December 12, 2007
William Willis

After the disasters of the previous months, there had been a near total breakdown of law and order. It started with the shortages of food and fuel. Some people took matters into their own hands. Especially near the earthquake and hurricane disaster areas. At first local authorities tried to restore order, with some degree of success. Then matters were made worse by the shortage of tax money from sales of food, fuel, and loss of income tax revenues from the affected areas, as well as other losses. With damages on this unimagined scale, all governments, city, county, state, and national had no choice but to cut back on all social services to pay for the recovery effort. In the end, the only thing left was Social Security. Even that had to be drastically reduced. With the loss of entitlement programs, many families found themselves forced to care for their elderly members, and those who had depended on those programs, suddenly had all support cut out from under them. It didn't take long for the riots to start.

Smaller towns and cities didn't have much of a problem putting down these disturbances, but with the war in the middle east still on-going and many members of the National Guard involved with the fighting, the riots continued for some time. The national government went to the U.N. asked for, and received, troops from foreign governments to help quell the riots. Russia was more than happy to supply more than the number of men, and materiel's asked for. It was butchery, pure and simple. Lightly armed civilians going against well trained and heavily armed troops, in body armor, were grossly out matched. Many of the rioters had expected these troops to behave as American troops would, with some degree of restraint. The were wrong. Thousands died. A dusk to dawn curfew was imposed nation wide. Anyone caught out after dark was shot. No exceptions, no excuses, they just died.

With this kind of "law enforcement" the riots ended in short order. Many people were actually grateful for the peace that was imposed. At least until they realized the amount of freedom they had lost. But by then it was too late to do anything about it.

What followed next was meant to help keep order. The government decided that, in order to maintain the peace, all dissent had to be eliminated. Political protests were banned. Soon any and almost all forms of free expression were also banned. The choice was to support the government, or go to the camps, to live with the rest of the "disruptor's" of society. Life expectancy in the camps was rumored to be quite short. Mainly because what happened inside the wire was largely ignored. It some of the larger camps, it was even encouraged. Less people to feed that way. But now, a nation wide sweep of any and all who might "cause problems" would be picked up and interned. Those who had not turned in excess food after things had started to happen, those who had not turned in their weapons during the disturbances, those whose religious beliefs didn't fall in line with what the government found acceptable, would all be arrested.

At first there was concern that there wouldn't be enough room for them all in the camps. Then the order came down to empty the camps, without releasing any of the prisoners. Gunfire was heard all over the country as this order was carried out.

The Chief of Police was bothered by the thought of having his men doing the round-ups at first. He worried that, if necessary, they wouldn't shoot, or perhaps they might allow some of their friends to escape the dragnet. However the General from Washington assured him it wouldn't be a problem.

"My friend. Don't concern yourself with this. We will use my men, not yours, and they are well trained. They will do whatever is needed. All your men need to do is make sure that those we put in detention stay there."

"What about after it's done? there might be problems with the ones who have family in detention."

"Not a problem. We will make sure any who have trouble with what we must do won't be in the way."

The Chief somehow didn't find this comforting, but then again, after it was over, he would retire and move away from all of this mess, with the promised reward for his assistance.

"My friend, your reward will be something more than you can imagine, I assure you." He had been told. He wondered about that. He could imagine quite a lot.