BEHOLD A PALE HORSE:
THE CLEANSING MONTH
Inferior ghetto-dwellers in New York City line up to be vaccinated against the Beckie Flu
Johnny get your shot,
Get your shot, get your shot!
Put that flu on the run,
on the run, on the run!
Health and Wellness for you and me,
And every Son of Liberty!
Hurry, right away!
Go today, no delay!
Make Uncle Joe glad
to have had such a lad!
Tell your sweetheart not to whine,
and tell her to step up next in line!
And we won't stop Cleansing until that Flu's on the run!
- "Johnny Get Your Shot," the official talkiebox jingle of the Office of Health and Wellness
The implementation of the Beckie Flu Vaccine Program was stunning both in its thoroughness and its speed. Never before had anything of the sort ever been achieved in human history. And the Republican Union wasn't about to let such a thing come and go without using it to its utmost advantage. While Steele had just announced his Focus on the Family Act, its groundwork had in fact been laid in secret by Dewey and especially Richardson. Richardson had, decades earlier, been the creator of the "Separate Worlds" policy, which legally banned Inferiors from living in areas close to Betters. Now, she would see this program brought to its next level by her protege, Joe Steele. Every single person in the Union received a "Societal Identification Number" as they were vaccinated, enabling the government to properly keep record of its patients.
However, this was also an easy way for the government to permanently identify its citizens. Those identified as Betters of Society were given SINs beginning with the letter "B," for "Better," while those identified as Inferiors were given SINs beginning with an "I." While he was not quite the first to receive the vaccine (beaten by several hundred military test subjects and Camp 222 prisoners), President Steele honorarily became Citizen B-1. Most other citizens were given a randomly-generated SIN. Each SIN number came with a small leather booklet containing a photograph of the person in question and featured not only their SIN number but also birth date, physical description, birthplace, and medical information. This caused some discontent with some citizens who viewed it as intrusive, but no one publicly called it out as totalitarian and most happily accepted salvation from the Flu. Another new rule stated that every citizen must carry their SIN booklet with them at all times and always be ready to show police and authorities the information at all times to "deter illegal foreign aliens, enemy agents, spies, false Betters, and crime of all sorts."
Example of an early SIN number booklet
But even as the Societal Identification Numbers were issued and reports of the Flu began to plummet around the nation, something else, even more sinister, was at work. As agreed to at Kissimmee, three-quarters of Inferiors were scheduled to die by vaccine poisoning during the Cleansing Month. The poison used, developed by Goodyear Laboratories in rural Chersonesus under a top-secret government contract, was created to show no ill effects for a good month or two after inoculation. Millions upon millions were scheduled to die. Curious newspaper reporters wrote stories about the sudden boom in the manufacture of "mobill oven trucks," despite the vaccine's unmitigated success. Many of these reporters quickly found themselves in ORRA interrogation chambers before long and were ordered to "forget whatever it was that you
didn't see." In reality, the Union Office of Health of Wellness (OHW), newly formed from the old Office of Influenza Management, was preparing for the massive die-off of Inferiors that would follow the Cleansing Month. As starving, sick Inferiors piled up in droves for the inoculation, it was clear that most of them, considering their then present medical condition, would not need a very large push to get them to fall over into the waiting arms of the mobill oven drivers. As millions of Americans finally felt safe for the first time in years, even Inferiors, national stability was greatly enhanced. In many ghettos, ORRA and OHW offered the Inferiors the vaccine in exchange for standing down from rioting or rebelling, proclaiming, "President Steele has decided to bring about a new era of safety and security by gifting the lowest elements of Society the ability to freely work, shop, and travel without the fear of the terrible disease known as the Beckie Flu." By mid-March, most Inferior and anarchist groups inside the Union had laid their weapons down and agreed to live in peace in exchange for the vaccine.
