First Weeks After by Jay Vielle

Author:Jay Vielle [Vielle, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-08T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Mark Longaberger was bored. He’d been sitting on the corner of the campus of Mt. St. Michael’s in his chair for hours next to the large church sign announcing the giant mandatory town meeting at Hunter’s Run High School. He had literally seen no one. Not a single vehicle passed by on Route 15, not a single human being had walked by on the campus. He understood why Father Joe had given him this last task. He was a good talker, a good promoter, and he was young enough to catch the eyes of college students and old enough to catch the eye of working adults and professors. Except for one, simple problem: nobody was there. Mark thought about the origins of his current state, wondering how things had gotten this way. Some things he knew, others he could only guess at.

The bombs that dropped the week before had left the country in limbo. When the very first attacks came, the news was all over it. They had identified the alliances made by foreign countries and speculated as to their reasons. They had taken note that the majority of the bombs that hit the U.S.—and one hundred percent of the ones that hit the Eastern seaboard of the country—were Russian in origin. They had noted that those bombs were taking out communications and people—but that the general destruction seen in past conventional wars seemed to be absent this time. The president had survived and was spirited away to an undisclosed location. So had much of Congress, as well as key military figures. That had happened quickly. And then the communication stopped completely.

For almost a week, not a single word about anything. It was weird, surreal, and something Americans were very, very unaccustomed to. During the global coronavirus pandemic earlier in the decade, people were sheltered in their homes. That had been strange, but the world had television and the internet. In fact, we had too much information during that world-wide lockdown.

This time was different. The Russians hit numerous broadcasting transmitters, satellite dishes, and communication arrays. It took a little while, but very soon we were completely in the dark. No one knew for certain what was going on. The Russians had found our Achilles heel, and delivered the killing arrow with frightening accuracy. The result had been near complete disconnection from one another and the world. As companies and individuals struggled to get back up and running, the result was communication that was sporadic, untrustworthy, and most often, useless. And our inability to communicate with one another made it nearly impossible to cooperate in the reconstruction of communication infrastructure. The long and short of it was that we didn’t really know anything for sure.

Some cities had been devastated in terms of human cost. Others were fairly untouched. Electricity was down in some places, working in others. Cell phones were usually useless, then for a few moments would receive messages and calls, only to die again later. The situation was maddening.

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