I had not taken kindly to being called a traitor by this riff-raff, yet there was, I suppose, some truth in what he had said. I had not lifted my voice, let alone a finger, to try to stop Hood so far.
Now I said: “I must ask you, General Hood, to spare these men’s lives. They are prisoners of war, after all.”
Hood exchanged a look of cruel amusement with Lieutenant Azuma. “But surely they are hardly worth sparing, Mr. Bastable,” he said. “What use would such as these be in any kind of society?”
“They have a right to their lives,” I said.
“They would scarcely agree with you if you were speaking up for me,” said Cicero Hood coldly now. “You heard Hoover’s remark about ‘niggers’. If our situation were reversed, do you think your pleas would be heard?”
“No,” I said. “But if you are to prove yourself better than such as Hoover, then you must set an example.”
“That is your Western morality, again,” said Hood. Then he laughed, without much humour. “But we had no intention of killing them. They will be left behind in the charge of our friends. They will help in the rebuilding of New Benin, as the city is to be called henceforth.”
With that, he strode from the cellar, still laughing that peculiar, blood-chilling laugh.
And so Hood’s land fleet rolled away from New York, and now I was a passenger in one of the smaller fighting machines. Our next objective was Philadelphia, where again Hood was, in his terms, going to the relief of the blacks there. The situation for the Negro in the America of this day was, I was forced to admit, a poor one. The whites, in seeking a scapegoat for their plight, had fixed, once again, upon the blacks. The other superstitious reason that so many of them wore those strange hoods was because they had conceived the idea that the Negroes were somehow ‘dirtier’ than the whites and that they had been responsible for spreading the plagues which had followed the war, as they had followed it in England. In many parts of the United States, members of the Negro race were being hunted like animals and burned alive when they were caught—the rationale for this disgusting behaviour being that it was the only way to be sure that the plague did not spread. For some reason Negroes had not been so vulnerable to the various germs contained in the bombs and it had been an easy step in the insane logic of the whites to see the black people, therefore, as ‘carriers’. For two years or more, black groups had been organizing themselves, under instructions from Hood’s agents, awaiting the day when the Ashanti invaded. Hood’s claim that he was ‘liberating’ the blacks was, admittedly, not entirely unfounded in truth.
Nonetheless I did not feel that any of this was sufficient to vindicate Hood.
Headed by the Land Leviathan, the conquering army looted and burned its way through the states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and wherever it paused it set up its black-and-scarlet banners, leaving local bands of Negroes behind to administer the conquered territories.
It was during the battle in which Philadelphia was completely destroyed, and every white man, woman and child slain by the pounding guns of the Land Leviathan, that I found my opportunity to ‘desert’ the Black Horde, first falling back from the convoy of which my armoured carriage was part, and then having the luck to capture a stray horse.
My intention was to head for Washington and warn the defenders there of what they might expect. Also, if possible, I wished to discuss methods of crippling the Land Leviathan. My only plan was that the monster should somehow be lured close to a cliff-top and fall over, smashing itself to pieces. How this could be achieved, I had not the slightest idea!
My ride from Philadelphia to the city of Wilmington probably set something of a record. Across the countryside groups of black ‘soldiers’ were in conflict with whites. In my Ashanti uniform, I was prey to both sides and would doubtless have fared worst at the hands of the whites who regarded me as a traitor than at the hands of the blacks, if I had been caught. But, by good fortune, I avoided capture until I rode into Wilmington, which had not suffered much bombing and merely had the deserted, overgrown look of so many of America’s ‘ghost cities’. On the outskirts, I stripped off my black tunic and threw it away—though the weather was still very cold—and dressed only in my singlet and britches—dismounted from my horse and searched for the local white leader.
