J. Curtis: Calexit: The Anthology

“You mean no water at all?” Johnson seemed confused. “I had a long hot shower this morning.”

“You’re in the militia compound, Colonel. Everybody is on rationed water for drinking only except for you — and Luther, of course.”

“Okay, then that’s fine.”

“But we will run out of water long before the pumping stations come back on line, whether you take long showers or not. I think that’s the point. The emergency water tank was installed to provide a hedge in the event of an earthquake, not against a regional system that, from all accounts, was destroyed.”

Mike Sanchez chimed in, “Things are going to get ugly. When the power went out, swimming pools were no longer filtered, so people are sucking what water there is out of those algae sumps, toilet bowls, and hot water tanks.”

“What happens when all that water runs out?” Luther’s question was rhetorical. “The desert reclaims the LA Basin?”

“We can’t let that happen!” Johnson was suddenly feeling every bit the colonel and the military governor of Caesar Chavez State.

“Definitely not,” Luther echoed. “What are you going to do about it, Major Sanchez?”

“I’m going to the same meeting as you are. But we need to start thinking about relieving some of the militia of their duties. They’re sucking down the rationed water and once that’s out, we’re out of business altogether.”

“Before the present system was in place there were two or three thousand people here. Now there are fifteen million in the affected area, less those who have been killed in the rioting and looting and those who took the big bounce and left Cali.” Larry Marcus looked though his mirror. “It gets worse. We’re down to under a thousand gallons of gasoline in our storage tank and there’s none to be had outside of government rations. I called Sacramento and they said they hoped to have a truck to us within a month or two. They’re dealing with widespread shortages since the port facilities were sabotaged and ships off-shore can’t unload.”

“Who do they think did the sabotage?”

“They know who. The Navy did it before sailing over the horizon to the U.S. They blew the facility and sank a civilian tanker to block access. We don’t have the capacity to move the sunken ship and don’t have spare parts to fix what they damaged. The Navy did it in full view and there wasn’t anything that Cali could do about it.”

“It was supposed to be our navy.” Colonel Johnson muttered loudly and cast an eye at Luther. “You said that they would give us the ports and the ships, Luther.”

“I thought that they would,” Luther protested.

The meeting at the renovated coliseum took up a fraction of the seats. A man that none of them knew chaired the meeting, but President Newman presided and was clearly in charge. Given that the Los Angeles Basin was about to be unlivable, the militia would staff a redoubt at the Port of Los Angeles and would occupy the old Fort MacArthur area. Food, water and fuel would be brought in by ship to sustain them. Caesar Chavez State would relocate most of its personnel to Needles, Primm, Blythe and the California strip to the west of Yuma. Cali would try to supply them with necessities, but it was likely that the militia would have to live off the land for some time to come.

Mike whispered to Larry Marcus, “They’ll all defect across the border to the U.S.”

President Newman stood and walked to the lectern and looked at Major Mike Sanchez and Colonel Dorris Johnson, “You will shoot and kill anyone who is even suspected of planning to defect across the border. The U.S. is erecting a border wall as I speak across that portion of the Inland San Diego and Los Angeles area. We will build our own wall eventually. We must maintain order and must keep our people in Cali to rebuild what the U.S. is doing to us. Questions?”

“What about people in Southern Cali who have no water, food or power?” Colonel Johnson spoke for the group.

“I’m afraid that they’re on their own. Up north we have Lake Tahoe to drain but since the mechanism to send water south has been destroyed, we have no way of supporting you except by ship. With the ports damaged or blocked, the only way we can do that is by off-loading big ships to small ships and landing them. We’ll increase our capacity over time but right now things are stretched to just providing for the militia and special friends. We will make sure that the roads are open for anyone who wants to walk to Sacramento.”

Dorris Johnson, showing an uncharacteristically sound grasp of the situation attempted to clarify what he heard. “But if they walk to Sacramento, they’ll do it without food or water.”

President Newman shuffled uneasily and said, “Yes, that’s the situation, Colonel.”

The remainder of questions put to the president were presented by panderers who tried to ingratiate themselves with the new leader of the nation and he warmed to them.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Larry and Mike waited by the MRAP for Dorris Johnson and Luther, who never strayed far from his man. General Brown, the militia commandant for Southern Cali and two captains walked up to them and informed them that Colonel Johnson had taken ill and that Mike was to drop Larry Marcus at the San Pedro depot to begin organizing the defenses there. “Larry, consider yourself breveted to major. We’ll make it official within the week. The Fort MacArthur command is yours. We’ll change the name to Fort Newman in honor of the president but for now, we just need to set that up and to make that the new beachhead for Los Angeles. Mike, we need you to pack up what you can, while you still have fuel, and get your militia to the border with the U.S. You’ll be executive officer under Sheila Malik, the Colonel commanding that sector.”

“So we’re abandoning Los Angeles, General?” Mike Sanchez itched for a drink from the bottle in his bag in the truck and Larry saw him lick his lips thickly. All of it began to unravel and Mike read the tea leaves.

“Of course not. Major Marcus here is going to be holding down the fort, pardon the pun.”

Mike slapped Larry on the back, “He’s a good man, General!”

“Meanwhile, I’m moving my flag from Brentwood to Santa Barbara, where there are water wells that will keep the command supplied, and we can receive food shipments by sea.” Brown had the pained expression of a man weighed down with the chains of command. “Oprah is making her home in Montecito available for our use. We’ll make the regional headquarters there work as best we can.”

“But Oprah’s not visiting Cali?”

“Apparently there are no immediate plans for her to do so.”

CALEXIT

D+60

Enterprising members of the militia were buying property for water. It worked like this. There were literally millions of empty homes and you could move into any one of them. By transferring the deed to your house to the Militia, which divided them up, and relinquishing legal ownership, and squatting in another house of your choice, you could receive water that the militia had control over, remain in the area and barter for food, again from the militia, which controlled all of it for distribution as they saw fit.

When Larry Marcus arrived at Fort MacArthur, he found that the militia was a going concern and that warehouses on the waterfront had been annexed by the officers for the scavenged loot that they’d been swapping for food.

He didn’t stop the practice, but he drew the line at trading gasoline. It kept the militia loyal, if focused on personal gain, and determined to defend what they were continuing to accumulate.

The officers didn’t object too strenuously when he walked the warehouses and selected his cut of the purloined goods.