The Hasten the Day Trilogy

by Billy Roper

  “Whistle sister, whistle, and you shall have a goat. I can’t whistle, brother, because it hurts my throat…”

  He had thought, when he was a kid, that East Texas summers were hot and humid. They were nothing compared to Lenin Park. The green area around a lake just south of Havana was the last refuge of the black pirates they had flushed out of the city, and it was miserable going for the Texas Rangers. One thing that kept them hacking through the overgrown public space was the fact that their Commander was right there beside them.

  Brad Nelson stopped to wipe the sweat off his face with a sodden khaki sleeve before taking a long drink of water from his canteen. He wished he could have a cold shower. Or some ice cream. Over the last two decades, the black pirates from New Africa under Ray Ray had driven the Cuban survivors of the Turkish Flu out of the former capitol, and into the bush. A few thousand of them hadn’t died from the original strain of the virus that had been brought to the island early on in the pandemic. The blacks, so susceptible to the strain genetically engineered by the Orange scientists and spread throughout the globe, were immune to the older form. They weren’t immune to the bullets from the Texas Rangers’ rifles, though.

  So far, they hadn’t seen any of the native Cubans. Nelson had heard from the German Major who had moved into Guantanamo Bay that there were a few of them over at that end of the island. But here, it was just the defeated pirates, who knew that surrender meant death.

  He could still hear the engines of their Land Rovers idling at the old Calabazar bus station, so Brad knew that they weren’t very far off of the road. It just looked preCambrian. A small group of retreating pirates had fled into the jungle on foot, just a half hour ago. Now, there was no sign of them. Well, it wasn’t like they could hide forever, or blend in, he thought with some amusement. The eight Rangers with him looked around uncertainly. There wasn’t much more they could do here.

  Pragmatically, the Commander had enough imagination to forsee how having Cuba as a Texican territory, even if they did have to share it with the Germans, would benefit his country. At least until New Orleans could be cleared out by the New Americans, the Gulf of Mexico would become a Texican lake. That would open up all of Central America to salvage and colonization. Within his lifetime, they would rule everything from the Equator to the Great Plains. That was a plan worth hacking through some overgrown ferns for. Not all day, on a wild goose chase, though.

  He had met some of the New American Marines when they had agreed to divide up the newly conquered islands, and they seemed like okay guys. You couldn’t really tell who was from one side of the border, and who was from the other, except for their uniforms. It was kind of hard to remember when they had all been citizens of the same country. Of course, Brad had just been a teenager when the Balk hit. Those memories faded a bit, every year, and seemed more like a dream, than something real. The world had shrunk for him, down to his home town, and then, as things recovered, his county and his state, his new nation. Then as now, the most important things had remained his friends and family. Now, that meant his wife Luisa, a Mexican-born woman of pure Castilian ancestry, and their three boys. She had the same color of green eyes that his mother had, and two of their three children had inherited the emerald trait. Hers had been one of the ruling elite landholding families from Mexico City, which as part of the semiindependent Mexican state, was a Texican satellite fiefdom.

  A man of lesser ability might have been held back in his military career because of being married to a foreigner. Had he not been the very best at what he did, competitors might have used it against him. Being physically imposing, at over six and a half feet tall, had helped. Nelson had been even more ruthless and cutthroat in his ascension to power than they had, though, and overcame them all. He just had not become personally corruptible, in the climb.

  Having a wife who was independently wealthy had made it a lot easier to refuse bribes. Having one so beautiful had made it easy to avoid blackmail over nonexistent affairs and indiscretions. Although there was no named successor to the Presidency, and the office of Vice President had been left empty for years, the Commander of the Texas Rangers served the role of the second highest military officer in the Republic. That made him a target to many, and an icon to all.

