The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  Behind the Strykers were the mortar tracks with their water buffalos and a ten-ton truck.

  The lead Stryker waited until the rest were arrayed and some communications were effected. There wasn't much cover in the refugee camp. Hell, it was surprising that everyone hadn't died of exposure. I was getting ready to start fixing that.

  But the first and most important thing was to establish who was boss.

  When everything was in place, we rolled up to the edge of the refugees.

  Let me try to do justice to this picture.

  Take seventy-four cars and array them randomly in the desert. Not all were cars. There were four SUVs, nine minivans and fifteen pickup trucks.

  Off to one side put more cars and such but they're all blackened piles of rubble.

  Scattered in and around these cars and such, place whatever you can imagine for shelter. Tarps held up by twine. Plastic sheets. Blankets serving as tents.

  Into this throw garbage. No food, mind you. Call it trash. Inorganic. I was getting ready to deal with the organic trash.

  Add in some small personal posessions. Pile those somewhat less randomly around a cluster of six of the minivans and two of the SUVs. Anything of any real value, put in that cluster. Hell, there were even some unopened MRE and "halal" bags.

  Throw in about a thousand people. All of them unwashed. Most of them not in amongst the cars. Just scatter them around the desert, just sitting there. No fires because the nearest wood that wasn't under our control was ten miles away.

  There is an almost unnoticed open area between the majority of these survivors and the cluster.

  Add in some dug holes that were supposed to be where people shat and pissed. They weren't used much. Add in a lot of piles of human dung, huge clouds of flies around same.

  Picture Strykers opening up around this area that covered maybe four acres of hell. Troops unass and start moving through the outer periphery of the refugees. They stop well away from the cluster. They are moving in three-man teams. One guy turns to the rear, the other two face inward. All of them, as if by magic, take a knee with their weapons pointed at the ground. They're in the midst of the crowd.

  The crowd gets the picture and starts moving. Away from the cluster.

  All of this takes place before the troop door of the lead Stryker lowers. Around from the back comes an officer in a dapper uniform. He is carrying not a single weapon. He holds a swagger stick and uses it to wave away the flies. He is, however, wearing a radio and headset.

  He is wearing sunglasses.

  He is followed by six troops in heavy armor. Their weapons are not down. They are up and training on anyone near him who might be considered a threat. Two face forward, two to the side and two backwards, walking carefully to avoid the filth.

  In the midst of this cluster of troops is a seventh, equally well armed. He is followed by a young woman in a blue jumpsuit that looks as if it has recently been removed from a package. Her hair is clean and brushed. She is clean and brushed.

  The Stryker has parked as close to the cluster as it can without running over refugees or their meager posessions. It is a short walk to the edge of the cluster where a number of armed men are now up clutching AKs and looking very angry.

  The unarmed and unarmored officer does not appear to care if they are angry. He doesn't appear to notice them. He is whacking at flies and smiling and nodding at the few refugees who are too tired or despairing to move out of the way.

  Out of one of the minivans comes a large man. He is at least six feet two inches tall and broad with a hard, dark face and black hair. He is carrying an light assault machine gun and bandoliers crossed across his chest. Also two pistols and at least four knives. He is clean shaven but otherwise closely resembles the sort of pirate Sinbad may have had to deal with.

  The officer, by the way, is looking down at him. The officer is . . . not small. However he is unarmed.

  There are more armed men emerging. They appear to have been resting in the clustered vehicles. A few young women follow them out. Some of them very young.

  Do you have this picture clearly? Fourteen armed and angry men. An unarmed captain who is clearly happy to see them. Refugees scrambling to get out of the line of fire. Heavily armed troops in an array that can cover most of the angles of fire.

  It's a clear morning, just after dawn, still reasonably cool but looking to be another hot one.

  "Hollywood," the officer says, languidly, raising the swagger stick. "Front and center."

  The large, armed, man starts saying something angrily. The interpreter cuts him off and gestures to the officer.

