It's a year after two New Madrid earthquakes have devastated the Mississippi Valley.
Battalions of foreign "peackeepers" are occupying Tennessee, at the invitation of the President.
Phil Carson, (from "Enemies Foreign And Domestic"), and three strangers are hiding in a well-stocked cave, which is a guerrilla fighter's lair. Across West Tennessee, Kazakh "contract peacekeepers" are wiping out the last remaining American holdouts, who have rejected the federal government's order to abandon their homes and move to distant FEMA "relocation centers."
This scene is in the middle of the novel.
"The young ones sure need a lot of sleep," said Phil Carson. He wasn't quite whispering, but he was speaking very quietly. In the silence of the cave, he didn't need to raise his voice to be heard.
"Thank God for that," replied Doug. "The only time that baby is quiet is when she's sleeping."
"I meant Jenny and Zack." Jenny and the baby were sleeping in the blue dome tent at the other side of the wooden platform. Zack was in a green sleeping bag, sprawled on a foam mattress pad next to the tent. Carson was across the square card table from Doug, sitting on one of the four wooden folding chairs, one for each side. Both men were nursing mugs of instant coffee. Doug had his AR-15 carbine disassembled on the table, and he was wiping down the bolt carrier with an oily rag.
The handheld radio and some of the other electronic devices from Jenny's pack were also lying on the table, after having been carefully examined. Both men had changed into dry camouflage BDU fatigues, part of the cave's stockpile. They were the old woodland pattern BDUs, curvy splotches of green, brown and black, not the digital gray and brown of the newer ACU pattern. A single bare light bulb was suspended above them. Doug had washed his face and hair in a basin and given himself a shave, and his black hair was combed straight back. Carson looked at his watch. "It's almost noon. How long do you think until Boone gets here?"
"There's no telling. If there are foreign troops around, he might decide he can't move in the daylight, and then maybe he'll wait until tonight."
"You have a lot of faith in him?"
"Oh yeah. I'd of been dead a few times if it wasn't for him. He'll make it."
A murmur came from within the blue tent, the start of a baby's cry, followed by a soft reassurance from Jenny. When the sounds quieted, Carson whispered, "You know, Doug, that baby can't live on instant milk powder. At least I don't think it can."
"What if we grind up vitamins and things to add to it?"
"I don't know. I just don't think babies can live on instant milk. You know what that means?"
Doug whispered back, "Is it going to die?"
"Maybe, but that's not what I meant. It means we can't stay hidden in this cave for a long time. Not if we want that little orphan baby to survive."
"Let's wait until Boone gets here. We don't have to decide anything today."
"What's the longest you ever stayed in here?" asked Carson.
"You mean without going outside at all?"
"Yeah."
"More than a week. We wait for bad weather to go out. The worse the better, that's what Boone says. The worse the better. He calls it good operating weather. It keeps the enemy inside."
Carson lowered his voice in order not to be heard by Jenny, in case she was awake. "Well, I don't think that baby can last a week on instant milk. Not a newborn. I hope I'm wrong."
"Let's just wait until Boone gets here, okay? He's the boss. He decides these things."
"Fine by me." Carson sipped from his cup of weak instant coffee. He was surprised that a luxury item that could not be found in the state of Mississippi was available in a cave in Tennessee. The coffee was from an old MRE meal pack--government-issue Meals Ready to Eat. Carson had seen only one cardboard case of the plastic meal packs. They'd split a single coffee packet and made two mugs, but at least it was hot. "So, Doug, you already heard me tell my story, back at Zachary's house. What about you? Where are you from, and how did you wind up here?" If they were going to spend the next few days or even longer in the cave, they were going to become well acquainted.
"Me? I'm from Maryland. The Baltimore suburbs, north of the city."
Carson had placed his accent as coming from somewhere in the Northeast, maybe Philadelphia. Maryland was a close guess. "So how did you wind up fighting a guerrilla war in Tennessee?"
