Chapter 38
We the People
Mike pushed the power on, gave it rudder, and rolled the plane toward the big log building. People came out and watched him taxi toward them.
Mike got out and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Where’s my woman?”
“I’m here,” Caroline responded, stepping out of the dispensary, making herself visible to him. ‘
“Look what I brought you!” he yelled. “Now you can ride down the mountain in style.”
Everybody was laughing and clapping as Caroline smiled extensively.
That night after supper, most of the residents gathered around the radio that Mike had set up and turned on. At first there was static and then some obscure station could be heard, but suddenly a man’s voice came over the speaker.
Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Carl Richards and I am the new President of these United States of America. First, I want to tell you something about me. I was a farmer. I grew corn, alfalfa, and wheat and I had dairy cows that I milked twice a day. I grew up on my Dad’s farm as he had grown up on his Dad’s farm and so on, going back before the Revolutionary war. I went to college and studied accounting and farm management practices. I’m not a lawyer and I’ve never studied law.
I stand here this day to bring you up-to-date on the current state of our nation. Sadly, our great country was attacked by Middle Eastern terrorists with satchel nuclear devises that they purchased from the Russians. They detonated one of those destructive weapons in Washington, D.C. and the other, a short time later, in a large portion of Atlanta, Georgia… and that was the beginning of a terrible nuclear war throughout the world.
While we were in a crippled state of affairs, our enemies attacked us and declared war on our people! We responded to these atrocities and various countries in the Middle East and elsewhere were reduced to nearly a Stone Age existence with the help of our friends and allies, the Israelis.
An accounting of what countries were attacked is as follows:
Russia, China, Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, Iran, Nigeria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, and Bosnia Herzegovina. Most of these countries no longer have an infrastructure and their industries have been reduced to virtually nothing.
We answered the attacks on our nation through the efforts of the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command and the United States Navy’s Nuclear Submarine Forces using most of our nuclear arsenal against those perpetrators who would make war on the United States of America.
Our message to those countries that would make unprovoked war on the United States of America is this; we did not seek a world war, but we ended it the only feasible way available to us, multiple nuclear strikes on those who had attacked us!
If there are others out there planning more destruction, we are prepared to strike again or reduce our weapons into the proverbial plow shares.
The United States of America has always been the first country to step up and offer aid and assistance to any nation on this planet that was in need of help. That is over! We will no longer offer food, money, medical, or intellectual help to any other country. Our benevolence is at an end and the free handouts are over.
These new guidelines not only apply to the countries that used to be recipients of our benevolence, but to our own citizens as well. We are going back to the philosophies of our ancestors… if you want to eat, you will have to have some sort of job or you will starve. To our allies, we are still your friend but our resources must and will be directed to our own people first and foremost.
Those areas struck by either Russian or Chinese bombs are… On our East Coast – New London, Connecticut, New York City, Norfolk, Virginia, Atlanta, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and Jacksonville, Florida. On our West Coast – Seattle, Washington, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, California, Los Angeles, California, San Diego, California, and Long Beach, California.
On the East Coast of our great Nation, from those cities struck by nuclear bombs inland to about seventy five miles, the radiation is strongest and most critical… but it diminishes somewhat after the first ten miles.
Those citizens still in or having to travel inside those areas should reduce their time in those perimeters to less than seventy two hours.
After the initial ten miles, the danger subsides considerably but still poses a threat for exposures of longer than seventy two hours. Beyond those distances of the initial ten miles and seventy two hours, the radiation levels are halved in intensity and duration. Our top scientists say that moving farther than twenty miles diminishes the radiation further yet to allow ninety six hours in duration.
If you do not have an immediate need to be closer than twenty or thirty miles from the coast, stay away!
We have little news about the West Coast. The majority of the population was within the greater Los Angeles area north to San Francisco, which was hit with multiple nuclear weapons.
The information coming out of there is sketchy at best. Stay away from Los Angeles and San Francisco! Satellite photos show us that most of the fires are out but the radiation poisoning will affect everyone from San Francisco south.
The oil fields in Bakersfield and Long Beach are still burning. We are in constant contact with new pockets of people who survived the conflagrations and we will report to you as we find them and learn a little about their situations.
My Fellow Americans, these are difficult times and the death and destruction is so massive and widespread that simple words or descriptions would fail even the best of narrators. Please allow me to be one of the first to offer my condolences to you for what you have lost.
These are not meant to be hollow words; they are my most profound, humblest, and sincerest. My heart aches for you and for our country. I lost my entire family and everything I hold dear, and I can attest to the pain that we all are feeling at this time.
