Homefront: The Voice of Freedom (14 page)

Walker decided he’d stay awhile.

FEBRUARY, 2025

As the days went on, Walker regained his strength and his wounds healed. He’d wrapped his rib cage with bandages found in the Medical Unit; the pain in
his side diminished over time. He found it surreal that the Marine base had been left in such an untouched condition. The Mess Hall was a godsend, of course, and he had mastered the art of lighting a fire in the grill. Collecting kindling wasn’t a problem, seeing that desert shrubs and Joshua trees were plentiful. Walker discovered many other desirable amenities; for one thing, nearly all the barracks still had beds with pillows, sheets, and blankets. He picked what he thought was an officer’s quarters for his “home.” In the Recreation Center there were pool tables, dartboards, and decks of cards to occupy his time. A library contained hundreds of books. Some of the barracks contained left-behind personal items such as old portable CD players, televisions, and exercise equipment. Of course, there was no electricity, but Walker could use the gym for weight-lifting and running. In several of the barracks he found utility uniforms of all sizes. Walker was surprised by how loose and comfortable they were. After a while, it was all he wore. He even found batteries for the flashlight, the electronics of which were miraculously intact.

One drawback was the almost unbearable heat. Without air conditioning, the barracks were incredibly hot. But as time passed, Walker got used to it.

Every day he explored a different part of the base, dressed in the olive-colored camouflage uniform. It was as if he were the last remaining Marine in America, and he wasn’t even a Marine.

One day he found a heavy, padlocked footlocker under a bunk in one of the bachelor barracks. Something was inside. Since he’d found even better tools in the base machine shop, Walker got the locker open in no time.

His jaw dropped when he saw the contents—an M4 assault rifle and boxes of magazines.

Gingerly he pulled it out of the footlocker and held it. Walker didn’t know a thing about guns, especially military-issue automatic assault weapons like this one. He had no idea how to load it or fire it.

But he was going to figure it out.

He carefully examined all the various switches and buttons on the rifle. It was obvious where the magazine went in and what direction it should face. Walker gave it a try and managed to correctly lock a magazine in the well. He went outside and aimed the rifle at one of the buildings in the distance. He squeezed the trigger and … nothing happened.

Was there a “safety”?

Walker once again pored over the machine, looking for the correct button. He found the select-fire switch—safe, semiautomatic, and burst fire. The gun still wouldn’t shoot when he flipped the switch away from “safe.” Finally, after much experimentation, he discovered the charging handle, a T-shaped device at the top of the receiver. He realized he had to pull it back and release it to “cock” the rifle.

The gun had a negligible kick. He was mighty pleased with himself that he had fired an M4. He was so thrilled that he emptied the magazine in seconds, and then spent the next ten trying to figure out how to release the magazine from the weapon. (It was a button just above the magazine well.)

Over the next week, Walker took advantage of the practice range and pretended he was a real soldier. He ran through the obstacle course and fired the M4 at imaginary adversaries. He set up targets and shot at them. He timed himself to be quick at loading a magazine, pulling the charging handle, and releasing burst fire in rapid succession. By the end of the month, he felt confident he could at least handle the weapon like an amateur. He may not have been an
honest-to-God Marine, but maybe it would be enough training to keep him alive.

It was not a bad existence and, aside from missing a hot shower and an occasional female companion, Walker was content.

Then one morning he saw the planes again. The roar overhead woke him at the crack of dawn. Walker thought he was under attack, so he grabbed the M4 and rushed outside in his skivvies to see U.S. Air Force C-17s flying overhead in formation. He retrieved his binoculars to get a better look, and a shiver ran down his spine. The U.S. emblems were covered up as before, but this time by flags depicting a red-washed American flag with the North Korean coat of arms superimposed on top.

Walker knew it signified that America was now occupied and under the control of the Greater Korean Republic.

APRIL 8, 2025

Salmusa had been busy.

Ever since the Korean People’s Army invaded the United States in January, he was given special assignments involving security, intelligence, and what the Koreans called “American compliance.”

