The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  Supply and demand.

  The Bitch decided that she was going to put a stop to that and ordered all basic commodities to be repriced at pre-Plague levels.

  Which just meant that people who had any money left stripped the shelves and because it was costing more to produce a loaf of bread than ten dollars, the few remaining businesses that were making bread went out of business. So there was no more bread.

  Ever hear the whole thing about Marie Antoinette and "If there is no bread then let them eat cake." She wasn't a cold-hearted bitch as is normally thought. She was a liberal airhead.

  Think I'm wrong?

  There was a famine going on at the time, a Malthus special combined with, hey! look! a global cooling event. The French agricultural economy had reached its carrying capacity just as there was a turn-down in the thermostat. One bad harvest and people were starving. The king ordered that the price of bread in Paris and other cities be fixed at a certain level so that people could afford to eat. The only problem being the farmers, who had limited supplies from the bad harvest, weren't willing to sell it to the bakers at the cost necessary for bread to be that cost. So the supply of wheat ran out for bread.

  The king had also decreed that if there was no bread flour, then cake, which was from much more expensive (less supply) flour, was to be substituted.

  So she was making, within the "command economy" mindset, a perfectly plausible statement. If the bakers aren't making bread, then the poor get to eat cake.

  The only problem being, there wasn't enough flour for cake, either. And either way the bakers were going to go out of business.

  There were stores of grains still in silos. It could be argued that locking in their price to what they were worth pre-Plague was reasonable. Except that the people who owned them now had much higher expenses across the board. And if they went out of business, somebody was going to have to run the silos. Okay, the government. Are we going to get to full communism? If Warrick had her way we would have.

  But even if you fixed the cost of those, that didn't get it to mouths. You had to transport it. The fuel delivery system was shot. (Take our dead husband in the suburb and multiply by fifteen million.) What fuel was available was expensive. Law of supply and demand.

  Okay, then fix the price of fuel!

  Truckers had gotten hit hard by the Plague. By definition, they traveled and were exposed all over the place. So there were fewer truckers. And most of them were independents. There were fewer loads, but there were way fewer truckers. They could pick and choose their cargoes and if they had one that was willing to pay more, say a load of critical components that a company was willing to pay through the nose for, rather than, say, a government priced shipment of food, they went for the filthy lucre.

  Seize the trucks!

  Thus was the Big Grab started. And it went on and fucking on. Sure, she had the Right under the Emergency Powers Act. It was, however, very fucking stupid. It did more lasting damage to the economy than the Plague. We're still trying to unfuck it.

  There's a personal side to that but I'll get to that. I promise.

  But while the Big Grab was still getting rolling, and understand it was never quite a full governmental program, just an ad hoc response as things came to the Bitch's attention, the Bitch implemented the next stage of her Plan.

  There was to be no triage. Not as such. Areas that were recoverable weren't to be designated. Areas that were write-offs weren't to be designated. She and her advisors would determine which areas were to be concentrated on, first.

  Well, go figure. Looks like the blue states won out big-time. And especially blue counties.

  Only one problem. If Brody Barnes had been asked, his contention was "they're mostly gone for the time being."

  Go back to the trust thing. Think about multiculturalism. Look at Morristown vs. Blackjack. And blue counties tended to be heavily urbanized.

  The cities were just a fucking wreck. At least for a time in almost all urban areas "essential services" broke down. Essential services are Maslov's hierarchy. Food and water are the big two. Security isn't really mentioned but before food started to run out looting became a major issue.

  Ah. Looting vs. scavenging. In a disaster situation, there is a difference between looting and scavenging. Scavenging is a person coming out of a Winn-Dixie or Meijers with a shopping cart filled with canned goods and bottled water. Looting is a person coming out of Walmart with five TVs.

  You help scavengers, you shoot looters. (Okay, okay, shoot me. It was too good to pass up! But I'm getting ahead of myself again.)

  Inner city neighborhoods that had been the target of "specialized policing" were the absolute worst. These were the grasshoppers gathered in force. Trust barely existed within family groups. There was little or no social cohesion.

  After the first wave of the Plague they were free-fire zones. I'd have rather walked down a street in Qom butt-assed naked than drive through South Detroit in a Stryker.

  But not only were those areas where the bulk of her voters came from, they were where the news media was. If it bleeds it leads and it was bleeding hard in South Chicago, Detroit, Watts, East L.A., Washington, DC . . .

  The worst spots were to be the target of the most concentrated effort.

  There's a military term for this. It's called "slamming the wall." The basic concept is that if you take your enemy's strongest position, it will break him. It's also called "suicide." Porkchop Hill, the Somme, Coldwater Harbor. Historical examples of "slamming the wall." Also historical examples of highest casualty assaults. And none of them did a damned bit of good in the end.

  Neither did pouring vital supplies into the free-fire zones.

  And then there were the Rules of Engagement. They went way beyond "do not fire unless fired upon." Warrick was, after all, a lawyer. Written out, they went to five pages of flow diagrams. They were worse than the ones issued towards the latter part of the Iraq Campaign. Essentially they came down to "do not fire." Period. If you shot anyone, for any reason, you were probably going to jail.

