Red Zone Son

Chapter 5

Solomon blinked. What? Militia service? Like the White guy who had him carry all those sandbags into that truck?

He went back to his bedroom, put the single-use screen down next to his display, and slid his phone into the display’s dock port. Sitting down, he pulled up the bot search agent and asked, “What does it mean if I’m selected for militia service in the Westsylvania Zone?”

He always kept the answers in text-only mode, not wanting to wake Adah when he used his display at night. Just as he was about to give up on the blinking cursor, the bot finally started spitting out text.

In the Westsylvania Zone, every faction is mandated by the interim militia council to contribute 10% of its members toward the formation of the Westsylvania Zone Militia. Each faction employs distinct approaches in selecting their recruits. For instance, the All-Whites exclusively rely on volunteers, whereas the Cultural Nationalists employ a lottery system for drafting. The duration of service spans eight years. Four of these years are active duty, while an additional four are spent in the militia reserve. Reservists should expect frequent and regular service.

Eight years?! He stared at the screen. “What… what is militia service in the Westsylvania Zone like?”

Militia service in the Westsylvania Zone can vary depending on the specific factions involved. Until recently, each faction had its own militia and members served only with those of the same faction. Several months ago, the interim militia council overcame internal dissent and consolidated all faction militias into one force, the Westsylvania Zone Militia. Generally, the Westsylvania Zone Militia emphasizes the importance of defense and self-reliance, and rigorously trains new recruits in combat and survival skills to ensure that they are prepared for a variety of situations.

The words rigorously trains new recruits jumped out at him. “What is the training like?”

Again, he waited for the cursor to blink.

Basic training is a demanding experience designed to prepare new recruits for militia service. It involves a structured program inherited from the pre-Splintering United States military of physical fitness training, marksmanship, first aid, navigation, drill and ceremony, and leadership development. Recruits experience intense physical training, mental and emotional stress, and strict discipline as they learn to work together as a team and follow orders from superiors. Through this training, they develop the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in warfare and serve with honor and distinction.

Intense physical training, mental and emotional stress, and strict discipline… Solomon hesitated, then asked, “Has anyone died going through Westsylvania militia basic training?”

Unfortunately, there have been instances where individuals have died during basic training. While such cases are relatively rare, they can occur due to various factors, including underlying medical conditions, physical exertion, extreme weather conditions, or accidents. The specific circumstances and causes of these incidents vary, and they are typically thoroughly investigated to improve safety protocols and training procedures.

“How… how many people have died going through Westsylvania militia basic training?”

I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I don't have access to current statistics. It's important to refer to official militia reports, studies, or reliable sources that provide up-to-date information on this topic. Additionally, the circumstances and causes of such incidents can vary widely, making it difficult to provide an exact figure without detailed and specific information.

Solomon took a shallow breath. “Militia reports, okay, or studies, I can look those up, yes, I’ll do that now,” he muttered to himself.

But when Solomon asked the bot search agent to recommend a specific source, it linked him to an ebook available at InfoVerse instead. That was fine with him, if not exactly what he was expecting. At least it would be free. He checked it out and began to read. It was a pre-Splintering book about American military basic training, but when he asked the bot search agent if basic training for a militia was different at all, it said no, they were pretty much the same.

Now he was getting really nervous. Information was usually easy to come by, unless someone out there had decided you shouldn’t have it at all. He couldn’t help but feel that the reason the bot search agent couldn’t give him any current links was because the militia death statistics were so bad that the militia wouldn’t publish them. The stories in the book and in posts he found online were all about getting screamed at for not folding your underwear correctly or being forced to go on miles-long hikes while carrying 70 pound rucksacks until you collapsed from heat exhaustion.

One of the posts he read was from a guy who claimed militia basic training was even tougher than what the old US military used to do, that the old US military had gotten soft in its latter days. Militia boot camps are like boot camps from the 1940s, 1950s, back when the US used to win wars, no more pansy shit, no more stress cards. Red zone men can handle the real thing.

