Another 20 Miles Page 6

  Carly had been picking at a string hanging off the sleeve of her shirt. At the sound of her name, she looked up to see all eyes on her. "What? It's not like I lied or anything. Anybody without a shit ton of food, or a way to grow or hunt it, and some way to get water, is gonna die, including us. Life as we knew it is gone, according to Dad, and won't be back for years, maybe not ever. This new life will be no joy, a lot of hard work, and pretty much just existing. Fun, fun, fun!"

  Will coughed to hide a chuckle. Amanda excused herself to another room where she could laugh. Lauri hung her head and covered her face with her hand. Joel ignored her and went on.

  "I know it will be uncomfortable at first, but you should all seriously consider it. Get together at each other's houses, talk it over, and see which place is the better choice. I would say yours, Chris, if you asked my opinion, just because it's closer to the pond."

  "What does the pond have to do with anything?" Julie asked.

  "You're going to need water to live. That's the closest water I know of," Joel said matter-of-factly.

  Julie looked at him horror-stricken. "You expect us to drink out of the pond? That water is disgusting!"

  "Isn't it though? I can't believe anyone would drink from it," Beth added.

  With a shrug, Joel replied, "We'll see how you feel about that in a few days. If you haven't thought of it, you have probably thirty to forty gallons of usable water in your water heater. That will get you through a few days if you use it wisely. I would still suggest pulling water from the pond for flushing toilets, so your untainted water can be used for cooking and drinking."

  "I have an on-demand water heater," Beth said sheepishly. "So much more energy efficient than a big tank."

  Joel shook his head. "Then you're in worse shape than anybody. So, here's what we're going to do. Lauri is going to give you some of our canned goods. It's green beans, potatoes, that sort of thing. You could make a stew if you have some meat in your freezer, which, by the way, you need to be cooking. Conserve your water. Beth, I'll come over and start another fire for you, but you have to keep it going this time." He turned to Chris. "Jack Duncan, up the street, has my old chainsaw. I'll see if he's done with it and bring it back for you. You may have some limbs down from the ice. You should start with those."

  Chris and Julie looked like tornado survivors. Their eyes seemed unfocused, their breathing a bit shallow. Joel snapped his fingers in front of them.

  "Chris? You with me? Julie?"

  They seemed to come out of their fog. Chris nodded slowly. "I don't … I hadn't considered … I'm not sure how we're supposed to get through this. It doesn't seem real. It can't be real."

  "It is real, unfortunately," Joel replied. "You need to start planning now how to survive. I've got some chores to do this morning, but I'll check in on you later this afternoon and bring the chainsaw. You three should talk in the meantime. No one's going to make it alone."

  He gently took the coffee cups from them and handed them back to Lauri. Then he steered them and Beth to the door.

  "Well, I guess I’m leaving, too," Beth said. "I'll be watching for you for the fire, Joel."

  "I'll be over in just a bit. We have some family business to discuss." He continued to usher them to the door. Julie stopped and turned back to the group.

  "Are we really going to die?" she asked, eyes lighting on Carly. Carly opened her mouth to speak, but Joel interrupted her.

  "We're going to do everything we can to keep that from happening. I'll be over later with some canned goods for you, too." They had reached the door by then. Joel opened it and the three of them walked out with dazed looks on their faces. Joel shut the door behind them, then turned to his daughter.

  "Carly, I know you're having a hard time with this, but your sarcasm and negativity are not helping anyone."

  Carly lifted her chin defiantly. "I haven't said one thing that isn't true. They're going to die. All of them. Unless we can get to Elliott, we will, too. And if we don't get to the boys, I don't want to live." Her lip trembled on the last statement. A single tear slid down her cheek, which she quickly wiped away.

  "Carly! Don't say things like that!" Lauri exclaimed. "We're going to figure it out. Trust your father. Right, Joel?"

  Joel nodded. "Yes, I'll figure it out. Will, get dressed. We need to go out."

