It may sound trite, or bogus, but it came to me in a vision. Over the course of an eleven hour work day --never mind where-- bits and pieces of this future history started coming to me unbidden. By the end of the day, I had over ninety percent of the fictional events I recount in the short version of Twilight's Last Gleaming. I wrote the short version and sent copies to some friends, solely for their and my amusement. I thought that was the end of it. But in the months that followed, more and more details of this imagined future began to reveal themselves to me. Finally, I felt I had enough to undertake the writing of a novel-length chronicle. Over the next year, I did just that.
An imaginary future history depicting the world-wide ascendency of Islam, and the fracturing of America along ethnic and religious lines, cannot help but be controversial. That's okay. So long as my fictional future prompts people to think, "That's not what's going to happen, this is...", then it's done its job. I intend for my chronicle to be a provocative work of dystopian fiction, alarming regardless of one's position on the political spectrum, but it is not my purpose to give offense. I honestly believe that most people everywhere would prefer to live and let live, lead normal lives, and go about their business. The strife in the world stems from comparitively small groups of determined trouble-makers. Such is the sad story of humanity. The sole point I wish to emphasize is that we, as a nation and a civilization, cannot be as stupid, lazy, and complacent as we want and still expect to be around. If we are supplanted by a younger, more vigorous civilization, the fault will lie with us and not with them.
So if it helps, just think of this as The Road Warrior without Mad Max. It's fiction, after all. As time goes on, I hope to add additional tales using Twilight as a background. I've always wanted to create my own fictional universe, ala Baum's Oz, Burroughs' Barsoom and Pellucidar, Howard's Hyborian Age, Tolkein's Middle Earth, Roddenberry's Federation, Lucas' Galactic Republic. Well, now I have. I intend for my fictional timeline and post-US America to serve as a backdrop big enough for any type of story --action-adventure, techno-thriller, war, drama, Dickensian social commentary, suspense, mystery, and possibly even comedy and romance.
The first chapter of the first novel set in what I might as well call "the Twilightverse" appears on this blog. It's a pulp fiction action saga called Guns of the Border Region. More chapters will follow as I create them. I have also included sample chapters from the opening, middle, and concluding sections of the full, book-length version of Twilight's Last Gleaming.
Friday, July 4, 2008
TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING: A History of the Future (short version)
[The following is the short version of my book-length fictional future history, Twilight's Last Gleaming . I made a few changes as I expanded it into a novel length work, and so have made revisions in this short version to bring it in line with the full-length chronicle. Copyright© 2006, 2008 by Charles Hoffman]
As America prepared to celebrate its 300th birthday in 2076, the greatest external threat facing the United States was the Islamic Federation of Europe. The Islamic Federation of Europe had existed as a formal political entity for only a few decades, but its roots went back much further. At the dawn of the 21st Century, sizable Muslim minorities already existed in such European nations as France, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. As the indigenous populations dwindled, the Muslim population expanded, both through considerably higher birth rates and additional unchecked immigration. Muslims also made remarkable inroads into Spain --formerly ruled by the Moors-- and Sweden, socially experimental as always and open to social engineering schemes.
Able to vote and hold office in their adopted countries, European Muslims began to sway elections and determine government policy. Achieving greater and greater prominence in all areas of public life, Islam also succeeded in winning many converts among the younger generations of indigenous Europeans. By 2060, the only countries in Western Europe to remain outside the Islamic Federation were the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, and parts of Scandinavia. The Islamic Federation of Europe had grown vine-like upon the framework of the old European Union, inheriting an efficient bureaucracy already in place and gradually consolidating power within a stronger central authority than had previously existed. More ominously as far as the western hemisphere was concerned, the IFE also inherited the formidable arsenals of both the former NATO powers and the Warsaw Pact nations.
In the meantime, Islam was roaring its power in its ancient homeland as well. Representative democratic government, which had been successfully transplanted to regions formerly ruled by shoguns, Kaisers and czars, failed to take root in the sands of the Middle East. It had gained a tenuous foothold in places like Afghanistan and Iraq due solely to considerable exertions and patience on the part of the US and its allies, but within a few decades these nations reverted to Islamic theocracy. At first the frameworks of representative government were kept in place, so as to lull the West into complacency and forestall further intervention. However, religious control of those regions returned in swift increments. Elected officials all-too-soon became figureheads placed in power to rubber-stamp the decrees of religious authorities.
The Islamic nations of the Middle East formed a powerful coalition with Iran at its center. Interfaith squabbles between Sunni and Shiite factions in the Mid East gradually ceased to be a significant problem due to the cool guidance of the religious and secular authorities of the Islamic Federation of Europe, who soberly arbitrated disputes and fostered cooperation throughout the region. Mid-East oil now flowed freely to Europe, fueling a robust European economy and enriching the nations of the IFE.
In the second half of the 21st Century, Islam dominated the Eastern Hemisphere. At this time all of Africa, with the exception of South Africa, was Muslim. The continent as a whole, however, remained impoverished and of marginal importance. Islam also made remarkable inroads in areas of the Far East where it had not hitherto flourished, in India, and also in North America. In the northeastern United States, African-Americans converted to Islam in great numbers, as did many whites.
In the US, both officialdom and average citizens viewed the growing power of Islam throughout the Eastern Hemisphere with alarm. Unfortunately, the United States had failed to break its dependence on Mid East oil. Sizeable petroleum reserves in Alaska and off the coast remained untapped due to ecological concerns. Alternative energy sources never got off the ground due to the shortsightedness of business leaders in the private sector. The price of crude oil continued to skyrocket, touching off a series of recessions, panics, and depressions that plagued America throughout the first half of the 21st Century. Widespread unemployment and poverty tore at the social fabric. Yet while the man in the street wept in helpless fury, government found that its hands were tied. Europe and the Mid East held all the aces, and impotent saber rattling was never even considered.
One political measure the US did undertake in reaction to Islamic hegemony was to strengthen ties with Catholic Latin America. This entailed pursuing amicable relations with the growing powerhouse that was Mexico.
Mexico had grown prosperous in part by adapting an alternative energy plan pioneered by Brazil. Brazil’s primary alternative fuel was ethanol, made from sugar cane. By 2005, seventy-five percent of Brazilian cars were running on flex-fuel, accepting gasoline, ethanol, or a blend of both. Early attempts by Mexico to manufacture ethanol from corn resulted in food shortages. However, Mexico achieved greater success with ethanol derived from sugar imported from Cuba. The economies of both nations benefited as a result. Unprecedented prosperity enabled Mexico to beef up militarily. Mexico’s chief supplier of arms was China, who had since the early 21st Century been expanding its military assistance to Latin America. In this, China was only filling a vacuum left by the United States, the former arms supplier to the region. The US insisted that client nations conform to restrictions in regard to human rights, ecological, and other concerns as a condition for military assistance. China made no such demands.
In addition to growing power and prosperity, Mexico also gained in international prestige. Italy, isolated from Muslim Europe, was desperate for support from Catholic Latin America. In due course, the first Mexican pope was elected.
In regards to relations with Mexico, US policy was also heavily influenced by an ever-increasing Hispanic population within its own borders. Since the 1970s and earlier, illegal aliens from Mexico had been swarming unchecked across the border in increasingly massive droves. Security at the border was scandalously lax. Border Patrol agents found themselves spread thin and hamstrung by government officials who steadfastly ignored the problem until it was too late.
By the year 2000, the population of these “illegal immigrants” had swelled to between ten and twenty million, according to various estimates. The majority of those who crossed the border illegally were ordinary people who were just seeking a better life. Even so, they placed a tremendous burden on education and social services designed for US citizens.
In California taxes soared, driving businesses and longtime residents to relocate northward and eastward. By 2025, the entertainment industry formerly centered in Hollywood and environs had been completely transplanted to Vancouver. The economy of Southern California was dealt a crippling blow from which it never fully recovered.
The other Southwestern border states also experienced difficulties due to the strain placed on government services. Still the flood of illegal aliens continued unabated. A series of amnesty programs, under various guises, served to entice more and more Mexicans to illegally enter the United States. As Mexican and other Latin American immigrants gained legal status, they came to wield increasingly greater political clout.
The Hispanic population of the United States was largely Mexican, though not exclusively so. An expanding segment of the population of southern Florida was Cuban. Many of their number arrived as refugees from the oppressive regime of Fidel Castro. The Castro regime had at the outset been abetted by the now-vanished Soviet Union. With the death of Fidel Castro, Cuba turned away from communism. Long-established sanctions against Cuba were lifted as a more progressive government was established there. Even so, few of the Cubans who had been residing in Florida for so long returned to their native soil.
Birth rates were also an important factor in the Hispanic population boom. The children of illegal aliens born on American soil were automatically deemed US citizens. The Catholic Church frowned on any sort of birth control, let alone abortion. Hispanic children benefited from the support of large extended families. Meanwhile, birthrates among Anglo-Americans plummeted. Disenfranchised and facing an uncertain future, many men in “rustbelt” areas and elsewhere were reluctant to start families. During the so-called “baby bust,” birthrates among Anglos fell to below replacement levels. Anglos in the Southwest became a minority.
A huge percentage of the illegal immigrants failed to assimilate and were, in fact, discouraged from doing so by political leaders that arose in the Mexican-American community. Mexican culture was lauded over American culture. The MEChA movement was active on all University of California campuses and at many other colleges and universities throughout the Southwest --indeed, throughout the United States. The ultimate goal of MEChA was the restoration to Mexico of all territory that had been part of it prior to 1846. The Mexican War of 1846-48 was seen as a blatant land-grab by the US. Activists ignored, or dismissed as irrelevant, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed on February 2, 1848, in which Mexico had been compensated $15 million for its vast, sparsely settled hinterlands. Also ignored was the fact that Mexico had never truly held sway over Arizona and West Texas; in the 1840s these were still the domain of the fierce Apache and Comanche.
In any event, a separate culture took shape in the western United States during the early decades of the 21st Century. It was a Hispanic culture that revered both the Spanish culture of Old Mexico and, paradoxically, the Aztec and Mayan civilizations that it supplanted. The Hispanic culture of the West was as different from the Anglo-American culture of the East as the antebellum South had been from that of the industrial North prior to the Civil War of 1861-65. Hispanics came to be regularly elected governor of western states. Representatives and senators from the West were also increasingly Hispanic as time went on. When they went to Washington, many of these staunchly advocated Mexican national interests as well as those of Hispanic Americans. The last Anglo governor of California left office in the late 2020s. In 2046, the MEChA flag was raised at the state house in Sacramento, and at several other western state capitals as well. It was an ironic --and to some ominous-- development that was duly noted at the time.
In the portions of the United States where Anglo-Americans still predominated, there was an upsurge in religious fervor among Christians. This was true among Protestants and Catholics alike. Denominational differences were set aside in the name of Christian solidarity, although fundamentalists in both camps began to eclipse more moderate factions. Commentators deemed the phenomenon an inevitable historic reaction to the worldwide rise of Islam. The philosophy, history, traditions, and art of Christianity was embraced and celebrated. The downside of this trend, however, was a growing fundamentalist stranglehold on various topics of discourse, with a consequent chilling effect on dissenting points of view. Both fine and popular art assumed a uniform blandness. Certain avenues of scientific inquiry and research were abandoned, causing America to lag behind in the sciences. Yet despite these drawbacks, the renewed prominence of
Christianity in public life often gained the support of even those with no strong religious beliefs. Many such persons viewed it as a matter of pragmatism, a robust Christianity was seen as a necessary counterbalance to Islam. “It takes a faith to fight a faith” was a frequently heard maxim.
However, Islam was alive and well in America. Nowhere did this make for more bitter controversy than in the African-American community. Black Americans in the southern states remained the staunchest of Christians, while inner city blacks in the Northeast and Midwest were increasingly drawn to Islam. White American Muslims also became more common in these areas, joining with the Black Muslims and those of actual Mid-Eastern origin or descent. Muslims from other parts of the nation relocated en masse to the Northeast and Midwest, further swelling the Islamic populations there. They were able to swing elections and influence public policy. One result was a weakening of the nation’s defensive and intelligence capabilities.
Inevitably, the more radical Islamic factions also made their presence felt. Suicide bombings occurred with mounting frequency in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. These were followed by anthrax outbreaks in several cities, as well as a nerve gas attack in the New York subway that killed over 700 people. Other atrocities ensued. The end result of this activity was a “white flight” from these urban centers so massive that it was referred to at the time as a “rout.” Businesses and the middle class fled like rats from a doomed ship. The municipal tax bases were eroded, setting the stage for urban decay on a scale never before seen in America.
In the meantime, the Southwest was making a modest comeback, after a fashion. Traffic had been flowing freely back and forth across the Mexican border for some time. The southwestern US and northern Mexico were evolving together into a semi-autonomous region --at least as far as the US was concerned. In 2060, a Congress in large part Hispanic overrode a presidential veto to declare the border officially open, citing “commerce” as a rationale. Previously, Spanish had been declared an official language of the United States.
And so it came to pass that the American Tercentennial of 2076 was celebrated, where celebrated at all, in a lackluster half-hearted fashion. Some wag wryly noted that this in itself was something of a tradition. The Centennial celebration of 1876 had been marred by bitter memories of the Civil War that ended little more than a decade earlier, and the Bicentennial of 1976 had been observed amid the malaise that followed the disastrous Vietnam War and a major political scandal. Even so, the United States of America was, at least in theory, still “one nation indivisible” in 2076. However, the cracks and fissures in the nation were now all too plain to see. One good jolt was all that was needed to shatter the Union into fragments like a piece of cheap crockery.
II.
That jolt was not long in coming. Just a few years later in 2079, Iran celebrated the 100th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution. It was a milestone that heralded dire events. Before the year was over, the worst fears of western intelligence agencies were realized when Iran and its allies launched an all-out attack on their mutually despised foe, Israel.
The state of Israel had been a thorn in the side of the Islamic Middle East for over a century. Iran especially longed to wipe it from the map. Iran was held in check at first by the deterrent effect of America’s military might, and later by the Islamic Federation of Europe. The IFE counseled patience and restraint, bidding Iran to bide its time even as it helped Iran prepare for the day of reckoning. The Islamic world consolidated its power, watching and waiting as America was corroded by internal strife.
Iran’s first attack wave came in the form of carefully coordinated air strikes and non-nuclear missile strikes that took out Israel’s defenses. The tiny nation was pounded by further air strikes that paved the way for a later invasion by ground forces.
American military response was swift. Aircraft carriers rushed to Israel’s rescue. They could not arrive in time to intercept that crippling first wave, but subsequent Iranian air attacks met with fierce resistance. In an effort to take the fight to the enemy, the latest generations of stealth bombers and cruise missiles struck deep within Iran and its allies.
Then, in a lightning move that bespoke much prior anticipation and planning, the Islamic Federation of Europe issued a formal declaration of war against the United States of America. This declaration was so worded that any and all allied of the US were included in this drawing of the battle lines. The battle was quickly joined. Nations around the globe were drawn into the fight as the regional conflict escalated with appalling rapidity into World War III.
Within hours of the IFE war declaration, the eastern seaboard of the United States found itself under aerial bombardment. European forces were able to swiftly reach American soil by striking from Greenland. Even before the creation of the Islamic Federation, Europe had begun to establish military installations in Greenland. The IFE subsequently busied itself for decades completing this task. Throughout that period, many warned that Greenland was becoming a huge dagger aimed at the heart of North America. However, this issue was never adequately addressed.
In the wake of the first attack, the US Air Force scrambled to neutralize Greenland. The Labrador Sea northeast of Newfoundland became the scene of fierce aerial combat as the air forces of the United States and Canada sought to hold the Europeans in check. The second European attack wave targeted Canadian as well as American defensive installations. Greenland also allowed the European Navy to dominate the North Atlantic. Here epic sea battles were waged on a scale not seen since Jutland.
Both on the sea and in the sky, the Europeans were better prepared and more effective. America was essentially fighting blind due to the destruction of its intelligence satellites at the outset of the war. In general, America lagged woefully behind Europe technologically. On one hand, defense budgets had been gutted in favor of social programs and failed social engineering schemes. On the other, distrust of scientists by powerful religious leaders had been influential in retarding technical advances.
The British Navy was quick to come to America’s aid in the North Atlantic. No sooner had it set sail than an invasion force from France swept across the English Channel. Britain was now fighting for survival as never before, not even during the Battle of Britain in the Second World War. Not since 1066 had an invading army overrun British soil, but one did so now. Ferocious bloody combat took place in London and other urban centers and throughout the countryside.
It did not take long for the conflict to spread to a Pacific theater, making it a true world war. Australia declared solidarity with its English-speaking brethren and at once found itself at war with Indonesia. At this point India became a factor. India joined with Pakistan in backing Indonesia. Boasting a formidable arsenal and an enormous population, India stood poised to deliver the coup de grace to Australia and New Zealand. It was forestalled from doing so only by the timely intervention of an even greater giant, China. China vowed severe consequences should India pursue its present course. India backed down, and soon afterwards hostilities in the Pacific gradually began to subside.
In the main theater of operations, the United States was being forced into an increasingly defensive posture. Enemy attacks remained unrelenting, even as America was being crippled from within. Sleeper cells were activated and went into action, striking at military installations and their support facilities, as well as civilian population centers. Most significantly, key areas of infrastructure were targeted for destruction. Highways, bridges, railways, power plants, reservoirs and food supplies were demolished or rendered useless.
Within weeks of the outbreak of hostilities, America was fighting wholly on the defensive. The US Government had retreated to the vast, underground Liberty’s Fortress complex in Virginia. In the meantime, Israel was left to fend for itself. Though it resisted valiantly, it was no match for the combined might of Iran, Iraq, Syria and their allies. After weeks of punishing air strikes, ground forces moved into the beleaguered nation. The invaders dealt death and absorbed casualties with the grim fatalism of their creed. At length, every Israeli man, woman and child found alive was put to the sword. Then all temples and monuments, indeed any structures of any type, were demolished. The conquerors of Israel razed it to the ground and salted the earth.
Subsequently, an IFE invasion fleet was launched to menace America’s east coast. A portion of the fleet was detached to launch an assault on New York City. The battle plan for this attack was designed to maximize civilian casualties. New York was the epicenter of the American Jewish population. At the behest of powerful clerics, the forces of the Islamic Eastern Hemisphere intended to purge Jews from the New World as they had from the Old.
Yet while the eastern United States was ravaged by attacks from within and without, the western states remained virtually untouched. The USA and the IFE traded blows from opposite sides of the Atlantic, but the western US remained protected by the vast Pacific and the absence of a formidable Islamic presence in the Far East.
Even so, there was a reluctance to leave the back door unguarded. Valuable troops and materiel sorely needed to defend the besieged eastern seaboard were left in place out west. This caused anguished and indignant voices to be raised among Easterners. The Hispanic Americans of the West had thus far not been threatened, while Anglos in the East were being decimated. [NOTE: The term “Anglo” as used in this account refers to English-speaking Americans regardless of race.] Never was the cultural divide between East and West more glaringly apparent. Over 80 percent of all Americans spoke some Spanish, but the majority of Hispanics spoke only Spanish. Nevertheless, fluent English was an essential prerequisite for service in the US armed forces. Clear communication was always of paramount importance in any sort of military organization or operation. The technical nature of much 21st Century warfare only served to emphasize this. A century earlier Hispanic Americans had been a backbone of the US military, but now they served in scant proportion to their numbers in the general population. Anglos bore the brunt of the fighting, and their bitter memory of the disparity bore repercussions in the post-war period.
