The Hasten the Day Trilogy

by Billy Roper

  Dr. Neiman, a professor of classical literature, was particularly fond of walks by the lake at Sabia park, but the gangs fought over the water there as order receded. One by one, his colleagues left, as well. They urged him to give it up and leave the city with them. Classes would not resume, they declared. The chubby German scholar refused. Very few students remained, either. From time to time he would see one, or two, out during the day, or the light of small fires across campus at night. Soon he had become confined to the squat three storied rectangle of the biblioteca itself. The advantage this gave him was a panoramic view of the open grassy area of campus, and a command of the high ground.

  His immediate problem was food and water. The most dangerous part of his life consisted of dragging a metal book cart down two flights of stairs after the electricity and water failed, then across to the cafeteria to load up on the canned food and beverages there, then to drag it back to the library and back up the stairs. Aside from that, he took the chance to catch up on his reading during the daytime, like the character in the old ‘Twilight Zone’ episode about time stopping that he had watched overdubbed into Portuguese as a child. At night he sat and listened for the feared breaking of glass or footsteps on the stairs. He had blocked all of the stairwells but one with microfiche readers and computer monitors and romance novels and other trash. That idea had come from another overdubbed memory, a movie about Zombies in London. He only had to guard the one entryway, now. Sometime during the third week of his solitary watch, he saw a group of urchins watching him ‘grocery shop’ in the cafeteria’s storeroom. He adjusted his rifle on its sling so they could see it. None of them appeared to be armed. They went their way without coming close to him.

  It surprised him when, a week later, one of them stepped out from between two buildings in front of him on his way to dump his latrine bucket. ‘That’s what I get for establishing a schedule’, he thought in dismay. Before he could swing his rifle around to fire, the teenaged Mestizo boy in filthy soccer shorts stepped forward, to nearly within reach. Dr. Neiman threw the bucket full of waste directly into the boy’s face, before turning and running as fast as he could waddle back up the stairs.

  The next morning, the half-Indian teenager and three others were outside the front entrance yelling up at him in English, then in German. They were educated, then, not street orphans, he noted. Oscar answered them back from the window in Portuguese, their native language. They wanted to talk.

  That was how the gang of teens became his personal butlers, as he thought of them, bringing him food and water from the cafeteria and further afield when the stores there ran out. In exchange, he kept watch over that area of the University campus with his rifle, and made sure that no other gang took the supplies they had stashed there while they were out foraging. It was a good symbiotic relationship, and worked well for him until the Argentinian Republic’s Nuevo Granaderos cavalry unit rode into the city, a month later. In the meantime, he had been tutoring the boys at night in Homer and Herodotus and Plato. The boy he had soaked, Jaime, endured the jokes and jibes of his peers over the dousing incident and became his star pupil. They all disappeared when the Argentines arrived, though, scattering into the city. It was kind of a bittersweet day for the Professor. The Granaderos made him leave his beloved books behind and go with them. He cried as they led him away.

  Almost 4,400 miles northwest of Dr. Neiman’s mildewing book hoard, the megalopolis of Mexico City had been reduced from 14 million to 1,150,000 by the virus, then further by violence as society fell apart. The millions of unburied dead and the lack of any health services or sanitation had brought on dysentery, cholera, and e.coli, killing thousands. Such a large number of rotting corpses produced decompositional gases alone which rendered the air in the city toxic from the ground to two or three stories in height. There had been roughly 200,000 Mexicans of wholly European ancestry in the city when the first cases of the Turkish Flu were diagnosed there. As elsewhere, half of them fled into the countryside before the road and rail systems became overwhelmed and the city shut in on itself. A month later, after the riots and attacks by the barrios of hungry frightened Mestizos and the fewer Indios who were immune to the virus, a quarter of them remained. In time they retook the city, buried the dead, and created a new society based on salvage and plunder of the dead zones. The surviving immunes were slaughtered wholesale. Quetzalcoatl had finally returned, and he was not happy.