Solomon closed his eyes. He remembered learning in school about how red zone militias had started forming first, and then blue zone antifas in response to them. When the federal regime began cracking down only on red zone militias, it had caused a massive defection from the military straight into them. So his future training camp had to be run by American military veterans, then.

Solomon still felt nervous, but he didn’t want to make the same mistake he’d made over the summer by wasting his time. He went back to the bot search agent and asked how an eighteen-year-old could become a legal guardian of a younger sibling.

The bot hesitated again, then spit out a series of links aiming him at appropriate starting points for the process. Solomon clicked all the links and followed all the steps. Somehow, it seemed too easy. In a real, legally binding way, he was chaining his sister’s fate to his own, altering the trajectories of a good portion of both their lives to follow each other’s path. And yet, in less than two hours of clicking, he had an appointment set with the court for a date less than a month away.

By the time Solomon finished, it was almost noon and his stomach was growling. He knew he should probably get up and cook something, but his mind kept circling back to the stories about boot camp. He liked hiking, but he didn’t want to be cursed at and punched for no reason. He was tall, but it wasn’t like he was a big guy, and he’d never been much interested in sports beyond pickup basketball. Not to mention he hated the cold.

Most of all, Solomon didn’t want to leave Adah all by herself.

He glanced at the single-use screen by the side of the display. A twisting force stirred inside him as he read again the words ordering him to report for militia duty. He found himself reaching for the screen. Then, without realizing exactly what it was he meant to do, he slammed it against the wall, swinging it again and again until the screen cracked into a spiderweb of gray lines that stretched across the black background.

His chest was heaving. He stared at the cracked screen in his hands, but breaking it hadn’t taken away the anger he felt or done anything else, good or bad. Single-use meant after a screen had served its purpose it was supposed to be recycled for parts, so it was garbage already. And the words ordering him to report for duty were still visible through the cracks.

***

“Food smells good,” Adah said as she came through the front door. It scraped on the floor a little. Solomon didn’t know how to fix it, so they just opened the door slowly. He was on his phone but tossed it onto the couch cushion next to him.

“How was school?” he asked.

She gave him a thumbs up. They both went to a former public school five and a half miles to the east of their house. It had been allowed to resume instruction after the Splintering once it got a license from the council certifying that it wasn’t teaching wokeness.

School was probably the one constant that had been in their lives since before the Great Splintering. Everything else had changed so much. Many of their neighbors had fled when the factional militias had descended on Pittsburgh; there were quite a few empty houses on their street now. And after the militias had gotten rid of the local antifa, expelled the remaining federal troops and shut down the zone borders, they’d replaced the police with themselves.

That was when the arrests had started. Solomon thought that was what had happened to his closest friend Zhen and his family. Even at school, the teachers he had been close enough with to talk to about Umma and Dad disappearing were gone, and he didn’t know where to.

Church was different, too. A few years before, the council had decided that denominations were no longer allowed in the Westsylvania Zone. Dad had told Solomon he thought the secularists on the council were probably sick of all the infighting within the religious right, and that they likely pushed that ruling through over the objections of the Christians also on the council. The official ruling allowed only one ecumenical church to operate for every 50 square miles.

Umma had said she thought it was actually a good idea. That Christians had been divided for too long, and maybe this would help them figure out their differences. But it had been nothing but a holy mess. There was never enough parking, and all the leaders of all the old denominations constantly scrabbled among themselves to do their own services their own way. Which could have worked, maybe, except the ruling forcing them together in the first place kept getting overturned back and forth so many times that nobody wanted to organize anything in case it changed again.

“I made yukgaejang,” Solomon told Adah, forcing a smile.

“It’s your birthday,” she replied, taking off her backpack and hanging it up on the hook by the door. “Why are you making my favorite?”

He didn’t want to tell her yet that it was because he had bad news, so he beckoned her into the kitchen where he poured the spicy beef soup into bowls with rice. Adah liked beansprouts so much that she’d used to fish into the pot for them when she was younger, so he added extra ones to her bowl before sitting down. They prayed and started to eat.

