World of Ashes (60 page)

“Oh, come now, Mr. Ken
ly. You have no legitimate authority.” Colonel Sharp made himself at home in Kenly’s leather chair and glared at the FEMA man-boy until he left. “This is the largest town, or city I suppose, this close to the Mississippi River. That makes this an important strategic location, and the President doesn’t want to see another Carson City, or Oklahoma City for that matter. I know this seems a little confusing, but you’re actually being given the opportunity to stay in power while you transition back to Federal Oversight.”

Ken
ly was completely silent. Mary stepped forward, “I’m Deputy Mayor Mary Cally. I assume you have a procedure for this?”

Colonel Sharp seemed pleasantly surprised. “As a matter of fact an SOP was written up as soon as we discovered your Harvesting operations in Jefferson City. There will be a matter of procedure, but I’m sure we can overcome it.”

Mary didn’t know if the Colonel had a sick sense of humor, or if he was as bat-shit crazy as she was beginning to suspect, but his quoting the Evil Emperor from
Star Wars
nearly verbatim didn’t ease their fears any. “Of course, Colonel. Will there be anything else?”

“Yes. So there is no confusion during the transitional period I will require your…
First Cavalry
, as you’ve been calling it, to store their arms immediately. At least until we can sort out who belongs where, I mean.”

“Who
belongs
where?” Kenly raised an eyebrow. “Explain.”

“Well, not to put to
o fine a point on it, Mr. Kenly, but we’ve got a list of suspected deserters. We intend to… investigate and prosecute where necessary.” Colonel Sharp smiled. It was disingenuous and creepy, just like the agents who’d preceded him. After bestowing upon Mary a stack of paperwork neither she or Kenly had any intention of filling out, the Colonel and his entourage of armor clad henchmen in the lobby left. To her lack of surprise Jenny Kopland was following Colonel Sharp around like a bitch in heat. Mary made it clear to the man-boy from FEMA that his welcome in their office had been worn out the moment the colonel arrived. He didn’t seem to understand, and she ended up pushing him out of the office with more force than necessary. He spilled his stack of useless forms all over the hallway. She hoped it made him cry like the sissy he was.

“How long until they get back?”

“We don’t know. The Feds are jamming radio communications.” Kenly sighed. “I sent Allen’s little brother and a couple other kids with a hardcopy of orders. Before you object, they’ve all made Eagle Scout. They know how to survive, and right now kids are the only people these Goddamned Commies haven’t slapped a cattle tag on.”

“Does Allen know?”

“Yeah, it was Jimmy’s idea in the first place.” That settled that matter. The next was a secret meeting in Reynolds’ basement. His medical condition meant a Candy Striper had been assigned to care for him by the FEMA workers. This Candy Striper was a moron, as predicted, and Reynolds’ older daughter had slipped her some crushed sleeping pills in a stiff glass of whiskey. She was asleep in a closet with headphones on before nightfall when the others arrived. No one knew how long it would take for Lee and Ethan to return, they had to plan an organized resistance while that was still possible. Two of the survivors in town were descendants of the Navaho Wind Talkers and spoke the code fluently. It was in the history books, but the chances of the Feds figuring it out was slim, especially if they changed the words up. Lessons from the French Underground and even those recently learned from Iraqi and Iranian Insurgents were all being discussed. No one wanted to start suicide bombing, or setting IED’s along the roads, but nothing was off the tables.

Occupation of Sullivan: Week 1

The next days brought a number of problems with “
Transitioning.”
Because the vast majority of the FEMA and Red Cross workers weren’t trained in security, the thirty or so troops Colonel Sharp lorded over and micromanaged to death weren’t able to make any headway in shutting down the Cavalry, or the Sheriff’s Department. If they thought they could sling useless DoD forms around and have someone take it seriously they had never expected the whirling shitstorm of bureaucracy Mary Cally could throw back at them, or the tenacity in which she insisted upon lengthy, redundant “proper procedure” being followed. By the tenth day of the Federal occupation most of the aid workers were too frustrated to confront Mary, and no one could seem to schedule time to see the Mayor himself, not even the turncoat Jenny Kopland or the now infamous Colonel Sharp.

