by Pete Thorsen
With the power on now we tried both the radio and the TV every evening to see if at some point our government would broadcast an announcement about what happened and what was being done to end this huge catastrophe that had crippled the greatest nation in the world and was still killing its citizens. The TV was always blank and the radio would only emit static every single night that we tried them. But we did not give up hope and continued every evening with the hope one day we would at least hear a voice being broadcast.
Chapter Seventeen
When possible we always tried the radio and TV at six or seven or eight o’clock in the evenings. We thought if there ever was any announcement it would most likely be on the hour and then likely be repeated every hour thereafter. Then one evening we heard a voice on the radio! At first it just repeated ‘standby for an emergency broadcast’. Just that repeating statement was reassuring to us. Everything else was forgotten and our total concentration was on that radio even though that simple statement was just repeating.
“Citizens of the United States this is your acting President speaking. I say acting because I was not elected by any of you and will hopefully be replaced as soon as we can get things up and running so we can have a regular election and you can elect a new President of your choice to replace me. The former President, vice President and many members of Congress have been forcibly removed from office, tried and convicted for the traitors that they were and executed for those crimes against the citizens of this country.
These elected traitors had planed and executed this catastrophe that has befallen this country. Yes your own elected officials were the ones that colluded with several private individuals to commit this heinous crime. No we do not know for sure if we found all of them but I can assure all of you that we looked mighty hard and turned over many rocks to find some of them cowering underneath. No mercy was given to any of these individuals when we did find them.
But as all of you well know the damage to us all had already happened. It took some time for real Patriots to realize what was really happening and to band together to stop it and bring those involved to justice.
The result is a new acting President and a very short handed Congress. I can tell you that everyone in Washington is all at once very strict followers of our Constitution all of a sudden. We think all of the traitors have been weeded out but to make sure in the next election you will be voting in a complete change in Washington from the President on down to every Senator and every member of the House.
But before that takes place we have a long row to hoe in trying to fix this country to get it back up and running. Some of you are in camps that the military are trying to maintain. Those in these camps know the conditions at best are very unpleasant. We are doing the best that we can with what we have to work with is all I can say. Everyday we are making headway and I know that some of you in the camps are seeing that this statement is indeed a fact.
Our first goal was restoring the electric power and at this point it is working in most of the nation. To those of you who are not in the camps I will tell you that those people in these camps are mostly working with us on projects everyday to restore more and more of our nation’s infrastructure.
This is all volunteer work, no one is getting paid and no one is being forced to work. We have no whips to make anyone work. The camps have open doors that people can leave or return as they see fit. We are all in the same boat here and it will take everyone working together to get this nation up and running again. No one knows that better than those of you that are in all the camps that we have set up.
The military is working alongside thousands of our regular citizens to make things better. Farmers and ranchers are being supplied with what they need from fuel to workers get the food chain up and running. You will be seeing more and more trucks running on our highways carrying food and other supplies that all of us need to survive.
To those of you that are on your own and not in the camps I say good for you and you must be strong survivors to have made it through so far. I urge you to contact any military troopers that you see to see if you can help. Do not worry; they will not drag you away to a forced work camp somewhere. Please try to do your part to help everyone to get things going again.
Whether you have special skills or not everyone can help in some way. If you have food to share it would be helpful and appreciated by those in the camps. If you do not want to share that is your own business and we will not take what is yours. Let me state again so there are no doubts in the minds of any of you. Any work you do is voluntary and if you wish to donate food that is totally voluntary also.
So what I am really asking is that you trust me. I am not a politician but instead I am a simple military man who through circumstances I have been thrust into this position. I can understand if you choose not to trust me. You have all suffered so much because those you elected broke that trust and deceived all of us. In spite of all that you have suffered I ask that you trust your government once again.
We were once a great nation and we will be again with the help of all of you.
This message will repeat every hour until it is replaced with an update. I can say that the men and women of this nation are working day and night to make things right.
Thank you all and good night.”
Amy and I sat in stunned silence for some length of time as our minds tried to make sense of everything that we had just heard and it was proving to be a difficult task for both of us I think.
Things like what possible motivation could cause our elected officials to unleash this catastrophe on our nation?
What would be the benefit for them or anyone else?
How could this happen in secret without our own FBI or a whistleblower or someone else finding out before it had been implemented?
Then how did they supposedly find out about it after the fact?
