Midnight by Anna Dove (books for new readers .TXT) 📕

“Yes, I see.”

A pause.

“Where is she now?” asked Carlos.

“Von Gorben? Dead.”

“No,” breathed Haley.

“Saw the obit in the newspaper.”

“When?”

“2021. December. Long time ago”

“No...I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. She’s nothing to me now. It was foolish in the first place.”

The fire had burned down a little, and the coals burned hot under the charred logs.

“Wait a minute,” said Carlos slowly. He looked at Elizabeth and leaned forward intently. “Elizabeth—what time did you overhear that conversation with Reed?”

Elizabeth frowned, her mind still focused on Jack’s story.

“I don’t know—I suppose it was around 10pm that night.”

“No, I need you to think,” urged Carlos, and his tone grew very serious. He clasped his hands in front of him, and his face had sobered deeply. “I need you to think now.”

“Why—I’m not entirely sure—Carlos, what’s the matter?”

“Was it after we ate?”

“Yes.”

“About thirty minutes after everyone finished and began to mingle?”

“Yes…I think so.”

“Oh...my god,” said Carlos. He froze, his gaze fixed on Elizabeth’s face, and then opened his mouth and shut it again, and Haley could see even in the low firelight that he had turned very pale.

“What is it? You’re scaring me,” said Elizabeth.

“I know who he was talking to. Who Reed was talking to—because I was in her bedroom when she took the call, and she stepped into her bathroom but I heard her—she said that she was worried about tomorrow, and then said that she trusted him, and said that she would see him tomorrow—I can’t remember what else…” He stopped talking, as the words caught in his throat.

“Carlos, who? Who is she?”

Carlos buried his face in his hands and took a deep breath. He waited a full sixty seconds before speaking.

“She was... having an affair with me...Adela…” he uttered the last name in a tone Haley had never before heard, one filled with a strange mix of reverence, shock and horror.

“Adela?” cried Haley.

“Yes—” said Carlos dully, after a long pause. “The First Lady.”

19.  August

“I am not concerned that you have fallen -- I am concerned that you arise.”

―

Abraham Lincoln

If we were to read about the attack in a history book, it would be labeled the greatest devastation that the United States of America had ever suffered. All wars in which the U.S. had participated, from the American Revolution to Afghanistan, paled in terms of death toll. The historians would pause for a moment as they penned down how two hundred and three million people had died in the four months after April 23, 2033, how the vibrant cities had turned into temporary cesspools of crime and decay, how the suburbs starved and invaded each other’s homes or fled to wilderness in an attempt to survive, how farmlands in the east had been ransacked by their neighbors, how the Appalachians had experienced a barrage of people fleeing to their woods and lakes, how the farms on the Midwestern plains could not process their foods for distribution, how the southwestern coast had caught fire in July and descended into a picture of hell itself, how the northwestern coast had choked in the smoke and fumes wafting from below.

Public and private transportation, which had transitioned since the turn of the century from gas dependent to electricity dependent, was useless. Trains sat empty on the lots like sleeping iron monsters, rusting on their tracks. Electric cars, as we know, wrecked in the street or stopped dead in the highways or refused to start, and gas powered cars only drove as far as their existing tank of fuel allowed.

Production and distribution of food and supplies immediately stopped, due to the surge of violence. Factories shut down, as most of them relied on electricity to power the processing machines. Businesses closed their doors, both from fearing violence and from the realization that their banking, their operations, their processes, were carried out online.

Hospitals found themselves in the dark, and could not treat many of their patients. After a few days, as the death toll rose, they sent patients home regardless of the medical situation and locked their doors, fearing assault as people would want the drugs stored inside, and anticipating that the number of sick and injured would soon skyrocket.

Law enforcement at the state and local level at first attempted to operate normally, but as the violence increased, and the prisons and jails (locked electrically) were emptied, they found that their presence was useless. They returned to their own families to focus on their own survival.

The Department of Defense, having developed a communications system impervious to electromagnetic attack, maintained operations in the Pentagon, notifying troops worldwide, cautioning airlines approaching U.S. airspace to return or land elsewhere, and serving as a protective hub from which other federal agencies could operate. The Secretary of State could be found there, as well as the Secretaries of Energy, Agriculture and Transportation, having been specifically sought out by the DOD.

We would read that the United Nations, within minutes of the attack as communicated by the Department of Defense, pledged to protect the United States against military invasion. NATO countries readied themselves to attack whoever had perpetrated the EMP. We would read that the Canadian Prime Minister and the Mexican President both sent coalitions to the borders to help American citizens who were fleeing north and south, providing emergency temporary visas for American citizens seeking refuge. We would turn the page and read that the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, China, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and Mexico began working together in an unprecedented display of cohesiveness to lead the development of an international economic initiatives that would prevent a global depression.

The international community did not fail as the United States crumbled backwards. They placed a soft cushion to protect its fall from breaking bones,