace what they were messily losing from both ends. They certainly had more than enough to spare, now. Still, three more became sick, and two had died during the night. Another died the next day, leaving Hoji and six others alive, two of them too sick to help sail the ship. This voyage was going so wrong. It was a catastrophe. The gods had frowned on him, because of his arrogance, Hoji told his shrinking crew, and now they would all die because of him. His father would be dishonored, and his family ashamed. The next morning, his face felt hot, and he sweated even before the sun rose over the horizon in front of them. Before it set behind them, though, they could see low islands ahead, with palms. A volcano stood out in the distance.
It took all of the next day for them to sail to where the oldest among them said the best slaves had come from, the White ones. But when they found the right island with its big harbor and city, there were large ships everywhere. Hoji thought that he was hallucinating at first. His mind had been wandering all day. His body shook with the bad cough that all of them but two fought, now. But they all saw it, so it must be true. They were something none of them had seen for what seemed like half a lifetime: American warships! The navy which had died had risen again. Hoji’s crew cried out in despair, thinking that these were ghost ships come to punish them for seeking their people as slaves. The smaller boats buzzing around the harbor were close enough to be real, though. One of them turned toward Hoji’s fishing boat. Grabbing the rudder handle, he steered the boat back eastwards, the only direction not blocked by floating steel monsters. He knew that they could only outrun the patrol boat if they lost interest and turned away. In a few minutes, not hearing the engine grow louder and closer, he dared to look back. Either they hadn’t really seen them, or they had gotten bored and gone elsewhere. There was no pursuit.
As the short crew chased the dawn over the next few days, three more of them died, but the rest seemed to recover. The four survivors gradually stopped losing control of their bodies, then were able to eat and hold some rice down. They pushed their dead friends overboard. The sails had remained tacked in an easterly setting, even as they had lain half-dead. Another night and dawn and they were able to clean the boat. Along with their supplies, they caught some fish to eat, and refilled their water barrels partway during a couple of rainstorms that caught them from behind and drove them on, faster. Many times Hoji thought to turn around, but his shame at having lost one of the family’s ships and letting his father down would not allow him to go back. He would keep going until he made his fortune, and return in triumph, to make his father proud and honor his family’s name. He had no idea that his father and nearly everyone in their village was already dead from their version of the Turkish Flu. The three sailors with him cast glances, but they had no choice. They must obey.
They avoided the little islands that told them they were close to land again. He didn’t want just any land, Hoji wanted a land of riches, a land to conquer. All four were still were fighting a wet cough as an aftereffect of their sickness when they came to the beach. There were no lights in the town above, but plenty of people, even darker than them, came out to see the wondrous site. Food was brought to the four mysterious strangers, and clean water, and clean clothes, because they looked and smelled like demons. A priest came out in black robes and crossed himself, questioning them in Spanish. Hoji sat quietly until a policeman of some kind arrived. He could speak and understand a few words of English, which the sick men haltingly remembered. Just enough to let the village know that they were lost Japanese fishermen.
The policeman was suspicious, and kept asking Hoji if they were from China. The Chinese didn’t seem to be well liked, here. It was decided that he would let them sleep in the city jail for tonight, until the ‘jefe’ of the town could decide what to do with them. The townspeople herded along behind the four men excitedly jabbering as they were walked to the jail. The name ‘Ensenada’ was stenciled on a sign outside the main gate. Inside, they were allowed to use the toilet, then given more water, before being left alone. The four discussed their situation briefly, but decided in the end that they would have to accept whatever tomorrow brought. Hoji was so exhausted that he was almost asleep already when the first guard began coughing, later that night.
I won't forget you baby
Memories slowly fade
I won't forget you baby
And all the plans we made…
The jagged peak of a broken pyramid blocked out the rising moon, casting the sullen river into darkness. Close to the bank, the NAS Nebraska rose to the surface, and poked its head out of the Mississippi. Minutes later a small group of men emerged to inflate a raft topside. Their assignment was to scout the city for hostiles ahead of the Razorback Regiment which would be crossing from West Memphis just before daylight.
Since they had come down out of the hills, the New American militia and the Knights Committee Crusaders who would be carrying out the principle entry over the I-40 bridge had been on high alert. The flat farmland forming the edge of the fertile delta was rich enough to grow crops to feed millions, but most of the blacks in this area had starved over the last five years. Some had migrated south to areas of denser population in New Africa, and been caught up in the tribal warfare there. Even so, they weren’t taking any chances. The first wave of Razorback Regiment volunteers tasked with crossing the river on a barge and holding the far side of the bridge had gone through the nearly empty town of Batesville a week earlier, on horseback. They saw only a few people, all White, in the town, mainly shopkeepers. Still, they were welcomed and cheered as they rode through without stopping. The Crusaders who stopped to meet with the Chief of Police and Mayor two days later in a convoy of trucks weren’t as big of a surprise to the residents, then.
