Martial Lawless (Calm Act Book 3)

by Ginger Booth

  (d) Free access to the Internet and Meshnets is a public good, to permit constructive discourse and dissemination of information between citizens. Availability may be limited by local conditions. There is no right to privacy on these free public nets.

  (e) Speech, including on the public Internet and Meshnets, may be limited or channeled to promote public order. Interference with the clear communications of the government or the military is a crime.

  (f) Citizens have the right to bear small arms for the purposes of hunting, sport, and self-defense. Small arms are arms that can easily be carried, cannot seriously interfere with vehicles including aircraft, nor able to injure more than 8 persons before reloading. Weapons that exceed these limits are permitted to the military, police, or militia sanctioned by local governments, but not to private citizens.

  (g) Citizens have the right not to work, and the right to die. If employed by another, they must be paid and free to exit their employment within one year. This also applies to military service. Hudson will not tolerate slavery.

  (h) Voters have the right to petition the Governor-General to make changes. The text of a valid petition shall not exceed 150 words. Its scope shall be a single subject of national interest. A minimum of 10,000 signatures is required before a petition will be reviewed.

  (7) The Governor-General shall, on an annual basis in November, report publicly on the budget, progress on previously announced objectives, the state of the nation, and any amendments or clarifications deemed necessary to this Constitution. The annual address shall also respond to the 10 petitions with the most signatures.

  (8) This Constitution does not require ratification, and shall stand until a new Constitution is established.

  Chapter 9

  Interesting fact: Nearly 1700 tornados struck the U.S. in 2011, the most ever recorded up to then. This super-outbreak was followed by a 3-year lull. America experiences more tornados than anywhere else in the world, especially in the ‘Tornado Alley’ region of the Great Plains.

  For our first attempt to watch the Constitutional Big Reveal, we settled into the conference room next to the public phone-charging room. Hotel amenities included a 60” wall display, Internet jack, and computer hookup. Tibbs, his sidekick Nguyen, Captain Johnson and his second Sergeant Becque, and the hotel manager Alex Wiehl and his wife, claimed seats at the table with us. Four other soldiers claimed to be our guards for the night, and stood at the back. We equipped ourselves with three pitchers of beer, two of ice water, and a mountain of fruit and cookies.

  The wait screen for Project Reunion News featured a revolving cast of characters with helpful explanatory subtitles. Governor-General Sean Cullen, Hudson’s new head of state, looking fit and dapper in a civilian suit. Army General Terrance Houston, new head of the armed services, the only black in the lineup. The numbered four successors listed in the Constitution. Lt. Colonel Ash Margolis, Resco of Manhattan and the Bronx, the heir apparent. Lt. Colonel Tony Nasser, top Resco for upstate New York, doomed to merciless teasing on the unveiling of his legal name Chandy. Colonel Pete Hoffman, top Resco for New Jersey in particular and ranking Resco overall – Emmett’s boss. And last but not least, Lt. Colonel Emmett MacLaren, Resco of Brooklyn and Queens. I knew them all, except for Houston.

  I nibbled a cookie thoughtfully. Back home in Brooklyn, I would have been tempted to take the train back to Totoket and Project Reunion News HQ, to be in on the big show. This was PR’s biggest broadcast since the end of the United States in March, really. I’d even been on screen, albeit unplanned, for that one. I was on the broadcast with Major Cameron when he proposed this simple constitution, including the four-name succession scheme. But this time, I hadn’t been involved at all. It felt very strange to be a simple spectator on this big night, out of the loop, for the news network I founded.

  My partner and confidant Emmett was oblivious to my discontent, head stuck in Beaufort’s reconstructed data again. At two minutes to broadcast, I poked him irritably. He scowled, then paused as he took in my expression. He closed the computer and said, “Look, Ma, the baby done grown up. PR News goes on without us.”

  “I wasn’t ready for the baby to grow up,” I groused.

  “Uh-huh.”

  -o-

  “Hello, hello! Amiri Baz here on behalf of Project Reunion News, speaking to you from my home in Poughkeepsie, New York. Excuse me! Hudson,” he corrected himself, with a grin.

