October 29, 2021 • 24 mins
Margaret Killjoy joins us to read a special spooky week ghost story about the 2nd American Civil War
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
It's it's spook all right, I didn't so if I'm
done for the day, taking taking the rest off by ament,
we sure do. Uh. So, you know, normally this is
(00:28):
a show about collapse, all that good stuff, YadA, YadA, YadA,
But fucking it's Halloween week. So we're we're we're we're
we're making sure all of our stuff has a little
bit of an extra spooky twist. It's like when you
you make a martini and you decide to actually put
vermuth inside it, as opposed to just kind of waving
it nearby. That's what we're doing this week, with spookiness
being the vermouth and mixing up our martini. Today is
(00:53):
Margaret Killjoy, Margaret Hello, Hello, I'm a famous mixologist, so
clearly this would be very good. Now Margaret today for
this very special episode of it could happen here on
Spooky Week. You have written us, well, you've written a
short story and you're going to read it and and
and we're all gonna enjoy it. Is that is that accurate? Um?
(01:16):
I hope at least I can I can testify to
the first parts, and I hope for the last part. Excellent.
All right, Well, with without further ado, or with minimal
further ado. Let's uh, let's let's let's just you know,
with the with the stuff, with the stuff, Margaret, with
this stuff. Well this is great because this is actually
a short story that you start reading of. Oh ship, Yeah,
(01:38):
where's that link? You tested it to me, but I
don't have my phone on me. Okay, let me put
it in the chat here um based impressive, to say
the least, based in fiction pilled. Okay, I start reading
the italics. Yeah, it's the first A couple of paragraphs
of introduction, and your your interview. Me, all right, motherfucker's
(02:02):
let's get it started. The Northern Host, for all its lingering,
horror and misery, the wake of a war is rich
to reign for a folklorist like myself. More people report
(02:23):
more supernatural experiences during times of war than times of peace.
Some of my peers have argued the stress and shock
of battle leaves our brains more susceptible to mass delusion.
Others claim that the veil between worlds remains thin when
so many are passing from life to death. The Second
American Civil War has been no exception. Most famously, of course,
(02:45):
soldiers from each of the three armies present at the
fifteen day Siege of St. Louis reported a wailing man
who walked among the wounded, healing some and ending the
lives of others. On the Cascadian Front, rebel forces spoke
of black bears, who in effect stood central for their
guerrilla positions. During the White Army's occupation of Washington, d C.
(03:05):
Civilians and soldiers alike reported apparitions pouring out from the
Pentagon Crater every new moon. Of all the various myths
and legends to spring up in the wake of the
recent conflict, however, I find myself most strongly drawn to
the stories of the Northern host. Never have I heard
a myth recounted in such detail by such a wide
variety of people. My favorite telling comes from Private Sarah
(03:28):
Dollar in the Battle of Ashville. This interview was recorded
in the spring of and lightly edited for clarity with
permission of the subject. Note that the subject refers to
the White Army by pejoratives throughout. These have been left
intact for the historical record. Could you introduce yourself and
tell me what you saw. Yeah, my my name is
(03:50):
Sarah Daher. I'm thirty one years old. I live in
Ashville and the Appalachian region of the United States of
America on stolen Cherokee Land. My u S military rank
was private. They may us all privates when they incorporated
the Irregulars into the Army, but I only served in
the Union to fight the White Army a year later.
I'm one of those crazy radicals who doesn't think the
reconfiguration goes far enough. I've never fired a gun in
(04:13):
my life before the Irregulars, and I hope I never
fired another one again. By temperament, I'm neither a lover
nor a fighter. I'm just your average trans girl who
likes cats and hates Nazis. I fought in three engagements
in Weaverville, Leicester, and Asheville. I think I killed two people.
One of them I know I killed him. I saw
him bleed out and I saw him taken away in
(04:33):
a black bag. The other person was a man I
shot in the thigh during the Battle of Asheville. I
didn't know you could die from a bullet in the thigh,
but I've spent a lot of time looking at casualty records,
and someone who fit that man's general description died in
that battle from a bullet to the thigh. Does that
bother you? Yes, No, I don't know. I don't lose
(04:55):
sleep over it, but I think about it a lot.
I look at the docks on both of them. The
first guy was a true believer, a real blood and
soil type. It doesn't bother me that I mingled those
two things for him. The second man, though, I'm not
so sure, he signed up because his son signed up.
I don't have any kids myself, but I could see
myself doing that. His son survived the war. Have you
(05:17):
been in contact with his son? Now? Funk? That guy
that kids a fucking Nazi and I don't know how
he talked his way out of the tribunals. Can you
tell me what you saw at the Battle of Asheville.
This was during the Fascist Spring Offensive last year, you know,
Hitler's birthday April. By that point, the White Army was
pretty much done, but they weren't about to go down
(05:38):
without doing some major symbolic damage. So there were about
forty of us, all irregulars, with our own commanders, no
army oversight. Morale was down. We felt pretty abandoned. Common
sentiment in the South I was on the street out
in front of the library, walking rounds. Downtown was half
rubble at that point. Only the library was standing because
symbols matter and all that bullsh ship, So that's where
(06:01):
we were making a stand. Neither side had artillery. Really
by that point, the brass had just commandeered even our
RPGs for the quote real fight. Air support wasn't coming,
not for them and not for us. Really, the Battle
of Ashville was was like nothing to the rest of
the world, and we knew it. So I was doing
the rounds thinking about my ship luck, thinking maybe I
(06:22):
was going to die, and how so many people had died,
and what's another dead girl to add to the pile.
