Confederation -- 25

Chapter 25

Whistle and I left to return to the FTL ship. After we took off, I had the idea to pass over the eastern half of the country. We climbed to ten miles and flew slowly toward Washington, D.C., moving at about a thousand miles per hour.

The shuttle's monitor displayed surface features under high magnification, and we put it to good use. I carefully inspected the area we flew over.

The Motherland Army had retreated from the site of our recent confrontation. It looked as if they were taking the threat of our spaceships seriously. We also saw small groups of refugees moving along the smaller western Kansas roads toward the mountains.

Most of the farms and many small towns were burned out. For the most part, I couldn't tell if the undamaged ones were occupied or if they'd been raided. There were large stretches of burned fields. The invaders had burned wheat and corn fields indiscriminately, which was a stupid thing to do. The upcoming winter would likely starve almost everyone unfortunate to be caught in the destroyed territory, and the soldiers would be as likely to suffer as the remaining residents.

We saw several columns of soldiers marching in ragged order along the old roads. Like the refugees, they were heading generally west, leading me to wonder if they were intended to be reinforcements for the attack on the mountains.

As we reached the Kansas-Missouri line, it was evident that the Motherland Army had set up checkpoints along all roads. They weren't letting any refugees through. The lucky ones were simply turned back. The unlucky ones lay in rows and piles in the ditches near the barricades. I supposed that they'd had something worth stealing, or perhaps the checkpoint guards had just been in a bad mood.

We varied our course slightly from a straight line to fly over Kansas City, St. Louis, and Cincinnati on the way towards DC. The cities mainly looked abandoned except for some groups of soldiers moving in the streets. Perhaps the residents had left or were too afraid to go out of their homes.

I tried to monitor what was going on below mentally, but I couldn't seem to reach any specific individuals. The only thing I received was a general sense of distrust, hostility, and hopelessness.

I finally decided that we'd have to land somewhere to hear what was happening directly from someone on the ground.

We landed outside Buckhannon, a small town in West Virginia. It was the site of a small college, and I'd actually been there before, briefly, and had a good memory of it as relatively prosperous and friendly. However, the aura was now one of disrepair and danger.

We hid the shuttle in a clearing in the trees on the side of a steep mountain. I then walked out to the road, leaving Whistle in the vehicle. A couple of houses were nearby, and I approached the first one with my hands held out so that the residents could see that I was unarmed.

A white-haired man came out on the porch to greet me. He carried a double-barreled shotgun, but he kept the muzzle pointed at the ground, carefully not covering me. I felt that he wanted to be friendly but was too used to being suspicious to relax completely. Besides, he could see that I was carrying a weapon. My splinter gun was easily visible on my belt.

He greeted me with some reserve, and I responded, "I'm just traveling through, and I wanted to know what I should look out for."

He lifted the gun a trifle at that and then thoughtfully answered, "Your story doesn't make any sense, son. No one's allowed to travel these days. You can't be from around here, or you'd know what to look out for, so where are you from? You can tell me. I'm not a collaborator."

The word 'collaborator' came out of his mouth with a degree of vituperation that let me know he didn't think highly of such people. I decided to level with him. It seemed easier, somehow. Besides, I'd been mentally probing, and I received a sense of trustworthiness from him.

"You're right. I'm not from around here. I'm from the Denver area," I answered.

He gasped and then said, "I knew it. You must have been from a long way away, not to know that the Motherland Army controls everything here."

He indicated the front steps with a gesture and said, "Sit down and let me rest and we'll talk."

I sat, and he gave me as complete a briefing as you could want. He had been an Air Force officer during the Vietnam War. He and his wife had been trapped here at their vacation home when the EMP burst had stopped most automobile travel. They normally lived in Florida, but they owned the little cabin here, and here is where they had stayed.

"The situation was bad for nearly a year. A lot of people died, but I was able to keep us going by trading and by hauling things for people. I've got an antique car that still runs, and I've been able to get food by transporting people and goods around the area when the soldiers aren't around," he said.

"What about the soldiers?" I asked, "Are they a problem?"

His answer was discouraging, "The whole country is locked down right now. They tell us we're under martial law, and they enforce a strict curfew. They've shot a lot of people for being out after dark. It's unreasonable, but they just execute anyone they catch without asking who they are or why they're out. No emergencies are allowed."

I replied, "It sounds like they are a problem then."

"That's not the half of it," he said. "They levy on our food supplies. If you can't pay the food requirement to them, they take everything you have. That's been real hard for a lot of people. People with kids or elderly people, like me. We have to be careful. If they come and take all of our supplies, we'll starve. A lot of people have starved."

He added, "Lucky we've got some apple trees, and I can use my tractor to plow a garden. It still runs, too, but getting diesel fuel is getting really hard."

The mention of a garden must have made him think of food because he looked at me and asked, "You aren't hungry, are you?"

I shook my head, "No. I ate breakfast a short time ago, and I'm not hungry now."

