THE DAY: A Novel of America in the Last Days (The End of America Series) (24 page)

Carrasco
Community Church

Carrasco,
Uruguay

              
Pastor
Jack Madison stood in front of the group assembled in a vacant storefront on
Cambara
Street. He smiled, swallowed hard, took a deep
breath and began his first South American Sunday sermon, "Brothers and
sisters, remember this day.
The day when the Carrasco
Community Church was born.
Officially.
What
started two months ago with our Bible Study of five couples is now a church of
thirty folks. If we are faithful to preach the Word, God will be faithful to
increase our impact for Him in Uruguay. I’ve been asked why the
Madisons
chose Uruguay, since it is reportedly the
least
religious country in Latin
America. Good question.
Simple answer.
We had a few
choices of countries, but we wanted to be involved in a ministry where we could
effectively spread the Gospel. Where better than in a country which
needs
evangelizing? Uruguay is our
family’s new mission field. We’re very excited about it.

              
"Some
of you know that I was a pastor in Dallas. It’s a long way from Dallas to
Carrasco, but anyone who knows the Bible understands that it records the many
times that God moved His people from their comfort zones out into the world to
share the Gospel. We pray daily for the dear people in the church that we left
behind in our church in Dallas. Fortunately, Dallas wasn’t one of the
cities nuked, but with no gasoline or electricity, the result, as you know, was
a scarcity of food, medical care and the basics of life. Communications being
as poor as they are, almost now non-existent, we have no word on how those whom
we knew and loved are faring in a destroyed America. We
pray
for them, as I said, but there’s precious little else
anyone can do."

              
As
he spoke, Jack looked at his wife, Allison, their two children and his mother
and father, John and Debbie Madison. He reflected on how good God was to allow
all of them to flee the Daughter of Babylon. He remembered briefly how his
father had been indicted by the federal government for supposed hate speech in
which he was charged with attacking the President in political speeches in
Texas. John Madison had been set free, after a jury ridiculed the
government’s case in opening jury selection. Jack’s memory flitted
over the fact that, soon after, the federal government indicted Jack, also for
hate speech violations, after he gave the Biblical view of traditional marriage
in a Sunday sermon. Jack silently thanked the Lord, again, that he was tried
and found innocent by the federal court jury, who took less than an hour to
deliberate, not even enough time for the jury to order pizza. Now Jack’s
family members were gathered safely in a new place of divine adventure. God is
good, Jack reminded himself.

              
"Most
of us are Americans who chose to leave our native land. We’ve chosen to
settle in this peaceful country for different reasons. One couple told me they
were most attracted by Uruguay’s rating as the freest nation in the
world, with the fewest government laws and entangling regulations. Others moved
here instead of nearer the equator because didn’t like the heat. One
couple has a child who came here as a missionary to the Uruguayan cowboys.
Whatever the reasons for moving here, we have assembled ourselves
together to see what God wants to do through us in our new home.
I
encourage each one of us to seek out a ministry in which you can be involved.
I’m looking forward to a future Sunday, hopefully with even more expats
who have joined with us, when we will share stories of
the Lord at work
through a bunch of re-located Yanks. What
a blessing
He has given to us."

Bluemont
Gardens

Mountain
Brook, Alabama

              
Mountain
Brook’s initial claim to fame was its Irondale Foundry, but it was
destroyed by Yankee soldiers in the War of Northern Aggression, a/k/a the Civil
War. Over time the area became famous for the several dairies located on its
rolling and wooded hills. In the 1940’s a local developer constructed
Bluemont
Gardens, an apartment complex with twenty
high-ceilinged, wood floor buildings. In the mid to late twentieth century the
area was extensively developed with expensive and imposing houses.

              
Mountain
Brook after The Day was an immediate target for looters and hungry Alabamians
who assumed that houses as large as those in Mountain Brook would have
plentiful food and ammunition for the picking. Residents soon fled or tried,
unsuccessfully and fatally, to defend their assets. Within just days every
McMansion
in Mountain Brook had its windows and doors
smashed in, most razed by fire. The same thing happened to the twenty buildings
in
Bluemont
Gardens. Because it was such an obviously
looted and pawed over site, Darrell Wright, the group’s leader, saw it as
a perfect place to hide their several families who had come together from local
homes and churches. Darrell was an engineer with a construction background.
After some study he decided to select the basement of a large interior
apartment building, one which from the outside looked totally ravaged. The
windows and doors were all blown out. The ivy on the red brick exterior was
burnt black from the fires that had been set in the complex. To any casual
visitor coming through the apartment complex it looked just like the other
destroyed buildings.

              
Death
and Snake Head took their time. Once they figured out which building was number
six they watched the hide-away from another building, though carefully hidden
so they would not themselves be spotted. Death was the first to spot the armed,
relatively tall man emerge from the burnt-out main door just after dusk,
sneaking out so that in the fading light he wouldn’t be seen. He carried
an AK-47, with four ammo clips on his belt. He was followed by another armed
man, with an AR-15, and two teen males, both carrying 22s. The four looked
carefully around the apartment complex for unwanted visitors before they set
off to hunt for game.