I was thinking about how at least this dead girl
is going to die surrounded by or in defensive books.
And then I heard dogs from around the side of
the building. One barked loud and near, the other sort
of distant and echoy. I went to check it out,
turned the corner and there was this naked guy. He
(06:44):
was pale as hell, tall, tattooed and scarred, and like
I said, he was naked as the sun. I stared
at him, he stared at me. I got so distracted
trying to figure him out that it took me a
moment to realize there were nine others behind him, or
maybe they weren't there at first. I don't know. Oh
most of them were men, mostly of the tall Norse
looking variety, but there was a Middle Eastern man and
(07:06):
three women, including one who by my read was Latin
X No dogs anywhere that I could see. The man
closest to me he asked me something in a language
I didn't know. I just kind of stared. He asked
me another question in another language. What I asked? Who
are you? Who are we fighting? He asked? His accent
(07:26):
was thick, and I couldn't place it for the life
of me. I mean, I know now, but I sure
as ship didn't know it then we I asked what
I was due back out front, because I was a
century doing the rounds and this sure needed reporting. But
what the hell was I going to tell? People? Who
are we fighting? Where are we You're in Asheville? Who
are you? Ah? The American conflict? The man said behind him.
(07:50):
Others nodded. Their movements were sloppy, dream like they were drunk.
I later realized one of them had dried blood running
down from her lip onto her not insubstantial. Ally, you're
fighting the nationalists, the first one said, we're here to
help you. Who are you, I asked this third time
he actually answered, my name is bell Gear. We are
(08:11):
the dead. We are the inn here from Valhalla. Every
day we are sent to a battle to fight, and
we die. The others behind him nodded, definitely drunk. Now,
I know there were good folks on our side who
were into European paganism, but you have to understand that
a lot more of the fashion were into that ship
than anybody else. If they hadn't been naked and drunk,
(08:33):
I might have mistaken them for the enemy and shot them. Valhalla,
I said, reciting the tiny bit I knew that's where
Vikings go if they die in battle, feast every day
and fight every night in Odin's hall until the end
of the world, where you like also fight and die.
But wolf eats the sun or something close enough. Bell
(08:53):
Gear said, I mean Odin only gets half the battle dead,
and Viking isn't a good name for us. But sure,
and you're here because we are to take arms alongside you,
fight your enemies and die Today am I going to
die today? Only the seers and the gods know that.
I've been calling myself a witch half my life, but
(09:14):
honestly that was mostly because I like taro and astrology
and panagrams and ship I've never been someone who took
the supernatural all that seriously. But nothing in the world
made sense like it used to. Fascists had just been
driven out of d C. Cascadia had not only succeeded,
but was in a civil war of its own now.
Mexico was gone and replaced by self governing states of
almost every stripe in the political rainbow. China had backed
(09:36):
white supremacists and other nationalist types in an American civil war,
and antigovernment leftists were fighting alongside weirdos like me in
the damn u s Army. I can't say those things
were as weird as naked dead don't call us vikings
talking to me in the street. But somehow all of
that was just comparably bizarre. Come let us arm ourselves
and fight together. You and I Belger said, So that's
(09:59):
how I'm the Northern host. Most people don't believe me,
assume it was just some kind of drunk wing nuts.
Maybe some irregulars I've never met before, but I saw
what I saw, and I believe it. The rest of
us who survived they saw it too, And how did
it go? Yeah? Pardon the battle? How did it go?
We got the iron here yard into irregular's garb and
(10:20):
armed them. There were plenty of guns at that point
in the forgotten hellhole of front. Bullets not so much,
but plenty of guns. They were all comfortable with firearms,
though one fellow groused about what he wouldn't do for
an axe and shield, and another said what we had
was fine, but monofilament web guns were better than any
combat shotgun. To hear them, tell it, funk it? Why
(10:42):
am I pretending like I don't believe them? I believe
them with every bit of my soul, and damn what
people think of me for it. The Northern Host fight
every night, and every night. They are in a different
time and place. Most battles in human history were in
the past, they said, which sounds optimistic, doesn't it, But
they said they fought in every century up to the
Nothing happen after the twenty four century. Ragnarok most likely
(11:03):
the end of the world, wolves eating the sun, and
the moon all that. They stood guard out with me
out front. Around midday we got hit with an e MP.
We knew that was coming. It didn't screw us up much.
We had a hardened phone in the basement, and all
our weapons operated just as well in dumb mode a
smart mode, including our own e MPs. The White Army
(11:24):
showed up, maybe a hundred men, all men, that's their
whole stick. They came in on motorcycles and a t
v s and horses more stick. Like a fucking folksy
they are. We hit them with the m e mp
s anyway level the field, took out the a t
v s, the bikes were retrofitted, no electric and a horse.