In late January he left the safe house in Van Nuys, drove the Volkswagen to San Francisco, and reported to KPA Military Command. The ad-hoc headquarters was set up in city hall after twenty thousand troops stormed the city and captured it. U.S. military resistance was strong at first, but the Americans were heavily outnumbered. The Koreans had come well-prepared, for they were trained in the use of American equipment and brought much of it along with them after having acquired it from Japan and South Korea. The U.S. forces were also in disarray after the years of downsizing and unfocused leadership. It took only two days for San Francisco to fall. Los Angeles, because of its massive sprawl, took four, although Edwards Air Force Base was secured in twenty-four hours. San Diego was under Korean control in only eight hours.

At the same time, C-130H troop transport planes captured at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu carried paratroopers inland. KC-135 and KC-10 tanker
aircraft, also seized in Hawaii, provided the extra fuel so the C-130Hs could return. KPA troops were dropped in Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, and Texas.

On January 27, Koreans flew C-17s from Edwards Air Force Base to drop troops even farther east, beyond the Mississippi River to the East Coast.

Salmusa admired the Brilliant Comrade’s plan. It was ambitious, for America was a large country. The key was capturing strategic targets that gave Korea undeniable leverage against the puny American resistance. San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, as shipping ports, were the obvious primary objectives, followed by Seattle and Portland. Heavy tech areas, such as oil refineries, were also priority goals. Whatever natural resources could be exploited, the Koreans wanted them. In a speech delivered to the inner leaders of the Korean Workers Party, Kim Jong-un stated, “Consider America a rotting warehouse filled with vermin. We must take all that we can from it before it falls in on itself. It must be stripped clean.” He finished the speech with a rousing, motivational statement regarding the Korean strategy of a growing occupational foothold by saying, “The smallest germ, once planted, can spread to kill the largest giant.”

Over the next three months, that germ had grown considerably.

The Korean military set up different Areas of Responsibility similar to the Unified Combatant Command structure the U.S. had used worldwide for decades. These areas were designated around general purpose output and potential for KPA use. Hawaii and West Coast cities were obvious export hubs for oil and technology to Asia. Rocky Mountain and
Midwestern states were divided into areas for agriculture, machinery, oil, and ores industries. While the Korean troops only occupied pockets of various states, they set up several Interest Zones under more direct authority, with a heavier number of troops.

It was Salmusa’s job to oversee population control and implement plans to counter civilian opposition in these centers of weighty Korean presence.

Approximately eighty thousand suspected dissidents such as thought leaders, local politicians, bloggers, and student protesters were rounded up and killed during the initial invasion. Salmusa ordered that mass gravesites be dug in Sunset Park in Las Vegas, Hayden Island in Portland, the Glendale Golf Course in Salt Lake City, and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. He also instituted the decree that any American could be detained indefinitely without trial upon the order of a Korean military officer with the rank of captain or higher.

Salmusa was currently in the process of setting up detention centers, most of them on the sites of former prisons. West Coast tech and engineering personnel who refused to work with the Korean government to dismantle the U.S. infrastructure were sent to Alcatraz Interrogational Island for “rehabilitation.” Low-level prisoners and common criminals were placed in the Pasadena Rose Bowl. Cobb Park in Fort Worth became a “camp” for wives and children of oil workers in Texas and the Gulf Coast to make certain of the loyalty of “American employees.” Grants Pass, in Oregon, was enclosed by barbed wire and acted as a death camp for undesirables from the northwest cities of Tacoma, Portland, and Seattle.

And then there were the executions. The different Areas handled the process in different ways. For example, Salmusa allowed the Korean Commander
of Area One to hang condemned prisoners from electricity poles in their local townships. The Commander of Area Three often conducted executions at night with the disposal of bodies done by cremation. Americans in this area often never learned what happened to a missing loved one or a family member.

