The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  "Yes, sir."

  I went back to my quarters and forgot about the incident.

  However, a week later the order went out to start "Emergency Slaughter Teams."

  It wasn't just soldiers. Groups would go to the soup lines and pick up any people who a) looked fit enough and b) were willing to "do some hard work for better food." There was no pay. The pay was fresh meat, which was rare for most people in those days.

  Some of the "farmers" didn't want to slaughter their pets. Most, however, had seen their feed almost totally depleted. In "Zones One through Three," the northern border down to North Carolina, dipping down to southern Oklahoma and then back up to northern California, snow was already on the ground to stay. Pigs, especially, were out of food. Pigs will eat anything. So will people. There wasn't any food for the people.

  Well, there was. Rye bread from farmers who had seen that the summer of 2019 was going to be screwed and soup made up of anything that was available. Spices were a rare commodity.

  Meat quickly became a common commodity for a while. There was quite a bit in those soups during the winter of early 2020. Might have kept the death rate down a touch.

  Lost a lot of livestock unnecessarily. By the time the ESTs were really getting in gear most of the livestock, including breeding stock, had died of malnutrition or exposure. But we got some of the food. That was something. Not that it helped in the long-run but few things do.

  By February all the livestock was either slaughtered down to breeding groups or dead. People were dying, too. Lots of people. Despite my "heroic efforts" fuel for power and heat was at a premium. There was a, in my opinion, good government program to make sure people could get what they needed. Ration cards and such. But there was never enough. And people died in blizzards when their meager stocks of food and fuel ran out. And cities lost power and people froze.

  Everything froze. The sugar cane in south Florida froze. Old people in retirement in Phoenix and Miami froze.

  And people died on soup lines because they were already malnourished (one small chunk of rye bread and a cup of soup is not enough to keep most humans going forever) and it was bloody cold and nobody had the right clothing and China wasn't making Gortex parkas anymore.

  People got frostbite and hypothermia. They dropped like flies.

  And it wasn't even the really bad winter.

  Farmers are planners. They sit on their tractors and in their dens and peer into the future though cloudy crystal balls, trying to discern what wheat and soy is going to be worth a year in advance. They look at the long-range weather reports. They watch the flight of the wild geese.

  I'd been trained to do that since I was a baby as a form of osmosis picked up from the few words my dad would say at the dinner table. The hands would be talking a bit and my mom would be chattering and one of the hands would say something and my dad would grunt.

  "Soy isn't going to be worth the price of sand next year."

  And when I got older I'd try to figure out why he knew that. And he was usually right.

  There's going to be a glut in the soy market next year. Why?

  Long-term weather looked right for soy. China was projected to do a big buy. Monsanto had just come out with a new seed strain that was going to increase yields, on average, by two percent. (Which, right there, was enough to cause a glut, believe it or not.)

  Big corporations were shifting towards soy. Managers were talking about it over coffee in the corner greasy spoon, around the counter in the feed store. Bio-diesel from soy. Soy was the word. "Soy's going to be big next year."

  And it was. Bumper crop. Perfect weather, great seeds . . .

  China wasn't buying as much as predicted. Bio-diesel wasn't really taking off. Overall sales were about the same or down.

  Supply and demand. High supply, low to normal demand. It was worth the price of sand.

  This, by the way, is what "commodity markets" are all about. Dad didn't buy his seed in cash. He bought it, everyone bought it, on "futures." That is, credit. But the seed had to be paid for by something. So commodity markets gambled on what was going to be big in next year's crop. Or even this year's crop. People put money into the market, the market created the "margin" for the seed and pesticides and everything else. And at the end of the year you found out if you'd made money or not.

  Hell, you could "day trade" on the commodity market. Going "long" on wheat, selling "short" on sow-belly (bacon). But it was always, truly, about going long. It was reading the crystal ball. By December all the money was counted and all the bills were paid or you'd lost the bet. You'd gotten the wrong answer from the crystal ball.

  My dad was the fucking prophet Elijah, every single year. Which was why we stayed in business. Hell, I always wondered why he didn't just give up farming and trade in commodities. He would have made a killing.

  I wasn't a prophet but you only had to be reasonably keyed in to see where we were heading. You only had to have the sort of head that could put five or ten variables, not complicated ones, together, plug in the known constants and get an answer.

  The "model" in my head said that we were looking at a famine in 2020 and 2021. Could be marginal, looked to be major. But there simply wasn't going to be enough food for all our remaining mouths. And the winter was going to be another killer.

  And the internal ESM models said the same about both production and weather.

  Then I'd look at what the USDA and the Met office was saying and shake my head. That, by the way, was one of the variables. The fact that the people who should have been making accurate predictions were making predictions based purely on politics and fantasy.

  Commodity markets were back up by spring of 2020. USDA was saying one thing. Independent research firms were saying the exact opposite. (Army data was secret but leaked.) Trading was all over the board. Long on wheat? Short on wheat? Hell, was there going to be any wheat?

  Generally, the trading was very "stagnant." Which meant less money available for supplies. But just about anyone who got into the commodities market in 2020 got their balls handed to them.