We estimate that more than five billion worldwide have died from nuclear bombs, radiation aftermath, the plague, and the lack of so many life-sustaining necessities such as potable water and food. We might be down right now, but we are certainly not out!
There are estimates that it’s going to take a thousand years for the world to repair itself from the destruction we have thrust on our own planet. But there are enough of us left to rebuild the world and repair some of the destruction. Your government is here to help in any way it can!
There were those who took God out of Government, out of our schools, and out of ordinary public and private living. I would like to be remembered as the President who put God back not only for your sake, but for my sake and for our country’s sake.
I want to take us back to the roots of the founding of this great nation and erase those things that evil men and women have done to America and Americans.
Starting now, the United States Senators will be elected the way the founding fathers intended and the way they laid the process out for us… by State Legislatures.
In agreement with the new Congress, we hereby abolish the 12th Amendment and your President and Vice President will be elected by the people and by popular vote of the citizens of the United States. The Electoral College will no longer exist.
No elected official will be permitted to hold any office for longer than a second term, regardless of the office that person seeks.
The U.S. Income tax is hereby abolished forever more.
The coining and control of U.S. currency will revert to a standard that is backed by something tangible. In this case, it will be backed by gold. The U.S. Government will print and coin its own money… and that money will be backed by gold. The Federal Reserve is hereby revoked.
Congress will no longer restrict inter-state commerce or trade.
Hereafter, there will be no more law by edict. All previous Executive Orders are immediately suspended or revoked.
A license will no longer be necessary to practice any trade or profession in the United States as long as that person has sufficient training and can go before a group of their peers and show satisfactory knowledge and training to practice that trade or profession.
A license or permit will no longer be required to do ordinary tasks or jobs as long as the task is done in accordance with common sense and acceptable standards.
The profession of lawyer is hereby revoked and all cases of dispute will be done by Arbitration. Those decisions will be final.
No one who ever practiced law in any form will ever be able to hold public office for the remainder of their natural lives.
All Capital Cases will be sent to a committee for review, which will hand down the verdict to the attending judge. Once the review is completed, execution of the sentence will be carried out within thirty days from the final decision.
All executions will be in public view.
The following crimes will be considered Capital Crimes and the ultimate penalty will be death by public hanging in the town squares. Those crimes are:
Rape, child molestation of any type, arson, sodomy, crimes made on the public by any elected official, crimes perpetrated on the public by any law enforcement official, or fraud against any agency that is serving the needs of the needy or the causes of any elderly or infirmed person(s).
Crimes committed by any person or group of persons more than three times in the natural life of the perpetrator, regardless of the description of those crimes, and perjury has also been added to this list.
And a warning to all who would hold public office… death to anyone who would hold public office and attempt to enrich themselves at the public’s expense and those who would attempt to introduce or create any law that is in direct violation to the Constitution of these United States!
It is with a heavy heart and the deepest humility that I make this vow to you. I will maintain this office to the highest and most ethical standards possible.
I pledge my life to my country and to you as a public servant. I love my country and all that it stands for, and I promise to do my best to bring peace and freedom to all of us.
Good night. God Bless each of you, and God Bless America!”
A stunned silence fell over the group, and they slowly left the big room and retired to their cabins. It was the final dialogue that put everything into perspective, and it was the finality of it all that made them realize the situation was what it was. They all knew they were on their own.
They were coping just fine together as a community, but there was sadness because it made them realize that there would be no more guessing about what had happened and what was happening. They understood that they could no longer depend on anyone except themselves and each other.
Chapter 39
The East Coast
Those who heard the President’s speech were caught up in the emotion of his words and most of them had little to say, but they all concurred that it was a good speech.
The following night as they were tuning in the shortwave band, they heard a man broadcasting from a radio station in upper New York State. He was unemotional, the characteristic of a seasoned veteran broadcaster, and his commentary of the happenings along the Eastern Seaboard was compelling;
Millions have perished… from New London, Connecticut to New York City, and south from there all the way down to Jacksonville, Florida, the death and destruction is beyond imagination. First it was the bombs and that destruction was beyond belief.
Then we saw the radiation sickness set in and, literally overnight, hundreds of thousands died in the streets, in their homes, sitting in their cars, at school, in factories, at airport terminals, and in area hospitals as they were being tended to by medical staff. The radiation killed most people in seventy two hours or less.
Some of the people who died manned the public utilities and, as a result, garbage piled up, telephones and power ceased to function, water systems shut down, and sewage systems stopped working shortly after the power companies quit sending out electricity to homes, factories, and cities. Soon there was no food, and those still alive became sick and disoriented. Some became pathological and killed others out of despair or out of revenge toward everyone for the suffering they were enduring. The madness escalated and within ninety days most people on the East Coast were dead.