  Soldiers were prosecuted, during that period, for firing upon people who were actively firing at them. Guys went to Leavenworth who had bullets in their body-armor. Dozens of food shipments were lost to gangs that forced the soldiers to turn them over. It was that or have a fire-fight. And they were not permitted to fire. When it was more or less one on one, and it often was, not firing first meant heavy casualties. The leaders, and I don't blame them, were willing to give up the shipments rather than take the casualties.

  Units were required to "maintain a minimum presence of force." That is, they weren't supposed to ride into the neighborhoods like an invading army. No matter how violent they were. Habeas corpus had been suspended but you couldn't tell it if you were a soldier. Unless, of course, you were up for punishment. Then you hadeus no corpus.

  And some very heavy weapons had gotten into the hands of these gangs. One Stryker was hit and destroyed by a Javelin while escorting a food convoy. Most of the units doing the escorting didn't have Javelins issued. (A Javelin is an anti-tank missile. More about those, later, too.)

  So while the red counties, the rural counties and smaller cities that made up "fly-over country" were organizing and recovering and hoping for some help, however little, the "blue" counties, many of which had gone completely bat-shit, were having food and medical supplies and emergency supplies shoveled into them like coal into a furnace and for about as much result.

  Okay, they were not all losses. Notice I didn't mention Harlem, Queens or the Bronx. That's because they didn't ever get that bad. Not even close. Part of that was because the mayor refused to let it get that bad. Mortality had been incredibly low. Less than 20% and that, frankly, tended to be among grasshoppers. Police presence was high and the local National Guard unit had been turned into something closer to the New York militia. When they were ordered to displace to handle problems in New Jersey—Newark was one of the war zones—the orders were ignored.
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  Food shipments got to where they were supposed to go. Bodies were collected. Order never really broke down in New York. It's possible for at least a local government to maintain near normal conditions even in densely populated areas, even in a disaster as bad as the Plague. But it took strong and effective leadership. People have got to trust. Let's all work together said "I'm trusting you to trust me to not screw you." Enough people got the idea that it worked. The few "random associators" among New Yorkers supported the mayor. And the "King" types were willing to follow a strong man in a time of trouble. Call it a cult of personality.

  Like I said, if Cranslow runs for President, I'll work with him. He's even a fiscal conservative. What the hell.

  Chapter Nine

  Random Associations

  The majority of the functional distribution, therefore, happened outside cities. Much of it was illicit. That is, food convoys were ordered to Philadelphia and "broke down" before they got there. And set up distribution stations. And fed people that needed it and weren't going to try to steal it. And, often, turned bulk materials over to "local random associations" for distribution.

  Okay, the gangs were, often, local random associations, more or less. Some of them, especially Hispanic and Asian, were at core familial based. (And by Asian I don't mean just Chinese. Note the Caliphate.)

  But they were not going to be, in turn, acting as useful distributors. The food was used for internal power. There was a touch of that in places with the churches and other associations (VFW did enormous if unheralded good during the Time). They had the food and they made the choices who ate and who did not. Generally, this was not race based as was often reported. It was, to an extent, based on trust issues. But mostly it was based on the same reasoning that young lady in Blackjack used. Feed local emergency services personnel first. Feed kids and elderly next. Feed random associators next. Feed the grasshoppers last.

  There was a degree of blending and bonding during the Time which was unprecedented in American history. Generally, for actual biological reasons, people do differentiate on the basis of color. (Yes, babies do not. Children, by and large, do not. The trait kicks in at puberty. It can be culturally adjusted, but it's a defined human trait. A white child raised among Chinese is going to trust Chinese over whites. True study. Another urban myth trashed.) And there were then and are now bigots on that score.

  But due to societal factors, random associators had a fair slice of military personnel in their midst. And military personnel deal with all kinds of colors when they're in. It's hard to be in the military for any time and not become to an extent color blind. They may look at cultural factors, but they tend to look past color per se. The two are not equal.

  (Had a bit of an issue on that part just before the last Iran deployment. We were having a hard time getting a widget out of one particular supply unit. I paid them a visit to try to sweet-talk. Ended up talking with the unit commander. Didn't get far. And then the fuck-head had the audacity to say "I guess you're just not part of the African-American mafia." So I laughed and admitted I wasn't. And then I turned the whole thing over to the IG. Along with my report of the meeting. About three weeks later the unit commander was on his way out of the Army.

  By the same token, Colonel Richards, just about the best fucking battalion commander I ever had, was black. Culture is not the same as race.)

  So when a white kid walked up to one of the white distributors and asked for extra food to take back to his family, he was judged on his social appearance. Did he have his pants hanging down to his knees and his ball-cap on sideways? Was he wearing an earring? Did he look "ghetto"?

  He'd better be known to the people doing the distribution or they'd tell him if someone had a chance they'd take some over but right now it was line up or nothing.