  Amiri was PR’s Pulitzer-prize winning top journalist, once a war correspondent, our most popular announcer. “Speaking with me tonight by video, is the man with the plan! Lieutenant Colonel Cam Cameron, Resco of Long Island, from his home in Riverhead. Author of the first new Constitution in the ex–United States.”

  (“Cam got promoted?” I asked Emmett. “Effective today. Shh,” Emmett replied.)

  “Not the author!” Cam objected, with his signature boyish smile. Definitely better looking than the four Rescos on the new Hudson succession, Cam was tall blond and handsome, and a few years younger than Emmett. “Instigator maybe. Sean Cullen wrote the Constitution. I was in charge of vetting it, incorporating feedback, and so on.”

  “You’re being too modest, Cam,” Amiri chided. “On my show six months ago, on the end of the Calm Act, this was the Constitution you described.”

  “Parts of it,” Cam conceded. “But on that show in March, you’ll remember you had a voting widget. Asking people, do you support a simple constitution for your super-state? The choices were Yes, Not Now, and Not That Simple. In Hudson, the results were fairly evenly split between the three choices. And that was true for other super-states, too – New England, Ohio, and so forth. Now, there are several different ways you can interpret that. For instance, you could say that the winning sentiment was Not. But Governor Cullen decided that Yes plus Not that Simple, equaled majority support for a new Constitution. That wasn’t quite so simple.”

  “Mm, yes,” Amiri nodded. “This is definitely not that simple. Where to even begin? Oh! Before we get into that – last we spoke, I believe you were a Major, Colonel! Congratulations on your promotion!”

  “Thank you, thank you,” said Cam, beaming. “My husband was promoted as well, now Captain Dwayne Perard. He’ll take over as Resco here in eastern Long Island, while I move west to organize the middle of the island.”

  (“Wasn’t that where we were going?” I pestered Emmett. “Shh,” he repeated.)

  “Wow!” said Amiri. “But you’ve split like this before in your marriage, yes?”

  “Yes, we’re not worried,” agreed Cam. “It’s pretty much the same way we worked in Connecticut. Just up one level in rank.” He smiled. “But on to the new constitution! There’s some radical stuff in there.” He grinned impishly. “But, we’ve play-tested it here on Long Island in a number of communities. It’s interesting. In a good way.” They both laughed.

  “Now when you say play-tested –” Amiri began.

  I punched the pause button, as sirens split the air. Yes, in a city that received 200 tornados in a single year, tornado warning sirens were a top priority.

  -o-

  Wiehl and his wife rose first. “Ten minutes out. If we’re lucky,” he informed us with a practiced smile. Clearly he’d captained this ship through this kind of storm before. “Plenty of room in the basements for everyone.” His wife was already out the door at a trot.

  “Soldiers last into the basement,” Emmett directed Captain Johnson. “Police the halls quickly. Let’s bring this downstairs with us.” He waved vaguely at our electronics. The IBIS agents set to that task. Tibbs jerked his head to indicate the room where we held the prisoner, and left to bring him downstairs. “Mr. Wiehl, do we have cameras and lights on the outside of the building?”

  “Yes, security cams,” Wiehl confirmed. “And designated tornado shelters turn on floodlights. My wife’s taking care of that. Please understand, we take in all comers during a siren.”

  “As it should be,” Emmett agreed. He looked to Captain Johnson
, who nodded.

  “Shall I handle the phone queue?” I volunteered. It was my fault we had random civilians on-site. “And Indie,” I added reluctantly. Brandy’s news team might be camping in the parking lot.

  “Please,” Emmett agreed.

  And we scrambled.

  In the Internet cafe we offered for public phone charging, half the crowd had already split, apparently trying to reach home before the storm. Or before the tornados, rather – a thunderstorm was already lashing rain outside, winds strong. Likewise, about a third of the waiting queue was gone. I freed the remainder to plug in their devices pronto, then get below. Faces were grim, and prone to nervous ticks, especially when lightning flashed, or thunder grumbled. Like me, some froze at the flash, counting out seconds to the thunder. But no one panicked.

