By 2030, local business could not afford to pay its employees. The US dollar was almost worthless and the government could no longer sustain public welfare. The Internet was inaccessible, joblessness was above ninety percent, it was illegal to gather in public groups, and free speech was redefined.
In 2031, the President of the United States, seeing she could no longer control the angry American mobs or provide for the starving masses, declared martial law, invoking Executive Orders 10998, 10999, and 13603, seizing all public modes of transportation, and declaring eminent domain over all farmland, oil fields and refineries, water supplies, and food-processing plants. No one was allowed to store food, horde water, or own energy sources.
Shortly thereafter, Executive Orders 10995 and 10997 went into effect, seizing all media, including radio, TV, telephones, satellite communications, newspapers, and lastly, electricity. In a matter of months, there was a complete revocation of constitutional law. It was no longer safe to travel, trade, or offer opinionated speech. America went black.
CHAPTER I
Southern Illinois, October 22, 2032
Jessica’s morning started like any other morning. Southern Illinois in the fall is the place to be for anybody that loves stormy weather and the sound of thunder as lightning flashes through the sky. It wasn’t exactly her dream home, but it would do for the time being. Her shoddy, half-sunk, rusty barge stank of fish and dirty river water, but it was away from the ensuing chaos in the town up the hill. The Chester Police refused to work for free, and the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office didn’t agree with the unconstitutional control of the US citizenry. Essentially, all rural areas of the United States were left to their own devices, so long as it didn’t interfere with the president’s hold on executive power.
Before the “Flip,” a term used to describe the day the first executive order was declared, Jess was a full-time correctional officer and a part-time police officer. She was only thirty-two, but had twelve years vested into the state as a correctional officer, and six years in law enforcement.
When the Flip went down, southern Illinois was already in disarray and any person with a keen eye could see it coming. At first, Jess was most worried about all the southern rednecks as food sources began to dwindle. Her first instinct was to be wary of them because she feared they would use those arms to secure food in unlawful ways. After the Flip, she saw these rednecks more frequently in the woods. That was how they secured their family’s food sources. As she thought on it, she came to understand that these people had been armed for years and were perfect law-abiding citizens.
Early on, after the Flip, she had found herself having to readjust to new norms and force herself to rethink and retrain her mind. The old ways were gone and a new era required new thinking. For Jess, this meant watching the new behaviors of the people she had previously sworn an oath to protect through the upholding of the Constitution of the United States. She had sworn the oath on two separate occasions: first when she was hired on as a CO, and the second time when she was hired by the city of Chester to work as a cop.
On this particular morning, Jess had an inkling to walk up the city steps, from the shore of the river to the Randolph County Courthouse, in an effort to acquire a copy of the US Constitution. To do so would mean leaving the cover and security of her camp and exposing herself to the hazards of the world above. Jess felt that she was up to the task, so she donned her service pistol, which was a Glock 22 chambered in .40 caliber, and secured it in the small of her back, where it was snugly fitted against her frame, concealed in a padded holster. She also had an AR-15 in .223 with a 5.56 chamber. Its sixteen-inch barrel provided for excellent tactical use when combined with its collapsible stock, but did not have much accuracy beyond three hundred yards. She had previously taken the scope off of it because it only bumped around the reticles and became more of a nuisance than anything. Besides, she was an accurate shot with her iron sights and felt perfectly capable without a scope.
Jess slung the rifle across her back. She was wearing khaki-colored tactical BDU pants with cargo pockets and a bullet-resistant vest under a khaki-colored long-sleeved tactical shirt. On the sleeves and shoulders of her shirt, you could see the outline of where her police patches used to be. After the Flip, she knew what was next, so she tore them off. Jess wanted no association with the tyranny of the federal government. Whether it was true or not, she believed the people would make the police out to be the face of government. Jess was first and foremost an American. She wanted to move up that hill and secure a copy of her country’s founding document, so with a deep breath and a quiet sigh, she headed up the city steps towards the courthouse.
Upon approaching the back side of the courthouse, where the Sheriff’s Department was attached, Jess could see that the Sheriff’s Department’s vehicles had broken windows and the body of the vehicles were spray-painted with various graffiti and vulgar threats about law and order. She noticed the sally port door was still in place, but the windows to the Sheriff’s Department were broken and the building itself was exposed to the elements. Jess removed her AR from where it was slung across her back and brought it to the ready as she carefully and cautiously approached the entrance to the apparently abandoned building. The inside appeared to be ransacked. There wasn’t any sign of life from what she could tell. It wasn’t but a moment of standing still and listening before Jess heard a noise coming from the jail area. It dawned on Jess that there may yet be prisoners, either loose or jailed, in the building.
The jail gate was open and she took her time to listen a moment longer before maneuvering toward the sound. What she heard was eerie and sent chills down her spine. It was the sound of feeding carnivores, crunching bone, and tearing meat. Jess knew that bobcats had made a comeback in southern Illinois, but reasoned that what she was hearing wasn’t exclusive to bobcats. There were too many scuffling sounds to be a bobcat. Bobcats are solitary predators and this sound was more like a sound of pack animals. The sound was steady, so she moved slowly toward the dispatch office and turned left towards the jail, her weapon at the ready.
