And Thy Mother Read online

  Three months after Kirkpatrick took office, the nation was once again without a vice-president, as he succumbed to what was officially ruled “accidental drowning while surfing.” Never mind that the area on the Atlantic coast where he “drowned” did not have suitable waves for surfing, even for beginners. It was irrelevant that the man would never try to surf, since he couldn’t even swim. The message was clear—even though they still called themselves the Secret Service, a North American version of the “Gestapo” was up and running. After this, there were no further challenges to Thompson’s decrees.

  While the search for a cure went on, with little success, Thompson legislated several more “stop-gap” measures supposedly designed to keep men and women from accidentally coming in contact. In reality, these were the first halting steps in his grand plan. Like the anti-Jewish “Nuremberg Laws” of Nazi Germany, they involved the reduction of women’s personal freedoms, and became stricter and more comprehensive as time went on. And time did go on, as the “temporary” martial-law period, and Thompson’s stranglehold on the government, stretched from months into years. Along the way, both the legislative power of Congress and the Constitution itself were permanently scrapped, and Thompson gave himself the right to hand-pick his successor, but with so many other things occupying the national consciousness, hardly anyone noticed, as he had hoped.

  His campaign to reduce women to second-class status began modestly. At first, they were banned from so-called “traditionally male venues,” places like bars and sporting events, where men were more likely to be drunk, more apt to touch a woman and probably die for it. After a few months, that concept was enormously expanded to include any public place where men might be. This included movie houses, voting booths (not that that mattered so much anymore), shopping centers, restaurants...

  Vastly more significant, it also included the workplace. With a single stroke of his pen, the President made it illegal for women to work outside the home. This had enormous repercussions in the business sector, leading to an immediate economic downturn, but Thompson did not care about that. His control over public life was increasing, almost by the hour, and that was all that mattered to him.

  One other arena was fatally impacted by this latest law. The search for a cure had sputtered due to continual budget cuts and layoffs, since it remained low on Thompson’s list of priorities. With the end of the female work force, it finally died because, ironically, most of the best researchers in this field were women. Without them, the men had no hope of success.

  The next logical legal step, now that women had nowhere to go, was to make it illegal for women to leave home without a special pass. The application form required to obtain this pass was continually revised, made longer and more complicated. The form had to be approved by a government agency, which was by no means guaranteed. As time went on, that approval became even less likely.

  Next, it was required that this form be submitted by, and issued to, a male, as if the woman suddenly required a “responsible” sponsor. If the woman had a husband or father to assume that role, fine; if not... too bad.

  Shortly after that, it no longer mattered if the woman had a male partner or not. Less than fifteen months after its introduction, Thompson phased out the pass completely, and in less than another year, he removed the need for one. He officially prohibited women from leaving their homes at all.

  Having confined them to their houses, he now removed “their houses” from them. Thompson made it illegal for women to own property, and this had several immediate ramifications. Women could not collect life insurance benefits from their husband’s death, if there were any to collect (an unlikely event), nor could they inherit the property of the deceased male.

  “Amazing, absolutely amazing,” said Mike, shaking his head and pacing back and forth.

  “Amazing, yes, but in one respect not so unusual,” Jim responded. “History has shown that one of the critical things a dictator needs to maintain himself in power is to have a group of people serve as a focus for the country’s hate and frustration. Hitler had the Jews, for Stalin and Mao Tse-tung it was the non-Communists—and, it seems, Thompson used women.”

  “Let’s see what else we have on here,” Mike said, touching a few keys…

  Despite all this, men were reportedly still dying. There was now only one place where the sexes ever had regular contact—the home. The President now turned his attention there.

  The death toll was still too high, he said—a noble-sounding concern had it come from anyone else’s mouth. In his mind, though, it had nothing to do with suffering and death. All it meant was that his control of every phase of American life was not yet total. Women still had too much freedom. They had not suffered enough.

  He vowed to remedy that.

  His next move elevated his madness to previously uncharted heights, and in the process broke a formerly sacrosanct barrier—the separation of Church and State.

  In 2025, President Thompson declared marriage illegal. He also proclaimed all marriages currently in force to be annulled. This outraged many people but, without former President Winslow or anyone like him, their opposition lacked unity and was quickly crushed. Surprisingly, the Catholic Church, long a bastion of male domination, was quick to agree that this was necessary.

  So, within three years of the outbreak of the virus, the situation was simple.

  Women could not work, could not go to a store, a movie, a ball game, a friend’s house, a wedding—anything.

  They could not leave their homes. For any reason. Ever.

  With no job and no husband, they had no financial or emotional support, no property, and no one obligated to provide any of these things. Moreover, being unequal to men in the letter of the law, women had no legal recourse, should anything happen to them.

  And the police knew it. They were authorized, by decree, to use “any measures, up to and including deadly force” to enforce what were commonly called the “separate and unequal” laws.

  Women were now totally at the mercy of the male sex. And the male sex took full advantage of that.