  Nelson didn’t feel much like an icon as he clambered back up the muddy bank, out of the waist-high grass. But setting an example for the men was necessary to keep morale up…and to make sure that their loyalty was to him, no matter where his wife might have been born. As they settled in the Land Rovers and enjoyed the laboring air conditioning, Brad thought about his wife, and the moment he had first seen her, the day her father had welcomed the Texican ambassador to his home. The purpose of the visit had been to negotiate open access to Tampico for Texican colonists. It had turned into love at first sight for the then-Sergeant and the young lady. A week later she had ran away from home to find him. Her wealth had made it possible. It had taken him all the years since, and three grandsons, to gain her family’s acceptance.

  Commander Nelson hoped that in a few more months, his tour of duty here would be over, and Texican colonization of Cuba could begin. Then he could see Luisa again. Until then she and the boys lived in Austin, near the Presidential mansion. It was customary for the families of Hampton’s most important and closest officers to live close by him while they were deployed. The implied threat insured many men’s loyalty.

  Back in their pre-fab barracks at the Port of Havana, within sight of the Republic of Texas naval squadron and its guns, Brad pulled off his boots and stretched his toes as he changed into dry socks. A meal of fish stew and canned vegetables would help him drift off to sleep tonight, but first he wanted to write a letter home to Luisa and the boys. If he made it a short one, it could go out on the next ship bound to Houston for more supplies. The infrastructure of the city had been looted and vandalized back to the stone age. It was even worse than it had been when the Cubans themselves ran it, Brad observed. Industrial machinery and parts and generators and equipment to get the basic utilities going again would take many trips across the Gulf. At least now the circuit would be free of pirates.

  “Well, I used to wake up in the morning, get my breakfast in bed When I'd gotten worried she'd ease my aching head

  But now she's here and there, with every man in town Still trying to take me for that same old clown

  Because I used to love her, but it's all over now…”

  Oahu had never achieved full self-sufficiency. The island state still depended on weekly supply convoys from Seattle and Portland’s grainaries, gathered from throughout the plains, and beef from the pastures of Alberta and Montana. Steel from Pittsburgh and cars and trucks from New Detroit arrived on ships as needed, like clockwork. But the gasoline and diesel used at Pearl-Hickam was refined and loaded on tankers directly in Anchorage, the diamond of the North. In fact, even with Norfolk and the other Atlantic ports open for business and flourishing, the New American economy was still centered on the other coast.

  Dr. Tina Edwards looked over the manifest from the small freighter which had just arrived in Coos Bay from the Hawaiian islands. Her longsleeved doctor’s smock, the Surgeon General’s traditional garb, rustled over the readout as her time-blemished hands followed the lines. The New American Marine Recon team had successfully captured a ship full of Moerdani’s subjects from Kupang City. The nighttime raid had gone well enough. No casualties, very little resistance, and over a dozen test subjects for her research. They were remarkably docile and obedient, according to the report from the ship’s captain. Especially for royalty. She would have him rewarded with a bilge full of Iowan corn to take back to Oahu, for his discretion. The matronly doctor believed in fair recompense.

  What Moerdani had done, by developing a vaccine for the Turkish Flu, was insure his rulership by controlling who received the gift of immunity, and who did not. It had only been realistic for his laboratory to produce vaccine for a few thousand of the most essential Indonesian personn
el and their families, after all, with the materials and resources he had had available. Sur had been very selective and bargained hard, when passing out the cure. Ultimately, what had saved Javanese civilization was not the vaccine, but the isolation they had maintained from the other islands during the crucial quarantine period. As government after government fell across SouthEast Asia, that became harder and harder. Their handling of refugees and immigrants had to become more and more ruthless. Any who attempted to get in were shot on sight.

  Because of this, there were two primary classes of Javanese in the Caliphate: those who had never been exposed to the Turkish Flu, and those who were immune to it. Those who had been vaccinated were not carriers of the disease. That immunity was partially inherited, however, the children of the elite were carriers of the disease, communicable but uninfected, themselves. This third class, growing but still small, were considered a special elite, and remained aloof from the commoners out of necessity, less they begin the viral contagion all over again. Once they reached the age of eighteen, if their families had remained loyal to Moerdani, they were granted the vaccine, as their parents before them had received, and were no longer contagious carriers.