You can't impel horse. I don't know if there was
a skirmish in that war that didn't start with both
(11:45):
sides ritually knocking the other one back to basically the
twentieth century. I think the tactical e MP is the
reason there's anything left of this country. We took a
few pot shots while they were still at range, but
we didn't have the AMMO to waste on anything else.
I don't think we'd at any damage. They took up
position further up the hill and the ruins of the
old Basilica. Then we waited. We should have mined the church.
(12:09):
That old thing was blown half to ship. Anyway, it
wouldn't have made the world any worse if we'd either
leveled it or hidden explosives throughout. But you know, ethical
war or whatever, don't mind churches. The other side leveled
every mosques, inn agogue and quote heretic church they got
their hands on, not to mention libraries and universities and
even the goddamn Statue of Liberty because they hate immigrants.
(12:30):
But we were supposed to be fighting a quote ethical war.
Those two words don't got nothing to do with one another,
and everyone knows it. So they hold up in the Basilica,
and we pulled back into the library and we had
one of those good old fashioned standoffs where people die
slowly from sniper fire and everything is awful. That's when
Laura got shot right in the head because we missed
(12:51):
a spot when we bulletproof the facade. She's dead. She
had natural red hair, but she always died at Redder
And her favorite show is by for the Vampire Slayer.
And she liked to drink water out of long stem glasses.
She was I think she was thirty seven, way past
rafting age. She volunteered. It was her first engagement. She
(13:13):
was only there because she loved books, had plenty of
time to avoid looking at her corpse while she was
in there with us dead. Dwight was another one of
my friends in the unit, one of my favorite people,
hands down, total weirdo, and he was all obsessed with
that Viking ship and Dark ages in general. Both his
parents had come over from Sweden, though his dad was
originally from Nigeria. Dwight had one degree in medieval studies
(13:34):
in another African history, and I can't tell you how
many times during basic he'd run down the details of
this or that ancient battle, whether in Europe or Africa.
If there were guns involved, he didn't care about it,
but if there were swords in armor or spears and shields,
he was all in. He started talking to the Vikings
first thing. He was the first person to believe them,
to to really believe them, and his faith was contagious.
(13:57):
While we were pinned down, he asked them everything. Mostly
they were quiet, even taciturn, but there was one thing
they were very insistent on, and that I overheard them
talking about Nazis don't go to Valhalla. But why not?
Dwight asked, It takes two things to go to Valhalla.
The spokesperson said, you have to die in battle, and
(14:17):
you have to venerate Odin. A bunch of those fuckers
are Odiness, he said, no, they aren't. They're nationalist, fascists,
racial separatists are all kinds of things, but they don't
venerate Odin. Whatever they think, What do you mean? They
only know one half of Odin. They know the masculine side,
the heterosexual side, the Christian side. They worship a bastardization
(14:38):
of our God, a bastardization first created by a nationalist
Christian eight hundred years ago that's only gotten further afield
since our Odin practices women's magic, the magic of these
sexually penetrated. We also worship female gods of war, and
male gods of the hearth, and gods who change their
gender when they're board. Nazis don't understand that any of it.
(14:59):
In life, we aided, sometimes traded. Other times we also
did all sorts of things that won't fit your modern sensibilities,
things that were I alive. You might kill me for
but we're not Nazis, and people who worship a Christian
version of our God most certainly do not go to Valhalla.
It was as if the man had used up every
word allotted to him for the day, because I don't
(15:21):
believe one of them spoke again before the battle began
in earnest And how long was that another hour? Maybe
the sun was still right overhead when the White Army
rushed us. It was a bullshit move, rushing us one
part over confidence in one part desperation. If you can
imagine that they knew they were losing the war at
(15:41):
that point, but they had us more than two to one,
and we all know that KKK commanders don't give two
ships about the lives of their men. That's when I
put a bullet on a man's leg while he was
in the street running. It was a good shot. He
was running, and I led the target and everything. I've
been aiming for center body mass, but but still at
least a hundred yards against a moving target. I was
(16:02):
proud of that shot at the time on a technical level,
even if I'm not sure I'm proud of it any
more now that I know the man's name. We expected
the charge. What we didn't expect was the ordinance that
knocked the reinforced front off its hinges. But that happened,
and almost all the fighting happened right there on the
first floor among the empty shelves. The whole thing felt
like it lasted half an hour. I've looked it up since.
(16:25):
From the time of the first blast at the time
the last shot was fired, we're talking about three minutes.
In twelve seconds, we thought they were going to pour
in through the door after they blew at the funk off.
So James got in there with our one functioning automatic
and he took at least ten of the fash down
with him before someone got him in the neck. It
was a faint and they blew a hole in the
side of the building while well that was going on,
(16:47):
and that's where they got in close quarters combat. As
a whole different beast, a worse one, maybe maybe a
better one. I go back on forth on that sometimes
instead of sleeping, I think about the pros and cons
of various types of absolute are Is it better to
see your death coming or to get picked off without
knowing it. I would have thought the Vikings would expend
themselves right off I mean Vikings. They were starting to
(17:10):
sober up by that point, but still they'd been drinking,
and they were already dead, and they were doomed to die.
But they were smarter than that. Never risked themselves unnecessarily.