Of note, there were two ghettos that rejected the vaccine offer. The first was the Oakridge City ghetto, near Doubleday, Appalachia (formerly Louisville, Kentucky, before the Union General Abner Doubleday captured it for the Union during the Great American War). An Inferior council of elders had proclaimed the People's Republic of Oakridge, a semi-Beutelist commune, and they had wisely decided that the government's offer had to have some catch. In their minds they were valiantly holding out against tyranny and were scraping by by farming just enough grain to feed their 10,000 people. While many were close to starvation and meat was extremely scarce (many Oakridge dwellers were known for their taste for rat, mouse, snake, and raccoon meat), they decided that the Union government was never to be trusted. What followed was one of the most blatant and brutal massacres in Union history. For two weeks, a standoff dragged on. Every day, ORRA officers approached the crude battlements of the commune and begged the Inferiors to surrender and be vaccinated, with the promise that all crimes would be forgiven by the President in exchange for their complacency. Every morning the militiamen on the wall would deny the offer, pledging to stand on their own without any help from "a pack of ravenous wolves." Finally, 57 year-old local ORRA commander Rusty Hancock, son of former President Winston Schofield Hancock, received orders from Goldstein himself. If Oakridge would not accept their generous terms, then it would be put to the sword.
"Under no circumstances whatsoever is the nascent commune of Luciferian hillbillies to be allowed to continue spitting in our faces. The vaccination effort is already far too behind in this area. Crush them utterly. Make. Oakridge. Go. Away."
- Dr. Midas Goldstein, Supreme Chief of the Office of Health and Wellness, March 20, 1914
Far be it from Rusty Hancock to make waves, he immediately followed orders to the letter. On the morning of March 21, a final plea was made for the commune to dissolve and accept ORRA and OHW officials into their midst. A final rejection was the anarchists' answer. At 9 am, that same morning, ORRA artillery pieces commenced bombardment of Oakridge Commune. Instantly, the defenses were crumbling. The weak walls and fences that had been erected stood no chance against the heavy shells and mortars of ORRA. By 9:15, the defenses were mostly down and ORRA troops were rushing into the holes, bayonets forward. Every single man, woman, and child inside the city was put to the sword, a final furious punishment for daring to oppose the government. Over 10,000 Inferiors were listed as "liquidated" by the government forces before the entire town was set alight and burned to the ground. Hancock rode in personally on his Appalachian Walker horse and surveyed the destruction. Lighting a Morton's Finest, he took a deep breath before telling one of his adjutants, "Don't let it bother you none, son. We tried. We tried like Hell. But when you mess with the bull, you get the horns. Play stupid damn games, win stupid damn prizes." After a week-long cleanup process, bulldozing equipment came in to level the city. Oakridge was completely wiped off the face of the earth, its very memory erased. The Appalachian governor, Marc Antony Johnson, enacted a law overnight that actually made it illegal to even mention the former town.
ORRA Commander Russell "Rusty" Lincoln Hancock, perpetrator of the Immolation of Oakridge
ORRA and Health and Wellness officers inspect the corpse-mounds in Oakridge before its total destruction
Inferior homes are torched during the Immolation of Oakridge
The entire time Oakridge was under siege, another Inferior commune was rejecting the government's offer of forgiveness and vaccination. This time it was the Trinity City Industrial Community of Texas, a ghetto just ten miles away from the capital of the state. Governor Oscar Campbell personally arrived on the scene as several thousand Inferiors rejected the "generous" terms given to them. Worried that allowing the standoff to drag on could escalate civil unrest, Governor Campbell called up President Steele personally and asked for permission to handle the problem his own way. "Don't disappoint me, Governor," warned Steele, before granting his permission. Campbell ordered his combination of ORRA, RUMP, and OHW forces to assault the town, ordering that every single man who resisted was to be put to the sword immediately. Over the course of about twenty minutes, Campbell bungled the operation spectacularly, vastly underestimating the tenacity of the rebels. By the end of the day, Governor Campbell himself and twenty of his men were taken prisoner and held hostage by the Inferiors. Roger O'brian, the head of the commune, then instructed for government forces to respect Trinity City Industrial Community's sovereignty or Governor Campbell would be put to death.
