“It’s like Hiroshima and Katrina all rolled into one,” the voice on the TV intoned.
The marquee along the bottom of the screen scrolled by with an incessant list of missing, killed, and injured, from Miami to Boston. The numbers had skyrocketed since yesterday, and they included warnings that most communications with authorities in the affected areas had been disrupted, so the actual numbers were likely higher.
“Three hundred thousand presumed dead…” gasped Cami.
“This can’t be happening,” Amber whispered. She turned and ran from the kitchen, sobbing.
Mitch looked after her, then at Cami.
“Go,” Cami croaked, her voice tight with emotion. “She needs a friend.”
Mitch got up and walked away, silent as a ghost. He stopped in the hallway and took a last look at the TV, then lowered his head and followed Amber.
Cami kept her eyes on the screen, her vision blurring as the news team switched to scenes from Baltimore, recorded earlier in the day. Fires had erupted in the larger skyscrapers, blotting the sky with ugly black plumes. Trash swirled in the air currents and created what looked like flocks of white birds, funneled down the ruined streets and concrete canyons of the old city.
Like Charleston, most of the buildings lining the bay had been utterly wiped off the earth. Water still streamed over ramparts and wharves, pooling back into the eerily calm harbor, but everywhere the land had been stripped bare.
The scene shifted to New York, and Cami let out a sob of shock. Several taller skyscrapers had fallen and crushed the smaller surrounding buildings. Smoke billowed up into the sky, reminiscent of 9-11, and helicopters buzzed over the mess as if a hornet’s nest had been overturned by a careless teenager. Boats littered the streets and a handful of somber gray Navy ships dotted Long Island Sound, moving to and fro on missions Cami couldn’t fathom.
“What about Boston? And Maine?” she begged the TV, but the reporter droned on about the unimaginable destruction to some of America’s largest cities. “This can’t be happening…”
She grabbed her cellphone with shaking hands to tap out messages to Reese. She told him she loved him, that she missed him, and that she begged him to be safe and come home as soon as possible. She told him that she and Amber were safe at home and that Mitch was with them and…
Cami dropped the phone and let it skitter across the table. Her eyes spilled over with tears and she collapsed into a chair, sobbing. Everything she’d been holding in for the past 36 hours exploded to the surface and she gave up trying to keep it in check. She let the anger and fear flow through her and cried it all out.
She didn’t know how long she’d allowed herself to wallow, but it was the sound of a strong voice, a confident voice, proclaiming that America would get through the disaster like it had all others, which finally grabbed Cami’s attention. She looked up, wiped tears from her face, and flipped a lock of wet hair out of her bleary eyes.
The TV had switched to a press conference in Denver while she’d cried, and an older man in a severe suit stood before an array of microphones, with a phalanx of serious-looking people behind him. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. The label at the bottom of the screen said Jack Faulkner, President Pro-Tem.
“President Pro-Tem?” Cami muttered, sniffing. As his speech died down, he turned and left the stage, followed by all the people behind him. The reporter picked up where the politician had ended.
“There you have it folks, the former Secretary of the Interior, now officially sworn in as President Pro-Tem, until such time as the whereabouts of the President, Vice President, and upper leadership of Congress can be determined. Trying are the times we’re living through, but as you can see, the system works, and we will have at least some measure of stability.”
“Whaaat?” Cami gasped. If the Secretary of the Interior had been sworn in as president, then the destruction in D.C. was much worse than she’d feared. The U.S. government had effectively been decapitated.
“We turn next to continuing coverage of the power crisis, as the damage to the nation’s electrical grid is still being assessed. That hasn’t stopped rolling brown outs—and in some areas of the Midwest, full-on blackouts—from taking place.” The picture of the harried reporter behind the anchor desk was replaced with a map of the United States. The east coast was swathed in black, a red line, jagged and uneven, pulsated halfway from the coast to the Appalachian Mountains, all the way from Florida to Maine.
Cami put a hand to her mouth. The dead zone was far worse than just a dozen miles along the coast.
“Conservative estimates place around a hundred million people without power along the eastern seaboard this afternoon. What’s left of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston, Jacksonville, and Miami are totally in the dark. Reports of spotty service are coming in from all along communities in the Appalachian Mountains, and blackouts have happened as far west as Denver, as the nation’s grid struggles to stay online.”
The map turned gray between the dead zone and Denver, sometimes clear and sometimes hazy, to simulate unstable power delivery. “West of the Rockies, localized blackouts are occurring but along the Pacific coast, brownouts—both scheduled and unscheduled—are happening more frequently as the day heats up and air conditioning demand soars. Representatives of the nation’s major electric providers are meeting in teleconferences at the moment, discussing…”
“It’s happening, then,” Amber said, her voice distant and dreamlike.
Startled, Cami fussed with her hair, trying to hide the fact she’d been crying. She looked at her daughter. Amber’s eyes were red and puffy, and her cheeks glistened. “Oh, sweetie…”
“Everything you said is coming true,” Mitch pointed out,
