The Darkness of Night

Author's Note: This story might just be a little prophetic, I wrote it way back in 2014. There is no sex in this story, just fiction.

Copyright © 2014 - 2023 - This is an original work by Zeb Carter and is protected under copyright by U.S. copyright law. It is only submitted at Literotica.Com and any submission to any other site has not been authorized by the Author.

With the coming of winter, we were indoors more than any other time of the year. Year, it was the thirtieth year after the end of the world as it had been known. It was 2053 and the world was experiencing another little ice age. We had migrated south from our summer home in the Wisconsin Territory, where we farmed our one hundred acres.

Here in our winter home in the Southern Missouri Territory, we farmed a fifty-acre plot with a great view of the ocean. It had taken my parents a long time to acquire our first fifty-acre grant of land. When the new government had federalized all the land in the Midwestern Territories and started the Great Land Grant Lottery of 2025, my parents stood in line for three days. They were the last ones allowed in to sign their names for a land grant at the county seat of Lufkin County in the Wisconsin Territory.

Until then, everyone was just squatting on land, claiming all they could as their own. It had been a struggle since the original government had collapsed in 2025. Back then, I had been a baby raised by my parents in my grandparent's home. Grandma actually raised me and was my best friend for most of my young life. I remember her like it was yesterday. My grandfather, as I remember had been a kind man, set in his ways, but wise.

I do not remember much else from my days as a toddler except my grandfather holding me when I cried and carrying me upstairs to spend time with both him and Grandma. I think I was ten years old when my grandfather died. I remember crying a lot then. My older sister has told me some of what I relate here, my parents have told some, the rest I discovered on my own from various sources.

It was 2008 the presidential elections were to be held in November. I was two at the time so none of this meant anything to me. All I cared about was eating, playing and getting held by someone. In 2009, the new president took the oath of office. Six months after he took office, New York City disappeared in a flash of light. A commercial jetliner carrying several small nuclear devices crashed in Central Park. On impact, the devices detonated. Four million people ceased to exist.

The new President's response, negotiations, and from what I could learn, the government intelligence agencies knew exactly who had bombed our country, but our Commander in Chief only wanted to talk, no plans for retaliation of any kind. Now I am not a violent girl, but if someone punches me in the nose, I punch back, hard.

His lack of willingness to hit back showed his weakness to our enemy, causing the city of San Francisco as the next city nuked. The people were outraged. The people made a demand for a recall of the president. Some of the Armed Forces were planning to move on Washington D.C. The Senate was in closed session when the capital building crumbled to the ground in shards. The government was in turmoil. The Secret Service walked off the job. The Chief of Staff had the President arrested. The Vice President left town for the same reasons that the arrest of the president took place.

From what I could learn, this was very irregular. Never in our history as a country had an arrest of a sitting president by the military took place nor have they not allowed the Vice President to assume the presidency. The populous and the military petitioned the Supreme Court to decide the matter. They found the president negligent in the performance of his duties as Commander in Chief of our Nation. That is when the Second Civil War of the United States of America started.

My family fled to Kentucky. An isolated farm in the western part of the state, it had been in my grandmother's family for hundreds of years. My grandfather started to build an arsenal of weapons. My father helped. We had a garden and a milk cow, some chickens and a couple of pigs. We were fairly well off for the first couple of years. Then those others came.

After that, it was a battle to keep the livestock alive. They destroyed the garden as the civil war had come to our neck of the woods. We tried to stay out of it, but when a group of the DNC showed up at the house demanding that we join them in the fight against the RNC, my grandfather refused. Twenty-three men died that day. My Grandma wounded along with my big sister, was in bad shape.

Three men survived out of twenty-three. My grandfather told them to leave and never come back. They told him they would be back with more men. He shot all three as they walked away. My father and grandfather worked all night digging graves and burying the dead. My grandfather patched up my sister and Grandma as best he could. Then he and my father prepared for the worst. They knew someone would come looking for those men, they just did not know when.

When they came, he came alone. He rode in on a horse. My grandfather met him, gun in hand, as he rode up. The man kept his hands in front of him as he talked to my grandfather.

"Mister?" the man asked.

"It doesn't matter," my grandfather answered.

"Well then, I was wondering if you had seen twenty or so men come through here about three weeks ago?"

"Yep."

"Do you know what happened to them or which way they went?"

"Yep."

The man's hand moved, my grandfather had his shotgun pointed at the man's head so fast that my eyes clicked. The man froze in place.

"I see. They tried to force you... to join our cause?"

"You could say that."

"Did they all die?"

"Yep."

"You killed twenty-three heavily armed men by yourself?"

"Nope."

"You're a man of few words I see."

Grandpa stood mute still aiming his shotgun at the stranger on the horse. The stranger waited, looking expectantly at Grandpa. Then his shoulders sagged.

"Were any of yours hurt?"

"Yep."

"Do they need medical care?"

"Nope."

"If they do, we have a doctor stationed in Marion. You're welcome to stop by. They will see to anyone who needs help. I will tell the recruiters to leave you alone from now on. Although I can't speak for the RNC you understand?"

"Yep."

"Well then, I'll be off." The stranger slowly picked up the reins and turned the horse to leave.

"Thanks," Grandpa said quietly as he watched the man leave.

The stranger stuck his hand in the air and waved as he rode off down the road. We never saw him or anymore DNC recruiters.

The fighting did come close to our place and a small battle took place in the woods just to the east of the house. My Grandpa had us all in the cellar until the skirmish finished. Then everyone except Grandma, my sister and I went out into the woods to see if there were any wounded. Those they found we patched up and took care of.

It did not matter to us which side they were on, we took care of them until they could leave on their own or until a unit of one side or the other passed by. Soon the fighting near us and to the north moved on or ended. The fighting continued in other parts of the country for a spell.

My sister healed and was back doing chores besides the rest of us. Grandma was not so lucky. She took several months to heal, which almost depleted our stockpile of medical supplies, with no chance of getting more. The fighting continued for several more years. Waxing and waning across the country.

I heard that the only place there was no fighting was west of the Rocky Mountains. Why they didn't join in, no one could tell me, and no way for me to find out on my own as the Western Territories declared their independence two years after the civil war started and closed their borders to all from the east.

At that time, the United States of America was dead. The fighting continued for another three long years. Three long years of brother against brother, father against son. The end result, families broken apart by political rhetoric. Outsiders started the turmoil then stood back and watched as the country they despised tore itself apart. It was a miracle anyone survived the fighting.

After the civil war ended with no discernible winner, the country was divided into three territories each an independent entity. No longer would someone in Washington D.C. decide the fate of the people in the central plains or west coast, so my father and grandfather say.

As for me, I grew up and joined the Midwestern Armed Forces to ensure that what happened would never happen again. I miss my grandfather and grandmother to this day but remember what they taught me.