The Hasten the Day Trilogy

by Billy Roper

  The knock on the door startled them both. Hope had showered first, so Jack answered the door and welcomed Randall and his wife into the room. Hope came out of the bathroom, and they showed them the contents of their luggage. They were pretty surprised, to say the least. Jack handed Randall one of the one pound gold bars, as a remembrance of his dad, and hopped in the shower, himself. Hope asked the S.S. to secure their luggage in the hotel’s vault. A few minutes later, he had dressed and they were on their way to the dinner.

  Travelling together in the Speaker’s armored personnel carrier, they told them abo ut the trip, and Montreal. Then Mrs. Balderson asked Jack how his college work was going. The small talk evaporated as their protective convoy arrived at the stadium.

  The group disembarked, then were hustled to a dressing room backstage, under heavy guard. There, they talked about the elections, and the likelihood that the ruling Nationalist Party would maintain control of the Congress, and the legislative branch. A half hour before the scheduled speech, the S.S. knocked on the door, and ushered in Governor Martin and his date for the evening.

  They shook hands all around, then talked about how cold the weather still was up this far North and what was being served for dinner. The Speaker took Paul aside to discuss his talking points, and the Governor’s date, a tanned blonde woman he’d introduced as Yvette, asked where the ladies’ room was, and excused herself. Hope and Mrs. Balderson were talking about how hard it was being a mother these days, and how lucky she was to have a good nanny, when Jack saw the Governor’s date reenter the room from the restroom. Something about her eyes, cold and reptilian, made him look closer. His instincts moved him toward the Speaker, placing himself between the two men and Yvette. Governor Martin looked up at her, and his smile froze as her arm rose, pointing a small semi-automatic pistol at the Speaker, who looked confused. Hope pushed Mrs. Balderson down onto the floor and began to draw a knife from her purse. In a cool and detached part of his mind, Jack observed that it would be a long and underhanded throw for her. She would never make it. No Harolding way.

  Jack was happy. Happy that he had a chance to be the center of everybody’s world. Happy to have it all up to him. Happy to have an excuse to kill, without mercy. Happy that he could be here, as nobody was for his dad. At least, nobody good enough.

  His suit jacket was unbuttoned, as he reached with both hands simultaneously for the crossdraw Glocks in the shoulder holsters. He had walked in and out of airport security without even thinking about them, he was so used to wearing them everywhere he went, and never being questioned. Putting them on had become as natural as putting on his pants.

  She hadn’t said a word. Like a professional. Almost detache d. No wasted motion or time or effort with useless, pointless words. Yvette shot first, before he could clear leather. Jack had no idea where that bullet went, or the one after. The third one, though, he tracked exactly, as it slammed into him and hammered his chest back, right in the middle of his sidelong dive. The young man’s twin .45’s leveled, and he began firing both at once. Above left, above left and on target, on target, on target, on target and below right, below right. Jack and Yvette both hit the floor at the same time, but she had more holes in her, than he did.

  He tried to sit up. He couldn’t catch his breath. Somebody somewhere was crying, and somebody else was coughing wetly, but it couldn’t be him because it hurt too much to suck in air. His big sister was there, telling him to stay with her. He tried sipping air a bit, instead of gulping it in. At least Yvette had stopped coughing. He could see her leg sticking out of the dark green cocktail dress from where he lay. It still trembled, but without purpose. Oh, the rush. He was trembling, himself, he noticed. Jack closed his eyes to steady himself. His ears rang again.

  Nobody else was hurt. A lamp and a wall had been hit on one side, and a cocktail dress and second wall ruined on the other. The Speaker and his wife, and Hope and the governor, were untouched. Mrs. Balderson stopped sobbing, when she saw that her husband was fine.

  The paramedics said Jack had a broken rib or two, but the .40 caliber round hadn’t penetrated his Kevlar. They’d take him in for an x-ray and to bind them and give him some pain meds, but he would be okay. At the Speaker’s insistence, the speech and the dinner would go on, even though Governor Martin was visibly shaken. Hope rode in the ambulance with him, while the S.S. took witness statement and collected the evidence, and Yvette. Paul watched them bag her up, sadly. His shoulders raised up and down, and then he was fine.

