THE DAY: A Novel of America in the Last Days (The End of America Series) (23 page)

Ambergris
Caye
, Belize

              
"Jack,
you realize, I assume, that only God could have freed you and your family from
the U.S.?" The question was posed by John Madison, Jack's father, who had
been living in Belize, along with his wife, Debbie, for almost three years.
Jack and Allison, with their two children, had managed to flee through Canada,
eventually arriving by boat in Belize. At the time of their departure Jack was
the pastor of a large church in Dallas. His final message was one of warning to
his congregation explaining why he was fleeing the 'Daughter of Babylon' and
suggesting that they consider doing the same.

              
"No
question
,
Dad. We were definitely on the
'no fly
list'.
Our only way out was the back door through Canada. Your suggestion that
we use gold coins to buy passage here was spot on. Nobody wanted dollars even
then. Now that the U.S. has been destroyed, the dollar has about as much value
as moldy Confederate money. I'm sorry you had to go through more federal agent
harassment. At least they didn't arrest you or Mom when they were looking for
us."

              
"Jack,
since we retired and fled by cruise boat to Belize I've tried to stay calm,
keep the ticker from racing, you know. But when the two suits stood out on this
porch and tried to intimidate me into giving you up,
I lost it
. I threatened to throw them off the porch."

              
"I
wish I could have seen
that
. They're
normally used to cowed compliance. Now that Washington DC is history, do you
think there's any chance at all that they'll be back?"

              
"Not
possible. Federal agents have to be paid, just like anybody else. There's no
government left to pay them, so the likelihood of our ever hearing again from
the feds is slim to none. However, Jack, even though that's no longer a
concern, I do have what has become an emerging source of
worry
....oh wait....I'm talking to a pastor....
a source of interest."

              
"It's
alright, Dad, as humans we
all
worry.
The secret
is knowing
how to cast those worries on the
Lord and let Him deal with them. What could you be worried about, though? You
live in a tropical paradise?
Health issues?"

              
"No.
Your Mom and I are both in pretty good shape, all things considered. It's about
Belize. A lot of this little country's income is based on American tourism.
That's over, of course. We don't travel around Belize
much,
we stay pretty close to this rented condo, the beach, the boat and a couple of
stores down the road. But what I'm hearing from other expats is that Belizeans
are increasingly hurting,
financially
.
No tourism income equals a loss of money to pay bills, to buy food, to
live."

              
"
Hunh
.
I guess I hadn't given
that much thought. How
bad
is it? How
will the Belizeans treat American expats?"

              
"
That
, my son, is the source of my
concern. I've already heard about some expats who live in the mountains whose
houses have been broken into."

              
"But
isn't petty theft just a normal way of life? Even in the U.S.
we
...."

              
"True,
but I'm not talking about petty theft, say of a laptop or TV. I've been hearing
that when the houses were broken into whoever did it cleaned them out.
Totally.
All the food, all the clothes.
Everything in the kitchen drawers.
Appliances.
Everything
that
could be carried out."

              
"Wow,
Dad, that
doesn't
sound good."

              
"No,
Jack, it doesn't, but yesterday I heard that an American expat was driving his
pickup and stopped at a bridge where a car blocked it. He started to get out to
help and three guys jumped him, hit him in the head and
slit
his throat."

              
"Slit
his throat? OK, now I get why you're worried. What are you
thinking
?"

              
"I'm
thinking that it won't be too many days, or weeks, before the folks who are
hungry decide to boat over to Ambergris
Caye
and hit
us. Actually, there are numerous Belizeans who live here who have been affected
negatively by Babylon, excuse me, America being destroyed. So....I'm thinking
we need to
boogie
while we still can.
I know it sounds weird to consider fleeing from the safe place we originally
fled
to, but things have changed. So we need to change, too. Wherever we go we have
to avoid countries with a significant Muslim population. The little news we
still get here confirms that the Jihadists are on the attack to
take over
the governments in Europe,
Africa and Asia, that is, that aren’t already in Muslim hands."

              
"Allison
will do whatever you guys think is best. She's frankly still
in shock
.
Shock from
moving out of the U.S. Shock at living in a different culture, even though we
haven't been here very long.
But her biggest shock....
our
biggest shock....is trying to adjust
to the fact that America, as we knew it,
is
gone
.
Terminated.
Annihilated.
How can we
ever
get used to that?
So many dead.
So many dying.
It
didn't
have
to happen. I can't get
that verse out of my mind....you know, in Jeremiah 51:9 where God says 'We
would have healed her, but she is not healed'. We didn't
have
to
turn away from
God. We didn't
have
to
betray Israel."

