Free The Living Will Envy The Dead by Christopher Nuttall Page A

auditorium.  It was one of the white collar criminals, a criminal lawyer – which was a perfectly accurate job description – who bilked his clients out of millions of dollars.  “We have rights !”
     
    “I knew someone would say something like that,” I said, cheerfully.  I nodded in the direction of Stacy, who was holding her prized sniper rifle.  “These are the kind of rights you have.”
     
    The shot echoed out in the dead silence.  It was a perfect shot.  The lawyer fell back into the crowd, a small hole neatly drilled through his head.  Stacy had done it so well that no one else was even remotely injured, thankfully.  I didn’t want to waste labour if it wasn’t necessary.
     
    “I trust that that makes my point?”  I asked, calmly.  There was a brittle silence in the room.  “You have no rights any longer.  The society that guaranteed you those rights is gone.  It has been replaced by a desperate struggle for survival, one in which you will either play a role in helping us survive, or you will die.”
     
    I looked around the room, wondering who would choose to help…and who would try to break away as soon as possible.  The real hard cases were dead and quite a few of the remainder were actually innocent, or punished well beyond what they deserved, or might even have made something of their lives if they had been allowed a chance to grow up in a better society.  For every kid who had a mother, a father and an Uncle Billy, there was probably five or ten who didn’t have anything of the sort.  Perhaps working in Ingalls for a few years would turn their lives around…or perhaps they would step out of line.  They were, after all else, expendable.
     
    “This is the deal,” I said.  “You will work for us for a period of five years, after which you will be free and independent citizens of the new America, whatever form it takes.  You will be treated with a certain kind of respect and the more useful you make yourself, the more respect you will earn.  You may even graduate to citizenship early…
     
    “Or you can die.
     
    “I cannot allow you to run over the countryside, or try to return to your homes, such as they were,” I continued.  “If you refuse to work for us, I will have no choice, but to dispose of you.  I am not going to run a chain gang” – and there I was lying, effectively speaking – “and I am not going to flog you in to work.  If you refuse this offer, you will be given a final meal and then executed.”
     
    People, later, focused on that statement as a deadly mistake, as it ensured that almost all of the prisoners would join us, and some of them would plan to desert at the first available opportunity.  I wasn't unaware of the possibility, but I didn’t want to have to kill anyone else, not unless I had a good cause.  You might laugh at that – after all, I had just ordered the poisoning of one thousand, seven hundred convicts – but they’d deserved it.  The remainder didn’t, at least in my view.  And, I reasoned, if these losers and drug addicts had a taste of honest work, they might reform without any further pressure on my part.  Hope springs eternal, right?
     
    A man put his hand up, as if he were in school.  “Sir…ah, what happens if we work for you for five years and then you refuse to give us…ah, citizenship?”
     
    “Yeah,” someone shouted, from the rear.  “We’re already citizens!”
     
    “You were citizens of a state that no longer exists,” I said, bluntly.  It was true, in a sense, but I was determined that we would save as much as possible.  I loved America, or at least the ideal of America, and it was my country.  “If you work for us, we will accept you as citizens, with all the rights and duties that that implies.  If you chose to leave us, at the end of that period, we will allow you to leave.  If you refuse to work now…well, we can’t feed you.  Work, or starve.”
     
    We did a brief count after