The Second Civil War- The Complete History

by Adam Yoshida

  He looked around briefly at the men before continuing.

  “Ok,” he said, “let’s go.”

  And, with that, Dumont and the rest of an infantry platoon charged into the lobby of a building that had taken on the name of yet another corporate sponsor but which Chicago and America would forever refer to as the Sears Tower.

  Chicago, Illinois

  “We have to do something!” screeched the Minister of Justice in the bunker beneath the Northwestern Memorial Hospital that had been converted into an emergency shelter for what was left of the Federation Government.

  “Then you do something,” replied the former President and High Commissioner, “but I’m about out of ideas. Half of the pins on that map represent units that don’t even exist anymore. They just melted in the face of heavy enemy attack. They’re going to come and yank us out of here, like Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole.”

  The Minister of Justice was surrounded by half a dozen old friends of the High Commissioner, men and women who had once upon a time helped to launch his political career and who had been found places in the shelter. All of them looked at one another, dazed and unable to figure out who to proceed.

  “It is impossible for the power of the people not to triumph,” insisted the Minister of Justice, “even if the military won’t fight, the people can still do it. We can use the force of justice and history to save ourselves still.”

  “Noble words, noble words,” said the High Commissioner sadly, “and ones that I agree with. But I also think, at this juncture, that the best we can hope for is that we will get fair treatment from our conquerers.”

  “You just heard Randall on television,” raved the Justice Minister, “he’s left our fate in the hands of Rickover. He just went up there and washed his hands. He’s probably eager for Rickover to take care of us, the bastard. It’ll make his job all-the-easier.”

  “Probably,” said the High Commissioner, his voice low. He refused to meet the gaze of the Justice Minister or the other people in the room.

  “Well, you can quit if you want to,” said the Justice Minister, “but I’m not done fighting. We’ll take to the streets and dare them to confront the people. That was our mistake: in trying to fight this war their way, with guns and bombs instead of organizing the people in defense of the progressive values that we all hold.”

  “Ok,” said the High Commissioner flatly. When he said nothing more than that, the Justice Minister, unable to contain her look of disgust, turned around and stormed out of the room, followed by her small cadre of allies. When they were gone, the High Commissioner got up and shut the door.

  People, thought the High Commissioner, had only ever valued him a a symbol. That had been true in the White House and it was true within the government of the Federation. He had never been taken seriously as a leader or even as a man. As he had been a powerful symbol of so many other things - of hope, change, and then resistance - now he would be a powerful symbol of the utter defeat of his cause. They were going to come and pull him out of this bunker and then they would use him to symbolize all that they claimed was wrong with the progressive cause. Since Kevin Bryan and Henry Warren were already dead, he would be put on trial for all of their crimes. The outcome of such a trial, he knew, was practically a foregone conclusion. He would certainly be convicted. He actually suspected that he would be sentenced to death but then reprieved by Mitchell Randall in a supposed gesture of reconciliation that would actually impose an even-greater humiliation upon him. He would be left to live out his days as a symbol of defeat and failure.

  His fate, the High Commissioner knew, had always rested more in the hands of others than his own. He had been used as a tool by other people for so long that he no longer really knew what it felt like to be the master of one’s own soul.

  He couldn’t save the Federation. He knew that now. Perhaps he had always known that. Perhaps, he thought as he walked over towards the small closet in the corner of the room, he’d been so desperate for relevance that he’d been willing to latch onto any cause that would have him and to grasp anything that would make him relevant.

  He undid his belt and gently pulled it from its loops. As he did he walked back over towards the desk and grabbed the drab institutional rolling chair that was sitting there. As he stood on the chair in the closet, he was forced to hunch over slightly. He looped the belt tightly around his neck and then took the long and and tied it to the closet rod, giving himself just a few inches of give. Looking at his handiwork he decided to tie a second knot with the remaining material simply out of an abundance of caution. When he had completed that, he used both of his feet to kick the rolling chair out from under himself.

  2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, 3rd BCT, 4th Infantry Division, Chicago, Illinois

  By the time that the tanks of the Second Platoon had made their way into downtown Chicago, the resistance of most of the remaining FNASA forces had simply stopped. In fact, armored units like the 1st Battalion had been ordered by the Division’s commander not to stop to accept the surrender of FNASA units as the sheer volume of such surrenders was slowing down the movement of the American soldiers.

  Still, despite the fact that resistance was now minimal, the soldiers had maintained their guard: no one wanted to be the last casualty of the war. A tank that they happened to find on West Chicago Avenue was engaged and destroyed without waiting to determine its intent.

  The 1st Battalion’s objective was to clear any remaining resistance on the campus of Northwestern University and make it all the way to the shore of Lake Michigan. It was widely-rumored the Northwestern was where the remaining leaders of the Federation were holed-up, and so all of the soldiers were eager to make their way there as quickly as possible.

  “Heads up Second Platoon,” came a radio call from an E-8 Joint STARS aircraft that was observing events in downtown Chicago, “but there’s a pretty big crowd gathered a few blocks ahead of you.”