  Will grabbed his jeans and slipped them on. "Where to, Dad?"

  Joel was putting his boots on. "We're going to see a man about a gun."

  Chapter 8

  President Olstein woke up not knowing what time it was. There was no clock on the nightstand in his sleeping quarters, and, of course, he had no cell phone to check for the time. He hadn't worn a wrist watch in years since he always had his phone with him. Mental note: get someone to find me a working alarm clock and a watch. He reached for his robe and opened the door leading to the hall. Agent Walters was sitting next to the doorway. When it opened, he stood up and addressed the president.

  "Good morning, Sir. Ms. Jackson came by just a bit ago and said your breakfast would be set out in the ready room since you wanted to get right to work this morning." He delivered the information flatly, with no emotion, just another day underground.

  "Ah, thank you, Walters. I'll need to throw on some clothes. Give me just a minute." He went back inside, donned a sweat suit with the logo of his alma mater, Harvard, and his high-end running shoes. No reason to dress up. There weren't going to be any cameras from the media around. He picked up the notepad he had been making lists on the night before and left the suite.

  He walked down the hall to the conference room. A large polished mahogany table dominated the space. Off to the side, a small buffet had been laid out with eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, toast, an assortment of jams, jellies, and syrups, with two types of coffee and three different kinds of juice at the end. He smiled as he went over and picked up a plate. Vanessa was already seated at the table with her own food.

  "Nothing like a good breakfast to start the day, eh, Vanessa?" he said as he piled food onto his plate. A server had already taken coffee and juice to the head of the table. He sat down and started eating.

  "Yes, it's a great way to start the day. I wonder how long we can expect to eat on the food down here?"

  Olstein stopped with a forkful of eggs hovering about his plate. He looked over at the sideboard. It didn't look like they'd made a dent in the serving plates full of food. "That's a very good question. Do we have any idea what the answer is?"

  She shook her head as she nibbled on a piece of bacon. "Not for sure. If they cook like this every day, a lot less time than we need it to last, in my opinion."

  "Then why did they cook so much? Lawrence!" He bellowed the name of the executive chef who had been on duty when the pulse went off.

  The housing and kitchen staff at work at the time had been relocated to the expanded bunker along with the president and senior staff members who had made it to the White House. Olstein had made extensive upgrades to the underground facility during his tenure in the White House. While his predecessors had used it predominantly as a conference area that could withstand a nuclear attack, with no other amenities, Olstein had added living quarters for a number of people to be able to remain underground for days or weeks at a time, possibly months. With barracks-style housing, they could have dozens of personnel on hand for security and comfort services. His own quarters were quite luxurious and comfortable.

  Lawrence entered the room. "Yes, Mr. President? Is everything satisfactory?"

  Olstein replied, "The food is fine. What I want to know is why you made so much of it for just the two of us."

  "Oh, it's not just for you and Ms. Jackson. Once you're done, what's left will be set up for the rest of the staff quartered here. It should be enough for everyone."

  The president smiled. "Oh, that makes perfect sense. Good idea, Lawrence. By the way, how much food do we have stored down here? What I mean is, how long will it last for the people who are staying here?"<
br />
  Lawrence looked thoughtful, then said, "Well, I would say a couple of weeks for sure. But we have more in the White House kitchen stores we could bring down. I can look into that for you if you'd like, Sir."

  "Are we feeding anyone up there, Vanessa?" he asked, looking at his chief of staff.

  "A small Secret Service team and a dozen or so Marines. We sent non-essentials home yesterday once we were sure this was the real deal."

  Olstein nodded and turned back to his chef. "Please figure out how long we can last down here and up there with the people we have on staff and the food we have on hand."

  "Yes, Mr. President. I'll get right on that."

  "I'd add another ten percent to the body count, Lawrence," Vanessa added.

  "Why?" Olstein asked.

  "The Speaker, the Joint Chiefs, various other Congress members and officers. I'm fairly certain when they run out of food stores in their current locations they'll expect to be able to eat here."

