by T I WADE
“Who are these attackers?” asked Martie as Carlos, Sally, and the rest of the group from North Carolina took seats in the first row around them.
“It seems that they are not peaceful citizens. We get those begging for food and we try to give out what we can, but it is very limited and I have given orders to stop any handouts. The attackers are groups or gangs of armed men. Every now and again they start shooting at any movement, especially if our men open the gates and try to leave. General Patterson is getting a food supply project up and running in the vicinity to try to quell the beggars. There are a couple of other embassies on the same street and they have the same problems.”
“Thank you for coming, everyone,” stated General Patterson over a working intercom. “Please find your seats and we will get started,” he stated from the podium. Several seconds later he continued, “The President of the United States is walking in. Please stand.” Everybody stood as the familiar but tired Chief Executive walked up to the main table from the back of the room. There were only two chairs behind the table. The national anthem was played once he reached the closest chair. It was the first time Preston had heard it since the massive destruction began two short months ago. “Let us get started,” continued General Patterson once the anthem was finished.
“The President’s hair is now completely gray,” whispered Martie in Preston’s ear as they sat. He nodded.
“This is going to be a long meeting, the first real get-together of everybody involved with the rebuilding of our great country,” continued the general. “I’m going to break down my report into five sections: troop movements, civilian deaths, security, what I call our “food action,” and finally, future threats. Then the President wants to address you and then we will open the floor for discussion.” The hangar was quiet and solemn; the reports were certainly not going to be nice. “First on the agenda is troop movements. We have good news. We have 490,000 soldiers returned to our shores, 60,000 less than we had planned for by end February. We have completely cleared out the Pacific Rim, in case of nuclear fallout from those nuclear explosions in China last month. We have also cleared Iraq and collected all our 3,000 soldiers and other personnel in North Africa. North Africa is not a place you want to be right now. We are still missing a hundred or so Navy Seals in North Africa, but we think they will surface somewhere. If we think the USA is in dire straits, I was told that there are hundreds of millions of people in trouble in the areas we pulled our troops out of. One of the Boeings was damaged by gunfire when thousands of civilians invaded our last base in Africa as the last aircraft flew out. The damaged aircraft made it into Ramstein, Germany, where repairs to several bullet holes were completed. It took a few days but it is back in daily schedule and here today.
“The only area where our troops are still in danger is Afghanistan. There are currently few attacks on our troops, but the Taliban are massing in strength and we think waiting for us to leave. There are still 300,000 men in the surrounding area as well as another 50,000 ready for pick-up in safer countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. We have 60,000 troops in Europe and Britain and I believe another 30,000 scattered in other safe countries. We could have them all home within 60 days.
“The 747s will all need flight maintenance by the time we get them home. As promised by the President, six of them will be given as gifts to specified countries sometime in the future. The aircraft’s fancy interiors have been stripped and put into storage to save weight. The only mounting problem we face is that our food stocks overseas need to return with the troops as we are running out here. We have not lost any food stocks to date, but our numbers of 60,000 troops short is due to carrying only 450 men per aircraft instead of 600. The spare weight is going to transport heavy pallets of food stocks in the baggage compartments and some even in the cabin areas. Believe me; these Jumbos are working their butts off.”
The President had a question. “General Patterson, what sort of food stocks are we talking about and where are they?”
“Thank you, Mr. President, I wanted to bring that up at this meeting. Naturally our supplies over there are where our troops are, in the more dangerous areas. Our bases in the countries we have pulled troops from are now filling up with food rations. We have also flown any needed small weapons and ammunition, men and food supplies to the safer countries in Europe. We have destroyed all remaining U.S. equipment so it wouldn’t fall in the hands of any potential enemy. The 747 transporter has been working out of Ramstein and has been helping to empty the frontline bases of all valuable equipment. In two weeks since her deployment, she has airlifted eighteen loads of men, food and equipment out of the Middle East and into Ramstein, which is now stacked full of all of the equipment we want to get back stateside; this includes tons of MRE rations, operational howitzers, jeeps, an armored personnel carrier or two, and thousands of older rockets for ground and air use. We had tons of the stuff in a hangar in Saudi Arabia. Why it was there, nobody knows, but I think it was a storage depot from the 80s or 90s. Of course all the more modern equipment, all of our Air Force fighters, modern Abram tanks and artillery pieces have been destroyed. It makes me sad to hear reports that several hundred of our best fighters, bombers, transporters and tankers have been destroyed beyond recognition. Estimated value of our destroyed equipment is now over 12 trillion dollars, and climbing daily. To get back to my problem: we need to delay the ferrying of troops over and get more of our food stocks back here. I have been in hourly contact with twenty different U.S. bases where food stocks are stored. Remember we always had a 90-day supply of rations ready at all times—one third over to be shipped, one third in consumption and one third in readiness. We still have one third of all our MRE and other food rations over there, comprised of over three million packs of food plus what still remains in many smaller bases. It will take our aircraft a month using all our big jets, including the transporter to bring back our food supplies. Any comments please?”