  “Roger that,” called out the platoon leader, “is is military?”

  “At least in part,” replied the E-8.

  “Good enough,” called back the platoon leader.

  Bravo Troop, 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, 3rd BCT, 2nd Armored Division, Chicago, Illinois

  With the tower, like much of the city, now bereft of power it had been necessary for the soldiers with Dumont to scale some one hundred and eight floors to reach the top to the building. Surprisingly, there had been little grumbling from men who had been asked to climb such a distance to engage in what was, in essence, a symbolic mission while carrying a surprisingly heavy load. There had been no over resistance during the cavalrymen’s climb, though they had been required to blow down several locked doors.

  The ascent had taken the men just over half an hour to complete, longer than the average time of the best competitive stair-climbers but pretty good for a group of soldiers who had just spent a fair part of the day engaged in combat operations and a number of whom were jointly carrying a large package.

  By the time they had reached the top floor of the tower the sun was just about to set. This contingency had been anticipated and several of the soldiers were carrying powerful portable lighting gear that they began to set up even as other soldiers began to unload their primary cargo and affix it to the giant television antenna that topped the tower.

  “This probably violates some FCC regulation,” joked one of the men as he climbed up a ladder to attach the object to the top of the antenna.

  “Imagine the worker’s comp claim if he falls,” said another one of the soldiers.

  Dumont smiled and waved his hand dismissively as the soldiers finished fastening the object to the antenna while others held it down to keep it from flapping in the wind and knocking the ladder down.

  “Alright,” said the Captain, “everyone back off except for those of you who are holding it down. Then, when everyone is clear, we’re going to let it go. Stand clear - it really could knock someone off thi
s fucking thing.”

  The soldiers efficiently followed the orders of the troop commander. Seconds later the object flew into the air, waving from the TV antenna. Dumont and the other soldiers instinctively stepped back and saluted.

  Northwestern University Campus, Chicago, Illinois

  Even amidst the chaos of war, the Justice Minister and her friends had managed to gather a small crowd to shout in defiance.

  “The people, united, will never be defeated!” the mixed crowd of students and bureaucrats chanted. They were marching in a show of defiance, designed to show the United States Army that their physical conquest of the city did not mean that they had gained the moral authority to govern it.

  The Justice Minister was marching at the front of the crowd of a few hundred people when suddenly the movement of the crowd began to slow and its volume began to drop. The Justice Minister stopped and turned to see what was going on. The majority of the crowd was looking to the south. A few were looking at the ground and crying. A few wept loudly and openly.

  To the south, on the other side of the river, the marchers were all looking at the Sears Tower whose rooftop was suddenly brightly lit. Flying from the antenna of the tower was the single largest American flag that the Justice Minister had ever seen. It would also, as it turned out, also be the last thing that she ever saw.

  2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, 3rd BCT, 4th Infantry Division, Chicago, Illinois

  Subsequent investigations would determine that the commander of the Second Platoon had committed what was, given the fog of war that had existed at the time, an understandable and excusable error. His tanks had been charging onto the campus of Northwestern University to engage a reported group of FNASA dead-enders when they had encountered a large crowd amidst the darkness.

  The soldiers of the Second Platoon were tired and a little jumpy. When some fool from within the crowd fired a rifle at one of the tanks, the soldiers had not thought twice about reacting as though they were faced with a substantial force of enemy infantry. All four tanks of the platoon immediately opened fire with both anti-personnel rounds and their secondary armament. The leader of the group, who had been staring dumbfounded to the south, fell under the treads of one of the seventy-ton tanks and reduced to an unrecognizable pulp. It took fully fifteen seconds for the tank crews to realize that the people they had encountered were running away from them and not firing back. By the time the platoon commander gave the order to halt firing, some seventy-six people were already dead and one hundred more wounded.

  At first the platoon commander had feared that he might be prosecuted for war crimes for his actions, even though they had been an honest mistake. In this moment he was particularly ill-served by the efforts of the local coroner, who was far behind in terms of identifying the bodies of the dead. When, fully one week after the so-called “massacre”, it was discovered that most of the people killed had been Federation bureaucrats or other well-known supporters of the enemy cause, the army decided instead to give the commander a promotion and a non-combat billet pending his final separation from the Army.

  The White House, Washington, DC

  Terrance Rickover woke up with work to do on his final morning in the White House. The weeks since the Battle of Chicago had simply flown by in a flurry of work. Tens of thousands of volunteer lawyers had been recruited and many different Grand Juries impaneled with the purpose of procuring indictments against any former officials of the Federal Government who had either supported the Loyalist cause or defected to the Federation. In comparison with the complexity of this work, dealing with the remnant of the FNASA had proven to be much simpler.