  "Oh, yes. I hadn't thought of that. Don't we have emergency food rations here, too? You know, MREs, freeze-dried food that lasts for thirty years, that kind of stuff?"

  Vanessa laid her linen napkin on her plate. "You know, I think we do. I'll check on that after our meeting."

  Lawrence took that as his cue to leave. "Will there be anything else, Sir? I should get to work on those calculations for you."

  Olstein waved his hand as if to shoo the man away. "No, no, go ahead. Thank you, Lawrence."

  Lawrence left the room and quietly closed the door behind him. When they were alone, the president pushed his half-eaten breakfast away and pulled his notepad in front of him.

  "Let's get started. Now, today I want a definitive update on bringing the troops back. I don't understand why this is so hard to get done. We move troops around all the time. We should be able to speak to them since the ones deployed are outside the pulse range. Have we reached any of them?"

  Vanessa pulled up her own notes. "We have spoken to our bases in Alaska and Hawaii. They were both far enough away that they were outside the blast radius. They, in turn, have contacted a number of bases in the Middle East and China. It doesn't appear that any other countries have been attacked. The United Nations is meeting this week in Switzerland to investigate the attack and has demanded North Korea attend. So far, they have not responded. The U.N. will also discuss gathering food and medical supplies for humanitarian aid for us. I doubt it will be enough to feed three hundred million people though."

  "What about the power? Have they said how they're going to help get that back online?"

  Vanessa had a confused look on her face. "Sir, did you read the reports from the EMP task force?"

  "Of course, I did," he said. "What a load of crap. Those guys were crazy. That's why I shut them down."

  "Well, it looks like they weren't so crazy after all," she replied. "What they were trying to tell us could happen actually has. We have two thousand large power transformers in this country — well, had. Most of them are fried now. The manufacturers can only make two hundred a year. It will take a minimum of ten years to acquire enough to get the entire country back online. Unfortunately, the countries that make them probably aren't going to get in any hurry to send some our way. We're not getting power any time soon."

  Olstein had a look of disbelief on his face. "Ten years? We can't last ten years without electricity! By then all the fuel that runs the generators will be gone. The plants that package the food won't be functional. The machines that sow and harvest the food for the plants won't work. We're going to starve!"

  Vanessa nodded. "That's a pretty good summation, Sir. Believing North Korea wasn't capable of this type of attack didn't make it go away. Not securing the electrical grid and protecting it from something like this didn't keep it from happening. We were warned. Now, we're left with devastation, which will become death from starvation, exposure, and lack of medical care, just to name a few; anarchy in the streets as people war over resources; and good people dying at the hands of bad people who either have them outnumbered or outgunned. No major city will be livable, both from the conditions and from the attacking hordes.

  "As time goes on, those gangs will have to spread outside the cities as the resources are consumed. The farmer on his two hundred-acre cattle farm will be executed for his livestock. Most of the people who live in the cities know nothing about processing meat or growing vegetables, so they will waste a good portion of the animals to acquire a steak or a roast. They'll cull all the potatoes from a field to feed their current hunger instead of putting some back to plant next year. Because they aren't looking to next year. They're hungry, and they're used to eating when they're hungry."

  She paused to take a sip of her coffee. Olstein took the opportunity to interject.

  "North Korea did not do this alone! They didn't have the technology. They're a little nothing country with a pompous little leader. They have no money. Someone had to have financed them in this attack! Surely our allies will come to our defense and our aid. We're extremely vulnerable right now. That's why I want our troops here, to defend the country!"

  Vanessa sighed. "At this point, the circumstances don't matter. It's done. We have been involuntarily set back about one hundred and fifty years technologically. We are probably the poorest country in the world now, as far as being able to sustain ourselves. Yes, we have allies, but we have just as many enemies. The ones who have tolerated us up to this point because of any financial assistance we were providing have no reason to kiss our asses now. We have no money, no way to make or collect money, and no time frame for that happening in the future. We're broke … and broken."