Doug smiled wistfully. "It's a long story. To start with, I was drafted. I was going to the University of Maryland, majoring in communications, but I had to drop out after my junior year because I couldn't afford the tuition. Unfortunately I'm just a Category 7--a healthy heterosexual Christian white male. That's the bottom, the baseline. My tuition was tripled with no warning, so that was that. They pulled my student loan and I couldn't get any kind of extension, so I was back at home living with my mom. That made me draft bait--except they call it National Service now."
"The draft is back?" asked Carson. "How's that work? Do they still have college deferments?"
"There's a lottery. They can get you anytime between eighteen and twenty-five. College doesn't get you out of it, but it puts it off, and if you're lucky they might not call you up at all."
"How long do you have to serve?"
"It's supposed to be two years in the military, or three years in the Conservation Corps or the Urban Corps. The CC's quota was already filled for the year--at least that's what they said--and forget the Urban Corps. That's all Jamal Tambor fanatics. We call it the Tambor-Corps. So it was the Army for me. To tell you the truth, I would have picked the Navy or the Air Force, but I didn't get a choice in that either. I did basic training at Fort Dix. Then I was assigned to an engineering battalion at Fort Leonard Wood. So I was already in Missouri when the first earth-quake hit."
"What are you, about twenty-four?"
"Twenty-five. I thought I'd have my master's degree by now. Well, so much for my plans--Uncle Sam had some other ideas for my future." He went on cleaning his rifle, ramming a small cloth patch on the tip of a metal rod up the inside of the barrel.
"Tell me something, Doug. You're obviously a smart guy. I've been out of the country for seven years. What the hell happened to America? I always thought Americans would fight to keep their freedom. What happened? How could Americans just roll over and give up their rights?"
"Well, we didn't just 'give up' our rights. It wasn't like that. Not at all. It's more like they were stolen in broad daylight, at the constitutional convention."
Carson asked, "How did that happen? I was down in the Caribbean then. American news wasn't so big down there. Panama was going through its own troubles, and I was keeping a low profile. I didn't have cable TV, that's for sure."
"I'll tell you what happened--I watched it happen. When the convention was over, that's when we knew that the old America was gone. It was over. Finished."
"The convention was in Philadelphia, right?"
Right. I was in Baltimore when it happened, but it was televised wall-to-wall. On television, the talking heads called it the con-con, like it was a big joke or something. Maybe constitutional convention was too hard to spell, or maybe it took them too long to say it. Too many syllables. You know--time is money. I think a lot of the people behind the convention couldn't even pronounce it, much less spell it, so it just became the con-con."
"It was two years ago?"
"Yeah, two years ago in September. You have to understand how bad things already were, even before the earthquakes, and before the big hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast. Even back then, the economy was so bad that people were calling it the Greater Depression. People were desperate. And not just welfare types--I'm talking about solid middle class citizens. Or formerly middle class, like my family. Nouveau poor, we called it. I think people were ready to try just about anything to get the economy moving. Nothing the government tried was working; everything was in a downward spiral. We were still using blue bucks then, what they called 'New Dollars.' Banks were failing left and right, only the Fed wouldn't let them fail--they pumped in trillions of dollars in new money to keep them open. Nobody wanted to hear that it might take years to unwind the economic mess we were in. That it took us decades to ruin the economy, and it would take a long time to fix it. Everybody wanted a quick fix, like pulling a rabbit out of a magic hat. But everything the president and Congress tried just made things worse. Especially printing so much new money."
Doug set his rifle barrel back down on the table and continued. "The country was already a mess, and that was undeniable. Everybody and his brother were proposing constitutional amendments, supposedly to fix the economy, or make everything fair for the poor, or whatever. That's how Congress came up with thirty-four state legislatures calling for amendments. There were seven or eight totally different amendment proposals, but it didn't matter. Once Congress had thirty-four states on record proposing amendments, they went for it. I think they were just waiting for the chance. Once they had thirty-four states, it only took a 51 percent vote in Congress to call for the convention."
"Congress? I don't understand. What do they have to do with the convention?" asked Carson.