              
Death
whispered to Snake Head, "Piece of cake. Your dead kid snitch was
right on
. It’s a pretty good
hideaway from a location viewpoint. Who would ever think anyone would be here?
What a dump
. But, from their defense
standpoint, it stinks. It looks like they all go in and out of that entry door
there. Inside there must be a stair down to their hidey-hole basement.
Can’t see any lights at all.
Very
good.
Very good."

              
Snake
was excited, as he could imagine fresh food, and armaments and women in his
future. He was also apprehensive. He asked, "Death, what’s
our
plan? We don’t want to lose a
bunch of guys to a bomb or to hand grenades, like back at the school."

              
"Don’t
remind me, Snake, if we hadn’t stepped out when we did
we’d
have been blown apart like
our buddies. No. My plan is simple. We quietly go into one of the first floor
apartments, during the day when they’re talking and making noise so they
don’t hear us. We hand drill a hole through one of the wood floors into
the basement and pour a gallon or so of our remaining gasoline down the hole.
They didn’t use pre-stressed concrete floors to build apartments in the
40s. One match and we got a parking lot full of scared, suffocating people. As
each one pops out of their little hidey-hole we wait by the entry door and
dis-arm them.
Like I said, Snake,
piece of cake
."

BBC
Studios – Broadcasting House

Central
London, England

              
The
co-host of WORLD IN REVIEW thanked Gretchen Rice for her contribution to the
BBC’s special report,
America
– One Year
After
the Day.
She threw the
newscast back to
Rab
, her male co-host, "Not a
very cheery report,
Rab
, but, of course those of us
living in the UK have known for almost a year how truly
devastating
was the collapse of what was then the world’s
remaining superpower. To wrap up our special tonight,
Rab
,
what have we learned about the impact of the attacks last year on
America’s nuclear power industry?"

              
Rab
smoothed his beard with one hand while gazing into
camera one, carefully enunciating, "Well asked,
Jala
.
This is really the other part of the story upon which we are reporting tonight.
By now most persons on the planet know about the sneak attack on America, with
an as of yet not totally known number of nuclear weapons, though it is known
with precision that the bombs were all set off within ten American metropolitan
areas. As we have reported, millions died immediately, estimated at around 55
to 60 million, with many millions more dying from radiation sickness, fallout
health issues and the like. Once the initial nuclear device-caused deaths took
place, the second large waves of deaths took place, from starvation, rioting,
looting and the like. What has not been widely reported is that in the second
wave of mass deaths, those that occurred well after The Day, there was a
secondary cause of
additional
deaths.
For the details on this story, which the BBC is breaking for the first time
publicly tonight, we go to Alastair Smyth, the recently retired Chairman of the
Office for Nuclear Regulation. Thank you for joining us, Chairman Smyth."

              
The
seventy three year old former British civil servant, looking every bit the
part, replied, "Distinct pleasure to be with you, I’m sure."

              
"Chairman
Smyth, we have only a very short time left in our newscast tonight, so I would
appreciate if you could keep your responses brief. Let me just ask you, what
have we in the UK learned about secondary causes of death in America that had
been
largely unknown
until
recently?"

              
"Humph….Humph….Well,
let me just say that….Keep it brief, though,
right
? Certainly….Well….In brief, the one hundred or so
nuclear reactors located at sixty five American nuclear power
plants….well….they all experienced nuclear core meltdowns.
Eventually….that is….
each one
."

              
"Mister
Chairman, can you explain to our younger viewers what that means?
Nuclear core meltdown.
Sounds quite
serious
, actually."

              
"It’s
much
worse
than serious. It’s
catastrophic
, as we learned at Chernobyl
and Fukushima, which took place 25 years apart. The results in Russia were
epidemic cancers, what has come to be known as Chernobyl AIS, chronic fatigue,
you name it. Genetically deformed and mutated human babies and animals.
Horrible.
Many innocent victims.
The problem,
Rab
, is that about one third of all
Americans lived within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant.
So….humph….you can see the problem if the nuclear power plants all
of them, uh, went into reactor core meltdown."

              
"Yes,
Mister Chairman, you have explained what can happen when
a
nuclear plant, let alone over one hundred of them, go
into core
meltdown, but
why
did that happen,
they weren’t
all
, surely,
within range of the nukes that were detonated?"

              
"Quite right.
No, they weren’t. A few were taken
out by the nukes, of course, but most, we estimate at least three-fourths, were
not destroyed by the nuclear detonations on The Day. The seventy to eighty that
survived did not immediately go to core meltdown. What happened was caused by
the Yanks making
two critical errors
,
we now believe. They designed their nuclear power plants to be critically
dependent upon maintaining connection to a functioning electric grid. Why?
Well….humph….the electricity was
critical
to keeping the reactor cores
cooled
at any given point in time. Within two hours, give or take,
after a failure to cool the reactor cores adequately the cores begin to
melt down
, throwing off massive amounts
of radiation into the air, and into any nearby bodies of water."