Your next assumption of a comrade you know is doomed
is that they'll sacrifice themselves to save others. None of
that either. They knew they were the best trained soldiers
on the field, and that in order for us to win,
(17:31):
they had to be in the fight as long as
they could. They were smart like that. Assholes like that.
I stationed myself in the back. I fancy myself more
of a sniper than the assault sort, so I watched
the whole thing go down. I also only hit three
targets out of a hundred and seventeen bullets I fired,
But that's another story. I watched us win. We took
(17:52):
casualties of fifty half of those were k I A.
But we defeated a force twice our strength. I watched
the in hangar bayonet in and shoot them, and I
saw one of the Viking women break a man's face
apart with her fists. Soon after, a bullet found her
heart and she collapsed with a smile on her lips.
She disappeared like literally she phased out of existence, being
(18:13):
me up Scotty. We pushed them back onto the pavement,
And when I say we, I'm honestly not being fair
because I didn't do much of it myself. We had
them scattered and running, most of them. Dwight was out there,
waving a pistol in one hand and swinging a wooden
stock rifle like a club in the other. A Viking
with a shotgun stood beside him. I think the same
(18:34):
fashy little ship killed them both, maybe in the same
three round burst. I tagged the fashion in his belly,
and his friends helped him get away, and the remaining
Nazis ran. He survived his wound. Why do we have
so much information about the war? Does it do me
any good to know who I killed and who I didn't?
And Dwight. Dwight lay alone in the concrete, face down.
(18:55):
There wasn't much blood, but he was dead. Two ravens
sat atop him, one on each shoulder. I've never seen
a raven in Asheville in my life, not before, not since.
There were two of them, as big as people say
those things are. They barked, and they sounded like dogs.
One was loud, like it was right where I was.
The other was distant, echoing. Then they flew away, directly
(19:18):
up and towards the sun, and I tried to watch
to see where they went, but you can't look directly
at the sun like that. I looked back down and
Dwight was gone. Okay, so his body was still there,
but there was there was something about him that was gone,
and I don't know how to tell you what it was.
That that was that we won sort of. They didn't
storm the library, which I guess means we won. But
(19:40):
sometimes I think I'd burn every single book in that place.
It would bring back Lord or Dwight or any of
the rest of my friends. The war was over at
that point, even if we didn't know it yet. So
what did they die for? I guess for symbols. Maybe
symbols matter that much. I don't know. I deserted after that,
half the survivors of the Battle of Asheville less than
a week later up in Pittsburgh, and I suppose I'd
(20:03):
be dead if I had gone, And it probably makes
me a coward that I didn't It's not that I
was afraid of dying. It's that I was afraid of
dying in battle because I believe in Odin Now it's
hard not to believe in a god without venerating him.
I don't want to go to Valhalla. I don't want
to fight ever again, let alone every night. I don't
want to serve with the iron and yard at the
(20:24):
twilight of the gods sometime in the century. If I
don't want to do that, then I don't want to
die in battle. Dwight, though I expect he's happy. I
expect he dies every day with a smile on his
lips and meat and his belly. He won't have to
fight alongside the monsters of the human race either, because,
as I learned in Nashville, Nazis don't go to Valhalla.
(20:56):
All right, that was awesome, markret thing you Yeah, thanks.
D'll put a bunch of applause noise here because translating
over yeah and and and and uh an air horn
stick an, I don't think the air horn is going
(21:17):
to be that as no Garrison air horn show. Thank you,
thank you, Garrison. Margaret Um, how long ago did you
write that? I wrote that I believe in two seventeen May.
Oh yeah, well it's not gotten less relevant. Yeah, man,
(21:41):
I uh, there's definitely some times where I've I've wished
for a platoon of vikings uh to deal with some ship.
Yeah uh, well this has been it could happen here,
and this has been spooky week. You enjoyed this scary
story that's also relevant to our theme of collapse. Margaret,
(22:04):
you want to tell the people where they can find you. Yeah,
I'm on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy. I'm on Instagram
at Margaret kill Joy. I'm on Patreon at patreon dot
com slash Margaret Killjoy, where this story and many other
stories are available for anyone who sponsors me at a
dollar a month. Then if you make less money than
I do, then just message me and I'll give you
all my ship for free. And I have an upcome
(22:26):
because you've asked me to plug things, and I'm definitely
just gonna go ahead and plug things. Um. I have
a book coming out from a K Press. It's a
reissue of my anarchist utopian book, A Country of Ghosts.
If you like my very I like writing war stories,
but I specifically like writing war stories that are actually sad.
And how about how war is horrible? Um, and so
A Country of Ghosts is such a book and this
(22:48):
story will eventually I'm excited to say I just signed
the contract for a k Press is going to put
out a short story anthology of mine which will include
this story. Yeah, that sounds incredibly rad Yes, great publisher. Yeah,
not biased at all in that. No, no, no, nor
towards stories of the Second American Civil War with superior
(23:14):
I've been introduced to just today. Um, all right, we'll
check out Margaret's book Parentheses. S uh and and um,
check out this show when it comes back someday one day.
