bookrandom Chapter 947 Backlash (4)
Chapter 947 Backlash (4)
[Time]: Autumn 1956, seventy-two hours after the outbreak of the Great Turmoil in the United States.
[Location]: Multiple locations in the United States
Scranton, Texas, Route 3 checkpoint
The gray sky hung low, as if it might collapse at any moment. The air smelled of unburnt diesel fuel, mixed with an unsettling acrid odor.
Two patrol cars bearing the Texas Police Department logo were overturned in a roadside ditch.
The front of the vehicle emitted wisps of black smoke, and the red and blue police lights flashed intermittently before finally going out with a hissing sound.
Several young state troopers took off their uniform jackets, revealing only sweat-soaked shirts underneath.
They weren't maintaining order; instead, they crouched in the roadside bushes with their heads in their hands. Even the rustling of leaves in the autumn wind made their hands holding batons tremble.
On the national highway, the asphalt surface is no longer the domain of vehicles.
An endless convoy is slowly crawling southward.
That's neither a military vehicle nor a logistics truck.
Those were thousands of family pickup trucks, agricultural tractors, and even heavy-duty dump trucks used for transporting coal that looked quite old.
Every vehicle was packed with people, or rather, crammed full of people.
Most of them wore work clothes covered in coal dust or coarse cloth shirts that smelled of earth.
They had no unified slogan, and not even a loudspeaker to amplify their voices.
The only thing they had in common was what they were holding in their hands.
It's a shovel.
It's a pickaxe.
It is a huge wrench used to repair pipes.
Many people also had hunting rifles and old-fashioned rifles that they had taken from the walls of their homes, just like Grandma Anna.
George Kowalski drove at the head of the procession in an old Dodge truck borrowed from the mine.
The bruise on his forehead had turned purplish-black, but he seemed to feel no pain at all.
His gaze was fixed on the small fan-shaped area in front of the windshield that was constantly being swept by the wipers.
In the passenger seat, his mother Anna had a gleaming double-barreled shotgun lying across her lap, and clutched a faded black-and-white photograph tightly in her hand.
"Mom, there are people ahead."
George slammed on the brakes.
The heavy truck made a screeching sound as its massive inertia caused the vehicle to lurch violently before coming to a stop.
Behind the roadblock ahead, two rows of National Guard soldiers in khaki uniforms and M1 helmets stood with their guns pointed directly at the convoy, which was composed of anger itself.
A lieutenant stood on the hood of a jeep, holding a megaphone.
"Listen up, citizens! By special order from the governor... this is the final warning!"
"Turn back immediately! Any attempt to force your way through will be considered rebellion! We will have no choice but to...no choice but to open fire!"
The lieutenant's voice was trembling.
He could clearly see, through the windshield of the Dodge truck, the old woman who looked as kind as his grandmother yet as cold and hard as stone, staring at him with the kind of look one would give a dead man.
Anna pushed open the car door, her ill-fitting old leather boots stepping onto the slippery pavement.
She didn't say anything, but just held the gun and walked step by step toward the roadblock.
George jumped out of the car and followed behind, carrying a heavy pickaxe.
Then came the third person, the fourth person...
Hundreds of miners got off the truck and silently followed behind the old woman.
Their boots sank into the puddles, making a heavy sound like a brewing earthquake.
"Stop...stop! Don't come any closer!"
The lieutenant nearly dropped the megaphone in his hand.
The machine gunner next to him already had his finger on the trigger. He was a greenhorn, not yet twenty years old, his face covered in cold sweat, his eyes darting frantically between the scope and his superior.
Anna walked to within five meters of the roadblock.
She stopped, looked up, and her wrinkled face remained expressionless.
She simply raised the shotgun slowly, but instead of pointing it at the soldiers, she pointed it at the sky.
Then, she unfastened the well-worn gold star badge on her chest—once the highest honor for the families of fallen soldiers.
She casually tossed the small metal piece, which she had once treasured, into the murky muddy water by the roadside.
"Child." She looked at the machine gunner, her voice not loud, but unusually clear in the deathly silence of the scene, "Were you also born of a mother?"
The recruit shuddered, and tears streamed down his face without warning, wetting his sights.
“If you’re going to shoot, then shoot. In the eyes of those lords in Washington, our lives are no different from the stones in that mine over there.”
"But I still have to go. Because my son hasn't come home yet."
After she finished speaking, she didn't look at the gun barrels again and walked straight towards the row of barricades that were even taller than her.
"Sir!" the machine gunner cried, his voice trembling with tears, "I can't do it! That's my neighbor from my hometown!"
He shoved the machine gun away, plopped down on the ground, and covered his face, weeping bitterly.
The lieutenant looked at the approaching crowd, at the machine gunner, and then at the useless M1911 pistol in his hand.
Finally, he sighed.
A long breath, as if exhaling all the strength of his body.
"Get out of the way," he waved to the soldiers behind him. "Move the roadblocks away."
