Collapse (New America)

by Richard Stephenson

  “An excellent observation that had not occurred to me, General. Well done.” Roberto smiled at General Weygandt and then quickly shot another menacing glare at the chairman. The seventy-two year old was acting like a schoolyard bully.

  The president almost laughed at the chairman, who was clearly letting the old man get the best of him. Carl was not hard to rile up; anyone could push his buttons, that is, outside of the military. No one in uniform would dare mock the second-in-command of the United States military. Again playing peacemaker, the president asked, “Where do they stand on completing an ICBM?”

  The director did not need to ask the computer, he knew the answer, “The estimates remain the same, at least fifteen months. Their test launches barely make it into the upper atmosphere.”

  This was what the president feared the most. The thought of the Iranians delivering a nuclear device to an American city kept him up at night. The president and everyone in the room also had nightmares about the terror attacks they now faced on their own soil with alarming frequency. September 11, 2001, was a day they all remembered well. The mere thought that the most powerful nation on earth could be attacked on their home soil was something they had never dreamed of on September 10, 2001. Everyone in the room thought back to the day the Twin Towers fell as the beginning, a prophecy of things to come.

  The president addressed both the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Warren Gill. The two had grown accustomed to being addressed at the same time, like they were a couple.

  “Gentlemen, how are things on the home front?”

  “To put it bluntly, Mr. President, not good.” Secretary Laferriere never held his punches. The president had hired him because he wasn’t a “yes-man” who told him what he wanted to hear or sugarcoated his answers. The secretary leaned back in his chair and looked to his close friend, Warren Gill.

  The FBI Director took his cue and began. “Our soil is being attacked on two fronts. Domestic terrorists are the hardest for us to capture. The Empire continues to activate sleeper cells around the country, and we almost never see them coming until it's too late. We have seen some progress capturing the waves of Silent Warriors that make it across our 7,612 mile borders. The majority of the terrorist invaders have no identification of any kind, not so much as a fake driver’s license. They avoid the major cities and the National Guard checkpoints, and well, we don’t know what they are doing.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” Stacy Reid, the president’s Chief of Staff asked.

  “Well, ma’am, they aren’t like anything we’ve seen in the past. Our best estimate is that Iranian submarines bring them over and they just swim right up to deserted beaches with nothing but the clothes on their backs. We also have credible evidence that large numbers of enemy forces are simply walking into the country from Mexico. Most of those we captured welcome torture and are hard to crack. A few have told us that they’re set loose on our shores with no plan of attack whatsoever; they are told to be creative and improvise.”

  “Hard to stop an attack that has no intelligence to track until the damned thing happens,” the CIA Director managed to bark in a raspy voice.

  Secretary Lafferiere nodded in agreement.

  The president focused his attention back on Jimenez, “Roberto, what do we know about Bunker Five? Any indication that they’re planning some sort of attack for us here at home?”

  The director turned his attention back to the screen, “Computer, display image of Bunker Five, begin playback from six months ago and show the progress in high-speed, ending with the most current image. Compress playback to sixty seconds.”

  The interactive image of the Iranian Theater remained on the screen and a new window opened in the bottom left corner, far too small for anyone to see. The Director had forgotten to close the first screen.

  “Son of a bitch,” the Director cursed under his breath. Roberto Jimenez hated to give the appearance that he was the stereotypical senior citizen that didn’t know how to work a computer. “Enhance.”

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff finally saw his chance and laughed out loud. “You need help there, Robert-O?” Moody had placed emphasis on the last “O” to really drive it home.

  Director Jimenez was becoming visibly frustrated, and his face flashed beet red as he realized that Carl Moody had just made fun of him. Roberto raised his right hand to grab the image. He succeeded in taking hold of it, but the pain in his arm was too much to endure and his hand fell back in his lap. The wall sensors tracking his hand movements misinterpreted his last gesture, and the image quickly disappeared.

  Governor Lori Prince could not stay quiet any longer. Watching this old geezer display his obvious incompetence with computers sent her over the edge.

  “Excuse me, Mr. President. I must know, exactly why am I here? This is all very interesting, but I just don’t understand exactly how the state of Florida is in any condition to help with the war effort.”

  The president raised his hand in a calming gesture. “Governor Prince, I understand your confusion, but if you would just remain patient for a few more min...”

  “Patient? PATIENT? You have the nerve to ask me to be patient? I have been patient for over a month waiting for you to make good on your promise to help the people of Florida. You have ended my political career while close to a million people have died! You haven’t done one goddamned thing to help!”

  The president’s Chief of Staff, Stacy Reid, was so alarmed that she almost screamed. Her shock was not that the governor had interrupted the president and used profanity, but rather what she had said.

  Did she really just say a million?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  While the governor of the great state of Florida was becoming the first visitor of the Clinton Room to use profanity at a sitting president, Chester Stephens was thinking about a promotion. He just knew it was coming. Chester was already thinking about what he would do with the extra money. Good ole’ Chester was grinning; he was so proud of himself.