You'll never know when, but you'll hear a whisper on
the wind, and there will be or it will be
(23:36):
the next weekday after one of those. It could happen
here as a production of cool Zone Media or more
podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone
media dot com, or check us out on the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
(23:58):
monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks
for listening
It's it's spook all right, I didn't so if I'm
done for the day, taking taking the rest off by ament,
we sure do. Uh. So, you know, normally this is
(00:28):
a show about collapse, all that good stuff, YadA, YadA, YadA,
But fucking it's Halloween week. So we're we're we're we're
we're making sure all of our stuff has a little
bit of an extra spooky twist. It's like when you
you make a martini and you decide to actually put
vermuth inside it, as opposed to just kind of waving
it nearby. That's what we're doing this week, with spookiness
being the vermouth and mixing up our martini. Today is
(00:53):
Margaret Killjoy, Margaret Hello, Hello, I'm a famous mixologist, so
clearly this would be very good. Now Margaret today for
this very special episode of it could happen here on
Spooky Week. You have written us, well, you've written a
short story and you're going to read it and and
and we're all gonna enjoy it. Is that is that accurate? Um?
(01:16):
I hope at least I can I can testify to
the first parts, and I hope for the last part. Excellent.
All right, Well, with without further ado, or with minimal
further ado. Let's uh, let's let's let's just you know,
with the with the stuff, with the stuff, Margaret, with
this stuff. Well this is great because this is actually
a short story that you start reading of. Oh ship, Yeah,
(01:38):
where's that link? You tested it to me, but I
don't have my phone on me. Okay, let me put
it in the chat here um based impressive, to say
the least, based in fiction pilled. Okay, I start reading
the italics. Yeah, it's the first A couple of paragraphs
of introduction, and your your interview. Me, all right, motherfucker's
(02:02):
let's get it started. The Northern Host, for all its lingering,
horror and misery, the wake of a war is rich
to reign for a folklorist like myself. More people report
(02:23):
more supernatural experiences during times of war than times of peace.
Some of my peers have argued the stress and shock
of battle leaves our brains more susceptible to mass delusion.
Others claim that the veil between worlds remains thin when
so many are passing from life to death. The Second
American Civil War has been no exception. Most famously, of course,
(02:45):
soldiers from each of the three armies present at the
fifteen day Siege of St. Louis reported a wailing man
who walked among the wounded, healing some and ending the
lives of others. On the Cascadian Front, rebel forces spoke
of black bears, who in effect stood central for their
guerrilla positions. During the White Army's occupation of Washington, d C.
(03:05):
Civilians and soldiers alike reported apparitions pouring out from the
Pentagon Crater every new moon. Of all the various myths
and legends to spring up in the wake of the
recent conflict, however, I find myself most strongly drawn to
the stories of the Northern host. Never have I heard
a myth recounted in such detail by such a wide
variety of people. My favorite telling comes from Private Sarah
(03:28):
Dollar in the Battle of Ashville. This interview was recorded
in the spring of and lightly edited for clarity with
permission of the subject. Note that the subject refers to
the White Army by pejoratives throughout. These have been left
intact for the historical record. Could you introduce yourself and
tell me what you saw. Yeah, my my name is
(03:50):
Sarah Daher. I'm thirty one years old. I live in
Ashville and the Appalachian region of the United States of
America on stolen Cherokee Land. My u S military rank
was private. They may us all privates when they incorporated
the Irregulars into the Army, but I only served in
the Union to fight the White Army a year later.
I'm one of those crazy radicals who doesn't think the
reconfiguration goes far enough. I've never fired a gun in
(04:13):
my life before the Irregulars, and I hope I never
fired another one again. By temperament, I'm neither a lover
nor a fighter. I'm just your average trans girl who
likes cats and hates Nazis. I fought in three engagements
in Weaverville, Leicester, and Asheville. I think I killed two people.
One of them I know I killed him. I saw
him bleed out and I saw him taken away in
(04:33):
a black bag. The other person was a man I
shot in the thigh during the Battle of Asheville. I
didn't know you could die from a bullet in the thigh,
but I've spent a lot of time looking at casualty records,
and someone who fit that man's general description died in
that battle from a bullet to the thigh. Does that
bother you? Yes, No, I don't know. I don't lose
(04:55):
sleep over it, but I think about it a lot.
I look at the docks on both of them. The
first guy was a true believer, a real blood and
soil type. It doesn't bother me that I mingled those
two things for him. The second man, though, I'm not
so sure, he signed up because his son signed up.
I don't have any kids myself, but I could see
myself doing that. His son survived the war. Have you
(05:17):
been in contact with his son? Now? Funk? That guy
that kids a fucking Nazi and I don't know how
he talked his way out of the tribunals. Can you
tell me what you saw at the Battle of Asheville.
This was during the Fascist Spring Offensive last year, you know,
Hitler's birthday April. By that point, the White Army was
pretty much done, but they weren't about to go down
(05:38):
without doing some major symbolic damage. So there were about
forty of us, all irregulars, with our own commanders, no
army oversight. Morale was down. We felt pretty abandoned. Common
sentiment in the South I was on the street out
in front of the library, walking rounds. Downtown was half
rubble at that point. Only the library was standing because
symbols matter and all that bullsh ship, So that's where
(06:01):
we were making a stand. Neither side had artillery. Really
by that point, the brass had just commandeered even our
RPGs for the quote real fight. Air support wasn't coming,
not for them and not for us. Really, the Battle
of Ashville was was like nothing to the rest of
the world, and we knew it. So I was doing
the rounds thinking about my ship luck, thinking maybe I
(06:22):
was going to die, and how so many people had died,
and what's another dead girl to add to the pile.
