When The Fault Breaks: Life Will Never Be The Same Page 24

  The president came on shortly after with a brief statement saying that the government would do everything it could, but that this was an unprecedented event and FEMA had never planned on something of this scale. The next morning the Dow opened down another five thousand points, so they closed all trading almost as soon as it opened.

  Some news had made it out about Seattle and it said that the city was in total ruins and it could never be rebuilt. They said it was impossible to evacuate any survivors from any of the Puget Sound Region. They went on to say that the quake caused the crust of the earth to shift and that the ground under the entire region had sunk over fifty feet and flooded the entire region for good. Scientists said the area would never be above water again."

  Floyd spoke up, "Well the ground sinking explained why I could not reach the valley when I tried to go see the damage. I was wondering why the water had not receded after the quake."

  "With every hour that passed, we heard more and more despair. Later that night word reached us that Mount Rainer had exploded and covered everything with ash and lava for hundreds of miles to the east. All air travel in the country was halted because of the ash cloud."

  Bill asked, "How long did it take for New York to fall apart?"

  That question seemed to strike a chord in John, you could tell it was hard for him to speak about it. He teared up again as he continued.

  "It's not as simple as that, the west coast fell apart because of the destruction, the complete loss of life and infrastructures, and of all the death and suffering.

  Back east it was very different, nothing was destroyed by the quake, it was all too far away. The effects of the west coast being obliterated was incalculable. To start with the psychological effect was enormous. Nearly everyone in the country has family or friends living on the west coast. No one could get any information on their loved ones and all the news was bad.

  The economic effect was also beyond calculation. California was the eighth largest economic power in the world. Just the loss of that alone was devastating. You add in the entire west coast, no imports, no exports, no commerce what so ever and you have a trifecta of doom.

  Remember I told you the Dow dropped over six thousand points in two days and the market was closed indefinitely. The country was still not out of the depression and the economy was hanging on the edge, as it had been for years. There was no way it could hold out with that type of destruction.

  To make matters worse the government came out and said there was no way they could get in and help anyone on the west coast and that everyone there had to fend for themselves. Those were not their exact words but they may as well have been.

  With the economic collapse and martial law declared nationally it was all people could take. Almost everyone now knew the world that we all knew was over, so the looting that had been contained in the city exploded. The cops could not, or would not, even begin to stop it. Just like in New Orleans many of the cops joined in the looting because they figured what was the point anymore.

  Entire malls were emptied in under an hour. Every Wal-Mart in town was picked clean in minutes. Sporting goods stores and pawn shops were hard hit by people trying to get survival gear and guns.

  People flooded the subways only to find none of them were running, abandoned by the workers, with all the windows on the cars smashed out. People were running down the tunnels trying to get away from the mayhem in the streets.

  Rioting was rampant in the streets. Cars burning everywhere, first the cop cars then any car was a target. Traffic came to a standstill and the only way to get around was on foot. There was the sound of breaking glass everywhere and the smell of burning buildings filled the air. People were running out of stores carrying anything they could manage. I remember thinking to myself how stupid can people be, what do they plan on doing with a flat screen TV.

  Even while the buildings were being looted they were set ablaze, huge fires raged as building after building burned. There was no way for fire crews to even reach them let alone fight them. In time skyscraper after skyscraper were in flames all the way up to the top.

  To make it worse after it all began there was really no one who could help. The first responders didn't respond because they had to defend their own families. Everyone that was home stayed home to protect their loved one. And those who could leave didn't because even if they tried they would not have been able to reach anyone that needed help.

  My city was literally burning to the ground and there was no way to stop it. From my twenty fifth floor condo I could see the Empire State building engulfed in fire, and rioters on the ground cheering."

  "Where was your condo?"

  "We lived on Fifth Street near the intersection of West 34th Street. We managed to make it out of our building before it was set ablaze. We were trying to make it out of the city as fast as possible but that was proving to be very difficult. There were hundreds of fires all over the entire city, none of them could be extinguished so they all burned out of control.

  I remembered my history and remembered what happened when America carpet-bombed the German cities in World War II with incendiary bombs. Just like those cities New York City now had hundreds of fires raging, spread all over the city. Those fires began to converge which formed larger ones then those combined as well.

  We were watching the beginning of a firestorm, as all the fires began to merge they sucked huge amounts of air to the center. It created a fire vortex that looked like a giant fire tornado. The more fuel there is, the larger the fire, and there was almost unlimited fuel in the city.

