by T I WADE
“Mr. President, members of the military, and civilians, this report is from yesterday’s numbers. I have not yet received the latest report from my staff this morning. Understand that we have three shifts of 200 people per shift working on these extremely slow computers inputting data 24/7. We have 117,000 MRE ration packs left in the country. We have handed out 9,940,560 ration packs to first time users and 6,458,150 packs to second time users. There is nothing much else in the country for civilians, but the aircraft will be bringing in the last 1,590,000 ration packs in the next week. Once they are gone, that’s it for the people, apart from what we are keeping in reserve for our soldiers and their families, totaling 2.5 million packs. Admiral Rogers will bring you up to date on the five Chinese container ships now steaming towards San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. The farmers across the midsection of the U.S. have planted their first crops. Every seed store, grain store, and other locations which hadn’t been burned or totally damaged, and where we could find seed, or anything for the farmers can use for planting, has been emptied by more than 50,000 soldiers across most of the country. Hopefully, the people who rifled the chain stores and hardware stores had enough intelligence to realize the value of the seeds in them. The early crops are in the ground, the entire livestock population has been fertilized as much as possible by the farming system to increase our meat quantities.
“The farmers told us about a large poultry incubation system still operational in Pennsylvania in a religious community. We found a second large incubator farm in an Amish community, and our soldiers found a third unit in southern California. We have sourced what the farmers needed and they are up to full steam and will soon produce the maximum numbers of day-old chicks they can. Chicken farms are being made operational, grains have been planted for the feed and we hope to be producing 600,000 chicks a week out of these three plants by summer. We have twenty abattoirs up and running and all the aging beef countrywide is about to be slaughtered.
“With working electrical parts from the Chinese supply we now have two large freezer warehouses fully operational here on the East Coast, one in Denver, one in Dallas and two on the West Coast. They are all running on large generators. The two on the East Coast are running on the six large diesel-fed truck-engine generators Preston Strong supplied. Within a month, there will be tons of fresh meat available across the country, as well as the first crops. We currently have 10,000 soldiers with civilian farmers checking the potato crops in Idaho. The semi-operational Amtrak system will move the food across the country to depots and every movement will be under heavy military guard. Within a month to six weeks, food will be made available to needy survivors. Thank you.” There was applause for the captain’s report.
“My next report is the bad news of the month,” continued the general from the podium. “At the present time, we have 4,500 crematoriums working 24/7 to cremate the bodies piling up around them. To give you a scale of this mammoth task, we have 200 dump trucks sourcing coal from the coal-fired power stations to feed fuel to the crematoriums north of us here on the East Coast. There are 140,000 civilians helping 100,000 soldiers in New York City and State, New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the other states working on this project. We couldn’t transport fuel to the East Coast crematoriums fast enough so we have started digging new burning pits at the coal-fired energy plants themselves to bury our dead. We are identifying about two-thirds of the bodies but there are still millions of people we will never identify, or even know what happened to them. The major cities north of us are ghost towns. I would say that ninety percent of the city populations have either died or have migrated south.
“Our system has identified and cremated 47,550,000 bodies across the northern frozen area of the country. We have not identified, but cremated 18,750,000 bodies or body parts in this same area. Approximately 48 percent of the frozen areas of our large northern cities are still under snow and ice, and we estimate another 50 million bodies in ice in over twenty of these cities. We have reached Times Square in New York which, it seems, was the most populated area in the country on New Year’s morning. With a workforce of a thousand soldiers and another thousand civilians, we have pulled out 470,000 frozen bodies in just three blocks. Nearly every frozen body there has identification and we believe that there are about 200,000 bodies to still dig out. In the southern areas, we have identified and cremated 19,550,000 bodies and approximately 15,500,000 unidentified bodies, or body parts. Within a month unsanitary conditions and disease will really hamper our actions everywhere. Gas masks were handed out to the soldiers and volunteers last week, but we don’t have enough for everybody helping. The ones without masks will be pulled back in ten days’ time and that will drop our cremations by nearly 50 percent per day. I have raised my estimated number of dead to 200 million, from 150 million a month ago. It could still go higher.
“Manhattan and its surrounding areas are totally empty of people, apart from the workers who are clearing the bodies, and hungry gangs who ambush anybody they see. In Manhattan alone, we have killed over 8,000 armed people who have shot at our soldiers or civilians working in the area. To date we have lost approximately 400 soldiers and 100 civilian workers but the numbers are decreasing.
“Gangs, violence and crime are now the major killer of people. We are working on the crime situation with the incoming troops. Crime in the northern areas is decreasing rapidly and once we have all our men back, I’m going to give orders to start a sweep from north to south across the entire country to clear the nation of criminals and gangs. As of yesterday, our soldiers have killed over 855,000 unidentified civilians who have taken up arms and fired on them. The soldiers now have orders to shoot civilians carrying guns on sight. The worst case last week was a gang of four fifteen-year old boys in Houston who killed a dozen soldiers with a stolen machine gun on the back of an old rusty truck driven by one of the boys. Many out there think the new world is a damned computer game and these kids don’t understand the difference between real life and a game. I spoke to my commanders on the West Coast and it is no different on that side.