I was thinking about how at least this dead girl
is going to die surrounded by or in defensive books.
And then I heard dogs from around the side of
the building. One barked loud and near, the other sort
of distant and echoy. I went to check it out,
turned the corner and there was this naked guy. He
(06:44):
was pale as hell, tall, tattooed and scarred, and like
I said, he was naked as the sun. I stared
at him, he stared at me. I got so distracted
trying to figure him out that it took me a
moment to realize there were nine others behind him, or
maybe they weren't there at first. I don't know. Oh
most of them were men, mostly of the tall Norse
looking variety, but there was a Middle Eastern man and
(07:06):
three women, including one who by my read was Latin
X No dogs anywhere that I could see. The man
closest to me he asked me something in a language
I didn't know. I just kind of stared. He asked
me another question in another language. What I asked? Who
are you? Who are we fighting? He asked? His accent
(07:26):
was thick, and I couldn't place it for the life
of me. I mean, I know now, but I sure
as ship didn't know it then we I asked what
I was due back out front, because I was a
century doing the rounds and this sure needed reporting. But
what the hell was I going to tell? People? Who
are we fighting? Where are we You're in Asheville? Who
are you? Ah? The American conflict? The man said behind him.
(07:50):
Others nodded. Their movements were sloppy, dream like they were drunk.
I later realized one of them had dried blood running
down from her lip onto her not insubstantial. Ally, you're
fighting the nationalists, the first one said, we're here to
help you. Who are you, I asked this third time
he actually answered, my name is bell Gear. We are
(08:11):
the dead. We are the inn here from Valhalla. Every
day we are sent to a battle to fight, and
we die. The others behind him nodded, definitely drunk. Now,
I know there were good folks on our side who
were into European paganism, but you have to understand that
a lot more of the fashion were into that ship
than anybody else. If they hadn't been naked and drunk,
(08:33):
I might have mistaken them for the enemy and shot them. Valhalla,
I said, reciting the tiny bit I knew that's where
Vikings go if they die in battle, feast every day
and fight every night in Odin's hall until the end
of the world, where you like also fight and die.
But wolf eats the sun or something close enough. Bell
(08:53):
Gear said, I mean Odin only gets half the battle dead,
and Viking isn't a good name for us. But sure,
and you're here because we are to take arms alongside you,
fight your enemies and die Today am I going to
die today? Only the seers and the gods know that.
I've been calling myself a witch half my life, but
(09:14):
honestly that was mostly because I like taro and astrology
and panagrams and ship I've never been someone who took
the supernatural all that seriously. But nothing in the world
made sense like it used to. Fascists had just been
driven out of d C. Cascadia had not only succeeded,
but was in a civil war of its own now.
Mexico was gone and replaced by self governing states of
almost every stripe in the political rainbow. China had backed
(09:36):
white supremacists and other nationalist types in an American civil war,
and antigovernment leftists were fighting alongside weirdos like me in
the damn u s Army. I can't say those things
were as weird as naked dead don't call us vikings
talking to me in the street. But somehow all of
that was just comparably bizarre. Come let us arm ourselves
and fight together. You and I Belger said, So that's
(09:59):
how I'm the Northern host. Most people don't believe me,
assume it was just some kind of drunk wing nuts.
Maybe some irregulars I've never met before, but I saw
what I saw, and I believe it. The rest of
us who survived they saw it too, And how did
it go? Yeah? Pardon the battle? How did it go?
We got the iron here yard into irregular's garb and
(10:20):
armed them. There were plenty of guns at that point
in the forgotten hellhole of front. Bullets not so much,
but plenty of guns. They were all comfortable with firearms,
though one fellow groused about what he wouldn't do for
an axe and shield, and another said what we had
was fine, but monofilament web guns were better than any
combat shotgun. To hear them, tell it, funk it? Why
(10:42):
am I pretending like I don't believe them? I believe
them with every bit of my soul, and damn what
people think of me for it. The Northern Host fight
every night, and every night. They are in a different
time and place. Most battles in human history were in
the past, they said, which sounds optimistic, doesn't it, But
they said they fought in every century up to the
Nothing happen after the twenty four century. Ragnarok most likely
(11:03):
the end of the world, wolves eating the sun, and
the moon all that. They stood guard out with me
out front. Around midday we got hit with an e MP.
We knew that was coming. It didn't screw us up much.
We had a hardened phone in the basement, and all
our weapons operated just as well in dumb mode a
smart mode, including our own e MPs. The White Army
(11:24):
showed up, maybe a hundred men, all men, that's their
whole stick. They came in on motorcycles and a t
v s and horses more stick. Like a fucking folksy
they are. We hit them with the m e mp
s anyway level the field, took out the a t
v s, the bikes were retrofitted, no electric and a horse.
