THE DAY: A Novel of America in the Last Days (The End of America Series) (22 page)

Colonel
Jim Irwin Elementary School

              
Beau
didn’t even think about it. It was instinctive. Too late he realized that
he should have run down a hall to a different location than where his men were
located. By running toward his defense forces he led the careening truck and
its armed men directly to his forces. The firefight that ensued was brief. Once
the truck negotiated the corners, it crashed headlong into the desks outside
the utility room door, running over and instantly killing most of the defense
forces. Those who survived the crashing dump truck were shot dead by the
tattooed invaders. Snake Head jumped off the truck and walked the hall shooting
any survivors in the head.

              
Death
walked the other way in the hall in the direction they had just driven, along
with his armed men. He shouted, "OK, guys. We know what we have to do.
Find the gym, that won’t be too hard, then we locate lockers numbered 127
and 128. They’ll be on a wall outside and just down from the gym. Those
kids didn’t
make up
those
numbers. That’s our entry to
the
women
, and from them we’ll find whatever food they have left. Both
should be
yummy
."

              
Inside
the interior storage room Hannah was awakened by the sound of the truck, then
its crashing into the desks in the nearby hall. It was followed by rapid gun
fire. The gun fire went from rapid to sporadic. Then it stopped. Hannah
concluded that either their men had taken out the invaders, or alternatively,
they were taken out by them. She silently prayed as she woke up the women,
leaving the children to sleep.

              
"Ladies,"
Hannah whispered, "Our safe house has been invaded. I heard
a lot
of shooting, but it’s
stopped. More than likely, someone will be coming through those locker
doors….
soon
….so….it
will either be one of our guys who will come to tell us that we’re safe
and the invaders are dead….or….well….
somebody else
."

              
A
distraught Audrey whispered back, not wanting to wake the children,
"Hannah, if our men are dead….then….we all know what will
happen
next
….right?"

              
"Audrey, dear Audrey.
Yes, we do know what would
happen. We’ve discussed this and we’ve planned for this. We
know
what we have to do. It’s not
about the food, of course, they can take all that….If our men are with
the Lord….then….then….we
can’t
defend
ourselves
. We never thought we could. They
won’t want the younger
children,
they’d
just be more mouths to feed. They
will
want
us….twenty eight women and teen-aged girls. But, Beau told us that his
experience overseas confirms that they won’t take
all
of us. Some they’ll
just
shoot
, some they’ll take along with them if they leave here.
Gary’s opinion was that if marauders overwhelmed us they may use this as
their new location, if it’s a better location than where they came from.
Beau told us, if you recall, that the survivors of The Day will kill and destroy,
growing in size and power as they take over remaining safe houses."

              
Shots
rang out, but only a short burst, then silence.
Then the
sound of men shouting.
At first, all the women could hear was
mens
’ voices, but they couldn’t make out either
the identity of the men nor their words. Then they heard, "
Down this way
….Here’s the
gym….It’s along the hall this way….the wall
against….here….just follow the numbers….a hundred and
fifty….the numbers go this way….a hundred forty
two….Ah….here we are….one hundred and twenty seven and twenty
eight. The kids better have been
right
."

              
The
locker doors were jerked open and Snake Head pushed through into the storage
room first, followed by Death, then their tattooed men. The two candles and one
dimming flashlight in the room revealed the horrific tattooed faces of the
intruders and the frightened, sobbing faces of the women. The noise of their
abrupt entry awakened some of the younger children.

              
Death
said "
Well….well
….
well
….what
do
we have
here
?"
Turning to Snake Head, Death said, "Just like I said Snake,
yummy….yummy
.
Even
some
young
yummies
."
Death
walked over to a teen girl shaking in fear as she stared in horror at his death
skull tattooed face. He licked the side of her face with his blackened tongue.
"
Yup
, yummy."

              
Death
nodded to the seven tattooed men who were with him in the room, giving them
permission to do whatever they wanted with the frightened, sobbing women and
children. They began to sort through the women, making their choices. Death
turned and motioned to Snake Head to come with him as he went back out through
the locker entrance to what was constructed to be a safe room.

              
Hannah
stood in the shadows along the far wall of the storage room. She offered up her
final prayer, reached behind her back and then pulled hard on a small steel
cable which was tied to the ignition pins on six hand grenades.

III

A
YEAR

AFTER

THE

DAY

              
"As
God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah along with their neighboring towns,"
declares the Lord, "so no one will live there (in the Daughter of
Babylon); no man will dwell in it." (Jeremiah 50:40)

              
"It
got to the point where the only thing we really thought about was food.
How to find it.
How we were going to survive if we
didn’t find food. It was terrible, not knowing if we would survive,
whether we would starve." (The World at War, PBS Series on life in the
Warsaw Ghetto in WWII)

BBC
Studios – Broadcasting House

Central
London, England

              
The
studio floor director for WORLD IN REVIEW counted down for the evening
newscast. "Five….four….three….two…." He
then pointed to the male talking head seated at the long curved silver
broadcast desk, behind which
was
the show’s
global logo and the network’s three large letters. The studio’s
numerous overhead lights brightly lit the two newscasters.

              
Looking
directly into the lens of studio camera one, the carefully coiffed newscaster,
his full beard precisely trimmed, read the news from the scrolling teleprompter
reflected in the one way mirror suspended over the lens.