  It had been foolhardy of the Caliph to establish an Islamic school for young noble children so far from the capitol, and so lightly guarded. The fourteen young royals seized in the Kupang City raid had the virus within them, harmless to those who did not have any Asian ancestry, but lethal to those who did. Dr. Edwards was certain that she could weaponize the original strain within just a few weeks of intensive laboratory tests. She might have grayed and stooped over the years, but her mind was still razor sharp. If any of the royal children survived, they would be returned home, of course. To infect and kill millions, on their own, she hoped. The weaponized virus, they would make sure did the job, if the spoiled little brats didn’t.

  None of the New American cabinet had objected to the plan. They all had known Carolyn personally, and they owed this final gesture of loyalty to the first Speaker. Attorney General Roberts had drafted the legislation authorizing the use of biological warfare agents by the Executive at the discretion of the Speaker, and it had already passed through the unicameral Congress unanimously. There had been no dissent, and a verbal aye vote was recorded in a closed door session.

  Tommy Bullens had come through once again by locating the school, and Gen. Ferguson had ordered the raid, at Speaker Balderson’s direction. In the meantime, Kip had quietly advised their allies, Australia and New Zealand, of what was about to happen in the region, so they could prepare.

  While Dr. Edwards spent the first Sunday the prisoners arrived in the capitol interviewing them in preparation for the medical experiments, the rest of the cabinet attended a special church service. In honor of her adoptive father, and in order to secure the family name and its’ lineage as a dynastic succession, Kip and Hope and the children were taking the unusual step of adopting the McNabb last name for their family. Just in case Jack’s military adventures went awry, so the new royal line would not end. Thousands of St. Louisians packed the cathedral and the grounds outside, where large plasma screens broadcast the renaming ceremony to those assembled. Milions more watched the spectacle on Post Dispatch TV broadcasts. When Kip and Hope McNabb and their six children emerged from the church, the roar of the crowd was deafening. “Give me a whisper, and give me a sigh…give me a kiss before you, tell me goodbye…I know how you feel inside, I, I’ve been there before. Something’s changing inside you, and don’t you know…”

  His head roared. The tunnel vision and gray blur were old friends, tinged in red. In clearer moments, he was cold and dispassionate enough to recognize that he had an impulse control problem. His psychology classes at the Academy had taught him how to take a step back and disassociate from a situation, to indulge in self-analysis. He could even self-psychoanalyze. Being socially isolated due to status. Losing a close sibling in an accident he had survived himself, at an early age. The death of both parents, violently, at the same time. A little post traumatic stress disorder was to be expected.

  The problem, though, was that he had always had an issue with impulse control, at moments, for as long as he could remember. He had the heart of a poet, but the soul of a clown, which made him Harold things up at the worst possible moments. Sometimes it was just a flash of temper, shades hotter and sharper than most people knew. It took less to set him off, and longer, much longer, for him to cool down. He could become enraged by the most casual slight and tremble and fume for hours. His reaction to anger was more extreme than most people’s too. A minor incident could leave Jack ready to cut off all ties to someone, or declare them an enemy.

  He really liked and respected Col. Northcutt, the New American officer briefing them before the beginning of a joint training exercise the Unified Command was holding with their Texican allies along their shared border, where New Mexico and Colorado met. The jovial man hadn’t said or done anything to offend him, in the least. Not that he had heard with his shattered eardrum, or seen with his nearsightedness, at any rate. On the contrary, he had been deferential to the First Lieutenant, as most superior officers were, in a professional way. Why, then, did he begin to have those raging, pushing impulses?

  Perhaps it had been a moment of boredom or distraction as the meeting near the La Jara reservoir had droned on with detailed troop instructions and redundant reminders to not engage in live fire exercises that might spook their Texican Mounted Infantry counterparts running parallel maneuvers a few miles South of them. Maybe it was the heat, seeping through the canvas roof of the tent, and drawing the sweat from his sunbleached hair. Whatever the trigger, Jack felt a silly urge to stand up and scream, to throw his metal chair, or to start shooting, starting with the Colonel. Anything to interrupt. It didn’t feel like a cry for attention. It felt like an option. An alternative. A half breath, a slip, a relaxation of a second away.

