by T I WADE
The Smarts had returned to their house, which was still untouched just outside Lancaster and Will was now the new police chief for the city. Maggie was going to work in Silicon Valley, where Lee Wang and his family had relocated with Grand Papa Roebels and Martie’s father, Michael. They were starting a new electronics company and getting tooled up to mass-produce whatever they could.
Martie put her arm through Preston’s and smiled at him. “Since this is our first real day off, and since we are not really part of the food process anymore, would you like to have a Yuengling with me for breakfast? We still have over 1,000 bottles of beer and for once this year I would like to act naughty and do something stupid, like have a beer for breakfast.” He smiled at her and allowed her to lead him away.
***
Over the next several hours, the numbers of people searching for food grew fewer. A second Huey arrived from Andrews and everybody got involved with food distribution.
For the rest of January, everybody worked long days, and as the troops came into the area from the northern bases, permanent food stores became the town centers. There were hundreds of fights. Soldiers were told that if fired upon, they had the right to shoot to kill, so the safe areas were growing slowly. As the troops increased in numbers, the violence also slowly decreased; hundreds of people already known for committing murder were tried by courts, which were composed of as many people as deemed necessary to make them fair and just. In addition, thanks to so few vehicles, there were ample fuel stocks to supply the vehicles that needed it.
Further north, collection sites were assigned for unclaimed bodies or those not buried by loved ones and, under a decree sent out by the President, all bodies had to be cremated if brought in to the collection sites. This system was slowly being implemented around the country, and every crematorium worked 24/7 to burn the unclaimed bodies to prevent disease once the weather warmed up.
The President traveled around the world towards the end of January. The four remaining Airbuses were to be given to Britain, France, Germany, and Russia as gifts of friendship and communication. The United States would keep the 26 Boeings until their troops were home, and then six of them would be given to other countries in need, like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Korea, Japan, and maybe what was left of China. Over 200 satellite phones were distributed to other countries and a simple form of international communications was implemented. A new government—a democratic one—had been formed in Shanghai, the capital of the new China, and the satellite phones would allow them to communicate with the rest of the surviving world.
All the other countries had losses similar to the United States, and the world total of deaths exceeded two billion by the end of January alone.
Nobody could tell if radiation from the three nuclear explosions that killed over 50 million Chinese in four of its major cities was moving around the world. It would definitely affect closer countries like Korea and Japan, and the entire fleet of large aircraft spent three days bringing every American out of those areas. However, the radiation problems were far from most American minds as they worked hard to feed as many people as necessary.
By the middle of February, the returning soldiers amounted to 500,000 and they were now not only happy to be home, but were willing to return to their homes and become the area police in the places where they had grown up. Still, the remaining 26 aircraft were flying troops home to the tune of 15,000 soldiers per day. The C-130s transferred the incoming troops out to new areas several times a day with supplies, and normally groups of three to five soldiers who lived in the same area were put under the management of a central location where an old Hughes satellite dish was the only form of communication with the rest of the country.
The national communications grid was simple and slow, but messages about food, crime, living conditions and other needs could be transmitted through the Hughes Net satellite dishes once every 48 hours. At headquarters at McGuire Air Force Base, three dozen Commodore computers recorded incoming messages much like emails, and there was always an aircraft or C-130 ready if the emergency code was sent demanding backup for gang warfare or if the troops were in danger.
Towards the end of February, over 1,790,000 bodies had been cremated in Manhattan alone, and the numbers recorded put total cremations in the United States by March 1st to 53,988,000 cremations in 3,900 crematoriums across the country. Any ID on a body was recorded for future reference. Many cities were still littered with bodies, especially in the north where snowdrifts up to 70 feet high still had millions of bodies buried beneath them. Many northern areas were still snowed-in ghost towns and had not yet been visited.
Very few soldiers had made it into the northern U.S. regions south of the Canadian border, and slowly thousands of soldiers and civilians were working their way northwards. Possible statistics given to the President was that maybe a quarter to a third of the bodies had been found so far.
