The rain had provided some water, but now only a little was left, and there were no clouds on the horizon. The realization that their lives depended on something as uncontrollable as the weather added another layer to the crushing avalanche of despair. How had it come to this?
She had to sit down again, her weakened body only able to stand for a few minutes at a time. Just walking from one end of the house to the other fatigued her like a five-mile run. Rose rested in the kitchen chair, and for the thousandth time went through it all again. At least she tried to. Everything seemed like a blur, and she struggled to think clearly – another sign her body was failing.
She had tried everything she could think of. Neighbors were no help – many in worse shape than she was. Several didn’t answer the door - the smell coming from inside of the home making it easy to guess why no one responded.
She had tried to walk down to the water and fish for food, but she didn’t know how. Digging Charlie’s fishing pole out of the garage and finding some plastic bait had given her hope, but she hadn’t come home with any bragging rights. The effort had exhausted her already weakened body even further.
A few days
ago, she had gotten in the car, determined to drive until she found someone, anyone, who could help. Charlie had evidently drained the cars for generator gas, and the sedan had sputtered to a stop before a single mile had passed by. Rose started crying again, thinking about the walk back to the house that day. Normally, the kids and she would have traveled that distance without even breaking a sweat. All of them had to stop to recover several times on the trip home, the lack of nutrition hampering even basic function.
The next day she had managed to hike to the marina, intent on breaking into one of the boats and foraging for food. Every single vessel that remained had been looted, and she couldn’t find a single crumb of nourishment. She had waited too long.
The sound of her littlest one coughing pulled her back to the here and now, the deep racking from the child’s lungs telling Rose the girl was suffering. The medicine cupboard was bare – she couldn’t comfort her baby.
While cough syrup wasn’t in the medicine cabinet, there was something else.
Rose closed her eyes, saying another prayer. She had been asking for guidance, begging for inspiration. The thought of the bottle of sleeping pills again entering her head.
She gathered her strength and stood, wandering past the children who were lying on the floor, blankly staring at ignored toys. The kids didn’t even acknowledge her passing, completely innocent of her thoughts.
The bottle was still there – up on a high shelf where curious hands couldn’t reach. Rose paused, thinking there had to be another way, but no solution came to her. She reached for the container and shook the contents. It was almost full – a prescription filled for Charlie after he had lost his job and couldn’t sleep.
This was the answer. She had to do it now, while she still had the strength. She had to end the suffering.
Slowly, she made her way to the kitchen where the last of their water remained. She divided the liquid into three glasses, the cartoon characters on the kid’s cups bringing a tear to her cheek.
That had been a great trip to the water park
, she thought.
I’m glad the kids got to experience those days.
Carefully, she ground up several of the pills into a fine white powder. She measured each, adding a little extra to be sure. Stirring the mixture took a bit, the water not wanting to absorb all of the powder.
She carried the three glasses into her bedroom and set them on the nightstand. Going to the closet, she reached high and pulled down a new storybook – one that was being saved for a surprise.
The kids were easy to lure into her room, following mommy and the new book. They didn’t have the energy to be distracted anymore. Onto the bed they climbed, mom in the middle, with a precious child’s head resting on each arm.
“Kids, mommy found some medicine that will help us all. It’s not going to taste very good, but it’s not a pill. You each need to drink all of it though. Every last drop, please.”
There wasn’t enough left in them to protest, not enough strength to complain about the bitter taste. A few moments later, the empty cups were returned to the nightstand.
Rose began reading the book. She noticed both children yawning soon afterwards. A few pages later, neither would respond. She pulled her loved ones close, one hand resting on each chest so she could feel the rhythm of both hearts through their tiny frames.
Rest well
, she said to her children.
It’ll all be over soon. No more pain. No more hunger. We’ll join daddy in a better place.
The little girl’s breathing stopped first. A few moments went by, and her lungs tried to expand one last time. Less than a minute later, her heart stopped. The larger boy took longer
, and for a little bit, Rose felt a sense of panic that she hadn’t mixed enough of the drug in his cup. Soon afterwards, he stopped breathing.
Rose reached for the third cup and didn’t hesitate. She didn’t want her children anywhere without her – she wanted to be with them. She gulped the bitter liquid down and pulled the two lifeless bodies in a tight embrace.
The White House
June 12, 2017
Having army tanks parked on Pennsylvania Avenue was a sight the secretary thought he would never adjust to. Being shuttled to the White House every morning in a military vehicle, complete with a machine gun mounted on the roof, hadn’t been part of the job description either. The day of his confirmation as the head of FEMA was one of the highlights of his career. It ranked right up there with receiving a post-graduate degree from Harvard, getting married, and the birth of his children. As he motored through the streets of Washington, Scott Fisher wondered if he would ever feel such a sense of success again.
Every morning he had
breakfast with the president’s chief of staff. At one point in his government service career, that statement would have been a boast. Exposure to prominence was something that moved you up the ladder. Now, he dreaded those meetings almost as much as the actual briefings with the boss himself. These days, exposure was something one tried to avoid.
Scott was working on tomorrow’s presentation, and like so many others over the last month, it wasn’t good news. Were it not for the food, shelter and security that came along with the job, he would’ve resigned weeks ago.