This would backfire extraordinarily. Instead of attempting to negotiate the return of the Texas governor, Steele ordered ORRA forces to shell the town with artillery and gas rounds. When ORRA commander Joshua Branch asked Steele if he was sure of the decision, Steele replied, his voice ice-cold, "I told that man not to fail me." Most of the town was shelled and poisoned with mustard gas, and Governor Campbell was among the casualties. Steele appointed Branch as Emergency Governor, with his reason simply being, "He didn't fail me." Branch rounded up the survivors of the commune and had them promptly hanged for treason against the state, earning him the nickname "Hangem' Branch." Branch would become a pet favorite of Steele and it would not be the last time the world would hear of him. At only 30 years of age, he had a long career in front of him still.
Texas Governor Joshua Roy "Hangem'" Branch
Steele had basically ordered the execution of a state governor, and this did not go unnoticed by the rest of the government at large. Newspapers were totally silent, however, simply reporting that Governor Campbell had died and had been replaced. For those not in the government, military, or security forces, there was nothing strange going on. Most Texans were completely unaware of the whole situation, a marvel of ORRA's control of information. But inside the government, panic was beginning to spread. The Focus on the Family had not yet been fully implemented, and if Steele was willing to kill a sitting governor simply by allowing himself to be captured by terrorists, all bets were off on what he'd do to people he personally despised. Jubilation in Philadelphia at the arrival of a Strong Man began to turn to fear and terror as every insider and politician began to make notes of what to do and what not to do to avoid raising Steele's ire.
One of the only other notable insurrections or resistance movements against the vaccine and SIN program was the New Canaan Riots, where several hundred ethnic Mexicans (some of the very last ones to remain in the state) tried one last time to stand against the Yankees, only for New Canaan Governor Samuel Lyndon Johnson to brutally crush them in a day with only a handful of RUMP officers from Metropolis, the state capital, acting before ORRA or OHW even arrived. Johnson had crushed the final Mexican independence or nationalist movement in human history, further wiping out what remained of the bloodline. After consulting with Steele, Johnson was given permission to stop the administration of any vaccine, poisoned or not, on ethnic Mexicans. Instead, he was told to simply ignore them as the Flu ravaged their numbers. Steele claimed "Natural Selection will take care of the Mexican Question just fine at this point." Johnson and Texas's Branch both would become the first recipients of the Steele Cross, a new and extremely impressive medal given only to those favored by Steele.
New Canaan Governor Sam Johnson
Despite a few instances of armed insurrection, the Cleansing Month was going pretty well for the government. Propaganda spread rapidly about how well the vaccine was working and about the "safety and joy" it brought to everyone. But the true purpose of the vaccine would soon be revealed to all when the first weakened or infirm Inferiors began to show symptoms of poisoning toward the end of the month. Still, news was not spread by the papers, which were strictly under observation by ORRA, but by word of mouth. In Shicagwa, around March 26, Inferiors began to report feeling light-headed and weak. Just 24 or so hours later and they would be dead. In occupied California, labor camps began to reporting a mass die-off of Chinese and ethnic Mexicans, further wiping out what little remained of the once massive Mexican nation. So much information on the Cleansing Month was censored that very little information was able to be recorded by historians, and many of the accounts of this genocide were masked under secrecy. At any rate, the reports of illness and death began to pick up around the end of March and early April. Millions of Inferiors were dying.
The ghettos became ghost towns, bodies lying in the streets. Inferiors knew they must have been poisoned, but the effects of the poison prevented most from doing anything about it. There were about 20 percent of Inferiors who received the normal vaccine, and to these Inferiors came the job of trying to hold together their communities or organize resistance to the government. But the government was prepared. Steele issued Executive Order 85 on April 2, ordering a general muster of the Custer Youth for civil defense purposes. Steele addressed the nation on April 3.
