July 19, 2017, 20:40 – Near Kaneville, Illinois

DeMontrius Watkins was having the time of his life. The past two weeks had been one unbridled party – raping, killing, looting, and burning, moving from one community to the next as his unit had slowly made its way down the Eisenhower Expressway, then turning onto I-88, also known as the Ronald Reagan Expressway. DeMontrius wasn’t exactly sure who Ronald Reagan was, but he figured he was just another rich whitey. Had to have been to get some fancy road named after him.

Well, rich whiteys had been DeMontrius’ prey for the past two weeks. As the “captain” of the unit officially known as Company D, 13th Battalion, Presidential Guards, though known more informally to DeMontrius and his underlings as “Da Englewood Demon Bloodz,” he had “led” his troops on a rampage of rapine and pillage through Chicago’s outlying suburbs. They’d begun with Oak Park, whose residents they had managed to surprise in their homes, even despite their having seen Obama’s proclamation that the newly-organized Presidential Guard units were being sent from the inner cities where they had been recruited into the outlying areas where the “insurrectionists” held sway. The citizens of Oak Park, most of them good upscale limousine liberals, thought that the Obama bumper stickers on their Priuses would grant them immunity from the mob’s fury. They were sorely disabused of this notion in a flurry of bloodletting and fire that lasted for two days and consumed the gentrified suburb. The Greenwheels bicycle and electric vehicle store burned for three days before the flames finally subsided. The fact that nearly one out of every five of their victims were themselves black meant little to DeMontrius and his crew – after all, they were just oreos, black on the outside, but white on the inside.

In quick succession, Maywood, Oak Brook, Downer’s Grove, Lisle, Napierville, and Aurora had all fallen to the sword, though after the third or fourth day of their march, most of what the Bloodz encountered were ghost towns whose residents had fled after having heard the news out of the inner ‘burbs, carrying with them as much movable property as they could. Still, there had been tons of liquor, electronics, clothing, and other loot – enough so that the Bloodz had taken to trailing a long line of stolen civilian vehicles behind them, packed to their roofs with the stolen goods. Yes, he may not have been good for much of anything before the War, but when it came to knowing when and where to loot and pillage, DeMontrius sure knew how to big it up.

The Bloodz had run into elements of one of the Hispanic battalions coming out of Northtown (even Obama’s advisors knew enough to disregard their own rhetoric about the vibrancy and strength of multiculturalism, and not mix blacks and Hispanics together into the same units). A brief firefight had ensued, neither side really understanding how to use the military weapons they had been given by the Loyalist army, but still knowing enough to be able to point and click at each other. A few casualties on each side had resulted, before the Mexicans agreed to go north, while the Bloodz would continue west.

And west they had gone, until now they were beginning to get out into the real farm country, the putative objective of their mobilization and commission. After the secession of nearly two-thirds of the states of the former Union, along with the large share of its standing military forces and their equipment, the Obama loyalists had turned to organizing the inner city gangs for use in regaining control of the insurrectionist countryside. While Illinois had not “officially” seceded from the Union, the only two places under effective FedGov control were Chicago and Springfield. Get outside of those and federal agents could expect to find themselves decorating a tree. Obama and his Cabinet understood that they needed to fix that problem – “secure their logistical train,” as the remaining brown-nosed careerists at the Pentagon had described it – before they could begin to send the gangs into Iowa and Missouri and recover those states. So it was up to the gangs – now called Presidential Guards – to terrorize the countryside and cow the hicks and hillbillies into submission. What remained of the real Army was too busy either trying to protect Washington D.C. or trying to defend Southern California from Rocky Mountain Alliance forces.

It was dusk when the Bloodz came upon the roadblock that had been built across I-88, about half mile past Seavey Road. A line of cars and trucks four vehicles deep had been lined up across both sides of the interstate. The roadblock, however, was deserted.

“Look like dem white devils was gonna try to stop us, but got skeered and ran off,” observed 1st Platoon CO, Lt. Malik Abd ar-Rahman, one of Chicago’s many Black Muslims. DeMontrius nodded in agreement. “Yeah, dem fools don’t wanna mess wid us.”