  A black guy walking up to a line of distributors from a very white church might get the same perusal. If, however, he was neatly dressed and well spoken, and especially if he offered to help, he was likely to be trusted. He might be given food for more than just himself if there was extra.

  Yes, there were those that used that to their advantage. But by and large judging on the basis of culture for trust works.

  It was not only white churches that got largess from military units who were, increasingly and against orders, turning away from downtown areas. Any random association that seemed functional and valid might get a drop of food and medicines. A fucking mosque in St. Louis was eventually considered the best place to drop shipments. They handled them evenhandedly and very efficiently. Charity is one of the few things that Islamics get right.

  Larger associations formed, very very much "back channel."

  Example:

  A white church in suburban Boston was running low on food. Suddenly, a convoy destined for the center of Boston "broke down" nearby and had to unload most of its supplies. Convenient?

  A black church in Arkansas had received a similar largesse, in part because the first sergeant of the National Guard company doing the delivery had family in the church and they were not interested in going into the portion of Little Rock they were destined for.

  The two churches, widely separated, were "sister missions" to each other. That is, there was some reciprocation of ministers and support. That mostly came down to the more wealthy church having, over the years, given financial support to the less wealthy. And, yes, that is white and black. And even after the Plague they had kept in contact through several means.

  In this case bread upon the waters, as Jesus said, worked out. The XO of the National Guard company had been a member of 10th ID. He called one of his old bosses and mentioned that he'd heard there was a church group doing good works but struggling near Boston. 10th ID was working the Boston area. Voila "breakdown."

  Bread upon the waters. Random associations.

  Where there was not direct interference, it was random associations that started to rebuild the country. The economy was just screwed. But that didn't mean people didn't work and businesses didn't function to some extent. It was strange. There was a labor shortage and at the same time high unemployment. It was like the cost of goods. There were many hands that wanted to work and companies that were opening or managed to hang on and stay open that needed to fill the slots left open by deaths. It took time, though, to get those two together.

  Communications never went down completely. There were times when it was impossible to get a phone call through to certain areas. And the Internet was a spotty thing. Not so much because of the trunks but because of local providers, functionality thereof.

  But commo was spotty and screwed up. And there would be various scares of a new plague breaking out. It did in places. Miami had a cholera outbreak, more deaths. L.A. . . . Well, despite the best efforts of Warrick, or possibly because of them, L.A. was fucked. Cholera, resistant tuberculosis, typhus, they all broke out. And then there's the water situation. But that's a sideline I'll see about covering later.

  And whenever there was a scare, the phone lines went down. All the connections weren't in place and as soon as anyone who still had access to a working phone heard a rumor, or a news report, which was often the same rumor, that a new plague had broken out they called friends or relatives in the area. And commo went down.

  So let's look at an example.

  Let's go back to the suburban family. The father was a guy working at a local fueling center. Now, this is a pump farm where the trucks that fuel gas stations go to fill up. Sometimes they're owned by one oil company but fill up all the trucks in the area, regardless of whose gas it's supposed to be. Not usually, but it happens.

  Anyway, working one those places is a semi-skilled job. At the very least, a knowledge of the basic safety and emergency response is useful.

  By and large, such places stayed up. Fuel was central and critical. They might not be going to a dozen gas stations anymore, but they were providing fuel to somebody. The military bought from such stations, fueling their fuel trucks at them.

>   But they'd taken hits in personnel. One in three, more or less at random. And as things started to reform, they were getting more and more trucks wanting fuel. Sometimes they ran out; it had to come from somewhere and the distribution system was in chaos. But the bottomline was, they needed bodies.

  Say that the first family was in suburban Cincinnatti and the fueling station was, too. The husband was dead and buried under pansies. They get to the point they need a new fuel guy. Everyone's working overtime, for sometimes no pay but the company is making sure they get food, and they're getting worn out. They need another body. A warm one. Not the guy under pansies.

  So they put out the word. They need a trained fuel technician.

  All sorts of people walk over to the place. It's a job, man. Jobs are scarce. And the fuel company is making sure its people and their families get fed. But these are just bodies. They need someone with experience handling big quantities of fuel. They're too overworked to train someone, much as they need the body.

  In the suburbs of Beltsville, itself a suburb, there's a former webdesigner who, during a single stint in the Army, worked a fuel distribution point in Iraq. She is a trained fuel transfer technician and has experience. But the place that needs her experience is in Cincinnatti. She's more than willing to go there to get a job and assured food. Maybe a bit of money left over for more than bare survival. It's a job, man.

  Say that she still gets some Internet access, somehow. (Libraries still had some functionality.) Say that she finds the want ad on MonsterJobs.com. (Which came back up in June of 2019 and stayed up to this day.) How does she get to Cincinnatti? Note the "she." Hitchhiking is a choice of last resort. Major league trust issues.

  In this case, not quite a random association. She puts her experience on the website along with a phone number at her local association (the VFW in her case, yes, it's taken from a real person's experience) where she can be reached.