"My fellow Americans, patriots all, we stand in awe at the vengeful fury that Jehovah has laid down against the Inferiors of Society. Truly, we serve a just and noble Lord. Yesterday, I received reports that there has been an explosion of deaths among the Inferiors following the success of the Cleansing Month. Some say that this was organized by my government. This is nothing but a worthless conspiracy theory created by those who have too much time on their hands. Though the current plight of the Inferior is welcome and is clearly God's righteous judgement, neither myself nor the government is involved in this event in any way, shape, or form. Yesterday, at around two o'clock in the afternoon, it was reported to me that millions of Inferiors have become gravely ill and are actually dying. This is not the work of my government, nor even of man. This is an act of God, proving the strength of our fluids and Pinnacle Bloodline once and for all. Whilst the Betters of Society have gratefully received their vaccines against the Beckie Flu and are currently prospering at the cusp of a new golden age for the nation, the Inferiors are experiencing a reaction to the medical miracle. Informally, many are calling this 'Infee Blight.' Their weak bodily systems and unsouls cannot handle the powerful ingredients of the vaccine, blessed by Jehovah. Sadly, this vaccine seems to be the final proof of our inherent superiority, as if there was any more room for doubt. God's will has been revealed, and it is now up to us to watch his righteous fury punish the iniquitous.
"After the reports pertaining to the Infee Blight were brought to me, I decided to take immediate action to ensure stability and security for the nation during this time of judgment. I signed Executive Order 85, requesting that Headmaster-Marshal Coolidge summon all Custer Youth over the age of 14 to immediate and short-term military service. Due to the fact that so many of our troops are currently occupying former enemy lands, there is a slight shortage of available manpower to deal with the instability the Blight may cause in the ghettos. This call to arms will be very short, and America's children will be back with their parents quite soon. However, in order to control the situation, we need as many able-bodied hands as possible. The ghettos currently fester with the dying and civil order must not be allowed to break down into pure anarchy. Order will be maintained, with an iron fist."
- Excerpt from Joe Steele's talkiebox address to the nation, April 3, 1914
Following Order 85, several million Custer Youth reported for action the next day, with many more showing up over the coming days. It was clear from the start that Steele wanted to use the crisis to test the loyalty of the CYB and to see if forty years of brainwashing and indoctrination had made them fanatical enough to wade into a festering ghetto and clear the corpses out. He would not be disappointed. Many of the CYB cadets proved to be as fanatically loyal as the most rabid ORRA officer. These children were the third generation to be raised by the state and were totally willing and even excited to answer the call to arms. Mobs of children took to the streets, waving torches and flags, singing, "We are coming, Uncle Joe, 300,000 more!" Steele was more than impressed with the show of loyalty, supposedly remarking to Coolidge, "Give me a million Custer Youth and I could storm the Vatican."
When the Custer Youth marched into the ghettos, equipped with gas masks to defend them from the "Infee Blight," they handled themselves stoically and eagerly served as a "cleanup crew." Their entire lives, from the earliest days of preschool, they were taught that the Inferior was basically an animal. Now they got to meet that animal face to face. OHW crews also showed up in force, driving the mobill oven trucks to dispose of the dead.
Over the course of the first half of 1914, over 75% of America's Inferior population died in the largest genocide campaign in human history. The threat of the communes was now over, as there were no longer enough Inferiors to fuel separatist movements. What remained of the fragile Inferior under-class, however, redoubled in their absolute hatred of the Union. From the ashes of the Cleansing Month would rise a new generation of Illuminati terrorists, willing to do whatever it took to kill as many Yankees as possible. However, in the rest of the world, not much was known about the Infee Blight, and news reports to the outside world were limited. Even foreign dignitaries and personnel were lied to and deceived about how bad things were getting.
But the work was not done yet. Beginning in late March and early April, facilities in the Britannic Union and the Confederation of the Carolinas began production of the vaccine. Interestingly enough, the Carolinas were supplied with only the standard version of the vaccine, but Britannia was provided with the two different versions, one intended for Betters, and the other for those of Irish blood. The war in Ireland continued to stretch on, with no end in sight, and Churchill hoped that the vaccine would finally give his nation the boost it needed to take the Emerald Isle. By early summer, the Europans and Germania had reverse-engineered the vaccine and announced they would begin production themselves by September. However, no news came from Russia, which still continued its struggle against Europa. Caesar Napoleon IV hoped, like Churchill, that the vaccination effort would finally give him the edge to push the Russians back and liberate all of Hungary....