They found me first. I was moving cautiously along one of the main thoroughfares when they suddenly appeared on all sides, wearing the sinister white hoods so reminiscent of those old Knights of the South, the Ku-Klux-Klan, whose fictional adventures had thrilled me as a boy. They asked me who and what I was and what I wanted in Wilmington. I told them that it was urgent that I should meet their leader, that I had crucial news of the Black Attila.
Shortly I found myself in a large civic building which a man named ‘Bomber’ Joe Kennedy was using as his headquarters. He had got his nickname, I learned later, from his skill in manufacturing explosive devices from a wide variety of materials. Kennedy had heard about me and it was only with the greatest self-restraint that he did not shoot me on the spot there and then—but he listened and he listened attentively and eventually he seemed satisfied that I was telling the truth. He informed me that he had already planned to take his small ‘army’ to Washington, to add it to the growing strength of the defenders. It would do no harm, he said, if I came with them, but he warned me that if at any time it seemed that I was actually spying for Hood I would be killed in the same way that Negroes were killed in those parts. I never found out what he meant and my only clue, when I enquired, was in the phrase which a grinning member of Kennedy’s army quoted with relish. “Ever heard of ‘burn or cut’ in England, boy?” he asked me.
The whites had managed to build up the old railroad system, for most of the lines had survived the war and the locomotives were still functional, burning wood rather than coal these days. It was Kennedy’s plan to transport himself and his army by rail to Washington (for there was a direct line), and the next day we climbed aboard the big, old-fashioned train, with myself and Kennedy joining the driver and fireman on the footplate, for, as Kennedy told me, “I don’t wanna risk not keepin’ you under my sight.”
The train soon had a good head of steam and was rolling away from Wilmington in no time, its first stop being Baltimore, where Kennedy hoped to pick up a larger force of men.
As we rushed through the devastated countryside, Kennedy confided in me something of his life. He claimed that he had once been a very rich man, a millionaire, before the collapse. His family had come from Ireland originally and he had no liking for the English, whom he was inclined to rate second only to ‘coons’ as being responsible for the world’s ills. It struck me as ironic that Kennedy should have a romantic attachment to one oppressed minority (as he saw it), but feel nothing but loathing for another.
Kennedy also told me that they were already making plans in Washington to resist the Black Attila. “They’ve got something up their sleeves which’ll stop him in his tracks,” he said smugly, but he would not amplify the statement and I had the impression that he was not altogether sure what the plan was.
Kennedy had also heard that there was a strong chance that the Washington ‘army’ would receive reinforcements from the Australasian-Japanese fleet which, he had it on good authority, had already anchored off Chesapeake Bay. I expressed the doubt that anything could withstand the Black Attila’s Land Leviathan, but Kennedy was undaunted. He rubbed his nose and told me that there was “more than one way of skinnin’ a coon”.
Twice the train had to stop to take on more wood, but we were getting closer and closer to Baltimore and the city was little more than an hour away when a squadron of land ironclads appeared ahead of us, firing at the train. They flew the lion banner of Ashanti and must have gone ahead of the main army (perhaps having received intelligence that trains of white troops were on their way to Washington). I saw the long guns in their main turrets puff red fire and white smoke and a number of shells hit the ground close by. The driver was fo
r putting on the brakes and surrendering, feeling that we did not have a chance, but Kennedy, for all that he might have been a cruel, ignorant and stupid man, was not a coward. He sent the word back along the train to get whatever big guns they could working, then he told the engineer to give the old locomotive all the speed she could take, and drove straight towards the lumbering war machines which were now on both sides of the track, positioned on the steep banks so that they could fire down at us as we passed.
I was reminded of an old print I once saw—a poster, I think, for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show—of Red Indians attacking a train. The land ironclads were able to match our speed (for the train was carrying a huge number of cars), and their turrets could swing rapidly to shoot at us from any angle. Shell after shell began to smash into the train, but still she kept going, making for the safety of a long tunnel ahead of us, where the land ’clads could not follow.
