INVASION USA (Book 2) - The Battle For New York (9 page)

“Get everybody together,” ordered Preston. “Let’s clean the private terminal out first and put the stuff in the Ford. It should all fit. Then we can get into the Southwest terminal and see what’s in there. We can always come back tomorrow and empty out the newer terminal. We’ll need Joe and a large trailer for that one.”

With everybody working, it took an hour to fill all three vehicles.

Preston found several still-sealed cases of good single-malt whiskey in the bar cupboards under the liquor display and packed these into the Cessna 172 that Martie was going to fly home. He asked Manuela to go with Martie, and they immediately took off in one of the 172s, with little Beth sitting on Manuela’s lap in the right seat, and she waved to the group as they raced down the runway. It was necessary for Martie to get back and monitor the radio.

Preston got into the other 172 with Mannie, told the rest of the guys to deliver the three full trucks to the roadblock, and then get the fuel back to base. He started up the plane and taxied around to the newer RDU terminal he had never been to. It had only been built a couple of years earlier and he didn’t often fly commercial.

As usual there were over a dozen aircraft at the gates and it wasn’t difficult to get inside. The inside was like the other one, semi-cleaned and empty. Security had closed the doors as they had left, and here there were dozens of closed restaurants, shops, and several bars. Now he only had the small Cessna and could take maybe 300 pounds in the rear seat. There were bread and bagels, still semi-fresh, and they packed a couple of boxes into the plane. They weren’t heavy, but it could be the last fresh bread for a long, long while. There wasn’t much more room, but Preston couldn’t resist spending a few minutes to break the lock into the Duty Free shop. Here, he was amazed. In the back were well over a hundred cases of top quality bottles of everything he loved.

“Let’s take a dozen cases, Mannie. I’m sure we can squeeze them in, and this stuff could all be gone by tomorrow.” Mannie agreed and they found a trolley and took the cases back to the doorway where they had come in. He couldn’t help but add a bottle of Martie’s favorite perfume and a couple of odds and ends to the trolley.

It was difficult, but they removed the big boxes and put the bread and bagels, still in plastic bags, back in. The little Cessna was now full to the roof, and so were its tanks, Preston realized. The poor aircraft was probably at maximum weight. He was right. She took a lot of runway to get airborne for a little 172 and slowly gained height, giving them a low view of the blackened vehicles now pulled onto the road and guarding the airport. David had even draped a few bodies over the vehicles, Preston assumed, to deter any other visitors.

The grisly site would stop him going any further, but he would be flying in with a C-130 on the next trip to clear the complete terminal out. It would require a whole C-130’s cargo bay to empty that terminal.

He climbed and headed south at first and then west over Apex, finally making 5,000 feet. Mannie turned the heater to full power and looked for the convoy beneath them, which was just leaving the roadblock. He decided to do a quick inspection of the I-95 corridor and flew east for 15 minutes. He flew up the main north-south artery for a ways through North Carolina, and the road looked like all the others. There were battered vehicles everywhere on the high way, fewer than in Raleigh, but still in both directions. Some looked undamaged and others had been in big accidents. Dead tractor trailers comprised at least half of the vehicles on the highway.

He then flew back along US 64 going west and caught up with the convoy as it was about to turn into his road and off the highway. He radioed in and brought spotter aircraft Number 2 down to its new home, full of bread, bagels, and booze.

‘Z’ Day 3 – The First Official Meetings of the New World

The highways to the south of the northern U.S. states were beginning to get busy. Since there was nobody to read the local weather reports, very few knew that a new and large storm was currently brewing over Idaho and Wyoming. It was dark in the United States and Canada, and it was 3:30 am when the storm blew into the northern United States from Canada and became what many would call an “arctic blast.”

In Yellowstone, the animals sensed and knew what was coming, found shelter, and hunkered down ready for the harsh icy winds that began to lash at them. The humans that were still alive were not as good at predicting future weather conditions, because they were used to the well-dressed guy on a flat screen who told them what they needed to know. In rural areas, farmers and outdoor people gathered and made sure there was going to be enough firewood—the rest of humanity was either in a place of safety, or not!