  The media, who hadn’t been told of the incident, remarked on how somber and dignified the incumbent looked that evening, as if he were reflecting on his legacy. He spoke briefly about the need for unity, and strength; for love, and compassion. Then he cautioned them not to turn their compassion outwards, to those who might deceive them with kind words, but to remain wary and trust only those who had proven themselves trustworthy. The hawks in his party loved it. Speaker Balderson, whom he introduced with a flourish, felt upstaged.

  When Jack was released from the hospital the next day, his left arm in a sling to keep it still and his ribs from moving, Hope was still with him. She had called her nanny and told her what had happened, and left a message on Kip’s voicemail. Secret Service accompanied them back to the hotel, for their luggage. On the way, they heard on the radio that the French Premier had denied that the French woman who had died in a car accident in Winnipeg was an employee of their government, despite her identification. Exit polls indicated that Governor Martin would win a landslide reelection victory, after Speaker Balderson’s endorsement speech the night before. It was expected to rain, all week.

  Back in St. Louis, Jack had half of the gold, about half a million New American dollars worth, deposited in a safety deposit box in the Bank of New America, downtown. Like father, like son. The remainder he had converted to cash at current market value, and hired a broker to invest a quarter of it into Republic of Texas Petroleum futures, a quarter into Ford Motor Co., and a quarter into New American government bonds to help finance the Lunar base expansion. With a couple of calls, the base optometrist had another pair of glasses in his prescription sent over. The remaining quarter, about two hundred and fifty thousand New American dollars’ worth, he placed in a handful of interest bearing accounts in different banks, which he could draw from as needed, before heading back to school two days later.

  On the morning he was to leave, Kip returned from his trip just in time to hear the whole story, be sworn to secrecy, and give Jack a letter ‘from a mutual friend out West’. He told him to wait to read it until he was on the way back to college. The Secretary of State was astounded at the financial windfall, as much as he was by the dramatic adventure, all around. Mary told Jack that he should stay with them and recover. She offered to nurse him back to full health. She was trained for it, after all. She even offered to let him stay in her room, where she could keep an eye on him until he got better. Hope nipped that in the bud by reminding Mary that he couldn’t afford to get behind in his classes, if he wanted to make his promotion on schedule. In reality, she and Jack both knew that Randall Balderson would make Jack a General right now, if he asked for it.

  On the flight home, he shifted uncomfortably in the seat, trying to find a position that didn’t hurt his ribs. The stewardess gave Jack extra special attention, because he was injured and in uniform, even before she recognized him. When the other passengers started to complain about being neglected, he had a chance to open the letter one handed and read it, from out West. It made him grin so big, that he had to read it again. Twice.

  Tracy and her parents were there waiting for him when he got off the plane, unexpectedly. They had wanted to wait and meet him before they went home after flying back with her at the end of the break to tour the campus and meet with her professors. All three of them were alarmed at his injury. He told them that he got it from falling down in Manitoba. It was, after all, the truth. Tracy was very gentle when she hugged Jack. At least, until her parents wa
ved goodbye and got on their plane. Then his ribs hurt, more than before.

  Chapter Ten

  "In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

  - George Orwell

  “You can't fight the tears that ain't coming, or the moment of truth in your lies. When everything seems like the movies, yeah, you bleed just to know you're alive…”

  The two genetically targeted viral pandemics, the Turkish Flu and the African Flu, along with their different strains and variations, had killed off seventy percent of the world’s population over little more than a single decade. Over four billion, three hundred and eighty million lives were lost, due to the laboratory work of a few genocidal virologists. That astounding number included not just those who died directly from the contagion, of which ten to fifteen percent of the targeted population groups were totally or partially immune, but also those who succumbed to starvation, warfare, and secondary diseases which resulted from the collapse of order in the affected nations. In Africa and Asia, the homo sapien species became endangered of extinction.