“What do we have left here for supply to our civilians without taking into account the rations needed for our troops?” asked the President.
“Less than a quarter of what we have over there,” the general answered. “Our supplies here will be gone in two weeks with our current distribution requirements.”
“And what percentage of the country is receiving stocks as of the latest reports this morning?” was the President’s next question.
“I haven’t seen them yet,” the general replied. “Captain Mallory, I believe you have those numbers?”
Captain Mallory stood up; he was sitting in the end chair on the first row. Preston hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks. He also looked tired, but stood straight and replied. “As of midnight last night, Mr. President, we are flying food into 11.3 percent of the entire country, not counting Alaska, Hawaii and any external territories. Of that, eighty percent goes to cities to the north of Washington, DC. The major new areas where we are clearing runways to begin flying into are Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota from the East and Idaho and Montana from the West. Some areas are still too snow-covered without ground help and we have little or no ground assistance in those areas. They are desolate cities with no movement. We have given out 5,955,000 ration packs which will last one person for fourteen days. The majority of those were in the state of New York, the whole New England area and the northern East Coast. Most civilians have received two packs in the north and one pack in the warmer areas in the central part of the country. To date we have given three million people food. I have a longer report, Mr. President and will present it when asked.”
“Thank you, Captain,” replied the President.
“To end my first section, and since we have no Congress or Senate to pass anything,” continued General Patterson, “I will ask for a vote from the President and the participants of this meeting. You are the current Congress and Senate of the United States of America. OK, here is the motion—it will take us ten more days to move our troops out of danger
areas and into Europe. It’s still freezing in Germany and many will have to sleep outside for a few weeks, but they are soldiers. That means we can move them into safer bases more quickly with shorter flights between Kabul and Germany. I need the jets to bring food supplies only into the U.S. for a full week, starting in 10 days. As reported, we only have enough food left here in the United States for 14 more days at the rate we are going. Then I suggest that the entire jet fleet transport food into the USA seven days at a time and then men and equipment for seven days at a time, one round trip per day until our external food stocks are returned two months from now. Only then do we bring the balance of our personnel and equipment home, another month or more after that. That means that the entire transportation operation will not be complete until the beginning of summer and not within the three-month timeframe the President promised.”
“Any discussion?” stated the President, standing up.
“I can assume that seven days of supplies will not run out in fourteen days of outgoing-distribution as our distribution system grows?” somebody asked from the second row.
“We have crunched the numbers and as long as all our troops are safe, our first priority is to feed our people. Figures for distribution growth work out to no more than 10 percent per week. I don’t believe that we are going to find many more operational distributional vehicles any quicker than that until the rest of the country thaws,” General Patterson replied.
I am prepared to go with the idea,” added the President.
General Patterson asked for a vote and nobody offered a negative view.
General Patterson continued onto his second section explaining civilian deaths to date to a quickly shocked audience.
“We have 3,945 crematoriums working as fast as they can to cremate bodies, once they have been searched for identity. We had 70 become operational just yesterday, mostly around New York State, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Most of these can handle up to 20 to 100 bodies per day. Most of the bodies are very frozen and take longer to cremate. Three weeks ago, using electronic parts found in the palettes from Zedong Electronics, we found enough replacement parts to get the first of ten massive trash burners in three states working. Understand that these burners were not made for human remains, but they do burn at a higher temperature than the average crematorium. The first one was in New Jersey and we have started cremating from 5,000 to as many as 10,000 bodies per day at just this one plant. We now know that this was the plan of the enemy Politburo as three of the Chinese Engineers had been over to this exact plant several times in the last couple of years to study its design.
“We are limited by our ability to get the bodies to these plants fast enough. We have over 50,000 troops and civilians working with anything mobile they can find to bring corpses from this area and/or take them to other central locations, normally ex-Walmart parking areas. Fingerprints are recorded if possible. Any identity papers retrieved from the bodies or from family or friends bringing them in are also recorded. Then they are moved in larger trucks to the closest burning unit.
“Please be prepared for the rest of my report. It will be a shock to your system. We have cremated or have for cremation—in piles as high as fifty feet—more than 1,797,900 corpses in and around the New York City area alone.” There were gasps from many. “We have four of the trash burners working 24/7 and over 700 crematoriums as far as 50 miles away from Manhattan accepting numbers from this area alone. Some of these private crematoriums can handle larger numbers on a daily basis, up to 10 per hour with multi-systems. The four trash burners are now cremating over 10,000 each per day in this area. The bodies are arriving faster than we can cremate them.
