From AMC’s The Walking Dead

Editor’s note: So I have one ‘finished’ novel manuscript being pitched to agents (mostly crickets so far; don’t those agents know how much writers love their rejection letters?) and a second completed manuscript that is in the editing stage. I figured, why not go for the holy triumvirate of unpublished noveldom and start a new one? The editing process on a novel is pretty brutal — it’s generally known as the time authors start to despise their story, seeing everything that’s wrong and choking back little baby vomits at the thought of all the work that’s needed to fix it. To give myself a little break from that dreary slog, I dove head first (or maybe belly flopped) into a new project that brings me nothing but unadulterated joy as I tap into my inner 13-year-old to write. That’s right, I’m writing a zombie book. It’s my party and I’ll be cliche if I want to. I don’t know if I’ll use the following faux-news article or not, but it provides the set up for this budding zombie world.

Supreme Court OKs viral incarceration
Drake administration praises decision as ‘game changer’ in War against Hunger; defiant states threaten to protect inmates’ rights
by Kareem Raji, The New York Times
17:49 | Dec. 15, 2021

Article approved by the FOB

WASHINGTON – On the 230th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court on Wednesday narrowly ruled in favor of the Justice Department’s Project Freeing Resources so Everyone Eats with a 4-3 vote along partisan lines.

Each of the four justices appointed by President Drake after February’s fatal Supreme Court chamber terrorist bombing – Eaton, King, Pendleton and Rivera – sided with DOJ arguments that viral incarceration does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Civil liberties lawyers failed to convince the majority that the infection causes conscious suffering.

In their dissenting opinion, the three justices who survived the bombing and remain capable of sitting the bench wrote: “Of course, there is no conscious suffering; the infection eliminates the conscious. Victims of Virus 26 suffer because the lives they once led are taken from them. They are robbed of any opportunity for penitence, morality, and indeed basic humanity. They exhibit dangerous predatory behavior without any instinct for self-preservation. By no other name, infection is the definition of cruel and unusual.”

Justices Robertson and Sotomayor remain on life support under heavy guard. No timetable has been set for their return to the bench or on a decision to replace them.

“We are highly distraught at this blow to the human rights and civil liberties of America’s prisoners,” Terrence Updike, lead counsel for more than two dozen activist groups challenging Project FREE, said. “We pray for the prisoners who will be soon be infected with Virus 26 and that their souls may one day find peace. We have all failed them. The government doesn’t want us using this word, but the public needs to know what infected prisoners become. We’ve seen these things after infection and it rhymes with [CENSORED].”

Barely six months after Mr. Drake’s executive order establishing Project FREE, the court’s decision marked the final hurdle his administration needed to clear before initiating the infection program. The Supreme Court declined to hear a State of Vermont case alleging viral incarceration using Virus 26 violated the 29th Amendment prohibiting capital punishment last month, citing official Department of Scientific Research findings that infected human test subjects were, in fact, alive despite a dormant heart beat and reduced brain function.

U.S. Attorney General Jack Coehlo said the DOJ would immediately begin implementing viral incarceration for all inmates serving life sentences in each of the 37 federal penitentiaries and 22 federal correctional complexes, despite threats from several jurisdictions including California and Texas to defend prisoners located within their borders “by any means necessary.”

California Gov. Robert Greenberg and Texas Gov. William “Buck” Doolittle issued their most aggressive statement to date after the court handed down its ruling. “This administration has once again overreached by illegally expanding federal authority, and now plans on trampling states’ rights by using armed federal forces to subjugate our citizens’ lawful decision to ban this immoral form of cruel and unusual punishment. We will not stand for the federal government’s Draconian tactics and are evaluating all options, including secession from the union and mustering state militias to defend the rights of our citizens.”

The statement was co-signed by eight officially unrecognized provisional governors of former states located in consolidated federal territories.

“Out-of-touch politicians can beat their chests about defending the rights of hardened criminals all they want, but as the Supreme Court has demonstrated today, the law is on our side,” Coehlo said during a press conference following the ruling. “Not only the law, but justice. Project FREE is about justice. Millions of innocent citizens are going hungry in this country every day, and California and Texas want us to take food out of their mouths to feed guilty criminals when we have available a perfectly humane solution to eliminate dietary needs for inmates. If you ask me, that’s the real crime.”

The attorneys general of Wyoming, Kansas, Louisiana, Virginia and Ohio were the first to query the DOJ for permission to transfer inmates serving life sentences in their state prisons to Prison Camp 26, where the Bureau of Prisons will detain infected inmates after administering the virus in an adjacent maximum security medical facility.

As of March, federal and state prisons held more than one million life-sentence prisoners (LSPs) for the first time in U.S. history. The DOJ estimates viral incarceration of all LSPs would free up about 1.5 billion pounds of food annually that would instead be distributed to the public through the federal Food Aid program. Each LSP also costs the government an average of $57,000 per year, according to the DOJ, but will cost less than $3,000 under viral incarceration.

WEB EXTRA: Three-year anniversary of Drake admin
order abolishing early parole. Are we any safer?

Coehlo said the billions in savings will be used to import additional food, but did not specify where those supplies would be procured. Mexican and South American food production continues to plummet as increasingly arid soils wreak havoc on staple grain production. Canadian crop yields reached record highs last year, leading its agriculture minister to declare the “Golden Era of Canadian farming,” but Prime Minister David Hawkins quickly threatened to tighten sanctions on food imports to the U.S. after the high court’s decision on Virus 26. European and Southeast Asian food imports have slowed to a trickle for the third consecutive year on the heels of lucrative trade agreements with China and Europe’s ongoing defense crisis facing a growing number of food raids led by increasingly organized and well-armed African militia forces.

A Defense Department official who wished to remain anonymous said Canadian military forces continue to organize around key agricultural zones in Alberta and Ontario, but denied rumors that the U.S. war machine is gearing up after President Drake’s saber-rattling threat issued on Thanksgiving promising to annex Canada’s most productive agricultural lands if Hawkins does not lift the food sanctions by New Year’s Day.

“The Supreme Court scored an important victory in the War against Hunger today,” the White House said in a statement to media. “This new weapon against hunger is a game changer as we work diligently toward our goal of providing all Americans with adequate nutrition by 2025. We will do whatever it takes to protect and feed our citizens through these challenging times, and look forward to swiftly easing the burden hardened criminals have placed on innocent Americans.”

White House and DOJ officials again declined to disclose the top secret location of Prison Camp 26, citing national security concerns, but offered assurances that the facility and infected inmates would be separated from the public and general prison population “by a safe distance.”