   California State Prison in Lancaster, a small community north of Los Angeles, was the newest Korean-operated detention center. Originally an all-male state prison that housed close to five thousand inmates with varying levels of security, half of the facilities were relegated to hold the types of prisoners the Koreans referred to as “dissidents.” They weren’t particularly dangerous civilians, but their ideas were. People who had been negatively outspoken in public toward the rise of Korean influence in the world fell into this category. Some of them were celebrities. Most were intelligent, college-educated citizens with strong opinions and the ability to organize, spread anti-Korean propaganda, and persuade the population to fight back. In Salmusa’s opinion, this made them more treacherous than armed resistance fighters.

In order to make room for these enemies of the Republic, half of the original prison inhabitants had to be released. Salmusa forced the American warden to decide who deserved to remain incarcerated due to the heinous nature of crimes committed, and who might be eligible for release. Once the list was compiled, the warden was confined with the dissidents. He didn’t know that Salmusa delivered a death sentence to all of the Level IV prisoners—the ones under maximum security. Under the false pretense that they were being released, nearly two thousand men were
burned alive by flame thrower-yielding KPA units in the prison exercise yard. The Koreans had no use for American criminals, so it was best to exterminate them altogether. Then, the newly arrived dissidents were moved into the maximum security housing, while the original lower level inmates remained in the more relaxed dormitories without a secure perimeter.

Salmusa arrived that morning for an inspection. He was also due to visit the detention center at the Pasadena Rose Bowl, having been given orders to come up with a “deterrent” to resistance. But first things first.

After touring the prison, Salmusa told the Captain-in-Command he would like to interrogate a certain dissident prisoner. He wanted to hear first-hand what the man had to say.

His name was Horace Danziger. He was brought into a bare room and tied securely in a chair that occupied the middle of the floor. One other chair faced it; that was Salmusa’s seat. A noose hung menacingly from the ceiling above the prisoner’s chair. It was attached to a pulley capable of raising or lowering the intimidating stretch of rope.

Danziger was a man in his fifties, but the strain of the past few months had taken its toll. He now looked seventy. The dissident was dressed in standard prison overalls.

Salmusa stared at the man for a full minute without saying a word. Danziger attempted to hold the gaze, but he couldn’t help glancing up at the noose a couple of times.

“What? What do you want?” Danziger asked.

Finally, Salmusa said, “Your name is Horace Danziger and you have had many things to say that are insulting to our Brilliant Comrade, Kim Jong-un.”

The man sighed heavily. He’d been through this dozens of times with other Korean interrogators. “Unlike your country, in America we have—or we had—the freedom of speech. We can say anything we want, not only about Korea, but our own country as well. That’s what happens in a democracy. Our Constitution protects that right.”

Salmusa opened a manila folder in his lap and studied it. “I understand you had a website where you called the Brilliant Comrade a ‘pig in sheep’s clothing.’ I don’t understand. I always thought the expression was a ‘
wolf
in sheep’s clothing.’ ”

“I meant what I said.”

“The Brilliant Comrade might not have been so insulted if you’d kept to the original expression. He
is
something of a wolf. But he is not a pig. That was insulting.”

“I didn’t think he’d see it.”

“Why not? It was on the Internet. Anyone could see it.” Salmusa examined more reports in the folder. “Before the invasion, you posted several blogs warning the American public about Korea. Why? Most people in America paid no attention to us.”

“Why? It was obvious what you were up to. I knew it was only a matter of time before you tried something. Somebody had to say something.”

Salmusa paused. “I understand you had your own television talk-show. You are famous.”

Danziger looked away. “Whatever.”

“Most Americans know who you are, am I correct?”

“I guess. Depends on if they watched TV.”

“Even now, three months after our occupation of much of your country, the man on the street mentions your name. The people wonder where you are. If you are safe. If you are alive.”

“Do they?”

“They do. I have seen illegal homemade posters pasted on buildings in Los Angeles. They say ‘Free Danziger.’ ”

“That’s nice to hear. I don’t suppose you’re going to do that, though, are you?”