“Also a large majority are body parts. We take whatever information we can and count a major body part as a body. This will of course skew our numbers, but that is the best we can do at the present time. Body parts are counted as one person. The smaller crematoriums are cremating sometimes as many as a dozen body parts at once, hence our higher than possible numbers. We haven’t even got into the snowbound parts of central Manhattan, which are still under thirty to forty feet of snow in some areas. We are waiting for the snow to subside before we go in. I have heard that Times Square has snow drifts over seventy feet high, and a lot of that height is due to corpses underneath. The men working in Manhattan have worked out that the height of the snow drifts is directly related to the number of bodies underneath. A thirty-foot high snow mountain will have a third of its total height in bodies underneath.” Again there were gasps from the people present. “We started our first of a dozen open burning pits east of Manhattan where Brooklyn used to be. I will explain a burning pit in my next point. Questions please?”
“What about the underground system?” somebody asked.
“A good question,” answered the general. “We have entered three stations so far, I’m not sure where, but the death and frozen corpses are far more concentrated underground. The cold got there as well, unfortunately. Only three people have been found alive out of thousands.”
“What are your time frames for completing this grisly task?” asked someone.
“Our main aim is to beat the problem of disease. We have at least two months of possible freezing conditions left and we hope to have the larger cities clear. Unfortunately we will not even get to some cities for another month. I think in April we will have to close down the areas we have not touched and keep everybody out. This is our major problem for the rest of this year: to keep the population alive and stop any disease that could spread like a plague in the United States. We are praying that an immense team of soldiers and civilian personnel can actually clean a complete city or other high density area and then move as a unit into another city. That hasn’t happened yet and unfortunately, it is impossible for us to know numbers and the size of the task ahead to be able to give you any more information on this horrible program. I believe it will impossible to clean up the entire United States by the end of this year, so I’m trying to find ideas on how to combat the onset of disease in the hot summer. As many as 53 million corpses have been burned in the country to date.”
There was absolute silence. “Now back to our idea of burning pits. It is a mammoth task. We have begun to dig 48 of these pits, and we have given out general recommendations to the personnel on how to dig them. They are in a dozen states and are being monitored by military personnel. We have 350,000 civilians countrywide under military supervision working to recover identity information off dead bodies. Chicago and several other cities are placing hundreds of thousands of bodies at a time into large pits which were dug by dozens of civilian and military digging machines. Our recommendation is to dig them fifty feet deep, fill them, and then pour fuel into them from defunct gas stations or airports. Once the burning is complete, usually after 48 hours, the ground cools and another team fills the holes with dirt. In Philadelphia alone, and with the ground frozen, we have a hundred large bulldozers at work 24/7 making a new hole every 18 hours. Our first one in New York started burning yesterday with 115,000 full corpses and the second one with 150,000 major parts of corpses. The fuel was obtained from JFK Airport. I’m sure many of you noticed the plume of smoke to the north?” Many of the pilots nodded that they had. ”That plume is in Brooklyn, New York. The flames are several hundred feet high. It is expected to take two days before we can cover the pit over. The engineers are making sure that a minimum of twelve feet of dirt covers the blackened remains for safety purposes.”
Many people were beginning to feel sick and this was just the beginning. The scope of the atrocity was becoming clear to many. Even Preston was totally shocked and felt sick as a deep anger began to burn in his stomach; he was already thinking of the billions of people worldwide—millions of people already dead and millions more who had little hope of survival.
“The largest pit so far was 150,000 whole corpses in Chicago and the smallest 10,000 just outside El Paso, Texas. The southern states have fewer corpses and most of those are from crime a
nd shootings. Unfortunately, the number of people being shot is rising quickly.
“If we continue at the same rate we are going, and if the corpses keep coming, we will able to cremate two to three million per day by the end of April.” The gasp from the audience was far louder than before.
“General Patterson, do you have recent calculations on how many people are dead, and how many people are going to die before spring?” asked Preston.
“Our current scenario estimates a minimum of 150 million dead, Preston. We have recorded and cremated over a third of that number already. As far as future deaths this winter, all I can say is that in total the country has basic food rations for 12 million people including our armed forces. We have assumed that at least another 30 to 50 million people, hopefully many more, live in areas with abundant food stocks, and another 25 million with minimal or low food stocks. Sorry to say this but nearly everything that is not human is a food stock and that means birds, insects and four-legged animals. I will not go further. So, to answer your second question, as we gauge food availability and have no crime, we could have 100 million people alive as the first crops of this coming spring come out of the ground; that is less than one third of the 2010 Census. What I’m worried about is the premature butchering of cattle, pigs, and other meat animals that could reproduce in the spring. It’s like cutting off the hand that feeds you.