  "My name is Bandit Six. I am the commander, pro tempore, of Titan Base. Translate."

  This is translated. The large, angry man says something and the others laugh.

  "Yes. Having completed all of our initial preparation missions within the base, it seems time to do something about the situation outside the walls. We also require some assistance."

  A glare.

  "Indeed. We will be taking thirty of your ladies to handle camp chores. And they will be the younger and prettier ones."

  A female head is peeking out of the minivan the large man had vacated. The girl is probably twelve. She has a large bruise on her cheek and a cut lip. Her clothes are tatters.

  The large man is now more angry and speaking quite angrily. He reaches for one of his pistols and draws it, possibly to wave in the air.

  "Open fire."

  The officer does not flinch. The six troops and the interpreter hit the ground and light the area up. The young woman hits the ground.

  The officer stands there. The large, angry, man explodes apart from a .50 caliber round, blood and less identifiable bits splashing on the officer. The officer does not flinch. He simply waves away some more flies. Rounds crack past his ear, he feels a tug from one on his lower left arm.

  When the firing stops, he smiles.

  Troops move in and ensure all the vehicles are clear.

  "Hollywood, find someone in this rat-fuck who can be put in charge. Have Salah start rounding up the girls. All of these for starters. Don't add any of these below the age of . . . sixteen to the thirty count. Any chosen who have children can bring them as well. And if they might not be their children, that's okay, too."

  The camp was moved. Some of the refugees had to be carried, but they all survived. It was moved to the other side of the road. A man who said he was a mullah was put in charge. He never carried a gun. (He was later recognized as one of the "diggers" from the first few days. The guys who got off their ass to bury the bodies. Good enough.) Others were found to carry the guns. The example of Abu Bakr was pointed out to them. Food and water distribution was rationalized. Tents and cots were brought out. A roadblock was put on the road to control who came out to the camp. Latrines, eventually a kitchen, etc.

  Of course, that brought more refugees. But . . .

  Some good in the world. For a time. A moment.

  Pax Americana. It's like a gnat in a blast furnace in the Middle East.

  Chapter Four

  We Get Ammunition?

  Did I get my tubes cleaned?

  Dude, I was the base commander.

  Her name was Shadi. She was eighteen. The reason I know is that I had a conversation with Hollywood.

  "How old is this young lady, Hollywood? She's eighteen, right?"

  "Uh, sir, she said she thinks she's . . ."

  "Eighteen, right?"

  "Yes, sir! She's eighteen, sir!"

  She was eighteen and she looked, even after all that time in that fucking place, like a god damned model. Long legs, gorgeous face, high cheekbones, aquiline nose, gigantic dark eyes and very nice hooters. She was, by a smidgeon admittedly, the best looking of the young ladies who had chosen to enter the employ of the United States Army.

  She was my "personal maid." She kept my quarters straight, shined my shoes, cleaned my clothes, made sure I ate . . . Stuff like that. She also, yes, participated in
the general housekeeping chores for the unit. That was the point of it, not to get a personal concubine.

  Butterfill got one too. Rank hath its privileges. The lieutenants, four, had two. The senior sergeants I'm not sure how it broke out. And really don't ask me about the troops. I know there was a rota of some sort but I did not get into it. That's what first sergeants are for.

  Were there "issues?" Oh, hell, yeah. Guys in their twenties fall in love with anything that's got pussy. But the issues paled before the benefits. I'm not talking personally although the benefits were nice. I'm talking about troops who were more alert and with soaring morale. My morale was better than it had been in a year. And, hell, the girls weren't exactly unhappy.

  By the way, did the boys have problems with "rank hath its privileges"?

  I'd just stood there cool as a cucumber in the middle of a firefight. The boys do love someone with big brass ones. Those who hadn't previously served with Bandit Six had heard the rep and might have believed it and might not. They knew it now. Big brass ones, calm as hell when the shit hits the fan. Bandit Six rocks.