  Chester Stephens was the General Manager at the Kissimmee Wal-Mart Supercenter located ten minutes from the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. His store hadn’t fared too well in the Second Great Depression. Its proximity to the Magic Kingdom and Universal Studios theme parks had helped keep his store above water – but just barely. Chester had been a loyal Wal-Mart employee for twelve years, working his way up to General Manager in record time. He took his job seriously and ran a very tight ship. He knew that the top executives at corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas were watching his career with great interest. They had told him that if he managed to end each year above the line drawn by the Second Great Depression or hopefully see a little increase, he would be moving to Bentonville to join them.

  When Hurricane Luther made his fourth trip ashore greet the citizens of the greater Orlando area, Chester knew he was facing the defining moment in his career. The boys in Bentonville had told him that if he had two more successful years, there would be a big promotion waiting for him. Chester welcomed Luther with open arms and knew that the disaster would move up his promotion two years ahead of schedule.

  When the hurricane began to demolish Orlando, Chester realized just how stupid he was for welcoming a disaster. Luther rose up from the pits of hell. The Magic Kingdom stood in ruins. Cinderella’s Castle would only be remembered in the company’s logo; it would be a very long time before it would be rebuilt, if ever. Over at Universal Studios, Hogwarts Castle was no more, the boy wizard himself would not be able to put it together, with or without magic.

  Then the city caught on fire.

  Chester had no idea how fires could be set in a rain-soaked town. He gave up trying to figure it out and hoped for the best. The General Manager and many of the employees rode out the storm in the store’s loading docks. The employees figured they would be much safer at their work site and Chester welcomed them in b
ecause he needed help protecting the store.

  Luther answered Chester’s prayers and spared the store. The massive superstore was not untouched, however, but it was one of the few large structures in the Orlando area still standing. At the front of the store, the “W” and “T” had fallen from the sign, renaming the store “al-Mar”. Luther’s massive right hook punched Orlando square in the balls with a world record two hundred twenty-five mile per hour wind. The Safir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale would later be upgraded to max out at a Category 6. Chester was convinced that the Good Lord in heaven above did his shopping at Wal-Mart.

  Chester set out to execute his plan for the store that clearly had the blessing of divine intervention. He knew that he must protect the store at all costs. Just the simple fact that the store had no customers meant that he would not manage to meet his goal for the year. Chester shrugged this fact off, as it was clearly not under his control. What was in his control, however, were the tens of millions of dollars worth of inventory for which he was responsible.

  Chester was no fool. He knew he was sitting on a goldmine. The first stage in his plan was to barricade both of the front entrances. Thanks to Luther, he only had to complete half of the task. The north entrance had an SUV crammed inside it with a stack of cars behind it. The north corner of the store suffered the most structural damage; the roof of the north entrance collapsed around the SUV and blocked off the entrance from the Home and Garden center. The kind old woman that greeted consumers would have to join her counterpart on the south entrance should the store open again.

  The south entrance proved a challenge. It was as pristine as it had been the week before. The first order of business was to use hand-trucks to move four pallets into the entrance behind the locked doors - two behind the outer doors and two behind the inner doors. Not satisfied with the barricade, Chester ordered that the sally port leading into the store be filled with shopping carts chained together. Chester was certain that it would take a dump truck at full speed to breach the security that he had employed.

  The next order of business was the loading docks. The sliding doors used to receive the eighteen-wheelers loaded with merchandise were closed and padlocked. Then Chester took a page out of medieval history and had his employees dump vegetable oil mixed with lighter fluid in front of the sliding bay doors. Should angry mobs tear down the doors and make it in, they would be set on fire. His employees joked with each other that all they would do was slip and fall because no one was actually going to set another human being on fire. Their loyalty to their minimum wage jobs had a limit.

  The remaining way in and out of the store was the pedestrian entrance to the loading docks. The General Manager and his employees needed a way in and out of the store. The Assistant Manager of the demolished Home and Garden center informed Chester that pallets of dirt and fertilizer were in the north end of the warehouse. Forty-pound bags were stacked chest high in front of the door. Chester picked four very enthusiastic teenagers to stand sentry behind the door. The first two carried high-powered BB rifles to fire at any potential mobs, hoping to scare them off. The other two boys carried a fully loaded pistol and shotgun each, should any angry Orlandites make it inside. The other employees knew that they would not set anybody on fire, they were however, quite frightened that these four boys would play G.I. Joe with much zeal.

  The new residents of the retail giant managed to construct a comfortable little fortress. They built a makeshift commune in the middle of the store. They used sleeping bags, comforters, mattress pads, and pillows to make beds. The perishable foods would soon be a total loss, so Chester did not object to them consuming as much as they could before it spoiled. They had a feast of the best steaks and shrimp. Ice cream and beer made for many a happy employee. They were living like kings.