Perhaps Mary
played the game a little too well, because it wasn’t long before Colonel Sharp got wise to what was happening. He called them out on it publically with a threat to declare Marshal Law, which, he claimed, was technically still in effect since the “Temporary Collapse of Government Services” two years before. Most of the townspeople walked away from the congregation standing around to hear him speak, as if the man in a ridiculous urban gray uniform that blended into nothing was just yelling at walls like the crazy bum in the subway. They all knew Passive Resistance doesn’t always meet with Passive Force, but the choice to disobey wasn’t truly a choice. It was an American tradition.

T
he day after Colonel Sharp’s failed speech there were sixty more troops, all having arrived on helicopters in the dark of night, and all just as heavily armed and unfriendly as the first group. The Federal workers seemed relieved backup had finally arrived because now they could feel safe in the streets of this lawless hillbilly town. People were having their firearms confiscated left and right and any building with a FEMA provided service or funding was papered with NO WEAPONS ALLOWED signs. Why? Because the theory was a Disarmed Populace was an Easily Controlled Populace. Any truly great despot knows Gun Control is key. Just ask Comrade Stalin or his neighbor to the West, Adolf Hitler. They would both have been fans of the works of Chairman Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il and even the efforts of America’s Last Regime.  

Allen was
n’t the first to butt heads with Colonel Sharp’s men, but his incident was the most public thus far. Mary had been working overtime to keep him away from the new troops, men from an Army that seemed to have forgotten what professional courtesy was, and who seemed to be under the impression that the people served them, not the other way around. She hated to admit it, but Ethan was right about the “Broken TV” patch, in that it was going to be on most of their shoulders. Fucking Tools.

Keeping them separated
from Allen proved impossible once Colonel Sharp showed up at the Sally Port of FOB Alamo with a search warrant, stamped in red ink and apparently signed by the President himself.

“Get off my
road, Colonel.” Allen shouted from the middle of the Sally Port, “You’re blocking supply routes.”

Colonel Sharp wasn’t impressed, “Young man, you need to move before we
remove
you. We are here under the lawful orders of the President of the United States of America. You will move so we can conduct a search of this property, which I might remind you,
is
Government Owned Land.”

Allen rolled his eyes, “When are you going to learn, Colonel. We’re not letting some jackass who appeared in town a week ago rummage through our military installations. And stop walking around giving orders. Do you see us in you
r goofy looking, non-camouflagey uniforms? I’ll save you the trouble of answering: No. And just as a reminder, were you here to protect us when we needed you most? No. We don’t owe you bastards shit. You left us here,
we
own this land, and you’re
not
getting inside.”

Sharp had had enough. Allen was a quick draw, but Sharp was faster, bu
t instead of a gun he drew a tazer on steroids, the prongs of which were in Allen’s left arm and right thigh before he could pull the trigger of his sidearm. The electricity burned through him like a wildfire. The acting Sheriff dropped to the wet blacktop as the raid sirens began to blare on post. The sentries opened fire, but none of the Soldiers were hit after having scrambled back into their vehicles to escape. Sharp left Allen on the ground, dazed and confused, the sounds of bullets pinging off armor fading in the distance.

Allen
wasn’t able to call to town before Colonel Sharp ordered a military crackdown, on his way out Sharp cut the hard lines. All Deputies and Cavalrymen were relieved of duty in a coordinated, practiced maneuver during the men’s chow times. Soldiers standing near Cavalrymen or Deputies received a radio transmission and suddenly raised their weapons on their counterparts, shouting for guns, knives and batons to be put on the ground and for them to return to their barracks or homes. Two Cavalrymen and a Deputy were shot down in cold blood when they refused. A compulsory town meeting was called in the old Wal*Mart parking lot. There a seething mad Colonel Sharp laid down the parameters of Martial Law with no uncertain terms.