Also, gangs in the southern areas were beginning to kill more and more soldiers guarding outposts and some gangs were reported to be in the thousands, and still growing.
Chapter 1
North Carolina – Two weeks later – February
Oliver and the fully grown puppy, now just called “Puppy,” were busy on their usual farm and runway inspection, lifting their legs and covering any foreign smells of wildlife, which had visited Preston’s farm during the cold winter-night hours.
As usual there were the fresh smells of deer, a possum must have decided it was important to inspect the southern area of the runway, and a fox had marked its new territory in one of the still existing trenches built by the Air Force several weeks earlier.
The farm was nearly deserted, except for Preston, Martie, Little Beth, the two dogs and Smokey, Buck McKinnon’s cat, who was still asleep in the house lounge. A guard of Air Force soldiers still using the warm facilities of Preston’s hangar had decided that nightly patrols were no longer necessary. The force of six men had patrolled the area every hour since the end of the war four weeks earlier, mostly keeping hungry locals from trying to get in and helping themselves to the food stocks.
Now the large, open and still moonlit area surrounding the airfield was deserted, apart from the two dogs doing guard duty. At 6:59 am on February 28, 2013 all the humans were still asleep in the main house and in the hangar.
With the complete area checked and re-scented with steaming dog pee, the two animals shook themselves, as if to get the cold air out of their fur and headed for the door to the house kitchen. Maybe somebody was up and there was a freshly cooked breakfast to be begged for.
Preston and Martie were still asleep when the doggy door to the kitchen made its usual groan as the two dogs came in. So was Little Beth who had taken over the only guest room as her own. Martie had transformed the once stately room into a pretty little girl’s room, filled with pinks, yellows, blues and greens. The temperature outside was five below freezing and the three human occupants of the house snuggled in their covers to keep warm and cozy.
The hangar was also peaceful; the Air Force personnel were working on getting out of bed as alarms set for seven began their wake-up sounds. The rooms above the lounge were warm and quiet and each one had a waking body about to get out of bed.
Life here on the farm for the six men was bliss; it was as good as living at home and there was more food in the hangar below them than anywhere else in the whole of North Carolina.
With the defeat of the invading forces in New York four weeks earlier, life had changed drastically and a daily routine was being reestablished at Preston’s farm.
Daily aircraft flights were heard overhead as they departed from the different military bases around the area to supply food to the surrounding population. The only flights in and out of Strong Field were Martie and Preston taking off in their Mustangs to check out the fully repaired and serviced aircraft. The Mustangs had been flown in a week earlier by Air Force pilots from Andrews Air Force Base. There hadn’t been another aircraft in si
nce the fuel tanks had been refueled by a lone C-130 tanker coming in from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.
During the first two weeks after the end of the invasion Martie and Preston hadn’t left the farm. They had not realized how tired they were and decided to take a couple of weeks off from saving the world. Martie wanted Little Beth to become comfortable as the newest member of their family, and time together would be the best way to accomplish that.
By 7:15, the soldiers were walking their first check of the farm’s outer perimeter for the day.
Preston’s alarm made its usual buzzing noise. He hated loud alarms, and he stretched, turned over and snuggled up to the other warm body still parked and asleep in the large and cozy bed.
“Preston,” moaned a sleepy Martie, “either do what you do best, give me a kiss and make me content, or get the coffee machine going.” The 80s-style coffee machine was one of the few gadgets still working in the kitchen. The latest house coffee machine with a computerized control system was now useless. It was replaced by the much older one from the hangar, which had been a cheap buy at Walmart years earlier and still brewed a good cup of coffee.
Preston kissed her cheek, yanked at Martie’s blonde hair gently, sat up, stretched and slid his legs out of the warm sheets, feeling for his slippers.
He reached for his robe and proceeded to aim, in the still dark room, for the bedroom door. Dawn was still several minutes away.