  "We have money!" the president exclaimed. "We have trillions of dollars, all over the world!"

  "We have a national debt of over twenty trillion dollars. We accrue almost a hundred thousand dollars in interest a minute — and that was when we could pay on it. How will we pay on it now, Sir? No one will be working, no one will be paying taxes, no one will be collecting taxes … this isn't just about the electricity. This is about every aspect of our existence." She stopped for another sip, then went on before Olstein could interrupt her again.

  "I don't know how much sleep you got last night, Mr. President, but I got very little. The enormity of this crisis is almost impossible to imagine. Bringing our troops home is your number one priority, to protect us, to gather and secure resources. Here's my question: why would they? We can't pay them. We can promise to feed them and their families, but that's a lie. Do you honestly think they are going to go into someone's home and take from that person's family what they worked to acquire for their own survival? Do you think they're going to disarm the American people at a time when they will need those weapons the most to defend themselves and their supplies? It's much more likely they'll join forces with them. And even if we had them all here, if we were attacked by anyone, our munitions would quickly be spent, and we'd have no way to make more. It would be a short war and we'd lose. I understand the reasoning behind wanting to present a strong front to the world, but the reality is we're weak and extremely vulnerable, and every other nation knows it."

  Olstein stared at her in silence. He seemed to be considering what she'd said. Finally, he replied, "Okay, tell me, Vanessa, do you have a better plan? Do you have any idea how we can survive this catastrophe?"

  Vanessa smiled. "As a matter of fact, I do have a few ideas. I'd like to present them to as many leaders as we can get together. I've already asked Speaker Roman to join us this morning. The remaining Joint Chiefs should be present, as well as the vice-president. They should all be here shortly."

  Olstein went wide-eyed. "You called a meeting without clearing it through me? You don't have the authority to do that! I decide when I'll meet them, not you. Who do you think you are?"

  Still smiling, she replied, "The chief of staff of the current President of the United States. It is quite possible I could retain this position for the president-elect when he's sworn in nex
t month. You could say I'm securing my future."

  Olstein stood up and slammed his fist on the table. "I said that wasn't going to happen! We can't have a changing of the guard at a time like this! I'll have to stay until the country is back on its feet. It just makes sense —"

  "It only makes sense to you, Mr. President. When our country is at its lowest point in history is not the time to try to rewrite or destroy the Constitution. I will not sit by and watch you destroy what's left of our nation. The people need hope that we can get through this disaster. They need a government that will fight for them not against them. We're going to see to it that they get that government."

  "We? You won't be seeing it from down here, Ms. Jackson. You may consider yourself terminated!" The president was so mad he was spitting with every word. "I need people around me who support me and my vision for this country and that is obviously not you! Security!"

  The door opened, and Agent Walters rushed in. "Sir, is everything alright?"

  "No, everything is most certainly not alright, Walters! I want Ms. Jackson removed from the premises immediately! And I don't just mean the bunker — I mean the White House!"

  Walters looked confused. Vanessa stood up and addressed him as she picked up her things. "It's okay, Jim. I know the way." She started for the door and was met by General Everley and Phil Roman.

  "Vanessa? I thought we had a meeting this morning. You're leaving?" Phil asked.

  "Yes. Apparently, my services are no longer required. And, honestly, I can't in good conscience be a part of his plan." She handed him a small device. "You might want to give this a listen, so you know what you're up against. He's clueless about this whole thing. Good luck, gentleman." Vanessa proceeded out the door, followed by Agent Walters. Roman and Everley watched her leave, then turned to the president.

  "What the hell is going on?" Everley barked. "You fired her? She's the most level-headed person on your staff."

  Olstein sat with his arms crossed. "I can't have disloyal people around me, especially now. I need people who can see my vision for our future. Vanessa doesn't see the big picture, the long-term goals. She doesn't understand what I'm doing, or what I’m trying to accomplish for our country."