by T I WADE
“And that leads me to my next topic, security. We are aware of very few active police forces. We believe that there are fewer than a hundred out of the 20,000 nationwide we had only three months ago.”
Preston was reminded of Will Smart. He hadn’t seen him yet, so he looked down the line of chairs to his left. He then turned to his right and saw the Smart family occupying several chairs in the same row. Maggie smiled at him and so did the kids. There was a spare chair, but Will was not there.
“I would like to bring on Detective Will Smart to give us a report on what he has seen and heard in California since he returned there a couple of weeks ago,” continued the general and Will appeared from the back of the hangar. He looked a little wheezy to Preston.
‘Looks like they had to drug him again,” whispered Martie in his ear. General Patterson sat down next to the President and drank from a glass of water.
“Ladies and gentlemen, sorry to be a little weird but I’m not good at flying as many of you know. We, the Lancaster Police Department, just north of Los Angeles, have an active police force of seven men out of forty. We do not know what happened to many of our colleagues, but new dead bodies appear every day. We have the City of Lancaster in curfew from sundown to sunup and shoot anybody we find in the streets during night hours, no questions asked. To date we have been shot at over 40 times and we have shot over a dozen armed men and one woman. Lancaster is pretty clean of crime compared to what I have heard from other areas.
“Parts of Los Angeles are, as General Patterson explained, being used as burning pits. We have seen smoke from what we assumed were several of these in the last two weeks. Soldiers coming through town, and at Edwards Air Force Base, tell us of hundreds, even thousands of shootings per day, every day in LA. Thirteen aircraft went down in and around heavily populated areas in the City of Los Angeles on the last day of last year. I was pretty close to another one in Lancaster and from the latest reports, it has taken ten days just to clear these burnt-out areas. What we have found are mostly blackened remains of unidentified bodies and the worse news is that of the nearly two million bodies already cremated, less than 10,000 had any ID. We believe that the missing IDs were either burned or stolen.
“San Diego also has a shooting problem. Soldiers coming through suggest that over one million are dead from shooting-related violence in the area of San Diego alone. I have not heard from further north in California, but the shooting deaths are mounting quickly in the southern areas and even little cities and towns around Lancaster have horrific numbers.”
“What is the reason for these shootings?” asked Sally Powers, white faced and shocked.
“The soldiers returning to these areas have been listening to the civilians passing through with their families, carrying any belongings they have left. These folks say that at first the violence stemmed from armed robbery and then for food. Now it’s the other way around. Glittery gadgets don’t work anymore and now food is the main reason, then gasoline and now just plain criminal intent.”
“Thank you, Detective Smart,” stated the general, returning to the podium. “For all of you who have just arrived from outlying areas, I want any feedback from you after this meeting and we will condense it into a written report for your reading in a day or two. What the detective has described is happening in many areas. Very vague numbers and information show that California, southern Arizona and Texas are the worst areas. We are about to send in as many troops as we can to these areas and this is the one problem I mentioned earlier: fly in the food or fly in the men? Both are equally important. We have heard of areas of safety in the country, especially rural areas and the smaller towns where the police force didn’t disappear and other areas where civilians set up road blocks and started their own protection groups to protect their families. From our latest knowledge, you don’t want to visit over 50 percent of the country, and I believe it is growing. The violence and murders are mostly in the south, and once the northern areas warm up we need to be ready for a growth in crime in those areas. Now, let’s get Captain Mike Mallory up here to give us his latest report on food supplies and numbers.”
The captain walked up to the podium, dressed as a civilian. He, like many people in attendance, looked tired and overworked.
“Good morning, everybody. Yesterday we gave 387,000 meal packs to 201,000 people. These are not exact figures, but figures we calculated from our daily supply system. Exact reports take a week or more to reach headquarters at McGuire Air Force Base in the Northeast, Seymour Johnson in North Carolina, McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas, Denver International Airport and Hill Air Force Base in the center of the country, and Edwards in California. As of yesterday, we are supplying food from 175 military bases using 150 aircraft of all types and sizes and 640 trucks big enough to carry three tons of food or more. It has been a tiring couple of weeks and the size of the job at hand is just unbelievable, but we are growing and getting better at getting food to the starving out there.
From what I have just heard in this hangar this morning, all we are doing is going to save lives. I want to thank the President, the Pentagon, the military and whoever were responsible for having so many military rations in storage. Without these millions and millions of ration packs, millions more people would have died between when we started a month ago and the approaching spring in about two months’ time. There are a few places in the United States which don’t need these rations and I’m pleased to tell you that this number is growing.