You can't impel horse. I don't know if there was
a skirmish in that war that didn't start with both
(11:45):
sides ritually knocking the other one back to basically the
twentieth century. I think the tactical e MP is the
reason there's anything left of this country. We took a
few pot shots while they were still at range, but
we didn't have the AMMO to waste on anything else.
I don't think we'd at any damage. They took up
position further up the hill and the ruins of the
old Basilica. Then we waited. We should have mined the church.
(12:09):
That old thing was blown half to ship. Anyway, it
wouldn't have made the world any worse if we'd either
leveled it or hidden explosives throughout. But you know, ethical
war or whatever, don't mind churches. The other side leveled
every mosques, inn agogue and quote heretic church they got
their hands on, not to mention libraries and universities and
even the goddamn Statue of Liberty because they hate immigrants.
(12:30):
But we were supposed to be fighting a quote ethical war.
Those two words don't got nothing to do with one another,
and everyone knows it. So they hold up in the Basilica,
and we pulled back into the library and we had
one of those good old fashioned standoffs where people die
slowly from sniper fire and everything is awful. That's when
Laura got shot right in the head because we missed
(12:51):
a spot when we bulletproof the facade. She's dead. She
had natural red hair, but she always died at Redder
And her favorite show is by for the Vampire Slayer.
And she liked to drink water out of long stem glasses.
She was I think she was thirty seven, way past
rafting age. She volunteered. It was her first engagement. She
(13:13):
was only there because she loved books, had plenty of
time to avoid looking at her corpse while she was
in there with us dead. Dwight was another one of
my friends in the unit, one of my favorite people,
hands down, total weirdo, and he was all obsessed with
that Viking ship and Dark ages in general. Both his
parents had come over from Sweden, though his dad was
originally from Nigeria. Dwight had one degree in medieval studies
(13:34):
in another African history, and I can't tell you how
many times during basic he'd run down the details of
this or that ancient battle, whether in Europe or Africa.
If there were guns involved, he didn't care about it,
but if there were swords in armor or spears and shields,
he was all in. He started talking to the Vikings
first thing. He was the first person to believe them,
to to really believe them, and his faith was contagious.
(13:57):
While we were pinned down, he asked them everything. Mostly
they were quiet, even taciturn, but there was one thing
they were very insistent on, and that I overheard them
talking about Nazis don't go to Valhalla. But why not?
Dwight asked, It takes two things to go to Valhalla.
The spokesperson said, you have to die in battle, and
(14:17):
you have to venerate Odin. A bunch of those fuckers
are Odiness, he said, no, they aren't. They're nationalist, fascists,
racial separatists are all kinds of things, but they don't
venerate Odin. Whatever they think, What do you mean? They
only know one half of Odin. They know the masculine side,
the heterosexual side, the Christian side. They worship a bastardization
(14:38):
of our God, a bastardization first created by a nationalist
Christian eight hundred years ago that's only gotten further afield
since our Odin practices women's magic, the magic of these
sexually penetrated. We also worship female gods of war, and
male gods of the hearth, and gods who change their
gender when they're board. Nazis don't understand that any of it.
(14:59):
In life, we aided, sometimes traded. Other times we also
did all sorts of things that won't fit your modern sensibilities,
things that were I alive. You might kill me for
but we're not Nazis, and people who worship a Christian
version of our God most certainly do not go to Valhalla.
It was as if the man had used up every
word allotted to him for the day, because I don't
(15:21):
believe one of them spoke again before the battle began
in earnest And how long was that another hour? Maybe
the sun was still right overhead when the White Army
rushed us. It was a bullshit move, rushing us one
part over confidence in one part desperation. If you can
imagine that they knew they were losing the war at
(15:41):
that point, but they had us more than two to one,
and we all know that KKK commanders don't give two
ships about the lives of their men. That's when I
put a bullet on a man's leg while he was
in the street running. It was a good shot. He
was running, and I led the target and everything. I've
been aiming for center body mass, but but still at
least a hundred yards against a moving target. I was
(16:02):
proud of that shot at the time on a technical level,
even if I'm not sure I'm proud of it any
more now that I know the man's name. We expected
the charge. What we didn't expect was the ordinance that
knocked the reinforced front off its hinges. But that happened,
and almost all the fighting happened right there on the
first floor among the empty shelves. The whole thing felt
like it lasted half an hour. I've looked it up since.
(16:25):
From the time of the first blast at the time
the last shot was fired, we're talking about three minutes.
In twelve seconds, we thought they were going to pour
in through the door after they blew at the funk off.
So James got in there with our one functioning automatic
and he took at least ten of the fash down
with him before someone got him in the neck. It
was a faint and they blew a hole in the
side of the building while well that was going on,
(16:47):
and that's where they got in close quarters combat. As
a whole different beast, a worse one, maybe maybe a
better one. I go back on forth on that sometimes
instead of sleeping, I think about the pros and cons
of various types of absolute are Is it better to
see your death coming or to get picked off without
knowing it. I would have thought the Vikings would expend
themselves right off I mean Vikings. They were starting to
(17:10):
sober up by that point, but still they'd been drinking,
and they were already dead, and they were doomed to die.
But they were smarter than that. Never risked themselves unnecessarily.
Your next assumption of a comrade you know is doomed
is that they'll sacrifice themselves to save others. None of
that either. They knew they were the best trained soldiers
on the field, and that in order for us to win,
(17:31):
they had to be in the fight as long as
they could. They were smart like that. Assholes like that.