  Halfway around the world, the boots of the Golden Dawn’s Spartan Brigade rang on the cool marble steps of the Hagia Sophia. The Greek armored column had pushed the surviving Turks out of Istanbul, and begun securing historical sites and museums. This place was at the top of their list. The ancient former Orthodox Cathedral, like many public buildings and mosques, had been filled with the sick and the dying as stricken virus victims prayed for salvation. In this region, fewer than three in ten had been granted it. The Greek population, like that of Italy and other Mediterranean European populations, was largely unaffected by the virus. That had answered the question in so many minds for so long. However, here where it had been named, the bodies of Turkish Flu casualties had taken weeks to desiccate, before entry into the cities was possible. The cleanup would take years.

  Sweet dreams are made of these Who am I to disagree?

  The New American Ambassador to Deseret could only fit one secretary and a couple of guards in the remodeled café a block off the capitol’s main drag. Generally, that was all he ever needed, of either. The black uniformed secret service looked menacing, but never saw any action, and the only action his secretary saw was in his suite after hours. Still, Hugh Jorgan was a pragmatic man. He knew when to be serious. The sealed envelope delivered by secret service courier directly to him as soon as the diplomatic package arrive on the inbound flight from St. Louis practically exuded seriousness. It was real cloak and dagger stuff, the kind of excitement he’d never seen at the Old Courthouse. Inside the envelope was another, and inside it was a microcassette tape player with a recorded microcassette tape inside, and a brief note. The letter was for him, and it was signed by the Speaker himself.

  Kelly had spent three days off of work, plus the weekend, helping Karen get settled into her apartment. She had thought it best that they stay together for a while. Josh knew that meant less couple time, but he understood. Besides, he was busy helping the Republic of Texas absorb the areas formerly held by the Nortenos, and establish repopulation colonies there. He was flying back and forth from Salt Lake to Brownsville and El Paso three times a week, here a minute then gone again. There was a major bone of contention emerging between the Church and Texas over Albuquerque and its salvageable infrastructure. Both nations wanted it. Officially, both nations claimed it. Republic of Texas mounted infantry had occupied it first, but Prophet Rammell had not rescinded Deseret’s claim. Tensions were running high. To defuse things diplomatically, President Bellefont had offered to come to Salt Lake to discuss the future of the ghost city with the Council of Fifty.

  The impending high level visit made things even more stressful for the Department of Public Safety, which served as both a state department and internal security division, for the LDS. Jimmy was worried about Mormon Fundamentalists who had already begun settling in New Mexico attempting to disrupt the negotiations. Kelly had acquired several piles of dossier files on her desk while she had been out, to assign investigators to. But at least Karen was rested and had begun to emerge a bit from her nervous, brittle shell. She even had run down on the constant chatter she had nearly driven Kelly crazy with, the first couple of days after she’d made it back.

  Dividing up the dossiers into two stacks, mentally marked ‘nutjob’ and ‘fruitcake’, Kelly sighed out loud as the phone buzzed. Her secretary told her that Ambassador Jorgan was there to see her. Great. Had he made an appointment while she was out, or was this a drop-in, unannounced, kind of informal visit? Probably St. Louis wanted to make sure they weren’t left out of the loop as two of the three largest nations they s
hared the continent with made nice. She told Steffie “Okay, I can give him five minutes. Send him in.”

  Hugh Jorgan walked in like a guilty kid being sent to the principal’s office for any one of several unnamed offenses. Kelly was a shrewd reader of body language, and the Ambassador definitely didn’t look like he knew what he was doing there. He did have a mission, though, that was clear. “How can I help you, today, Ambassador? Kelly asked politely, smiling.

  The tall, ruggedly handsome man looked like he was trying to put on a brave front. “Ms. Johansen, I have been directed to play a recording for you. I am told that it is a top secret message from the highest levels of my government, intended directly, specifically, and solely for you.”

  “Wow, that sounds pretty mysterious. Do I need my secret decoder ring to decipher it?” she joked.