As the American situation grew more desperate, fears arose that the war would spiral out of control and result in some sort of thermonuclear exchange. Fortunately, nuclear weapons were never utilized in World War III. The time of greatest danger from atomic weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) such as chemical and biological agents was actually the early 21st Century. Atomic and hydrogen bombs, though the object of considerable angst, were never deployed during the long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. A nuclear strike by one superpower would bring retaliation in kind, inevitably escalating to global Armageddon. This stalemate was commonly referred to as “Mutually Assured Destruction” (or “MAD”), and actually had a chilling deterrent effect that decreased the likelihood of the USA and USSR sliding into a shooting war.
After the internal collapse of the Soviet empire, the chief threat from WMDs was in their potential use by terrorists. Various rogue agencies espousing Islam aimed to break the will of their ideological foes, rather than seize territory or capital as in traditional warfare. Terrorists operated outside the auspices of any nation, although nation-states could and did support these networks covertly. An invisible menace without borders, terrorist networks were immune from similar retaliation. Thus it was now possible for an American city to go up in an atomic fireball without it sucking the rest of the world into a nuclear conflagration.
Ironically, this danger decreased as radical Islamic factions came to power in more and more nations. Now that these formerly outlaw elements were “on the map” with clearly defined borders and political centers, they could be targeted for a counterstrike. Therefore, when World War III broke out, nuclear weapons were not deployed. As in the previous century, no one wanted to open that can of worms.
Nevertheless, the mere fact that everyone dreaded the specter of nuclear warfare didn’t remove it from the realm of possibility. As America found itself reeling, nuclear options began to be considered. As these murmurs reached the ears of its enemies, a ceasefire and armistice were conveniently proffered by Europe. IFE representatives sensibly pointed out that the original root cause of the war was now moot. Israel was no more, and the Jewish voice in America had been muted. Few were left to champion the cause of Israel. The Islamic powers could afford to be magnanimous. They stood to gain considerable concessions from a chastened America. Even if these concessions fell short of Islam’s ultimate ambitions, the compromise was an acceptable one. There would be other wars and Islam was patient. The guns fell silent and peace talks began.
III.
The Third World War had been short, swift and vicious, like the whirlwind of fangs and claws that ensues when two wildcats fight. The talks that followed dragged on longer than the duration of the war itself. Still, the dust finally settled and a new world order was in place.
The United Kingdom was forced to accept the yoke of Islam. Britons were faced with the choice of conversion or becoming second-class citizens of their own country. Most accepted the latter indignity as an alternative to complete capitulation. Britain became a minor satellite of the Islamic Federation of Europe.
China, on the other hand, emerged from the war with its stature enhanced. It took full advantage of the opportunity to reclaim Taiwan. The United States, having been brought to its knees, was in no position to interfere, and no one else was terribly concerned about the matter. Before long, China also assisted North Korea in its conquest of the South. Ironically, however, it was the capitalist culture of South Korea that was subsequently nurtured by China. China had long viewed the rise of the Islamic world with wariness and growing displeasure. A thriving Pacific Rim was seen as an essential bulwark against the further spread of Islam. Therefore China came to encourage capitalistic enterprise in Korea, Taiwan and Japan, which became a vassal of China.
America emerged from World War III torn and bloodied. Much of the Northeast lay in smoking ruins. The infrastructure was fragmented. Many regions were without water and power. Foodstuffs rotted in warehouses because they could not be transported to starving areas. Much of the nation’s navy had been sunk, and its arsenal had been depleted. Postwar America was weakened and vulnerable.
The armistice that America was obliged to accept included the provision that the citizens of states with heavily Muslim populations be “allowed to” vote to establish an autonomous region in which Islamic law was the highest legal authority, superseding the Supreme Court and even the United States Constitution. Such elections were held in a dozen states in the Med Atlantic and Great Lakes regions. The measure passed in all but a few of these states.
This development did not go unopposed. Trouble first flared up in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Angry citizens there were loath to accept a condition imposed by a popular vote tipped by populous Muslim strongholds like Philadelphia and other cities in the eastern part of the state. The southwestern counties flamed in riot and open rebellion. Rebel leaders issued a manifesto declaring that states opting for Islamic religious rule had for all intents and purposes seceded from the Union; if secession were the order of the day, then they would secede from Pennsylvania. All the counties south of Meadville and west of the Alleghenies soon separated from the rest of Pennsylvania by mutual agreement. The secession movement spread like wildfire as other affected states followed suit. The southern rural regions of states like Ohio and Illinois broke away from the more urbanized areas of the North.
What would become the Islamic States of America included all of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, as well as vast parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. In the meantime, the hardy Southwestern Pennsylvanians joined with the equally stalwart West Virginians in the formation of a semi-autonomous buffer zone insulating the Christian South from the Islamic North. In time this would include all of the Ohio River Valley and environs, and become known as the Border Region.
These momentous developments sent shockwaves through the West as well. The citizens of the Southwestern states overwhelmingly favored leaving the Union and joining Mexico. They made this known both through their elected representatives and by taking to the streets in protest. Mexico itself added its voice to theirs, politely insisting that citizens of those states be allowed to “determine their own destiny.”
Back east, editorial cartoons of a weeping Abraham Lincoln failed to move many. The West had come through the war relatively unscathed, to the resentment of many in the East. America’s loss of the war was blamed on the nation’s lack of cohesion. Critics were quick to point to Southwesterners’ longstanding embrace of Mexican, rather than American culture. If these states left the Union, they would take their representatives in Congress with them; their influence on American policy would vanish.
Within a year the entire states of California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico left the United States to join Mexico. Of the Southwestern states, only Texas split in two as Pennsylvania had. The Big Bend area of West Texas that included El Paso joined Mexico, as did all the regions south of Austin. The rest of the state remained in the Union. Before leaving San Antonio, Anglos there dynamited the Alamo to prevent it from falling into Mexican hands.
Both the secession of the Southwest and the establishment of the Islamic States came to be seen as a blessing in disguise by certain commentators. The Northeastern states lay in ruins and the cost of rebuilding would be staggering. If they left the Union, however, they were no longer America’s problem. Let the Europeans help the Northeast to rebuild, some reasoned; after all, they were the ones who wrecked it in the first place.
These commentators regarded the “downsizing of America” in a positive light. It was thought that America could get back on its feet faster if certain problem areas were no longer parts of it. “Smaller is better” and “leaner and meaner” became popular mottos. Others simply snorted “Good riddance” in regards to the departing states.
Unfortunately, secession did not end there. Within five years the northern New England states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, cut off from the rest of the Union by the Islamic States, were clamoring to leave the Union and join Canada. A weary Federal government caved to their demands. In due course Oregon and Washington, along with the northern panhandle of Idaho and the upper peninsula of Michigan, were joined to Canada. However, Canadian gains of US territory were offset by the loss of Quebec. Secession fever had spread to Canada, and Quebec finally realized its long-sought goal of independence. Quebec had long been the world center of French language and culture, now all but extinct in France.
Canada and Mexico were not the only nations to gain from the break-up of the American Union. Apart from the Southwest, the largest concentration of Spanish-speaking Americans was to be found in southern Florida. These were of mostly Cuban descent. In 2093, all of Florida south of the Panhandle left the US to form a union with Cuba.
Throughout the final decade of the 21st Century, what was left of the United States continued to struggle to haul itself out of the abyss into which it had been plunged. In doing so, the nation redefined itself along the way. Almost half of its former territory had been lost. What remained consisted of the Southeastern states, with the notable exception of Florida, and the still sparsely populated central states such as Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. The political, economic and cultural life of the recovering nation centered in what had been the Old South of two hundred and fifty years earlier.
It became common to refer to the South, and by extension the downsized nation as a whole, as “the New American Confederacy.” The term was spoken with a tone of irony at first. It was frequently observed that this new “Confederacy” had not seceded from the Union --rather, the Union had seceded from it! And unlike the old Confederate States of America, the new Confederacy was not built on the rotten foundation of racism and slavery. Rather, the new nation that was being erected on the ash heap of the old was the work of both black and white --brothers and sisters all, united in Christ.
One thing the New Confederacy did have in common with its predecessor was a lessening of the power held by the central authority of the Federal government, with greater autonomy being retained by individual states and regions. As a result of this trend, certain states became, for all intents and purposes, miniature nations. In Utah, the population was overwhelmingly Mormon and elected to return to their old ways. Polygamy was reinstated with nary an objection from the Federal government. Since such once-unthinkable concessions had been granted to American Muslims, not much of a case could be made for denying the same considerations to the Mormons, who were at least Christians. Alaska also began to function more and more independently of the central government. In the meantime, a whole separate culture was taking form in the Ohio River Valley’s Border Region. Places like Utah, Alaska, and the Border Region were neither wholly in nor wholly out of the Union, or rather the Confederacy, as it increasingly came to be called.
As the map of North America was redrawn, the populations of various areas were uprooted and transplanted to different locations. Asian Americans on the West Coast had been drifting northward for decades. Those of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and other Asian descent formed enclaves in the northernmost regions of California, now part of Mexico; in Oregon and Washington, now part of Canada; in British Columbia and in the southern panhandle of Alaska. Christians in Michigan migrated to the Upper Peninsula, which seceded from the state and the nation to join Canada. The Amish of Eastern Pennsylvania joined those in the sundered western part of the state to occupy the northeastern fringe of the Border Region. In time the Amish came to adopt a more militant stance, becoming the watchmen along the border with the Islamic States of America.
Hawaii loosened its ties to the rest of the country, now without a west coast, as it became a thriving crossroads of the commerce conducted by the nations of the Pacific Rim. In time Hawaii became a protectorate of Japan. More notable, however, were the formal declarations of nationhood on the part of the Islamic States of America and the New American Confederacy.
For twenty years the Muslims in the former northeastern US labored to create an Islamic nation in the Western Hemisphere. For a time they were governed from the various state capitals by local religious leaders who worked with their counterparts in the other states in an informal committee. The actual rebuilding of the war-ravaged areas was accomplished, as predicted, with foreign aid courtesy of the Islamic Federation of Europe. In the meantime, leaders worked to construct a more permanent government and draft a constitution. This constitution was ratified in the fall of 2100. A fully independent Islamic States of America now took its place among the nations of the world. A yearlong celebration concluded on September 11, 2101, when a monument commemorating the martyrs of a century earlier was unveiled in New York at the former site of the World Trade Center.
To the south, in what only the elderly still insisted on calling the United States, there was a growing movement calling for a new constitutional convention. The old fifty-star flag still flew on flagpoles across the land, but to many it seemed a mockery --a symbol of ignominious defeat. A whole generation had now been born and grown up in a fragmented Union. Those a little older, who had been children when war came, remembered the fifty-state Union only dimly. So it came to pass that the constitutional convention was held, that the nation might officially become what it had long been in fact.
In 2105, the New American Confederacy was formally adopted as the name of the reborn nation. Optimists referred to the period of the constitutional convention itself as the “Era of Rebirth.” The terms “reborn” and “born again” were used frequently, since America had been “born again” in Christ. The New Constitution mandated that citizens at least pay token service to some form of Christian faith. This was in some measure a matter of practicality; the few remaining Muslims in the Confederacy were obliged to relocate to the Islamic States. Persons of other faiths, free thinkers and nonconformists found new homes in Alaska and the Border Region. Alaska did not ratify the New Constitution, opting instead to become an independent republic.
The Confederacy flag retained thirteen red and white stripes to acknowledge an esteemed past, but in the blue field all the stars were gone. Instead, the blue field was divided into four quarters by a white cross. This was not the only break with the past. Throughout the tumultuous post-war decades, the Federal government had been conducted from Liberty’s Fortress. An elaborate complex called Liberty’s City was constructed adjacent to it. Liberty’s City was now designated the new nation’s capital.
In Washington DC, the monuments and artifacts of the Old Union were preserved and honored. Yet latter day tourists visiting the former capital often felt as if they had come instead to Cairo, a place of museums housing relics of a long-vanished empire. They felt stained by the dust of antiquity, and came less and less to visit. Washington became a necropolis.
The whole world had changed. It was entering an age of warring faiths. Islam had already established a formidable beachhead in the Western Hemisphere. Islam may have even encompassed the whole globe in time, but here the vision grows hazy. It made little difference to the passing generation of Americans. With the adoption of the New Constitution, with the unfurling of the new flag, the last feathers had fallen from the molting American eagle. The United States of America, as it had been known to history, had ceased to exist.
As America prepared to celebrate its 300th birthday in 2076, the greatest external threat facing the United States was the Islamic Federation of Europe. The Islamic Federation of Europe had existed as a formal political entity for only a few decades, but its roots went back much further. At the dawn of the 21st Century, sizable Muslim minorities already existed in such European nations as France, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. As the indigenous populations dwindled, the Muslim population expanded, both through considerably higher birth rates and additional unchecked immigration. Muslims also made remarkable inroads into Spain --formerly ruled by the Moors-- and Sweden, socially experimental as always and open to social engineering schemes.
Able to vote and hold office in their adopted countries, European Muslims began to sway elections and determine government policy. Achieving greater and greater prominence in all areas of public life, Islam also succeeded in winning many converts among the younger generations of indigenous Europeans. By 2060, the only countries in Western Europe to remain outside the Islamic Federation were the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, and parts of Scandinavia. The Islamic Federation of Europe had grown vine-like upon the framework of the old European Union, inheriting an efficient bureaucracy already in place and gradually consolidating power within a stronger central authority than had previously existed. More ominously as far as the western hemisphere was concerned, the IFE also inherited the formidable arsenals of both the former NATO powers and the Warsaw Pact nations.
In the meantime, Islam was roaring its power in its ancient homeland as well. Representative democratic government, which had been successfully transplanted to regions formerly ruled by shoguns, Kaisers and czars, failed to take root in the sands of the Middle East. It had gained a tenuous foothold in places like Afghanistan and Iraq due solely to considerable exertions and patience on the part of the US and its allies, but within a few decades these nations reverted to Islamic theocracy. At first the frameworks of representative government were kept in place, so as to lull the West into complacency and forestall further intervention. However, religious control of those regions returned in swift increments. Elected officials all-too-soon became figureheads placed in power to rubber-stamp the decrees of religious authorities.
The Islamic nations of the Middle East formed a powerful coalition with Iran at its center. Interfaith squabbles between Sunni and Shiite factions in the Mid East gradually ceased to be a significant problem due to the cool guidance of the religious and secular authorities of the Islamic Federation of Europe, who soberly arbitrated disputes and fostered cooperation throughout the region. Mid-East oil now flowed freely to Europe, fueling a robust European economy and enriching the nations of the IFE.
In the second half of the 21st Century, Islam dominated the Eastern Hemisphere. At this time all of Africa, with the exception of South Africa, was Muslim. The continent as a whole, however, remained impoverished and of marginal importance. Islam also made remarkable inroads in areas of the Far East where it had not hitherto flourished, in India, and also in North America. In the northeastern United States, African-Americans converted to Islam in great numbers, as did many whites.
In the US, both officialdom and average citizens viewed the growing power of Islam throughout the Eastern Hemisphere with alarm. Unfortunately, the United States had failed to break its dependence on Mid East oil. Sizeable petroleum reserves in Alaska and off the coast remained untapped due to ecological concerns. Alternative energy sources never got off the ground due to the shortsightedness of business leaders in the private sector. The price of crude oil continued to skyrocket, touching off a series of recessions, panics, and depressions that plagued America throughout the first half of the 21st Century. Widespread unemployment and poverty tore at the social fabric. Yet while the man in the street wept in helpless fury, government found that its hands were tied. Europe and the Mid East held all the aces, and impotent saber rattling was never even considered.
One political measure the US did undertake in reaction to Islamic hegemony was to strengthen ties with Catholic Latin America. This entailed pursuing amicable relations with the growing powerhouse that was Mexico.
Mexico had grown prosperous in part by adapting an alternative energy plan pioneered by Brazil. Brazil’s primary alternative fuel was ethanol, made from sugar cane. By 2005, seventy-five percent of Brazilian cars were running on flex-fuel, accepting gasoline, ethanol, or a blend of both. Early attempts by Mexico to manufacture ethanol from corn resulted in food shortages. However, Mexico achieved greater success with ethanol derived from sugar imported from Cuba. The economies of both nations benefited as a result. Unprecedented prosperity enabled Mexico to beef up militarily. Mexico’s chief supplier of arms was China, who had since the early 21st Century been expanding its military assistance to Latin America. In this, China was only filling a vacuum left by the United States, the former arms supplier to the region. The US insisted that client nations conform to restrictions in regard to human rights, ecological, and other concerns as a condition for military assistance. China made no such demands.
In addition to growing power and prosperity, Mexico also gained in international prestige. Italy, isolated from Muslim Europe, was desperate for support from Catholic Latin America. In due course, the first Mexican pope was elected.
In regards to relations with Mexico, US policy was also heavily influenced by an ever-increasing Hispanic population within its own borders. Since the 1970s and earlier, illegal aliens from Mexico had been swarming unchecked across the border in increasingly massive droves. Security at the border was scandalously lax. Border Patrol agents found themselves spread thin and hamstrung by government officials who steadfastly ignored the problem until it was too late.
By the year 2000, the population of these “illegal immigrants” had swelled to between ten and twenty million, according to various estimates. The majority of those who crossed the border illegally were ordinary people who were just seeking a better life. Even so, they placed a tremendous burden on education and social services designed for US citizens.
In California taxes soared, driving businesses and longtime residents to relocate northward and eastward. By 2025, the entertainment industry formerly centered in Hollywood and environs had been completely transplanted to Vancouver. The economy of Southern California was dealt a crippling blow from which it never fully recovered.
The other Southwestern border states also experienced difficulties due to the strain placed on government services. Still the flood of illegal aliens continued unabated. A series of amnesty programs, under various guises, served to entice more and more Mexicans to illegally enter the United States. As Mexican and other Latin American immigrants gained legal status, they came to wield increasingly greater political clout.
The Hispanic population of the United States was largely Mexican, though not exclusively so. An expanding segment of the population of southern Florida was Cuban. Many of their number arrived as refugees from the oppressive regime of Fidel Castro. The Castro regime had at the outset been abetted by the now-vanished Soviet Union. With the death of Fidel Castro, Cuba turned away from communism. Long-established sanctions against Cuba were lifted as a more progressive government was established there. Even so, few of the Cubans who had been residing in Florida for so long returned to their native soil.
Birth rates were also an important factor in the Hispanic population boom. The children of illegal aliens born on American soil were automatically deemed US citizens. The Catholic Church frowned on any sort of birth control, let alone abortion. Hispanic children benefited from the support of large extended families. Meanwhile, birthrates among Anglo-Americans plummeted. Disenfranchised and facing an uncertain future, many men in “rustbelt” areas and elsewhere were reluctant to start families. During the so-called “baby bust,” birthrates among Anglos fell to below replacement levels. Anglos in the Southwest became a minority.