  Thanks to President Thompson and these statutes, in the early decades of the twenty-first century, scenes like this became all too familiar...

  It was a Wednesday. Just a typical day at the office.

  Officers Chet Dillon and Keith Bryant were on patrol. In addition to their handguns, they had a shotgun and an assault rifle in the back seat, and another piece of weaponry in the trunk. Each man had three extra clips for his pistol on his belt, along with several hand grenades. They carried no handcuffs.

  Their first call was a request for backup. A woman had been seen running in the park before dawn, and had been chased home. Now she was refusing to answer the door. The other two officers took the front, Dillon and Bryant went around to the back. At the signal, both doors were broken down. With guns drawn, they quickly searched the first floor. Advancing up the stairs, they found the suspect cowering in a back bedroom. Bryant advanced into the room while the other three kept their weapons trained on her.

  “Why were you in the park this morning?” he demanded. Good police procedure, he thought. Don’t ask, were you there, which shows doubt — ask, WHY were you there, which gives the victim no choice but to confess.

  “Well… I was... um” she stammered.

  “Why did you run?”

  “You... were chasing me,” she whispered.

  “Why didn’t you answer the door for these gentlemen?” Her last chance.

  “Uh... I didn’t... that is, I…”

  Bryant turned back to his colleagues. “Uncooperative,” he said, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder. He moved out of the room. Three shots rang out, one from each gun.

  Later, they were passing a house when a movement caught Dillon’s eye. He pulled to the side of the road. Both men got out of the car and stood in front of the house, looking in the picture window. Dillon said, “Look at that,” pointing to the woman in the living room. He
sighed, and went back to the car. When he came back, he had the .20-gauge shotgun in his hands.

  He walked up to the window, loaded a shell into the chamber, and fired. The deafening roar of the gun drowned out the sound of breaking glass, and the screams of the woman who caught most of the charge in the chest and head. She was blown back onto the couch, which quickly became stained with her blood.

  On the way back to the patrol car, he mentioned to Bryant that this house belonged to his friend Brad Allen. “That woman was his wife, back when.”

  “What’d she do?” Bryant asked, getting into the car.

  “I’ve visited Brad many times,” answered Dillon, “often enough to know that her side of the house was on the right. She was in the wrong room.”

  “Yeah, but Brad’s not home right now, right?” Bryant asked.

  “Your point being…?”

  “Well, if he ain’t there, what difference does it make where she is in the house?”

  “Think about it. What if she touches something of his and he gets infected with that disease she’s got? What then?”

  “Yeah,” Bryant countered, “but, no man’s ever been infected by that thing.”

  “Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it can’t happen. I ain’t willing to take that chance—are you?”

  “I see your point,” Bryant conceded as he got into the patrol car.

  Another call came in, this one reporting that a woman had killed her former husband, and then barricaded herself and the body in his house. They drove to the site and found three other cars already there.

  Rick Danvers, the officer in charge, was trying to determine the best way to flush the woman out. Various ideas were suggested and discarded.

  “Does this guy have any kids?” Bryant asked.

  “No boys,” said another cop. “A girl or two, though.”

  “Oh, well then,” said Danvers, dismissing the subject, “why are we wasting time on this? Dillon, have you got...?”

  “Right here, Lieutenant,” he said, reaching into the trunk of his car. He came back with a rocket launcher. Danvers took it and pointed it at the house.

  “Get down!” he shouted, as the rest of the cops dove behind their cars. He pulled the trigger, and the rocket sailed off the launcher, crashed through the door and exploded with a sound like muffled thunder. For a moment, the entire house seemed to lift off its foundation, then a gaping hole was blown through the roof, and the rest of the house crashed down in a burning pile of rubble.

  “Gotta set an example,” said Dillon.

  “Yep. I bet no woman on this block tries that barricade trick again,” said Danvers as they all prepared to leave.

  Late that afternoon, they came upon a man standing on the sidewalk, leveling a rifle at a house. They stopped, and Bryant reached behind him for their own automatic weapon. As they approached him, they looked to see where he was aiming, and saw a woman standing in the doorway, obviously in the center of the man’s sights. She had her young daughter with her.

  The cops asked him what he was doing. “I don’t want that woman coming any closer than that,” he said, never removing his eye from the telescope on his rifle.

  “We appreciate your concern, sir,” said Dillon politely, “but maybe you should let the professionals take over now.” After a moment’s hesitation, the man lowered his gun.

  Dillon turned toward the house. “Lady, you go on, get back inside now, and everything—”

  Just then, the little girl’s attention was drawn to some flowers, and a butterfly sitting on one. She took off down the sidewalk, trying to catch the bug. Without thinking, her mother called her name and ran after her. Toward the policemen, and the guy with the rifle.

  Bryant raised the AK-47 and fired a two-second burst, sweeping the walkway as he did so. The woman was staggered by almost a dozen rounds before falling into the flower bed. The four-year-old girl caught three herself, and died instantly. Her mother was still clinging to life when the cops left moments later... but not for long.