"Everything, under Article Five. It all came down to Article Five of the old constitution. Congress runs the whole show for constitutional conventions."
"It does? I didn't know that."
"Yeah, well, join the club. That was a major surprise to almost everybody, since it had never happened before. Not in over two hundred years, since it was written. So nobody knew much about Article Five," said Doug.
"I guess that changed in a hurry."
"You're not kidding. It was shock therapy. Especially when the Poor People's Party marched through Baltimore. There were already about a million of them camping out in Washington on the National Mall before the convention. When they took off walking to Philly, it was like a dam bursting. That was on Labor Day. Mile after mile of people with flags, signs, drums, musical bands on trucks?everything you can imagine. Police cars were escorting them, leading them up I-95. They closed the northbound lanes of 95 for something like twenty miles, for the whole time it took them to walk to Philly. They kept moving that closed section of 95 north, to keep up with the marchers. There was nothing else on television, practically. It took them two days just to get through Baltimore, and when they came through, they spread out like locusts. I was in Baltimore then, back in my mother's house. I'd quit college and gotten my draft notice. I was waiting to report for basic training."
Doug took a sip of his instant coffee, and went on. "Naturally, our own locals got into the spirit and joined the march. They took whatever they wanted from any stores along the way, and the police just watched. There was nothing they could do anyway, or it would have caused the biggest riot in history. It was legalized looting, that's all it was. Legalized looting, all over Baltimore. 'Redistributing the wealth,' they called it. We stayed locked in our house and watched it all on television. It would have been suicide to go out and see it in person."
"So it was, ah...racially polarized?" asked Carson.
"Extremely. Everything was black and white when they came marching through Baltimore. Blacks marching, and whites hiding. I never saw anything like it in my life. Well, not until Memphis, but that was after the earthquakes."
Carson asked, "How far is it from Washington to Philly? Two hundred miles?"
"That's about right. It took two weeks for them to make it all the way, and when they arrived, the constitutional convention was just starting. Perfect timing. What a coincidence, right? It was all planned in advance, that's obvious now. They held the convention in Philly's new sports arena, the one that was named for a bank. I think that bank is out of business; I don't know what they call it now. The delegates were down on the floor, and the rest of the stands were full of twenty thousand 'spectators.' Yelling and screaming like maniacs?and outside it was worse. They said there were over a million of the Poor People's Party in Philly by then, coming from everywhere, not just Washington. Probably another million just from the Philadelphia area. They were banging on buckets and pans, turning over cars, barricading streets and smashing store windows. They kept interviewing the rabble-rousers on TV--it was like pouring gasoline on fire. 'No Justice, No Peace,' that's all you heard. That was one of the big mantras. They called the looting 'street reparations.' They said if they didn't get the economic justice amendment, they'd burn the city down. It looked like they would, too. Every street in downtown Philly looked like Times Square on New Year's Eve, that's how crowded it was."
"Jeez, that had to be pretty rough, with that many people packed into downtown," said Carson. "There couldn't have been enough public bath-rooms."
"Almost every store and restaurant was broken open. Needing to use the restrooms was always a good excuse to force their way in. That, and needing food and drinking water. And after that, everything was looted."
"And the police didn't stop it?"
"They couldn't stop it. How could they?" asked Doug. "The police just stayed back on the edges and tried to herd them. Even that didn't work. A mob that big makes its own rules."
"Like a human tidal wave."
"Exactly. A human tsunami. So, with that mega-mob outside the arena, you can guess what kinds of radicals were being let in to fill the twenty thousand seats. The real cream of the crop. It was a total farce. That's when they started to call it the 'kangaroo convention' on talk radio. That was back when we still had AM talk radio."
Carson asked, "What happened to talk radio?"
"Two things. First, a couple of years ago Congress passed the so-called 'fairness' laws. That meant that every point of view on a radio station had to be balanced by another radio host or by other callers from the other side. It got incredibly complicated. They literally had to count how many minutes were said for this and for that on every subject. Trying to keep up with the fairness laws made talk radio a money loser, so most stations went to sports or music. Then Congress passed a law against 'hate speech on the public airwaves.' Anybody could take a radio station to court for just about anything that they claimed was hate speech. They'd cherry-pick a left-wing judge and jury, and it was a slam-dunk every time. After a few million-dollar judgments, the last talk radio stations threw in the towel. Now radio is practically all music and sports, with happy talk in between government PSAs?public service announcements."