A huge percentage of the illegal immigrants failed to assimilate and were, in fact, discouraged from doing so by political leaders that arose in the Mexican-American community. Mexican culture was lauded over American culture. The MEChA movement was active on all University of California campuses and at many other colleges and universities throughout the Southwest --indeed, throughout the United States. The ultimate goal of MEChA was the restoration to Mexico of all territory that had been part of it prior to 1846. The Mexican War of 1846-48 was seen as a blatant land-grab by the US. Activists ignored, or dismissed as irrelevant, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed on February 2, 1848, in which Mexico had been compensated $15 million for its vast, sparsely settled hinterlands. Also ignored was the fact that Mexico had never truly held sway over Arizona and West Texas; in the 1840s these were still the domain of the fierce Apache and Comanche.
In any event, a separate culture took shape in the western United States during the early decades of the 21st Century. It was a Hispanic culture that revered both the Spanish culture of Old Mexico and, paradoxically, the Aztec and Mayan civilizations that it supplanted. The Hispanic culture of the West was as different from the Anglo-American culture of the East as the antebellum South had been from that of the industrial North prior to the Civil War of 1861-65. Hispanics came to be regularly elected governor of western states. Representatives and senators from the West were also increasingly Hispanic as time went on. When they went to Washington, many of these staunchly advocated Mexican national interests as well as those of Hispanic Americans. The last Anglo governor of California left office in the late 2020s. In 2046, the MEChA flag was raised at the state house in Sacramento, and at several other western state capitals as well. It was an ironic --and to some ominous-- development that was duly noted at the time.
In the portions of the United States where Anglo-Americans still predominated, there was an upsurge in religious fervor among Christians. This was true among Protestants and Catholics alike. Denominational differences were set aside in the name of Christian solidarity, although fundamentalists in both camps began to eclipse more moderate factions. Commentators deemed the phenomenon an inevitable historic reaction to the worldwide rise of Islam. The philosophy, history, traditions, and art of Christianity was embraced and celebrated. The downside of this trend, however, was a growing fundamentalist stranglehold on various topics of discourse, with a consequent chilling effect on dissenting points of view. Both fine and popular art assumed a uniform blandness. Certain avenues of scientific inquiry and research were abandoned, causing America to lag behind in the sciences. Yet despite these drawbacks, the renewed prominence of
Christianity in public life often gained the support of even those with no strong religious beliefs. Many such persons viewed it as a matter of pragmatism, a robust Christianity was seen as a necessary counterbalance to Islam. “It takes a faith to fight a faith” was a frequently heard maxim.
However, Islam was alive and well in America. Nowhere did this make for more bitter controversy than in the African-American community. Black Americans in the southern states remained the staunchest of Christians, while inner city blacks in the Northeast and Midwest were increasingly drawn to Islam. White American Muslims also became more common in these areas, joining with the Black Muslims and those of actual Mid-Eastern origin or descent. Muslims from other parts of the nation relocated en masse to the Northeast and Midwest, further swelling the Islamic populations there. They were able to swing elections and influence public policy. One result was a weakening of the nation’s defensive and intelligence capabilities.
Inevitably, the more radical Islamic factions also made their presence felt. Suicide bombings occurred with mounting frequency in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. These were followed by anthrax outbreaks in several cities, as well as a nerve gas attack in the New York subway that killed over 700 people. Other atrocities ensued. The end result of this activity was a “white flight” from these urban centers so massive that it was referred to at the time as a “rout.” Businesses and the middle class fled like rats from a doomed ship. The municipal tax bases were eroded, setting the stage for urban decay on a scale never before seen in America.
In the meantime, the Southwest was making a modest comeback, after a fashion. Traffic had been flowing freely back and forth across the Mexican border for some time. The southwestern US and northern Mexico were evolving together into a semi-autonomous region --at least as far as the US was concerned. In 2060, a Congress in large part Hispanic overrode a presidential veto to declare the border officially open, citing “commerce” as a rationale. Previously, Spanish had been declared an official language of the United States.
And so it came to pass that the American Tercentennial of 2076 was celebrated, where celebrated at all, in a lackluster half-hearted fashion. Some wag wryly noted that this in itself was something of a tradition. The Centennial celebration of 1876 had been marred by bitter memories of the Civil War that ended little more than a decade earlier, and the Bicentennial of 1976 had been observed amid the malaise that followed the disastrous Vietnam War and a major political scandal. Even so, the United States of America was, at least in theory, still “one nation indivisible” in 2076. However, the cracks and fissures in the nation were now all too plain to see. One good jolt was all that was needed to shatter the Union into fragments like a piece of cheap crockery.
II.
That jolt was not long in coming. Just a few years later in 2079, Iran celebrated the 100th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution. It was a milestone that heralded dire events. Before the year was over, the worst fears of western intelligence agencies were realized when Iran and its allies launched an all-out attack on their mutually despised foe, Israel.
The state of Israel had been a thorn in the side of the Islamic Middle East for over a century. Iran especially longed to wipe it from the map. Iran was held in check at first by the deterrent effect of America’s military might, and later by the Islamic Federation of Europe. The IFE counseled patience and restraint, bidding Iran to bide its time even as it helped Iran prepare for the day of reckoning. The Islamic world consolidated its power, watching and waiting as America was corroded by internal strife.
Iran’s first attack wave came in the form of carefully coordinated air strikes and non-nuclear missile strikes that took out Israel’s defenses. The tiny nation was pounded by further air strikes that paved the way for a later invasion by ground forces.
American military response was swift. Aircraft carriers rushed to Israel’s rescue. They could not arrive in time to intercept that crippling first wave, but subsequent Iranian air attacks met with fierce resistance. In an effort to take the fight to the enemy, the latest generations of stealth bombers and cruise missiles struck deep within Iran and its allies.
Then, in a lightning move that bespoke much prior anticipation and planning, the Islamic Federation of Europe issued a formal declaration of war against the United States of America. This declaration was so worded that any and all allied of the US were included in this drawing of the battle lines. The battle was quickly joined. Nations around the globe were drawn into the fight as the regional conflict escalated with appalling rapidity into World War III.
Within hours of the IFE war declaration, the eastern seaboard of the United States found itself under aerial bombardment. European forces were able to swiftly reach American soil by striking from Greenland. Even before the creation of the Islamic Federation, Europe had begun to establish military installations in Greenland. The IFE subsequently busied itself for decades completing this task. Throughout that period, many warned that Greenland was becoming a huge dagger aimed at the heart of North America. However, this issue was never adequately addressed.
In the wake of the first attack, the US Air Force scrambled to neutralize Greenland. The Labrador Sea northeast of Newfoundland became the scene of fierce aerial combat as the air forces of the United States and Canada sought to hold the Europeans in check. The second European attack wave targeted Canadian as well as American defensive installations. Greenland also allowed the European Navy to dominate the North Atlantic. Here epic sea battles were waged on a scale not seen since Jutland.
Both on the sea and in the sky, the Europeans were better prepared and more effective. America was essentially fighting blind due to the destruction of its intelligence satellites at the outset of the war. In general, America lagged woefully behind Europe technologically. On one hand, defense budgets had been gutted in favor of social programs and failed social engineering schemes. On the other, distrust of scientists by powerful religious leaders had been influential in retarding technical advances.
The British Navy was quick to come to America’s aid in the North Atlantic. No sooner had it set sail than an invasion force from France swept across the English Channel. Britain was now fighting for survival as never before, not even during the Battle of Britain in the Second World War. Not since 1066 had an invading army overrun British soil, but one did so now. Ferocious bloody combat took place in London and other urban centers and throughout the countryside.
It did not take long for the conflict to spread to a Pacific theater, making it a true world war. Australia declared solidarity with its English-speaking brethren and at once found itself at war with Indonesia. At this point India became a factor. India joined with Pakistan in backing Indonesia. Boasting a formidable arsenal and an enormous population, India stood poised to deliver the coup de grace to Australia and New Zealand. It was forestalled from doing so only by the timely intervention of an even greater giant, China. China vowed severe consequences should India pursue its present course. India backed down, and soon afterwards hostilities in the Pacific gradually began to subside.
In the main theater of operations, the United States was being forced into an increasingly defensive posture. Enemy attacks remained unrelenting, even as America was being crippled from within. Sleeper cells were activated and went into action, striking at military installations and their support facilities, as well as civilian population centers. Most significantly, key areas of infrastructure were targeted for destruction. Highways, bridges, railways, power plants, reservoirs and food supplies were demolished or rendered useless.
Within weeks of the outbreak of hostilities, America was fighting wholly on the defensive. The US Government had retreated to the vast, underground Liberty’s Fortress complex in Virginia. In the meantime, Israel was left to fend for itself. Though it resisted valiantly, it was no match for the combined might of Iran, Iraq, Syria and their allies. After weeks of punishing air strikes, ground forces moved into the beleaguered nation. The invaders dealt death and absorbed casualties with the grim fatalism of their creed. At length, every Israeli man, woman and child found alive was put to the sword. Then all temples and monuments, indeed any structures of any type, were demolished. The conquerors of Israel razed it to the ground and salted the earth.
Subsequently, an IFE invasion fleet was launched to menace America’s east coast. A portion of the fleet was detached to launch an assault on New York City. The battle plan for this attack was designed to maximize civilian casualties. New York was the epicenter of the American Jewish population. At the behest of powerful clerics, the forces of the Islamic Eastern Hemisphere intended to purge Jews from the New World as they had from the Old.
Yet while the eastern United States was ravaged by attacks from within and without, the western states remained virtually untouched. The USA and the IFE traded blows from opposite sides of the Atlantic, but the western US remained protected by the vast Pacific and the absence of a formidable Islamic presence in the Far East.
Even so, there was a reluctance to leave the back door unguarded. Valuable troops and materiel sorely needed to defend the besieged eastern seaboard were left in place out west. This caused anguished and indignant voices to be raised among Easterners. The Hispanic Americans of the West had thus far not been threatened, while Anglos in the East were being decimated. [NOTE: The term “Anglo” as used in this account refers to English-speaking Americans regardless of race.] Never was the cultural divide between East and West more glaringly apparent. Over 80 percent of all Americans spoke some Spanish, but the majority of Hispanics spoke only Spanish. Nevertheless, fluent English was an essential prerequisite for service in the US armed forces. Clear communication was always of paramount importance in any sort of military organization or operation. The technical nature of much 21st Century warfare only served to emphasize this. A century earlier Hispanic Americans had been a backbone of the US military, but now they served in scant proportion to their numbers in the general population. Anglos bore the brunt of the fighting, and their bitter memory of the disparity bore repercussions in the post-war period.
As the American situation grew more desperate, fears arose that the war would spiral out of control and result in some sort of thermonuclear exchange. Fortunately, nuclear weapons were never utilized in World War III. The time of greatest danger from atomic weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) such as chemical and biological agents was actually the early 21st Century. Atomic and hydrogen bombs, though the object of considerable angst, were never deployed during the long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. A nuclear strike by one superpower would bring retaliation in kind, inevitably escalating to global Armageddon. This stalemate was commonly referred to as “Mutually Assured Destruction” (or “MAD”), and actually had a chilling deterrent effect that decreased the likelihood of the USA and USSR sliding into a shooting war.
After the internal collapse of the Soviet empire, the chief threat from WMDs was in their potential use by terrorists. Various rogue agencies espousing Islam aimed to break the will of their ideological foes, rather than seize territory or capital as in traditional warfare. Terrorists operated outside the auspices of any nation, although nation-states could and did support these networks covertly. An invisible menace without borders, terrorist networks were immune from similar retaliation. Thus it was now possible for an American city to go up in an atomic fireball without it sucking the rest of the world into a nuclear conflagration.
Ironically, this danger decreased as radical Islamic factions came to power in more and more nations. Now that these formerly outlaw elements were “on the map” with clearly defined borders and political centers, they could be targeted for a counterstrike. Therefore, when World War III broke out, nuclear weapons were not deployed. As in the previous century, no one wanted to open that can of worms.
Nevertheless, the mere fact that everyone dreaded the specter of nuclear warfare didn’t remove it from the realm of possibility. As America found itself reeling, nuclear options began to be considered. As these murmurs reached the ears of its enemies, a ceasefire and armistice were conveniently proffered by Europe. IFE representatives sensibly pointed out that the original root cause of the war was now moot. Israel was no more, and the Jewish voice in America had been muted. Few were left to champion the cause of Israel. The Islamic powers could afford to be magnanimous. They stood to gain considerable concessions from a chastened America. Even if these concessions fell short of Islam’s ultimate ambitions, the compromise was an acceptable one. There would be other wars and Islam was patient. The guns fell silent and peace talks began.
III.
The Third World War had been short, swift and vicious, like the whirlwind of fangs and claws that ensues when two wildcats fight. The talks that followed dragged on longer than the duration of the war itself. Still, the dust finally settled and a new world order was in place.
The United Kingdom was forced to accept the yoke of Islam. Britons were faced with the choice of conversion or becoming second-class citizens of their own country. Most accepted the latter indignity as an alternative to complete capitulation. Britain became a minor satellite of the Islamic Federation of Europe.
China, on the other hand, emerged from the war with its stature enhanced. It took full advantage of the opportunity to reclaim Taiwan. The United States, having been brought to its knees, was in no position to interfere, and no one else was terribly concerned about the matter. Before long, China also assisted North Korea in its conquest of the South. Ironically, however, it was the capitalist culture of South Korea that was subsequently nurtured by China. China had long viewed the rise of the Islamic world with wariness and growing displeasure. A thriving Pacific Rim was seen as an essential bulwark against the further spread of Islam. Therefore China came to encourage capitalistic enterprise in Korea, Taiwan and Japan, which became a vassal of China.
America emerged from World War III torn and bloodied. Much of the Northeast lay in smoking ruins. The infrastructure was fragmented. Many regions were without water and power. Foodstuffs rotted in warehouses because they could not be transported to starving areas. Much of the nation’s navy had been sunk, and its arsenal had been depleted. Postwar America was weakened and vulnerable.
The armistice that America was obliged to accept included the provision that the citizens of states with heavily Muslim populations be “allowed to” vote to establish an autonomous region in which Islamic law was the highest legal authority, superseding the Supreme Court and even the United States Constitution. Such elections were held in a dozen states in the Med Atlantic and Great Lakes regions. The measure passed in all but a few of these states.
This development did not go unopposed. Trouble first flared up in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Angry citizens there were loath to accept a condition imposed by a popular vote tipped by populous Muslim strongholds like Philadelphia and other cities in the eastern part of the state. The southwestern counties flamed in riot and open rebellion. Rebel leaders issued a manifesto declaring that states opting for Islamic religious rule had for all intents and purposes seceded from the Union; if secession were the order of the day, then they would secede from Pennsylvania. All the counties south of Meadville and west of the Alleghenies soon separated from the rest of Pennsylvania by mutual agreement. The secession movement spread like wildfire as other affected states followed suit. The southern rural regions of states like Ohio and Illinois broke away from the more urbanized areas of the North.
What would become the Islamic States of America included all of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, as well as vast parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. In the meantime, the hardy Southwestern Pennsylvanians joined with the equally stalwart West Virginians in the formation of a semi-autonomous buffer zone insulating the Christian South from the Islamic North. In time this would include all of the Ohio River Valley and environs, and become known as the Border Region.
These momentous developments sent shockwaves through the West as well. The citizens of the Southwestern states overwhelmingly favored leaving the Union and joining Mexico. They made this known both through their elected representatives and by taking to the streets in protest. Mexico itself added its voice to theirs, politely insisting that citizens of those states be allowed to “determine their own destiny.”
Back east, editorial cartoons of a weeping Abraham Lincoln failed to move many. The West had come through the war relatively unscathed, to the resentment of many in the East. America’s loss of the war was blamed on the nation’s lack of cohesion. Critics were quick to point to Southwesterners’ longstanding embrace of Mexican, rather than American culture. If these states left the Union, they would take their representatives in Congress with them; their influence on American policy would vanish.
Within a year the entire states of California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico left the United States to join Mexico. Of the Southwestern states, only Texas split in two as Pennsylvania had. The Big Bend area of West Texas that included El Paso joined Mexico, as did all the regions south of Austin. The rest of the state remained in the Union. Before leaving San Antonio, Anglos there dynamited the Alamo to prevent it from falling into Mexican hands.
Both the secession of the Southwest and the establishment of the Islamic States came to be seen as a blessing in disguise by certain commentators. The Northeastern states lay in ruins and the cost of rebuilding would be staggering. If they left the Union, however, they were no longer America’s problem. Let the Europeans help the Northeast to rebuild, some reasoned; after all, they were the ones who wrecked it in the first place.
These commentators regarded the “downsizing of America” in a positive light. It was thought that America could get back on its feet faster if certain problem areas were no longer parts of it. “Smaller is better” and “leaner and meaner” became popular mottos. Others simply snorted “Good riddance” in regards to the departing states.
Unfortunately, secession did not end there. Within five years the northern New England states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, cut off from the rest of the Union by the Islamic States, were clamoring to leave the Union and join Canada. A weary Federal government caved to their demands. In due course Oregon and Washington, along with the northern panhandle of Idaho and the upper peninsula of Michigan, were joined to Canada. However, Canadian gains of US territory were offset by the loss of Quebec. Secession fever had spread to Canada, and Quebec finally realized its long-sought goal of independence. Quebec had long been the world center of French language and culture, now all but extinct in France.
Canada and Mexico were not the only nations to gain from the break-up of the American Union. Apart from the Southwest, the largest concentration of Spanish-speaking Americans was to be found in southern Florida. These were of mostly Cuban descent. In 2093, all of Florida south of the Panhandle left the US to form a union with Cuba.
Throughout the final decade of the 21st Century, what was left of the United States continued to struggle to haul itself out of the abyss into which it had been plunged. In doing so, the nation redefined itself along the way. Almost half of its former territory had been lost. What remained consisted of the Southeastern states, with the notable exception of Florida, and the still sparsely populated central states such as Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. The political, economic and cultural life of the recovering nation centered in what had been the Old South of two hundred and fifty years earlier.
It became common to refer to the South, and by extension the downsized nation as a whole, as “the New American Confederacy.” The term was spoken with a tone of irony at first. It was frequently observed that this new “Confederacy” had not seceded from the Union --rather, the Union had seceded from it! And unlike the old Confederate States of America, the new Confederacy was not built on the rotten foundation of racism and slavery. Rather, the new nation that was being erected on the ash heap of the old was the work of both black and white --brothers and sisters all, united in Christ.
One thing the New Confederacy did have in common with its predecessor was a lessening of the power held by the central authority of the Federal government, with greater autonomy being retained by individual states and regions. As a result of this trend, certain states became, for all intents and purposes, miniature nations. In Utah, the population was overwhelmingly Mormon and elected to return to their old ways. Polygamy was reinstated with nary an objection from the Federal government. Since such once-unthinkable concessions had been granted to American Muslims, not much of a case could be made for denying the same considerations to the Mormons, who were at least Christians. Alaska also began to function more and more independently of the central government. In the meantime, a whole separate culture was taking form in the Ohio River Valley’s Border Region. Places like Utah, Alaska, and the Border Region were neither wholly in nor wholly out of the Union, or rather the Confederacy, as it increasingly came to be called.