In and near the areas nuked, people died as the invisible radiation penetrated their bodies, their drinking water, and their food. Dead fish and marine life by the millions floated on the top of rivers and lakes. They washed ashore along the beaches of the Atlantic from Maine all the way down to Key West.
Millions floated on top of the water in the South Atlantic and the Caribbean from the nuclear bombs that literally melted the Island of Cuba to the waterline. People in Haiti, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Brazil are dead or suffering from the fallout of the deadly radiation.
Stench swept over the land from the putrid, rotting bodies that were never buried because there was no one left to bury them. Rats and mice seemed to thrive for awhile, but they soon died as well. The flies were akin to the Biblical Plagues of the Old Testament. Scarcely a living creature has gone untouched. This land has become a stretch of eighteen hundred miles by seventy five miles of death, destruction, and wasteland devoid of life.
The only inhabitants that have seemed to thrive are insects… in particular, cockroaches. In fact they are dining on the cornucopia of so much dead and dying food that they’re getting bigger as each new generation hatches.
The United States, although badly damaged from the nuclear conflagration caused by the terrorists and the war, has emerged with a new President, Carl Richards, who vows to reorganize the states into a viable and cohesive union. But there are those who express doubts about the future. Most of the elected politicians were killed by one deadly means or another.
Only a handful of Congressmen and Senators are still alive and, by all accounts, are hiding out somewhere at places undisclosed. There has been no word about the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, and it is assumed they are all dead. Almost nothing on the East Coast is alive or productive. It is a dead wasteland.
Hundreds of notables of movie and television fame boarded their private jets and left the U.S. for hideaways in Europe at the onset of the initial terrorist bombings. It isn’t known with any certainty thus far, but according to shortwave broadcasts, most if not all of them were caught up in the plague outbreak that swept through Europe and are presumed dead. Few escaped the invisible bugs of the age-old harvester of human lives. It would appear that Liberalism in America has ended. The rich, effete, influential, and outspoken members of that infestation are dead.
Small bands of people located all over the U.S. are coming on the air; we hear from them daily. We have heard from no one on the West Coast or on the Atlantic Seaboard as of yet, but it is hoped that some of them made it through the terrible events that has cost America and the world so much in such a small time period.
Canada made it through relatively unscathed regarding the bombs, but the plague cut its numbers down to a fraction of what they once were. It is estimated that Canada lost four fifths of its population to the plague, but there were other factors that caused a great deal of additional casualties.
Canada’s strict gun control laws curtailed the number of weapons at the disposal of its citizens and mobs raided across the unprotected and almost unguarded border. The Canadian’s were overwhelmed and overtaken by the well-armed hordes. People came from Connecticut, Maine, Upper New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, areas north of Washington State, Montana, and further east to the Great Lakes… and the Canadians didn’t stand a chance.
There were two reasons for this happening… first, Canada negotiated with the Russians to use their sovereign soil as a staging ground to invade America and that enraged many Americans… and second, the Canadians did not have the capability to stop the Americans from invading. Canadians are actively fighting the invaders but, without arms, it has been an uphill battle for them with a now greatly reduced population.
There are pockets of groups away from the seaboards who are holed-up in enclaves that are completely independent of everyone, and they do not hesitate to kill anyone on site. These people were initially friendly to the hundreds of thousands that began to pass through their area, but the mobs stripped the areas clean like a horde of army ants and left little for the residents to survive on. Those who did survive became distrustful and no longer tolerate random passersby to enter or to traverse their territory.
The war came to Middle America and it was an ugly and thankless battle of territorialism. Soon there were no more trespassers and the people, although on guard from that day forward, returned to the task of growing food to survive. Those who passed through kept moving and some of them made it to the Ohio Valley.
We know the following states are all that is left of the United States…
New Mexico, Iowa, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and South Florida. We have heard nothing from Alaska, California, Washington, Oregon, or Hawaii so far.
We do know that roving patrols are shooting everyone on site who penetrates those territories. The wide belt that cuts down the center of the United States is now the United States. President Richards has declared Chicago to be the Nation’s new Capital.
We also know that industry and manufacturing is proceeding better than expected, with minor exceptions. Farmers are promising a bumper harvest, which is a miracle considering the weather has been cloudy and overcast since the bombs dropped.
We are hoping to hear from all areas outside of the central areas of the U.S. We do get messages now and then, but only a few have been confirmed and consistent.
Armed gangs have terrorized many of the hard-hit areas. We hear stories of slavery and cannibalism but so far we have not been able to confirm those allegations. To say that this is all a picture of horror is an understatement. We know full well the hardships the entire country has had to endure and we need to know the truth about these stories, one way or the other.