"This must really be up your alley, if you were majoring in communications."
"Yeah, I picked a great time to choose that career path, huh? Now all we get on television and the radio is government propaganda."
"I've heard it," said Carson. "We could get Nashville radio at Zack's house at night. So, you were up to the start of the convention."
"Right. So to start it off, the Aztlan Coalition said they wouldn't vote for any other amendments unless they got their regional autonomy deal first. That was the Southwestern Justice and Compensation Amendment. That was the first amendment they voted on, and it passed on a voice vote. Next, it was reparations for slavery. Five hundred thousand New Dollars for every African-American man, woman and child. Right after that, it was reparations for 'survivors of the Native American genocide.' Another half million for everybody with Indian blood."
"How was that paid?" asked Carson in astonishment. "Where did the money for all of that come from?"
"Didn't matter," Doug replied. "It was just instant money from the Treasury--or the Federal Reserve. What's the difference? Ten trillion brand new blue bucks, right out of thin air. The checks came in the mail, or the money was just direct-deposited straight into their bank accounts. It was all just electronic digits, but it was real money just the same. It was just as spendable as any other money."
"And that brought on the hyperinflation?"
"Among other things, like fraud on a scale never seen before in human history. People were collecting reparation payments right and left under false identities. I think there were about a million double-dippers who claimed they were black and Indian--but it didn't matter. Congress said that the reparations money would stimulate the economy. It would 'prime the pump and even the playing field' at the same time. It was 'the mother of all stimulus packages.' That was another of those cliches you heard all the time. The convention was already way out of control by the time they passed reparations for slavery and the Indians.
"Next came the Freedom from Gun Violence Amendment, and that's when the Second Amendment was annulled. So you see, we didn't want any of it. Not regular Americans. We didn't ever vote for it; it was all done at the con-con by mob rule. It was a complete circus by then?the kangaroo convention. But it didn't matter what average Americans thought, the amendments all became law. They became the new constitution. When the Second Amendment was repealed, the delegates in the arena had a mass orgasm. We watched it all on TV. It was surreal, like a bad dream you get after food poisoning."
Carson asked, "What did the gun amendment ban?"
"Just about every legal firearm that was left. After the Washington Stadium Massacre, the semi-auto rifles were already outlawed. The ones they called assault weapons."
"I remember that," said Carson. "I was here for that one."
"Well under the Freedom from Gun Violence Amendment, there are no more privately owned handguns, none. Um, except for the police. The police and the military. And no pump or semi-auto shotguns. Only single shot and double-barreled shotguns--and you need to get a federal license to keep one in your house. Oh, and you have to take a federal firearms safety course and pass a background check to get your license. And if they don't like your background--meaning your politics--no license."
"Gun control was never about safety: it was just about taking power away from ordinary Americans," said Carson. "It's to make it safe for the police, in a police state."
"Exactly. And that wasn't all," continued Doug. "No rifle scopes, only assassins need them, right? No rifles bigger than thirty caliber, period. And all of the bolt- and lever-action rifles have to be licensed and registered, just like the shotguns. Everything that's registered has to be kept in officially approved gun safes, and they're subject to inspection at any time. They even have to be kept disassembled, with the bolts stored separately in another room. And God help you if they come in to inspect and they're not 'properly stored' according to the law. That was another part of the amendment: if you manage to get a gun license, you agree to random 'safety inspections'."
"What about ammunition?"
"You have to fill out about a yard of paperwork and get police approval to buy a box of hunting ammunition, and then it's taxed at around 500 percent. And you have to turn in your fired brass before you can buy more ammo. Oh, and forget about reloading--that's illegal. You can't even own gunpowder--that's 'bomb-making material' now."
