Danielle Kidnapped: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Ice Age

by John Silveira

“I’ve been watching you,” she said.

  They went back to work and, eventually, because of the small space, there was more contact between them. He didn’t want to think about how it was making him feel, but he didn’t want it to stop, either. He didn’t know if she was aware of it or not.

  “Why did you really change your mind about the dog?” she finally asked, but she asked very nicely. It occurred to her that he might just wait until she was gone to do it.

  He mumbled something.

  “What?” she asked and stepped closer to hear him better, her forearm against his.

  “I started to do it, but I realized I like him,” he said.

  “He likes you, too, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Zach stopped cutting and looked at the dog. For the first time, it occurred to him that the dog did indeed like him.

  As they finished, he brought in another quarter and they canned that together, working until evening. Altogether, they got thirty quarts of venison and venison stew. Then Zach said they should clean up before the cabin got dark, and they did, neatly and efficiently, as a team.

  When they were done, she went back to her chair and read in the gathering gloaming. He then set out some candles for light. She knew this was a luxury, and though it allowed her to continue reading, he seemed to have done it more for himself than for her. He sat on the floor and played with Whoops for hours. Every once in a while, she looked up from her book and watched them. Whoops was bonding with him.

  Δ Δ Δ

  Late in the night she was awakened. The last thing she remembered was cuddling up on the chair in the dark with her sister. Now there was a dim light in the cabin and Whoops wasn’t with her.

  She looked across the room and Zach had her up on the table and was changing her diaper in candle light.

  When he heard her stir, he looked at her.

  “She was crying,” he said. “She pooped her pants again. I’m changing her.”

  “Thank you,” Danielle said. “Tomorrow morning, teach me to shoot the gun.”

  “Okay.”

  A minute later he brought Whoops back to her, blew out the candle, and they both lay in the dark, he on his couch, she in her chair until Whoops started crying again.

  “Oh, Whoopsie,” she whispered, “I need to sleep.”

  Seconds later the candle was relit. She hadn’t even heard him get up.

  He came to her.

  “I can’t sleep,” he said. “Let me take her so you can.”

  “You don’t mind?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer. And she couldn’t see his face. All she could see in the dim light were his outstretched arms offering to take her.

  She handed her sister to him and said, “Thank you. I’m going to need sleep if I’m going to get on the road.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just took Whoops, sat on the floor with her, and played with her again.

  Chapter 23

  September 1

  The President; his National Security Advisor, Fred Cotta; and his speechwriter, Sam Feinberg were the last to enter the Roosevelt Room directory across the hall from the Oval Office in the White House.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, remain in your seats,” the President said as several of the men and women began to rise. “We’ve got a lot to do. Let’s dispense with the courtesies and formalities and get down to business.”

  Although the attendees knew the agenda, he reminded them, “The purpose of this meeting is to map out my Address to the Nation, tonight. I’d like this to be quick.

  “What’s happening with the states?” he asked as he slid into his seat. The question was directed at the Secretary of Homeland Security, Deanna Knox.

  “Hawaii just announced secession,” she said.

  “That makes ten,” the President said, though everyone in the room knew the count.

  “Intel says that should be the last of them, though we’re not absolutely sure which way South Carolina is going to go,” she said.

  The President looked at her as if encouraging her to continue.

  “We’re in touch with Governor Brackett and he’s assured us South Carolina is with us, but intel says he’s fence-sitting,” she added.

  The President nodded. “Do we know how to get in touch with him?

  “No.”

  “That’s not good. If we can find him, I want to talk with him. I don’t care what I’m doing. Interrupt me if you have to and let me go tete-a-tete with him. Until we can get some assurances from him, I’m going to assume South Carolina may try to leave, too.

  “What about the other governors…the ones in the states claiming to have seceded?”

  “They’re all incommunicado. But we’re still attempting to reach each and every one of them.”

  “Do we yet know if the secessionists are banding to form a separate country?” he asked, meaning if they were duplicating the actions of the states that had seceded and founded the Confederates States of America during what some called America’s first Civil War and others called the War Between the States.

  “Not yet,” Knox replied. “There was obvious coordination in their announcements, so we assume there’s a confederation of sorts, but they haven’t announced one yet.”

  “Is that something we can find out?” he asked Howard Davies, the Director of the CIA.

  “We’re looking into it, Mr. President,” Davies said.

  “Let me know what you discover,” the President said as he looked down at the sheaf of papers he’d brought with him.

  He turned to General Elias French, the Combatant Commander of NORTHCOM. “What’s the military assessment, General French?”

