Things calmed down. The Bitch asked for Gordon's resignation. He told her to stick it. And a bunch of the brass sent word through their contacts that if Gordon left, the Society of Cincinnatus was going into abeyment for "the duration of the current emergency."
On October 29, the last working day before the week of the election, Executive Order 5196 was issued ordering a "suspension of all Federal elections for the duration of the current emergency." At the same time, the news media released "secret testimony" indicating that Carson had been involved in "redirection of essential disaster relief material." It was on every remaining network and front page news in every major newspaper.
On Tuesday morning, November 2, 2020, people started lining up, early, at the polls. Most places it was snowing or freezingly cold. Right down to the bottom of "Sector Three." It didn't matter. People lined up in droves. Soup kitchens shifted over to polling places.
Almost every polling place in the U.S. opened on time. And the areas that did not? Well, they were the ones that were controlled by very hard-core factions of the Democratic party. Das (feminine) Fuhrer had said that there were to be no more elections and so there vere no more elections! Alles in ordnung!
The census of 2020 had never been completed. Nobody was absolutely sure what the population of the U.S. was. There were some areas where there were questions about voting. People had moved around, a lot. Documentation was sketchy. There were a lot of "questionable" ballots that had to be set aside for determination. A lot.
Things were not as efficient and fast as they'd been before the Plague. Ballots were primarily paper. Returns were slow coming in.
Warrick ordered the military to shut down polling places. She also ordered local police to do so. She went on television under the Emergency Broadcast rules and ordered it.
Flash Order CJCS Number 2187-20, OpPlan Open Polls, ordered local Regular and National Guard troops, by unit down to platoons (it had been written months before), to move to polling places and "ensure security and continued function of same." In any area where polling was not open they were to "find local polling officers and escort them and any necessary materials for polling to the designated polling office and ensure function of same until the normal close of polling."
Mutiny? Oh, hell, yeah.
Coup? No. That would have been what was contemplated for November 3 if the vote didn't go off.
Flawless? Not hardly. Nothing had been close to flawless since 2018 and that was a pretty fucked up year all things considered.
Good? Good enough, anyway?
Yeah.
The news media held its ground as long as it could. It was still declaring for Warrick when Army numbers showed California had gone to Carson. So had every other state in the nation except Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Carson was still unavailable to comment. He was in jail.
Warrick refused to concede. The vote was "illegal." The person elected a "criminal."
(Warrick, by the way, was one of the people to first castigate against "the politics of personal destruction.")
Not even the SCOTUS could take that one. November 23, when all the states had certified their results, they declared the vote valid and binding. 8–1. They ordered the release of the President-Elect on a 5–4 vote for.
Warrick said that nothing was going to change. She ordered the arrest of the CJCS and the members of SCOTUS, all eight, that had certified the vote.
The Capitol Police ordered to arrest the CJCS went to the Pentagon, took one look at the troops guarding the doors, and went away.
So did the ones that went to the Supreme Court building.
So did the ones ordered to arrest more Republican congressmen and senators.
We'd turned over most of the emergency resupply duties. The troops were just sitting there. Might as well camp out on the doorsteps of various "distinguished persons." Hell, we even had teams around the Democrats. Fair and balanced and all that.
The Secret Service brought Carson to his home in DC. He gave a very nice acceptance speech. Finally. He also mentioned that he'd been well treated during his "unfortunate stay in federal custody" and was pretty humorous about it. You got the impression he'd been at a resort.
Warrick threw the Secret Service out of the White House. She brought in a private security firm to protect her. She also never left from before the vote until January 20th.
Food was getting very scarce. Nobody was talking about it in the news.
The Carson "transition team" got underway. The word was out that as soon as Carson was in place and things were relatively stable, the Joint Chiefs were all going to resign. Carson wasn't having any of it. But they were pretty adamant. They'd performed a sort of de facto coup. And they weren't going to continue with power under those conditions. It couldn't be seen as a good thing. They were not only going to resign, they were going to forego any government service for the rest of their lives. They were going to disappear and live off their meager (for the job they do, anyway) pensions.
I felt really sorry for Carson in a way. He had a lot of picking up to do and there wasn't any good news in the near future. Projections for 2021 and 2022 were for colder and colder temperatures. Ice age here we come.
December we started distributing Kula Bars and the public view of the Army hit an all-time low. Everybody knew we'd saved the election but . . . Kula Bars? Fuck 'em. It kept people alive.
We were still in the "taking care of everybody" business and starting to get sick of it. We wanted things to start getting back to any semblance of normal so we could get back to learning how to kill people and break things. That didn't look to be happening any time soon.
India sent us grain shipments. India. My grandmother used to say "Eat all your food. There are starving children in India." By then there weren't starving children in India. But there had been in her memory and Grandma was a little besotted by then. Back when she was no more than middle aged, we'd been sending grain to India to help out with their famine.
Now they were sending us grain. We made it into Kula Bars. When they found out, they got a little testy. Till we explained the rationale.
Oh, India was an interesting case. But this isn't the time for that. Maybe later.
January 20th. Inauguration Day. Cold as a witch's fucking tit. I was part of the security. I know.
Carson stood up, raised his right hand and then let loose one hell of a speech. He didn't even use old catchphrases that were perfect for the conditions. The closest he got was his "continued hard times that will require great sacrifice. We will face them together as Americans and triumph over all that stands against us."
The guy had been an actor for a long time. He knew how to deliver a speech. He made even the weakest phrases ring with conviction that was so solid you could cut it and serve it as food. Better than Kula Bars, anyway. Could barely break those with your teeth. (Another "feature," not a bug.)