"And this was all in the gun amendment?" asked Carson.
"Hell, yes. I think the FFGVA is something like thirty pages long."
"Damn--the whole Bill of Rights was only a couple hundred words."
"I hear you. It took the Founding Fathers four months to write the original constitution. That was in the summer in 1787. Some of the greatest minds in history. The new constitution is about fifty times longer, and they cranked it out in a week. Of course, they shortened it here and there. Like by cutting out most of the Bill of Rights."
"And American shooters just went along with it?" Carson asked with a look of incredulity.
"No, not most of them. I mean?oh hell, I don't know. I didn't believe any of the polls I read on it. But you'd be amazed by the number of so-called hunters and sportsmen they found to say it was all actually quite reasonable. They were on TV all the time, telling shooters to be reasonable and comply with the new laws. They could still go hunting, and a bit of inconvenience was a small price to pay for public safety."
"They can always find sellouts and traitors."
"Yessir they can," Doug agreed. "Jamal Tambor was all about reasonable gun laws, until the guns were all gone. But any way you cut it, the Second Amendment was finished, dead and buried after the constitutional convention."
Carson sighed, and slowly shook his head. "The end of two centuries of American gun rights."
"Yep, the end." Doug smiled, and patted the lower receiver of the AR-15 carbine lying across the table. "Legally, anyway. That is, if you consider anything that came out of that abortion that was born in Philadelphia to be legal."
"I take it you don't."
"Nope, I don't, not at all. But the con-con didn't end with the gun amendment. The economic amendment was the last one. That was on the final day of the convention. It was a rubber stamp, another voice vote. By then the con-con was like a religious revival meeting, so of course the EJDA passed. That's what they call the Economic Justice and Democracy Amendment, the EJDA. It was another mass orgasm in the Philly sports arena. We were in shock by then, watching it on television at home. It all happened so fast! Only a few months before the con-con, everybody thought the Poor People's Party was a joke. We thought the constitutional convention would never happen, and even if it did, it wouldn't really count somehow. But it did, and nobody's laughing now."
"What's this economic amendment do?" asked Carson.
"The EJDA guarantees jobs for everybody; it guarantees a living wage, it guarantees affordable housing, free health care, free college and free child care. I'm sure I left out a few things it guarantees, but you get the idea. Almost any freebie or handout you can think of, it's in the EJDA. Basically, it's communism, written into the constitution. And believe it or not, they sold it as the best way to fix the economy! The new constitution was going to get us out of the depression, and make life fair for everybody at the same time. With the new constitution, the president could enact the 'New New Deal' and get us out of the depression. Fat chance! That's like taking arsenic to cure a stomach ache."
"Back up a minute," said Carson. "How did they ratify these amendments? What does the old constitution say? Don't they need something like three-quarters of the state legislatures to ratify an amendment?"
"That's what we thought," replied Doug, "but they used the backdoor clause. In Article Five, it says new amendments have to be approved by three-fourths of the state legislatures, 'or by conventions in three fourths thereof.' That was the fuzzy part, the part nobody could really explain. That became just about the most famous sentence in the old constitution. But what the hell does it mean? Who makes up these state conventions? Who nominates the delegates, what are the rules, and where do they hold them? There's nothing in Article Five that spells it out. You'd see ten so-called constitutional experts on television, and you'd get ten different explanations. It was all up to the Congress to determine what conventions in three fourths thereof meant. At least according to the Congress it was, and Congress is three-quarters Democrat now."
"It sounds crazy," said Carson disgustedly. "It sounds like something that would happen in Venezuela or Zimbabwe. Making up the rules as they go along."
"It was crazy, especially because the whole thing started with eight Western states that wanted a states' rights amendment. It was mostly over coal and gas revenues, and water rights. They wanted to cut back on federal control of their resources, and then they were joined by seven Southern states. That was the original group of fifteen states. But pretty soon lots of blue states jumped on the bandwagon, when they thought they might be able to turn a convention in their direction. Nobody really thought it would actually happen, it seemed so far-fetched--but in less than a year there were thirty-four states calling for a constitutional convention. For six or seven totally different amendments, mind you.