The statement we had just heard actually produced more questions than it gave answers. If this statement is true how could any of us ever trust our government again? And certainly how could we trust them right now? Amy was the first to break the silence.
“Well that was certainly something I was not expecting to hear.”
“I have a thousand questions running through my mind right now.”
“I agree, questions like how and why are at the top of the list.”
“None of my questions are finding any reasonable answers.”
“How could any sane reasonable person think of the motivation to bring this deadly catastrophe down on the American people? It is just totally insane.”
“If anything we heard is even true.”
“On the one hand I can not believe anything I would hear at this point but on the other hand I could almost see it as being true.”
“You could actually think this all could be true?
“I don’t know. It sure seems very bizarre if it is true. But for awhile before the power went out I had started reading and learning about our country’s economic condition and something it seemed was going happen.”
“You thought this might happen?”
“No not this but something big, a very big change.”
“What could bring you to that conclusion?”
“You know about the big crash and recession we had starting in 2008, right?”
“It was pretty hard to miss.”
“Well since then we have been told again and again how the economy was coming back and many pointed to the tremendous rise in the stock markets as proof of those statements. But I started to have some doubts and really started to dig into things just before this power failure.”
“And you found what”
“Well one thing was the unemployment rate that had been steadily dropping was not really true. What was really dropping was the number of people who could work but were not. Often this group would draw unemployment benefits as long as they could but never go back to work even after the unemployment ran out.”
“I vaguely
remember hearing something about labor participation rates or something maybe.”
“But that was just one thing. The number of people getting some kind of free aid from all levels of government had been skyrocketing higher and higher and at the same time all levels of government debt was also skyrocketing higher and higher. At some point something had to give.”
“You mean like what happened with Detroit?”
“Yes like that but it was a way bigger problem than just Detroit. Many cities were on track to declare bankruptcy and also counties. Even several whole States were in very deep trouble and they did not have the bankruptcy option so would have needed a big bailout from the federal government.
The problem of course was that our federal government was steadily sinking under the weight of its own huge debt. That is the real reason interest rates were kept so low. If interest rates had went up to more normal levels the US government would not have been able to pay the interest on all of its debt. Which would have meant default.”
“This is all true? I was a banker but I did not follow the government side of debt.”
“Unfortunately it is all true. There were more people getting money from the government than there were people paying taxes into the government. There was way over a trillion dollars of just student loan debt that the federal government had on the books and much of that was toxic. The list was endless. And those in Washington totally ignored the problem. Something had to bust open and when it did it would be awful.”
“So you think that was tied into what has happened to us?”
“I don’t know. Think what group of people have likely suffered the most deaths since this all started?”
“I would guess the poor that were in urban areas and the elderly.”
“And those would have also been the ones that were the biggest drain on the government before this started. Whether this is a coincidence or not, I don’t really know. I do know that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid were by far the biggest parts of the federal budget, making up about half. Right now today I would say that most of those people that had been drawing that are now dead.”
“So you think a group of those in power decided on this plan to kill off all the non-productive members of our society?”
“I don’t know what to think. I only know that it was just a matter of time before everything went bust the way we were going. Some form of a very major change was certainly inevitable at some point in our future. I never heard anyone say anything about something like this happening.”
“I have to do a lot more thinking about all of this before I could ever make any sense of it. I do think that I can safely predict that I will have a very hard time going to sleep tonight.”
“You and me both.”
We listened again at the next hour to hear the same broadcast to see if we had missed anything. Then we both went to our beds to in theory get some sleep.
Chapter Eighteen
I got very little sleep that night and in the morning when I looked at Amy it appeared that she had also had a tough time sleeping. Just the thought of our own government killing millions of its own citizens was enough to keep anyone awake.
We had breakfast and left the radio off. One of the questions on each of our minds was what to do now. This time I started the discussion.
“So are we going to stay hiding out here?”
“Are we hiding out or are we just staying at the only place we know of where we can survive?”
“You know what I mean. Are we going to try to get more answers or see about offering to help fix things?”
“I am NOT going to one of those camps. Ever.”
“OK. I guess I would say that I agree with that maybe. I just don’t feel good about staying here and doing nothing to help others if there was something that I could be doing to help.”
“OK I guess I agree with that. I would also like for us to stay together rather than separate.”
