CW 2

By George S Conklin

In 2020, after a highly contested Presidential Election, the then-current President fomented a new Civil War, CW 2. At the end of the war between the "liberals" and the "conservatives" most of the USA was dark. Enemies of the President were rounded up and sent to gulag-like prison camps to toil on one or another of the President's special projects,

• Language: English
• Publisher: George S Conklin
• Release date: Dec 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9780578797939

George S Conklin

George Conklin is the author of several dystopian and crime novels. He retired in 2019 after many years working in healthcare.

Book preview

Part 1: Post-War Times

Adobe Stock, 2020

1

History Lesson

The second Civil War started in 2021 shortly after the 2020 Presidential Elections. Unlike the first one, CW2 was a war between supposedly liberal and supposedly conservative peoples. As a result, CW2 was a lot more destructive as the demarcation between the sides was not drawn as clearly as North and South was in CW1. Family members fought with family members, neighbors against neighbors.

The root cause of CW2 was allegedly the call from the President at the end of 2020 when he lost that election for his proud boys (and girls) to stand up against massive voter fraud and stick up for their beliefs and what he deemed to be (his) rights. They did, and cities around the country erupted into violence. Federal troops and armed military were sent into the cities under instructions to arrest and immediately incarcerate insurrectionists and looters as anyone who opposed the President were called. He also had federal marshals arrest seditionists, those who had spoken out against him during and after the election, whether in the news services or politics. Federal police herded the arrested into Stalinesqe prison camps along the Mexican border and elsewhere. Judges appointed for these trials sentenced almost all the prisoners to the maximum sedition penalty, 20 years in federal prison; they also sentenced all convicted to hard labor under a widely contested reading of the 13 th Amendment to the US Constitution. A few got even worse sentences.

The military eventually rebelled and refused to arrest and incarcerate the President’s enemies and they helped senior leaders of the liberals and the winning Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates and their families to slip away to safe havens around the country and the world. With their fingers on the triggers of some immensely powerful weapons, the President backed down for a while.

On January 4, 2021, the President had the military leaders who stood against him removed and eliminated. He then appointed lackeys to their roles, and attacks on the liberals and anarchists re-initiated. The President’s forces advanced in almost every major city. The Stock Exchange collapsed as cities fell and major sites of production and intellectual activity were destroyed. The economy went with that into free fall.

Yet the President continued his attacks against people he considered liberals and anarchists. Not all of these people were without the willingness and ability to fight back, and they did, escalating the violence and even, for a time, surrounding the White House that had been walled on the day before the election. The insanity didn’t seem to have an end.

Tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, had died to that point. The President went on his state TV to rant and rave about the resistance, saying that the deaths of so many directly resulted from their actions, as usual taking no responsibility. His many agents who were only protecting the elected President from insurrection were innocent of any crimes.

Several days before Inauguration Day, the President said that his opponent had defaulted on any call that he had on the office when he, as the President put it, defected. Since there was no one to transition power to, he assumed the office for the protection of the Union, which was rapidly burning down around everyone. Inauguration Day came, and the only people there were the President, some of his closest associates, and his family. He was disappointed, no enraged, by the withdrawal of the armed forces from his Inauguration parade at the last minute. Military leaders thought it would be a mistake to provide that message of alignment to the country.

A similar thing happened with Congress. With members of either house in hiding or incarcerated, their opposite party opponents who, sometimes, only received single-digit percentage points of the vote, assumed their seats. Votes were quickly held to legitimize the President’s takeover of the government and to give him unlimited opportunities for re-election, in effect declaring him President for life.

The war dragged on. Elements of the military threw in with the liberals, and others stayed their historic course and remained loyal to the government, but stayed out of the fray. Senior officers who had escaped the January 4 th decapitation of the military locked themselves down and took control of the tools of destruction so that nuclear war wasn’t in the mix, at least for the foreseeable future.

Military leadership knew that they couldn’t last forever, and they were right. The President regained control of a portion of the nuclear arsenal and ordered EMP bursts over the major, anarchist cities, turning them back to the 18 th century overnight. With power out and almost all services unusable, resistance in these cities collapsed, and the President’s troops moved in to mop up. Hundreds of thousands more died, and those that didn’t die found themselves transported to the ever-growing number of prison camps on the border, dying from rampant diseases or back in the 19th century, if not worse.

The only cities that escaped this were those in Anarchist States, particularly those with nuclear capability. States like California, Colorado and Montana escaped bombing because retaliation by those states would have devastated wide swaths of conservative-held lands. As it was, the leaders of those states were hard-pressed not to respond, but bided their time.