"Nobody saw the train wreck coming. Well, almost nobody--the radical Democrats in Congress saw it. They wanted it--they saw the potential. It was a setup, a scam from day one. A big scam to turn the country hard-core socialist in one big jump. We all know that now. But by the time we figured out what they were up to, it was too late to stop it. Congress had complete control of how to run the convention, and that meant the Democrats. The train had left the station, and it couldn't be stopped. Then the Poor People's Party was organized, and the next thing you know, we had Philadelphia. They held these so-called 'state ratifying conventions' right there in the big sports arena in Philadelphia, right after the constitutional convention. It was such a joke! That's why we called it the kangaroo convention."
"And the Supreme Court didn't stop it?"
Doug said, "Oh, the Supreme Court--I forgot that one. There are twelve justices on the Supreme Court now. That was another amendment: twelve justices instead of nine. President Tambor nominated the three new justices as soon as the convention was over, after the amendments were passed. Congress confirmed them the same day Tambor nominated them. The old Supreme Court with nine justices was our last hope: that they'd throw the whole thing out. Just invalidate the whole thing. But they didn't stop it. They voted five to four that the Supreme Court had no standing to overrule the convention results. The majority said that Article Five conventions are up to Congress. That was the last ruling by the nine-judge Supreme Court. Most people think the five liberals on the old court liked the new constitution better. They agreed with the new amendments, so that's why they voted to stay out of it. Now that there are twelve justices, the liberals win everything. Three of the conservative justices resigned in protest, but that just gave Tambor three more seats to fill. Since the convention, it's like living in Venezuela, or Russia. It's Alice in Wonderland."
"What about Congress?"
"What about Congress?" Doug asked back. "The Democrats had unbreakable majorities. The whole convention was their idea. Oh my God, the Democrats were all in heaven--and the Republicans were just as gutless as ever. The RINOs rolled over for the new constitution, most of them anyway. They never had the numbers to stop it. You know, as long as they can keep their snouts in the hog trough, that's all they really care about. A few Republicans challenged the basic legality of the con-con, but they were shouted down and called fascists and racists, all the usual stuff. They took an unholy beating in the media. So most of them caved in, and shut up."
"Typical," agreed Carson.
"Very. It works every time with RINOs. Growl at them, call them racists or homophobes, and they'll run for cover with their tails between their legs. They just want to stay in Congress--it's like being royalty. I think most of the RINOs in Congress like being in the permanent minority--it's easier. Just keep your head down, shuffle along, make your votes, and get invited to millionaire parties every night of the week." Doug spat on the floor of the cave. "Bunch of pathetic losers."
"But I take it that not all of the states accepted the amendments."
"You can say that again," said Doug, laughing. "Most of the Northwest, some of the South, half of Texas--but not enough to kill the new constitution. The president, the Congress and the Supreme Court accepted the new amendments, and that's who counts. They control most of the military, and all of the federal law enforcement agencies. And they're in charge in Washington, D.C., so they make the rules for everybody."
"Only they can't enforce it out West."
"Well, that's right," agreed Doug, "They can't enforce it out there in the free states. Their state legislatures rejected the new constitution out-right. They said that everything that happened in Philadelphia was illegal and invalid because their so-called state delegates were stooges and imposters. So now the Northwest is using the old original constitution. They even got rid of the federal income tax, because they said it was unconstitutional. They say that the Sixteenth Amendment was bogus because it was passed by some kind of a fraud back in 1913. They use a 12 percent sales tax instead, and it's the same tax for everybody. Rich, poor--everybody pays 12 percent. And they keep it in their own states--they don't send any money to Washington."
"I'll bet Washington can't stand that," said Carson. "Washington, D.C., I mean."
"Can't stand it is right. Especially with the federal states still stuck in the depression. Yeah, the feds opened up a real can of worms with this new constitution. The states that rejected the new constitution didn't just stop there; they started what they call the 'rollback.' That's how they got rid of the federal income tax. They even got rid of New Dollars out there. Now they use gold and silver instead. They're hard-core on the original constitution."