CHAPTER II
Nathan Roeh had been out of the Marines for fourteen years. He was now thirty-eight years old and lived in what used to be Grand Tower, Illinois. He was the leader and founder of a group he titled “Southern Illinois Home Guard.” He had started the group years prior when the need for a resistance group became a growing concern. He had spent several years blogging on the Internet about the decline of American values and morals and the rise of progressive thinking. He knew that one day there would be a call to service and a time that he would once again have an opportunity to serve his oath to the country. Most laughed him off and others thought he was just a pessimist, but he knew the truth was fast approaching that the government would eventually make its move against liberty.
Nathan was a web designer before the Flip went down. He was working for an encrypted conservative blog site when the FCC shut them down; and not just the bloggers, but all Internet access was restricted to government communications. He now found himself, as most remaining Americans did, merely surviving.
He had set up a protocol with his group that covered many possible scenarios. In the case of a government takeover, or “martial law” as it was previously known, the group was to travel to Gorham, Illinois, where they could set up a low-profile resistance group, for starters. There were originally a group of twenty faithful members that attended regular meetings and kept in touch, using the United States Postal Service as their primary mode of communications. Some members of the group believed the government was listening to their phone calls and collecting text messages. So it was widely known that “snail mail” was the least of all the evils and thereby used. Unfortunately, when the Flip went down, only five showed up at the predetermined rally point. Nathan believed the small outcome was the result of the government shutdown that laid off all civilian mail carriers.
Among the five group members was Todd, a rugged th
irty-two-year-old outdoorsman and country boy from Evansville, a town a few miles down the highway. He was never in the military but spent most of his waking hours wishing he had served, especially after the Flip. Todd liked to fight, deeply respected veterans, and followed their leadership sacrificially. When the Flip went down, he grabbed all thirteen hunting rifles, along with ammunition, and made a beeline to the rally point.
Ziggy, or “Zig,” as they called him, was from Murphysboro, also known as “Murphy” by the locals, and was less than a half hour from the rally. Zig owned a ranch and lake house in the country. He was fifty-three and as sharp as a tack. He took those cattle and horses, when the POTUS invoked EO10998, to a plot of land that belonged to a deceased friend. That plot of land, not too far from the Shawnee National Forest, was well hidden under the canopy of Jackson County’s woodland.
When the Flip came, Zig brought along his cache of pickled food supplies, farm equipment, a cache of fuel, guns and ammunition. All of which was concealed in the forest where no government drones had prying eyes. In the fall and winter months, the group used camo netting. Periodically, the group traveled to the herd and slaughtered a cow to carry the meat back to base camp. The team was careful to plot their patrol so that they returned at night, disguising their food supply under cover of darkness. This technique was an important practice because there were more than a fair share of both loyalists and bandits living in the southern Illinois region.
Nathan’s best friend, Denny, was a Navy Seabee Corpsman that served about the same time as Nathan. Denny had been stationed at Camp Pendleton, California, and was attached to an infantry battalion when he met Nathan. He was a die-hard Corpsman and was considered by some that served with him to be one of the Marines, even though he never officially earned the title. Denny was thirty-six and still in top shape. He and Nathan regularly held training meets with the group before the Flip. On those training days, they would learn first aid, room clearing, and simple tactical and guerilla operations. Denny took charge of the emergency medical training and Nathan handled the grunt work.
Denny was an RN at Chester Regional hospital before the Flip. Denny raided the hospital the day it closed its doors for the last time. Those medical supplies had proven invaluable many times since then. His integrity had always been very high, but he knew what was happening and that things were about to change forever. He reasoned that taking those supplies would insure the group’s ongoing safety and security.
Ash was a twenty-three-year-old taxidermist. He was learning his father’s business before things turned upside down. He was an avid hunter and enjoyed working with his hands. He was also a canine trainer before deciding to take on taxidermy with his father. Money never was that good and times were hard with the inflation. It wasn’t uncommon for people to have two or more full-time jobs, because the tax rate seemed to invalidate everybody’s work. Ash’s childhood was tough. The tax rate grew as he did, so he never really knew what “better times” were.
The SIHG had it good as it was, given the situation the world was in. They had a secret operation of sustainability on the mighty Mississippi River. Their group, together with their families and combined skill sets of those still surviving in Gorham, made for a semi-comfortable living, one worthy of the times. Their operation consisted of small garden areas, kept discreet and spread out for the purpose of concealment; breeding beef cattle and milk cows; chickens; fish; weapons and ammo; and two guard dogs, which Ash brought from his home near Prairie Du Rocher.
Everything at the base was carefully plotted and thorough. Nathan had given a respectable assignment to everybody in the op. Each assignment was according to his or her area of expertise. Of course, some things fell to a workload that needed to be shared. Laundry, for example, didn’t fall to a single person, but to whoever’s turn it was on the “extra-duties list,” which was posted in the duty shack.