In a last-ditch attempt to level the playing field, military leaders with fingers on nuclear missiles reprogrammed some of them to deliver EMP blasts to cities aligned with the conservatives. Soon, everyone was back in the 18 th century, but the President had won, though he no longer had TV to exhort his followers to even greater insanity. However, he still had the Dark Web that he used well.

Without the small amount of control that he exerted on his minions, they went berserk and began attacking everyone with whom they held a grudge. That included other people on the conservative side with whom they disagreed.

Culture entirely devolved at that point, and it became kill-or-be-killed.

2

Science and Knowledge on Trial... Again

COVID-19 surfaced during the last year of the President's first term and took hundreds of thousands of lives before CW2 forced, by its outcome, social distancing, and the disease burned itself out. The President and his anti-science posture did tremendous damage to the nation, destroying confidence in the few developed vaccines and treatments. Public health officials were verbally and physically attacked, and the President cast basic public health measures as encroachments on freedom. Where Governors or local leaders tried to attack the virus through implementation of basic public health precautions (that his own government promoted), he entered directly to counter them saying, Liberate…!! This behavior was exactly the divisive language that helped to bring on CW2 in the first place; that fact was not lost on many, but, in the end, it didn’t matter.

In early and mid-2019, two times, the President's son-in-law was interviewed and stated, proudly, that the administration had gotten the country back from the doctors. They had a similar problem with all science as they seemed to want to dismantle any regulations limiting business and industry from polluting and the destruction of nature as they had been accustomed to do before common-sense restrictions were put in place. Many previous administrations' rules and regulations were revoked and government departments were weakened, or shut-down completely. One of the earliest shut down was the group responsible for managing pandemics responses. The folly of that soon was visited on the country.

Things looked more and more like the country had returned to the times of the Spanish Inquisition, but this time managed by Big Business’s minions in the White House, rather than the Church. Science was on trial everywhere it tried to fence in cupidity or stupidity. And it failed to do so almost everywhere. Greed was triumphant.

The environment had some good and bad news. On the positive side, climate collapse slowed as its causes disappeared when CW2 shut down almost everything. On the negative side, some collapse just wouldn’t be stopped, thus compounding the pain.

Whole swaths of the US coastline disappeared as the seas rose. The US's central plains faced tornadoes, droughts, and, paradoxically, intense periods of rain associated with hurricanes—that for three years running had gone through the entire list of names set by the World Meteorological Organization and far into the Greek  alphabet letters. The heavy rains and winds associated with the storms washed or blew away dried topsoil, making the breadbasket more a desert. It was Dustbowl times all over again. Food production nearly collapsed.

The US settled into darkness. Thank goodness for the US military, which continued to project power outside of the US to keep adversaries away.

3

Prison Camp 42

Prison Camp 42 was on the Texas-Mexico border near Fort Hancock, Texas. There were 400 prisoners there, almost evenly split between men and women, and assigned to continue expanding a section of the border wall built in the middle of nowhere. Daily temperatures averaged from 24-degree lows in the winter to 96-degree highs in the summer. There were many days, though, where temperatures went into the 100s. Precipitation was meager. The land was very arid, even before climate change's acceleration. Not a place to live comfortably, let alone labor for hours outside in the sun. Mortality was high among the prisoners, but there was an endless supply of them.

They had sentenced most of the inmates to 20 years for sedition with hard labor added by Presidential order as vengeance for claimed attacks. These camps were so isolated that most of what happened in the country passed them by; most of what occurred in them also passed by the population. The prisoners toiled, ate, slept, and then toiled more.

From time to time, one or two of the prisoners disappeared for special interrogation. Most of the time, if they returned, they were shadows of their former selves. Those taken away usually were journalists and were loud voices in opposition to the President. Vengeance was taken on these for their attempts to take the President’s bad behavior public.

The survivors, who could, talked about black sites and the purposeless torture they suffered while there. Waterboarding was a favorite of the interrogators, but that wasn’t all they did. People taken who returned, came back broken and bearing scars they would carry the rest of their lives.

Josh Willard and Jennifer Winston were newspaper reporters for a large East Coast newspaper closed by government action. They were captured in a raid that grabbed many of their fellow reporters, who they didn’t expect to see again. Josh and Jennifer were sent directly to Camp 42, arriving on a day when the temperature hit 116 degrees and taken to the only air-conditioned place in it for trial. The trial lasted about 30 minutes and was less than perfunctory. There was an assigned counsel who had a stack of case files several feet tall in front of her and had no time to prepare anything for a defense, though it was apparent that was not her purpose. The government attorneys had well-prepared materials, including PowerPoints, to illustrate all the supposed crimes. The judge appeared not to be attending to the proceedings; it looked like she was listening to something else on headphones. When the prosecution finished, she asked if either Josh or Jennifer had anything to say; she cut them off before they even began. With a 20-year sentence at hard labor imposed immediately, prison scrubs were given, and they put them on. They were told that they wouldn’t need their old clothes anymore, and that they would be destroyed.