  Mrs. Wiehl and the kitchen staff busily set out large A-frame easel ‘Tornado Shelter’ signs, with arrows, at the lobby entrance and blocking the elevators, directing traffic to the stairs instead. Orange cones marked the path, clear and easy to comprehend even at a dead run in a panic, and spaced to channel four people abreast.

  Yes, the IndieNews van was still in the parking lot. And no, the idiots hadn’t come to the door. I called Brandy’s phone and told her to get her butt inside. Yes, snacks and the constitution broadcast would be provided. She was inclined to chat when she made it inside, hair plastered to her head sideways by dashing through the thunderstorm. I firmly shoved her down the orange cone road. “Talk to you downstairs!” I called over my shoulder.

  Time was up for the Internet cafe, I decided. “You’ve plugged in enough – get downstairs! Now, now, people! Hustle!” I turned off the lights and shut the door, and yelled, “Phone banks clear!” to the lobby guards. Two of them moved to check that wing one final time, the other two remained at the hotel entrance. The hotel was getting a trickle of random passersby, looking much like drowned rats, apparently with no other haven close by.

  I joined Emmett beside the shut-down elevators, where he was plying his phone. A brace of guards flanked him. He finished writing off a text message, then looked up to smile at me, then glance around the lobby appraisingly. “Uh-huh,” he said in approval. He set a hand on my back to direct us to the end of the short queue for the stairs that had bunched up momentarily.

  “I love thunderstorms,” I murmured, staring back out the lobby windows. The storm was coming on hard now, thunder only two alligators past the flash. Sheeting rain turned to a flowing pond across the floodlit parking lot, trees tossing from the waist. The hair on my arms stood up from the electricity, my whole body wired with adrenaline and excitement, both from the ions in the air and from my little bit of first-responder action. Emmett nodded agreement and kissed my temple.

  The warning siren took on a different warble just as we reached the steps. Mrs. Wiehl stood station there, flanked by orange cones forbidding access to the upward stairs. I paused and directed a puzzled frown at her, pointing up to indicate the siren.

  “Tornado spotted,” she confirmed softly. “There’s one more level, for touchdown.”

  “Nearby?” Emmett asked in shorthand.

  Mrs. Wiehl shook her head slightly. “Sirens don’t say that. Please, downstairs.” Indeed, a late trio had already dodged around us and pelted down. We nodded thanks and stepped down briskly.

  The main room downstairs provided neatly arrayed hard plastic chairs for several hundred, with plenty of aisles. Mr. Wiehl directed down here, insisting that guests not rearrange the chairs for now, and fielding other questions. The room already boasted a huge display in front of the seats, showing webcam feeds of the storm from above the front doors and behind the building. The IBIS agents were setting up to resume Cam’s Hudson Constitution special. Further well-planned signage directed guests to lavatories, bedding supplies, and the remains of the dinner buffet. Clearly the Wiehls had found a true vocation in hospitality and emergency management.

  The front row of seats was reserved for our group, transplanted from the original conference table upstairs. Brandy, bless her pointy head, had managed to not only claim a block of the second row for Indie News, but picked her seat right behind mine and Emmett’s.

  “Oh, goody!” I said to her with a grin, taking a seat sideways in my chair. “Sorry, couldn’t chat upstairs, Brandy. I was clearing the phone bank.” Emmett snorted and took the seat beside me, hunched forward and plying his phone again.

  “We got an extension cord to the van,” Brandy told me sourly. “We were watching the constitution special on PR. Dee, had you read that before?”

  I shook my head. “Just read it over dinner. The agreement was that PR got it three hours before the show, then posted it two hours before. The other governors and the Rescos got it earlier in the day, I think. As a courtesy.” Emmett nodded beside me.

  I turned to the camera man beside Brandy, and bestowed him an especial nose-wrinkling impish smile. “Blake! So good to see you again! Have you filmed all the arrangements down here? Interviewed Pittsburgh natives about the tornados? There’s a buffet! Blankets! I would so love to mirror your footage on PR! So get your effing camera out of my face. I’m sitting in a chair. You mind?”

  Brandy petulantly jerked her head sideways to send Blake Sondheim and another reporter off to do my bidding. Brandy wasn’t budging. Nor did I expect her to. “What’s he doing?” she asked, pointing to Emmett.

