by Adam Yoshida
“Yee-haw!” screamed the Governor, waving his hat in the air as the trucks made a second firing pass.
“Jesus, Governor,” whispered Colonel Evan Dunford over the ferocious sound of the machine guns, “ammunition is in short supply.”
“I ain’t no dummy,” replied the Oxford-educated Governor in a sharp whisper to the Colonel before turning back towards the firing and screaming, “Shoot ‘em up, boys!”
“Look!” the Governor pointed to the sky as a Bell 407 helicopter came into view.
“Looks like a Kiowa,” observed Dunford, “where the heck did you get that from?”
“Traffic chopper,” replied the Governor, “took it from the local NBC affiliate under the War Emergency Act.”
The helicopter came in for a low and slow pass, firing from a door-mounted machine gun into the mall, then turning around to rake the mall with yet more fire.
“Governor,” Colonel Dunford attempted to lecture patiently, “I know that fire like that looks impressive, but it’s not very effective at killing.”
“Like I said, Colonel, I ain’t no dummy,” replied the Governor.
The Governor picked up his personal radio and spoke into it, “ok, that ought to about do it.”
The firing by both the technicals and the helicopter abruptly stopped and a sudden silence overcame the scene. The Governor waited ten seconds before speaking into his radio once again.
“Does anyone have IR?” he asked.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s moving in there, Governor,” came back a static-filled reply.
The Colonel ran his hands through his hair.
“What the fuck?” he asked.
“Weaponized fentanyl,” explained the Governor, “we synthesized it ourselves and then pumped it into the air system from multiple locations. Enough to knock every single one of those motherfuckers out. Now we can just go in and arrest them.”
“Interesting,” observed the Colonel, “and, frankly, more humane than I’d been led to expect.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Colonel,” replied the Governor, “there’s still lots of good stuff to come.”
Headquarters, Arizona State Defense Forces, Phoenix
Governor Schmidt and Colonel Dunford were watching an interrogation from behind a one-way mirror.
“…I don’t know what it is that you’re asking me,” the man inside whined, struggling to speak as he drew in breaths made more painful by the rib that he’d broken, according to the report that would be filed later, during an accidental fall.
“Well, Colonel,” said the Governor, “I know that you aren’t just here to pay a courtesy call.”
“No, Governor,” replied Dunford, “that’s certainly true.”
“I want to know who you report to. Who is the commander of your cell?” demanded the former Police Detective from within the interrogation room.
“Governor, I’ll go right to it,” said Dunford, “I’m here because we’re going to be making a big push soon, right through the heart of Arizona, and we needed to know what kind of resistance that we’ll be facing along the way. It’s vital to the planning of the operation. My Division commander didn’t feel that all of the reporting that he was receiving was realistic.”
“Hold on, hold on,” said the Governor, placing his hand on the Colonel’s shoulder, “watch this.”
“Look,” said the former Detective, “I don’t like this anymore than you do. But I have a duty to discharge and I will do just that. Do you understand?”
The man handcuffed to the chair nodded, his eyes full of tears.
“Now, you know what we do to terrorists in Arizona these days, don’t you?”
“Ok,” said the detective, taking a pad of paper and a pen and slapping it down upon the table in front of the young man, “then - if you don’t want us to shoot you - you’ll write down the names of everyone that you know who is working with the insurgents. Do you understand me?”
The young man looked at the table, sick to his stomach.
“…and, if I cooperate, you won’t kill me?” he asked.
“I swear, before God and my mother, that if you tell me the truth right now we won’t have you shot.”
The man picked up the pen and slowly began to write.
“I’ll just give you a few minutes,” said the Detective, a smile crossing his face as he exited the room.
The Detective walked into the room with the Colonel and the Governor. The eyes of the Detective met those of Governor Schmidt for a few seconds before both burst into wild back-slapping laughter.
“I… I’m not sure if I understand what that was,” said Dunford after a long and awkward pause. Schmidt and the detective shared a look.
“Well, you see Colonel,” said the Detective as soon as he’d gotten a look at Dunford’s insignia, “these interrogations can get kind of dull. So we play some games to liven them up just a little bit.”
The Governor wiped a tear away from his eyes and continued.
“So, of course we can just lie to these people and tell them whatever we want. But it’s a lot more fun for us to play little games. So, lately, the boys here have been playing a game where we try not to lie to ‘em. Well, not directly, anyways.”
Dunford turned away and looked at the man inside the interrogation room. He was writing frantically, his hand seemingly picking up speed with each passing second.
“So,” said Dunford, “you told him the truth?”
“The absolute God’s-honest truth,” said the Detective, “here in Arizona we hang traitors. We don’t shoot them. We only shoot honorable men.”
The Governor and Detective both burst into laughter once again as Dunford turned his eyes towards the ground in silent contemplation.