He was trying to figure out how to tell Adah that he had to report for militia duty when she asked him, “So, how was your birthday?”

All of a sudden, he was once again remembering how Umma had fumed about American history being two groups of White people fighting about which group was better. A hard knot of anger formed in his chest. It was just like Umma had said. Because they just had to fight about which type of White person was better, I get to celebrate my eighteenth birthday, without my parents, facing militia duty.

“Solo? What’s wrong?”

Solomon forced himself to speak. “I… I got drafted for militia duty. I… I have to report for training in January.”

“What? What do you mean? Report for training?” Her eyes darted from him to the door.

Solomon tried to tell her what he had learned that day about boot camp, but the words wouldn’t come out. Instead, tears rolled down his face. He felt pathetic. How could he survive basic training if just thinking about it made him cry?

Adah was out of her chair and hugging him right away. He didn’t push her away as he used to when he was younger and mad at himself for crying. She stayed there until he told her he was okay and then she slowly went back to her seat. She had tears in her eyes too. “Are… are you going to leave?”

“I don’t want to,” Solomon said. “But I think I have to. I spent the whole day reading about it and everyone who is selected for militia service has to go live at a base camp and get training for eight weeks and then they have to serve for eight years –”

“Eight years!” Adah all but shrieked. “Solo, no!”

He swallowed hard. “They hunt you down if you don’t show up. They send you to a prison labor camp.”

Now she was really crying. Solomon wanted so badly to make her feel better, but what could he say? He hated it, but there was nothing he could do about it. It was what it was. Sometimes things were terrible, the end. Over a year of trying and failing to find Umma and Dad, to make Adah’s and his life go back to what it used to be, had taught him that. You could be angry about it, but that was it.

And he was, Solomon was so angry about it, and the more Adah cried, the angrier he got, until he had to stand up, had to stand up and hit a wall or go run or something.

Adah stopped to take a breath and tearfully asked, “At least they’ll pay you, right? It’s like a job or something, isn’t it?”

Solomon was on his feet, staring at her. Then he raced back to where he’d dropped his phone on the couch. He opened up a bot search agent with his thumb as he went back into the kitchen. “Does the Westsylvania militia pay its recruits?” he asked.

Since it was on his phone, the agent responded audibly. “Yes, the Westsylvania Zone Militia pays its members. The amount of pay depends on various factors such as rank, years of service, and job specialty. In addition to pay, recruits may also receive allowances for housing, food, and other expenses.”

“When do they pay you?” he demanded.

“As I am an AI language model, I do not have personal experiences or the ability to understand specific situations such as when individuals in the Westsylvania Zone Militia receive payment. The payment structure and timing during militia training may vary depending on –”

Oh, come on, you useless computer! Solomon cut it off and re-phrased his prompt. “When does a recruit in the Westsylvania militia receive his first paycheck?”

This time, the bot got it. “In the Westsylvania Zone Militia, recruits begin receiving pay on the first day of basic training, also known as boot camp. During basic training, recruits receive a small stipend known as basic pay. After completing basic training, the amount of pay a service member receives is based on their rank, years of service, and any special pay or allowances they may be eligible for.”

Solomon started to laugh. He could feel a weight dropping from his shoulders. When he hadn’t been praying this past year for Umma and Dad to come back, he’d been praying for God to find a way to get him work so Adah could eat, and now, just like that, he didn’t even have to go out and find a job. He could just show up on January 1st and report for duty. Even boot camp didn’t feel so daunting anymore. Sure, he was going to get screamed at and spat on, but at least he was going to get paid for it!

“Let’s go get ice cream,” he said to Adah.

Her eyes lit up. But then she hesitated. “I still don’t want you to go, though.”

Solomon took her hand and started pulling her toward the door into the garage. “I don’t want to go either,” he said. “But I do want ice cream. For my birthday. Come on, let’s go quick so we have plenty of time before curfew.”