As the map of North America was redrawn, the populations of various areas were uprooted and transplanted to different locations. Asian Americans on the West Coast had been drifting northward for decades. Those of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and other Asian descent formed enclaves in the northernmost regions of California, now part of Mexico; in Oregon and Washington, now part of Canada; in British Columbia and in the southern panhandle of Alaska. Christians in Michigan migrated to the Upper Peninsula, which seceded from the state and the nation to join Canada. The Amish of Eastern Pennsylvania joined those in the sundered western part of the state to occupy the northeastern fringe of the Border Region. In time the Amish came to adopt a more militant stance, becoming the watchmen along the border with the Islamic States of America.
Hawaii loosened its ties to the rest of the country, now without a west coast, as it became a thriving crossroads of the commerce conducted by the nations of the Pacific Rim. In time Hawaii became a protectorate of Japan. More notable, however, were the formal declarations of nationhood on the part of the Islamic States of America and the New American Confederacy.
For twenty years the Muslims in the former northeastern US labored to create an Islamic nation in the Western Hemisphere. For a time they were governed from the various state capitals by local religious leaders who worked with their counterparts in the other states in an informal committee. The actual rebuilding of the war-ravaged areas was accomplished, as predicted, with foreign aid courtesy of the Islamic Federation of Europe. In the meantime, leaders worked to construct a more permanent government and draft a constitution. This constitution was ratified in the fall of 2100. A fully independent Islamic States of America now took its place among the nations of the world. A yearlong celebration concluded on September 11, 2101, when a monument commemorating the martyrs of a century earlier was unveiled in New York at the former site of the World Trade Center.
To the south, in what only the elderly still insisted on calling the United States, there was a growing movement calling for a new constitutional convention. The old fifty-star flag still flew on flagpoles across the land, but to many it seemed a mockery --a symbol of ignominious defeat. A whole generation had now been born and grown up in a fragmented Union. Those a little older, who had been children when war came, remembered the fifty-state Union only dimly. So it came to pass that the constitutional convention was held, that the nation might officially become what it had long been in fact.
In 2105, the New American Confederacy was formally adopted as the name of the reborn nation. Optimists referred to the period of the constitutional convention itself as the “Era of Rebirth.” The terms “reborn” and “born again” were used frequently, since America had been “born again” in Christ. The New Constitution mandated that citizens at least pay token service to some form of Christian faith. This was in some measure a matter of practicality; the few remaining Muslims in the Confederacy were obliged to relocate to the Islamic States. Persons of other faiths, free thinkers and nonconformists found new homes in Alaska and the Border Region. Alaska did not ratify the New Constitution, opting instead to become an independent republic.
The Confederacy flag retained thirteen red and white stripes to acknowledge an esteemed past, but in the blue field all the stars were gone. Instead, the blue field was divided into four quarters by a white cross. This was not the only break with the past. Throughout the tumultuous post-war decades, the Federal government had been conducted from Liberty’s Fortress. An elaborate complex called Liberty’s City was constructed adjacent to it. Liberty’s City was now designated the new nation’s capital.
In Washington DC, the monuments and artifacts of the Old Union were preserved and honored. Yet latter day tourists visiting the former capital often felt as if they had come instead to Cairo, a place of museums housing relics of a long-vanished empire. They felt stained by the dust of antiquity, and came less and less to visit. Washington became a necropolis.
The whole world had changed. It was entering an age of warring faiths. Islam had already established a formidable beachhead in the Western Hemisphere. Islam may have even encompassed the whole globe in time, but here the vision grows hazy. It made little difference to the passing generation of Americans. With the adoption of the New Constitution, with the unfurling of the new flag, the last feathers had fallen from the molting American eagle. The United States of America, as it had been known to history, had ceased to exist.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Guns of the Border Region: Prologue and Chapter One
[The following is the prologue and opening chapter of a new novel I'm working on set in the universe of Twilight's Last Gleaming. It is my intention that the fictional universe and timeline I've created serve as a backdrop for any type of story. For the first one, I've decided to cut loose and go with an action-adventure, pure pulp fiction. Subsequent chapters will appear as I complete them. Copyright 2008 by Charles Hoffman.]
PROLOGUE
In the year 2079, the world was rocked by a war the likes of which it had not seen in well over a century. Nations around the globe were drawn into the conflict, but the main antagonists were the United States of America and the Islamic Federation of Europe. America, already in decline, proved no match for the ascending power of Islamic Europe.
During the war’s decades-long aftermath, the American Union broke apart. The Southwest rejoined Mexico, and southern Florida aligned itself with Cuba. Other states seceded to join Canada or become small independent nations.
The Northeastern and Midwestern states were, by the late 21st Century, home to large populations of American Muslims. Under the terms of America’s surrender treaty, these states were to be permitted to adopt Islamic law as their supreme legal authority, superseding even the United States Constitution. In time these states achieved full independence and formed the Islamic States of America.
Meanwhile, the political, commercial and cultural life of what was left of the United States had slowly become centered in what had been the Old South prior to the American Civil War of 1861-65. This section, and the downsized nation as a whole, came to be commonly referred to as the New American Confederacy. Early in the 22nd Century, a new Constitution was ratified. Among its provisions was the stricture that only Christians could be full-fledged citizens. The name “New American Confederacy” was formally adopted. The Old Union was no more.
Between the Islamic States of America and the New American Confederacy lay the Border Region. This area originally consisted of non-Islamic areas of Islamic-majority states that had broken away. In time, however, it included the entire Ohio River Valley and the whole state of West Virginia. The term “Border Region” referred to a location rather than a political entity. With the exception of West Virginia, government was conducted solely at the city and county level. The Border Region was essentially a patchwork of small fiefdoms, with the major urban centers functioning along the lines of ancient Greek city-states.
The people of the Border Region were united chiefly by an independent spirit and a libertarian philosophy. The societies of both the Islamic States and the New American Confederacy, on the other hand, tended to emphasize conformity. Consequently, the Border Region became home to numerous free thinkers, non-conformists, misfits, rogues, entrepreneurs, outlaws, and adventurers.
CHAPTER ONE -- WILD NIGHT IN WHEELING
The setting sun still reddened the western sky, but already the dives and fleshpots of Wheeling were roaring. Bars, clubs, gambling dens and bawdy houses were all crammed full of rowdy patrons. Located in West Virginia’s northern panhandle, a slim finger thrust between southern Ohio and Westsylvania, Wheeling had by the early 22nd Century become known far and wide as a booming crossroads for the countless travelers, wanderers and wastrels that traversed the Border Region.
Hot nightspots were scattered throughout the city, but the greatest concentration of the wilder venues were to be found across the railroad tracks from the main part of town, where the Ohio River flowed darkly southward before turning west. Here in the old section, winding narrow streets, their asphalt worn away to expose the underlying brick, formed a tangled maze lined by garishly lit taverns, strip clubs, and other establishments offering various forms of raucous entertainment. Rain-slick sidewalks reflected the lurid glare of multi-hued neon blazing forth from the buildings’ colorful facades. Barkers stood near some entrances, loudly hawking the pleasures to be found within in an effort to entice the throngs of passers-by. It was a warm night. Throbbing music and shrill laughter blared from open doorways. Meat grilling in open stalls and on tiny food carts scented the air with its savory aroma.
To this dark carnival-land came the woman called Shadow. She strode boldly down the center of the street, spurs jangling on her heavy boots. Clad in a long black duster, the young woman stood over six feet in her boot heels. The upturned collar of the duster framed a delicate-featured face that yet conveyed a hawkish toughness. Her long straight black hair was parted in the middle to reveal a high contemplative forehead and the keen eyes of an observer. Her thin nose and lips gave her pale features a dour cast.
Shadow had just hit town and was looking for kicks. She had spent the long summer in the western reaches of the Border Region cultivating her gardens. A bumper crop of reefer had left her flush, and now she was headed back up the long trail to her native Westsylvania. There she would tend to other enterprises before settling in for winter. But first she was stopping off in Wheeling, her old stomping grounds, for what she trusted would be a truly memorable party night.
For right now, however, the drinking and carousing could wait. After weeks of subsisting mainly on foodpaste, Shadow’s first order of business was a real meal. To that end, she headed straight for Wotan’s Carving Board.
Wotan’s was a popular eatery that saw a lot of the rough outlaw trade. It resembled nothing so much as an old Viking mead hall. Rows of rude wooden tables and benches filled most of the vast interior. Whole hogs and sides of beef roasted over open flames, sending tendrils of blue smoke curling to the rafters. Elsewhere, steaks and chops were being grilled. It was only early evening, but Wotan’s was already crammed to near capacity with hungry feasters come to gorge and guzzle.
Shadow scanned the crowd as she entered Wotan’s, acknowledging the greetings of fellow patrons who knew her of old. She made her way to a table near one of the fire pits. Because of the heat of both the flames and the many bodies that surrounded her, she removed her duster before taking her seat.
Shadow doffed the garment with a shrug of her supple shoulders, a move that drew appreciative glances. Many of the outlaws and adventurers of the Border Region enjoyed dressing the part. Shadow was no exception. Beneath the duster, much of her superb young body was bared. What little she wore was mostly black. Tight boots came to just below her knees, and studded gauntlets encircled her wrists. Crotch-hugging leather pants clung to her powerful thighs and full womanly ass like a coat of lacquer. Above the waist she wore only a scanty bra of PVC. Her exposed body was white as fresh cream, typical of one bred in the cloudy, darkly wooded hill country of Westsylvania. A tribal design had been tattooed onto her right upper arm, and a small ring piercing her navel adorned her rippled drum-tight abs. Her breasts were splendidly shaped, but not overly large. Shadow was built for action.
The sole spot of color in her apparel was the military utility belt that hung snuggly about her hips. It supported an assortment of olive green pouches and a bowie knife in a worn brown leather scabbard. The knife’s blade was narrower than that of the traditional “iron mistress,” but the clip point design was unmistakable. Jutting hilt first from the woman’s left hip, it could be unsheathed, sword-like, with a quick cross-draw motion. Travelers stopping in Wheeling were required to check their firearms with the local sheriff’s office, but other weapons could be worn openly.
Shadow seated herself and ordered her meal. She and several table mates agreed to split a whole ham. As the waiter departed with their order, Shadow added, “Bring me a pitcher of 33 to wash it down.”
33 was a beer brewed in Latrobe, in the Laurel Highlands of Westsylvania. During the 20th Century, the Latrobe Brewery had produced a pale lager called Rolling Rock. Originally a local brew, it grew in popularity and came to be distributed throughout the Old Union. Early in the 21st Century, a major national brewing company had purchased the Rolling Rock brand name and moved production of the beer to New Jersey. Now, over a hundred years later, New Jersey was part of the Islamic States of America. No alcoholic beverages, including the ersatz Rolling Rock, were produced there any longer. A few years ago, however, a group of enterprising Westsylvanians had refurbished and reopened the old Latrobe Brewery. The beer they made there was brewed identically to the original Rolling Rock. The name of their brew derived from the enigmatic number “33” that had appeared on Rolling Rock bottles.
Shadow had nearly finished her first mug of 33 when the feast arrived steaming on a heavy wooden platter. The ham was actually a whole haunch of half-wild boar, a Wotan’s house specialty. Eschewing the steak knife in front of her, Shadow hacked off hunks of meat with her bowie knife. She then stuck the bowie point first into the wooden table, within easy reach. The boar meat was far more savory than any ham from a factory farm hog; it was the rich dark purple of port wine and flaked apart like good tuna. A whole loaf of fresh bread, still warm from the oven, accompanied the ham. Shadow tore off a big piece and slathered it with butter. Potatoes and a large wedge of tangy yellow cheese completed the repast. Shadow fell to with gusto.
As she ate, Shadow studied the crowd more closely. West Virginians and Westsylvanians predominated, along with others from elsewhere in the Border Region. Many, like Shadow, were of the footloose roving breed. There was also a smattering of Muslims come down from the Islamic States to the north to partake of forbidden earthly delights. Likewise, some goody-good Christians from the New American Confederacy had traveled up from the south to go slumming in the Border Region’s wildest town. That could be a dangerous pastime, but too bad if they didn’t know how to look out for themselves. Shadow also noticed some darker complexions that bespoke origins still further south --Mexico or Cuban Florida.
After eating her fill, Shadow rose to take her leave. She plucked the bowie knife from the table, wiped it clean, and re-sheathed it. Slipping on her duster, Shadow exited Wotan’s. Time for bar-hopping and some serious drinking.
Shadow headed off down the street in her long-legged stride, the long unfastened duster billowing out behind her. At length she came to a cozy little bar she had frequented in times past. The place had no name, just a neon sign hung above the door that said “Bar.” Shadow entered the dimly-lit tavern and traversed a floor strewn with sawdust and peanut shells to seat herself at the bar.
The bartender smiled in recognition and shoved a drink across the bar to her. He had remembered her favorite, Jack Daniel’s with Mountain Dew for mixer. Shadow sipped the drink as she took in her surroundings. Behind an assortment of liquor bottles, a mirror ran the length of the bar. This afforded her a view of the entire place. Whenever she went to a bar, club, or other public place, Shadow always seated herself in a location that gave her the best view of the crowd and the exits. When hanging out in a joint, Shadow wanted to know what was going on in every square foot of it.
There was a television behind the bar. Broadcast and cable TV were things of the past in most of the Border Region, but the bar’s set was hooked up to a deck capable of playing home videos in a variety of formats dating clear back to Betamax. Right now the set was showing an old black-and-white monster movie from the mid-20th Century called The Creature Walks Among Us. A character in the movie remarked that mankind was poised midway between the jungle and the stars. After several more Jack-and-Dews, Shadow was moved to reflect that mankind had backslid quite a bit since the movie had been made.
By now Shadow had caught a good buzz, yet gave no outward sign that she had a few drinks under her belt. She had an uncanny knack for holding her booze. Shadow never got so drunk or high that she couldn’t snap back to stone cold sobriety in an instant should the situation require it. When the movie was over, she left the bar to go in search of one with a pool table.
Before long she found a place called Antonio’s that had several tables, so there was no waiting. After hanging up her duster, she moved to one of the empty ones. A guy who seemed pretty nice asked to play, and a few minutes later they were engaged in a friendly game.
It didn’t take her long to draw a crowd of spectators. Most of the men in the bar, as well as many of the women, were looking her way. Shadow in any kind of action was an incredible sight. Circling about the pool table, planning her next shot, she looked like a panther softly stalking its prey. Bending over to take the shot, she exposed breathtaking flashes of her luscious milk-white cleavage. The overhead light illuminated the supple play of her toned muscles moving smoothly under her skin.
When she finished her game with the nice guy, others were waiting. A big guy with an attitude nudged the nice guy rudely aside. He seemed a little drunk. Shadow was adept at sizing up people at a glance. Taller and heavier than Shadow, he looked to be a former athlete gone to fat. Some ex-jocks had personality problems and could be dangerous. Shadow was willing to humor him, but only up to a point.
Shadow agreed to play him, rather than create a scene. Not playing at her best, she still beat him handily. Other men were eager to shoot pool with Shadow, just for the pleasure of her company. But her present opponent had something to prove, and insisted on playing her again.
“Okay, Mac,” Shadow agreed pleasantly, “You’re on. Care to make it interesting?”
Ego-driven, Mac accepted Shadow’s wager. He was not a bad player, just not as good as he thought he was. Shadow made a show of her superior skill, executing difficult shots, pointing out which balls she intended to sink into which pockets and then doing it. She hoped Mac would get the message that he was outclassed and back off while he was not too far behind.
Unfortunately, Mac was none too bright. To make matters worse, his equally oafish friends were egging him on. Thanks guys, Shadow thought. After losing the bet, he still wasn’t ready to quit. “Aw, c’mon,” Mac pleaded, “Just give me a chance to win back my money.”
“Alright,” Shadow sighed, “You asked for it.”
By now, the full attention of nearly all the bar patrons was focused on the one-sided contest between Mac and Shadow. Two more games, and Shadow had cleaned him out.
Not surprisingly, Mac was a sore loser. The jibes of his buddies and the laughter of the women in the bar did little to sooth his temper. “You bitch,” he spat, “You hustled me.”
Shadow knew well from past experience that it was pointless to try to reason or argue with morons. But for the sake of the bystanders, she made the effort.
“I did not set you up,” she said slowly, careful to speak clearly and use direct simple language, “I did not pretend to be lousy to sucker you in. You could have quit any time. Dig?”
Mac wasn’t buying it. “You owe me money or ass,” he snarled, and made a grab for her. Shadow swatted his hand away. Mac cocked back a clenched fist and swung. Shadow wasn’t about to take chances with a bigger, stronger opponent. Before he could connect, she kicked him in the balls hard enough to lift him off the ground.
It was a front snap kick, perfectly executed. Shadow’s booted foot crashed sickeningly into Mac’s testicles. He flew up and back like a puppet on strings. Mac thudded against the bar, then slid down to the floor. He lay there shivering for a second before disgorging a thick puddle of vomit.
Shadow glowered down at him. Hopefully he would stay down long enough for her to get out of there without further incident. No such luck. Mac’s friends helped him to his feet. Shadow backed away slowly, keeping her eyes on her foe to determine if there was any fight left in him.
There was. Mac stalked forward, his face an inhuman mask of rage. Even through her considerable annoyance, Shadow was impressed by his ability to take a ball shot and recover so quickly. Mac snatched up one of the pool cues from the table. Shadow grabbed the other one. Mac swung his cue like a club, aiming the thick end at Shadow’s head. Shadow gripped her cue with both hands, quarterstaff style, and raised it to block. So powerful was Mac’s blow that it actually snapped Shadow’s cue in half.
Shadow jumped back as Mac’s cue whizzed past her head. She shifted her grip on the broken cue halves and bored back in, wielding the pieces like a pair of fighting sticks. Trained in Filipino kali, Shadow could launch an effective attack with weapons in both hands. Her first blow smashed Mac’s own weapon hand, causing his cue to slip from his numbed fingers. Filipinos called this “defanging the serpent.” Shadow then used her sticks to batter Mac to the floor. This time he stayed there.
“How ‘bout you assholes!” Shadow roared at Mac’s cronies. Dumbstruck, they were quick to shake their heads vigorously back and forth and raise their hands in appeasement gestures. Shadow spat in disgust, cast her broken pool cue away, and left.
#
Shadow went to another bar and grill to chill out. She downed several tequila shots, followed by an ice-cold bottle of beer. She had eaten a heavy meal early in the evening, but the fight had whetted her appetite. Hot dogs were sizzling on a grill behind the bar. The wieners were the kind with the natural casing, the only kind Shadow considered worth eating. Shadow ordered two hot dogs, indicating the ones that had been on the grill the longest. A devotee of the crunchy hot dog, she savored the crispy snap as she bit into her first dog.