City Hall, New York City
“This country is becoming brutalized by the experience of war,” sighed Mayor William Engels as he stroked his long and pointed beard and reviewed the latest edition of the New York Times.
“Surely you mean the Rebels are, darling,” said New York Times reporter Sandra Heep as she sat on the Mayor’s desk gazing at his largely-bald head.
“Oh no,” replied the Mayor, “don’t be naive, dear. Everyone is. That’s what a civil war means. It’s not simply the old trite cliche - that this is a war where “brother fights brother” or however you wish to put it. The reality is much, much worse. We hate one another more than we’d ever hate any foreign enemy. I mean, it isn’t the Rebels setting off all of the IEDs and the like. Even if that part generally gets left out of things.”
“You really don’t think that President Bryan can pull this thing out? Things were looking promising once he issued his proclamation. At least, up and until the bombings. Though I hear that the effects of those have been somewhat overstated.”
“Well,” replied the Mayor, “you and your paper would be in a position to know about that. Wouldn’t you?”
For weeks now the Times had printed endless stories dwelling upon the Rebels’ firebombing of the various Army of the United States camps, presenting it as an atrocity practically without parallel in the history of the world.
“Yes,” admitted Heep, “but there’s still a lot of things that we have going for us, don’t we? I mean, we have the support of most of the world. We also have the better part of the coasts and most of the major ports.”
“Look,” said Engels, “the President can’t give up, because he’s the President. But, first of all, I think that a realistic appraisal says that we don’t win this thing if we fight right up until the end. But, if we do, what do we win? A sullen and angry South filled with bitter white men with guns? The killing would go on for years and years and I don’t see any great prize there. Really, if you think about it, why do we even want to govern those places? Let them sink on their own.”
“How do you, as Mayor, even fit into this thing?” asked Heep.
“I mean,” she added, “don’t you pretty much have your hands full running the city at this point?”
“Certainly these are trying times for the city,” admitted the Mayor, “but the other work that I am doing is, in truth, vital to the future of this place. What we are working on is creating a better, freer future for New York. That requires a little bit of under-the-table work.”
“I’m not sure if I follow,” said the reporter.
“There’s going to come a moment when we have to make our move in order to forge a new future for progressive America. When that happens there’s going to be resistance, even here. I’m working to minimize that resistance in advance so that the entire process may proceed smoothly. Do you understand that?”
“I… I think so,” said Sandra after a long pause.
“Good,” said the Mayor, “because I’m going to need you and your paper if this thing is to come off. In particular, you’ll need to make sure that some things aren’t reported.”
“We can do that.”
Camp Cesar Chavez, Near Oceanside, California
The recruits stationed at Camp Cesar Chavez had actually fared better-than-average among units subjected to Rebel firebomb attacks. The total deaths among the 40,000 recruits held at the camp had amounted to “only” a little over two thousand with an equal amount injured seriously enough to put them out of action altogether. The average casualty rate among the densely-packed training camps had been closer to 20%. Some of the camps had simply been wiped out altogether.
Still, that was not to say that the survivors were in anything that could be described as good shape, thought Alvaro Ramirez as he surveyed the scene. Many of those who had not been so seriously wounded as to put them out of action had sustained minor injuries that, in older times, would have seen them declared unfit for active duty. And that, of course, only accounted for the physical casualties.
The majority of the new recruits raised for the Army of the United States were hard men. Given that the new cohorts were largely composed of amnestied criminals and illegal aliens that was to be expected. It was a decidedly macho group. However, seeing a man stabbed in a prison knife fight and seeing one hundred people burned alive are very different things and even some of the mentally-tough members of the new force were having a hard time dealing with things like that.
Ramirez had, in recent weeks, grown used to walking into the barracks to find men silently weeping to themselves. The first few times it had happened he - and others within the chain-of-command - had treated it as an emergency, devoting their full attention to the matter. That was no longer the case. There were too many broken men wandering the streets to give each anything like the full attention of anyone and, in any case, many - including Ramirez - tended to believe that the attention lavished on the earliest breakdowns had only encouraged others to emulate the example of the first.
Still, even if he believed that some of their seeming psychological casualties were malingerers, there was no doubt in Ramirez’s mind that a large percentage of his unit was utterly unfit for duty. They weren’t even fully trained yet. Only a lunatic would send men into combat under such conditions.
Yet, looking at the words on the tablet in front of him, Ramirez could see that that was exactly what was happening.
Damn them, he thought before adding, but, then, what choice did they have?
The Rebels were moving west out of their Colorado bastion. They were doing it, by all accounts, in great numbers. The Army of the United States units in California might not be ready, but they were pretty much all that stood between the Rebel army and the coast with its vital ports. Given this, as much as he hated the fact that his men were going to be used practically as speed bumps, the plan formulated by the Joint Chiefs to send fresh infantry units into Arizona and Nevada to launch spoiling attacks made an awful lot of sense. The only hope that existed to keep California in the hands of the Federal Government would be to fight a series of actions with the aim of delaying the Rebel advance long enough for what heavy forces could be scraped together in the interior of California to be used to launch a series of major counterattacks. The logic was, in fact, impeccable, Ramirez decided.