  A further seven hundred million, give or take, died from the other effects of The Balk. During what would become known as the Bottleneck, nearly a hundred nuclear weapons were used on Omaha, Colorado Springs, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, Providence, Beijing, Hainan, Cairo, and the ancient cities of the Middle East. That was aside from the smaller tactical nukes used in New Orleans, Tel Aviv, and in northern India. A larger percentage died from starvation and ethnic cleansing merging into civil wars than from the direct effects of nuclear weapons, however, especially the first winter.

  Another decade of declining health standards and nutrition led to a further reduction in global population numbers from hunger and illness. Life became, in many areas, brutal and short, once again.

  By the time Captain E ric Gruber’s C-140 crew had buckled in and gotten clearance from the Darwin Field tower to take off, the Earth’s human population hovered at around one billion, four hundred million. With the special cargo they were carrying on the hot northern Australian day, their mission was to reduce that by another seven percent. The six Indonesian teens who had survived months of torturous medical experimentation were restrained in the back. Tied to fold-down seats and wearing parachute packs, their eyes were dead, their faces slack. The four armed guards weren’t even necessary. Seeing eight of their friends die as they endured blood sampling and injections on a daily basis had taken all of the spirit out of them.

  Capt. Gruber’s pre -flight meeting with the big transport’s nine man crew had been brief, but blunt. Unified Command intelligence indicated that the Javanese Caliphate planned to attack Australia. With over a hundred million people, nearly a quarter of that under arms, the Muslim horde couldn’t be stopped using conventional means. The amount of nuclear devices required to destroy that size of an army would also poison much of their allies’ land area, so that wasn’t an option, either. They had to go biological.

  He remembered the cold eyes of his co-pilot, Lt. Williams, dancing as he outlined their mission. Williams had no family left alive older than himself. They had all been in Omaha, while the air force brat had been visiting his grandparents out of town due to the growing chaos in the cities. He had married and had kids of his own, but at times seemed almost reptilian and emotionless. Some scars were just too deep to heal.

  The rest of the crew were too young to remember much before the Balk, and just wanted to get this over with and go to the only home and the only life they knew, back in New America. They had no idea what they had lost, Eric thought. It must be nice, not knowing what you were missing. He remembered the old world all too well. Some days he woke up thinking for a few seconds that the last twenty years had just been a bad dream. Then he realized that it was true. Usually about the time he noticed that the bed was empty beside him, where his young wife used to lay.

  As they had finished the pre-flight checklist, Williams had pushed the power button on the decidedly non-regulation CD player wired directly into the dashboard avionics power grid, and out to the intercom system. He reached an open hand out to Eric. Shaking his headphoned noggin from side to side in amusement, Capt. Gruber gave his copilot a thumb’s up. Smiling back, Williams pulled a sleeve of CDs from inside his flight jacket, and flipped it open.

  “Okay, here we go.” Williams said, almost under his breath. The Captain grinned.

  “Just remind the cargo handlers to push the kids out after we’re over land.” He said, cutting into the intercom so those in the back could hear him.

  “Alright, but do we tell them where the Harolding cord is to pull first, or not? I forgot!” came the sarcastic response from the tail.

  Taxiing down the runway and gaining thrust, the first bars of the new popular Celtic Punk band ‘Rising Eire’’s hit song ‘Elbow Room’ filled the cockpit and cabin with the screech of electric bagpipes. In moments they were lifting and turning in a slow circle over the Pacific, headed West. The whole crew knew the words, and sang along, to rid themselves of the jitters. Some just mumbled, but Williams really belted it out:

  “Went to see you in a zoo, cause you were always last to bloom, Now your kind’s runnin’ on fumes, we got us some elbow room”

  The second half of the semester at the Soldiers Of The Cross Training Center passed more quickly than the first. Jack reverted back to a study of advanced propaganda techniques, mass psychology, and oratory. Tracy spent every possible hour with him, making it clear to all of the other girls that McNabb was her personal territory. On weekends they went hiking and swimming together, or drove into town to eat. He filled in twice more on Sundays at the pulpit, to practice the public speaking techniques he was learning, and engaged the academic staff in several debates in both Lincoln-Douglas and Parliamentary style, as well as Socratic interrogation. His hearing loss gave him the habit of inclining his head towards the person he was debating, a trait he used to his advantage, as a gesture of cordiality, to disarm them. He wore his glasses on stage, and driving, when he needed them.