  It was supposed to be pre-planting. Met office was saying temps were going to be coming up, fast. USDA was predicting soil temperatures that were on with 2018 or earlier. Like they were totally ignoring the fact that we were entering an ice age.

  But it was so clear, by then, that all but the most "government uber alles" tofu-heads were tuning them out. They'd constantly predicted better temperature regimes. Because of "global warming." Which everyone was starting to realize was so much bunk. They'd stood in food lines in below zero, Farenheit, temperatures. They knew it wasn't getting warmer. Not that year, by God.

  And the Bitch was starting to campaign for office. She still had supporters. Some. The core of the news media, for sure. The "limousine liberals" who had managed to sail through the Plague and the Chill because, of course they got immunized and of course they got paid and had access to all their usual foods. But even that was starting to crumble.

  Her opponents were beating her with a stick every time they got a second of airtime. Polls showed her numbers to be in the low twenties. And going down.

  So then she started . . . reacting.

  Chapter Two

  We Are TOO Going

  to Have an Election!

  In March of 2020 the Bitch "nationalized" a major radio network. It had always been fairly right wing. It broadcast not only on local stations but on satellite. And it had hung in there, barely, through the whole Plague and the depression that followed. Lots of marginal stations just shut down, but it was still hanging in there.

  Then it was announced, on all the stations, that they had been seized by the federal government for "violation of Fair Use laws." Essentially, their commentators had been saying Bad Things about the Bitch and thus she shut them down.

  The FCC was ordered to ensure "Fair Use" of airtime in all radio and broadcast TV stations.

  Short of simply turning off all the radio stations, she co
uldn't get rid of every person working for the company. And most of the "talent" were not exactly Friends of Warrick. But they knew the score. Toe the Party Line or toe the soup line.

  But, hell, they were experts in playing with words. I got sent an MP3 in an e-mail from a guy who was still on his talk show down in Georgia. Very right wing. But he was "toeing the party line." The opening:

  "We have another pronouncement of better things for tomorrow from our glorious leader President Warrick!" All in a tone of utter sincerity.

  Subtle propaganda works for Americans. It was the stock in trade of the MSM. Over the top propaganda they spot in a heartbeat. And laugh their asses off.

  But they weren't being "unfair." They were giving Warrick almost all their airtime. And when they spoke of her opponents it was . . .

  "Today, the evil Senator from Tennessee, Fred Carson, who has the audacity to think he can best our glorious leader in November, suggested to a paltry group of scum-sucking supporters that perhaps some of her actions were uncalled for or perhaps wrongly judged. How dare he! The evil of the man suggesting that the vaccine distribution was, and I quote as the words cause bile in my mouth, 'less than optimal.' He should be shot and then hanged and then torn to pieces for suggesting our glorious leader is not perfect in every way!"

  Yeah, they were "fair." Don't you think?

  (Actually, there were people who complained about the presentation of Warrick's opponents as being "unfair" and "destructive." Some people just cannot get a joke.)

  But we were getting into normal planting time in Minnesota. And snow was barely melting in Virginia. USDA estimates of "optimum soil temperature regimes" for various foods passed and were updated, passed and were updated. Based on those estimates, the tofu-eaters following the directions on the packet (that packet being the pamphlets they'd gotten from the county agents who were passing them from USDA headquarters) had laid in seeds, where available, for planting that were designed for a normal season.

  It wasn't a normal season.

  And a lot of the tofu-eaters had died on those farms in the middle of winter when they didn't ration their heating oil well enough and were stuck in the middle of nowhere in a blizzard and they couldn't even walk to their local emergency shelter for food and a place to sleep out of the killer cold.

  Nine farms, recall. Two, Bob had managed through finagling to hold onto. I won't give the list of destruction that those tofu-eaters did to my farms. What I will say is that three of the seven died over the winter. Two of the other four only survived because they made it to Bob and he kept the grasshoppers alive.

  The other two weren't bad folk. They're still my farm managers.

  In Zone One, that is the great-white-north, that was about the rate. Three in seven of those "government cooperative farmers" died. So did all their livestock. It ripped the guts out of one of the most productive agricultural areas of our nation.

  Going further south they survived in higher numbers. In a way that was worse. They were there to fuck things up.

  Okay, let's return to Blackjack since we've used that before.

  They manage to pull a good bit of their population through the Plague. The farmers in the community (and it's a heavy farming area) are looking at the forecasts. Cotton is a dead letter for the time being. People aren't buying new clothes. Food is the key for 2020 and although it's still summer of 2019, they're looking in their crystal balls. They've also looked at 2019 and have laid in their crops. Corn, wheat because the temperature regimes are going to be good for wheat in Georgia. (Wheat was not a major crop in Georgia prior to the Freeze. It's now one of our big wheat producers.) Potatoes. Soy because there's all sorts of things you can do with soy.