The goal of ‘Operation Graceland’ was to lance the last festering sore in the upper south. The long-awaited E.C.O. (Ethnic Cleansing Operation) of Memphis would not only make Tennessee whole again, it would give New America control of the vital upper Mississippi River. The waterway was crucial for transport from the upper south to and from the midwest. Connecting to the
navigable Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri Rivers, it would further unite the young nation.
Speaker McNabb had visited the New American Coast Guard office which had expanded to take up the sixth and seventh floors of the former Federal building in St. Louis, personally. As a department of the Unified Command, it was technically under General Harrison’s direction, but the Commander-inChief’s failing health over the last few months had required John to devote more and more time to defense matters. The doctors had diagnosed Harrison with prostate cancer, and were running tests to determine how far it had spread. The General was such a hero to the country he had helped to create that in every school classroom in New America, children began their day by saying the new pledge of allegiance, singing the new anthem ‘America The Beautiful’, and praying for General Harrison. It was in the hands of God, and the doctors.
That new pledge, written by Carolyn and introduced by her to the Old Courthouse press corps during the second year of the Provisional Government, stated: “I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the Republic of New America, and to the White nation for which it stands, united, under God, of free will, for the future of our people above all.”
The Speaker’s official meeting at the Coast Guard office had been brief and perfunctory. This was a courtesy, him going to them rather than summoning the Nebraska’s Commander to his office at the O.C.. It showed that the man who headed up the department consisting of his submarine, four large pre-collapse Coast Guard Cutters that had made their way upriver from the Gulf past New African ports, five motor life boats, and eight Defender class response boats was more than just a subordinate, and they were more than just river patrollers. The NACG were an equal partner in the Unified Command, where rivalries between the former branches still caused resentment, from time to time. Even though the remainder of their fleet patrolling from Minneapolis as well as Pittsburgh and Cincinnati (through the Ohio) all the way to the capital consisted of commandeered and converted river yachts and cruisers, they kept the inland waterways safe. The Coast Guard’s involvement in ‘Operation Graceland’ was crucial, and involved a motor life boat crew escorting a tug boat downriver with a barge that would land on the west bank, load fifty mounted infantry and their mounts, and ferry them across to the east bank and offload them, as quickly and quietly as possible. In the dark, without their running lights. If that weren’t enough, the Nebraska would be inserting a forward recon team to precede the primary mission, then withdrawing them after the city was secured. Piece of cake.
Jonesboro had been a more diverse town before Cinco Day, and when the wheels started to fly off of multiracial democracy, the city fathers had attempted to promote tolerance and diversity with a peace vigil. While much of Memphis demonstrated further south and the surviving Whites fled their former neighbors, much smaller flames had been struck in Jonesboro for a candlelit march. They had even carried a coffin labeled ‘racism’ downtown to a city lot, and ceremonially buried it, with much prayer and music and shucking and jiving. That had been a half decade ago. When the Razorback Regiment’s horses clomped through the debris-filled streets of the small city, the dismembered townspeople’s skeletons from the race riots which had followed were still intermingled with the trash in the gutters. Several of the militiamen took off their hats out of respect, while others solemnly spit in disgust. They all rode on.
Barely far enough behind them not to spook the horses, the Crusaders turned south onto I-55, only slowing when they neared the rendezvous point. They had spotted their first blacks in Marked Tree, just a few dark scarecrows in rags who had ran from the sound of their engines. When they entered West Memphis, on the Arkansas side of the river, more of them could be seen, peering in amazement as they passed. Sitting in the back of a pickup slowly swinging his AK variant to cover the gaping blacks, Squire Wilson Haynes thought that it was like that cargo cult movie, about the gods being crazy. He doubted that these people, to use a generous term, had seen a running car, or a White person, in years. Most of them hadn’t seen a shower in that time, either, by the look and smell of things.
There were three companies of Crusaders in the convoy of fifty vehicles, which included pickup trucks, National Guard troop carriers, a few APCs, and many SUVs, as well as New American Humvees. The 278 men were hardened from fighting the rampaging Indians in Oklahoma, and ready for new sport. Once the opposite end of the bridge was secured, they would go across I-40 on foot. It would have been nice to just cruise in, but every bridge out of the city was still clogged with the dead cars from the fatal traffic jam that had been caused by fleeing Whites attempting to get out of town at the last minute.