Still, the roadblock was there, and it was thwarting the Bloodz’s goal of reaching, and looting, nearby Kaneville. A quick reconnoiter showed that they couldn’t go around. On both sides of the highway there was a fairly steep embankment followed by thick forest coming almost up to the road. The embankment was simply too steep for the loot-cars to negotiate, loaded as heavily as they were, and the forest prevented the unit’s M113 APCs from going around. It was find a way through, or turn around and find another way to the town. Having come this far, DeMontrius didn’t have the patience to go around. He was seriously considering just trying to drive the APCs over the lines of cars monster-truck style when Malik pointed toward the center of the line.

“Look dat,” he exclaimed, “dey left only one car in da middle. Bet we could push it out da way and go on through.”

DeMontrius lifted his binoculars and looked to where Malik was pointing. Sure enough, there was only one car, and a tiny Hyundai at that, holding the line exactly in the center of the westbound side of the highway. One of his APCs could push it by easily.

“Stupid honkies. Dey not gonna stop us wid dis trick.” DeMontrius said assuredly.

“Hey you!” DeMontrius motioned to the squad leader sitting unbuttoned in the lead APC and then pointed to the Hyundai. “Push dat **** out da way and get us goin’.”

Sure enough, the leading APC had no trouble with the job. The Hyundai groaned as the M113 ground into its side, but then slid out and to the left as the APC kept moving and cleared the surrounding line. The cars on either side swung forward as the APC struck their fronts and rears, leaving a hole big enough for every vehicle in the unit to traverse.

Now the line of vehicles, as had been reported to Mike Hammond, the commander of the local militia unit, was around a quarter of a mile long, all told. The squad leader in the leading APC, still unbuttoned, did not happen to notice that about a quarter of a mile past the roadblock, the asphalt of the highway had been broken up and then replaced, almost appearing as a simple set of cracks in the road. Of course by that time, if he had, it wouldn’t have really mattered.

Just as the last of the loot vehicles was starting to pass through the hole in the roadblock, the smallish fertilizer bombs that had been hidden in two of the cars on either side of the hole were remotely detonated. The explosion rocked the entire area, and because the charges had been positioned so as to force the vehicles deeper into the line inward, the rear loot-car was effectively shattered and then crushed between parked cars that were driven into it from either side, neatly plugging the hole. The man driving the car was killed instantly.

So was the crew of the leading APC, for less than a second after the rear bombs were set off, the larger fertilizer bomb that had been hidden under the layer of asphalt that the APC was now crossing was also detonated, easily cutting through the bottom of the APC like a knife through aluminum foil, disintegrating the crew and propelling the APC fifteen feet into the air and backwards, where if landed squarely on the nose of the vehicle following it. Both ends of the Bloodz’ line were now blocked.

The forest on both sides of the highway then opened up with small arms fire. Hunting rifles, AR-15s, Mosin-Nagants, SKSes, each in the hands of a local farmer or a refugee who had been driven before the Bloodz, poured fire down onto the column. Additionally, some grenades obtained from the National Guard armory up in Sycamore came raining down on the Bloodz. In their confidence, most of the infantry in the unit had been riding outside their APCs, hanging onto the handholds or sitting on top. After all, who wants to ride in some metal box on a hot July evening when you can be out in the fresh air? This lackadaisical attitude cost them dearly as half of the Bloodz were cut down before they could even take cover.

“What da **** yo!?” DeMontrius screamed as he saw his unit being destroyed around him. “Shoot dem back, shoot dem back!” he ordered. DeMontrius hunkered down behind his M113, two of his men with him. Like many people who do not know anything about them, DeMontrius assumed that automatic weapons were like garden hoses – you simply point and squeeze until the target is hosed down, and then you move to the next. He failed to take into account the recoil that builds up through sustained full-auto. As he held down the trigger, the barrel of his surplus-issue AK-47 swung upward of its own accord, and then flew out of his hands, clattering to the pavement behind him. He scrambled out of cover to retrieve it, which was when the rod of fire bit him. His thigh felt like someone had taken a red-hot fireplace poker and stabbed him through with it. His leg stopped working, and he fell to the pavement, struggling to get back up. Then the next rod of fire bit him in the rear end, and the next struck him in the neck, ending his life on the earth.

DeMontrius Watkins did not see the inevitable end of this action, which was the complete and utter destruction of Company D, 13th Battalion of the Presidential Guards. One hundred percent casualties, no prisoners taken.