  (I did not tell them I was nearly peeing myself. There'd been a lot of reasons, including the above, that I did it that way. Didn't mean I liked it. Rank has way more to it than privileges.)

  Did the boys have problems with "rank hath its privileges"? No. They would have for the fucking battalion commander who hardly ever left the fucking FOB and created no end of trouble when he did. But not for Bandit Six. Or Fillup who was a stand-up guy.

  We eventually dipped further into the well for some more for the Nepos. The girls that "assisted" them were getting a bit ragged.

  Some of them had kids. Their kids? I dunno. Didn't care. Some of them, despite my best efforts (there was a supply of birth control pills on the base, naturally, and I kept telling guys to use fucking condoms) got pregnant. Or were pregnant when we brought them in. Deal with that bridge when we came to it. Hell, we were bound to get "relieved" . . . more relieved sometime.

  Or were we?

  Look, the U.S. was a shambles. The military, Army, Air Force, Marines, even the damned Navy, was stretched to the nth degree trying to keep things from coming totally apart. People thought they were apart. They weren't. Hell, television stations were still broadcasting. CNN was up. Fox was up. Networks were mostly showing repeats but if you had satellite and power you could pretend things were normal if you didn't watch the news.

  Civilization in the U.S. was hanging on by a thread. Civilization everywhere was hanging by a thread.

  Europe looked as if it might survive or it might not. Besides all the shit the U.S. was going through, its average mortality, despite an I'll admit better distribution of the vaccine, was higher than that of the U.S. See that long bit about why and pick what you're willing to believe. Bottomline, they'd gotten hit massively.

  Oh, yeah. Might be time to talk about how effective the vaccine really was. They had distributed vaccine. And gotten a goodly part of their population. Type one vaccine. Turns out that the strain of H5N1 that actually broke out almost all had mutated binding proteins.

  (What the hell? Mutated what? You mean it stalked around growling "Braaaains . . ."?)

  Here's what a flu virus does. A flu virus is a little packet, it can't really be called a cell, that looks sort of like a robot and acts a lot like one. Depending what kind of cell it's "targeted" on, it finds that type of cell and hooks on with proteins that look remarkably like hooks under an electron microscope. Then it shoots a package of DNA into the cell. The package of DNA first tells the cell to make a shitload more viruses then kills itself (lyse) so they're released.

  This is the way that immunization works.

  Immunization doesn't attack the flu. It tells your body's defenses what the flu is going to look like when you get it. It's sort of like giving the body's policemen a picture of that flu bastard and telling them "Shoot to kill." So when the flu attacks, your body produces a bunch more policemen (antibodies) which attack the flu.

  The problem with most flu vaccines is that the "picture" that the antibodies get only describes those hooklike proteins. And it, chemically, describes them precisely. If the antibodies see different proteins, they ignore them. Otherwise you can get what's called an "autoimmune" disorder where your antibodies are attacking you.

  A virus can only mutate in a host, therefore who it infects is as important as how—certain human genes control how and when the virus mutates—a blended genetic culture such as U.S. is much less likely to produce a uniform mutation that could spread (see Patient Zero discussion)—so the monocultures in the rest of the world were much more likely to be infected by a resistant mutant that was practically tailored to wipe them out.

  Okay, so sometimes there's a point to multiculturalism.

  H5N1 had been mutating fast. It had to to become as lethal as it was. Part of that mutation (just minor changes in genetics; not weird zombies) was in its binding proteins.

  Slippery little sucker.

  Type Two, on the other hand, described the coat proteins of all flus. The outer case of the robot if you will. They all "look" the same. (Bit like R2D2. With claws.) It worked on just about any flu. I haven't had the flu since that one injection that I was bitching about.

  That's why I was such a fucktard. I was bitching about the only immunization that really worked.