  Nine weeks passed by, and the time came for his graduation, just a week after his seventeenth birthday. Jack had received cards and e-mails and letters and calls from all over the world congratulating him on the graduation and the birthday, but the ones which meant the most to him came from Hope and Kip; Mary, who sent an X and O filled note of her own, and Julia, who sent him a birthday card smeared with lipstick.

  He spent the special day with Tracy having a picnic on a mountaintop, then rock climbing while she watched, duly impressed by his display of fearlessness. That evening after dinner, she gave him a special present. In a silver box, salvaged on one of her childhood excursions to the old capitol, was a weather-stained oval insignia the size of a small dinner plate. The eagle in its center was surrounded by the words ‘Seal of the President of the United States’. Jack thought that it was the coolest gift ever.

  “This belongs to you. It’s your destiny,” she said, as she placed it in his hands. He turned it over, looking at the design. It looked like it had been mounted, somewhere.

  “Maybe, but who knows what our destiny is?” he replied, setting it carefully back in the box.

  “Betrothed, not to sound patriotic, but Randall Balderson isn’t a real leader. He’s just a placeholder for you. He’s a…a regent.” Jack raised an eyebrow.

  “For me, you mean?” He looked doubtful.

  “For you and nobody else in the world. You were born to lead. And I was made for you.” Tracy declared.

  “And nobody else?” he asked, his lips touching hers. She answered him without words.

  As he packed to go back to St. Louis to await orders, there was tension in the air. The Third fleet was rejoining the Fifth and Seventh in the Pacific, and the new Atlantic fleet was taking over operational control of its’ own theater. All active duty troops in the Unified Command were being redeployed. The news was full of Caliph Moerdani’s face, threatening to undertake the Islamification of Aust
ralia and declaring Sharia law in Java. Rumors of war were everywhere.

  Tracy was afraid for him, but proud at the same time. Her plans were to move to St. Louis as soon as she graduated in four months, and go to work for the State department or the Speaker’s office or some other Executive bureau, so they could be together. She talked about getting their own place. At the airport, she tried not to cry, and almost did it. He promised to call or e-mail her as often as he was able. Her tears tasted salty, but gratifying, as he climbed aboard with a secret smile.

  Waiting for him at Lambert Field was a letter of promotion to Captain, and deployment orders to Coos Bay. He had a twenty four hour leave before he had to muster for the award ceremony and unit assignment and briefing. Jack called Tracy and told her that he had made it, and shared the news with her about his promotion, just as he’d sworn to. Then he called Hope, to tell her that he was in town for the day and would stop by later. She said that she’d have lunch ready.

  It was too early for the banks to open, so he took a cab over to the Old Courthouse and told his mom and dad about the promotion, at their monuments. He wished his dad could see Tracy and Julia, he told him. He didn’t mention Mary, that would have been kind of awkward. Especially in front of his mom.

  Jack did a whirlwind tour of four banks he had accounts in, creating a minor riot, checking balances and withdrawing a few thousand New American dollars for spending money. Then he stopped by a florist, and paid handsomely for a contract requiring them to send a single red rose to Julia with his name attached to a card, and the same each week for the next four months until graduation to Tracy, at the college. Next, he decided to save some time the next day by going to the Unified Command’s Quartermaster Division office now. McNabb’s letter of promotion and his recognizable face got him a new Captain’s dress uniform, two sets of rank insignia, four sets of battle dress utilities, and the rest of his equipment and gear. With the cab’s trunk stuffed full, he finally went to the Warehouse, to his family, and his home.