  “All I know is that my orders were clear. I’m to play the recording once, then leave with it…then to destroy all traces of it.” He didn’t look like he was joking. Hugh Jorgan, according to their monitoring of him, wasn’t smart enough to carry off a prank.

  Kelly walked to the door and closed it, sha king her head at Steffie’s gaze of disapproval. “Okay, Mr. Ambassador, you’d better let me hear it,” she said.

  The microcassette recorder clicked and whirred, then emitted three beeps and a longer tone. The voice which followed the tone was instantly familiar from five years earlier, when she had heard it every day for months as her interrogation progressed, then peaked, and subsided. For a while it had been her only human contact, a voice she had craved when it was absent and yearned for after it left her. The voice of Speaker John McNabb was calming, soothing, quietening, even as it just spoke her name, over and over, she lost count of how many times. Jorgan stood and stared at her changing facial expressions as he extended the microcassette recorder towards her as instructed. Kelly’s face had relaxed, the lines of worry and suspicion erasing, and the corners of her mouth drooped out of that perpetual sarcastic smirk. A long tone sounded again, three of them, in a sequence, lasting three seconds each. The New American leader’s voice continued: “Kelly, the time has come to complete the circle. Sink back into your memory of our time together. Remember what was forgotten. Sink back into your memory of our time together. Remember what was forgotten. Complete the circle, Kelly. Complete the circle.” Three series of three beeps followed. Then the tape shut off.

  The Head of the Deseret Department of Public Safety took a step backwards until the heels of her shoes hit the wall, then turned to her right and sat heavily in her chair. Hugh searched for something to say, then waited for her to say something, but she just sat as mute as stone, with silent tears running down her cheeks. Remembering his orders, the Ambassador pocketed the player, then turned and opened the door and left. He had no idea what THAT was about, but it sure had been weird. All he knew was, there were some things he was better off not knowing. Ignorance was bliss.

  Steffie was equally unsure of what had happened behind the closed doors, or why her boss was crying, but she had been an emotional wreck since her sister had shown up. That was understandable. Since the New Americans had been the ones who found her, maybe the Ambassador had come to tell Kelly something personal about Karen’s time in captivity. That would explain the crying, and now the feverish work as the Director dug through the persons of interest dossiers as if looking for the perfect one.

  ‘A patsy, that’s what’s needed, an obvious, easy pick, a Lee Harvey Oswald for the 21st century..or a bunch of them, harder to pinpoint’, Kelly thought. Too bad the meeting with the Texican President wasn’t going to happen in Dallas.

  Perry Bellefont had decided that rather than take a risk and having all of their eggs in one basket, General Scott Hampton would stay behind and supervise the reactivation of both bases in El Paso to defend the colony there. Instead of his usual tag-team partner, the President would take his Secretary of State, Kenny Wiggins, with him to count the wives in Salt Lake. Wiggins was a hard-nosed bruiser who would show the Mormon cultists who was the big dog. The normal retinue of F-16 escorts for his Presidential Lear should impress the polygamists, too, Perry thought.

  On the night before they were to leave, his wife couldn’t sleep. She had suffered from bad dreams for a week, and warned him to be careful on his trip. When he got back, he’d have to make a point to spend more time with her, she obviously was feeling lonely and neglected. He kissed her forehead and gave her a hug as he climbed aboard the jet for the weeklong conference to decide the fate of Albuquerque.

  Bellefont couldn’t care less about the wretched ghost city, personally. The Mormons wanted it worse than he did. But, it was the principle of the thing that mattered. Nobody dictated terms to the Republic of Texas. Not anybody. Besides, it would set a bad precedent. Next, the New Americans would be wanting Oklahoma City, or something. Anyway, Texas had gotten there first, and that was all there was to it.

  For three days after the welcome ceremony and state dinner and performance by the Tabernacle Choir in his honor, closing with “The Eyes of Texas”, the negotiations went back and forth. They remained barely cordial, but the hostility was more subdued when Kenny Wiggins was out of the room. Perry let the Secretary of State play bad cop to his good cop, a role he preferred. He was glad Kenny smoked a lot when he was nervous and had to go hide outside from the anti-tobacco Mormons. It gave him a chance to smooth over some ruffled feathers.