Within fifteen minutes, he was attacked by two happy and tail-wagging dogs, who received a dog bone each for their friendliness, a stretching Smokey who had followed Preston into the kitchen from the dark lounge and who looked around curiously for his treat. Within minutes Preston made two cups of freshly-brewed mugs of coffee.
“Life of the rich and lazy housewives of North Carolina,” stated Preston to the blonde-haired beauty who still hadn’t moved in the California-king sized bed. “Even though we don’t have television anymore you don’t have to go far to find those totally spoiled, rich blondes. We have one right here.”
“Oh shut up, you pompous excuse for a man slave,” responded Martie sitting up quickly, grabbing her top pillow and about to throw it at Preston until she realized that her first order of the day had already been granted. “Oh! That coffee looks wündabar, my wündabar man!”
Preston handed her a steaming cup, slipped out of his robe and slippers and got back into bed next to her.
“It’s been a good two weeks of rest,” stated Preston as Martie looked at him sternly. He quickly realized what he had forgotten—the cookie tin of rusks Martie had recently made to dunk into their morning coffee. Rusks, or biscotti, were a European treat Preston quickly got used to, and he hadn’t remembered to bring the new batch she had baked the day before. He walked quickly back to the kitchen scaring the animals in there by his sudden presence, grabbed the tin on a shelf and feeling the chill in the kitchen, headed back to the bedroom. “I think it’s time we returned to the main stream of our new world,” he stated handing her the full tin and climbing back into the warm bed. “It’s been a great rest and I feel fresh. Do you think we should turn on the radio again and see what’s going on outside in the big wide world?”
“Just let me enjoy my coffee and rusks and then we will discuss getting back into the now useless and defunct world,” Martie replied.
An hour later the smell of bacon drifted out of the kitchen. Martie had breakfast ready and Little Beth arrived, bundled up in a cut-down robe, one of Martie’s old ones. It was still a little too big around the back, but the extra material kept the little girl warm.
The dogs were shooed out of the kitchen and they decided to see if they would have any luck over at the hangar, the soldiers also having breakfast on the go. Oliver had whined outside the side door to the hangar for two years, before Preston added another doggy door so that he didn’t have to let Oliver in during cold winter days, when he kept the main hangar door closed.
Breakfast was quick and it wasn’t long before everybody moved towards the hangar to enjoy a third mug of coffee with the soldiers.
“No visitors, or at least no tracks we could find, Preston,” stated the master sergeant in charge of the men.
“It’s been over a week now since we had our last visitor,” replied Preston. “I think the local population is being adequately supplied and hopefully the locals have forgotten we exist. I’m sure they have other priorities.”
“Oliver and Puppy would have barked if they had found anyone,” suggested Little Beth, sipping from a steaming mug of hot chocolate.
“That’s what we listen for,” added Martie. “We know that the dogs are the early risers in this house.”
“I think it is high time we did a survey of our surrounding area from the air,” carried on Preston. “I’m going to turn on the radio in the house and speak to Buck and Carlos and see what they are doing,” he said to the group. The Air Force radio was always on and tuned into Seymour Johnson Air Force Base to the south and Preston told them to let him know if anything important came over the airwaves.
“We are going to head back to Seymour Johnson tomorrow,” stated the master sergeant. “We are being replaced by fresh guys and are going to miss the comforts of our home here. Darn it! I will have to get back to military life.”
“When did you arrive here, Sergeant?” asked Preston.
“We were the second group in here, Preston. We arrived on the third day of the New Year,” was the answer. “And my team will be the last of the original guys to leave. The C-130 is coming in tomorrow at 08:00 hours with a team of engineers and a bulldozer to clean up the trenches and get your farm back to normal.”
“That will be nice,” added Martie.
“We aren’t going to look like a war field anymore?” asked Little Beth. Martie noticed the word “we,” looked at Preston and smiled.
“No,” added Preston. “It’s time we went back to civilian status again, young lady.”