              
"I
know....I know....but just thank God that He loved us enough to give us ten
warnings to flee before the Daughter of Babylon would be destroyed. He didn't
have
to do that.
But, He did.
Now, we need to give prayerful thought to our next location. I did some
research a couple months ago, once I realized how much the economy here is
dependent on American tourism. What I concluded is that we need to either get
to Australia or New Zealand or move far south in South America.
Either Chile
, Uruguay or Argentina. All three had very
little U.S. tourism. Every nation's economy has been hit hard by the loss of
the U.S. The Bible tells us in Revelation 18 that the merchants of the world
look at the fall of Babylon and wail at their loss. But we need to move as far
away as possible from folks who are
enraged
at Americans
for their economic losses, their lack of food."

              
 
"I get it. What about Australia or
New Zealand? Or even China, or...."

              
"China's
out. It's guaranteed that they'll be in an economic depression.
Not only
won't we be shipping them billions of dollars from sales at China-Mart, excuse
me, Wal-Mart, but the U.S. owed China 1.2
Trillion
dollars. Nope.
Forget China.
Australia
and New Zealand are possibilities. Very little U.S. tourism, but the question
is
how to get there
. Almost every air
flight from this part of the world to that part of the world went through the
U.S. Or at least they used to. I could only find a flight or two out of Chile
that used to fly direct. The other alternative is to fly from Panama to Europe
and fly east across the globe to Australia or New Zealand. But, I’m not
comfortable with even passing through a
Muslimized
Europe. We could drive from Belize to Panama, but we’d need to be armed,
maybe even hire a couple guards to make sure we get to Panama."

              
"South
America is
closer
. Which country is
easiest to get to?"

              
"Either
Chile or Uruguay. I ruled out Argentina."

              
"Yeah,
the government there seems hell-bent on destroying their own economy. What are
flights like now to Chile or Uruguay? "

Colonel
Jim Irwin Elementary School

              
Death
and Snake Head were happy, very happy. Not just because one year after The Day they
were still alive. Not just because they uncovered that morning a cache of
liquor hidden in an outbuilding behind a house in Pelham owned by a grocery
store manager, who was long dead. Not just because they also found a large box
of ammunition near the liquor stock. No, Death and Snake Head were overjoyed
because they had been given the location of a small, supposedly
well-provisioned gang hiding out a few miles to the east in Mountain Brook,
formerly an upscale suburb of Birmingham. The expensive houses in the community
had long ago either been looted or burnt. Prowling through the neighborhood
streets during the year since The Day they had not seen anything to indicate
that there was anything still left worth grabbing.

              
However,
Snake Head had just persuaded a captured emaciated, obviously on the edge of
starvation teen-ager, who was on a solo trek looking for food, to disclose
where he had been living in the last few months, after The Day and through the
biting months of winter. The shaking, sobbing teen finally revealed that he had
slipped out late at night from a hideaway located in Mountain Brook. Before
Snake Head took the young man’s life, he forced the teen to draw a map of
the location of the hideaway with enough detail for Snake Head to locate it
without hauling along another hungry mouth to feed.
The
basement of Building Six at
Bluemont
Gardens in
Mountain Brook.
Bingo.

              
Snake
Head reported his findings to Death. Death smiled, his blackened teeth showing
through his tattooed skull mouth. He smoothed his bald head, on which was
tattooed YOU’RE DEAD, with both hands. Death was pleased, very pleased,
saying to his fellow gang leader, "Snake.
Ya
’
done
good
. We be now up to eighty-six commandos, but
we
gotta
’ grow. If we don’t add more
shooters, the other gangs will, and then we
be
out-manned, out-gunned and we be dead."

              
Snake
Head, the tattooed snake on his forehead glistening with sweat, smiled back,
"
True that
, Death. So far, our
little hidey-hole here at this school has escaped the attention of the gangs
out there. The Bible thumpers done picked a good spot. Without more men and
arms, though, one day it’ll be discovered and they’ll over-run us.
I keep hearing about a gang that’s well over a hundred and
ten,
at least that’s what I hear.
Supposed
to be holed up at the UAB Hospital in Birmingham on 6
^th
Avenue.
If we don’t add to our strength, that gang will head south down 280 and
take us out
. We’ve got to grow to
at least as many shooters."

              
"Snake,
how
many
did your dead snitch tell
you are hiding in Mountain Brook?"

              
"He
wasn’t positive, but when I twisted him a little, he estimated between 20
and 24 men."

              
"
Humh
.
But
how many teen boys?
They
be
our only possible
new gang members,
don’tcha
know. Did he say how
many women and teeny-bops?"

              
"He
was sure on that number, Death.
Twenty eight.
Eighteen women and ten teen-age girls.
About
the same number of teen age-boys and some younger kids.
I got him to
tell me that three or four of the women folk were real lookers. He got all
weepy
on me when I pushed him on whether
any of the females were related to him. "

              
"And?"

              
"His
Mom and Dad are alive, and his sixteen year old sister is there. Or at least
she was there."