Declaring martial law required the White House to manage the entire country. The effort had proven to be problematic at best. One staffer had compared the situation to the old communist regimes of the cold war era and their central planning committees. The executive branch would issue numerous goals and objectives, but they were rarely met. The various departments, agencies and bureaus could order, demand, belittle and stomp their feet all they wanted, there were just some aspects of the recovery that couldn’t be accomplished quickly. In so many ways, the process of enlightenment was extremely difficult for a great number of federal officials. The almighty, all-powerful, never-been-denied US federal government had limitations! There were just some things it couldn’t handle, couldn’t fix, or was unable to manage. The whole thing was sad, really. Watching the federal government grasp that even it had boundaries was like observing a young child in the process of comprehending he really wasn’t a superhero. Until accepting reality, a whole lot of imagination was in play.
Secretary Fisher had observed the men reporting to the president using their imaginations. Perhaps creativity was a more polite word. Like the dictatorial leadership of the old Soviet bloc, governing had become a game of numbers, and the numbers were often ‘tweaked’ by the time they got to the boss - the net effect being a mirage of progress being presented to
the Commander-in-chief. Scott had initially tried to push back on his regional supervisors and other federal agencies. He wanted to know the cold, hard truth, unable to tolerate any imaginings or creativeness.
That effort not only exhausted him, but also damaged his ability to manage FEMA. Sullen bureaucrats began to avoid h
im – thinking he was on a witch hunt. Cooperation from sister departments dried up, his requests seemingly lost or pushed to the bottom of the priority stack. FEMA’s headman knew the president was getting glass-half-full information at best – outright exaggerations and falsehoods were not uncommon. Secretary Fisher, during one of his more cynical moments, had whispered to himself, “Yes, Mien Fuhrer – you still have 100 divisions on the Eastern front.” Scott eventually determined it was best for the country to play along and not contradict his fellow cabinet members. Even if the boss were being misled, some help
was
reaching the people.
Secretary Fisher scrolled through the reports on his laptop. There were three critical measurements the president wanted to monitor closely. The first was the percentage of the country that enjoyed electrical power. For all of its financial, military, and political power, restoring the infrastructure to generate and deliver electricity was the most elusive of the administration’s goals.
Fortunately for FEMA, the Department of Energy was tasked with that seemingly impossible effort.
Scott’s mind drifted to the last briefing,
remembering the secretary of energy’s voice. “Mr. President, we continue to increase the number of kilowatt hours being generated. As of this morning, another coal-fired plant in eastern Kentucky was brought on line. This plant will provide service to Cincinnati and Louisville for several hours per day.”
The president had nodded at the good news, a weak smile crossing his lips. The energy expert continued, “We can now report that 20% of the population receives at least
limited electrical power every day.”
The chief executive’s eyes seemed to glaze over. When he finally spoke, his voice was distant.
“One in five Americans, Mr. Secretary? That’s all we’ve been able to turn on - one in five?”
The man delivering the report squirmed in his chair. Scott could understand – he’d been in the hot seat more than his fair share lately. It wasn’t the boss’ wrath - that wasn’t the bad part. What they all dreaded was
the inevitable direction these meetings headed - trying to come up with a workable plan to improve the situation. It just couldn’t be done. There was no good answer.
Secretary Fisher leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror hanging across from his desk. The gray hair was taking over, and he didn’t think for a second it was hereditary. The crow’s feet around his eyes
grew deeper each day; it seemed almost as if they were having a race with his follicles to see which could make him look old first. At least he wasn’t the only one. All of the cabinet heads looked like warmed-over zombies. This crisis had aged all of them and was no doubt taking years off of their lives.
After a brief moment of feeling sorry for himself, responsibility kicked back in, and Scott returned to his paperwork.
He was looking for background information to justify his next report to the chief. Even though he knew the scope of the nation’s problems as well as anyone, uncovering the facts still made him shudder.
The results of over-cycled electrical energy surging through the
US grid were beyond imagination. When generators started spinning faster and faster, bearings failed, wires melted, and transformers blew. One of the initial reports after the attack concentrated on Hoover Dam and its massive electrical generators. Weighing 400 tons each, the overcharged revolutions had caused an epic failure of three of the turbines. No spares were available, but that really wasn’t the biggest problem. Hoover was out of business because the Nevada transformer farm that cleaned, regulated, and distributed the dam’s energy had burned to the ground. It would take months to acquire the parts to rebuild the facility.
Nuclear power plants hadn’t fared much better. The attack had fried millions upon millions of computer circuit boards all over the nation. Multimillion dollar machines were rendered inoperable by a $1.00 electric component buried somewhere inside. The safety systems, cooling pumps and controls panels of
the nation’s power plants were severely damaged. No matter how desperate the country was for energy, no one was stupid enough to fire up a nuclear plant without a completely functional safety and monitoring system in place.
Just like Hoover, even if they could generate electrical power, the distribution system was badly damaged as well. Up-voltage and down-voltage control systems were wrecked. Transformers and regulators were fried. Spare parts couldn’t be manufactured without electric juice, and the few components that were in stock hardly mattered when compared to the scale of the damage.
Depending on the position within the grid, some homes had their circuit breakers melted, while other folks simply suffered blown televisions, fried computers, or busted light bulbs. When electricity was restored to these residences, it was common for fires to ignite – sometimes causing entire neighborhoods to burn to the ground.
Factories and other consumers of high voltage current suffered the worst. The higher megahertz electricity unleashed by the Chinese attack delivered more bite at
460 VAC than the normal household’s 115 VAC. Production lines, refineries, distribution systems and communications facilities were all severely damaged.