As she munched on hot dogs and drank more beer, Shadow contemplated her next move. All the trouble notwithstanding, her win at the pool table had left her feeling that she was on a lucky streak. There was a little casino not far away where card games went on all night. Shadow was in the mood for some poker. Maybe she could win herself a pretty big pot. A malicious little grin formed on her thin lips, exposing sharp white predatory teeth. Why not? After all, she would be playing with Mac’s money.
#
When Shadow reached the Monte Carlo Casino, she headed straight past the slots, roulette and other sucker games to the back rooms where cards were being dealt. It didn’t take her long to find a game. A guy had just folded and hot chicks were always welcome at the card table.
Shadow was dealt in. She spent the first hands taking the measure of the three other players. One was a Southern swell who liked the action but didn’t seem like a serious player. At least he looked like he could afford to lose. Next to him was a non-descript looking guy who appeared to be in his late thirties. Shadow quickly pegged him as a formidable card sharp, but that was okay -- so was she. The last guy was kind of young, with an annoying habit of laughing at remarks that weren‘t particularly funny. He was pretty good, but not in her league.
Shadow felt that she had her work cut out for her. It would take a little time to build some momentum. Snacks and beverages were available. Shadow had some sushi and a bottle of Mad Dog 2020 brought to the table. Then she got busy.
Shadow raised frequently to get more money into the pot. Between her and the non-descript card sharp, they cleaned out the swell in fairly short order. Then they were left to battle it out, with the laughing guy hanging back and studying their moves. Shadow wasn’t afraid to raise the bet even when she held a weak hand; she didn’t want to be observed never to bluff, thereby cautioning her opponents when the good cards did come her way.
Several more hands were played out. Shadow rode out the ebb and flow, keeping even over the long run and then surging ahead. The card sharp realized that he had met his equal, and that Lady Luck had deserted him. He quit the table with a courtly bow that conveyed his respect.
That left the other guy. Shadow wondered if his annoying laughter was done deliberately to unsettle opponents. Not that it mattered; Shadow did not want for steady nerves.
As it turned out, her final opponent played a pretty good game. He won several hands in a row. More through luck than skill, he raked in a pretty big chunk of Shadow’s money. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the sense to quit while he was ahead. Shadow had more than enough money left to keep the game going long enough to recoup her losses. It finally ended when her Ace-high flush of hearts beat his Queen-high flush of diamonds. He finally realized that he had lost all he could afford to and then some.
Shadow stood up, began folding money and stuffing it into the larger pouches of her utility belt. Her defeated opponent sat dumbfounded. Finally he rose unsteadily and glared at her.
“You bitch,” he said sullenly, “You cheated.”
Not again, Shadow thought. She snarled, “Up yours, Laughing Boy! Sorry you lost at cards to a girl. Next time stick to Old Maid.”
She shifted into a fighting stance, waiting for him to try something. He didn’t. Shadow turned and took her leave.
That’s it, Shadow thought as she went into the street. No more gambling! Time to go dancing.
#
The Metropol was the hottest dance club in Wheeling. It was a refurbished industrial facility with new metallic décor designed to complement existing fixtures. The club boasted superior lighting and sound systems. In many rural areas of the Border Region, there was still no electricity decades after the War. The cities and larger towns were usually well supplied, however. There was plenty of juice to power Metropol’s all-night revelry.
Throbbing techno music pulsated over the crowded dance floor. Shadow was in the center of the throng, soaking up the rhythm, letting it move her. She had been tense after sitting so long playing cards. Remaining stationary for any length of time tended to make her restless. She had to get out on the dance floor and move.
When she danced, Shadow typically found herself the center of much male and female attention. That was okay. This was a pretty nice crowd; no assholes so far. Plus, she had spotted some familiar friendly faces. Shadow relaxed and felt the tension seep out of her muscles.
After awhile, she took a break. She was greeted by a blonde punkette named Phoenix, a former acquaintance. Phoenix had some interesting news.
“They’re having an amateur contest tonight at the Go-Go Lounge. You oughta enter it. You were hot out there. You could win first prize.”
“It’s probably too late,” Shadow replied.
“Not if we hurry. Last I heard it was still going full blast.”
Shadow and Phoenix left Metropol and headed straight for the Go-Go Lounge. It was an average sized strip club, a little seedy but not a total dive. They got there just in time. Shadow signed up for the contest, and was scheduled to go on last.
As she got ready backstage, Shadow wondered if she wasn’t cheating a little. She had worked as an exotic dancer in the past, although not in Wheeling. She doubted anyone here was aware of it. It had been awhile ago anyway.
Moments later, Shadow went on stage. She had doffed her boots and black leather pants. She went out clad in her skimpy PVC bra and matching thong panties. The military belt, bowie knife and all, remained fastened tightly about her waist. She was greeted by scattered applause as the spotlight hit her.
The music started, generic hard rock characterized by heavy bass and a pulsing backbeat. Dancing at the Metropol had already warmed her up and she merged easily with the rhythm. Shadow strutted up and down the runway in time to the beat, hips swaying seductively. She smiled down into a sea of lustful male faces, meeting their gazes with her own, dominating them. With a contemptuous toss of her hair, she headed back to center stage. Guys in the audience moaned at the sight of her full, firm buttocks bared by the tiny thong as she walked away from them.
Shadow stepped back onto the main part of the stage as the music’s tempo quickened. Jumping into the air with the grace of a leaping gazelle, she deftly caught the brass stripper pole and hauled herself aloft. Her well-defined arm muscles flexed as she swung herself around the pole, long shapely legs extended. The music slowed once more. Shadow swung her legs up and caught the top of the pole between her tightly crossed ankles. Letting go with her hands, she unbent her body, slowly undulating until she hung suspended upside down, her hair just touching the stage. Shadow’s acrobatics evoked enthusiastic applause.
The song ended and another began, one with more of a sexy disco beat. Shadow pressed her hands against the stage to brace herself as her legs released their grip on the stripper pole. In a single fluid motion she flipped back onto her feet and rose majestically to her full height. Shadow stood poised with her back to the audience. Glancing boldly over her shoulder, she transfixed spectators with a sultry bedroom look. Then, with one of her never-fail moves, she reached behind her back and unfastened her bra. As she tossed it aside, Shadow smiled at the audible intake of breath from guys near the stage. Turning about, she strutted back down the runway bare-breasted, flaunting her body like a proud young animal.
Returning to center stage, Shadow danced, swaying hypnotically, eyes half-shut, lips softly parted. She ran her hands over her supple body, to the delight of all. As one of her hands brushed against her thong, the languorous look on her face was replaced by a strangely beautiful angry one. Unhooking the thong, she yanked it roughly from between her thighs and cast it from her. It was as though concealing her body with even a tiny scrap of clothing had suddenly become intolerable to her. Save for her belt and wrist gauntlets, Shadow was now gloriously nude. She stood poised, hands on hips, for dramatic effect, allowing her audience to drink in the sight of her. A light sheen of sweat coated her entire body, causing it to glisten as though slick with baby oil. The crowd roared its approval.
The music stopped, then started. This was Shadow’s last number. She wanted to make her grand finale a memorable one. She shook back her sweat-dampened hair, then abruptly dropped forward. Catching herself on her hands, she stretched her body horizontally along the length of the runway. In this prone position she did several push-ups that caused the supple muscles of her arms, back, thighs, calves and buttocks to flex and tense. Then she began to glide about on all fours. Meeting the eager gaze of patrons who were now eye-level, she seemed like some young lioness scenting blood.
Crawling back to center stage, Shadow remained on hands and knees, her nude body in profile. She began to rock back and forth in time to the music, pushing her hips and ass back as if meeting the thrusts of an invisible lover. The guys in the crowd ate it up. Shifting her position, she faced them frontally once more. Staying on her knees she reared back on her haunches. With head and shoulders flung back, exposing her white neck, she bounced up and down as though she were riding some lucky bastard. As the music ended, she wilted in a graceful bow suggestive of a post-orgasmic swoon.
Following Shadow’s set, all the dancers came back on stage. The contest winners were determined by audience applause. Shadow took first prize. Adding it to her gambling winnings, she reflected that this had been a very profitable evening.
A little while later, Shadow was at the bar drinking Jagermeister with Phoenix. One of her fans had bought the drinks. He offered her a cigarette.
“Thanks,” she said, accepting one, “I don’t usually, but after that I need one.” She rewarded the guy by permitting him to light it for her.
Shadow was clad once more in her leather pants and boots. Her bra was missing, however, having been snatched by someone as a souvenir. She stood at the bar smoking and drinking, brazenly topless. Leaning back against the bar, unconsciously picturesque, she studied the unruly crowd.
Experience had long since taught Shadow that it was best to spot trouble before it got too close. Case in point: that guy she had beat at poker, Laughing Boy, was in the club and headed her way.
“Hiya babe,” he said when he reached her, “No hard feelings. Can I get you a drink?”
“Already got one,” Shadow replied coolly.
Undaunted, Laughing Boy continued his pick-up routine, “I just got here a little bit ago. I caught the end of your act. You are one hot lady. Listen, I got a room not far from here. We could go back, do some drugs. Have some fun…”
“I don’t think so. I’m only in town for tonight. I want to take in as much action as I can.” Shadow was trying to be nice. Instead of just telling him to eat shit, she was giving him a chance to back off and save face. Unfortunately, Laughing Boy wasn’t taking the hint.
“Well, how `bout if I go with you and help you spend some dough?” His expression turned sour, “After all, it’s my money.”
“Alright,” Shadow groaned, tired of this, “So you’re sore about me shooting you down, and you’re sore about losing money to me. If I were to pay you to fuck me, would that square everything?”
Laughing Boy stood dumbfounded, mouth agape. Shadow could sense his brain trying to work. It was like he was actually trying to figure out if she was serious. Shadow wasted no time clarifying matters.
“That was a joke,” she said harshly, “Now will you please quit bugging me?”
“You lousy whore,” he spat back, raising a clenched fist, “I oughta punch your face in.”
“Don’t try it, Laughing Boy,” Shadow warned as she shifted into her fighting stance, “I’ve already kicked the ass of a tougher man than you tonight.” In addition to Filipino stick and knife fighting, Shadow was well trained in Okinawan kenpo karate, judo and Muay Thai. She had nothing to fear from the likes of Laughing Boy. He was no bigger than she was, and his body language told her that he was not skilled. That meant she could put him down without busting him up too badly. She looked forward to teaching him a lesson.
The clamor in the bar had died down and patrons stepped back to give them room. Bar fights were not an unusual occurrence at the Go-Go Lounge, but seldom had it been the setting for one like this. Shadow faced her opponent looking like some bare-breasted Amazon; a cruel smile played on her thin lips and her nipples were conspicuously erect.
Laughing Boy rushed in aiming a left hook at Shadow’s head. So predictable. She blocked it easily, then stung his face with a couple of quick jabs to loosen him up. When he raised his guard, she snaked an uppercut into his midsection. Her tightly-clenched fist sank into his belly just under the diaphragm, knocking the wind out of him and doubling him over. As he folded, she struck the back of his neck with a well-placed karate chop. Laughing Boy hit the floor.
“You’ll never get to Sea World that way!” Shadow smirked as she stood triumphantly over him. Laughing Boy had friends in the bar. One of them came over to help him to his feet. By the time he could stand erect, he was breathing normally.
Shadow knew better than to take her eyes off her foe, a fact which saved her life. Standing just a few feet away, Laughing Boy abruptly reached into his shirt, drew a derringer, aimed it at the center of Shadow’s face.
Shadow was faster. Even as Laughing Boy’s hand disappeared into his clothes, her bowie was out of its sheath. Cold steel flashed through the air as he took aim. Laughing Boy’s gun hand flew spinning from his wrist in a fountain of blood as Shadow’s razor-sharp blade sliced cleanly through flesh and bone.
Laughing Boy howled like a damned soul in torment as he clutched at the stump of his wrist. A bartender applied a makeshift tourniquet to staunch the jetting blood. Leaning on his friend, Laughing Boy staggered towards the exit.
Looking down, Shadow saw the severed hand twitching on the floor. She speared it through the palm with the point of her bowie. Brandishing it aloft, she called out after the departing Laughing Boy:
“Hey dickhole, you forgot something!”
Shadow flicked the knife with a snappy whipping motion, sending the hand sailing through the air to land at Laughing Boy’s feet. The friend picked it up, and the pair continued on their way. Shadow wiped her blade clean with a cocktail napkin as she watched them go.
Next: The Road to Westsylvania
PROLOGUE
In the year 2079, the world was rocked by a war the likes of which it had not seen in well over a century. Nations around the globe were drawn into the conflict, but the main antagonists were the United States of America and the Islamic Federation of Europe. America, already in decline, proved no match for the ascending power of Islamic Europe.
During the war’s decades-long aftermath, the American Union broke apart. The Southwest rejoined Mexico, and southern Florida aligned itself with Cuba. Other states seceded to join Canada or become small independent nations.
The Northeastern and Midwestern states were, by the late 21st Century, home to large populations of American Muslims. Under the terms of America’s surrender treaty, these states were to be permitted to adopt Islamic law as their supreme legal authority, superseding even the United States Constitution. In time these states achieved full independence and formed the Islamic States of America.
Meanwhile, the political, commercial and cultural life of what was left of the United States had slowly become centered in what had been the Old South prior to the American Civil War of 1861-65. This section, and the downsized nation as a whole, came to be commonly referred to as the New American Confederacy. Early in the 22nd Century, a new Constitution was ratified. Among its provisions was the stricture that only Christians could be full-fledged citizens. The name “New American Confederacy” was formally adopted. The Old Union was no more.
Between the Islamic States of America and the New American Confederacy lay the Border Region. This area originally consisted of non-Islamic areas of Islamic-majority states that had broken away. In time, however, it included the entire Ohio River Valley and the whole state of West Virginia. The term “Border Region” referred to a location rather than a political entity. With the exception of West Virginia, government was conducted solely at the city and county level. The Border Region was essentially a patchwork of small fiefdoms, with the major urban centers functioning along the lines of ancient Greek city-states.
The people of the Border Region were united chiefly by an independent spirit and a libertarian philosophy. The societies of both the Islamic States and the New American Confederacy, on the other hand, tended to emphasize conformity. Consequently, the Border Region became home to numerous free thinkers, non-conformists, misfits, rogues, entrepreneurs, outlaws, and adventurers.
CHAPTER ONE -- WILD NIGHT IN WHEELING
The setting sun still reddened the western sky, but already the dives and fleshpots of Wheeling were roaring. Bars, clubs, gambling dens and bawdy houses were all crammed full of rowdy patrons. Located in West Virginia’s northern panhandle, a slim finger thrust between southern Ohio and Westsylvania, Wheeling had by the early 22nd Century become known far and wide as a booming crossroads for the countless travelers, wanderers and wastrels that traversed the Border Region.
Hot nightspots were scattered throughout the city, but the greatest concentration of the wilder venues were to be found across the railroad tracks from the main part of town, where the Ohio River flowed darkly southward before turning west. Here in the old section, winding narrow streets, their asphalt worn away to expose the underlying brick, formed a tangled maze lined by garishly lit taverns, strip clubs, and other establishments offering various forms of raucous entertainment. Rain-slick sidewalks reflected the lurid glare of multi-hued neon blazing forth from the buildings’ colorful facades. Barkers stood near some entrances, loudly hawking the pleasures to be found within in an effort to entice the throngs of passers-by. It was a warm night. Throbbing music and shrill laughter blared from open doorways. Meat grilling in open stalls and on tiny food carts scented the air with its savory aroma.
To this dark carnival-land came the woman called Shadow. She strode boldly down the center of the street, spurs jangling on her heavy boots. Clad in a long black duster, the young woman stood over six feet in her boot heels. The upturned collar of the duster framed a delicate-featured face that yet conveyed a hawkish toughness. Her long straight black hair was parted in the middle to reveal a high contemplative forehead and the keen eyes of an observer. Her thin nose and lips gave her pale features a dour cast.
Shadow had just hit town and was looking for kicks. She had spent the long summer in the western reaches of the Border Region cultivating her gardens. A bumper crop of reefer had left her flush, and now she was headed back up the long trail to her native Westsylvania. There she would tend to other enterprises before settling in for winter. But first she was stopping off in Wheeling, her old stomping grounds, for what she trusted would be a truly memorable party night.
For right now, however, the drinking and carousing could wait. After weeks of subsisting mainly on foodpaste, Shadow’s first order of business was a real meal. To that end, she headed straight for Wotan’s Carving Board.
Wotan’s was a popular eatery that saw a lot of the rough outlaw trade. It resembled nothing so much as an old Viking mead hall. Rows of rude wooden tables and benches filled most of the vast interior. Whole hogs and sides of beef roasted over open flames, sending tendrils of blue smoke curling to the rafters. Elsewhere, steaks and chops were being grilled. It was only early evening, but Wotan’s was already crammed to near capacity with hungry feasters come to gorge and guzzle.
Shadow scanned the crowd as she entered Wotan’s, acknowledging the greetings of fellow patrons who knew her of old. She made her way to a table near one of the fire pits. Because of the heat of both the flames and the many bodies that surrounded her, she removed her duster before taking her seat.
Shadow doffed the garment with a shrug of her supple shoulders, a move that drew appreciative glances. Many of the outlaws and adventurers of the Border Region enjoyed dressing the part. Shadow was no exception. Beneath the duster, much of her superb young body was bared. What little she wore was mostly black. Tight boots came to just below her knees, and studded gauntlets encircled her wrists. Crotch-hugging leather pants clung to her powerful thighs and full womanly ass like a coat of lacquer. Above the waist she wore only a scanty bra of PVC. Her exposed body was white as fresh cream, typical of one bred in the cloudy, darkly wooded hill country of Westsylvania. A tribal design had been tattooed onto her right upper arm, and a small ring piercing her navel adorned her rippled drum-tight abs. Her breasts were splendidly shaped, but not overly large. Shadow was built for action.
The sole spot of color in her apparel was the military utility belt that hung snuggly about her hips. It supported an assortment of olive green pouches and a bowie knife in a worn brown leather scabbard. The knife’s blade was narrower than that of the traditional “iron mistress,” but the clip point design was unmistakable. Jutting hilt first from the woman’s left hip, it could be unsheathed, sword-like, with a quick cross-draw motion. Travelers stopping in Wheeling were required to check their firearms with the local sheriff’s office, but other weapons could be worn openly.
Shadow seated herself and ordered her meal. She and several table mates agreed to split a whole ham. As the waiter departed with their order, Shadow added, “Bring me a pitcher of 33 to wash it down.”
33 was a beer brewed in Latrobe, in the Laurel Highlands of Westsylvania. During the 20th Century, the Latrobe Brewery had produced a pale lager called Rolling Rock. Originally a local brew, it grew in popularity and came to be distributed throughout the Old Union. Early in the 21st Century, a major national brewing company had purchased the Rolling Rock brand name and moved production of the beer to New Jersey. Now, over a hundred years later, New Jersey was part of the Islamic States of America. No alcoholic beverages, including the ersatz Rolling Rock, were produced there any longer. A few years ago, however, a group of enterprising Westsylvanians had refurbished and reopened the old Latrobe Brewery. The beer they made there was brewed identically to the original Rolling Rock. The name of their brew derived from the enigmatic number “33” that had appeared on Rolling Rock bottles.