They were then taken to their bunks. They mixed men and women in the tents, but the guards were clear that fraternization among prisoners was not tolerated. They emphasized the among prisoners part and looked leeringly at Jennifer.

In their twenties and triathletes in their former lives, both Josh and Jennifer were very fit and handsome. He had short, blond hair, and she, long, dark, curly hair. They were both candidates for abuse from the outset by the repulsive guards who commanded them. Assigned more challenging work and put in riskier positions than most of the other prisoners, their days were strenuous. One guard put it to Jennifer that could change for both, if….

---------

First Time at the Black Site: Day 1

They didn’t understand that this work was tenderizing them for a visit to a black site. One morning, when they’d just awakened and were preparing for breakfast, such as it was, two men came into the tent, called their names, put burlap bags over their heads, and took them away to waiting vehicles. Their stay at the black site, they were told, would be about two weeks depending on how they helped the questioners. They were warned to be prepared to suffer a lot if they didn’t. What they found out, though, was that they were to suffer, regardless.

Once they arrived at the black site, they were taken to a room. Their shoes, socks and scrub tops were removed, leaving them in scrub bottoms and tee shirts. The operatives cuffed their hands behind their backs, and manacled their feet. They attached the cuffs to wide leather belts that were tightened around their waists.

A leash was attached to the belt and they were led into another room. There were two metal seats in the room, on which they were told to sit; their belts and manacles were strapped to the chairs' legs. The bags were pulled over their heads again, and they were told they’d be staying there until questioning started. They were also told that these would be their bags while they were at the site, every time they were at the site.

They felt, rather than saw, the lights in the room go out, and then they heard a hissing sound and felt steam filling the room. This continued for some time. Breathing through the burlap got to be challenging. The hissing finally stopped, and then ice-cold air blew into the room, causing the steam to condense and for them to get soaked as the temperature dropped and the steam condensed.

That continued for quite a while. Then the hissing started again, this time accompanied by loud clanging bells from all around them. When the steam treatment stopped, and the cold air began blowing again, the clanging sound stopped and was replaced by the sound of teeth chattering from loudspeakers.

The cycle repeated itself again and again. Until they both were shivering wrecks and passed out. They woke to ice-cold water being thrown on them by a couple men who unchained them from their chairs and told them to stand.

Time for dinner. Are you hungry? asked a man.

Yes. We haven’t eaten all day.

Well, some good news for you. You get to eat what we eat while you’re here. Not that crap that’s fed you in prison.

Their bags taken, they led them on leashes into a room with two chairs bolted to the floor where they were chained again. The men slid two trays onto the chairs’ arms and locked them in front of them. They set two bowls before them filled with a delightful smelling meat stew. With their hands bound behind their backs, it was clear they were to eat like dogs.

Eat up now. Get right into your bowls of food. We’ll come back and spray you down afterward. The men left the room laughing at them.

Jennifer and Josh looked at each other and then slowly bent their faces to the stew. At the end of the meal, it was in Jennifer’s long hair and all over both their fronts. They got to sit in the food until it dried, and then the men came back in.

Aww. You look gross. Didn’t your mothers teach you how to eat in polite company? said the one who appeared to be the leader. Let’s wash you down.

He walked over to a panel in the wall, opened a door, pulled out a fire hose, and turned a faucet in the wall. He turned to them and turned the hose on them, saturating them and holding them under it until they had to breathe, so taking in some water. After about ten minutes, he stopped and turned to shut off the faucet.

They removed the trays, unchained them from the chairs, put their wet, smelly bags on, and walked them out of the room, down a hallway to another cell. This room was the torture chamber. There were many whips and chains hanging from hooks on the walls, large chairs and wood frames with cuffs on them, chains hanging from the ceiling with collars at their ends, and, of course, a waterboard.

I think you know what this is, he said, pointing at the waterboard when he took the bags off their heads. The way this is going to work is that we’re going to tie one of you to the board, starting with you, and he pointed to Jennifer, "and we’re going to ask your partner some questions. Some we already know the answers to and others we want to find out about. If you don’t answer, cannot answer, or lie, and you won’t know what we know and what we don’t, your partner will get a 20-minute session on the board. How that works is we run water over your face until you gag, then we continue to pour for fifteen more seconds. We then wait for 20 seconds to start again. The same sequence is run repeatedly. Once we start, we’ll not stop until the 20 minutes expires. Understand?

Well, you don’t really need to.

They hooked one collar hanging from the ceiling around Josh’s neck and then took Jennifer over to the waterboard. She struggled as much as her bindings would allow, but these men were experts, and, in a few minutes,