“In addition, packs of wild dogs have been seen eating the dead in the outer suburbs of New York. There was one pack of well over a hundred animals. Several other packs have been seen in other cities. In northern Chicago, a pack of over 250 animals is being monitored. They attacked a platoon of soldiers and the soldiers had to retreat into buildings. The men fought off over a hundred hungry dogs. A few soldiers reported seeing wolves a week ago.
“In other areas, where the warmth of spring is creeping in, we have to close down areas of cities where the smell is becoming unbearable. The residue on the ground from so much decomposition has become a health issue and I can see us locking down whole cities in the next few months. They are mostly empty anyway and I do not know what we can do about disinfecting a whole city. I’ve been told by doctors and sanitary experts that Mother Nature herself could be the best bet, but it will take a couple of seasons for the situation to normalize. There are several cities in the south where soldiers are still fighting gangs around the clock, and we cannot get people in to clear the bodies. The stench and sanitary danger there is mounting and we are closing down Houston, New Orleans and Fort Worth, and setting up a perimeter around the cities with hundreds of thousands of troops. We will let the gangsters stay inside and, of course, let out unarmed civilians, but they will be checked for arms and fingerprinted first. OK, numbers.
“The stench and dead in Los Angeles, especially, is very bad. We have already pulled a large percentage of our soldiers out. It will be the first city where we block all roads in and out. We currently have daily flights over the city trying to count the dead in the streets and check for people trying to get out. Disease is going to spread and the doctors believe that a plague could occur and spread very quickly in the warmer areas.”
The entire hangar was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
“Any questions?” the general asked.
The President asked the next question. “You estimate 200 million dead out of 330 million, General Patterson. These are your latest numbers. How many people are alive? And how many are dependent on us for food in the coming months?”
“I was about to give the report on the living, Mr. President. These numbers are mostly from Captain Mallory’s food program and all our base commanders, farmers and food distribution sites around the entire country, except for cities and areas we cannot go into. Part of Los Angeles is one of these areas, for example. We have a little over 37 million people recorded in our database, of which seven million will need food pretty soon. That includes all our military personnel here and aboard. Mr. President, we are still going into new areas where the snow is receding. We are finding about 50,000 living people per day in mostly rural farming areas. The Rockies have many survivors. Soldiers from Salt Lake City and Denver are heading into the mountain communities by foot to search and are finding people with food stocks and enough wood to keep them alive. We also believe that rural Canada has fared better than its cities. Same with Alaska and Hawaii. Alaska has hunting, as General Pete Allen found out when he stopped over. Hawaii and many U.S. coastal towns have fishing to survive and don’t need materials for warmth. As far as the difference between the numbers, sir, I just don’t know. We have been happily surprised to find whole communities surviving by banding together, but also whole communities where there is nothing living. I’m hoping to reach the 60 million mark by the beginning of summer.”
May I add something to this report?” asked Captain Mallory, standing up in the first row. General Patterson nodded for him to carry on. “The majority of these civilians are now building small accommodations to live, in a central band either side of the Rockies. It looks like new villages and settlements are springing up about a hundred miles south of the Mason Dixon Line, from Virginia to southern Colorado, and as far south as New Mexico. I won’t be surprised if by the end of this year most of the population of this country will be in a band a hundred miles wide stretching from Virginia to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thousands of people have also been migrating north from the hotter and more violent areas and into places like northern Arizona and central California.”
“So it might be necessary to close down our northern and southern living areas until people want to migrate there again?” suggested the President. “I can understand why people don’t want to go through another winter and do want to move away from the violence in the south. It also makes it easier for us to clean up, or let Mother Nature clean up the dangerous areas in the north for a couple of seasons. It will certainly help us contain the violence in the south.”
“Correct, Mr. President,” added the general, still standing at the podium. “We are now giving out food packs in the Deep South and telling people that more could be available in the rural farming areas to the north. Also, the farmers have unlimited free labor to help with the crops. Within a month or so I would like to close down our southern border and do a sweep north to clear out factions of violence, and then we could have a military zone free of civilians in case there is an attack from the south.
“Now I would like to bring up Admiral Rogers who will give us his report on naval and shipping projects.” The Admiral came up to give his speech.
“Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, we have a lot going on out there and I’ll be brief. First, our European container ship is docked in Calais, France. We have seven convoys of approximately 290 military vehicles heading towards Calais. These vehicles are mostly old troop carriers and Vietnam-era Mutts, jeeps with rocketry on them. Many were in museums or just sitting around in storage as backups. The 168 troop carriers, mostly from smaller, less important bases around Europe, are filled with anything we could get into them. The conditions in Europe are an exact copy of what we have here in the United States, except that the highways are far less cluttered and there are very few old vehicles moving. The reason for the nearly empty highways is that the electronic outage happened just before dawn in this area of Europe when the majority of the population had finished partying and were already asleep. We are getting reports of much less violence than there.