I stationed myself in the back. I fancy myself more
of a sniper than the assault sort, so I watched
the whole thing go down. I also only hit three
targets out of a hundred and seventeen bullets I fired,
But that's another story. I watched us win. We took
(17:52):
casualties of fifty half of those were k I A.
But we defeated a force twice our strength. I watched
the in hangar bayonet in and shoot them, and I
saw one of the Viking women break a man's face
apart with her fists. Soon after, a bullet found her
heart and she collapsed with a smile on her lips.
She disappeared like literally she phased out of existence, being
(18:13):
me up Scotty. We pushed them back onto the pavement,
And when I say we, I'm honestly not being fair
because I didn't do much of it myself. We had
them scattered and running, most of them. Dwight was out there,
waving a pistol in one hand and swinging a wooden
stock rifle like a club in the other. A Viking
with a shotgun stood beside him. I think the same
(18:34):
fashy little ship killed them both, maybe in the same
three round burst. I tagged the fashion in his belly,
and his friends helped him get away, and the remaining
Nazis ran. He survived his wound. Why do we have
so much information about the war? Does it do me
any good to know who I killed and who I didn't?
And Dwight. Dwight lay alone in the concrete, face down.
(18:55):
There wasn't much blood, but he was dead. Two ravens
sat atop him, one on each shoulder. I've never seen
a raven in Asheville in my life, not before, not since.
There were two of them, as big as people say
those things are. They barked, and they sounded like dogs.
One was loud, like it was right where I was.
The other was distant, echoing. Then they flew away, directly
(19:18):
up and towards the sun, and I tried to watch
to see where they went, but you can't look directly
at the sun like that. I looked back down and
Dwight was gone. Okay, so his body was still there,
but there was there was something about him that was gone,
and I don't know how to tell you what it was.
That that was that we won sort of. They didn't
storm the library, which I guess means we won. But
(19:40):
sometimes I think I'd burn every single book in that place.
It would bring back Lord or Dwight or any of
the rest of my friends. The war was over at
that point, even if we didn't know it yet. So
what did they die for? I guess for symbols. Maybe
symbols matter that much. I don't know. I deserted after that,
half the survivors of the Battle of Asheville less than
a week later up in Pittsburgh, and I suppose I'd
(20:03):
be dead if I had gone, And it probably makes
me a coward that I didn't It's not that I
was afraid of dying. It's that I was afraid of
dying in battle because I believe in Odin Now it's
hard not to believe in a god without venerating him.
I don't want to go to Valhalla. I don't want
to fight ever again, let alone every night. I don't
want to serve with the iron and yard at the
(20:24):
twilight of the gods sometime in the century. If I
don't want to do that, then I don't want to
die in battle. Dwight, though I expect he's happy. I
expect he dies every day with a smile on his
lips and meat and his belly. He won't have to
fight alongside the monsters of the human race either, because,
as I learned in Nashville, Nazis don't go to Valhalla.
(20:56):
All right, that was awesome, markret thing you Yeah, thanks.
D'll put a bunch of applause noise here because translating
over yeah and and and and uh an air horn
stick an, I don't think the air horn is going
(21:17):
to be that as no Garrison air horn show. Thank you,
thank you, Garrison. Margaret Um, how long ago did you
write that? I wrote that I believe in two seventeen May.
Oh yeah, well it's not gotten less relevant. Yeah, man,
(21:41):
I uh, there's definitely some times where I've I've wished
for a platoon of vikings uh to deal with some ship.
Yeah uh, well this has been it could happen here,
and this has been spooky week. You enjoyed this scary
story that's also relevant to our theme of collapse. Margaret,
(22:04):
you want to tell the people where they can find you. Yeah,
I'm on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy. I'm on Instagram
at Margaret kill Joy. I'm on Patreon at patreon dot
com slash Margaret Killjoy, where this story and many other
stories are available for anyone who sponsors me at a
dollar a month. Then if you make less money than
I do, then just message me and I'll give you
all my ship for free. And I have an upcome
(22:26):
because you've asked me to plug things, and I'm definitely
just gonna go ahead and plug things. Um. I have
a book coming out from a K Press. It's a
reissue of my anarchist utopian book, A Country of Ghosts.
If you like my very I like writing war stories,
but I specifically like writing war stories that are actually sad.
And how about how war is horrible? Um, and so
A Country of Ghosts is such a book and this
(22:48):
story will eventually I'm excited to say I just signed
the contract for a k Press is going to put
out a short story anthology of mine which will include
this story. Yeah, that sounds incredibly rad Yes, great publisher. Yeah,
not biased at all in that. No, no, no, nor
towards stories of the Second American Civil War with superior
(23:14):
I've been introduced to just today. Um, all right, we'll
check out Margaret's book Parentheses. S uh and and um,
check out this show when it comes back someday one day.
You'll never know when, but you'll hear a whisper on
the wind, and there will be or it will be
(23:36):
the next weekday after one of those. It could happen
here as a production of cool Zone Media or more
podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone
media dot com, or check us out on the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
(23:58):
monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks
for listening
It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
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