“Good evening,” he said, using the accent from another of the movies; a stupid high-class Englishman. “How are y’all?”
There was a series of mutterings. Some of the men, he realised with annoyance, were drunk already, clinking bottles under their arms. “We are going to go into Darktown,” he said, using the local name for the black section of Salvation. “Once there, we are going to search it from top to bottom for guns, which niggers are not allowed to have.”
There were chuckles. One of the prime actions, after the civil war had ended, had been to keep weapons out of black hands. “If we find any, the nigger in question is to be arrested,” Buckley said. “Any resistance, shoot to kill. I’ll square it with the state; we all know what duffers niggers are with guns.”
“Probably shot themselves while trying to escape,” a clearly drunken man said, laughing unpleasantly. “Come on, Sheriff; don’t we get any fun with the dark women?”
Buckley scowled at him. Rape was an unacknowledged way of keeping the blacks down; surely it proved how inferior they were that no black man would go to the defence of a raped black woman? There were nearly a dozen mixed-race children in Darktown alone, proof of the policy.
“Later, perhaps,” he said, knowing that some would certainly take the opportunity. “Now, is everyone ready?”
“Yes,” they shouted, and followed him through the streets into Darktown. Buckley made a face; Darktown stank. It smelt of houses and of unclean people, pigs and swamps and Africa. Not given to self-honestly, Buckley couldn’t acknowledge that his side of Salvation smelt exactly the same.
“Niggers, come out,” he shouted, firing once into the air. “Come out or we’ll shoot!”
Some doors opened; black faces peered out. “Come out into the square,” Buckley bellowed. “Come out, now!”
Slowly, reluctantly, clearly terrified, they came forth, standing in the square in their nightclothes. Some of his men ogled the women; their tongues hanging out. Buckley glared at them until they resumed guard position.
“Under the authority vested in me by the state, I am here to search your premises for guns,” Buckley announced. “If any of you want to make it easier, declare your weapons now.”
One young man began to protest; he was shot through the head. The blacks shifted nervously – Buckley could smell their fear and urine – but they didn’t move under the noses of the weapons.
“Search that house first,” Buckley commanded, detailing off men. Four men had to watch the blacks; the others went in pairs. Some of them, he was certain, would see it as an opportunity to steal; by the looks on their faces, some of the blacks knew it as well. “Move it!”
A single gunshot rang out, followed by another. “What happened?” Buckley demanded, lifting his rifle. “Answer me!”
“Nigger bitch shot Dawson,” one of his men said. “She had hidden under the bed and…”
One of the black men threw a stone. Buckley fired without thinking; the entire posse fired. The fight was short and savage, but there was no other possible outcome. Five minutes after the fighting had begun, the blacks lay dead.
Dawson, clutching his shoulder, cheered. “We whipped them good,” he hollered. Buckley felt sick for the first time. “We own this place!”
“Check all of the other buildings,” Buckley ordered, keeping his gorge down with an effort. “Round the rest up, then torch the buildings.”
The White House
Washington DC, USA
1st June 1941
The headlines of the New York Times were clearly a mixture between two equally important subjects; BLACK OUTRAGES IN SALVATION and BRITISH SPACE DISASTER competed for space. For once, the paper made no excuses for the behaviour of the white inhabitants, despite taking a pro-white slant. The devastation was simply out of all proportion to any offence.
“We haven’t seen anything like this since the civil war,” Roosevelt said. He sounded vaguely stunned. Ambassador King felt burning rage growing within his breast; had he never considered some of the consequences of words compared to actions? What did truth; justice and the American way mean if you were black?
“The local sheriff was informed that the blacks were hiding subversives within their town and organised a posse to investigate,” Hoover said. His self-importance was more than King could bear at this time in the morning. “The blacks opened fire and…”
“And an entire population got slaughtered,” King snapped. “Do you have any sense of how important this is?”
Hoover ignored him, speaking directly to the President. “This is the direct result of a campaign of subversion,” he said. “All across America, subversives are meeting and plotting the fall of American democracy. Mr President, you must sign a bill authorising martial law across the South and end the insurgency once and for all.”
Without waiting for a reply, he swept out of the room, meeting Tolson outside for a late lunch. I hope that he bites your cock off, King thought with a sudden bitter anger, before turning back to face Roosevelt. The President looked older; his Vice President, Truman, was watching him with concern.
“How do we handle something like this?” Roosevelt asked. His voice was wavering. “Everything was nice and peaceful until you people arrived.”
“It was nothing of the sort,” Truman said. He’d been amused to discover that his actions on racial integration had made him a hero to the black population. “This problem has been growing for a while.”
“Did you know that the HUAC has started to plan inquires into shutting down the Internet?” Roosevelt asked. “Hoover – the faggot bastard – has been calling in every marker he’s owed, just to have the Internet attacked.”
The President’s sudden vehemence shocked King. “The Southern Governors – and some of the Northern ones – are demanding new laws to control…”
“Uppity niggers,” King snapped.
“As you wish,” Roosevelt said. “They want the entire region placed under martial law and the insurgency rooted out root and branch.” He glared down at the list of incidents; they were coming in with more and more violence, damaging lives all across the south.
“Not unless you can do it for the entire country,” Truman said wryly. The riot in Chicago had been brutal. “We have to win in Norway and then against Germany.”
“Hoover has been going on and on about communists,” Roosevelt said. “He thinks that the Russians have been supplying aid to the blacks.”
“There’s no proof of that,” King pointed out quickly.
“Who needs proof when Hoover is around?” Truman asked. “The fairy has a handle on half of Congress.”
“And he’s still talking to MacArthur,” Roosevelt said. “I have been thinking about offering him a combat command, rather than the training post at Fort Hood. Unfortunately… well, you know what the regulars think of him.”
King nodded. By now, the rumours had risen to MacArthur being in the pay of the Japanese, selling out his men for a comfy life in the future. “It would be one way of getting rid of him,” King said wryly.
“Then everyone would say that I’d sent him off to die, instead of leaving him in the training billet,” Roosevelt said. “Damn it; I wish I knew what they were doing.”
Colonel Palter, though no fault of his own, had found himself assigned to General Eisenhower as an unofficial aide. His experience at the countless little wars within the Middle East, and Central Asia, had been very helpful, although some of his ideas hadn’t been. No one in 2015, except the historians, had really understood just how limited their capabilities really were.