  Some of them are seed farmers. They only produce seed. They get the base stock seeds from a seed company and plant those. The "harvest" is actually different from the base stock and that's what gets planted to make food and the harvest from that is different than what you get when you plant the seeds. (Trust me. It's complicated. I've given enough classes, I'm not going to give one in transform genetics. I'll just say it's not fucked up, it's how plants work. Period.) I don't mean it's a different species. It's just you wouldn't want to try to make bread from the stuff the seed companies send them to plant to make next year's seeds. You don't even want to make bread from the seeds. (Gluten content is wrong.)

  So, they've got the seed in the ground. They've found sources for pesticides. They're ready to rock in what farmers do best; watching money grow out of the ground.

  They first hear from the seed company. It's been nationalized. Not sure what that's going to mean except we've been told no genmod. We pointed out that the seed for next year is already in the ground and it's all genmod. They're in meetings. I have my pink slip. See ya.

  Then the sheriff comes around looking pissed.

  Farm's been nationalized. You gotta get out.

  This has been in my family for generations. The hell you say.

  I don't like it. Don't get stupid. Too many dead already.

  Where go?

  Parrish family died. House is in county hands. No buyers. Move there. Ten acres. Best I can do. Take personal stuff. Furniture even. No farm equipment.

  So they move over to the Parrish house. And they look around at the belongings of people they knew through their kids going to school together. There are pictures on the walls. All the people are dead.

  They take the pictures down. They move the Parrish furniture out into the storage shed. They put in theirs. They put the cans of food they've brought from home up on the shelves. They figure out how to get a new house going.

  They walk five miles to town. They go to the feed store. There's a lot of other farmers in there, bitching. There's talk of revolting but it's just talk. There's a lot of "The South Shall Rise again" but the world's already a fucked up enough place and they know it. They're ants. If the South is going to Rise Again it's gonna have to be fed, first.

  There's seed in the feed store. It's not much but there's seed. Most of the good stuff is getting stripped, fast. The feed store owner is pretty damned tight and he's not tied into the whole "futures" thing. But he gets another loan from the bank, which is only holding on from the government propping it up, and he buys more seed. He gets orders in advance and he lets people he knows buy on credit. Long-term credit.

  There's a shortage of seed but what the hell.

  There's a program that people who are farming can get gas for their tractors and combines. If you're a registered farmer. If you're a registered farmer and not tied into the "nationalization program" you're likely to be out on your ass.

  People pool their gas rations. There's barely enough. There's a certain amount of "scrounging" and some finagling by local gas providers. But tractors get filled. Horses become a primary means of transportation.

  Ten acres ain't much, unless you're a very smart farmer. Then you can do a lot with ten acres. There's land that hasn't been tilled in a long time. It's not great, but you're a pretty decent farmer. You get more credit for herbicides to kill the grass. You do soil samples. You have to get them tested through the county agent but you're not a registered farmer so you're waiting a while. In the meantime, you're planning.

  Also in the meantime the "government cooperative farmer" has arrived at the farm. This is a "grade A" farm on the list the USDA keeps. It's gone to well-connected tofu-heads. Call it a former female marketing executive who specialized in promoting organic farming and her husband the lawyer, also an "agricultural expert." They've both been on the soup line a couple of times but mostly they've been able to get along. They don't have children because "they never found the time." As part of their "resettlement package" they've been given extra gas rations to drive to their "resettlement farm" and start a new life as happy farmers in the big wide open.

  They arrive to find nothing in the house. Not a damned thing. Some scraps of paper. Everything else is gone. They drive to town to complain to the sheriff. He's to say the least un
caring.

  They drive to the county agent's office. He's out and his secretary is less than helpful. They're handed a bunch of pamphlets.

  They're low on gas to get to the farm. But they make it. They have, as part of the resettlement package, a bunch of instructions. They attempt to decypher them. "What is soil chemistry?"

  They attempt to call the listed, USDA, help center. Their phone has been disconnected. They'll have to drive into town to get it connected. They run out of gas. They are out of gas rations for the time being. (As far as they know. Actually, farmers had plenty of gas but farmers needed it.)

  They walk to town. On the surface people are very nice. They find the phone company. They get the phone and electric connected. The gas for heat and cooking is rationed. There's some in the tank. Don't use it up quick.

  There is an "emergency food distribution center" at the Baptist Church. They don't like churches but they go there to get food. They explain who they are and that there's no food in the house and that it's a long walk. Reactions are mixed. A few people are hostile. Most smile and say "Bless your heart" a lot. (Southrons never ever say what is truly on their mind. They're very Japanese that way. In this case, "Bless your heart" means "So you're the poltically connected assholes that took over the Beauford farm . . .") A very young lady gives them enough simple foods to last for a few days. They leave. They try to hitch a ride back to the farm. Finally a guy in a pickup truck picks them up and drops them closish. They walk the rest of the way.

  There is a truck garden the farmer's wife put in before they were thrown out. They pick some beans. There's a pig. They don't know what to do about the pig or the cows. They read the instructions. They try to figure out the instructions. They call the help center. It's a busy signal (because there are thousands like them in the same predicament).

  The lawyer actually sits down and reads all the documents. The main thing he extracts is that they are entitled to "supplementary emergency fuel" allocations on the basis of being farmers. Okay! Styling. They can get gas!