  The general replied, “We’ve mobilized troops and we’ve moved on all ten of the states’ capitals—plus Columbia,” he added, referring to South Carolina’s capital, though South Carolina’s status was still not clear. “We’ve taken several of the governors’s mansions and the legislative houses, and we’ve gone to many personal residences—but we’re not sure where they all are and we’re stretching ourselves thin as it is. The state legislators we’ve found say they’re not part of the secession, but we’re holding them under the Preventative Detention Act. But we haven’t found any of the avowed secessionists, including state governors. We can’t even find Governor Brackett,” he said referring back to South Carolina’s governor. “All of our moves to find and arrest them have been anticipated. They’re in hiding. As Secretary Knox pointed out, the secession seems to have been well-coordinated.”

  “Our political opponents are saying the mass arrests are unconstitutional,” the Vice President, Henry Rickers, said.

  The President understood Rickers wasn’t taking the secessionists’s side, he was merely informing him of what they were saying. The President shuffled through the papers before him until he found a page he was looking for and began to read from it, “Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution states, ‘The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion, the public Safety may require it.’ I want this text to be part of the speech,” he said again to Sam, “along with the statement that habeas corpus has been suspended until further notice. Also include that, with amendments to the Insurrection Act, passed by the Congress last year, we have the authority to invoke a military presence to stop domestic terrorism and to aid in the event of natural disaster. And right now we have both terrorism and a natural disaster.”

  In an aside to Feinberg he said, “I would like you to include wording…a summation of both the Insurrection Act and the Preventative Detention Act.”

  “Will do, Mr. President,” Feinberg said.

  “Where are the loyalties of the troops?” the President asked General Winston Turnbull, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  “Among some units, morale is high. Some, it’s not so good. Overall, it’s good.”

  “I’m not asking about morale. Where are their loyalties?”

  “Frankly, Mr. Pres
ident, it depends on whether they’re being fed. The best-fed units are loyal. Other units would follow anyone who offered them a sandwich.”

  The comment got the only smile the President would make during the meeting.

  “What about the units that are being disbanded?” he asked.

  “We’ve put that on hold,” the General responded. “But we don’t know how much longer we can maintain them. Too many of the units we’ve officially discharged have been recruited by the warm states, and some of them have gone over. Others have formed gangs—become road pirates. The ones that have joined the states are bringing their equipment including weapons and ammunition stores with them. If we disband too many units, the states are going to have more armed troops than we will.”

  He continued, “Though keeping them active is creating a strain on our resources—we haven’t the food or medical resources to care for them all—we’ve determined it is the best action to take in the near-term, unless otherwise directed.”

  “Have the units that have gone to the states been told they’re committing treason…?

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “…and is that your recommendation: To keep the remaining active units active for the time being?” the President asked.

  “Yes, Mr. President. Keep all the remaining units active until the states are back in the fold. Letting them defect to the secessionist states is unacceptable.”

  “I agree. But where will the food to feed these units come from? Where do the medical supplies come from?”

  “They have to be diverted from the…”

  “That was a rhetorical question,” the President said. They all knew they were being diverted from the civilian population.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  The President conferred with his National Security Advisor in a low voice for several minutes while the others sat patiently in the room.

  “What’s the overall food situation,” he asked FEMA Administrator Alberto Martinez.

  “We can barely provide starvation rations to twenty-five percent of the people in the country and, by the end of the year, that figure will be down to less than twenty percent. To make matters worse, much of the food we try to distribute to the citizens is stolen before it reaches them and it’s created a black market of the stolen commodities. But even food on the black market is drying up.”

  The President didn’t say anything, as if expecting him to go on.

  “When the ice age began,” Martinez said, “the nation had a seventy-two-day food supply. That was seventy-two days with everyone eating pretty much what they wanted. With the current rationing we probably have less than three weeks, and most of that is in the warm states which makes access to it problematic. And, as we all know, we’re consuming it faster than we can produce it.”

  The President paused and made more notes. Then he looked up and asked General Turnbull, “What’s happening at the border with Mexico?”

  “Americans are trying to enter Mexico,” Turnbull said, “but the Mexican government has assembled troops at all the official crossing points and they aren’t letting anyone in—even Mexican nationals trying to return home, whether they had come to this country legally or illegally.”

  The President grimly nodded.

  “May I add what I’ve gotten from National Academy of Sciences, NOAA, and experts with various other groups?” Martinez asked.

  “Go on.”

  “With the abrupt disruption and changes in agriculture occurring all over the world, there isn’t a single country with enough food to feed itself. Demographers, the people who study populations…”

  “I know what demographers are,” the President said sharply.

  Martinez nodded without looking at the President. “…and other experts now claim there will have to be a great dying-off before populations can stabilize, and no one knows how long that will take to happen or how much worse the ice age is going to get. But the consensus is that, if this is a full-blown ice age, it’s going to last tens of thousands of years.”

  The President picked up one of his papers and glanced at it. It triggered his next question. “In our last meeting, questions about the roads came up. What about them? What’s happening with the transportation system, General French?”