              
"Good
evening from BBC’s London studios. Tonight we look at the subject of
America – One Year
After
The
Day.
As virtually everyone on the planet knows, America was
destroyed one year ago today by the detonation of several nuclear devices in
ten American cities. At the outset, a disclaimer on what we are about to
report. Though we believe that the contents of tonight’s program are
accurate, viewers will appreciate that obtaining news from what used to be
America is a difficult task. There are no existing news services still
reporting news in the U.S. Consequently, most of the news that we can report
has come to us from the few short wave radio operators who are still alive in
the devastated nation. Only those who had an independent electric power source,
of course, are able to transmit their reports and updates out to the world.
There are no known American electric utilities still generating to customers.

              
"For
our first special report on this important topic we’ll go to Major
General Archibald Raleigh, who joins us from the Permanent Joint Headquarters
at Northwood, here in London.
Major General, thank you for
joining us this evening.
Let me just throw up the first question, a
question which many here have asked in the last year….Where is
America’s military? What happened to the armed forces of what some called
the hammer of the whole earth? Can you enlighten us, Major General?"

              
The
screen was then split between the newscaster and a mustachioed military
officer, in full dress uniform, battle and service metals covering his left
chest. Somewhat scowling into the camera, he said, "Why yes, Robert,
excuse me, that is….yes….
Rab
, I think I
can help your viewers in this regard. Not only was the American federal
government decapitated with the nuclear explosions a year ago, but the US
military command and control structure was almost
totally
destroyed. Once it became obvious to individual American
forces in the field, those, that is, who survived the detonations, that there
was no one, literally
no one
, in
charge, the inevitable took place."

              
"The
inevitable, Major General, and
that was
?"

              
"They
scattered, they left their posts. Compare what happened with what took place in
New Orleans in the U.S. a few years back after Hurricane Katrina struck.
Virtually all of the city’s police and law enforcement officials bolted
from their assigned and routine duties in order to help their individual
families. What the Yanks call the ‘thin blue line’ totally
dissolved. Within twenty-four hours
no
policeman
could be found anywhere in New Orleans. It appears that each law
enforcement officer made the conscious decision to leave and protect his own
family as his highest priority. Personally, I can’t say as I blame
them….actually. But, I should hasten to add, that’s not our
official
position, obviously."

              
"Is
that what happened, Major General, did the American military
abandon
their stations in order to help
their own families? And what about America’s police officers, did they
replicate what the New Orleans police did?"

              
"Essentially,
Rab
, that’s
exactly
what happened. Most of what we learned in this regard we obtained before
communications with the U.S. military went down, which I should say took at
least a week to ten days for reasons that we can discuss, now or later, if you
wish."

              
"Sure.
Go ahead."

              
"Well,
there was some limited flow of information from the underground Cheyenne
headquarters in Colorado, at first, as I said, but over time it came to a halt.
Initially, some of the ranked officers who were not killed in the nuking of
America were still in place, but they had a problem. There was no command and
control from Washington, DC, or anywhere else. Plus, with the troops very
quickly drifting away to help their families, taking their firearms I should
add, they had no one
to command
. So,
with control gone from
the top
and
troops gone from
the bottom
, these
ranked officers, we understand, eventually saw the handwriting on the bunker
wall, and themselves left to go help their own."

              
"And,
Major General, what about the police forces in America after The Day?"

              
"Oh,
yes, sorry. Our information regarding America’s police forces is
more sketchy
, as we had no regular communication protocols
with those officials.
But, having said that, our intelligence
services have gathered information from the short wave operators whom you
mentioned at the top of the show.
It appears that the police forces fled
quite quickly in the large and medium sized cities, those not hit by nukes, of
course. But we have a few scattered reports that in several small, actually
very small, communities the local law enforcement officers continued to enforce
the law and continued to do their jobs. Sadly, that didn’t last for a
lengthy time. We understand from these scattered reports, which we get on
occasion, that with no pay and no support from missing governmental structures,
those police officers who stayed on the job
eventually
gave into the inevitable."

              
"In
this case, the inevitable was….?"

              
"
Rab
….that’s the thing….You are well aware
of Her Majesty’s government’s official estimate released just this
week?"

              
"Our
viewers have heard the report, naturally, but, Major General, why don’t
you cover the key points?"

              
"The
calculation as to the death toll in America over the last year was derived by
Her Majesty’s government from a variety of sources. Our Royal Air Force
planes were used, in part, for fly-overs. Relief agencies were understandably
reluctant to send personnel into a radioactive environment. The airplanes were
able to photograph metropolitan areas, largely. Counts were then made of dead
bodies, those, that is,
Rab
, which were exposed and
in the open. We were not able to count those who were deceased who were
indoors
, obviously. The persons who
survived didn’t stay that way by being out in the open where they could
be seen by others, including by airplanes. The report cites a U.S.
Congressional study of a few years back that estimated that if the country were
to be hit by multiple nukes, EMP or any other major attack, that the American
population would be reduced by 90%.
Within the first year.
Her Majesty’s report concluded that the
actual
death rate in the last year has been between
92 to 93 percent
.
Very sad to say.
"

              
"That
would make the attack on America, one year ago today, would it not, Major
General,
the largest single loss of life
in the history of the world?"

              
"Let
alone,
Rab
, the most
significant single man-made event
in world history - I should
think."