One Second After [117]
And yet ironically, at the same time, at least according to Voice of America, there were signs that some recovery was going on, down along the coast.
The federal government was reconvened, functioning aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln, and martial law was still in effect. There were reports that the corn and wheat harvest of the Midwest would be brought in and train lines reopened to move the bulk goods. Headquarters for the south-
east emergency government had been established in Charleston and daily reports now issued about the progress of rebuilding, even a claim that a nuclear power plant in Georgia had been brought back online, but it seemed like any progress being made was moving along the coast or slowly edging towards Atlanta. He wondered if someone up the command chain had decided to "triage off" upper South Carolina and western North Carolina.
There had been overflights, though. Fighters several times, a C-17 transport, and Asheville finally admitted that replacement parts for generators for the hospital had been airlifted in.
Asheville was playing its cards close. The phone line that Black Mountain had started had been run into the county office in Asheville, but the communications were rather one-sided, as if the director there resented the showdown over refugees versus water supply.
The thought that some kind of medical supplies had been lifted into Asheville had made John wild, Washington having to nearly physically restrain him from driving straight there and demanding some fresh insulin. He had personally telephoned Burns, who still was running Asheville, and begged for any information on insulin and Burns flatly announced none had come in and even if it had, he would not release any outside of the town no matter what.
Insulin, John was obsessed with it. Two days ago Jennifer's blood sugar was up. She had taken an injection, and it was still up.
He had finally gone for Makala and she carefully examined Jennifer, then took him aside.
"The three remaining bottles. They might have spoiled," was all Makala would say.
It had finally taken three times the normal dose to bring Jennifer's level back down.
Her time had been cut by two-thirds.
And help, if it was indeed help, was still as far away as the far side of the moon.
Of the other diabetics in the town, over half were dead, the others dropping off fast.
He turned off the motor of his car, sat back, and lit another cigarette, the sixth of the day ... oh, the hell with it and the counting out.
He sat there, smoked, looking at the interstate, cars still stalled where they had died over two months ago.
Somehow we've all been playing a game of reality avoidance with ourselves, even on Day One, he realized.
Anyone with even the remotest understanding of EMP and the threat to the nation should have been going insane before it hit. During World War II the entire nation had been mobilized, all the talk of loose lips sinking ships, the scrap drives, the guards on railroad bridges in Iowa. Much of it was absurd when the threat was finally understood, long after the war was over. There were no legions of spies and saboteurs in America, and the few who were in place or attempted to infiltrate were caught within days by the FBI. There was a threat, and though remote, it was at least acted on back then. But this time? The threat was a hundred times worse and they did nothing, absolutely nothing. Angrily he stubbed out the cigarette and lit another.
If everyone had been educated to it, the same way Civil Defense had once been in the curriculum of every school back in the 1940s and 1950s, if people knew the simple things to do on Day One, Charlie already trained to react to an EMP, mobilize his forces and react quickly ... if they had but a few simple provisions stocked away, the same way anyone who lives in hurricane or tornado country does, would they be in this mess?
The crime, the real crime was those who truly knew the level of threat doing nothing to prepare or prevent it. Bitterly he wondered if they were suffering as the