"Let them pass."
The torrent of steel began anew. The wheels crushed the medal tossed into the mud, burying it completely beneath the black silt.
---
the other side.
Detroit, Michigan, General Motors' No. 2 Assembly Plant
The place that was once the heart of the "Arsenal of Democracy" is now so quiet that you can even hear pigeons cooing on the steel-framed roof.
Normally at times like this, the place would be filled with the screeching of rivet guns, the friction of drive belts, and the loud clanging of metal.
Those Buicks and Cadillacs waiting to roll off the production line will flow like a river on the assembly line.
But at this moment, the huge assembly line, stretching for several kilometers, is completely empty.
Those car bodies, only half-painted, looked like the skeletons of skinned wild beasts, hanging awkwardly in mid-air.
The workers are all here.
More than 10,000 blue-collar workers were wearing the same blue overalls.
Instead of leaving the factory, they sat cross-legged on the cold cement floor, next to the machines that had stopped running.
There were no slogans or banners.
Someone was silently wiping a wrench that was no longer used for tightening screws, while someone else was rolling rough tobacco leaves in waste paper.
Smoke swirled above the entire factory, forming a bluish-gray cloud.
A man dressed in an expensive suit, who looked like the factory manager, was being escorted by several security guards and was standing on a high iron walkway, shouting loudly into a microphone.
"...This violates Article 402! This is an illegal strike! If you don't return to your posts within an hour, not only will you lose your bonuses for this month, but I will also fire you all for absenteeism!"
"Do you know how many orders are piling up? The Ministry of Defense is still waiting for those trucks!"
No one paid any attention to him.
Even a fat man sitting below, eating a sandwich, didn't even lift his head, continuing to chew slowly and methodically.
This disregard drove the man to a complete loss of reason. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from the side and slammed it hard against the iron railing, making a loud noise.
"I've called the police! When that bald sheriff arrives with tear gas, let's see who among you will still be able to sit still!"
A soft clicking sound, like metal parts colliding.
An old man who had been sitting under the conveyor belt on the assembly line, wearing a hat covered in grease, slowly stood up.
He was a Black man, and his left sleeve was empty—a mark left from the Pacific theater of World War II.
He raised his only remaining right hand, not holding a wrench, but a heavy main hydraulic hose that had been removed from the fully automated riveting robot.
He looked at the frantic manager with the same gaze he once had when looking at the Japanese flag in the jungle across the way.
"gentlemen."
"Then go ahead and call me that."
"But before you call, I'd like to say something too."
The old man pointed to the stopped production line.
“This machine. I checked it this morning. Its valves are fine. But this hydraulic hose is broken. And… for the time being, you won’t find a new one in all of Detroit.”
The tube in his hand swayed gently in the air.
"It doesn't want to produce a single car for the guys who turn our children into monsters anymore. It's tired. So are we."
The microphone seemed to have lost signal, emitting only a piercing howl.
The manager opened his mouth, but ultimately made no sound.
He shuddered as he looked down at the thousands upon thousands of indifferent eyes that held a certain scrutinizing quality.
---
Washington, D.C., near the Washington Monument
A strange parade is taking place here.
If the northerners Anna brought were like a sharp, angry knife...
So here, the people of the South are like a deep and wide, silent yet resilient river.
The young Black men wore their best shirts, or even their formal suits that they only wore on Sundays.
They linked arms and lined up in neat rows of six.
The line stretched from the Lincoln Memorial all the way to the Capitol Hill in the distance.
There was no vandalism or verbal abuse here.
Only one kind of sacred song, originating from an ancient African melody, was softly hummed by them in a bass voice, as if performing some kind of ritual to deliver the soul of the city, or rather, the country.
Martin Luther King Jr. walked in the middle of the procession.
His expression was not as passionate as when he gave his speeches.
He frowned, his gaze always passing over the mounted police maintaining order around him and looking at the ordinary white citizens standing on the roadside watching.
As the group passed an intersection, several homeless people and young people appeared out of nowhere and tried to break into a department store window and steal a television set.
"That's for justice!" a thug shouted righteously, holding up half a brick.
The ranks remained orderly.
Two tall, imposing patrol officers swiftly and decisively stepped forward. Without even saying a word, they simply used their calloused hands, one on each side, to lift the two thugs out of the patrol like chickens.
They took the bricks from their hands and gently placed them on the flowerbed by the roadside.
Then, he dusted off his hands and returned to the queue.
The shop owner, an elderly white man trembling as he held a shotgun, watched this scene, and his grip on the gun gradually loosened.
He pushed open the door, hesitated for a moment, then took down the wooden sign at the entrance of his shop that read "If any person of color enters, shoot them immediately" and turned it upside down on the ground.
The team continued its silent advance, like a clear stream flowing through the heart of the special economic zone, which had become murky due to the chaos.
That non-violent power, at this moment, is more awe-inspiring than violence itself...
At this moment, almost the entire United States began to tremble...