“I’m not sure. You could cause him to crash which would rig the betting. I’ll have to ask the captain if it’s okay for members of the crash and burn family to bet.”
Ariden laughed so hard she spit up her hot chocolate made from an MRE she had picked over. She ate the cookie, the peanut butter crackers, and the hot chocolate, leaving what she called mystery meat. Her mother told her it was meat loaf, but Ariden laughed and replied, “Even school had better mystery meat.”
Jon returned fifteen minutes later with the keys to a new vehicle, Erin asked, “What did we get this time?”
Jon struggled to hold in a laugh. “The captain said he was loaning, his words, loaning us something we couldn’t break and if we did, it would be a first.”
“What is it?”
“They call it an MRAP. It’s a huge truck designed to survive mines and IEDs which are like bombs.”
“Oh great, can you drive it?”
“I did in the back of the motor pool. It’s just a large heavy truck. It doesn’t handle like a car or SUV but then again, we’re not going to be driving very quickly. We’re number twenty in line. They don’t know when we’re leaving. They want to solve the mystery of what happened to the people who were here and have disappeared, every last one is gone. They also showed me where we can rest, there are four beds in one room with a private bath. We can go there until we’re called. Someone is coming by with fresh uniforms for us and bathroom stuff, toothbrushes, and that sort of thing.”
Erin smiled at the idea of washing her hair with army shampoo.
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It took 30 months for the construction of two additional secure military and political shelters to be built. The Cold War government relocation shelter at Mount Weather had been destroyed by the massive tidal waves from the splinters hitting the Atlantic Ocean. Raven Rock was on edge of the freeze line, most thought it would be covered by the glaciers, so it was out. A crew had volunteered to remain in Cheyenne Mountain knowing they may not be able to leave once the glaciers arrived. They would become a self-contained community. There was enough food to sustain them for over fifty years and underground springs ensured they had enough water. Their communications network consisted of buried fiber cables, most of which survived so they’d remain in communications with the other shelters.
One shelter was cut into a small mountain/hill outside of Austin, Texas another was buried under the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. The Austin airport used to be a SAC bomber base and had hidden bunkers and shelters under it. Since most people had long ago forgotten about them, this made a perfect back up location for the military operations center. The shelter under the Arsenal was huge, large enough for over five thousand people to live and work. The President chose to relocate to Austin which placed him closer to the colonies being built in Central America and the new cities built in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and in every state under the freeze line. Massive forests were cut down for their wood and to make space for the new towns. The average house size was set at 1,800 square feet, much closer to the size of homes in the early 1960s. They were all built from a single plan, hence remembering your house number was very important. The roads went unpaved to save time and resources. The new homes came as a shock to many. Many protested only to learn they could remain in the tents they had initially moved into or take the house assigned to them.
The assigning of homes instead of selling them to the refugees caused friction with existing homeowners who felt these new communities devalued their homes and the refugees got their homes for free while the existing homeowners were paying their mortgages to banks and credit unions. One compromise the government agreed on was that the refugees who arrived without a vehicle would have to buy one, instead of the government assigning them one.
All of the industries that had been located above the freeze line also had to move. This created problems when company A resettled in Dallas and many of their workers had been resettled in Abilene. President Lanoha decided he’d instruct HHS to see if they could relocate people close to any existing family or where their employer was. When both spouses worked, and their companies were in different locations, the family was given a short time to decide where to go. The Secretary of HHS told the President having to work out where people wanted to go vs where towns were ready for them was causing massive delays, ones they couldn’t afford. President Lanoha told HHS to do the best they could, but they had to get everyone moved who wanted out before the glaciers arrived.
When the sky darkened from the tons of debris thrown into the atmosphere, the sunlight was cut off. Without sunlight, crops died. Without crops, feed animals died. The food supply was drying up and, in some countries, starvation became the number one killer. President Lanoha had ordered a crash program of installing UV lights in caves to grow crops and to move as many animals as possible south. HHS and the Department of the Interior told the President it was going to be a choice of land for people or animals. They were told to figure it out, but both were needed. Hence, the single-family home project came to a