Carson was intrigued. So the Northwest was going back to the gold standard. That was how he had been doing business in the Caribbean, and he still had a few ounces hidden in his belt, and more stashed in the derelict tugboat near his wrecked catamaran. He said, "Politicians can't just create more gold and silver out of thin air, like they do with paper and electronic money. Taking away their printing press is like cutting off their balls and putting a ring through their nose."
"Exactly right. It cuts the power of the government right off at the knees. People are finally starting to figure this out, and boy, do the politicians up in D.C. ever hate it."
"What about the South, the emergency zone?" asked Carson. "Which constitution are they following?"
"Basically, General Mirabeau speaks for the emergency zone. He is the e-zone. He's the only law down there that matters. They haven't had an election in three years. I don't know how he really feels, I don't think anybody does, but I don't think he's committed one way or the other. As far as I know, he hasn't rejected the new constitution, but why should he? He rules like a king from Louisiana to Georgia. He makes up the laws as he goes along, under his own emergency powers act. It's easier for him to avoid making trouble with Washington. What would it gain him? Washington can't force him to do anything, so it's a standoff. Personally, I think General Mirabeau is just for General Mirabeau."
Carson said, "The folks here in Tennessee can't be happy about the new constitution."
Doug asked, "What difference does it make if they're happy about it, when they're under martial law?"
"Did people really turn in their guns?" asked Carson.
"Here, or up in the federal states? Up north, people didn't have much choice. The police already knew where most of the guns were, from all kinds of computer records and registration lists. Most people up north turned them in. At least it looked that way on television. People had no alternative. It was either turn them in or get arrested. Or take a chance on having a SWAT team make a midnight visit. Maybe some folks up north buried their guns, I don't know. If they're buried, they're still buried, I guess. But they're not much good when they're in the ground."
"Nobody fought back?"
"Some hardcore types went down shooting, but not many. I was right there; I was still up in Maryland then. There were a few shootouts on the news, but not a lot."
"What about you, Doug? What did you do with your guns?"
He grinned sheepishly. "I didn't have any guns to turn in. My family was pretty liberal, and they were always against guns in general. You know, growing up in Maryland, my family blamed guns for violence in society. I never touched a real gun until after I was drafted." Doug finished wiping down his rifle's barrel assembly, rejoined it with the lower receiver, and pushed the two cross pins through.
"What about here in the South?" Carson asked.
"Oh, it was way different down here. Even after the new constitution was passed, the local sheriffs wouldn't cooperate with the feds, not when it came to gun control. They wouldn't set up collection centers like the city cops did up north. Then they had the hurricanes and the earthquakes, so things just worked out differently down here. The local police down here could barely find enough gasoline to drive around, much less to go out on gun raids. Not that they wanted to anyway. With all of the looting, people needed their guns--the local police understood that. Taking people's guns away wasn't a priority down here. After the earthquake, the feds couldn't even bring food in, so they sure as hell couldn't come in looking for guns. So anyway, folks down here are mostly still armed, just like before the Second Amendment went down the tubes. And with what happened after the earthquakes, people damn sure wouldn't give up their guns. Guns mean survival--life or death. If people didn't understand that before the quakes, they sure know it now. They won't give up their guns now, no matter what the law says." Doug Dolan picked a loaded thirty-round magazine up from the table and slid it into the rifle. He stood the weapon up on the table, pulled down the charging handle, and let it fly home with a rasping metallic snap, chambering a round. "And I won't either. At least not while I'm alive."
"And that's why the feds are coming down so hard on Kentucky and Tennessee?"
"That's what most folks think," replied Doug. "If the feds can't get Kentucky and Tennessee and the Carolinas whipped into shape, they'll never be able to get control of the Deep South, what they call the emergency zone. That'll leave General Mirabeau in charge, except he's not really under Washington's authority. All Washington really controls now is the Northeast and the Midwest, from Maine to Minnesota and down to Virginia--and Virginia is shaky. There's a lot of mountains in Virginia, just the same as eastern Tennessee, Kentucky and the Carolinas."