“I was in communication three days ago with farmers I met on my travels from New York to North Carolina a couple of days after the deadly happenings on New Year’s Eve. They have driven tractors across a large swath of farmland in the central United States and their reports are unbelievable. In extremely rural areas, there are people who have traveled south from cities such as St. Paul, Chicago, New York and even several Canadian families. Reports are that tens of thousands of people are heading south trying to reach warmer places. All are on foot and tell of atrocities in their home towns which made them leave. The ground is not very good for any motor traffic as snow is over twenty feet in drifts in some places. These people just keep heading south, being given scraps or supplies from the farmers who have extra. We have set up several food points on the main migration routes in the last week and so far have given supplies to 100,000 people or families who have been told of our outposts by the farming community.”
“How far have you set up these outposts across the country?” asked the President.
“During the first week of January I met the first farmers who began to spread the information as we travelled down I-95,” described Mike Mallory. “They are in a broad farm belt just north of Baltimore. We, the farmers and the military set up the first outpost on I-81 west of Baltimore immediately after the attacks in New York ended. We actually set up our first outpost on I-95, but, funny, this highway had no traffic in the first 48 hours we monitored it. The thinking was that it was safer to travel across country. The people were traveling on foot and country paths became used more and more. So we moved our first post to I-81, cleared a mile of road for runways, closed the area down, set up several military tents and defensive positions on bridges on each side, flew in soldiers for protection and began airlifting supplies—food and medical—into our new runway and outpost headquarters. We had three people walking down the highway on day one, 100 on day two, 500 on day three and now we get well over a thousand a day at Outpost One. The information is being relayed by farmhouses in a fifty-mile zone north of the outpost. Each arriving family is given a military tent, two weeks of rations, a propane gas heater, a road map and any warm clothing like gloves, army boots and headgear we can supply. They are given medical attention by a military doctor and two nurses. The medical tent always has a line.
“From the beginning of February, they have been told about our second outpost which is currently set up in Bristol, a small town further south-southwest of Outpost One, again on I-81. This one is on
the Virginia-Tennessee border. Outpost Two is approximately 450 miles further south. Seventy-five percent of daily visitors who walk directly from the north into Outpost Two are new and did not get rations at Outpost One. There we have received people from Cleveland, Columbus, New York State and Pennsylvania. The other twenty-five percent who arrive walking down I-81 spent about two weeks traveling on the road from Outpost One to Outpost Two. Visitors from Outpost One are given another case of rations per two family members and anything else we can give them: water, candy, dog food, anything that can keep them alive.”
“Dog food?” asked somebody in the audience.
“Yes, I’m sorry to say but nothing is being left out. We found a dog food plant on our travels and we airlifted 190,000 cans of the stuff into Outpost Two. I tried it with several of the extremely hungry families and to them it tasted quite good. I didn’t like the taste much and preferred it cold to heated up.”
“Are you giving out weapons for protection?” asked somebody else.
“No, we have nothing to give them. They are either carrying their own, or travel in groups of twenty to thirty people with a couple of weapons in the crowd.
“How do you know who is arriving from Outpost One?” asked Carlos.
“Thanks to your old computers, Carlos, we record daily identifications and since some guys at McGuire even modified them to accept thumb drives. Thumb drive copies of each day’s identity list are airlifted back into McGuire with the next flight, copied at headquarters and then a copy goes out with supplies the next day. Thanks to you, Carlos, we have quite a good memory program and there are millions of thumb drives everywhere.
“Our third outpost, aptly named Outpost Three, is forty miles northwest of Nashville, Tennessee, on Interstate 24. This food point has been running for two weeks now. There are not as many people walking south as the other two, around 600 people per day and growing by a dozen or so a day. Again a mile of highway has been set up for landing a C-130 and has military protection, tents for food, medical, and warm supplies. We have begun to get dozens walking in from the city of Nashville. The area is frozen but with little snow. I don’t know if it is good or bad to be positioned near such a large city, but we treat everybody as equals, enter their information in the database, and they head back to the city with food and medical care. No warm clothing or overnight tents are given to these people.
“Outpost Four is directly on Interstate 35 in Kansas. We have been operating out of there for five days now. This road is busy with thousands of people walking south towards Texas. This food point is 50 miles north of Oklahoma City and approximately 300 miles due east of Outpost Three. Here we have the same system, except that there are over 2,000 people coming through per day heading south and we have two airlifts per day, one from McConnell Air Force Base and one from McGuire.
“Outpost Five has been set up in California on Interstate 5, one hundred miles north of Los Angeles close to a small town called Avenal. This is our newest food point and our slowest. I assume that Californian weather is warmer than here on the East Coast and there is less movement. Edwards is airlifting supplies into Outpost Five and numbers are slowly rising, but to date we are seeing less than 300 people passing through daily.
“Outpost Six will be operational tomorrow and is north of Raton, a small town on the Colorado-New Mexico border. We have been working on this food location for two days now and we have had to erect fencing around our base due to the high number of people already camped out. Soldiers have already been giving out food packs since yesterday and we are planning three loads of supplies per day, enough for 12,000 people. Peterson Air Force Base has good food supplies. It, Edwards, and Dyess Air Force Base in Texas can supply this food location for six weeks before we have to bring in supplies from other bases.