  We had a boat at the marina so we headed for it on foot praying that my boat was still there. On our way there a woman ran up to us screaming for help, her son was trapped under some rubble and she was begging us to help her son.

  We had to stop to help her. She said her name was Betsy and her son's name was Hank and that they were trying to get out of the city when a sign fell and pinned him down. Hank was lucky that the sign landed on some other rubble which stopped it from crushing him. With some help from others we were able to get the sign off of him, and he only had a few scratches.

  As we worked to free her son I could feel the winds picking up, they were blowing toward the center of the city. I knew this was a sign that the firestorm was building strength and that we had to hurry.

  I told her we had a boat and that she and her son could come with us, but that we had to hurry. By now the winds were really picking up, so much so it was difficult to run against the force. The winds were kicking up dust and making it hard to see where we were going. Finally, the four of us made our way to the waterfront and the marina.

  When we reached my boathouse I was relieved to find it was still locked up and no one had taken my boat. As we pulled away from the dock we could see fires on the opposite shore as well, so we knew we could not just cross the river. We ran with no lights and stayed away from shore and decided to float downstream and go ashore wherever we could.

  We didn't need to go far before we were able to make it ashore across the Hudson River in to New Jersey. By now it was dark and when we looked back we could not believe our eyes. Every mile of shoreline was in flames, none of the skyline had escaped the fire. As I scanned the shoreline I could see several fire vortices spiraling thousands of feet into the sky.

  Then I saw this gigantic vortice spiraling so far I could not even see the top even from as far away as we were. The flames reached all the way to the clouds. Ominous black clouds high in the sky were spiraling in toward the center of the fire. The fire was sucking in huge amounts of air to feed itself and created strong winds even as far away as we were. The suction was so strong you could see semi-trucks being sucked in. It was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life, and I used 'was' correctly.

  In a few short hours New York City's Manhattan, the greatest city man ever made was finished, totally destroyed. As we looked around we saw countless boats doing the same thing we did, fleeing the city like rats esca
ping the fire with no idea of where to go or what to do next.

  People lined the shore with their boats and stayed there for some time. The boats were all tied together making huge rafts. We waited there for the fires to burn themselves out before we left. Betsy and her son had a little luck at least, while we were in New Jersey she found some family and stayed with them. All the better because we knew we could not take her with us.

  As soon as we could we headed north to some property I owned, but first decided to get a closer look to see what was left of the city. It was an eerie sight, as we approached the southern shore of Manhattan we watched very closely for any signs of life, but saw none.

  Even before we reached the shore we could smell the burnt flesh. As we approached it we saw burnt bodies floating along its banks, scores of them. The site and smell was even worse when we reached the bank and went ashore.

  There were hundreds of burnt bodies, piled on top each other. Row after row of bodies mostly burnt to a skeleton, it was clear they all had tried to reach the shore as the fires burnt all the way to the river. As we slowly made our way inland we found fewer bodies. What were left of the streets were huge piles of smoldering rubble.

  There were countless skeletons everywhere, lying where they fell and were completely burned up. The smell of burnt flesh hung in the air even more, I vomited repeatedly. None of the skyscrapers escaped the fire, and most of the streets were impassable. The closer we got toward the center of the city the worse the damage was, the roads were melted and glass from the store fronts laid in solid puddles on the ground.

  There were no lights anywhere, no sign of any life, no birds, no rats, not even any cockroaches. There was absolutely nothing left alive in the city. All that was left was the burnt out and fallen shells of some of the taller buildings, most of the smaller ones were buried under the rubble from the taller ones. The devastation was so severe that we needed to leave.

  How could the greatest city man has ever seen been destroyed so quickly? How could it have not been affected by the most violent quake the world ever saw, a quake three thousand miles away. How could it fall at the hands of a minority of people? What did it really say about us all, if we could do that to such a mega-city? As we returned to the boat and pulled away I turned around to get one last look at my home and began crying again."

  By now there was not a dry eye in the place including myself, everyone was horrified at what John described.

  Someone asked, "So how did you get away?"

  "We headed north up the East River. We could not believe our eyes when we saw what was left of the Brooklyn Bridge. The two towers still stood but the span was gone, one of the span cables was still intact with several smaller cables hanging from it, while the other was gone, I have no idea what happened to it only that it was gone.

  We continued up stream because I had a jet at a small private airport community north of the city. As we moved north we did not see any life on the New York shores. But in New Jersey boats lined the shores with people trying to survive. At times we could see people trying to flag us down to help them but we knew that was impossible, they would have overwhelmed my boat.