“The wire perimeter fence on the front of the property is going to remain intact, unless you want the engineers to dismantle it as well,” replied the sergeant.
“I think that since it’s the only easy way in here, the barbed wire should stay for a while longer. I have a weird sense that life in this country is not going to be as peaceful as we hope for quite a while yet,” stated Preston.
“Well, they now have a decent amount of our foreign-based troops back on home soil,” replied the sergeant. “The jumbo jets are still working around the clock and we will have a million troops to keep the peace in a few months.”
“I know,” returned Preston. “But I have this feeling that the country is not over its problems, not by a long shot. There must be millions of dead bodies out there, the food distribution can only be helping a small proportion of the remaining population, and I’m sure that there are areas of this country where we would not like to be right now. Plus, we still have another month of cold weather before the crops can be planted. I think that the good old USA is just seeing the beginnings of her problems.” Preston didn’t realize how correct he was.
Three hours later the two freshly serviced P-51 Mustang engines were being warmed up outside the closed door of the hangar. The airfield was deserted of all other aircraft. Apart from the fuel tanks, there was nothing to see. There was a slight mist in the air and a rising sun, still hidden behind small wintry clouds. Preston’s other two aircraft, his beautiful P-38 Lightning and the work horse, his crop sprayer, were still inside the warmth of the hangar. He had totally cleaned the sprayer tanks weeks earlier before putting it in the far corner of the hangar for its winter hibernation.
There was no snow on the ground, and the trees and the white frosted grass would go back to brown pretty soon once the sun came out from behind the clouds.
The Mustang engines warmed in the frosty sub-zero air, white clouds of hot air coming out of the exhausts, and the pilots let their engines warm up to operating temperature while enjoying the peaceful view. Minutes later they headed
off to the southern end of the tarred runway for takeoff.
Above the trees and keeping low to stay hidden for the first couple of miles, Preston and Martie flew over the green canopy, not wanting to attract any interest about where they resided. They didn’t want, or need, any attention from the public.
All roads below them were empty of moving vehicles, except for one old truck going slowly down one of the minor roads. There were still thousands of empty and trashed vehicles on the sides of the major highways, but the actual asphalted tarmac strips had been mostly cleaned up, probably by people wanting to get past. Bigger broken down or crashed trucks could easily be seen far and wide on I-40 and I-95 and as they climbed high into the sky their pin-point dots could be seen far below.
RDU seemed empty and desolate, exactly as they left it a few weeks earlier. Preston decided to call up Joe and ask him to ride into town with one of the ferrets and give them ground cover for a landing at the international airport. Joe, Preston’s farm neighbor, heard them fly over his land and was expecting a call. Joe needed something to do and with David, his good friend and now permanent resident on the farm along with Joe’s five sons, readily agreed to take a drive with all the transportation vehicles they had, to show strength.
Preston told Joe that they would land at the airport in 30 minutes, but first would complete an aerial sweep of the surrounding area before the trucks got close.
An Air Force C-130 came over the radio telling them that he was in their general area outbound from Seymour Johnson to Richmond, Virginia and then to drop several pallets of food into surrounding towns. It was quite a shock to hear someone else on the airwaves and Preston quizzed the pilot on what he had seen.
“It’s the same everywhere we fly,” replied the C-130 pilot. “Hungry people, mobs, dead bodies can be seen in most areas from the air. And I don’t mean one here and there, I mean hundreds sometimes thousands blanket the ground, especially further north. I flew for a week out of Andrews into the northern parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and in and around the major areas. Where the snow had melted with warming sunlight, I could see piles of bodies, I think piled up by the civilians to clean up their surrounding areas. It’s going to take months to bury the dead. I hate to see the piles of snow and bodies I saw in Manhattan as well as the thousands of dead enemy soldiers still piled up on the highways around New York and New Jersey. There are many more in the main streets and also east of Manhattan. In places like Brooklyn, square miles of plain civilization are not there anymore. It was horrific just to see the carnage.”