  All the H5N1 that spread didn't have the mutated binding sites. There were, it was later determined, six different "strains" of H5N1. Did they all come from Jungbao? Probably not. They probably mutated later by cross cellular chain mutation . . .

  (What's . . . ?)

  Look, I'm not going to give another fucking class in virology, okay?

  The point being, even when people got the vaccine, it didn't always work.

  Europe got hit hard.

  But that was only the beginning of their problems. Europe had been "aging" for quite a few years. That is, they had less and less native population peoples to keep up that elaborate retirement pension plan and socialized medicine. More and more of them were retiring.

  The bright plan to take care of this was to bring in immigrants. Might have worked, if they'd worked a little harder on being a melting pot. Instead, the immigrants had often created their own internal communities that were reflections of the "Home Country." The U.S. had that a few times, too, but never to the degree that Europe was experiencing before the Plague.

  This had created . . . issues. On the surface the Europeans were very kumbaya. That was the official line and nobody was allowed to stray from it. "Multiculturalism is good because we say it's good. Alles in ordnung!" Underneath, however, was the very European mindset that there were US and THEM. No matter how many generations you family had been in Germany, you were not granted full German citizenship if you weren't ancestrally German. France had a slightly different way of segregating the minorities. The basic lesson was clear; you're here to take care of us in our old age but that doesn't make you important.

  I don't like radical Islamics but doing something like that would make me radical. It did so in Europe. That was causing problems, bigger and bigger problems, well before the Plague.

  Europe, Western Europe, had had a very European response to the Plague. Not "new Europe" which was all sweetness and light. No, it was an "old Europe" response. You know, the one that gave us words like "pogrom" and "Holocaust."

  Germany and France, what was called often the Franken-Reich, were the centers of power in what was called back then the European Union. Each had their own way of dealing with the Plague and their "restive" immigrant population.

  France dealt with it by how it distributed the vaccine. It didn't go to every clinic, everywhere, all at once. It went to selected clinics on a "trial" basis. This dissuaded some people from seeking it out. But the point was, they weren't doing the "trial" on the Wogs. They were doing the "trial" in clinics that were in primarily native French regions, down to neighborhoods. And there was a shortage of the vaccine. Gosh
, before the Plague hit they never did get around to those Moslem neighborhoods!

  Germany's was a doozy. It was a very German approach. On certain days, everyone with last names starting in, say, F to H were to go to their local clinics for vaccination. Alles in ordnung! But. The first round of the vaccine was to go to persons with "full German citizenship."

  Hey, why didn't you just put a yellow star on them for Christ's sake?

  Germany was having riots before the Plague. Which they put down with Teutonic efficiency.

  But when it swept through, they hadn't gotten most of their "native" population vaccinated, anyway, what with one thing and another and almost none of their "immigrant." Between that and the fact that the vaccine wasn't all that functional, Germany and France were both hit hard. And the remaining immigrants had gotten really untrusting. There also wasn't much of a military in either country to help out. Germany had a "social service" obligation that was supposedly the same as the draft. But most of the people serving in it did "social services" rather than military service. And most of them were less than available in a disaster.

  They were sort of hanging in there. Sort of having a civil war along with eveything else but sort of hanging in there. All the Western European powers were sort of hanging in there. Worse than the U.S. or better? At that point, nobody could tell. It was all a toss-up.

  Eastern Europe . . . Poland was doing pretty good. Lower level of immigration and higher trust levels. Pretty good vaccine distribution. Death rates about like the U.S. In the late summer of 2019, Poland looked a good bet to make it.

  I could go on. I won't. The "European Union" was hanging by a thread. But it was hanging. They might or might not go into a thousand year night.

  In many places civilization was gone. Iran was one. Most of the Middle East. China, southeast Asia except Thailand and Singapore which were just very bad. Vietnam, it depended on which station you listened to. It sounded sort of like they were going back to North and South. Russia . . . depended on if you believed the government or the few news reports still coming in from refugee interviews. I believed the refugees.