by T I WADE
Comrade Wang looked at a long list of numbers he kept in a red notebook in his shirt pocket and gave the numbers to the chairman. The first number he stated aloud was the number for the transporter 747—the more important aircraft. Chairman Chunqiao got a quick answer from the pilot. “Are you on your way back to Shanghai?”
“Yes Comrade Chairman,” replied the pilot, suddenly sitting up straight in his seat. “We are an hour out of New York and bound directly north for our secret landing location. No, there are no problems with our 747,” he added, puzzled why the chairman was phoning him so quickly after they had seen him in New York just an hour earlier.
“Unfortunately, the other aircraft is having a minor fuel problem,” the pilot reported. “The pilot said that he is having fuel starvation at high altitude a few minutes ago and he has descended his aircraft down to 20,000 feet. We can see him on radar about five miles behind us and he is still with us. The pilot believes that the problem is sorting itself out the lower he goes. He will stay at 20,000 feet until the problem clears itself, Comrade Chairman. We think it is just dirty fuel from New York and that he will ascend and join me in an hour or two. There is no need for concern and I will update you if you wish, Comrade Chairman.”
“Don’t call me, call Comrade Wang. Do you have his number?” asked the Chairman. Wang also nodded to the chairman that he had and the chairman terminated the call and put the phone down. He explained to the whole group what the pilot had said to him and then looked at each member.
“Comrade Wang,” he stated as his eyes fixed on the man he was beginning to blame for all his problems. “I understand your concern. The aircraft are fine and there were no problems in New York. That means our termination squads cleared the runway, our troops landed, and nothing was out of place. I honestly believe you are beating the wrong horse, Comrade. How are Americans coming halfway across the world to bomb our headquarters? How could they even know we exist? It’s absolutely impossible. You disappoint me, Comrade Wang. The Americans get panicked, the shutdown closes down the whole country—everything. They don’t even know who formulated the attack. The Americans and the Europeans can only think it’s the Russian or Chinese governments, or maybe North Korea or Iran. They could never think it was a conglomerate of private electrical companies here in China. And you want to tell me that with all their satellites destroyed, they fly like angels across the world and accurately destroy our headquarters, a building that they don’t even know exists? Wang this is real life, not an American Hollywood film production.”
“But….” started Comrade Wang.
“I don’t want to hear any more. I think we should vote on this issue immediately,” continued the Chairman. “We have sixteen votes on this table. Gentlemen, who here believes the Americans are to blame for the destruction of our headquarters?” Only Comrade Wang put his hand up. “Who believes it was a country we have just terminated by me pushing the fourth button two minutes ago?” the Chairman asked. Ten members put up their hands. “Who believes that our headquarters was destroyed by Chinese fighters, or bombers belonging to either of the two Chinese governments?” Three people put up their hands. “Who believes that foreign aircraft were used, but they were assisted or ordered to by people in our own Chinese government?” Twelve members put up their hands. “Good, I believe that I agree with the 12 members of this Politburo and blame our own allies and our own government for this attack on our world sovereignty.”
Comrade Wang’s phone went off again and the chairman, tired of this man’s continuing interference, asked him to either turn off his phone or leave the room. Wang knew what was going to happen and, much to the dismay of his Politburo colleagues, he got up, bowed and stated his apologies to the chairman, and left the room. “I have a bad feeling about Comrade Wang,” the chairman confessed to the group after the door closed behind Wang. “I do not think he can take the pressure of his position, and I think we should bring the number in here down to 15. Gentlemen, how many of you believe that it is time to conquer the whole world and take everybody out of the picture. If I press the fifth button, nothing except our 35 aircraft, our five naval ships, our three satellites, our 500 cell phones—of which 250 are already in America and Europe—our ten container ships, and an unnamed area north of here will still be operational in the whole world. Gentlemen, if I press the fifth button, we are either going to control the world, or we will die trying. There is no going back, except to pick up the Chinese pieces in a year or so and turn the billions of humans worldwide who have survived into workers for our new world. How many of you vote to press the fifth button? Everybody put up their hand.”
The chairman took a key out from his right trouser pocket, opened the lock to the fifth button and again without hesitation, pushed it once and closed the lid. It was done. The rest of China shut down. Everything still powered up around Shanghai and Nanjing and the surrounding areas where the hundreds of companies had produced the products for Zedong Electronics shut down. The Zedong Electronics universities, their training facilities on the island, the production plants, everything apart from Shanghai Pudong airport and the Shanghai docks shut down and went dark.
“And our final decision before we open some fresh, cold bottles of champagne, gentlemen,” continued the chairman. “I understand Comrade Wang has been a good, hard-working member of our organization. He has done well and should always be remembered for his dedication to our cause. I would like a vote on this matter. How many believe that he is not strong enough for his position and should be relieved of duty?”