He sighed in some relief and then laughed, "I thought I'd probably have to feed you and we don't have much left right now. Most of the people in the area barely have enough to eat to keep from starving."

That meant that he wasn't alone. I reached out mentally and felt that someone was looking at me from a hiding place. It was his wife, and she was watching suspiciously, in case I turned out to be hostile after all. I didn't mention that I sensed her but went on with my questioning, "What about meat? Do you have any livestock, or do you hunt?"

He replied, "The Motherland taxmen have taken all of the livestock and shipped them to Washington for the big-wigs that live there. We aren't even supposed to hunt. No one is supposed to have any weapons. If you get caught walking around with a firearm, they execute you, no questions asked. I have to be careful with my shotgun not to let any of them see it."

He looked around and then added, "But a couple of the local guys have bows, and they're pretty good. We get venison once in a while. The deer come into my orchard and pick up the fallen apples, and who's to say if one less deer goes out than came in."

I grinned, "That would be the deer's problem and no one else's."

"Yeah, but you don't want to get caught with venison. We only take a little, spread it out among a lot of families, and we all eat it quickly. No sense leaving it to spoil or get us in trouble," he said.

His attitude changed from friendly to concerned. "You're from the Denver area, you say?"

"Yes. From Denver," I answered.

"Is there anything you can do to help us? This Motherland group is just a bunch of savages. They rape any women they want, and their idea of justice is a travesty. In addition, they've taken off all of our young men to fight somewhere. I don't know where they're sending them."

I suspected that many of them had been sent out west to the Denver area, and I didn't want to tell him that we'd killed a bunch of them.

"There's not much I can do right now," I said. "Now that I understand what you're facing, I'll see what can be done."

I didn't want to promise any action. I might not be able to help, but if my idea of a confederation worked out, we'd have to have some minimum standards for treating the population well as a prerequisite for admittance to the group. Maybe that would be a way to get the Motherland leader and others like him to behave. I hadn't thought about it to this point, but I could see that it would be necessary to enforce some basic human rights somehow.

His mind had gone on to another question, and he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye as he asked, "If you're from Denver, how did you get here without being caught. They're just about everywhere, and it'd be difficult to get through."

I hesitated, then answered, "I flew."

He smiled widely, "That's the best way, but I didn't hear any aircraft. I used to be a pilot, you know. I thought that you might be some kind of spy or something." He paused and then quickly added, "Not that I'd consider turning you in or anything. They caught a man they said was a Canadian spy a few months ago. They've instituted the old medieval practice of drawing and quartering criminals. They make everyone in the area come and watch, too. It's a very unpleasant thing to see."

I ignored that sad news and answered the first part of his question.

"My ship is very quiet. You wouldn't hear it unless you were very close when the engine was running," I said. "I'm going to have to go now. We've still got a long way to travel, and I'm running late. Thank you for all of the information."

He leaned back and said, "Not at all. You come back and visit any time you want, young man. I've enjoyed talking to you. It gives me some hope that things might eventually get better."

We shook hands, and I walked back out to the road. Once I reached the place where I'd come out of the woods, I looked in both directions and then jumped the ditch and moved into the trees. Whistle was sitting in the cockpit where I'd left him.

We took off and headed on to pass over Washington. I wasn't worried about detection. There probably wasn't any radar still operating. They might see us visually, but electronic detection was unlikely.

The Washington area was heavily fortified. I could see lots of soldiers manning barricades along the approaches to the beltway. There were also wagons carrying produce streaming into the city along some of the main roads. The people inside the beltway seemed to be relatively prosperous. They weren't afraid to be out on the streets, either. There were a lot of pedestrians and horse traffic, along with quite a large number of carriages. I could see the occasional motorized vehicle, and once there was a large convoy of military trucks rolling along a boulevard. I assumed that these vehicles had been somehow shielded against the EMP blast.

Overall, the place looked like a well-to-do but heavily defended fort. We circled the city a couple of times, looking. I could see that the White House was occupied, and there were lots of people coming and going into the old government buildings. I guess even a barbarian-level government needs administration.

There was a long row of gibbets on the green in front of the old United States Capitol building. Most of them had corpses hanging from the projecting arms. It was a grim reminder of how the place was ruled, and despite the hustle and bustle of the scene below, I was left with a feeling of depression and a temptation to take a couple of shots at the place. I restrained my urge with some effort.

That's what our once proud country had devolved to, a totalitarian kingdom with public executions. I wondered if it was due to some kind of previously hidden structural flaw or if our government had just been an easily-replaced sham. Thinking back on pre-EMP times, I remembered that the constitution had been losing more and more of its meaning as the government gradually stripped rights from the people. Perhaps this barbarian empire was the inevitable result after a representative democracy disintegrated.

Whistle pointed the shuttle towards space and gave the engines full power. We shot upwards and out of the atmosphere like a bolt of lightning and were soon on an intercept path with the orbiting FTL.