  These impulses came and went, so far without him letting them slip. He had never told anyone, but they worried him. He had never told anyone, because they worried him. The best medicine was to ground himself, to focus hard, and not slip sideways. He concentrated on the details of the instructions, the route that his platoon was to take along old Highway 17 to 285, then right on 142 to the rendezvous point with the other platoons at the Rio Grande. Less than a hundred miles, through dry scrub and desert. They would be done by nightfall.

  An image flashed in his mind of how shocked Northcutt would be if Jack blurted out “bullcrap”. Okay, time to push back the edges of thought and memory. He made himself retrace his past month. Watching the ruined resorts on Paradise Island flare up in a controlled burn as they left. The overnight stops in two Florida enclaves where he had made good on his promises to a couple of local girls. The convoy of trucks back up the coast to Tallahassee, where the Emerald Coast had treated them to a night in an old but well maintained four star hotel and a steak dinner, before their flight out to St. Louis on C-140s. From Lambert, they had been dismissed for 24 hours of R&R in the capitol.

  Jack’s first stop was at the Old Courthouse, the New American primary government building, though in recent years the mechanisms and offices of state had overflowed into the adjacent blocks, as well. Randall had welcomed him into the office that he still thought of as his dad’s, and couldn’t enter now without the sting of imagining his old man sitting behind the desk that now held a picture of Mrs. Balderson.

  They were up to something big, based on the working lunch he had interrupted the Cabinet in the middle of. He didn’t stay long, just long enough to shake hands all around and tell them informally how things had went in the Bahamas. Jason said that he looked like he had come back a grown man, especially without his glasses. He had meant it, Jack could tell. Gen. Ball told him to take his staff car from the garage, and asked the secretary to call a driver, so the easily recognized young officer wouldn’t be mobbed by the media or fans on the street. It also would help the other pedestrians and commuters, sinc
e he couldn’t see so well. Jack stopped at the monument outside where his parents were both interred, him in fact and her in spirit. He placed his hand on the shoulder of the bust mounted at eye level, and stood for a moment, in contemplation. The sun was nearly over the top of the arch by the time the car came around to pick him up.

  At the Warehouse, Hope gave him a big hug and told him that she wanted him to remember that this was his home. The younger four of her six kids mobbed him; Adam, Megan, Victoria and Carol, who had been named after her grandma. Hess was away at the Academy, and Mary was volunteering at the base hospital, helping with the injured combat veterans from Freeport. Hope asked him if he had seen Kip, and he said that he had, at the Cabinet meeting he’d interrupted. She had one of the staff make a big lunch for them all with his favorite, supreme pizza, as the main course. While it was prepared, he told her about the battles he had been in, and she caught him up on the gossip in the capitol. The pizza was the best he had ever tasted, he recalled.

  After lunch, Hope had gotten more serious after sending the kids to go play in the back yard. She needed him to sign some papers related to the trust that was being set up, for the family, to settle his parents’ estate. The house would belong to the two of them, commonly. Most of the liquid assets were also to be divided. Some of them would go into accounts that would guarantee he would never have to survive on army chow alone. A couple of the accounts were in foreign banks, one in Berlin and another in Montreal, that would have to be liquidated in person, at some point. Everything looked satisfactory to him. He joked that he guessed they didn’t need to call Jason for this, and she replied that he was the one who had drawn the papers up for her. They both laughed, like brother and sister, and the papers got signed. It was bittersweet.

  Jack played with his nieces and nephew out back for a while, enjoying the freedom are carelessness of the brief time, while Hope sent a courier off to Jason’s office with the documents. After the kids wore him out playing chase, her brother went upstairs for a bit, on his own. A long hot bath in his own tub sounded good.