  General Manger Chester Stephens was quite proud of himself. Yes sir, he was damned proud. He knew that his move to Bentonville was on the horizon. All that was left to do was wait it out for the Calvary to swoop in and rescue them.

  The Calvary never came.

  The only people who showed up were ninety percent of the remaining employees of the Kissimmee Wal-Mart Supercenter. Chester welcomed them in, the more the merrier. They were a welcome addition to his army of blue-vested soldiers.

  This was the first of Chester’s many mistakes.

  The two hundred and forty-seven employees felt they should be able to take whatever they wanted from the store. Chester didn’t mind them eating and drinking, but he did ask them to document everything they consumed. His concern, other than keeping people alive, was being able to provide accurate, detailed records should corporate request them. At first, the employees were more than happy to keep track of what they used. That attitude quickly changed. Chester gave them permission to take bicycles so they could ride back to their homes and check on things. Every employee returned to report their homes and apartment complexes had been obliterated.

  The destruction of their homes was not the most troubling thing they had to report. Carnage filled street after street. The stench was overpowering. In the rubble laid twisted and mangled corpses. They were able to identify some men, women, and children, but the majority of the corpses had no discernible gender. Ants and maggots had each taken their turn on the decaying flesh.

  Much of the staff came back to the store like shell-shocked soldiers returning from the battlefield. The others returned thinking that they could simply replenish what they had lost. The Wal-Mart workers were even bold enough to grab a few shopping carts and fought and squabbled with each other over merchandise like it was Black Friday. Chester tried and failed to stop them; some even spat on their boss. Chester wiped the spit from his face, pulled out his notepad and wrote down their names. They had ended their careers with Wal-Mart. He would personally see that the traitors lost their jobs and were prosecuted for theft.

  Eventually, rage began to replace shock - rage over the fact that absolutely no one was coming to rescue them. It had been over a month and not one plane dotted the sky; no rescue teams could be seen on the horizon. They were alone, living in a third world country that didn’t care whether they lived or died. Surely the American government had learned its lesson with Hurricane Katrina. Surely rescue would come.

  Chester began to worry when the front doors to the south entrance began to shake. The door quickly fell, but the ingenious barricade he had constructed held firm. The General Manager himself went up to the roof and peeked over the edge to get a look at the parking lot. A makeshift camp had been erected there. Camped out in front of the store were around a hundred people. They were patiently waiting as if the front doors would simply slide open so they could come inside and buy all the groceries that their hearts desired, gladly paying cash and smiling at the kind door greeter on their way out.

  Chester was confident that all he had to do was keep the citizens of the makeshift camp at bay for just a little bit longer. He just knew that rescue had to be coming. If he could just manage to hold on for one more night they would be saved, and he would be moving to Bentonville to live the good life.

  Chester knew he had little time left when a few tired, broken and hungry souls figured out that they could go around to the back of the store. The boys with BB guns did manage to scare them off. Some creative citizens of the makeshift camp returned with garbage can lids to deflect the BBs. When the first one of them had his foot blown off from a shotgun blast they quickly retreated. Chester knew he had a day at best before they regrouped and tried to attack the store with different tactics. He was wrong. He didn’t have a day, he had less than six hours.

  Chester never dreamed that it would come to this. He had exhausted every good idea he had in fortifying the store. His first mistake was that he didn’t camouflage the pedestrian entrance to the loading docks. The second mistake he made was failing to secure the hatch leading up to the roof. The third and final mistake was underestimating the primal and unrelenting will to survive at all costs - t
he same drive that kept his species alive.

  Chester had no idea he had even committed these crucial errors. He was still quite confident that his fortress would repel any attack. He knew without question that he would be greatly rewarded for his efforts when this was finally over. When the end came, Chester would not be rewarded, he would not be promoted. The new boat he had picked out would not be purchased. He definitely would not be leaving Orlando to join the big wigs in Bentonville.

  The leader of the makeshift camp was a man named Benjamin Black. Ben was not a man of influence or authority; he was the manager at a nearby Jiffy Lube. Benjamin told his employees to bring their families to the Jiffy Lube so they could ride out Luther in the pit underneath the shop. A few residents did so, and Ben offered them shelter. An hour before the full force of the hurricane was due, some frightened motorists pulled into the shop and Ben offered them shelter as well. Ben and his employees emptied out the stock from the pit and they all hunkered down, shoulder-to-shoulder, to ride out Luther’s punishment. They had no idea if they would drown from storm surge; they took their chances underground anyway.

  When Ben and his people managed to get out of the pit, they emerged into a new world, one of Armageddon. They could stand in one place and see in a straight line to sections of town miles away. Homes and buildings should have obstructed their line of sight. Instead they saw complete destruction and devastation. They could see dogs climbing over rubble, pieces of human flesh in their mouths - fingers, hands, and scalps with matted bloody hair. Ben found two boys, both under the age of ten, covered in dirt and blood, walking down the road adjacent his shop. A few women in the group tended to the boys and tried to get them to talk.