              
"Meaning?"

              
"The
kid said his sister told him that she was thinking either of running away or
maybe killing herself. Said she was tired of worrying every day, every minute,
that some gang of killers, you know, like us, I guess, would find their hiding
place and she would be passed around by the men. You know, Death, the kind of
feminist clap-trap
we’ve heard
from some of our women. They just don’t
get it
."

BBC
Studios – Broadcasting House

Central
London, England

              
The
co-host of WORLD IN REVIEW thanked Major General Archibald Raleigh for his
contribution to the BBC’s special report,
America – One Year
After
the Day.
He
turned towards his female co-host, in what journalists call
‘throwing’ the newscast to her, "More than a ninety percent
casualty rate. So,
Jala
, what do we know about the causes
of such a high death rate? What led to these
astounding numbers
of dead Americans?"

              
"It’s
not a simple answer,
Rab
, as we learned in putting
together tonight’s special report. To help us understand what actually
happened to our dearly departed cousins across the pond, we are joined by an
American reporter who was not in the U.S. a year ago, as she was working here
in London at the time as a foreign relations reporter for the New York Times.
The newspaper is no longer published, thus Gretchen Rice is in studio with us
as a private citizen. Thanks, Gretchen, for coming by to help us understand the
result of the nuking of
ten American cities
. First, it
is estimated that about fifty-five million died either on The Day or within a
few days after as a direct result of the detonated nuclear devices.
That’s only about 17% of what was then the total population of about
three hundred and fifteen million. So, how did the percentage of deaths grow
from under 20% to
over 90%,
according
to the British government report about which we just heard?"

              
Dressed
modestly in a black business suit as befitted the occasion, Gretchen Rice
looked down at the notes shaking slightly in her hands, then gazed into
designated camera three, softly saying, "
Jala
,
it was a combination of
many
factors.
Let’s first examine the most vulnerable. Hospitals and medical care
clinics and facilities in America were
quickly
overrun
as soon as people realized what had happened to their country.
Patients in hospitals and residents of American nursing homes did
not….well, let me just say that….they were among the
first to die
, apart from those who were
vaporized by the heat and blast of the devices themselves, of course. The next
persons who died quite quickly were those who were exposed to radiation from
the blasts, generally those within three to five miles of the point of
detonation. They didn’t last much longer than
a few hours
or days
,
depending on how close they were to the nuclear detonations.

              
"Gretchen,
we’ve read that American hospitals in or near the cities which were
struck directly by nuclear devices were
overrun
and unable to provide any meaningful level of medical care to those who were
near the detonations?"

              
"Yes.
That’s our understanding, again with the disclaimer that much of what we
know came from unverified sources, but are believed to be accurate. An average
hospital with say 100 to 300 beds couldn’t even come close to treating
the thousands
of radiated persons
knocking on their door. Pharmacies located in hospitals and general retail drug
stores were quickly
cleaned out
, most
by widespread looting. Pharmaceuticals available in the U.S. appear to have
disappeared shortly after The Day. Before we leave that subject,
Jala
, many further deaths occurred over the next several
weeks and months as those who had previously survived on manufactured
pharmaceuticals
didn’t make it
,
once they could no longer obtain their meds. That
alone
was a big factor in the exceedingly high death rate."

              
"Is
it the case, Gretchen, that almost every store, food markets, clothing,
hardware, all types of retail establishments, were, to use your phrase,
‘cleaned out’ and looted? If so,
how soon
did that happen after The Day?"

              
"
Jala
, my sources at the time, just under a year ago
obviously, told me that the looting of retail stores in America was
almost instantaneous
. By that I
understand that Americans who heard on the news that their country had been
attacked with nuclear weapons wasted no time in rushing to the nearest
mega-malls, strip malls and local stores. There were early scattered attempts
by owners to ward off looters, but that apparently didn’t last long.
Within twenty-four to thirty-six hours of the detonations, as I understand it,
virtually all retail establishments in America had either been blown up in the
cities nuked or looted by those who survived the blasts."

              
"Gretchen,
we mentioned at the top of the show that there do not appear to be any
operating electric utilities in the U.S. Is that consistent with what you have
been able to learn over the last year?"

              
"Yes….sad
to say. Those electric utilities which operated on coal shut down early on, as
it took diesel fuel for the trains which hauled the coal from the mines to the
generating stations. As you may know, American oil refineries did not survive
The Day for a variety of reasons. With no electric power, water systems
couldn’t function, which, of course, meant that sewage treatment systems
ceased to function. Within hours of The Day, simply stated, America just
ceased to function
."

              
"Can
you tell us, Gretchen, what was the impact on everything you’ve just
described to us of EMP weapons, those emitting an electro-magnetic
pulse?"