“And I can certainly agree with that. Maybe we should take a walk back to town and find some others to at least talk to about this situation.”
“That seems a like reasonable first step. There is fair chance we will run into some military on the road though.”
“I see about three options if we do see any military. They just wave and drive past us, they stop and talk to us and answer our many questions, or they stop and take us into custody.”
“The first two options would be fine but that third option is rather troubling don’t you think?”
“If we leave here we will be taking a risk. I am willing to take that much of a risk I think.”
“OK so we are heading to town. And we stay together no matter what happens.”
“If we were really worried about being taken into custody we could stay off the road and still walk to town.”
“I don’t think we have to go to that extreme, at least not yet.”
So we got ready with just a little food and water in our packs to last the day and left for the short trip to town. Again I was carrying the pistol out of sight but had the knife visible and Amy had her Fubar.
We did see a couple of military type vehicles but though I am sure they saw us they never stopped. This we thought was a good sign that at least some of what our ‘acting’ President said was true.
Nothing looked any different in the town and once we got in a ways we saw a person walking ahead of us so we hurried a little to catch up to them.
“”Hey can we talk to you a minute?”
When I spoke he turned around and when he realized we were strangers he changed to a very worried expression (he appeared unarmed).
“I don’t want any trouble.”
“It’s OK. We certainly don’t want any trouble either. We stopped here awhile back and talked to a guy named Sam.”
“Sam said he had talked to a couple that had walked into town. I am on my way to a little meeting. We want to talk over what the new President said yesterday. You can come with me if you want.”
“That is the exact reason we came to town today. Thank you for inviting us.”
“Sam said you guys seemed like a nice couple and were living nearby.”
So Amy and I walked with the man to a nearby little park. There were several people there already and we could see a few more were also just arriving. Many of them were staring at us and a man started to speak (who we realized was Sam).
“These two newcomers are the couple I told you I met awhile back. I think we can trust them. Their names are Lee and Amy. Please welcome them to our group.”
As soon as he finished a couple people walked over to us and seeing that just about everyone else did also. We were soon surrounded with people shaking our hands and introducing themselves to us (it was kinda overwhelming after not being around people for some time).
Apparently Sam was the defacto leader of this group of around a couple dozen people because he started speaking again.
“So I assume we have all heard the speech from our new President by now, what some of you might not have heard is that a couple guys from here that had been to one of the camps came back and got a little bit of their gear and went back again. They had been truckers and said they were needed to start driving again. A military rig brought them to town and left with them again.”
Everyone was talking amongst themselves and then another guy spoke louder.
“Did they say much about life in those camps?”
“I actually only talked to them for a few minutes because their ride was waiting for them. There were several other people with and they were being brought back to their places to get more clothes and such. The guys said that life was hell in the camps but you were always free to come and go.
The Army guys had it no better than anyone else as far as they could tell. I will say they did seem anxious to get back to work again. But maybe that was just to get out of the camps. So what they said rings true with what the President said during his speech.”
About the
n we all heard a vehicle (the park was on the highway that cut through town) and a couple of Army rigs stopped when they saw all of the people in the park. At first they just looked then drove closer, stopped, and a couple of them got out. The Army guys were not armed (or at least did not have rifles). They walked up to the group and asked if everything was OK. Sam stepped forward to talk with them.
“Things are as fine as to be expected here. We just came together to talk about the President’s speech. Could you guys fill us in about what is going on locally?”
“We would be happy to tell you what we know. We don’t know all that much about other parts of the country but can answer any questions about what is happening around here.”
“Do you actually have time to talk to us or are you on an important mission?”
“Yes to both of those questions. Yes we have things we need to do right now. And yes I feel it is equally important to talk with a group of citizens like you. After this new President’s speech I think very few people trust our government anymore. I know many of us in the Army feel that way.
But we are following our orders on the hope that this new group has the best interests of the country at heart. I can speak for most all of the military I have come into contact with and say that we will do nothing to harm any of the honest citizens like you no matter what orders we might receive.”
“So are the conditions at these camps awful?”
“Yes and no. Yes they certainly were awful. But since the power came back on many people have left the camps and are living in nearby homes and hotels. They stay close so they can get fed at the camp and go out on work details from the camp.
With many people now gone from the camp the conditions for those that have remained are now pretty good at this point. Plus with the return of the electric power we got the water and sewer systems working again, I can not describe how much that helped.”