“Similar to our plans here in the States, European farming is the number one priority and they have lost vast numbers of population due to winter conditions and starvation, but their situation is different. Yes, there is crime, violence, robbery and gang murders, but the small country police forces are still intact. There are fewer guns, and with less land, they are easier to police. Our convoys are heading towards the ship. With the troop transporters we have 84 jeeps, seven armored personnel carriers, 15 thirty-year old tanks, a dozen large Caterpillar earth movers on tractor-trailers, and several fuel tankers. The transporters will empty their loads dockside and, with an armored escort, will return to several of our northern European bases to collect a second and a third load of vital equipment. During the two weeks it will take the vehicles to return to Calais, the container ship will head to Portsmouth in England.
“In the U.K., violence is much worse than in Europe with gangs of youth and others fighting police in several areas. Two cities are burning, Manchester and Birmingham, and they are expected to burn to the ground. London had 50,000 police and army clearing streets of vandals and most of the U.K.’s populations have already fled the cities into the rural areas. In England we have another 70 vehicles. We did have 120, but we were begged by the English military for help. We gave them thirty troop carriers and twenty Mutts as a parting gift once we had everything safely at the port. The 747 Transporter has visited the U.K. several times. Our bases in England are now empty of flyable equipment. The 747 flew out the last of our MRE rations and ammunition yesterday. The British seem to be a very angry and hungry population. Once our ship is loaded with everything we can salvage, she will depart and be back in New York harbor by the end of this month.
“Our second container ship has reached the Panama Canal, meeting up with the three Light Frigates on loan to us by the Colombian Navy. We have off-loaded 10,000 troops and we were shocked at what we found. I briefed Mr. Mo Wang, the ex-board member of Zedong Electronics, earlier this week when he and the Frigates arrived in our Norfolk naval facility. He told me that 10,000 Chinese troops of the Zedong army had been placed at the canal on a permanent basis to take over control of the canal from the Panama authorities, and to maintain the canal so that Chinese shipping could pass through. What we found were thousands of dead Chinese soldiers. There was a major battle and by the looks of it, the battle lasted a couple of weeks. There was nobody about, until we found several Chinese engineers who had barricaded themselves in an underground facility and managed to get overlooked by the attacking army. They told us of an army from the south, thousands of men, who took on the well-armed Chinese army and killed every single soldier. We found areas where hundreds from both sides had died, areas where the captured were executed, and three towns where the populations had just disappeared, thousands of people.”
“Do we know what happened to the civilians?” asked the President.
“Yes,” replied Admiral Rogers. “Several civilians who escaped told us that the town’s people had been rounded up and were told to carry supplies northwards on foot. The local airport had aircraft coming in. One man told us that the aircraft were Venezuelan. For days these aircraft, a dozen of them, brought in food and ammunition and took out wounded.
“Did you find any identification on the dead bodies?” asked Carlos. “Since my uncle, the ambassador cannot be here, I would like to transfer any relevant information back to him and his contacts in Colombia.”
“They searched many dead bodies. It was a gruesome task as many were already over a week old and they only had a few gas masks with them. Most of the bodies we searched had no identity on them at all. All the Chinese and the opposition armies’ weapons and ammo were gone, but we did find empty Venezuelan and Colombian cigarette packets on the ground. We assume that there were just too many bodies to carr
y back to wherever, or the advancing army was ordered to move on northwards. We found several bodies with Venezuelan information on them. One had an old girlie magazine and we found some Colombian papers on a couple of others. There was one body which had a Brazilian passport on it, Carlos. I will brief you and your uncle later in North Carolina. We have rounded up a thousand locals and we are digging pits to bury the dead before disease becomes a bigger problem there as well. We left 12,500 troops and supplies at the canal. This was a week ago and the Panama Canal is under U.S. control again.
“The container ship and its Destroyer guard passed successfully through the canal and headed to the Hawaiian Islands to meet the other five container ships from Shanghai anchored there. We made contact with the vessels yesterday and several small battles on board the Chinese ships ensued. We had asked the captains to anchor a couple of miles offshore of a small uninhabited island near Kauai. This island was visible from the ships and is a couple of square miles in area. Many of the Chinese troops jumped ship and began swimming to the island. I don’t know if they can survive on this island, but that’s not my problem. We sustained a dozen or so casualties and took over command without any damage to the ships. Our vessels had enough naval personnel aboard to take command of the Chinese vessels. They are steaming past Maui at the moment and we are aiming for the five main West Coast ports where the Army and Marines are currently securing and forming a lock-down. We hope to be distributing food in about a week.
“The third container ship, still in New York harbor, is ready to sail and we will send her south to the Panama Canal with another 12,500 troops on board to make sure that we are ready if this army decides to return. Thank you.” And the admiral returned to his seat.