Eight men put up their hands—the ones who always agreed with the chairman and the ones the chairman could always count on. “Last, do we terminate Comrade Wang and his knowledge about our operation immediately, or shall we simply demote Comrade Wang into a lower position and maybe have the man fill ex-Comrade Feng’s old communications position and allow him to continue to be an asset to us? Raise your left hand for immediate termination, or your right hand for demotion out of the Politburo. Please vote now.” This time, nine men voted with their right hands and five with their left hands. The chairman jotted notes about who raised which hand, and then got up and walked over to the wall to personally open a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. “Good. I like the vote. Comrade Wang is a good man and I have always treated him as a friend. I will personally tell him the news in the morning. Let’s enjoy our newfound freedom. Gentlemen, we now own the whole world, and nobody can stop us.”
All 15 men began opening the dozen cold bottles together. Wang was forgotten, and for the next several hours they toasted themselves and their new found dominance. It was a joyous occasion as the ships steamed away from a dark and cold Asia, and the humans aboard the ships didn’t care. They were going south, down to the warmth of the equator.
Comrade Wang was unhappy. He knew that they were going to push the fifth button, and he was already on the phone trying to find Lee Wang.
Chapter 14
‘Z’ Day 8 – The Beginning of the Second Week
Exactly one week after the beginning of the year, North America was racked by the coldest weather seen in many years. Frozen wind gusts blew snow into piles, covering everything in its path. Temperatures hovered between zero and -35 in places for days on end. Roads that were normally cleared and passable disappeared. Even small buildings were totally covered, especially where lake effect snow was in abundance.
For many who were still alive, the drifting snow kept away the wind chill, and people huddled in groups, covering themselves with everything warm they could find. In many places, they went out to chop more wood for the fireplaces, now one of the only areas of a house that kept people alive. Fireplaces were now the most important place in people’s homes. Here, people stayed warm and brewed coffee and cooked food pulled out of kitchen freezers. They slept around the fire, which burned continuously day and night. Fuel was abundant, since many American houses were built with wood, and it was plentiful from other houses where people didn’t have a
fireplace and were either long gone or frozen.
Many millions had died, mostly due to the freezing conditions, but many also had fallen to thugs and gangs stealing and killing anyone who had stockpiles of food. The cities were the worst hit. The only place for warmth was in basements where fires were started with wood from the local parks or furniture that was chopped up from various apartments in the buildings. Many died asphyxiated from carbon dioxide poisoning, not understanding the mechanics of survival.
The laws of survival were a forgotten art for many Americans, who had depended wholly on the “system” to supply them with everything they needed—even information seemingly unimportant in a situation like this. In the cities, this lack of survival instinct was worse than in the country, where stockpiles of supplies were more abundant and anybody with a little creativity could keep themselves alive.
Gang violence in the north was curtailed for the time being by the weather, wind chill, and snow drifts, making it difficult to move about. People became reclusive, staying in one place and living off what they had. Once that ran out, there was nothing else to eat, except the frozen bodies outside.
In more southern areas, life was a bit warmer, but the incidence of violence and the killing of innocent people climbed drastically as folks became more aware of what they had to do to survive.
It was either kill or be killed, in a country where gang-related violence was the norm before the beginning of the end. Many of the stores, now with doors missing or hanging open, were empty or full of products unnecessary for human survival. Many people still had a store of food—the hoarders, the conspiracy theorists, and the rich. Freezers were still cold in the southern areas, but the produce was beginning to thaw and many were cooking the thawing food to halt the decaying process for a week or two. Many had looted cans of food, which would keep them going for awhile, and rural communities had animals to kill and eat if marauding gangs didn’t steal them first.
As Comrade Chunqiao had correctly predicted, humans became their most feared enemy in terms of their own survival, and there was nothing hungry and cold people would not do to ensure their continued habitation on earth, even if it was only for one more day.
After the first week, the longest week modern civilization had ever known ended, over 100 million people in North America alone had perished.
*****
The 100 engineers under guard in the terminal at JFK were given two opportunities—either work for the American people or be left to the wrath of the American people. They decided to work. All their satellite phones were bagged and taken to McGuire Air Force Base, the new command center, and then each Chinese engineer with their Air Force engineer chaperone started going through the equipment unloaded out of the 747 transporter. Most of the parts were designed to repair the movement of electricity, which were pretty useless without electricity.
It seemed to be a major flaw in the Zedong Electronics plan. It was fine to send in new parts that actually worked, but they were not much use without the electrical power grid, and billions of parts would be needed to get the North American power grid working again.
Generators were sought after, and small mobile electricity-makers were needed by the millions. The only engines of any sorts still working were old carburetor-fed combustion engines. Any engines with carburetors and no management systems—from a small push lawn mower to an old truck engine—would run for a long time; all these engines needed was fuel, and there was tons of that around. With 90 percent of all North American vehicles sitting useless somewhere, there was a lot of fuel to go around for the rest.