While the Razorback Regiment coaxed their skittish horses onto the barge moored under the Henando De Soto bridge, the Crusaders left their vehicles with a platoon to guard them at Dacus Lake, and continued on foot. For over two miles, they walked single-file, in between and sometimes crawling over cars that were, in many cases, the tombs for the refugees who had been trapped when the black rioters had blocked the offramps at the end of the bridge and begun throwing gasoline bombs into the roadway. Wilson was glad that the smell was long gone, but it still was spooky. As he had first started scraping by between the burnt out wrecks, he had determined to pay respect to the dead by counting the remains he could see as he passed. In his lifetime in the Ozarks, he had never seen such a sight. In some places the fire had made it hard to tell, or whole families were jumbled and melted together in a tangle. There were windows kicked out when the concrete walls had been too close, and doors cracked open where they hadn’t been. Piles of shoes and old cell phones showed where a number of the refugees had decided to jump from the bridge, instead of burning alive. The Squire doubted many had survived the fall or the swim a half mile to shore, or what awaited them on the bank, if they did.
A tug boat, covered by the machine gun crew and spotters on board the nearby Coast Guard motor life boat, pulled the barge away from the concrete bank below. The Crusaders could hear the thrum of the straining engine and the splash of water not quite masking the nervous whinnies of frightened horses. The Forward Recon Team from the Nebraska, just upriver, established sniper positions amid the broken glass sheets of the pyramid, which a crashing plane had plowed into during the collapse. Haynes finally lost count of the bodies he passed in their scorched sepulchers. He had been at 314, last he noticed. He couldn’t understand why so many had waited so long to get out of the majority nonWhite city. Hadn’t they seen the news? Didn’t they know what was coming? Why were they so apathetic, so complacent? Because they hadn’t listened, and waited too long, it had cost them their lives, and the lives of their families, along with them. They had woken up after the break up, and found themselves on the wrong side of the front lines, and it had been their own damn fault.
Even without any lights onboard the barge or the tug, Wilson could faintly see it heading diagonally across the river in the moonlight. It would land, according to plan, at the park on Mud Island. The sound of its passing faded. Suddenly, a silent hand gesture command was passed down the line from Andrew, the Crusaders’ young commander in the front. Apparently they had run into something which hadn’t been included in the detailed aerial photographs and reports from Lambert’s flyovers. Wilson waited, pushing his longish brown hair back under his cap. After a few moments, the line began snaking forward again, around and in between and over the wreckage, like a bloated chicken snake, he thought. Halfway across, after he had passed the Tennessee state line marker in the middle of the bridge, the fire damage petered out. Here, all of the doors were open, and all of the cars empty. The Squire was relieved by this until he came downhill to the east side of the bridge, and found what had caused the delay. Massed along the two onramps on either side and from N. Front Street to N. Second, the asphalt was scattered with bleached bones, many of them still in rags. It had been a massacre.
Once they had gotten off the barge at Mud Island and calmed their horses, the Razorback Regiment had experienced the same problem getting
off the island up its narrow access walk. The mounts spooked at the sounds of skulls and ribcages crushing underneath their hooves, and the men did, too. Before the Crusaders’ point had reached the city, though, the mounted infantry fanned out past the Crowne Plaza and checked out the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, where they had seen fires burning on some lower floors. By the time they arrived, however, the inhabitants had scattered, leaving their miserable possessions behind. There were clear indications of cannibalism around the cookfires.
Despite the obvious signs of recent occupation, no hostiles were encountered throughout the entire following day. Wilson seemed to have been right, there did seem to be cargo cults which had piled heaps of jewelry and stacks of flatscreen tvs into alters on various street corners. Now, though, those corners were the territory of packs of wild dogs which watched the advance of the mounted infantry with hungry eyes. It was simply too large a city for a force their size to sweep completely, but at the end of the first full day in Memphis encampments were established in Morris, Greenlaw, and Winchester Parks, and all of the city west of those areas declared clear zones.
Over the next two days, the Forward Recon Team established an overwatch position on the roof of a luxury hotel downtown which used to feature ducks coming down on the elevator to swim in a fountain in the thoroughly looted lobby. The ducks had probably been eaten long ago. ‘Operation Graceland’s first casualty came on day three, just a few blocks away. A large herd of blacks moving north from Martin Luther King, Jr., Avenue ambushed a Razorback Regiment patrol liberating historical artifacts from the Sun Records Studio museum. These were the first encountered face to face, since the E.C.O. had begun. The attack by three dozen or so was broken up by a magnificent mounted charge which drove the blacks back down to Beale Street, but not before one trooper was struck in the left hip by a metal spear thrown from behind the hulk of a Cadillac in the intersection. His injury wasn’t immediately life threatening, and roughly half the attacking force were put down before they vanished into the alleyways and side streets beyond further pursuit. The same unit of Razorbacks secured the iconic statue of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest just down Union Ave. that same day, but it had been toppled and defaced.