Kane turned the dial…
“… since it’s out all over the city, I should say probably not. First CNN went off the air and then the power went out all across town. Nobody knows what’s going on. And don’t even bother calling 911. There’s a lot of smoke outside too. It’s blowing in from the west.”
“That’s from the flash fire,” another replied. “No telling how far that will spread.”
“No sign here in Maine,” said another. “Still a bright sunny day. We still got TV too. The news is showing fires all over Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland… Canada too. People are still rioting in New York City, and the army has pulled out. Wait… they’re showing shots of the sky now. Looks like it’s on fire!”
“Where’s that?”
“Hold on… the caption says St. Louis… Oh, shit! People are running past the camera in flames!”
“Keep that channel, Marcus. Sounds like it might be a party line.”
“On fire? In St. Louie?”
“It’s what it says…”
“Should I lock the door?” Ulrich wondered.
“Dunno,” Forrest said. “What do you think? I hate keeping information from the others. Feels a little like communism.”
“… Oh, now they’re showing somewhere in Southern California… It’s all on fire—nope, they just lost the feed.”
“This shit here might freak the women out,” Kane said.
“I’ll lock the door,” Ulrich decided. “We’ll tell them about it if they ask. People on fire won’t play well.”
“My wife just came in from outside… she says she can see a darkness to the west. Christ, it’s moving fast. We’ll be going to the basement soon…”
“Hey, I’m down here in Jacksonville… It’s raining like hell here. Loudest goddamn thunderclap I’ve ever heard in my life… and the wind! Jesus, the wind!”
“That’s from the asteroid, you’d better bet!”
“Hey, what about the government? Has anybody heard a damn thing?”
“Ha! The government? Remember 9/11? Katrina? They’re running for the bunkers… or out fishing! We’re on our own, pal.”
“Nobody’s fishing today, ass-wipe…”
“But he’s right. We’re on our own…”
“White Horse calling… anyone hear me? This is White Horse calling…”
“Go ahead there, White Horse.”
Kane looked over at Forrest. “White Horse?”
“Capital of the Yukon.”
“Earth’s quakin’ like hell up here, folks. A giant crack ripped right through the center of town. Power’s out too and it’s getting dark. Gonna be a long winter, you betcha…”
The three men listened for the next hour, and the news was all the same, more or less. The continent was dying and, for the most part, people were saying their goodbyes in surprisingly calm and dignified ways. By the end of the hour, Forrest decided to meet with the rest of the population, and he shared with them much, though not all, of what they had heard. To his relief, most of the women were satisfied to hear it from him and made no requests to hear it for themselves, many of them suspecting things were worse than he was letting on and choosing to remain willfully underinformed.
Later that night, as everyone was milling about getting ready for bed, Andie cornered Forrest at the end of the hall near the blast tunnel door as he was reentering the corridor.
“What are you keeping from us?” she asked quietly. “I’d like to know.”
“Ever read Revelation?” he said with a rueful grin.
BOOK TWO
Twenty-Eight
Three months had passed since the asteroid strike, and the skies had long since grown dim. The average temperature in the Hawaiian Islands now hovered at thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit, and the ocean life had at last begun to die off. However, there were still fish in the sea to be caught, and the Navy had their hands full protecting the fishing vessels from pirate attack. Admiral Preston Longbottom drew a careful breath before making his response, reminding himself that the people of Hawaii had elected a government, and that a military must exist to serve that government.
“Madam President,” he said patiently, “I am not disagreeing with you, but you must understand that we need to patrol the Islands. There are still pirates in these waters.”
Ester Thorn, now the president of the United Hawaiian Islands, had reluctantly accepted the office six weeks earlier, and so far she was not terribly pleased with the progress they were making toward securing the future of the Islands. The population of 1.2 million was doing well in terms of cooperation with their newly elected government, but there was growing unease over the dwindling food supply, and the announcement that rations were to be cut again had not been well accepted.
“I don’t mean to be obstinate, Admiral,” Ester said, “but I’ve told you before that your men and their expertise are needed elsewhere. If the pirates attack the fishing boats, by all means blow them out of the water, but don’t waste time looking for them. You’ll never hunt them out of existence. We’re bringing half the vessels back into port and that’s my final decision.”
Longbottom sat back looking pissed. The idea of taking orders from an astronomer did not ride well with him at all, but the crotchety old bitch had been elected in a landslide. At least her vice president was Barry Hadrian, former twice-elected President of the United States and hugely popular in the Islands.
At first Hadrian had not approved of the idea of canning the old state government in favor of an entirely new federal government, but saw that it was inevitable—the vast majority of people in the Islands were demanding a fresh start. When he began to hear talk that the military element in the Islands was considering militarizing the government, he approached Ester and offered himself as her vice presidential candidate. With his support, the other three candidates, all of them lifelong politicians, didn’t have a prayer of being elected.
“I think what President Thorn is trying to say, Admiral,” Hadrian interjected, realizing that Longbottom was mostly trying to preserve the size of his force and thus maintain his importance, “is that we’re in dire straits as far as feeding the population is concerned, and that your engineers and other servicemen will be better utilized trying to solve those much more immediate problems.”
Dr. Harold Shipman, here in his new capacity as adviser, smiled at Ester. Neither of them had any illusions about who at the table had actually kept the Navy in check to this point.
“Yes, sir,” Longbottom said, still respectful to the former commander-in-chief.
“The wind farms are providing us with enough electricity to run our essential services,” Ester continued, “and the natural gas is keeping us warm. But we’re not moving fast enough on indoor farming. Which is where we must focus our efforts, gentlemen, until we have solved the problem. We’re not going out the way they did at Easter Island centuries ago by devouring one another.”
This had been one of Ester’s campaign promises, and she never passed up the chance to restate it, understanding how real the possibility was of the food running out. By now most shopping malls and grocery stores—most buildings with fluorescent lighting—were on the way to being converted into greenhouses. But Ester was well aware that once their fluorescent bulbs burnt out, there was no immediate way of replacing them. New technology had to be developed as soon as possible, using resources available within the Hawaiian Island chain.