  I always kept my jet fully fueled and ready to fly at a moment's notice just in case I needed to get somewhere fast. It was several miles north and not very far from the river. We figured we would go see if it was still there and hoped it was not destroyed.

  When we made it to the boat launch I was surprised to see no boats there. The streets of the city were deserted but littered with dead or abandoned cars. We only had a couple miles to go to make it to the airport and were overjoyed when we saw my hanger was still intact. I opened the door and there she was, my jet just waiting for us to fly her out of there.

  We always kept the hanger loaded with survival gear and a couple weeks supply of food and water, so we were happy to be able to eat."

  "What about the ash from the volcano and the no fly order?"

  "The answer to your first question is by now there was no ash left in the air where we were, and the second one, well the government no longer controlled anything including the air. I did not hear anything on the radio until I flew close to Chicago, which was when I heard I was entering restricted air space and was told to land."

  "Did you land like you were ordered?"

  "No way, when I heard I was entering the air space and was ordered to land I wanted nothing to do with that."

  "What did you do?"

  "I dropped close to ground level, sped up and turned south for a spell then I continued west."

  Someone asked him where he was heading.

  John paused again, "I was heading to my parents to get them so we all could head to South America, figured it was warmer than the north."

  Someone else asked, "Did you make it to your parents ok."

  John took another very deep breath, sighed and slowly shook his head and said, "No, I was shot down somewhere over south western Colorado, not too far from here."

  The group all gasped and almost as a whole asked, "How?"

  John shook his head again and said, "By a surface to air missile. I saw it coming so I rolled but it clipped my wing. The landing was hard but since I had been flying low over highways I was able to land on a freeway."

  Beth asked, "Were you or Edith hurt bad?"

  John said, "No only minor bumps and bruises."

  "Who shot you down, the military for flying in a no fly zone?"

  John came back fast with an answer and he didn't seem very happy.

  "I don't think so, my guess was it was one of the militias or other bands of nutcases that had broken into a National Guard Armory and stole some surface to air missiles. When they saw my jet one of them shot at me. I don't know why, maybe just because he could. After that we ended up in that stupid little hick town where your brother is your dad and your aunt is your sister too. The rest of the story you already know."

  I stood up and returned to the front.

  "It sounds like you have all had a rough experience, but you are safe now and from what I can tell you will all be a great asset to the village. We have a committee made up of representatives of different groups so I think one of you should join that committee. Do you guys have a nominee?"

  "Mark gave a quick and resounding, "Yes, it could be none other than Floyd. He has led us through all this stuff, so we know we can trust him in this too."

  Floyd replied, "Thanks Mark I would be happy to represent y'all with these nice folks."

  "Then welcome to the committee Floyd, I'm sure you will do fine." With that we all adjourned.

  Within a short time, the new comers settled in and seemed like they had always been part of us. But now our little group had grown and it was becoming difficult to fit everyone in the cave for meetings, so we decided we needed a better solution. It was Patrick that came up with a good solution, we would build our own little amphitheater.

  Chapter 32: Going Up

  It had been several months since the new comers had arrived and it would be fall soon enough, so everyone pitched in to help them find a place and to build their cabins. There was a garden in every field with a plethora of fruits and vegetables growing. We had a dozen separate large wheat fields and a dozen rice fields as well.

  The mill was mostly built and the water wheel worked like a charm. The grinding stones were finished and turning on the shaft so they would grind down the high spots before the grain was ready. The mill was turning out to be a favorite meeting spot over the summer because it gave everyone a nice place to just lie back in the water, relax and stay connected.

  The mill also powered the ceramics studio where a couple of potters' wheels were driven by their own small water wheel. A Step Kiln was built and several people used them to make all kinds of useful and decorative items for their homes.

  Our horse gave birth to twins and we were thrilled as they grew bigger and stronger every day. The heat of summer had passed and everything was going great. One day while a few of
us were relaxing in the pond Fred asked, "Hey Peter, how far up the valley have you explored."

  "I only went as far as the big falls, I didn't see any sign of human activity, so I didn't look further."

  "I think we need to scout out the valley all the way to the top, then drop down the valley on the other side of the pass."

  Ben replied, "That's a great idea count me in," so did Floyd, Bill and Ted.

  "Then it sounds like a plan, we have enough backpacks and bags for everyone. We can take two tents and use fire or stoves to cook. We have plenty of food we can bring and can supplement that by hunting and fishing."

  Fred said, "We even have a couple of MRE's left if we want them."

  Bill responded, "Thanks but no thanks."

  We all laughed because we all could relate to that.