Once again, the problem was electricity. Most gas stations needed electricity to pump the fuel out from their underground storage tanks. Therefore, it took an engineering degree to figure out how to produce the electricity to pump out the fuel to feed the electricity, and so on. It was a vicious circle, but easily done with the use of a combustion engine, or large deep-cycle battery, or solar and wind powered electrical systems that most governments had thought unimportant until now. Civilization would take 20 or even 30 years—a whole generation—to get human life on the planet back to the safe and comfortable lifestyle everyone was used to.
Major Patterson and his crew were airlifted back to McGuire to rest, or so they thought. They had done their job well and fresh troops were airlifted into all four New York airports by helicopter, with the two large helicopters bringing in small bulldozers hanging from the strong underbelly-hooks. They were destined to clear the snow off the runways so that the aircraft could come in and deliver more troops.
Once the bulldozers were in, the area was checked for any vehicles in the many parking garages around the airports. Airport parking garages were usually full of motor vehicles and they searched for anything that would start. The ones that worked were driven out to the areas of the airport where engineers went about using all the power inverters they could find to turn the engines into mobile generators to light and heat critical areas. Over 70 vehicles were found in the JFK garages alone—mostly old American cars with large gas guzzling engines; perfect for generating electricity.
It took two car engines to power up the landing-light system on the already cleared runway. The system was fed from the motor vehicles into a large inverter they brought in from McGuire, which fed raw energy to the lights themselves and cut out all malfunctioning electronic-control systems. It took several hours of retrofitting the electronics, but the lights came on when someone started the cars stationed at each end of the long runway. Now equipment could be carried into JFK at night.
One large car engine could run several small electrical heating units, blowers, and electrical bar heaters found in stores. The Air Force flew these in by the hundreds. A second car engine could run the terminal lighting systems and any available propane tanks could get the stoves working in the terminal’s restaurants and feed the workers.
By the end of Z-Day Eight, JFK was lit and semi-heated so people could work and sleep. Military camp beds had been brought in and porta-potties dotted the outside areas next to the walls of the terminals, inconspicuous and hidden from anyone landing.
The aircraft themselves changed inside. Several teams pulled out the seats and made them into living quarters where less lighting and heating were needed to make them warm and comfortable. A beautifully painted Quantas 747 became a warm, cozy home with fully stocked kitchens and bars for 100 people, once the unnecessary seats had been placed in warehouses out of the view of anyone flying in unannounced.
The five bulldozers worked 24 hours a day. Snow hadn’t fallen for a day now, and JFK’s runways were still clear, but the other three airports could hardly be seen under the snowdrifts. Only white shapes in the snow, aircraft wrapped in heavy layers of frozen precipitation and the snow-bound terminals showed the outline where runways hid under feet of winter weather. The large lifting helicopters moved the bulldozers into La Guardia and soldiers began clearing its main runway.
Once the bulldozers had been moved, men again went in search of old vehicles in the parking garages, got inside, and hotwired them. They were driven outside the garage towers where the helicopters picked them up and carried them over snow drifts and placed them where the engineers needed them. It would take 24 hours to clean the runway and the same would be necessary for Teterboro Airport, which was next. Newark would be last. Teterboro would be the deployment airport for troops into the other three airports when needed, and all seven of the operational troop-carrying C-130s could ferry in 100 troops each at a time to wherever they were needed.
The third job of the always-working helicopters was then to bring in food and supplies for the troops and an ever-growing number of locals who had seen or heard the action. Once the runways were cleared, the C-130s flew in from Air Force bases that had warehouses full of stored meals for the overseas troops, and were flying in 5,000 meals at a time on pallets. There were only five C-130s available for this work since the other two were down in North Carolina doing the same thing
, but they started hauling 25,000 meals per day into the four airports and the supplies were stored in the empty hangars.
By the third day of work, the bulldozers were working on Newark’s runway. With the increased activity at the airports, children began to venture out foraging for food and pushing their faces up to the high security fences to beg the armed soldiers stationed around the perimeter for anything edible. It would take an entire week to get the airports ready for the incoming attack, before they could even start on the harbor area. Between that work and distributing food, the troops were working 24-hour shifts.
*****
Carlos and Lee were exhausted. They had worked nearly 20 hours a day for several days in a row, and in a few days there would be renewed satellite phone communications around the world. The stolen 747 had flown into McGuire Air Force Base at 9:00 am that morning, as had all the important electrical equipment being airlifted in from JFK.
Once the small pallet of remaining new phones had been offloaded and opened, Carlos and Lee started a phone directory file on the computer, listing the numbers for distribution to all the phone users to ensure that nobody spoke to the enemy by mistake.
Both Carlos and Lee had an operational Commodore computer linked up to be able to log in all the numbers, and a really old black and white printer that could print copies, and they issued the first phone number list for transfer with the HC-130 tanker being refueled for its world trip. Each phone—all 25 of them that now had an international delivery destination, as well as another 50 for the Air Force bases around the country—were recorded on the list. Each phone was numbered, and its projected destination was typed onto the sheet. Another 20 phones were added as extras, and blanks were added where the new owners’ names could be written in. The list would be updated once the aircraft returned from deliveries.