  The protesters lining the Farnsworth Promenade circle around the capitol building were getting unruly. Why they were there at all was a mystery to Jimmy. Things had been going so well for Deseret on all fronts, that all Saints should be rejoicing. This bunch, though, was fired up. Holding signs that said “Open The East” and “Missions to Moriarty”, they sang hymns and ranted and chanted, all day long. He had his best D.P.S. plainclothes officers sprinkled among them, to keep an eye out for any violent malcontents among the bearded fundamentalists. “What do we want?” “Albuquerque!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” went back and forth at the top of their lungs.

  Kelly had barely spoken with Josh since the negotiation had begun, leaving him wondering what he had done wrong. Maybe it was Karen being back, making Kelly hate all men after what had happened to her sister. Or maybe she was acting professional for her boss during the dignitaries’ visit. They had sat across from each other, but since the opening ceremony neither of them had been asked a question. The negotiations had taken place between Prophet Rammell himself and President Bellefont. The big Secretary of State from his nation had done a lot of the hardball negotiating, but right now he was out on his umpteenth smoke break of the day. A dozen diplomats and secretaries bunched around the conference table and carried on without him. In addition to President Bellefont and Prophet Rammell and himself as the Ambassador of the Republic of Texas to Deseret, there was Kelly as Director of the D.P.S. and, when he was in the room, Secretary of State Kenny Wiggins. Then, the Ambassador from New America to Deseret was included as a diplomatic courtesy. He had spent the last two days ogling Kelly in a way that made Josh want to punch him in the nose, especially given his reputation and Kelly’s silent treatment of the Texican, lately. Each side had a secretary here in the conference room off of what used to be the Governor’s office, before that job became superfluous, to record everything that was said for posterity and their own records.

  The media hadn’t been allowed into the meetings, but two tv crews, one from the BBC North America and the other from Post Dispatch TV, elbowed the still photographers and old fashioned reporters from a dozen newspapers aside for more panning room to film the crowd on the Promenade. Here and there, the mob was working itself into a frenzy, surging forward into the blue-clad regular police forming a concentric ring between them and the capitol building. They looked like a flood of water lapping against the brim of a dam, about to go over. Suddenly, from the far side, an even louder roar erupted. A new cry echoed down the line. The TV cameras clearly picked up screams of “There’s one of them now!” a
nd “Look, Look, he’s smoking! On the capitol grounds, he’s smoking!” Sinner! Sinner” and most chilling of all, “Gitim! Gitim!”. Back and forth the protesters surged against the police.

  This was just what Jimmy needed. Some Texican cowboy had stuck his head out flaunting a cigarette, and that was all the provocation this bunch had required to go rabid. They were making Deseret look bad, like the LDS were a bunch of Muslims or something, ready to stone people to death for having a smoke. Worse, they were making Jimmy look bad. When this was all over, he was going to have to launch a full investigation into who had organized this rally, and how, considering the degree of controls in place designed specifically to keep this kind of thing from happening. Right now, he was trying to locate his people, to calm the protesters down. It was too loud to use his radio, and he couldn’t see any of them. Suddenly the crowd surged forward again, and this time it didn’t stop and recede. Jimmy was being carried along with it. If he stopped, he would be trampled. He couldn’t see what was going on, ahead of them, but obviously the police line hadn’t held. The mob carried him over the body of a trampled cop trying to cover his face, and Jimmy purposefully fell on top of him. Kicking his legs out, he covered the cops’ body with his own and cleared a small space around them. Together, they were able to stand. Holding each other up, they began trying to shoulder their way out of the mass of enraged humanity. Pushing their way to the edge and free of the stampede, Jimmy and the bleeding deputy watched in disbelief as the vanguard of the protesters pushed aside the last line of blue at the top of the steps, bulldozing them back through the doors and into the capitol building, out of sight. He hoped that Kelly was safe, in there! If anything happened to her…or to the Prophet, of course…