Shadow had nearly finished her first mug of 33 when the feast arrived steaming on a heavy wooden platter. The ham was actually a whole haunch of half-wild boar, a Wotan’s house specialty. Eschewing the steak knife in front of her, Shadow hacked off hunks of meat with her bowie knife. She then stuck the bowie point first into the wooden table, within easy reach. The boar meat was far more savory than any ham from a factory farm hog; it was the rich dark purple of port wine and flaked apart like good tuna. A whole loaf of fresh bread, still warm from the oven, accompanied the ham. Shadow tore off a big piece and slathered it with butter. Potatoes and a large wedge of tangy yellow cheese completed the repast. Shadow fell to with gusto.
As she ate, Shadow studied the crowd more closely. West Virginians and Westsylvanians predominated, along with others from elsewhere in the Border Region. Many, like Shadow, were of the footloose roving breed. There was also a smattering of Muslims come down from the Islamic States to the north to partake of forbidden earthly delights. Likewise, some goody-good Christians from the New American Confederacy had traveled up from the south to go slumming in the Border Region’s wildest town. That could be a dangerous pastime, but too bad if they didn’t know how to look out for themselves. Shadow also noticed some darker complexions that bespoke origins still further south --Mexico or Cuban Florida.
After eating her fill, Shadow rose to take her leave. She plucked the bowie knife from the table, wiped it clean, and re-sheathed it. Slipping on her duster, Shadow exited Wotan’s. Time for bar-hopping and some serious drinking.
Shadow headed off down the street in her long-legged stride, the long unfastened duster billowing out behind her. At length she came to a cozy little bar she had frequented in times past. The place had no name, just a neon sign hung above the door that said “Bar.” Shadow entered the dimly-lit tavern and traversed a floor strewn with sawdust and peanut shells to seat herself at the bar.
The bartender smiled in recognition and shoved a drink across the bar to her. He had remembered her favorite, Jack Daniel’s with Mountain Dew for mixer. Shadow sipped the drink as she took in her surroundings. Behind an assortment of liquor bottles, a mirror ran the length of the bar. This afforded her a view of the entire place. Whenever she went to a bar, club, or other public place, Shadow always seated herself in a location that gave her the best view of the crowd and the exits. When hanging out in a joint, Shadow wanted to know what was going on in every square foot of it.
There was a television behind the bar. Broadcast and cable TV were things of the past in most of the Border Region, but the bar’s set was hooked up to a deck capable of playing home videos in a variety of formats dating clear back to Betamax. Right now the set was showing an old black-and-white monster movie from the mid-20th Century called The Creature Walks Among Us. A character in the movie remarked that mankind was poised midway between the jungle and the stars. After several more Jack-and-Dews, Shadow was moved to reflect that mankind had backslid quite a bit since the movie had been made.
By now Shadow had caught a good buzz, yet gave no outward sign that she had a few drinks under her belt. She had an uncanny knack for holding her booze. Shadow never got so drunk or high that she couldn’t snap back to stone cold sobriety in an instant should the situation require it. When the movie was over, she left the bar to go in search of one with a pool table.
Before long she found a place called Antonio’s that had several tables, so there was no waiting. After hanging up her duster, she moved to one of the empty ones. A guy who seemed pretty nice asked to play, and a few minutes later they were engaged in a friendly game.
It didn’t take her long to draw a crowd of spectators. Most of the men in the bar, as well as many of the women, were looking her way. Shadow in any kind of action was an incredible sight. Circling about the pool table, planning her next shot, she looked like a panther softly stalking its prey. Bending over to take the shot, she exposed breathtaking flashes of her luscious milk-white cleavage. The overhead light illuminated the supple play of her toned muscles moving smoothly under her skin.
When she finished her game with the nice guy, others were waiting. A big guy with an attitude nudged the nice guy rudely aside. He seemed a little drunk. Shadow was adept at sizing up people at a glance. Taller and heavier than Shadow, he looked to be a former athlete gone to fat. Some ex-jocks had personality problems and could be dangerous. Shadow was willing to humor him, but only up to a point.
Shadow agreed to play him, rather than create a scene. Not playing at her best, she still beat him handily. Other men were eager to shoot pool with Shadow, just for the pleasure of her company. But her present opponent had something to prove, and insisted on playing her again.
“Okay, Mac,” Shadow agreed pleasantly, “You’re on. Care to make it interesting?”
Ego-driven, Mac accepted Shadow’s wager. He was not a bad player, just not as good as he thought he was. Shadow made a show of her superior skill, executing difficult shots, pointing out which balls she intended to sink into which pockets and then doing it. She hoped Mac would get the message that he was outclassed and back off while he was not too far behind.
Unfortunately, Mac was none too bright. To make matters worse, his equally oafish friends were egging him on. Thanks guys, Shadow thought. After losing the bet, he still wasn’t ready to quit. “Aw, c’mon,” Mac pleaded, “Just give me a chance to win back my money.”
“Alright,” Shadow sighed, “You asked for it.”
By now, the full attention of nearly all the bar patrons was focused on the one-sided contest between Mac and Shadow. Two more games, and Shadow had cleaned him out.
Not surprisingly, Mac was a sore loser. The jibes of his buddies and the laughter of the women in the bar did little to sooth his temper. “You bitch,” he spat, “You hustled me.”
Shadow knew well from past experience that it was pointless to try to reason or argue with morons. But for the sake of the bystanders, she made the effort.
“I did not set you up,” she said slowly, careful to speak clearly and use direct simple language, “I did not pretend to be lousy to sucker you in. You could have quit any time. Dig?”
Mac wasn’t buying it. “You owe me money or ass,” he snarled, and made a grab for her. Shadow swatted his hand away. Mac cocked back a clenched fist and swung. Shadow wasn’t about to take chances with a bigger, stronger opponent. Before he could connect, she kicked him in the balls hard enough to lift him off the ground.
It was a front snap kick, perfectly executed. Shadow’s booted foot crashed sickeningly into Mac’s testicles. He flew up and back like a puppet on strings. Mac thudded against the bar, then slid down to the floor. He lay there shivering for a second before disgorging a thick puddle of vomit.
Shadow glowered down at him. Hopefully he would stay down long enough for her to get out of there without further incident. No such luck. Mac’s friends helped him to his feet. Shadow backed away slowly, keeping her eyes on her foe to determine if there was any fight left in him.
There was. Mac stalked forward, his face an inhuman mask of rage. Even through her considerable annoyance, Shadow was impressed by his ability to take a ball shot and recover so quickly. Mac snatched up one of the pool cues from the table. Shadow grabbed the other one. Mac swung his cue like a club, aiming the thick end at Shadow’s head. Shadow gripped her cue with both hands, quarterstaff style, and raised it to block. So powerful was Mac’s blow that it actually snapped Shadow’s cue in half.
Shadow jumped back as Mac’s cue whizzed past her head. She shifted her grip on the broken cue halves and bored back in, wielding the pieces like a pair of fighting sticks. Trained in Filipino kali, Shadow could launch an effective attack with weapons in both hands. Her first blow smashed Mac’s own weapon hand, causing his cue to slip from his numbed fingers. Filipinos called this “defanging the serpent.” Shadow then used her sticks to batter Mac to the floor. This time he stayed there.
“How ‘bout you assholes!” Shadow roared at Mac’s cronies. Dumbstruck, they were quick to shake their heads vigorously back and forth and raise their hands in appeasement gestures. Shadow spat in disgust, cast her broken pool cue away, and left.
#
Shadow went to another bar and grill to chill out. She downed several tequila shots, followed by an ice-cold bottle of beer. She had eaten a heavy meal early in the evening, but the fight had whetted her appetite. Hot dogs were sizzling on a grill behind the bar. The wieners were the kind with the natural casing, the only kind Shadow considered worth eating. Shadow ordered two hot dogs, indicating the ones that had been on the grill the longest. A devotee of the crunchy hot dog, she savored the crispy snap as she bit into her first dog.
As she munched on hot dogs and drank more beer, Shadow contemplated her next move. All the trouble notwithstanding, her win at the pool table had left her feeling that she was on a lucky streak. There was a little casino not far away where card games went on all night. Shadow was in the mood for some poker. Maybe she could win herself a pretty big pot. A malicious little grin formed on her thin lips, exposing sharp white predatory teeth. Why not? After all, she would be playing with Mac’s money.
#
When Shadow reached the Monte Carlo Casino, she headed straight past the slots, roulette and other sucker games to the back rooms where cards were being dealt. It didn’t take her long to find a game. A guy had just folded and hot chicks were always welcome at the card table.
Shadow was dealt in. She spent the first hands taking the measure of the three other players. One was a Southern swell who liked the action but didn’t seem like a serious player. At least he looked like he could afford to lose. Next to him was a non-descript looking guy who appeared to be in his late thirties. Shadow quickly pegged him as a formidable card sharp, but that was okay -- so was she. The last guy was kind of young, with an annoying habit of laughing at remarks that weren‘t particularly funny. He was pretty good, but not in her league.
Shadow felt that she had her work cut out for her. It would take a little time to build some momentum. Snacks and beverages were available. Shadow had some sushi and a bottle of Mad Dog 2020 brought to the table. Then she got busy.
Shadow raised frequently to get more money into the pot. Between her and the non-descript card sharp, they cleaned out the swell in fairly short order. Then they were left to battle it out, with the laughing guy hanging back and studying their moves. Shadow wasn’t afraid to raise the bet even when she held a weak hand; she didn’t want to be observed never to bluff, thereby cautioning her opponents when the good cards did come her way.
Several more hands were played out. Shadow rode out the ebb and flow, keeping even over the long run and then surging ahead. The card sharp realized that he had met his equal, and that Lady Luck had deserted him. He quit the table with a courtly bow that conveyed his respect.
That left the other guy. Shadow wondered if his annoying laughter was done deliberately to unsettle opponents. Not that it mattered; Shadow did not want for steady nerves.
As it turned out, her final opponent played a pretty good game. He won several hands in a row. More through luck than skill, he raked in a pretty big chunk of Shadow’s money. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the sense to quit while he was ahead. Shadow had more than enough money left to keep the game going long enough to recoup her losses. It finally ended when her Ace-high flush of hearts beat his Queen-high flush of diamonds. He finally realized that he had lost all he could afford to and then some.
Shadow stood up, began folding money and stuffing it into the larger pouches of her utility belt. Her defeated opponent sat dumbfounded. Finally he rose unsteadily and glared at her.
“You bitch,” he said sullenly, “You cheated.”
Not again, Shadow thought. She snarled, “Up yours, Laughing Boy! Sorry you lost at cards to a girl. Next time stick to Old Maid.”
She shifted into a fighting stance, waiting for him to try something. He didn’t. Shadow turned and took her leave.
That’s it, Shadow thought as she went into the street. No more gambling! Time to go dancing.
#
The Metropol was the hottest dance club in Wheeling. It was a refurbished industrial facility with new metallic décor designed to complement existing fixtures. The club boasted superior lighting and sound systems. In many rural areas of the Border Region, there was still no electricity decades after the War. The cities and larger towns were usually well supplied, however. There was plenty of juice to power Metropol’s all-night revelry.
Throbbing techno music pulsated over the crowded dance floor. Shadow was in the center of the throng, soaking up the rhythm, letting it move her. She had been tense after sitting so long playing cards. Remaining stationary for any length of time tended to make her restless. She had to get out on the dance floor and move.
When she danced, Shadow typically found herself the center of much male and female attention. That was okay. This was a pretty nice crowd; no assholes so far. Plus, she had spotted some familiar friendly faces. Shadow relaxed and felt the tension seep out of her muscles.
After awhile, she took a break. She was greeted by a blonde punkette named Phoenix, a former acquaintance. Phoenix had some interesting news.
“They’re having an amateur contest tonight at the Go-Go Lounge. You oughta enter it. You were hot out there. You could win first prize.”
“It’s probably too late,” Shadow replied.
“Not if we hurry. Last I heard it was still going full blast.”
Shadow and Phoenix left Metropol and headed straight for the Go-Go Lounge. It was an average sized strip club, a little seedy but not a total dive. They got there just in time. Shadow signed up for the contest, and was scheduled to go on last.
As she got ready backstage, Shadow wondered if she wasn’t cheating a little. She had worked as an exotic dancer in the past, although not in Wheeling. She doubted anyone here was aware of it. It had been awhile ago anyway.
Moments later, Shadow went on stage. She had doffed her boots and black leather pants. She went out clad in her skimpy PVC bra and matching thong panties. The military belt, bowie knife and all, remained fastened tightly about her waist. She was greeted by scattered applause as the spotlight hit her.
The music started, generic hard rock characterized by heavy bass and a pulsing backbeat. Dancing at the Metropol had already warmed her up and she merged easily with the rhythm. Shadow strutted up and down the runway in time to the beat, hips swaying seductively. She smiled down into a sea of lustful male faces, meeting their gazes with her own, dominating them. With a contemptuous toss of her hair, she headed back to center stage. Guys in the audience moaned at the sight of her full, firm buttocks bared by the tiny thong as she walked away from them.
Shadow stepped back onto the main part of the stage as the music’s tempo quickened. Jumping into the air with the grace of a leaping gazelle, she deftly caught the brass stripper pole and hauled herself aloft. Her well-defined arm muscles flexed as she swung herself around the pole, long shapely legs extended. The music slowed once more. Shadow swung her legs up and caught the top of the pole between her tightly crossed ankles. Letting go with her hands, she unbent her body, slowly undulating until she hung suspended upside down, her hair just touching the stage. Shadow’s acrobatics evoked enthusiastic applause.
The song ended and another began, one with more of a sexy disco beat. Shadow pressed her hands against the stage to brace herself as her legs released their grip on the stripper pole. In a single fluid motion she flipped back onto her feet and rose majestically to her full height. Shadow stood poised with her back to the audience. Glancing boldly over her shoulder, she transfixed spectators with a sultry bedroom look. Then, with one of her never-fail moves, she reached behind her back and unfastened her bra. As she tossed it aside, Shadow smiled at the audible intake of breath from guys near the stage. Turning about, she strutted back down the runway bare-breasted, flaunting her body like a proud young animal.
Returning to center stage, Shadow danced, swaying hypnotically, eyes half-shut, lips softly parted. She ran her hands over her supple body, to the delight of all. As one of her hands brushed against her thong, the languorous look on her face was replaced by a strangely beautiful angry one. Unhooking the thong, she yanked it roughly from between her thighs and cast it from her. It was as though concealing her body with even a tiny scrap of clothing had suddenly become intolerable to her. Save for her belt and wrist gauntlets, Shadow was now gloriously nude. She stood poised, hands on hips, for dramatic effect, allowing her audience to drink in the sight of her. A light sheen of sweat coated her entire body, causing it to glisten as though slick with baby oil. The crowd roared its approval.
The music stopped, then started. This was Shadow’s last number. She wanted to make her grand finale a memorable one. She shook back her sweat-dampened hair, then abruptly dropped forward. Catching herself on her hands, she stretched her body horizontally along the length of the runway. In this prone position she did several push-ups that caused the supple muscles of her arms, back, thighs, calves and buttocks to flex and tense. Then she began to glide about on all fours. Meeting the eager gaze of patrons who were now eye-level, she seemed like some young lioness scenting blood.
Crawling back to center stage, Shadow remained on hands and knees, her nude body in profile. She began to rock back and forth in time to the music, pushing her hips and ass back as if meeting the thrusts of an invisible lover. The guys in the crowd ate it up. Shifting her position, she faced them frontally once more. Staying on her knees she reared back on her haunches. With head and shoulders flung back, exposing her white neck, she bounced up and down as though she were riding some lucky bastard. As the music ended, she wilted in a graceful bow suggestive of a post-orgasmic swoon.
Following Shadow’s set, all the dancers came back on stage. The contest winners were determined by audience applause. Shadow took first prize. Adding it to her gambling winnings, she reflected that this had been a very profitable evening.
A little while later, Shadow was at the bar drinking Jagermeister with Phoenix. One of her fans had bought the drinks. He offered her a cigarette.
“Thanks,” she said, accepting one, “I don’t usually, but after that I need one.” She rewarded the guy by permitting him to light it for her.
Shadow was clad once more in her leather pants and boots. Her bra was missing, however, having been snatched by someone as a souvenir. She stood at the bar smoking and drinking, brazenly topless. Leaning back against the bar, unconsciously picturesque, she studied the unruly crowd.
Experience had long since taught Shadow that it was best to spot trouble before it got too close. Case in point: that guy she had beat at poker, Laughing Boy, was in the club and headed her way.
“Hiya babe,” he said when he reached her, “No hard feelings. Can I get you a drink?”
“Already got one,” Shadow replied coolly.
Undaunted, Laughing Boy continued his pick-up routine, “I just got here a little bit ago. I caught the end of your act. You are one hot lady. Listen, I got a room not far from here. We could go back, do some drugs. Have some fun…”
“I don’t think so. I’m only in town for tonight. I want to take in as much action as I can.” Shadow was trying to be nice. Instead of just telling him to eat shit, she was giving him a chance to back off and save face. Unfortunately, Laughing Boy wasn’t taking the hint.
“Well, how `bout if I go with you and help you spend some dough?” His expression turned sour, “After all, it’s my money.”
“Alright,” Shadow groaned, tired of this, “So you’re sore about me shooting you down, and you’re sore about losing money to me. If I were to pay you to fuck me, would that square everything?”
Laughing Boy stood dumbfounded, mouth agape. Shadow could sense his brain trying to work. It was like he was actually trying to figure out if she was serious. Shadow wasted no time clarifying matters.
“That was a joke,” she said harshly, “Now will you please quit bugging me?”
“You lousy whore,” he spat back, raising a clenched fist, “I oughta punch your face in.”
“Don’t try it, Laughing Boy,” Shadow warned as she shifted into her fighting stance, “I’ve already kicked the ass of a tougher man than you tonight.” In addition to Filipino stick and knife fighting, Shadow was well trained in Okinawan kenpo karate, judo and Muay Thai. She had nothing to fear from the likes of Laughing Boy. He was no bigger than she was, and his body language told her that he was not skilled. That meant she could put him down without busting him up too badly. She looked forward to teaching him a lesson.
The clamor in the bar had died down and patrons stepped back to give them room. Bar fights were not an unusual occurrence at the Go-Go Lounge, but seldom had it been the setting for one like this. Shadow faced her opponent looking like some bare-breasted Amazon; a cruel smile played on her thin lips and her nipples were conspicuously erect.
Laughing Boy rushed in aiming a left hook at Shadow’s head. So predictable. She blocked it easily, then stung his face with a couple of quick jabs to loosen him up. When he raised his guard, she snaked an uppercut into his midsection. Her tightly-clenched fist sank into his belly just under the diaphragm, knocking the wind out of him and doubling him over. As he folded, she struck the back of his neck with a well-placed karate chop. Laughing Boy hit the floor.
“You’ll never get to Sea World that way!” Shadow smirked as she stood triumphantly over him. Laughing Boy had friends in the bar. One of them came over to help him to his feet. By the time he could stand erect, he was breathing normally.