We reached the tunnel with some relief and the engineer was for slowing down and stopping in the middle in the hope that the enemy machines would give up their chase, but Kennedy considered this a foolish scheme.
“They’ll come at us from both ends, man!” he said. “They’ll burrow through from the roof—they’ve got those ‘mole’ things which can bore through anything. We’ll be like trapped rabbits down a hole if we stay here.” I think there was sense to what he said, though our chances in the open were scarcely any better. Still, under his orders, the train raced on, breaking through into daylight to find half-a-dozen land ironclads waiting for it, their guns aimed at the mouth of the tunnel. How the locomotive survived that fusillade I shall never know, but survive it did, with part of the roof and a funnel shot away and its tender of wood blazing from the effects of a direct hit by an incendiary shell.
The rest of the train, however, was not so lucky.
A shell cut the coupling attaching us to the main part of the train and we lurched forward at a speed which threatened to hurl us from the tracks. Without the burden of the rest of the train, we were soon able to leave the ironclads behind. I looked back to see the stranded ‘army’ fighting it out with the armoured battleships of the land. They were being pounded to pieces.
Then we had turned a bend and left the scene behind. Kennedy looked crestfallen for a moment, and then he shrugged. There was little that could be done.
“Ah, well,” he said. “We’ll not be stopping in Baltimore now.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Triumphant Beast
Washington, surprisingly, had not sustained anything like the damage done to cities like New York and London. The government and all its departments had fled the capital before the war had got into its stride and had retired to an underground retreat somewhere in the Appalachians. It had survived the explosives, but not the plagues. Having little strategic importance, therefore, Washington had most of its famous buildings and monuments still standing. These overblown mock-Graecian, mock-Georgian tributes to grandiose bad taste could be seen in the distance as we steamed into the outskirts of the city, to be stopped by recently constructed barriers. These barriers had existed for only a week or so, but I was surprised at their solidity. They were of brick, stone and concrete, reinforced by neatly piled sand-bags, and, I gathered, protected the whole of the inner city. Kennedy’s credentials were in order—he was recognized by three of the guards and welcomed as something of a hero—and we were allowed to continue through to the main railroad station, where he handed our locomotive over to the authorities. We were escorted through the wide, rather characterless streets (the famous trees had all been cut down in the making of the barriers and for fuel to power the trains) to the White House, occupied now by ‘President’ Beesley, a man who had once been a distinguished diplomat in the service of his country, but who had quickly profited from the hysteria following the war—he was believed to have been the first person to ‘don the White Hood’. Beesley was fat and his red face bore all the earmarks of depravity. We were ushered into a study full of fine old ‘colonial’-style furniture which gave the impression that nothing had changed since the old days. The only difference was in the smell and in the man sprawled in a large armchair at a desk near the bay window. The smell would have been regarded as offensive even in one of our own East End public houses—a mixture of alcohol, tobacco-smoke and human perspiration. Dressed in the full uniform of an American general, with the buttons straining to keep his tunic in place over his huge paunch, ‘President’ Beesley waved a hand holding a cigar by way of greeting, gestured with the other hand, which held a glass, for us to be seated. “I’m glad you could make it, Joe,” he said to Kennedy, who seemed to be a close acquaintance. “Have a drink. Help yourself.” He ignored me.
Kennedy went to a sideboard and poured himself a large glass of bourbon. “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you any men,” he said. “You heard, did you, Ben? We got hit by a big fleet of that nigger’s land ’clads. We were lucky to get through at all.”
“I heard.” Beesley turned small, cold eyes on me. “And that is the traitor, is it?”
“I had better tell you now,” I said, though suddenly I was reluctant to justify myself, “that I joined Cicero Hood’s entourage with the express purpose of trying to put a stop to his activities.”
“And how did you intend to do that, Mr. Bastable?” said Beesley, leaning forward and winking at Kennedy.
“My original plan was to assassinate him,” I said simply.
“But you didn’t.”
