One Second After

“This time around, though, no outside help to come pouring in like in New Orleans. It was a death blow for those still alive.

“Add in the heat without AC. Few houses down there today were designed for living without AC. Add in twenty percent of the population as elderly, so many dying in the first days that they say that in some of the retirement towns the dead carpeted the streets, again like something out of the plagues of old. Disease just exploded in that climate; that’s what killed most of them before starvation even set in… food poisoning, heat exhaustion, bad water or no water, then malaria, West Nile, they say typhoid and dysentery ran rampant in the Miami area, even reports of bubonic plague….” He paused.

“Cannibalism even, like your Posse types… but also a lot of people driven mad with hunger. Cults sprang up, one damn near like the Aztecs, into human sacrifices to atone for the wrath of the earth spirits, others some weird play on the Last Supper and Communion, that this was now God’s will and it was OK to eat the dead. Others, well, just wackos.”

John sighed. The Prozac nation on withdrawal, he thought, remembering Kellor’s warning.

“The only ones left there now the barbarians and a few small communities with good tactical positions, like yours, and a good leader, like you.”

There was something about the way the general spoke that caught John. Why was he focusing on Florida?

John looked at him, felt he shouldn’t but had to ask.

“Sir, your family. Are they OK?”

The general looked back at him, eyes bright.

“I was with Central Asian Command. You know our stateside command is in Tampa—Saint Pete. I shipped over to Iraq month before we got hit.” He sighed.

“Wife, three kids, daughter-in-law, and two grandkids lived in Saint Pete. Haven’t heard a word since it happened.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Yeah, we are all sorry now.” John could not speak.

“Voice of America never said anything about that.” The general shook his head.

“Did you think we’d actually tell you the truth?” he sighed. John bristled.

“So what the hell is the truth?”

“We had our asses handed to us, that’s the truth. Just several bombs, and we had our asses handed to us. With luck there might be thirty million people still alive in what was the United States.”

“What do you mean, was?”

The general shook his head.

“Course you wouldn’t know; we’re not talking about it on Voice of America. You can write off the Southwest, including Texas, unless we can dig up another Sam Houston and Davy Crockett. During the winter, Mexico moved in. Claimed it was a protectorate to counter the Chinese.”

“What?”

“China. Oh, they came with aid, plenty of aid for the few survivors after sixty days of anarchy and disease. And now there’s five hundred thousand of them on the West Coast, California to Washington State, clear up to the Rockies.”

“Who?”

“Chinese troops. Here to help us of course,” Wright said, his voice bitter. “Oh, they’re giving out aid, even helping with some rebuilding, but there’s no sign they ever plan to leave.”

“So it was them?”

The general shrugged.

“We’ll never know, most likely.”

“What?”

“John, three missiles total. One launched from a containership out in the Gulf of Mexico and burst over Kansas, Utah, and Ohio. The cargo ship, typical, had Liberian registry and had docked at half a dozen places, including Oman. We think the weapons might have been loaded aboard there, a medium-range missile capped with a nuke inside an oversized container. That ship, by the way, blew up right after the launch, no one survived, so it fits the terrorist model. Another over Russia, launched from another containership from near Iceland, same scenario, the ship blew up right after the launch. We don’t know why over Russia rather than over Central Europe. Maybe its guidance was screwy, but that did mean England and parts of Spain were spared. Last one burst lower, but still high enough to knock out Japan and Korea.

“Some say it was China, others North Korea, which by the way is now a glowing slag heap, others the terrorist cells, others Iran, a fair part of that glowing as well. Maybe it was all of them; maybe it was none of them. Maybe it doesn’t matter now; they did it, and they won.”

“What do you mean, won? Damn it, Voice of America kept saying we were winning.”

“Sure, there’s a lot of rubble heaps around the world where once there were cities, us lashing out, maybe rightly, maybe just blindly. But did that change things here?

“I was deployed back here, from Iraq. The entire navy is here as well on the East Coast at least. Nearly all our overseas military is now back here, trying to sort things out, rebuild, and defend what’s left.

“John, I saw Baltimore and Washington burning in the night, the smoke a pillar visible a hundred miles away,” and he spoke now in almost a monotone.

“My God, it was like something out of the Bible. It was medieval.” Washington, and for the first time in months John thought of Bob Scales in the Pentagon.