By 7:00 am in Boise, Idaho, the temperature started a rapid descent as the warmer air was pushed south. The temperature plummeted down 15 more degrees by 9:00 am. The sky was clear and blue.

The wind started blowing the dirty air out of the Salt Lake City basin around 10:00 am. The temperature in Park City Utah, as well as the other side of the main highway to the east where Carlos and Lee had left two hours earlier, dropped from -13 to -27 within two hours. It got colder and colder as the icy winds shot out from the north, bringing all the freezing arctic air southwards at 30+ miles an hour. The wind chill dropped to -30 and -40 in some mountainous areas, and people who had no heat perished quickly.

The blast spread out quickly, moving into Washington State and the Dakotas by midday and as far south as the Arizona border. For the folk who loved the heat in Las Vegas, the wind chill dropped quickly from 15 degrees to zero, and then a bitter -5, and these poor folk who had very little to wear for warmth, froze in their lightly covered beds in their houses. The blast carried on, mainly in a southern and eastern direction, moving quickly and catching up with the people beginning to head south.

In many areas, the roads were dry and the dozens of old vehicles moving south were okay. It was the people who were trying to walk along the roads, or across the uneven terrain, that felt it. Whole families tried to bundle up and stay alive, but slowly their body warmth ebbed in the face of the raging winds. They slowly stopped moving and the blowing snow began to cover them over.

The northern East Coast was beginning to experience the same downdraft of arctic air coming out of Canada. In some areas, it got as horrible as -40, and anybody outside lasted only minutes. In New York, the cold weather hit at about 11:00 am. The temperature was already cold at 15 degrees and dropped ten by midday. The sky was blue, an icy cold blue that was the last view thousands of people witnessed as their bodies went cold and their eyes became vacant.

Up to this morning, the north had been experiencing the highest numbers of deaths in North America, Europe, Russia and Asia. But on the third day, the population in the southern regions began to panic. There was no power, no open stores, no police, and no fire engines to put out fires, so the southern areas of the world began to turn to violence. For many people, their refrigerators were now empty, the milk gone, the pantry was down to a couple of items and frozen food was thawing—the non-frozen meat having to be consumed before it went rotten.

All the locked stores had products people now needed. There was a new sense of survival—a new sense that nothing was going to happen for a longer amount of time than they had first envisioned. For the first time, neighbors met their neighbors, people began to form groups, arm themselves, and walk down to their local stores to meet other groups doing the same. Many didn’t want to break the law, but hunger and the welfare of their families came first.

Humans were only human. It took one brave soul to walk up to a door and break it open with a crowbar or steel rod, and then there was a stampede for the food that was neatly packed on the shelves inside. Candy and chocolate were fought over first, once any shopping trolleys had been commandeered. People with guns entered the store, first civil and decent, but once they realized that they had more power than the people without guns, they held the others at bay while their friends and neighbors helped themselves.

It was inevitable, but the first group with guns was confronted by another larger group with guns, and by the third day alliances were being made. Many of the armed people were still sharing their spoils with others. There was still enough for everybody.

An average supermarket in the United States held several million dollars worth of food and merchandise, and in many areas of the country, including the south these were half empty by early afternoon. Like piranha, thousands upon thousands of people denuded the shelves.

By late afternoon the food was gone, as were generators, pet food, lawn tractors, wood, gas cylinders and all heating and cooking items and steel fencing. Everything that could be eaten, used to heat or cook, or to protect people was on the move. Pawn shops and gun stores were attacked and opened. The owners were a little more protective of their institutions of business and dozens of people were shot trying to get inside until the owners and shooters were themselves shot or injured, and the invaders were free to help themselves—often climbing over the owners’ dead bodies to get to what was inside.