“After the Land Leviathan made its appearance I saw that killing Hood would do no good. He is the only one who has any control at all over the Black Horde. To kill him would have resulted in making things worse for you and all the other Europeans.”
Beesley sniffed skeptically and sipped his drink, adding: “And what proof have we got of all this? What proof is there that you’re not still working for Hood, that you’re not planning to kill me?”
“None,” I said. “But I want to discuss ways of stopping the Land Leviathan,” I told him. “Those walls you’re building will stop that monster no more than would paper. If we can dig some kind of deep trench—lay a trap like a gigantic animal trap—we might be able to put it out of action for a while at least...”
But President Beesley was smirking and shaking his head.
“We’re ahead of you, Mr. Bastable. There’s more than one kind of wall, you know. You’ve only seen what you might call our first line of defense.”
“There isn’t anything made strong enough to stop the Land Leviathan,” I said emphatically.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Beesley gave Kennedy another of his secret looks. “Do you want to show him around, Joe? I think we can trust him. He’s one of us.”
Kennedy was not so certain. “Well, if you think so...”
“Sure I do. I have my hunches. He’s okay. A bit misguided, a bit short on imagination—a bit English, eh? But a decent sort. Welcome to Washington, Mr. Bastable. Now you’ll see how that black scum is to be stopped.”
A while later we left the White House in a horse-drawn carriage provided for us. Kennedy, with some pride, explained how the Capitol had been turned into a well-defended arsenal and how every one of those overblown neo-Graecian buildings contained virtually every operational big gun left in the United States.
But it was not the architecture or the details of the defense system which arrested my vision—it was what I saw in the streets as I passed. Washington had always had a very large Negro population, and now this population was being put to use by the whites. I saw gangs of exhausted, half-starved men, women and children, shackled to one another by chains about the neck, wrists or ankles, hauling huge loads of bricks and sand-bags to the barricades. It was a scene from the past—with sweating, dying black slaves being worked, quite literally, to death by brutal white overseers armed with long bull-whips which they used liberally and with evident relish. It was a sight I had never expected to witness in the twentieth century! I was horrified, but did my best not to be
tray my emotion to Kennedy, who had not appeared to notice what was going on!
More than once I winced and was sickened when I saw some poor, near-naked woman fall and receive a torrent of abuse, kicked and whipped until she was forced to her feet again, or helped to her feet by her companions. Once I saw a half-grown boy collapse and it was quite plain that he was dead, but his fellow slaves were made to drag his corpse with them by the chains which secured his wrists to theirs.
Trying to appear insouciant, I said as coolly as I could: “I see now how you managed to raise the walls so quickly. You have reintroduced slavery.”
“Well, you could call it that, couldn’t you?” Kennedy grinned. “The blacks are performing a public service, like the rest of us, helping to build up the country again. Besides,” and his face became serious, “it’s what they know best. It’s what most of ’em prefer. They don’t think and feel the same as us, Bastable. It’s like your worker bee—stop him from working and he becomes morbid and unhappy. Eventually he dies. It’s the same with the blacks.”
“Their ultimate fate would seem to be identical, however you look at it,” I commented.
“Sure, but this way they’re doing some good.”
I must have seen several thousand Negroes as we traveled through the streets of Washington. A few were evidently employed as individual servants and were in a somewhat better position than their fellows, but most were chained together in gangs, sweating copiously for all that the weather was chill. There was little hope on any of their faces and I was not proud of my own race when I looked at them; also I could not help recalling the pride—arrogance, some would call it—in the bearing of Hood’s Ashanti troops.
I stifled the thought, at that moment, but it kept coming back to me with greater and greater force. It was unjust to enslave other human beings and cruel to treat them in such a manner, whichever side committed the injustice. Yet it seemed to me that there was a grain more justice in Hood’s policies—for he was repaying a debt, whereas men such as Beesley and Kennedy were acting from the most brutal and cynical of motives.