"Mountain folks are a different breed of people, that's been my experience."
"Mr. Carson, the federal government is just an empty shell anymore, and that's how I think it looks in most of the country. It's hollow, it's all rotten inside--it just hasn't collapsed yet. Why should General Mirabeau obey Washington if Washington can't even get a handle on Kentucky and Tennessee? And if they can't get Kentucky and Tennessee under control, then they can forget about the Northwest. They'd never have a chance of getting control out there. Not while the East is still divided. That's why Kentucky and Tennessee and the Carolinas are so important. If Washington can't even get their own backyard cleaned up, they can forget about the Northwest. I think that's why Tambor was willing to bring in foreign troops. He doesn't care what anybody thinks--it's make-or-break time. The whole world is watching. If he can't get control east of the Mississippi River, then the federal government is finished, and everybody knows it."
"Well that's sure something to ponder," said Carson. "The end of the United States of America."
"Maybe America died a long time ago, and it just took us this long to realize it." Doug shouldered the reassembled rifle, aimed it at the ceiling of the cave, and sighted along its barrel. "Hell, we already lost the South-west without a fight. Yeah, I think the America you knew is long gone."
"That might be right. You know, you've got a lot of ideas, a lot of insight for a young man. Maybe someday you could write a book about all of this."
"I've thought about it." He propped the rifle against a crate behind him, within easy reach. "Did you ever hear of a book called The Black Swan?"
"No, never."
"You ever read about chaos theory?"
"Sure, a little."
"It's related to that. Risk, randomness, fractal geometry--it's sort of where mathematics meets philosophy. Anyway, a black swan event is something nobody thinks is possible, like a black swan in nature. All swans are white, right? That was a certified known scientific fact forever--until they found black swans in Australia. You can't even imagine a real black swan, until it hits you between the eyes. Planes taking down buildings on 9-11, that was a black swan. The constitutional convention coming out of nowhere?that was a black swan. The global financial collapse, that was one too. After they happen, everybody has an explanation, but never before. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but foresight is blind. The twin earthquakes sure as hell were black swans. All the experts said that a big Midwest earthquake should happen only about every five hundred years. They said that like it meant we had another three hundred years to go, counting from the last big New Madrid quakes. Like earthquakes follow human schedules. So much for experts!
"Hell," said Doug, warming to his subject, "we got attacked by a whole damn flock of black swans, and the experts didn't see a single one of them coming. Nobody believed any of this could happen. But it did! When it comes to predicting these off-the-bell-curve events, the experts were all wrong, wrong, wrong. Speaking of bell curves, some people call these black swan things 'fat tails.' That means a big fat bulge out on the skinny edge of the bell curve, where things should be astronomically rare. Fat tail events happen all the time out in the real world, but the experts can never see them before they hit, because they don't fit their probability models."
"Like the 'hundred-year floods' that happen twenty years apart," said Carson.
"Exactly. I read The Black Swan back at the University of Maryland for a statistics course I was taking. I'd love to read it again someday. When I read it back in college, it seemed kind of far out. Not anymore. I'm a big believer in black swans now. What you can't see can kill you. What you can't even imagine can kill you--or wreck your country. You think that just because your country has been chugging along pretty well for two hundred years, it'll keep on going forever, nice and easy. Like some kind of American birthright, or natural law. But black swans are out there--even if you can't see them, or predict them. And they can change everything."
"Doug, you have got to write a book about this."
"Maybe I will. But who's going to read it?"
"I would."
"Thanks. I'll start tonight. Or today, or whatever time it is."
Carson checked his watch. "It's half past noon."
"It never changes in here. It's easy to get disoriented and lose track of time."
"You were telling me how you dropped out of college and got drafted. So, how did you wind up in Tennessee with Boone Vikersun?" Phil Carson understood that this might be a sensitive topic if the young man was still supposed to be serving on active duty in the Army.
(Continues at Part 2.)
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