              
"Well,
Jala
, there’s not been a consensus on that
subject. Normally a HEMP device, that is a High Altitude EMP device, is
launched into the mid-stratosphere in order to have maximum effect over a wide
area on the ground. Because the U.S. military was so hampered immediately after
the attacks we were never able to confirm if any the cities hit by nuclear
devices were by HEMP devices launched above the cities. It’s possible, of
course, that some of the nuclear devices which appear to have been land-based,
in offices, or condo buildings, or in motor vehicles, were constructed with EMP
emitting capability. That would explain why so many motor vehicles were
disabled on American highways, clogging those roads to transit, more than would
have just run out of fuel, I would think."

              
"Finally,
Gretchen, a topic that I think most of us here in the UK would rather avoid,
but many people are quite interested, particularly if they had family and
friends, business associates and the like, in the U.S. What can you tell us
about the status of the seven or eight percent of Americans who are still
alive, who
didn’t die
in the
detonations, or since due to the devastating effects of a collapsed,
non-functioning society?"

              
"All
that we know,
Jala
, is what we have learned from the
Royal Air Force fly-overs, by the Sentinel R-1s, and from the short wave
broadcasts which we have discussed. Those who were able to flee America after
The Day on available ships which were not destroyed in the blasts are not much
help to us, from an information view-point. The last ship or plane to transit
the Atlantic from the U.S. was many months ago. Our satellite systems of
communication with the U.S. have been inoperable from almost day one, as the
sending/receiving stations on the U.S. end of the system were either
immediately taken out in the blasts, or ceased to function over time without
power and with exhausted fuel for back-up generators."

              
"Given
those limitations, Gretchen, what can you share that we
do
know?"

              
"It’s
not good. In fact, it’s very,
very
bad. There were many Americans who saw that the nation was a target for future
troubles. They were what were then called ‘
preppers
’,
because they laid up substantial stores of food, weapons and other preparations
for future survival. Some of the short wave transmissions that were received
came from ‘
preppers
’."

              
"That
seems like a wise and prudent course of action. How are the ‘
preppers
’ in America faring?
"

              
"Not
well,
Jala
, not well
at all
. It seems that most ‘
preppers
’
knew other people who were
not
prepping, as they say. After the food supplies dried up, and there was no
electric power, no gasoline, you know, then people who knew where they could
find such vital items, that is from the ‘
preppers
’,
located them and
took
what they
wanted.
"

              
"But,
Gretchen, didn’t that lead to….
violence
?
Were they willing to share what they had stored up?"

              
"We
understand that
some
shared. At
first, but when people get hungry they….well….let’s just say
that they lose some of their normal societal
inhibitions….Then….they do what they have to do….to….
survive
. The end result over the last
year has been that millions have died, either directly from starvation, or
killed at the hands of starving people who wanted what people had stored up.
Some of the things we have heard from short-wavers are
truly beyond belief
. In my opinion the percentage of Americans
still alive is more like two to three percent, and that may be overly
generous."

              
"Gretchen,
without dwelling too much on the macabre, what does America look like
today
– a full twelve months, 365
days since The Day? We’re about out of time, so I’ll ask you to be
concise, please."

              
"Imagine
this scene. This is America one year after The Day. No houses or apartments are
lit at night, not by electricity, of course, but also not by candles or oil
lamps, as any light seen at night is an invitation to marauding bands of
cutthroat killers anxious to find food and new prey. In the day time, no one
with any sense goes out into the open, for the same reason. Spotters will alert
the gangs and they will track and follow you back to your place of hiding,
hoping to loot, rape and destroy.

              
"The
result, as we understand it, is that what is left of America belongs to the
armed gangs, many of whom were prisoners on The Day. They either escaped or
were released from jails and prisons which weren’t nuked. The U.S. had
over two million prisoners incarcerated on The Day, the highest number in the
world at that time. Estimates are that at least one million survived and are
now in gangs. The
gangs
number from small, 15 or 20
killers, all the way up to what amount to armies, small armies, but with
several hundred armed men, all safely hiding in tightly barricaded buildings,
warehouses, office buildings. The type of building varies depending on the
army. But, the critical aspect of their encampment is that have to be able to
secure their bolt-hole location from entry by other gangs, or other armies who
want to get what they may have."

              
"Wrapping
up, Gretchen, you didn’t mention how women and children are surviving in
America in these perilous days."

              
"I
didn’t forget,
Jala
….I just didn’t
want to be the one who….well….the ….uh….gangs
don’t need youngsters, whom they would have to feed, or older women and
certainly not any men who may have families and who need to try and protect
them. It appears,
Jala
, that apart from teen-aged
women and younger women who are allowed to live as….you
know
….as….sex slaves….sorry to say,
almost all
of the population still
surviving and alive in the U.S. are men in gangs, in small armies.
I
sincerely
regret
to report
."