  I held up a wait-a-minute finger, and draped myself over Emmett’s shoulder, to kiss his ear and read his phone. At the moment, it showed satellite storm-tracking. He zoomed out for me to show that this mother storm front stretched from Lake Erie to our north, down to around Jackson Mississippi, with bands of thunderstorms and supercells a hundred miles wide. He zoomed back in to the immediate neighborhood.

  “Two twisters sighted so far in greater Pittsburgh,” Emmett told me quietly. His back was firmly planted against Brandy, and likely to stay that way until after the web special. “Serious punishments around here for false reports. Forecast is for thunderstorms to keep re-spawning here through midnight. Orange dots are supercells.”

  “Supercells?”

  “Like a twister incubator,” he clarified. “Strong bit of thunderstorm, spinning. I was reading up. Seems tornado alley has moved east. Sent texts from us to congratulate Cam and Dwayne. Said we were watching, with interruptions. Copied sundry.” I took this to mean he’d let his peers back in Hudson know that he was running behind for the big show.

  I gave him another kiss and turned back to Brandy. “He’s studying up on tornados. Get comfy. We’ll be here all evening. You heard about the two hundred tornado touchdowns in Pittsburgh last year, right? Forty so far this year?”

  Brandy stared at me, stricken. “No. We hadn’t heard that.” I nodded pleasantly and looked around the room, drinking in the expressions of the natives. We’d collected maybe 75 new friends. Brandy took the hint, and looked around, too. “My God,” she said thoughtfully.

  “That’s the big story here so far, I think,” I suggested. “Check out the satellite view maps of this place. Scars all over the place. Big ones.”

  “Dee,” Emmett warned me. I touched his arm to acknowledge his desire that I change the subject.

  “What news on Beaufort?” Brandy asked, noting the by-play. “I hear you were investigating his death all day.”

  I frowned. “You know we can’t discuss the investigation, Brandy. Give it up. If it makes you feel any better, I’m censored out, too.”

  Apparently that did brighten her evening. “Then let’s talk constitution!” she suggested.

  “Let’s not,” I sighed.

  “C’mon, Dee!” Brandy said cheerfully. “That’s some radical stuff in there!”

  “Oops! Announcements,” I whispered, in a triumphant stage whisper, as Wiehl stepped to the front of the room. Grateful, I firmly turned my back on Brandy, too.

  “Welcome, everyone!” Andy Wiehl boomed out. “I think we’re all in now, so let me do some introductions.” He m
ade Emmett and the IBIS agents stand and say hi, then Brandy and me. “For a treat tonight, we’ll be watching a special on PR News – Ms. Baker’s network. Today our neighbor New York–New Jersey, where these guests are from, has declared itself the new nation-state of Hudson!”

  Wiehl paused for applause. There was none. He pressed on. “Hudson has a new constitution. This is a first for the ex-U.S., I guess they’re calling it now. So we’ll rewind the program and watch it from the top, yes?”

  Emmett nodded. He also spun a finger to suggest Wiehl speed this up.

  Four very wet new guests stepped in, wearing militia camouflage. Wiehl froze ever so briefly. I trusted the front door guards had relieved them of their weapons. “Uh, perhaps I should repeat the introductions for our newcomers –”

  “No need,” Emmett directed wryly, clear as a bell. The militiamen were probably detailed to keep an eye on the hotel, after all. Emmett crooked a finger to beckon one of our guards, and whispered instructions to her. She bore his message to the newcomers.

  Wiehl tried to ignore all this, and continued, pointing, “Bathrooms, a buffet of free food, blankets and towels. If your clothes are wet, please take a blanket. And then we’ll settle in quietly to watch the show. I hope to get started in five minutes. And remember – a tornado shelter is a conflict-free zone. Anyone breaking truce, goes outside.”

  Drat, on the delay. To escape conversation, I switched seats to the audio-visual table the IBIS agents had set up, and rearranged the big display. I showed the new constitution to the left, stacked the webcam feeds to the right, and gave two thirds of the screen to the main event. Then advanced the constitution another paragraph. Gianetti already had the special queued up to run from the beginning. I found the introductions loop to run first. And settled back to advancing the text a few lines at a time, for people to read.