Sweetness in the Dark (16 page)

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The news from Down Under stunned the room in Bruneau. They had been absorbed in their own predicament. A quick calculation showed that the Chinese seemed to have about thirty ships available for moving people across the Pacific. That meant about 150,000 settlers per month could be transported to the West Coast, or almost two million a year. And that assumed no other ships become operational.

Isaac and Matt had already answered the call for volunteers to enlist in the Idaho State Army. General Gale had received orders from the provisional government of the ASSC to form training camps and seek recruits. The response had been overwhelming.

Setting a goal of two divisions from Idaho, recruits had been selected while the remainder were put on a waiting list for the next call-up. Veterans were given priority and General Gale had quickly established a first-rate boot camp at Mountain Home Air Force Base.

The Federal military facilities had been under suspicion as to where their loyalties would lie. The states in the ASSC were flirting with rebellion in many people’s eyes and the base commanders had kept their distance.

That had been the situation up until the U.S. President had finally appeared. The President had shown up at Plattsburgh Air Force Base in New York. Although many in the country could not receive the speech due to burnt out radios, enough shortwave operators had received it for it to be widely distributed.

The President continued to blame his predecessor for the collapse of the country. He charged Congress and the three preceding presidents for failing to act on the EMP Commission report. But it was when the President thanked China for coming to the aid of hard pressed Americans that he lost all credibility. When that message was received on the military bases around the country, the local commanders within the ASSC states got on the phone to their state governors and reported in for duty.

At military bases outside the ASSC states, planes and ships left their bases bound for bases within the ASSC states. The plea of the President during his speech for all military units in the ASSC states to leave and report to loyal Federal states was met with silence.

The United States was irrefutably split now, but the balance of power had shifted also. With the high death rate in the former liberal states, the conservative states now held the majority of the nation’s citizens. Even the conservative states with large urban populations saw the majority of their casualties inside the urban areas, traditionally liberal bastions.

‘The Pulse’ had rendered the United States a very different political animal. While America had always polled over 50% of the people conservative to 30% claiming liberal persuasion, the influence of the big city media had kept the liberal Democrats in power. Now that was all gone. At the news of the Chinese invasion, the delegates at the Cheyenne Conference had voted unanimously to move as quickly as possible to clear the intruders from North America.

Now a month later, all the states in the ASSC were busy training recruits. They were progressing on getting society back to work with improvements to the infrastructure. There was much to be made up, but things were improving.

The resumption of electricity allowed businesses to restart. America’s need for individual transportation was being met by entrepreneurs that were casting new intake manifolds for truck and car engines. Other manufacturers were producing carburetors. The combination of the two got numerous vehicles back on the road.

The few remaining environmentalists complained about the increased pollution of these carburetor-equipped vehicles. They wanted to wait for the electronic companies to return to manufacturing electronic fuel injection. They were practically lynched on the spot by a crowd waiting for gasoline.

Farms would come to life when spring planting season arrived. The states had made sure that manufactures of the new engine components had the majority of tractors ready to go. Simple crystal radios became available so that people could receive news and music from the rebuilt radio stations.

The important parts of the economy were coming together. Transportation, communications, food, housing and water were all gaining ground. While certainly not robust yet, at least it allowed people to build confidence that the ASSC states would return to normal. But when news spread that New Zealand and Australia were suffering similar invasions, people took on a new resolve to defend their way of life.

“General Gale, I have the reports you wanted. Things are to the point that we can conduct operations as planned,” the adjutant said.

“Very good. Our first round of recruits will be ready in March. That leaves April to get them into their units and positioned for the start of the campaign,” Ed said. “My reports from the regular forces is that the Air Force has reached a thirty percent operational status and the Army is at fifty percent.”

“You don’t expect to need them for the opening moves though, so they’ll have more time to increase their ready status.”

“So far we have no reports of Chinese troops in Portland, Oregon. I assume the long run up the Columbia River dissuaded them from occupying there. So clearing up any remaining gangs east of the mountains and then proceeding into the Willamette Valley can be handled by our Idaho troops,” Ed said. “I don’t expect much resistance from whoever is still alive there. We just have to assure our supply trains are safe to travel and not subject to raids by stragglers.”

“I’ve already worked on security. I’ve got a firm in Missoula and one in Butte working on adapting rail cars to armored rail cars. We’ll place them on our supply trains for extra protection. We’ll still need rapid response teams to shadow the trains ‘til all the bandits are eliminated,” the adjutant said.

“Maybe we can get a couple of helicopter gunships pried out of the Army for support. That will impress the natives,” Ed offered.
Yes, we will need to impress the natives, at least any that are left out there alive
, he thought.

Cheyenne, Wyoming  (7 months after P-Day)

The spring thaw had come early to eastern Wyoming and the locals were enjoying the unusually warm sunshine. It had been a busy winter in the Mountain West as people struggled to outlast the cold weather.

While the electrical grid was almost fully functional and food and water were widely available, individual needs were still at risk. With only a handful of operational cars and trucks, snowbound roads were impassable at times, hampering distribution of vital supplies.

Horses were still available, so families on scattered ranches had made the effort to stay in their homes. But many had abandoned their remote locations and relocated to family and friends closer to rail lines.

The electrically hardened trains had been the difference in making sure that people received the support needed to survive until spring. Now it appeared that winter had finally broken. March was early to rely on good weather, but people were thoroughly enjoying the warmer, sunny days.

The big news in Cheyenne, however, wasn’t the sunny warm weather. It was the arrival of delegates to the Constitutional Convention by members of the American States Security Compact.