“Several helicopters are already lifting supplies into the major Colorado cities, so we have sent one of our C-130s into Peterson to help out. This aircraft will complete three flights per day. She will start flights into Outpost Six daily from 08:00 am Mountain Time tomorrow. Currently we have three C-130s supplying our outposts, less than 2 percent of our aircraft fleet. Every military base around the country is supplying food and medical supplies into other central or northern areas, and have stocks for a couple of weeks before we need the rations from abroad.”
Mike Mallory got a standing ovation for his work. Most knew that he had planned much of the project himself with help from the trusty Southwest crew that had gone down with him in New York on New Year’s Eve.
General Patterson returned to the podium and began his “future threats” topic. “The President and I believe that any future threats from a major power are virtually impossible for the foreseeable future—and the foreseeable future is the next five to ten years. If you have any ideas, especially you, Carlos Rodriquez, since you are in charge of our satellite program, and anybody else who might know something we don’t, please bring them forward.
“At the moment we believe our only threats are internal at this time. First, we know crime and death will increase. More people are going to die, either from starvation, the elements or crime. There is nothing we can do about the situation more than we are doing right now. Next is the threat of disease once the temperatures rise and the dead bodies begin to decompose. Again there is nothing more we can do. The third future threat is food. We will reach a time when all food stored in the United States of America will be exhausted. We hope fresh crops are harvested before then, but I believe it is going to be close, and unfortunately too late for many. We will continue to use our current system to transport any food stocks around the country. By the end of March, we will have more of the country under a regular delivery system. So, my job and the job of all military personnel in the next thirty days is to secure the living population of the United States of America, and at the same time protect the farms and farmers of the country and aid them in every way we can to produce enough food for our people on a continuous basis. I suggest we all return here in thirty days for updates.
“We are already planning food stocks for next winter, but until we halt the dying, and count how many people actually need to be fed and kept warm next winter, we are purely running around in the dark. Every able person will begin to help in the system in the near future. Money means nothing. Luxuries are few and far between, and all nest eggs, savings, bank accounts are less important to every person here than where the next meal is coming from. We must protect our cattle, pigs, chickens, rabbits and any other source of meat products, as well as rich farmland from anybody wanting to hamper our tasks. Our borders need to be protected from hungrier people crossing them to steal food stocks here in our country. Communications must be set up later this year with other countries with which products can be bartered—beef for bananas, pork for chicken—you can understand what I mean. That is all I have for you today. It is now time to hear from our President.”
The room was totally silent, many digesting the vast amounts of information presented over the first hour.
“Ladies and gentlemen of our new country, we are still called the United States of America by all of us, a free country and a country to protect and make safe now more than ever.” A round of applause greeted his opening sentence. “Thanks to you here today I feel less alone trying to run a country of this size, as a single yachtsman trying to cross a large sea with no wind. There is no Congress and Senate. Sometimes that is a blessing.” Several laughed as everybody knew of the intense partisan battles between him and the pillars of power. “Even though it is more peaceful not having Congress around, we, as a country, need to reinstate government. I don’t believe that it is crucial right now and you people are my backups until we form a new government. I hope this will occur sometime this year, or once we have our three major problems under control, as the speakers have described for the last hour. I don’t believe we will rest until we save every citizen we can, feed them and keep them safe. We don’t know where the next security situation will come fr
om but I believe it will come, and we must be ready for it.
“I have heard from a number of elected officials, eleven Congressmen and nine Senators to be exact. They got word through military bases close by. All said that they are in their homes protecting themselves and their families. That is important for them, and none of them said that they would be returning to Washington in the near future. Many others are dead and many we will never know what happened to. I do know of dozens from both houses who were in flight over New Year’s Eve. So I have disbanded Congress and the Senate and will fill it again with new people when we have the free time to do so.
“I agree with General Patterson, who is my new Chief of Staff for all our military departments, since I know his ability and since many of the military commanders are also unaccounted for, or still busy with troop withdrawals in other parts of the world. All top military personnel currently in the United States are in this room, apart from Four Star Army General Max Wood in Washington State who had both his legs amputated due to a car accident on December 31st. I’m sure there are several people trying to communicate with me, but you, the people in this hangar, are the ones who are going to help me get this proud country back to the best we can make it.
“Before I finish, I would like to ask Wolfgang Roebels and his son Michael up here to share their understandings on the electrical situation in this country. Four weeks ago I asked them to study what they could on our current situation. Gentlemen, please.”
Michael wheeled Martie’s grandfather up to the podium.
“If you don’t mind, Mr. President,” stated Michael into the microphone, “I would like to be the voice here as my father’s voice is not as strong as it used to be. Many of you know we started in San Diego decades ago and sold our company to Raytheon, which up to last year was one of the leaders in all types of mobile directional technology. My father and I did not stop work once we were bought out years ago. Work and our love of designing electronics is what we always talk about. After the sale we also had several old ideas from the 80s which we had time to play with.