Shadow knew better than to take her eyes off her foe, a fact which saved her life. Standing just a few feet away, Laughing Boy abruptly reached into his shirt, drew a derringer, aimed it at the center of Shadow’s face.
Shadow was faster. Even as Laughing Boy’s hand disappeared into his clothes, her bowie was out of its sheath. Cold steel flashed through the air as he took aim. Laughing Boy’s gun hand flew spinning from his wrist in a fountain of blood as Shadow’s razor-sharp blade sliced cleanly through flesh and bone.
Laughing Boy howled like a damned soul in torment as he clutched at the stump of his wrist. A bartender applied a makeshift tourniquet to staunch the jetting blood. Leaning on his friend, Laughing Boy staggered towards the exit.
Looking down, Shadow saw the severed hand twitching on the floor. She speared it through the palm with the point of her bowie. Brandishing it aloft, she called out after the departing Laughing Boy:
“Hey dickhole, you forgot something!”
Shadow flicked the knife with a snappy whipping motion, sending the hand sailing through the air to land at Laughing Boy’s feet. The friend picked it up, and the pair continued on their way. Shadow wiped her blade clean with a cocktail napkin as she watched them go.
Next: The Road to Westsylvania
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Sample Chapter: Part Three, Twilight's Last Gleaming
[This chapter is from the final section of the book, Part Three: Twilight's Last Gleaming. The last third of the book concerns the balkanization of America during the decades following World War III. The chapter is preceeded by 6. The Pennsylvania Uprising and its Long-Term Consequences, and followed by 8. The Downsizing of America. Copyright 2008 by Charles Hoffman.]
7. The Southwest Rejoins Mexico
The Special Election and the Pennsylvania Uprising created enormous migrane headaches for the beleaguered Moulton administration. The mutiny of the Pennsylvania National Guard, which should have been foreseen as a contingency, sent shockwaves through the Federal Government. Clearly, any attempt to use the nation's armed forces to quell the uprising could have well resulted in a military coup de tat. It was a chilling, sobering realization. President Moulton touted his own wisdom in moving the Federal Government more-or-less permanently to Liberty's Fortress. For this, the President was pilloried in the press with charges of physical and moral cowardice.
The nation now found itself facing fundamental questions concerning its very identity. Could the Islamic states truly be considered some sort of "country within a country"? Or had they for all intents and purposes seceded from the Union as The Westsylvania Manifesto had maintained? Should the sundered portions of Islamic states, such as Westsylvania, be considered new states?
As these questions and their ramifications were being testily debated in the halls of government, in the media, and in private homes, a smattering of voices chimed in to call attention to a peripheral question; how many stars rightfully belonged on the American flag? Should stars representing Massachusetts, New York, and the other wholly Islamic states be subtracted? Should new stars be added to represent Westsylvania, Southern Ohio, and so on, or did these balance the loss of eastern Pennsylvania, etc., to a region within the country now ruled by Islamic law? This "flag controversy" for the most part elicited exasperated groans from a population long since grown jaded and cynical. There were, however, certain sentimentalists who persisted in making esoteric arguments concerning the flag's symbolic importance. Yet for the most part there was no great inclination to alter the fifty-star flag that had flown over the nation for well over a century. Syndicated columnist Donald McGrath suggested leaving the flag as-is, regardless of future developments, since it had stood for so long and represented the American nation at its zenith --a zenith, he did not add or need to add, that had passed. In this manner the issue was not so much settled as allowed to drop.
Given subsequent events, many breathed a sigh of relief that the flag issue had been put aside. The precise status of the states in the Northeast did not remain of paramount concern for very long. The dust from the Special Election and the Pennsylvania Uprising had barely settled when the nation's attention was drawn to the Southwest. In the wake of the momentous events of World War III and its aftermath, citizens there sensed a sea change in the nation's character. For decades, the Spanish-speaking majority had overwhelmingly favored leaving the Union to join Mexico. They now clamored to do so.
Sensing that the moment was at hand, the people there took to the streets in massive demonstrations that drew worldwide attention. Their local elected representatives could not have gone against this tide even if they had wanted to. The Congressional Chambers of Liberty's Fortress echoed with angry voices in English and Spanish throughout the rest of 2082 and into the following year. Mexico itself entered the debate, politely insisting that Southwesterners be allowed to "determine their own destiny."
To political realists, the secession of the Southwest appeared as inevitable as death. After all, if the State Senate and Assembly of California, for example, elected to quit the Union, what could the Federal Government do about it? A new Civil War waged with 21st Century weapons was unthinkable. Moreover, the Eastern US was still bleeding from the last war. And if formidable Mexico entered the fray on the side of the Southwest, as was almost a given, the US would be at a distinct disadvantage. Indeed, there were some in Mexico City who positively relished the prospect of a second war with the United States, justifiably certain that the rematch would have a decidedly different outcome.
Southwestern secession became the major issue of the 2084 presidential election. President Moulton had decided not to seek reelection, leaving the race wide open. Coveting the electoral votes of populous Southwestern states like California and Texas, candidates for both parties ran on pro-secession platforms. The focus of the debate gradually shifted to the manner in which the Southwest should leave the Union --"if and when the time came," politicians hastened to add in an effort to mollify secession opponents. It was of utmost importance, these politicians declared, that the Southwest and the rest of the Union "part as friends."
There was a good deal of backroom wheeling and dealing that went on between Eastern politicians and the Southwestern governors. California was fully prepared to walk right out of the Union as South Carolina had done in December 1860, triggering a chain reaction of subsequent secessions. The candidates and their minions endeavored to persuade the governors and other important officials to postpone any such move until after the election. In this effort, the candidates were motivated by both personal ambition and the nation's welfare. On the one hand, they were keenly interested in the electoral votes up for grabs if the Southwestern states remained in the Union through the present election cycle. Yet there was also a sincere desire to see the United States spared further humiliation. If the Southwestern states were to just up and leave the Union while the Federal Government could only stand impotently by, it would entail an immeasurable loss of face for a nation that had been humbled repeatedly in recent years. High government officials in the current administration, along with those seeking to succeed it, wished to avoid this at all costs.
To that end, it was deemed advisable to construct some sort of quasi-legal procedure for the secession of the Southwest, destined to come about in any event, so as to preserve the appearance of due process. In order to implement this plan, officials sought the aid of California's charismatic governor, Ramon Vargas (later president of Mexico). Governor Vargas was arguably the most powerful and influential political figure in all of Mexamerica. Other governors and elected officials of the region tended to follow his lead. The front-running candidates, as well as the President himself, travelled to California to meet with Governor Vargas in a series of long, confidential discussions that took place behind closed doors. Following the primaries and national conventions, each nominee, unknown to his opponent, made the same secret pact with the Governor: If the Governor forestalled California's secession until after the general election, the machinery to bring about an amicable parting of the Southwest from the rest of the Union would be put in motion in 2085.
The winner of the election, Rep. Ian McElroy of North Dakota, made good on his word. During his first month in office, he addressed the nation concerning the matter of Southwestern secession. Belaboring the obvious, the new president emphasized how the nation had changed over the past century in regard to the wholly seperate and distinct culture that had evolved in the Southwest. The people in the region had spoken in a loud, clear voice, the President said, and it was time to decide the matter by putting it to a popular vote in the affected states. This motion was widely derided as a face-saving charade. Southwestern secession had been hovering on the horizon like a menacing storm cloud for years, if not decades. Still, the nation cringed at the prospect of another "special election."
Pressed for an answer at a subsequent news conference, President McElroy was obliged to admit that the Special Election that had established Islamic law in much of the Northeast had indeed furnished the framework for the new election about to go forth. The President took considerable flak for this forthright admission, owing to the fact that the original Special Election had been mandated by what amounted to a surrender treaty to a victorious foreign power.
"Special Election Dos," as it came to be called, was held on May 1, just days before the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo. In Arizona and New Mexico, over 90% of the electorate voted "yes" on secession. In Nevada and California, the measure passed with a slightly smaller percentage. Northern California was still home to many Anglos, among them the moneyed aristocracy that congregated in the San Francisco area. The majority of these expressed a haughty indifference concerning which flag flew at government offices.
Secession also passed in Texas, albeit by a slimmer margin. Only in Texas was there any public outcry reminiscent of the Pennsylvania Uprising. A movement to divide the state along ethnic line had begun even before the votes had been tabulated. Among the most prominent activists were two elderly sisters from Austin, Annabel Lee Scott and Veronica Kuykendall. Both had been active in local municipal politics for decades, and were highly esteemed matriarchs in the community. The were instrumental in coordinating protest activities in northern and eastern Texas.
State officials in Texas were quick to hearken to angry Anglo voices, making a timely effort to avoid turmoil, rioting, and bloodshed. In due course, Texas became the only Southwestern state to split in two as Pennsylvania had. The Big Bend area of West Texas that included El Paso joined Mexico, as did all the counties south of Austin. The partitioning of Texas was marred by only a few acts of violence, but one of these was notable for its dramatic impact. Before leaving San Antonio, Anglos there dynamited the Alamo to prevent it from falling into Mexican hands.
By mid-summer, the former American Southwest had been officially joined to Mexico. One of the first acts of the Mexican government in the new era was to secure Mexico's new northern border so as to prevent unauthorized entry from what was left of the United States.
7. The Southwest Rejoins Mexico
The Special Election and the Pennsylvania Uprising created enormous migrane headaches for the beleaguered Moulton administration. The mutiny of the Pennsylvania National Guard, which should have been foreseen as a contingency, sent shockwaves through the Federal Government. Clearly, any attempt to use the nation's armed forces to quell the uprising could have well resulted in a military coup de tat. It was a chilling, sobering realization. President Moulton touted his own wisdom in moving the Federal Government more-or-less permanently to Liberty's Fortress. For this, the President was pilloried in the press with charges of physical and moral cowardice.
The nation now found itself facing fundamental questions concerning its very identity. Could the Islamic states truly be considered some sort of "country within a country"? Or had they for all intents and purposes seceded from the Union as The Westsylvania Manifesto had maintained? Should the sundered portions of Islamic states, such as Westsylvania, be considered new states?
As these questions and their ramifications were being testily debated in the halls of government, in the media, and in private homes, a smattering of voices chimed in to call attention to a peripheral question; how many stars rightfully belonged on the American flag? Should stars representing Massachusetts, New York, and the other wholly Islamic states be subtracted? Should new stars be added to represent Westsylvania, Southern Ohio, and so on, or did these balance the loss of eastern Pennsylvania, etc., to a region within the country now ruled by Islamic law? This "flag controversy" for the most part elicited exasperated groans from a population long since grown jaded and cynical. There were, however, certain sentimentalists who persisted in making esoteric arguments concerning the flag's symbolic importance. Yet for the most part there was no great inclination to alter the fifty-star flag that had flown over the nation for well over a century. Syndicated columnist Donald McGrath suggested leaving the flag as-is, regardless of future developments, since it had stood for so long and represented the American nation at its zenith --a zenith, he did not add or need to add, that had passed. In this manner the issue was not so much settled as allowed to drop.
Given subsequent events, many breathed a sigh of relief that the flag issue had been put aside. The precise status of the states in the Northeast did not remain of paramount concern for very long. The dust from the Special Election and the Pennsylvania Uprising had barely settled when the nation's attention was drawn to the Southwest. In the wake of the momentous events of World War III and its aftermath, citizens there sensed a sea change in the nation's character. For decades, the Spanish-speaking majority had overwhelmingly favored leaving the Union to join Mexico. They now clamored to do so.
Sensing that the moment was at hand, the people there took to the streets in massive demonstrations that drew worldwide attention. Their local elected representatives could not have gone against this tide even if they had wanted to. The Congressional Chambers of Liberty's Fortress echoed with angry voices in English and Spanish throughout the rest of 2082 and into the following year. Mexico itself entered the debate, politely insisting that Southwesterners be allowed to "determine their own destiny."
To political realists, the secession of the Southwest appeared as inevitable as death. After all, if the State Senate and Assembly of California, for example, elected to quit the Union, what could the Federal Government do about it? A new Civil War waged with 21st Century weapons was unthinkable. Moreover, the Eastern US was still bleeding from the last war. And if formidable Mexico entered the fray on the side of the Southwest, as was almost a given, the US would be at a distinct disadvantage. Indeed, there were some in Mexico City who positively relished the prospect of a second war with the United States, justifiably certain that the rematch would have a decidedly different outcome.
Southwestern secession became the major issue of the 2084 presidential election. President Moulton had decided not to seek reelection, leaving the race wide open. Coveting the electoral votes of populous Southwestern states like California and Texas, candidates for both parties ran on pro-secession platforms. The focus of the debate gradually shifted to the manner in which the Southwest should leave the Union --"if and when the time came," politicians hastened to add in an effort to mollify secession opponents. It was of utmost importance, these politicians declared, that the Southwest and the rest of the Union "part as friends."
There was a good deal of backroom wheeling and dealing that went on between Eastern politicians and the Southwestern governors. California was fully prepared to walk right out of the Union as South Carolina had done in December 1860, triggering a chain reaction of subsequent secessions. The candidates and their minions endeavored to persuade the governors and other important officials to postpone any such move until after the election. In this effort, the candidates were motivated by both personal ambition and the nation's welfare. On the one hand, they were keenly interested in the electoral votes up for grabs if the Southwestern states remained in the Union through the present election cycle. Yet there was also a sincere desire to see the United States spared further humiliation. If the Southwestern states were to just up and leave the Union while the Federal Government could only stand impotently by, it would entail an immeasurable loss of face for a nation that had been humbled repeatedly in recent years. High government officials in the current administration, along with those seeking to succeed it, wished to avoid this at all costs.
To that end, it was deemed advisable to construct some sort of quasi-legal procedure for the secession of the Southwest, destined to come about in any event, so as to preserve the appearance of due process. In order to implement this plan, officials sought the aid of California's charismatic governor, Ramon Vargas (later president of Mexico). Governor Vargas was arguably the most powerful and influential political figure in all of Mexamerica. Other governors and elected officials of the region tended to follow his lead. The front-running candidates, as well as the President himself, travelled to California to meet with Governor Vargas in a series of long, confidential discussions that took place behind closed doors. Following the primaries and national conventions, each nominee, unknown to his opponent, made the same secret pact with the Governor: If the Governor forestalled California's secession until after the general election, the machinery to bring about an amicable parting of the Southwest from the rest of the Union would be put in motion in 2085.
The winner of the election, Rep. Ian McElroy of North Dakota, made good on his word. During his first month in office, he addressed the nation concerning the matter of Southwestern secession. Belaboring the obvious, the new president emphasized how the nation had changed over the past century in regard to the wholly seperate and distinct culture that had evolved in the Southwest. The people in the region had spoken in a loud, clear voice, the President said, and it was time to decide the matter by putting it to a popular vote in the affected states. This motion was widely derided as a face-saving charade. Southwestern secession had been hovering on the horizon like a menacing storm cloud for years, if not decades. Still, the nation cringed at the prospect of another "special election."
Pressed for an answer at a subsequent news conference, President McElroy was obliged to admit that the Special Election that had established Islamic law in much of the Northeast had indeed furnished the framework for the new election about to go forth. The President took considerable flak for this forthright admission, owing to the fact that the original Special Election had been mandated by what amounted to a surrender treaty to a victorious foreign power.
"Special Election Dos," as it came to be called, was held on May 1, just days before the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo. In Arizona and New Mexico, over 90% of the electorate voted "yes" on secession. In Nevada and California, the measure passed with a slightly smaller percentage. Northern California was still home to many Anglos, among them the moneyed aristocracy that congregated in the San Francisco area. The majority of these expressed a haughty indifference concerning which flag flew at government offices.
Secession also passed in Texas, albeit by a slimmer margin. Only in Texas was there any public outcry reminiscent of the Pennsylvania Uprising. A movement to divide the state along ethnic line had begun even before the votes had been tabulated. Among the most prominent activists were two elderly sisters from Austin, Annabel Lee Scott and Veronica Kuykendall. Both had been active in local municipal politics for decades, and were highly esteemed matriarchs in the community. The were instrumental in coordinating protest activities in northern and eastern Texas.
State officials in Texas were quick to hearken to angry Anglo voices, making a timely effort to avoid turmoil, rioting, and bloodshed. In due course, Texas became the only Southwestern state to split in two as Pennsylvania had. The Big Bend area of West Texas that included El Paso joined Mexico, as did all the counties south of Austin. The partitioning of Texas was marred by only a few acts of violence, but one of these was notable for its dramatic impact. Before leaving San Antonio, Anglos there dynamited the Alamo to prevent it from falling into Mexican hands.
By mid-summer, the former American Southwest had been officially joined to Mexico. One of the first acts of the Mexican government in the new era was to secure Mexico's new northern border so as to prevent unauthorized entry from what was left of the United States.
Sample Chapter: Part Two, Twilight's Last Gleaming
[This chapter is from the middle section of the book, Rocket's Red Glare, concerning the Third World War in 2079. The chapter that appears below is preceded by 5. Defeat at Sea, and followed by 7. The War in the Pacific. Copyright 2008 by Charles Hoffman.]
6. Britain Invaded
The battle for Greenland was just the beginning of a series of reversals for both the British and American navies. The Atlantic Ocean now became a vast hunting ground in which a more modern, numerically superior European fleet pursued, harried, and chipped away at Anglo-American naval forces. The US and the UK were never again able to mount an offensive naval operation against the Islamic Federation of Europe.
From almost the second the United Kingdom first lifted a finger to aid the US, Britain found itself engaged in total war with the IFE. Within hours of Admiral Trowbridge's fleet joining forces with the United States Navy, England was reeling under the first of a series of aerial bombardments. Vital military installations were struck first, with key population centers as secondary targets. IFE bombers rained death and destruction on London, where citizens cowered in shelters as their ancestors had done during the German blitz of the previous World War.
The British counterstrike came immediately on the heels of the first IFE attack. The airplanes, manned and drones, missiles, and cruise missiles of the Royal Air Force streaked across the English Channel, but penetrating European defenses proved no easy task. The RAF was able to strike at some important military and civilian targets in Western Europe, but only at great cost.
Seeking to take its own fight to the enemy, the US Air Force tried to lend a hand. It was severely handicapped in doing so, however. Thanks to satellite intell, the IFE high command was aware of the American military's every move almost in advance. Hypersonic scramjet aircraft capable of striking at Europe from the western side of the Atlantic were dispatched from Air Force bases within the US. Most were intercepted by planes and missiles based in Greenland or launched from the IFE Atlantic Fleet.
The combined Anglo-American air forces did manage to inflict damage on civilian population centers in Muslim Europe, including the capitals of Paris and Berlin. Inhabitants of European cities that came under attack endured the onslaught stoically, having been hardened by their rigorous and demanding faith. This stood in clear contrast to the populations of beleagured cities in England and the US, where angry choruses of panicked citizens demanded that the government "do something."
As single nations went, the United Kingdom was still a fairly formidable military presence by the late 21st Century. But its power paled before that of the vast Islamic Federation. Stretching from Portugul to the Chukchi Peninsula in easternmost Siberia, the IFE was a leviathan that spanned a hemisphere. Great Britain was an island pitted against a continent.
