There was one daycare, the largest in the city and it had hundreds, if not more, of the little ones. One of the guys, without telling anyone, goes there the night before, sprays gasoline everywhere, and sets the whole thing afire. It burned the daycare and about another four blocks around it. The snow finally put it out, but nobody said a word to him about it. That place is full of dogwood trees now. It's a lovely spot.
What did you do when you finished?
I went home, but it took me awhile to function again, to see, once again, that life is more than death and pain, more than the torment that I had just lived through. My wife can be thanked for that. She was the rock my sorrows broke upon, a bedding of stone that kept me from washing away in memories. I'm lucky to have her, as are my kids.
After a few weeks home, they called me up and asked me to go to a new city. Can you believe that?
The Lieutenant Governor of Illinois?
No, this was a guy from New York. I laughed at the guy. I mean, I didn't want to be rude, but there was no way I was going through that again. Chicago had about three million in and around the city center. I can't imagine what it was like for those guys in New York and L.A. Though I know they couldn't do anything with L.A. because of the Veech using it as one of their bases.
I came home and promptly closed the family business. I had had enough of death, thank you. So, I opened a chicken farm. Yeah, I know it's funny, but people needed food then, and I know this will sound crazy, but chickens brought me hope. It's like when your kids were little and the house was always loud and chaotic, then one day, they all move out, and the place seems like an empty shell. Well, it was like that, except the opposite. I almost couldn't take the quiet, and then came the chickens. We ended up with hundreds of them. At first, we were going to sell the meat, but I just couldn't bring myself to kill them, so our home turned into the biggest egg company in Rockford.
Now, I hate eggs. (Smiles.)
Richard Osborne
Detroit, Michigan
It's fall in Detroit, and a cold wind is already blowing down from the North. In downtown Detroit, in front of me, stands a wall of containers stacked four high, which circles the downtown area. On the top of the containers, spaced 200 yards apart, stand steel towers of grey metal that watch over those who live inside.
Standing watch on the towers, appearing almost relaxed, are prison guards for one of the world's largest prisons. The Detroit prison was created during the Veech War to hold those who committed atrocities during the war. Every prisoner has a fifty-year sentence: no appeals, no probation, and no leaving for any reason.
The prisoners were told they could use what they found in the city but would not receive help of any kind. They are allowed to buy and sell goods to the outside world if they want. The prison has been practically forgotten in a land so torn by war. Despite the lack of interest in the prisoners' welfare, this was one of the most challenging interviews to get. I'm allowed in at my own risk.
I'm meeting Mark McCall, a former accountant. Mark is short, slim, and almost shy. He is the very picture of an accountant. I'm led through two gates of iron bars by a guard, who gives Mark a friendly nod, then closes the gate behind me.
John's a good guy, been working at the prison since the beginning. He buys some of our vegetables, then resells them, I think. Well, this is some of the land we reclaimed. (Points to trees planted in long rows parallel to the wall.) We planted apple trees here. I think there's about 1,000 of them, but not sure anymore. Let's walk down a ways. There's a picnic table we can sit at. (He leads me to a wooden picnic table and sits. I join him.)
After the sonic weapons, during the panic, things got out of control in many areas of America. I know some places weren't affected too hard, but unfortunately, I wasn't in one of those places. I lived in Reno when things there went from bad to worst so fast it was like someone had planned it. Like there was some script people followed to make things get as bad as possible, and make no mistake, that's what happened.
We saw the sonic weapons hit the cities, and we saw the aliens land troops in America. At first, most people didn't panic, at least not in Reno, but it didn't take long for the criminal element to stand up and see that nobody cared about policing them anymore. They crept from the dark and basked in a light where no one noticed them. So, they did what petty criminals do. They destroyed, robbed, and plagued the people who count on the government to take care of them.
I had a wife and two daughters, both young. We lived in an affluent area of Reno, a gated community that was supposed to be safe. (Smiles sadly.) We stayed in our house as gangs rode up and down the street, yelling, shooting guns, and breaking into homes. We called the police, but all the signals were busy when there was a signal at all. So we waited and prayed that help would come. It never did. I didn't have a gun. Didn't believe in them