The mass of people heading home with piles of merchandise began to push the junk aside and clear the roads so that they could get through. Cars were pushed off the road and fires were lit to burn the remains of trucks and cars for warmth, once their insides were emptied.

Most of the people got supplies for several days of survival. Useless electronics were still taken by many, the people hoping that one day they would work again. Banks were attacked and many tried in vain to open the vaults and the buildings were then torched in frustration. Gas stations were cleaned out of snacks and drinks, the gasoline and diesel sitting safely below ground in tanks. The majority of the people had never hot-wired a car in their lives, never mind something more complicated.

As the stores emptied, the late or honest ones were left with bare shelves and empty isles staring back at them. It was time to go and buy, barter, beg and then forcibly take it away from the people who had gotten there sooner.

It was time for anarchy, exactly what Chairman Wang Chunqiao in Nanjing thought 30 years ago would be his army of devastation—the American people themselves. A far bigger army that he could ever put together, well-armed and dedicated soldiers who would kill anybody for anything they had.

It was time for Chairman Wang Chunqiao’s army to fight in earnest, and they started just before dark on the third day.

*****

Dawn was breaking when Captain Mallory woke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. First, he thought the events of the past few days were only a dream and the world was back to normal, but after opening his eyes to the sight of one of his flight attendants standing in front of him with a steaming cup of fresh brew, he realized that it was not a dream.

“We heard faint noises outside,” Pam Wallace told him. “We couldn’t see anything but I’m sure I heard a tractor or two moving around out there earlier. We let you sleep, Captain. You needed a good night’s rest.”

“Thank you,” he replied, taking the coffee and sitting up. He had slept on the front seat of the SWAT truck, a few blankets had filled the hole between the seats and he had slept well, exhausted from the previous two days. The captain was still dressed, except for his thick winter coat, and he put that on and unlocked the main door to the hangar. He slid it open just enough to walk outside and was confronted by several men—three sitting on old farm tractors and the rest standing, all armed and interested to see who was in the private hangar owned by a doctor friend of theirs who had gone down to Key West for Christmas and was not yet expected back. Also, there were no wheel tracks of his aircraft landing on the runway.

“I don’t believe you own this hangar,” stated one of the farmers sitting on his tractor.

“Unfortunately, I don’t,” agreed the captain. “I’m Captain Mike Mallory, a pilot with Southwest Airlines. When the power went out over New York, I landed my aircraft in the water, managed to survive, rescue my passengers, and I am now taking my crew and what’s left of my passengers south to escape the cold. It is bitterly cold up there in New York and very dangerous.”

“You mean that this power outage is bigger than just around here?” the same farmer asked.

“I believe it’s countrywide,” replied the Captain. “There are fires in New York as big as some of the buildings. All of I-95 is clogged with dead cars and trucks. We must have seen at least a thousand dead bodies in the cars, frozen to death. We even saw a couple of lions that must have escaped from a local zoo eating a human body in New Jersey. It is pure carnage out there, and I think it’s getting even colder.”

“You’re right,” replied the farmer. “Air smells like we going to get an arctic blast sometime today. Why are you here in our friend’s hangar? Do you know him?”

“Unfortunately no, but I’ve flown into this airfield several times on recreational trips and fueled up from those fuel tanks over there. Mickey Mason was the guy who always refueled me when I landed here.”

“We know Mickey! He also flew out of here just before Christmas, down to Macon, Georgia to visit his folks,” added the farmer. A fourth tractor appeared, driving into the airfield as fast as it could with a young boy on top. He pulled to a halt and was excited.

“Pa, I saw a convoy of more old trucks driving south. There was at least nine or ten of them. I saw them through the binoculars. Fords and Dodges they were, and they went past the off-ramp and didn’t stop.”

“I’m sure there will be thousands coming south to escape the cold up there,” continued Captain Mallory. “There must be thousands upon thousands of dead up there already and this cold blast is not going to help anybody stay alive.”

John came out and introduced himself, still in his flight uniform, and so did a couple of the flight attendants.