              
"Surely,
Mister Chairman, there were back-up generators at the nuclear plants should
their electric grid power go down?"

              
"Well yes,
Rab
, of course.
That was the second major error. The Yanks’ Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, which is very much like the agency I headed, that is, until
recently, only mandated
a one week supply
of backup generator fuel stored at each reactor site. Under normal
circumstances, if a plant lost its electric grid power, it would go to backup
generation, and if it saw a long term power outage it would be sure to start
hauling in extra supplies of diesel fuel for the back-up generators, as much as
would be needed."

              
"Ah,
I see.
There was the rub
.
America’s electric grid went down with the nuclear attacks, as well as
its
refineries
, so no new supplies of
diesel fuel.
The
result
?

              
"
Disasterous
.
Truly catastrophic.
It’s almost as if those Yanks who
lived through the initial blasts were then eventually felled by the radiation
coming from eighty or so plus nuclear reactors, all in full meltdown mode,
located all over the country. What an
unprecedented
….well,
words fail me to describe what happened next. No electricity, no fuel. No
cooling of the cores.
Full
meltdown
.
All over the country.
Whichever
way the winds would blow, radiation would soon follow, covering every square
mile of the nation, eventually, with
high
levels
of radiation, on top of what resulted from the nukes, of
course."

              
"Mister
Chairman, we have aired in this show the results of a British government study
that 92 to 93 percent of the American population is no longer….this is
difficult to say….but
no longer
alive
. Before you came on the show we aired a segment from a former
American newspaper reporter. Based on short wave transmissions and other
sources, she opined that the number of Americans still alive could be even
less. Do you have an opinion on this question of significant interest to many
of our viewers?"

              
"Rab….humph….no
one can be precise, naturally. But what I can say is this….however many
Americans may still be alive,
very few
,
if any will survive the next twelve to twenty-four months."

              
"Because of the
meltdowns
?"

              
"Because of the meltdowns and the radiation which has spread
to every area of the nation.
We are picking up increasing amounts of
latent radiation in the jet stream here in the UK, as you may have heard.
Incidentally,
Rab
, now that I have officially
resigned as Chairman of the Office for Nuclear Regulation, I can confirm that
all sixteen of the UK’s reactors will be offline and eventually closed
down within the next year, just as fast as they can be safely terminated as
power sources."

              
"Well,
breaking news here on the BBC. But Mister Chairman, what will that do to the
UK’s electric grid requirements? How can we survive without
nuclear…
.
"

              
"No,
the question is how
could we
survive
with
nuclear power. The experience of
the Yanks confirms that there are better ways to boil water and make
electricity than nuclear radiation. We will suffer a great deal in the days
ahead, not quite going back to the middle ages, though for many it will seem
like it. We’ll all….humph….
we’ll just have to soldier on
."

              
"Mister
Chairman, thanks so much for joining us this evening, any parting words in the
last few seconds?"

              
"Yes….actually.
I’m not a religious man, certainly. But recently a nephew of mine, one of
the
funda
….evangel….you know….
a Bible believer
. He showed me some
verses. I don’t know if I’m allowed to do
this….now….that is….and I not yet sure
 
as to what I believe, mind
you….but…well, here…. I brought along a verse.
Written by a chap named Jeremiah….let’s
see….50:40….whatever that means.
It says
‘As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah
along with their neighboring towns, declares the Lord, so no one will live
there; no man will dwell in it’…"

              
The
studio floor director tried to get the attention of the show’s hosts,
moving his hand across his throat in the universal cut sign, trying to
terminate the guest’s comments, but neither host was looking in his
direction. The guest continued, "My nephew says this is in reference to
America, which he says was the
Daughter
of Babylon
, or maybe the Son….I’m not sure. I don’t know
how Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed….or even if they were….but it
sounds very much like nuclear radiation, since the
neighboring towns,
and their crops, were also affected. And the
verses described darkened skin and stick-like legs and arms after the
destruction….which sounds like radiation effects….But I will say
that with the eighty nuclear core meltdowns across the pond I can easily see a
totally devoid America, no population at all, none.
Within
just a few months.
Humans can’t tolerate that much radiation, not
for very long anyway."

              
"With
that parting note, Mister Chairman, thank you for being with us.
Jala
, will you close us out?"

              
Jala
looked up at camera one through the narrow slit in her
Burkha
. "That’s all the time we have
tonight on WORLD IN REVIEW. Thanks to our distinguished guests and to our
producers from Al Jazeera network.
Allahu
Akbar,
Barakallah
and good night."

              
The
camera zeroed in on the large BBC Letters on the studio wall behind
Rab
and
Jala
. The letters were in
two languages, British and Arabic. On the screen then appeared the slide which
now ended all BBC programs:
              

THIS
BBC/Al JAZEERA PROGRAM APPROVED BY

IMAM
MAHDULA BAZARDI

Government
Appointed Censor

The Islamic Republic of Great Britain

and
Northern Ireland