It’s just a Goddamned shame that my soldiers and I are going to be ones whose lives are thrown away as part of the gambit.
“Alright men,” he called out to the assembled soldiers, “listen up.”
“I don’t think that it’s a secret that most of you are not particularly happy at being asked to undertake this particular mission. I understand and share your feelings. This is a shitty job that we’ve been handed.”
“The Rebel army is coming our way. They mean to stomp us out. And you know what that means for not only the country, but for your personally.”
“For many of you this represents a second chance. You have been given an opportunity to make amends for past sins. For some of you those were minor. For others… less so.”
“Now you can complain and curse - in fact, I encourage you to do just that - but when the time comes to move out, we’re going to move out. And, when we do, we’re all going to do our jobs.”
“Any questions?” asked Ramirez, looking around at the assembled men.
“Alright then, dismissed,” he said simply.
His Platoon Commanders - one a newbie who was replacing a freshly-minted Lieutenant burned to a crisp by the Rebels - lingered after the rest of the men had returned to their tasks.
“Where are we going, Captain?” the new Platoon commander, a twenty-something woman from Seattle, asked.
“We’re going to move through Rebel-held California and pass into Arizona,” he explained simply, “and then we’re going to dig in along the interstate. The Rebels don’t have organized forces between here and there to stop us from doing it. We’ll have artillery - good artillery, in fact, in the form of a regular formation - and air support.”
“And then what are we going to do?” asked the young woman.
“Why then we’re going to hold our position until we’re ordered to withdraw. Or until we die. Whichever comes first.”
Old Courthouse Museum, Vicksburg, Mississippi
Acting President Rickover stood on the platform impatiently playing with a rubber band while the Mayor of Vicksburg droned on about the glorious history of his town. He wasn’t really sure where the rubber band had come from - Presidents don’t have much occasion to use the things - but he’d fished it out of his pants pocket and, over the previous twenty minutes, it had proven to be a welcome distraction from the tiresome antics of the local dignitaries.
“…and now,” said the Mayor, “I take great pride in presenting to you, the President of our glorious United States!”
The crowd cheered vigorously as the Acting President stood and walked towards the podium, where he shook hands with the Mayor.
“Thank you for that very moving introduction, Mayor Argue,” he said simply.
“Now,” began the Acting President, “I’ve come to Vicksburg because it represents a special place in the history of our country. It was on the same day that the Union forces won at Gettysburg that this city also surrendered to Union forces after a long siege.”
That remark drew a few boos from the audience. Historical memories are long in the South.
“I can add nothing to what has already been said about the great heroism of the Southern people during that war, or of the people of the city of Vicksburg - and the soldiers who defended it - in particular. The bitterness of that defeat persisted for generations thereafter. It is said by some that it was not until the year 1945 - some eighty years after Appomattox - that Vicksburg held an official post-war celebration of the 4th of July.”
“Yet, today, the wounds of that war are healed. I think it can be fairly said that the patriotism of the citizens of Vicksburg, of Mississippi, and the South is beyond question. We are all Americans and you, in particular, are some of the most loyal Americans of all. Whatever the wounds of the past are, today they are healed.”
“Now, our country is undergoing a similar trauma. Once again American fights American here, on
our own soil. Once again American blood is behind shed right here at home. And I am determined that we - the legitimate government of the United States - will win that war.”
“However, once we win that war, our work is not nearly over. Indeed, when that glorious day comes - as come it shall - our work will be barely begun. After the fighting is over must come the work of reconciliation and reconstruction.”
“Now,” continued the Acting President, “fair debate may be had over the details of the First Reconstruction. I do not wish to engage in that beyond to say that I believe that true points are made by those on both sides of that issue. However, I would argue, the first wave of reconstruction - that advocated by our martyred President - were vital to the eventual healing of the rifts of that war.”
“Now, as in the First Reconstruction, we must - as we prepare for a Second Reconstruction, consider what sort of America we want to have going forward. We need to think about what it means to be an American and what our vision of the future is. And, having decided upon that vision, we need to write it into our Constitution so that the mistakes of the past cannot be repeated in the future.”
“The first principle of the Founders - and the first principle of America - was and is simple: liberty. We need to restore that as the fundamental principle of our system of government. In creating our government and writing our Constitution, the Founders did not seek to create a system of perfect democracy or to provide for the uplift of every America. In America uplift is the business of the people, not the business of the state. Liberty must be the first principle of our government, ahead of both democracy and equality. Those are notions that the Founders explicitly rejected.”
“The purpose of our Constitution was not to empower the government to improve the lives of the people: it was and remains to limit the extent of the involvement of the government in the lives of the people to a minimal level.”