  After Chicago, the Acting President had issued a proclamation to the effect that anyone who surrendered in the aftermath of the destruction of the Federation government would be dealt with through the regular legal process. Anyone who continued to resist further would be considered a bandit and a terrorist under both the laws of war and the terms of the Insurrection Act and would be hunted down and killed. Without any real centralized leadership left, the Federation’s soldiers had mostly surrendered in the space of a few days. All captured Federation soldiers and officials were sorted into four groups. Those who had been leaders or senior officials were held separately for possible trial under Federal law for various serious crimes. Those who had been regular volunteers were held as prisoners of war pending the development of a proper process for dealing them them. Those who had been illegally released from prison by Kevin Bryan were held in harsher prison camps pending their return to various Federal penitentiaries. This morning, however, Terrance Rickover was dealing with a final group: those illegally present in the country who had taken up arms against the government of the United States.

  “I don’t fucking care,” he nearly shouted into his phone as Mitchell Randall waited in the Oval Office for the traditional meeting between the outgoing Chief Executive and the President-elect.

  “No,” repeated Rickover, “I don’t fucking care what the President of Honduras thinks. Maybe the next guy will reverse me, but I’m still the President for three more fucking hours and I have combat aircraft escorting that plane. If he doesn’t let it land, tell him that I’m going to order the escorting fighters to drop bombs on his fucking house. Tell him that.”

  The Acting President slammed down the phone and turned to face Randall.

  “The repatriation program is running into some resistance,” he said simply.

  “Apparently,” replied the President-elect.

  “Well,” said Rickover, “this desk will be yours soon.”

  “I know that we’ve had our differences, Mr. President,” said Randall, “but I wanted to thank you this morning for your service to our country. It is largely your doing that today we have a united nation to witness the orderly transfer of power.”

  “Yes,” agreed Rickover, “it is largely my doing. You would have signed a large chunk of the country away, had you and your lot had your way.”

  “I don’t think that we need to rehash that this morning, Mr. President,” said Randall softly.

  “No, I suppose that would be wasted effort. Wouldn’t it?” said Rickover with a sigh as he sunk into his chair.

  “Was it worth it, Mr. President?” asked Randall. Rickover leaned back in his chair.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally, “we have given the American people their nation back, but they can only have their republic back if they want it themselves. I don’t know if that’s what they really do want these days. I don’t know that a people so ill-educated as ours are actually capable of sustaining a republican government, since they don’t really understand either the intent of our Constitution or the meaning of liberty.”

  “You can’t have done so much and really believe that America is finished, can you?” asked Randall.

  “I didn’t say that America was finished,” said Rickover, “but the American republic might be. You and the other politicians are going to play a big part in that now. For a republic to exist we require a moral and educated citizenry that believes in the principles of limited government, not an easily-swayed mob. I believe that, a century from now, there will still be a country on the map called the United States of America. I just don’t know if it’ll be the sort of country in which I’d like to live.”

  Manhattan, New York

  Rickover had sat on the inaugural platform and smiled politely as first Robert Schmidt and then Mitchell Randall had taken the Oath of Office. President Randall’s inaugural address had hit all of the expected notes about healing the nation and ensuring that a tragedy such as they had just endured would never happen again. Rickover had smiled politely throughout and clapped at all of the appropriate moments. Then, all of a sudden, it was all over. He no longer had any office nor any fixed political duties. He had boarded an old Air Force jet at Andrews Air Force Base and taken off, after saying farewell to the small band of supporters who had come to see him off, even before the ina
ugural parade had finished.

  It was a short trip from there to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, where a car was waiting to take him to the small townhouse that he had purchased on New York’s Upper East Side. He wasn’t a rich man by any means, but he was pretty certain that the money that he would earn from writing the memoirs of the Acting President during the Second Civil War would be more than enough to pay for his indulgence. The Secret Service has blanched at the notion of a former President moving into such an insecure location and so Rickover had decided to dispense with any further protection from them.

  At first there had been more than a few people who were eager to confront the former President in the streets about his actions during the war. Rickover, while he avoided commenting on current affairs, had proven willing to provide an accounting of himself and his actions to anyone who demanded one. After a few such confrontations had become viral video sensations, New Yorkers had begun to adjust to seeing the former President of the United States casually walking the streets of the city, which he would do for many hours each and every day.

  A year after leaving office, the former Acting President had finished his memoirs and e-mailed them off to his publisher. When that was done he went ought and bought last-minute tickets to see a show on Broadway as he often did.

  “Mr. President,” said a polite usher whose name Rickover had never bothered to learn as he helped him to his seat.

  “Thank you,” said Rickover as he quietly slipped into the lower orchestra seat and removed his jacket. The people around him whispered but didn’t say anything. The former Acting President removed his bulky overcoat and rested it upon his lap.

  The play was a revival of the classic musical “Life With the Simpsons”, which was more-popularly known as “The Simpsons Musical.” The second title, however, was something of a misnomer since the musical wasn’t so much about The Simpsons as it was about a fan’s appreciation for the thirty-two year run of the series and how it had run through his entire adult life. Rickover, also a life-long fan of the series, laughed throughout.