“Governor, we need to resist the Texas grab for power. From the correspondence we’ve received, the Texas delegation is ready to usurp authority over the rest of the member states, and it appears that Louisiana and Oklahoma are carrying their water for them. We didn’t fight Washington D.C. to end up entangled with Austin as our new overseer,” Dr. Paul Kendall said, as the train pulled into Cheyenne station.

The ride had been productive, especially after the Montana governor and his party boarded the train in Pocatello. The two original states that had set their own course five years earlier weren’t about to trade one despotic ruler for another. And that was what appeared to be coming from the Texas crowd.

“Dr. Kendall, I can assure you that Texas and its cronies will not run so quickly into the sunset with our freedom. We were ahead of things when we broke with the Federal government about preparing for what happened. I will not let Montana get roped into any regurgitation of any supposed Federal arrangement again,” the Montana governor said.

“Hear, hear. Well spoken. Idaho concurs with that sentiment. I am confident many other states will feel the same about putting Texas or any other state into a dominant position,” the Idaho governor added.

General Gale joined in, “Well, I just want a finalized command structure in place. We take our Army into combat in a month and we continue to have problems between the regular forces and the various states’ troops. We need a clear chain of command so we are as strong as we can be. When we go up against the Chinese we can’t have any confusion.”

General Gale had been busy over the last couple of months. Ever since the ASSC states had met in January and declared themselves a separate country from Washington, D.C., things had happened fast.

The thirty member states and provinces had agreed that neither the U.S. Federal government, nor the Canadian national government, held their best interests. In fact, both national governments had essentially ceased to exist.

Washington, D.C. had transformed almost immediately after ‘the Pulse’ into a free-fire zone of gangs fighting with other gangs for survival. Like most of the large cities of the Northeast, the lack of an electrical grid, running vehicles and any way of communicating had resulted in those cities becoming death zones.

As the police left with their families for the safety of rural areas, all civil authority broke down. The few armed citizens that attempted to maintain order were quickly overwhelmed by rampaging gangs.

Even before ‘the Pulse’, America had become a land of ‘takers’. When the official supplier stopped providing, the ‘takers’ struck out at everyone in their path. The ‘takers’ would pillage and kill their way to survival.

Virginia delegates at the meetings described the effort that their state had made in keeping the chaos restricted to the north bank of the Potomac River. Virginia had acted quickly to organize an armed citizenry to fight for the state’s survival.

Being one of the late states to begin preparing, the electrical grid was not fully protected. Transportation and commutations in the state were sporadic at best, and the Virginia authorities knew that they would have a difficult time avoiding a high death rate among its own citizens.

If the criminal gangs were allowed to invade the state, the survival rate would plummet. The hardest part for citizens manning the front lines was turning away regular people from up north trying to escape the mayhem. Allowing people into Virginia would only risk more deaths to the people already there.

This same experience was expressed by other border states, as refugees from places like Chicago and Detroit attempted to flee. America was torn apart as civil society transformed into survival mode.

It wasn’t unique to America, as all over the world reports came in of armed struggle for survival. As predicted by the EMP Congressional Commission, a ninety percent death rate seemed to be coming true among the unprpared. The high death rate was especially true in Westernized urban areas where electricity and modern transportation kept the system functioning.

Areas of the Third World could be expected to have more survivors. Subsistence farming would not be greatly affected by a collapse of all electrical systems. But even those areas were heavily dependent on aid coming from the developed world. That aid had stopped on P-Day.

Under such conditions, the delegates to the Union of American States Constitutional Convention opened their first session. The thirty members had each sent a delegation with three members. Six other states and two other provinces had requested standing at the Convention.

“The first order of business will be the eight jurisdictions that have asked to join our Convention. I’m opening the floor to debate,” the moderator from Missouri announced. He had been chosen as a compromise between what developed into two factions. Texas had its allies ready and Idaho had become the default state to lead the second faction.

“Mr. Moderator, I move that the six states from the former United States be admitted,” yelled Horst Petrasek, the chief Texas delegate.

Many of the governors were present but were playing a secondary role at the Convention. Since they each sat on the Governor’s Council, which technically made the day-to-day decisions of the new country, most of the governors had assigned a chief delegate.

Idaho’s governor turned over the state’s leadership when he had appointed Paul as chief delegate for Idaho. Paul stood and was recognized by the Chair. “I nominate the Provinces of British Columbia and the Yukon for admission.” Montana quickly seconded the motion.

The moderator duly noted both nominations and was taken back as Horst Petrasek changed the tone considerably. “Mr. Moderator, the great State of Texas would ask that a question of the legitimacy of all the Canadian Provinces being here be polled. This here is an American discussion and I don’t understand how these foreigners ever got admitted in the first place.”

“If the honorable Mr. Petrasek would recall, the thirty member states voted our three neighbors to the north full membership when we declared our independence from all previous governments. That included Ottawa as well as Washington. And the language said as much in our signed Declaration of Independence,” Paul offered. “If Mr. Petrasek wishes me to read our formal declaration to remind him of what Texas agreed to, I certainly can.”

Paul realized that this was Texas’s opening move. The original twenty states had agreed to admit Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. At the time, all had seen the need for common cause.

With an outside threat to North America, both sides of the border realized their future lie with cooperation. Ottawa had failed almost as completely as Washington in dealing with the after effects of ‘the Pulse’. Toronto and Montreal had succumbed to the same violence that large American cities had experienced.