It did not take the European military long to neutralize Britain's ability to wage an effective counteroffensive. Hemmed in and on the defensive, the UK could only attempt to ward off further attacks. Subsequent IFE air strikes were aimed at crippling Britain's infrastructure. Vital resources such as water and power were disrupted in London and other cities. Transportation arteries were severed, preventing foodstuffs from reaching the marketplace. Electromagnetic pulse weapons wrought havoc with computer systems. Cut off from its allies by the IFE Navy, the beleaguered island nation was being softened up for the coup de grace. With its military decimated and its civilian population howling, Britain was ripe for invasion.
The invasion of England, as well as the campaign that paved the way for it, was conceived, planned, and directed by General Andre Desjardineau, arguably the most remarkable figure to emerge from World War III. A Frenchman of the Elder Race, Desjardineau converted to Islam in his early teens to advance the military career he even then aspired to. France was a Muslim-majority nation by then, and to the young Desjardineau life as a civilian was all but unthinkable. Desjardineau's ancestors had served in the French army since the Middle Ages, fighting in virtually every war that France had fought against England. Desjardineau men had shed their blood for France in the Hundred Years War, the War of Spanish Succession, and the War of Austrian Succession. During the Seven Years War, they had served both in Europe and in North America, where the conflict was known as the French and Indian War. A Desjardineau had been with Montcalm when Quebec fell, leading to France's ouster from North America. Another forbear had been with Napoleon at Waterloo.
Scion to an illustrious military family, Andre Desjardineau strove constantly to distinguish himself. As a young officer, he excelled in fencing with the epee and saber, and was for a time the savate champion of the French Army. Tall and powerfully built, Desjardineau was a dynamic, charismatic figure. He rose rapidly through the ranks, commanding the respect of both New Breed and Elder Race Europeans. When war finally appeared to be looming between the IFE and France's ancient rival, Britain, General Desjardineau looked forward to settling an old, old score.
Desjardineau's master plan for the conquest of Britain involved, as we have seen, dismantling the UK's defensive capabilities and then pounding the nation itself until it was dazed and bloody. With these goals achieved, the invasion itself could begin.
London was to be taken first; as London went, so went the nation. The alarm that announced that the invasion was underway came in the form a a cruise missile that smashed into Buckinghiam Palace, exploding inside it. Buckingham Palace had been carefully spared in previous bombings. Now it was gutted by fire and explosion as several more cruise missiles streaked into it. Within minutes only the blackened outer walls remained standing upright, like a giant tombstone for a city and a nation.
The invaders came by sea, entering the mouth of the Thames and moving inexorably upstream. The IFE invasion fleet included light maneuverable hydrofoils designed for river navigation. These came racing up the Thames into the heart of London, escorted by swarms of attack helicopters that darkened the skies above. Another component of the invasion fleet consisted of amphibious assault craft of the sort Admiral Duncan had hoped to land on Greenland, only considerably more advanced. The amphibious craft drove on massive tires along the muddy bottom of the Thames, emerging from beneath the water where river embankments furnished access to the shore. Londoners could only look on in sick horror as the gleaming submersible craft climbed dripping out of the Thames and rolled into the city streets.
From there the amphibious assault craft fanned out into London, broadcasting loud warnings for citizens to get off the streets and indoors immediately. Stragglers were mowed down like ripe grain. With the population driven indoors, the invasion fleet secured bridges and, more importantly, parks and large parking lots to serve as landing fields for the large troop transport helicopters that immediately followed. For the first time since 1066, British soil was trampled by the tread of foreign invaders.
Even as London was being overrun, the European Navy secured the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Man for use as staging areas from which the IFE could complete it conquest of Britain. The seaport city of Liverpool was soon stormed and taken. Elsewhere, IFE hydrofoils and submersibles made their way up rivers like the Trent and the Ouse to stab into the interior of the country and pave the way for the capture of inland cities like Manchester, York, and Birmingham.
IFE troops met with little in the way of resistance, and were even greeted as liberators by some segments of Britain's Muslim minority population. The civilian populace as a whole had long since been disarmed. Moreover, British citizens in public places had been subject to video surveillance since the close of the 20th Century. The IFE military took immediate control of the surveillance cameras, of course, finding in them a convenient and useful tool during the subsequent occupation.
British subjects were not lacking in courage, but improvised weapons such as Molotov cocktails, or even small arms had they been available, would have availed them little. By the late 21st Century, the individual infantryman was so outfitted and equipped as to be a virtual one-man army. For elite outfits, battle armor had evolved into a complete exoskeleton that encased the soldier from head to toe. Helmets were equipped with sophisticated sensors and high-speed computers, as well as filters to screen out airborne toxins. Body armor was designed to augment strength and could therefore be equipped to carry multiple weapons systems. IFE battle armor was the most advanced in the world. A single squad of troopers outfitted in it was sufficient to capture and hold an entire town.
As IFE forces took possession of the nation, government officials were forced to flee into outlying areas. For many, however, flight was not even an option. The King and Queen, who had bravely made their stand in London throughout the aerial bombardments, were killed when Buckingham Palace was struck. Members of Parliament residing in London were compelled to cower indoors along with the rest of the city's population as IFE troopers took control of the streets.
Once the occupation was complete, the Prime Minister had no choice but to accept IFE terms for unconditional surrender. General Desjardineau arrived by helicopter for the signing of the surrender papers, landing before the entrance of 10 Downing Street where the ceremony was to take place. Many cameras were on hand to capture the moment, ensuring that Andre Desjardineau would be enshrined in posterity as "the Muslim Napoleon."
6. Britain Invaded
The battle for Greenland was just the beginning of a series of reversals for both the British and American navies. The Atlantic Ocean now became a vast hunting ground in which a more modern, numerically superior European fleet pursued, harried, and chipped away at Anglo-American naval forces. The US and the UK were never again able to mount an offensive naval operation against the Islamic Federation of Europe.
From almost the second the United Kingdom first lifted a finger to aid the US, Britain found itself engaged in total war with the IFE. Within hours of Admiral Trowbridge's fleet joining forces with the United States Navy, England was reeling under the first of a series of aerial bombardments. Vital military installations were struck first, with key population centers as secondary targets. IFE bombers rained death and destruction on London, where citizens cowered in shelters as their ancestors had done during the German blitz of the previous World War.
The British counterstrike came immediately on the heels of the first IFE attack. The airplanes, manned and drones, missiles, and cruise missiles of the Royal Air Force streaked across the English Channel, but penetrating European defenses proved no easy task. The RAF was able to strike at some important military and civilian targets in Western Europe, but only at great cost.
Seeking to take its own fight to the enemy, the US Air Force tried to lend a hand. It was severely handicapped in doing so, however. Thanks to satellite intell, the IFE high command was aware of the American military's every move almost in advance. Hypersonic scramjet aircraft capable of striking at Europe from the western side of the Atlantic were dispatched from Air Force bases within the US. Most were intercepted by planes and missiles based in Greenland or launched from the IFE Atlantic Fleet.
The combined Anglo-American air forces did manage to inflict damage on civilian population centers in Muslim Europe, including the capitals of Paris and Berlin. Inhabitants of European cities that came under attack endured the onslaught stoically, having been hardened by their rigorous and demanding faith. This stood in clear contrast to the populations of beleagured cities in England and the US, where angry choruses of panicked citizens demanded that the government "do something."
As single nations went, the United Kingdom was still a fairly formidable military presence by the late 21st Century. But its power paled before that of the vast Islamic Federation. Stretching from Portugul to the Chukchi Peninsula in easternmost Siberia, the IFE was a leviathan that spanned a hemisphere. Great Britain was an island pitted against a continent.
It did not take the European military long to neutralize Britain's ability to wage an effective counteroffensive. Hemmed in and on the defensive, the UK could only attempt to ward off further attacks. Subsequent IFE air strikes were aimed at crippling Britain's infrastructure. Vital resources such as water and power were disrupted in London and other cities. Transportation arteries were severed, preventing foodstuffs from reaching the marketplace. Electromagnetic pulse weapons wrought havoc with computer systems. Cut off from its allies by the IFE Navy, the beleaguered island nation was being softened up for the coup de grace. With its military decimated and its civilian population howling, Britain was ripe for invasion.
The invasion of England, as well as the campaign that paved the way for it, was conceived, planned, and directed by General Andre Desjardineau, arguably the most remarkable figure to emerge from World War III. A Frenchman of the Elder Race, Desjardineau converted to Islam in his early teens to advance the military career he even then aspired to. France was a Muslim-majority nation by then, and to the young Desjardineau life as a civilian was all but unthinkable. Desjardineau's ancestors had served in the French army since the Middle Ages, fighting in virtually every war that France had fought against England. Desjardineau men had shed their blood for France in the Hundred Years War, the War of Spanish Succession, and the War of Austrian Succession. During the Seven Years War, they had served both in Europe and in North America, where the conflict was known as the French and Indian War. A Desjardineau had been with Montcalm when Quebec fell, leading to France's ouster from North America. Another forbear had been with Napoleon at Waterloo.
Scion to an illustrious military family, Andre Desjardineau strove constantly to distinguish himself. As a young officer, he excelled in fencing with the epee and saber, and was for a time the savate champion of the French Army. Tall and powerfully built, Desjardineau was a dynamic, charismatic figure. He rose rapidly through the ranks, commanding the respect of both New Breed and Elder Race Europeans. When war finally appeared to be looming between the IFE and France's ancient rival, Britain, General Desjardineau looked forward to settling an old, old score.
Desjardineau's master plan for the conquest of Britain involved, as we have seen, dismantling the UK's defensive capabilities and then pounding the nation itself until it was dazed and bloody. With these goals achieved, the invasion itself could begin.
London was to be taken first; as London went, so went the nation. The alarm that announced that the invasion was underway came in the form a a cruise missile that smashed into Buckinghiam Palace, exploding inside it. Buckingham Palace had been carefully spared in previous bombings. Now it was gutted by fire and explosion as several more cruise missiles streaked into it. Within minutes only the blackened outer walls remained standing upright, like a giant tombstone for a city and a nation.
The invaders came by sea, entering the mouth of the Thames and moving inexorably upstream. The IFE invasion fleet included light maneuverable hydrofoils designed for river navigation. These came racing up the Thames into the heart of London, escorted by swarms of attack helicopters that darkened the skies above. Another component of the invasion fleet consisted of amphibious assault craft of the sort Admiral Duncan had hoped to land on Greenland, only considerably more advanced. The amphibious craft drove on massive tires along the muddy bottom of the Thames, emerging from beneath the water where river embankments furnished access to the shore. Londoners could only look on in sick horror as the gleaming submersible craft climbed dripping out of the Thames and rolled into the city streets.
From there the amphibious assault craft fanned out into London, broadcasting loud warnings for citizens to get off the streets and indoors immediately. Stragglers were mowed down like ripe grain. With the population driven indoors, the invasion fleet secured bridges and, more importantly, parks and large parking lots to serve as landing fields for the large troop transport helicopters that immediately followed. For the first time since 1066, British soil was trampled by the tread of foreign invaders.
Even as London was being overrun, the European Navy secured the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Man for use as staging areas from which the IFE could complete it conquest of Britain. The seaport city of Liverpool was soon stormed and taken. Elsewhere, IFE hydrofoils and submersibles made their way up rivers like the Trent and the Ouse to stab into the interior of the country and pave the way for the capture of inland cities like Manchester, York, and Birmingham.
IFE troops met with little in the way of resistance, and were even greeted as liberators by some segments of Britain's Muslim minority population. The civilian populace as a whole had long since been disarmed. Moreover, British citizens in public places had been subject to video surveillance since the close of the 20th Century. The IFE military took immediate control of the surveillance cameras, of course, finding in them a convenient and useful tool during the subsequent occupation.
British subjects were not lacking in courage, but improvised weapons such as Molotov cocktails, or even small arms had they been available, would have availed them little. By the late 21st Century, the individual infantryman was so outfitted and equipped as to be a virtual one-man army. For elite outfits, battle armor had evolved into a complete exoskeleton that encased the soldier from head to toe. Helmets were equipped with sophisticated sensors and high-speed computers, as well as filters to screen out airborne toxins. Body armor was designed to augment strength and could therefore be equipped to carry multiple weapons systems. IFE battle armor was the most advanced in the world. A single squad of troopers outfitted in it was sufficient to capture and hold an entire town.
As IFE forces took possession of the nation, government officials were forced to flee into outlying areas. For many, however, flight was not even an option. The King and Queen, who had bravely made their stand in London throughout the aerial bombardments, were killed when Buckingham Palace was struck. Members of Parliament residing in London were compelled to cower indoors along with the rest of the city's population as IFE troopers took control of the streets.
Once the occupation was complete, the Prime Minister had no choice but to accept IFE terms for unconditional surrender. General Desjardineau arrived by helicopter for the signing of the surrender papers, landing before the entrance of 10 Downing Street where the ceremony was to take place. Many cameras were on hand to capture the moment, ensuring that Andre Desjardineau would be enshrined in posterity as "the Muslim Napoleon."
Sample Chapter: Part One, Twilight's Last Gleaming
[This chapter is from Part One: O'er the Ramparts We Watched. The opening third of the book concerns events transpiring from the present day up till the outbreak of World War III in 2079. This chapter is preceeded by 9. Religion in 21st Century America, and followed by 11. Changes in American Society. Copyright 2008 by Charles Hoffman.]
10. Violence and Decay Plague American Cities
The relocation of most American Muslims to the major urban centers of the Northeast and Midwest was pretty much complete by 2055. Unfortunately, the more radical Islamic factions also began to make their presence felt there.
Suicide bombings occured with mounting fequency in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. Populare restaurants and nightclubs were bombed, as were various other sorts of small businesses. This had a chilling effect on the local economies.
Sporting events and holiday celebrations were favored targets of suicide bombers, snipers, and other terrorist operatives. Major sporting events, such as playoff games and championships, came to be patrolled by small armies of security personnel. While effective, these measures caused terrorists to shift their attacks to taverns and restaurants hosting game-watching parties. A sniper attack on New York's Thanksgiving Day parade caused the event to be discontinued. Occuring at the start of the Christmas shopping season, the attack hurt holiday sales at retail businesses nationwide and caused their fourth quarter profits to evaporate. On July 4, 2062, the fireworks used in a display at a public park in Philadelphia were sabotaged so as to spread toxic agents when ignited, poisoning the crowd of several hundred spectators. Most were sickened and many died. After a similar attack in Boston two years later, fireworks displays were banned in favor of laser light shows in all parts of America where the Fourth of July was still celebrated.
Other atrocities ensued. Outbreaks of anthrax in the Great Lakes cities of Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago wreaked havoc with the shipping industry. These outbreaks also effectively ended honeymoon and other tourism to Niagra Falls. On May 10, 2063, simultaneous nerve gas attacks on the New York subway and the PATH trains linking New York and New Jersey killed over 700 people.
The end result of this activity was a "white flight" from these urban centers so massive that it was referred to at the time as a "rout." Businesses and the middle class fled like rats from a doomed ship. The municipal tax bases were eroded, setting the stage for urban decay on a scale never before seen in America. Due to diminished revenues, police and sanitation services were for the most part reserved for such affluent areas that remained. Elsewhere, those services were spotty at best. Inner city neighborhoods became haunted no-man's-lands by night. Vicious gangs roamed the streets while citizens cowered behind locked doors and barred windows. Abandoned buildings were taken over by squatters. In time, outlaw factions formed de facto governments in blighted areas.
In New York, die-hard native residents hung on despite the city's perils. Upscale sections of Manhattan such as the Upper East Side evolved into tightly controlled gated enclaves where motor traffic was limited to specially authorized vehicles. In the outer boroughs, Italian and Irish American gangs warred incessantly with Arab-American gangs who congregated in such strongholds as the Atlantic Avenue area of Brooklyn.
Similar scenarios played out in other Northeastern and Midwestern cities. Throughout the crises of the `50s and `60s, leaders in the mainstream Muslim community worked tirelessly to rein in the radical elements and stem the tide of chaos. Their exertions did eventually help to bring that troubled era to a close, but not before many corporations and middle class taxpayers had commenced to pull up stakes and take their leave of the major metropolitan areas in the region. With the local tax bases so greatly reduced, city and state politicians felt they had no choice other than to lobby for Federal assistance.
10. Violence and Decay Plague American Cities
The relocation of most American Muslims to the major urban centers of the Northeast and Midwest was pretty much complete by 2055. Unfortunately, the more radical Islamic factions also began to make their presence felt there.
Suicide bombings occured with mounting fequency in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. Populare restaurants and nightclubs were bombed, as were various other sorts of small businesses. This had a chilling effect on the local economies.
Sporting events and holiday celebrations were favored targets of suicide bombers, snipers, and other terrorist operatives. Major sporting events, such as playoff games and championships, came to be patrolled by small armies of security personnel. While effective, these measures caused terrorists to shift their attacks to taverns and restaurants hosting game-watching parties. A sniper attack on New York's Thanksgiving Day parade caused the event to be discontinued. Occuring at the start of the Christmas shopping season, the attack hurt holiday sales at retail businesses nationwide and caused their fourth quarter profits to evaporate. On July 4, 2062, the fireworks used in a display at a public park in Philadelphia were sabotaged so as to spread toxic agents when ignited, poisoning the crowd of several hundred spectators. Most were sickened and many died. After a similar attack in Boston two years later, fireworks displays were banned in favor of laser light shows in all parts of America where the Fourth of July was still celebrated.
Other atrocities ensued. Outbreaks of anthrax in the Great Lakes cities of Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago wreaked havoc with the shipping industry. These outbreaks also effectively ended honeymoon and other tourism to Niagra Falls. On May 10, 2063, simultaneous nerve gas attacks on the New York subway and the PATH trains linking New York and New Jersey killed over 700 people.
The end result of this activity was a "white flight" from these urban centers so massive that it was referred to at the time as a "rout." Businesses and the middle class fled like rats from a doomed ship. The municipal tax bases were eroded, setting the stage for urban decay on a scale never before seen in America. Due to diminished revenues, police and sanitation services were for the most part reserved for such affluent areas that remained. Elsewhere, those services were spotty at best. Inner city neighborhoods became haunted no-man's-lands by night. Vicious gangs roamed the streets while citizens cowered behind locked doors and barred windows. Abandoned buildings were taken over by squatters. In time, outlaw factions formed de facto governments in blighted areas.
In New York, die-hard native residents hung on despite the city's perils. Upscale sections of Manhattan such as the Upper East Side evolved into tightly controlled gated enclaves where motor traffic was limited to specially authorized vehicles. In the outer boroughs, Italian and Irish American gangs warred incessantly with Arab-American gangs who congregated in such strongholds as the Atlantic Avenue area of Brooklyn.
Similar scenarios played out in other Northeastern and Midwestern cities. Throughout the crises of the `50s and `60s, leaders in the mainstream Muslim community worked tirelessly to rein in the radical elements and stem the tide of chaos. Their exertions did eventually help to bring that troubled era to a close, but not before many corporations and middle class taxpayers had commenced to pull up stakes and take their leave of the major metropolitan areas in the region. With the local tax bases so greatly reduced, city and state politicians felt they had no choice other than to lobby for Federal assistance.
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