  “Key roads are kept open by the Army. Here on the East Coast, there are points along I-95 where we’ve had problems with road pirates who have tried to inhibit the flow of traffic. But as the problems arise, we’ve dealt with them. There are bigger problems along US 101, that runs from Seattle to San Diego. Road pirates there have been intercepting people trying to flee south—robbing them, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands—and they have, on occasion, damaged, destroyed, or blocked roads and bridges to make those fleeing the north easier to rob.”

  “Where are these people, the ones leaving the north, getting fuel to make the trip south?”

  “We can’t always be certain. Fuel became something people began to hoard before the gas stations closed, and it has become the most important barter commodity, after food, guns, and ammo. Some, we’re sure, has been stolen from military stores.”

  “Probably much of all those commodities—food, guns, and ammo—come from military supplies,” the President said as he made another note.

  “How severely do these road pirates disrupt the roads?” he asked.

  “Blockades and damage to roads and bridges along US 101 have, in the past, prevented the Army and the Army Corps of Engineers from maintaining the dams on the Columbia River, they’ve disrupted access to the nuclear facilities at Hanford, Washington, and interfered with the distribution of food and medical supplies. And, now, they could disrupt efforts to stop the secessions.”

  “Do you think the road pirates are siding with the states?”

  “They don’t care about the states unless the states come after them, and they don’t, anymore. What the road pirates want is to stall traffic so they can prey on the people fleeing south. A year ago we were tasked to come up with a solution. Now, when we discover that a band of road pirates has damaged or blocked roads or bridges, making them impassable, we have elite units,” he said with subtle emphasis on the word ‘elite,’ “from the 3rd Infantry Division, trained to deal with them.”

  “Let’s talk about that,” the President said.

  General French continued, “Mobile units go in first, deal with those who have created the problem, and they are followed by the Corps which is tasked with the repair of whatever damage has been done…”

  “And they have succeeded, so far, in minimizing interference by the road pirates and in restoring the orderly flow of traffic,” the President said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The President nodded and, because California was still the most populous, as well as the largest industrial and agricultural state, and it was a key to maintaining the Union, he asked, “What’s happening in California?”

  “We still have a presence at most of the military bases including Camp Pendleton, Edwards, China Lake, and other facilities, though troop numbers have necessarily been reduced. The Army now maintains the Golden Gate Bridge, otherwise, the roads and almost all the other bridges are still controlled and maintained by the State.”

  “Is the Army still at the Golden Gate?” the President asked.

  “Yes, but the California Highway Patrol has asked them to leave. They claim the Army is on sovereign Californian soil.”

  “Have any of the confrontations between the Army and the locals deteriorated…or escalated…into shooting confrontations?” the President asked.

  “No. But, as of yesterday, local police forces and the California National Guard are not allowing any movement by the Army, Army supply convoys, or units of the Corps in California, and they’re presently stalled and awaiting orders.”

  There was a silence in the room while the President made more notes.

  “Instruct the units at the Golden Gate to stay there,” the President said without looking up. “I think it’s a strateg
ic point on the 101 and it’s symbolic that we keep the bridge.”

  “I agree,” the General said.

  As he made more notes the President added, “We are not withdrawing from any of the states. If we can find him, I’ll speak with Stottlemyer,” he said mentioning the California governor by his last name, “and explain our situation. I’ll also explain that we will not tolerate interference with Army units in any of the states by any state agencies. If I don’t get in touch with the governor, we will ask whoever we can reach to convey that message to him and I will also include that message in tonight’s address. He won’t be able to claim he missed it.”

  Everyone in the room knew that reaching the Governor was unlikely and it would merely be a perfunctory call, used to buy time while the machinery for getting the Army on the move again was put into gear.

  “We need the roads open. We need the transportation links to remain intact to provide food and to stop the insurrection,” the President said. “Roads are the glue that’s going to hold this country together.”

  He glanced at Sam Feinberg and, referring to the radio address he was scheduled to deliver that night, he said, “I want it made abundantly clear that the country is still a Union. I also want to emphasize that those advocating or espousing secession are traitors and that those blocking or damaging roads, bridges, rail lines, airports, canals and other waterways, seaports, and anything else of that kind, are committing treason and, under the terms of martial law, will be dealt with swiftly and effectively.”

  The President continued, “Add…no, stress…that the only way we are going to be able to feed people is if we maintain the Union.”

  Feinberg glanced at the President. He knew there was no way all the people were going to be fed, but he understood the President’s motivation for saying this.

  “I also want you to include that the secessionists are taking all the food and are hoarding it.”

  “That could be dangerous,” Cotta said. “It’s no secret there isn’t enough food to feed everybody. We’ll have no credibility at all if we claim there is.”