  Just a typical day at the office.

  But there was even more to come.

  Like most megalomaniacs, the President could not comprehend an opinion that differed from his own. He was convinced that his laws against women were for the public good; since he understood this, therefore everyone else would, too, and obey without question. He assumed that when a woman was arrested for a crime, she would just surrender herself and calmly go off to whatever fate awaited her. It genuinely surprised him to learn that when women felt unjustly arrested, and knew that death awaited them, they would usually resist—sometimes violently. Whenever a woman had to be taken down, very often she would take refuge in a house, or a car. A man’s house or car.

  And the men didn’t like that. They saw the need to catch a runaway woman, but complained that it resulted too often in their property being damaged or destroyed. When a woman sought shelter in a house, very often the police had to shoot out the windows, or fire tear gas, or break down the door, or even in some extreme cases burn down or blow up the whole house. If she fled by car, then the tires might be shot out, or she would crash it or roll it, or the police would fire at the gas tank and incinerate it (and, of course, the woman).

  And there were those nasty blood stains everywhere.

  Cleaning up after these police actions was becoming a major nuisance, the men whined. The President needed to do something about it.

  The economy was another area which required his attention, for it was in dire straits. The female work force was gone, by decree. Female-owned businesses, which had employed a large number of men, had to either sell out (which was rarely done), or fold up completely, the much more common alternative. Female-oriented companies found themselves with drastically reduced sales, and consequently much smaller work forces, as men regained total control of the purse strings. Unemployment among men was at a fifty-year high, and men were complaining about that, too.

  Thompson heard their pleas and sympathized with their plight. He decided that it was time for the second phase of his great Plan.

  It was very late when the men reached the end of the computer files. The two officers were simultaneously horrified and mesmerized by the story. They were learning things that had never even been hinted at in history books. It was astounding, unbelievable... and unfinished. They wanted—needed—to know the rest.

  CHAPTER 17

  Another early morning, but this day did not start out very promising at all.

  Jim had turned off his cell phone while they had been watching their video last night, to conserve his battery. When he turned it on, almost immediately a text message appeared, from General Chambers. As Jim had feared, the Fourth would not be moved to the requested location. In fact, it was being recalled to base, and the sighting of the “foreign soldiers” was re-classified as a “false lead.”

  “Looks like your gut was right yet again,” Mike commented, reading over Jim’s shoulder.

  “Unfortunately,” Jim agreed.

  The explanation cited the standing order that “no Military Unit shall, at any time, conduct any type of activity, including Combat, within ten miles of any portion of the Wall.” In addition, it seemed the “top brass” had some “serious questions” for Colonel Parker. He and Captain Wilkins were ordered to return home “without delay.”

  “Easier said than done,” Mike said ruefully.

  “I wouldn’t do that, even if we had wheels,” Jim responded, as he started writing a text message of his own. “They probably want to ‘reassign’ me, like they did with Jansen.”

  “Chambers must have sent that message just in case we survived yesterday’s ‘reassignment’,” Mike noted dryly.

  “Chambers doesn’t know anything about this,” Jim responded. “He’s just passing messages for Four-Star, while that man is busy trying to kill us. Those goons he sent yesterday were expendable—he knew they were no match for us. We won’t be so lucky next time… and guaranteed, there
will be a ‘next time’. Now they want us to ‘come home without delay’? I step foot on that base, I’m a dead man. That ain’t happening.”

  “So, you’re gonna disobey a direct order, then.”

  “They already think I’m a capital criminal,” Jim answered, as he hit the ‘Send’ button on his phone. “What are they gonna do—shoot me twice?”

  They gathered their gear and walked back to the road and the useless hulk which had been Mike’s car. On the way, they commented on Chambers’ reference to that particular standing order, one which they both knew well.

  “First of all,” Mike began, “it doesn’t even apply. The location you pointed to is at last twelve miles from the Wall, so why did the general even mention it?”

  “It’s just a convenient excuse, from his alleged superior ‘Four-Star’, to not give me what I asked for. They could always say something like, ‘our rough estimate put it within the restricted zone, so we had to deny the request’, or some shit like that.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Mike agreed. “Their coordinate tracking is at least as good as ours.”

  As they continued walking, Jim spoke again. “You know, I’ve never understood that order, especially from a purely military standpoint. I mean, if an Army unit is pinned down by an enemy and finds itself within ten miles of that thing,” indicating the Wall behind them, “what are they supposed to do? Tell the enemy, hey, sorry, we gotta move, ‘cause the President says we can’t fight on this turf?”

  “I can’t really see that happening,” Mike said.

  “Me neither. That’d be like a boxer cornering his opponent and then letting him out, for the sake of ‘good sportsmanship’,” Jim added.

  “So,” Mike answered, “I guess the only choices would be to fight on in defiance of the order, or… surrender.”