For security, members of the community donated fence from their properties that could be used to build a safety perimeter around some of the town. For a lookout, members of the town took turns, in pairs, high in the water tower with an old-fashioned crank siren.
There were several vacated homes in the small secluded town. In one home, Denny’s sister, Heather, found an old washboard, and they laundered their clothes the old-fashioned way. The town had a way of clinging to the old ways and, for whatever reason, held tight to nostalgia.
When the public water supplies stopped flowing, most of Gorham’s population boarded the busses and headed to only God knows where. A few ran into the surrounding woodland and rocky crags of Fountain Bluff. As for the Southern Illinois Home Guard, it was a matter of staying alive and holding to the truths of the founding documents of the former United States of America, that all men are created equal. The group believed in free travel and free commerce. The fact that the government had taken everything from them did not deter them from the hope of America returning to simple truths of sovereign liberty for all.
It was autumn and the men were hard at work chopping wood for the upcoming winter, when it would be too cold to swing an axe for a prolonged period.
“Hey, Todd, did you ever secure that fence line around the southeast edge of the perimeter?” Zig yelled as he thrust one final swing of the axe into the log.
As Todd kept pounding away at his pile of lumber, he replied, “Yeah, I took an assortment of metal fencing down from Jefferson and Van Buren Streets. I tossed it alongside the train cars, no thanks to you.”
“When I said ‘secure,’ I meant ‘install,’ not ‘acquire.’”
“In that case, no, I didn’t. It’s still rolled up,” Todd said.
About that time, Nathan came riding up on a horse.
“I need one of you guys to come with me, ASAP.”
“What’s going on?” Zig requested.
“There’s a motor sound coming down the Mississippi and you both know it can’t be friendly.”
Zig and Todd looked at each other briefly as if trying to determine which one was going to ride shotgun with Nathan. They both wanted to go, but there was only one horse in eyeshot. They both ran towards Nathan, slightly startling the horse. Todd, being the youngest and strongest, made it to Nathan first and quickly jumped up.
“Try not to get fresh,” Nathan said as they rode off laughing.
CHAPTER III
Nathan and Todd raced their way to a vantage point along the Mississippi. They hitched the horse behind an old farm and continued on foot toward the river. They entered the tree line, nestled under the cover of natural foliage, and waited.
“What do you think it’s going to be?” Todd asked.
“I’m not sure yet, but whatever it is, there’s a lot of them,” Nathan said confidently.
As they sat patiently for just a few moments, the source of the sound came into view.
“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” Todd said.
Nathan was too shocked to say anything. Instead, he just sat and stared at the never-ending convoy of tugboats that were hauling what looked like hundreds of steel shipping containers. Each tugboat was white with two black letters neatly painted on the side: “UN.” Nathan and Todd both noticed that each of the shipping containers were labeled as well. They were also white in color with a single letter “V” neatly painted on the side.
“I hope that means something other than United Nations,” Nathan said as he continued to stare in awe.
Thinking with his belly, all Todd could say was “I wonder if those containers have food in them.”
“You’re always hungry, man.”
“I was a tyrannosaurus in my previous life. I’m still a meat-loving country boy.”
“Whatever, man. We need to get back to camp and report this. It may be actionable. If there’s food in those containers, or medical supplies, we could really start this year out right,” Nathan said.
“I don’t know, Nathan, it could be a risky move.”
“I’m not going to make a dictatorial move here!” Nathan
exclaimed. “All I’m saying is, we need to strategize a possible plan of attack. If those are UN crates, they’re not welcome here. We can talk about it, come up with a plan, and vote on it.”
“Agreed,” Todd replied.
“Okay then, let’s get back to town and put our heads together. We need to beat those tugs back to base.”
Nathan and Todd came galloping back to base and called for an immediate roll call.
“What’s going on?” Ash asked, as he could tell Nathan’s and Todd’s voices were full of excitement.
“I’ll tell everybody as soon as we can make sure that each and every one of us is accounted for,” Nathan said. “We need to make sure nobody is on the river where they can be spotted.”
“Spotted by what?” Zig asked as he came walking towards the group.
“Look,” Nathan said. “We saw dozens of tugs heading north up the river. Each tug was labeled UN, and—”
“The United Nations is here?” Denny interrupted.
“They’re passing through, it looks like,” Todd said.
“Go on with your report,” Denny said. “I’m sorry for interrupting.”
“Look,” Nathan said. “It looks like they’re just passing through, but there’s no way to be sure.”
“No way to be sure?” Zig questioned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not sure because it doesn’t make sense to me that the United Nations would be here with no military support.”
“All we saw was tugboats and they were tugging barges with hundreds of steel shipping containers,” Todd said.
Nathan picked up a stick and started to draw in the dirt as he replied, “That’s it, just shipping containers with the letter V painted on the side of them.” Nathan drew out a picture of the Mississippi and started to draw squares to represent the barges, but the faint sound of the tugboats had approached within earshot of the camp, which was impressive because the camp was just over two miles from the river. The number of barges and the absence of other man-made mechanical sounds made it easier to hear at farther distances.
Whiskey Black Book Set: The Complete Tyrant Series (Box Set 1) Page 14