“Ladies and gentlemen,
citizens
of the United States.” He began, reading from a teleprompter, though this narcissistic prick had probably written the speech himself. “Today’s actions, and reinstitution of Martial Law, are a direct result of an attack on myself and my Personal Security Detail outside the gates of your
illegal
, paramilitary installation. I have relieved the town’s Deputy Sheriffs of duty pending retraining as Security Personnel, and have disbanded the cavalry unit, as there are no Infected Citizens left to protect against. They’ve all rotted. They’re all gone. You can all rest assured now that we are here to
help
.” There was a pause, and though hands were raised in the crowd no questions were answered. “According to the provisions of Marshal Law, the following rules will be in effect until such time as order can be restored.”

“No thanks to you!” Someone in the crowd shouted. Troops strategically placed throughout the
masses swooped in and the man was gagged and dragged away. Those gathered grew restless and Sharp’s right-hand man suggested they leave. Sharp refused.

“The following provisions will be adhered to with the strictest of
discipline!” Colonel Sharp continued. “A nightly curfew of twenty hundred hours until zero six hundred hours will be in effect one hour after this crowd is dismissed. All organized resistance will
cease
, the orders of the Military’s Officers and Noncommissioned Officers will be followed to the letter, the orders of Security Personnel will also be adhered to without hesitation. Punishment for nonviolent offenses will be time spent in the stockade. Punishment for violent offenses will be removal from this jurisdiction pending tribunal at a Military Installation to be determined… Rations will begin to be
equally
redistributed first thing in the morning by FEMA personnel. Orderly cooperation is
mandatory
. We will not have a repeat of Katrina or the Quarantine Riots, people. A full list of Martial Laws is posted on the storefront over there and individual copies are available. Remember folks, it’s gonna be a tough time, but we’re the Government and we’re here to help.” That night thirty four people ended up in the stockade for curfew violations. Another twelve were shot, five more were never heard from again. This continued almost nightly.

17

              Finding herself unemployed, Mary had little to do but sit at the local park with Paula and watch the children as the Onezies, the Federal workers who all wore color coordinated mechanic’s one-pieces, rebuilt the town in the image of their Most Glorious Cheyenne Mountain Colony. It was terrifying to listen to them tell their reverent stories of surviving the Refugee Camps during the panic, and how the ‘Most Historic’ President and his sweeping policies of change and hope for a Socialist future had risen to the occasion and reinvented America for a safe, and secure future.

Or whatever.
 

Some people
, mostly those in their teens and twenties, were going along with the transition from self-sufficiency back to government dependency without hesitation. Falling back into old habits by the dozen, this demographic was the easiest to dupe. Mary tried to remind herself that these were the ten percent of the population that did ninety percent of the whining in the first place. It gave a little too much credence to Ethan’s reasoning for disliking teenagers in the first place. It was almost as if anyone born after 1990 couldn’t accept the collapse of a society dependent on Twittering their life away on Facebook and hiding in their televisions and cell phones rather than saying hi to their neighbors. The lazy and useless were happy to be told what to do again, to not have to think for themselves like good little goose-steppers.

Everyone else was trying very hard to follow and increasingly complex set of
counterintuitive regulations, Citizens were being arrested daily, often without prior cause or because a neighbor said something. It was becoming a witch hunt. There were lists floating around, of people wanted for ‘questioning,’ Ethan and Lee chief amongst them. Someone had found a list of guns sold at Wal*Mart and compared them to credit card receipts. If there was a match that person’s home could expect to be raided within hours. The new monetary system, imported along with a flood of hundreds of new Settlers from Cheyenne, was confusing and often unfair, giving little if anything in exchange for money earned during the Lawless Time. U.S. dollars were considered worthless, and any money baring the Sullivan stamp was deemed contraband and had to be handed over for an amount adjusted for inflation, assuming it wasn’t confiscated altogether. Keeping Sullivan branded money was punishable by ten days in the stockade for a first offence and mandatory attendance of political reeducation seminars. There were no second chances. God help you if you forgot to turn over even one S-Dollar.