John Barnes - Directive 51

“That’s the story,” Cam said, “a big, cold wet storm, crossing the northern US or possibly veering south, within a few days. Bad enough to cause death from exposure. What should we prepare for? Anyone got something to say about the impact of that?”

Steve from Deep Black nodded and pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. “We’re still getting pretty decent data from reconnaissance drones flying off carriers—not as detailed as we would like because they have to stay high up to avoid catching nanoswarm and taking it back to the carriers. But what we see looks semi-okay. The impromptu evacuation of the cities in the Northeast is going faster than we hoped—lots of people are just walking out, with whatever they can carry in shopping carts and wheelbarrows. Private motor traffic seems to have stopped completely; we think there are probably almost no tires left, and so many biotes around that the few tires there are don’t last long.

“We see high densities of people walking out of the big cities on highways. The flow started early this morning, right after the regular trucks didn’t come in and the grocery stores ran out of a lot of staples. Still a lot of people staying put and hoping it will get better right now, of course, but as they see people streaming out, they’ll probably start to move, themselves.

“That’s the good news. The bad news is, we’re not seeing any evidence that they’re turning off the road and getting indoors much of anywhere; it’s warm enough today for them to keep walking. Most of them have been moving for less than twenty-four hours, so to some extent they may still have scruples, and to some extent the people they’re meeting are in the same situation they are—there’s big parts of the Northeast Corridor where you can’t really walk to a real evacuation area in less than a week—”

“Just for my information,” Graham Weisbrod said, “by ‘ real evacuation area’ you mean… ?”

“A place it makes sense to evacuate them to, rather than just the same bad situation farther up the road. If there’s no food, no heat, hardly any shelter, then traveling there isn’t really evacuation—at best it just gets them closer to the real evacuation point later. From well north of Boston to down past Richmond, we’ve got a band of highly populated areas that are about a week’s walk from real evacuation areas.”

“So to live they’ll have to walk for a week without food or a warm place to sleep?”

Cam said, “That’s right. They’ll start to improvise tonight and tomorrow night, when it gets cold and they’re hungry. They’ll start knocking on doors, and then knocking down doors; there’s going to be some violence, and a lot of people will be building fires out of whatever they can find, and wherever there’s something to loot, there’ll be looting.

“Then each successive wave coming out of the deep population centers is going to be worse; by the time the last ones make it out, they’re going to be really dangerous and not especially sane, and that’s what people will be out there as the storm hits. Which means a lot of them will die and solve the problem of themselves for us, but while they’re doing it they’ll tear up the areas they manage to reach pretty badly.”

Steve fidgeted. “I saw some of the pictures a couple hours ago. Take I- 80 across New Jersey and into eastern Pennsylvania—we got some photos from there—pictures from the air show literally hundreds of miles of highways covered with people walking. The highways run through huge suburban areas of single-family housing; once it gets dark, and especially when the cold and the rain hit the refugees, those little suburban houses will be obvious targets, and basically you’ll have a… I mean, I don’t want to sound… but that crowd on the highways, hungry, cold, nobody there to tell them what to do—”

“They’re going to hit that suburban tract housing like a ravening barbarian horde,” Graham Weisbrod said. “Which they’ll be.” His face was drawn and tight as if he were watching it happen already. “Not because they’re bad or even because they’re angry, but because… well, hell, I think about my kids when they were little and helpless, I imagine them hungry, crying, and cold, and yeah, I’d break down a man’s door and maybe kill him just for a can of beans for the kids, especially if I’d had all day to stew and think about the fact that no one was coming to help and how I needed it more than the guy who still had a house, until I rationalized it all. It might be hard to talk myself into that the first time, but by the second time on the third day, it would be business as usual.”

Heather was the last drop-off for the biohazard Hummer, and he invited her to move up to the front seat “for two more eyes and one more gun.” He left the scanner running; no signal on any emergency bands. KP-1 was holding on, broadcasting government announcements from Pittsburgh. The midshipmen at Annapolis had hand-built a radio station they were calling Radio Blue and Gold; a young-sounding kid was reading the morning’s Advertiser Gazette over the air. A faint, sputtering station that claimed to be coming from RPI’s physics lab came in for a second, then faded.

I left a mountain of chow on the floor for Fuss and Feathers, and set out five litter pans; they’ll be all right for a week, which is more than you can say for us.

The driver said, “I don’t want to try to go all the way to this address in Chevy Chase. Last reports, an hour ago, there was a lot of bad stuff going down. The minute I drop you off, I’m swinging over west, picking up my family, and heading out, as far and fast as I can. Listening to all the nice people I’ve been driving, I’ve heard about the two-hundred-mile dying zones around the cities, there ain’t gonna be any United States in another week, it seems to me, and I’ve got one of the few vehicles that can keep running, at least for a while, and if I take it right now to haul my family, maybe they can live.”

Heather thought about her sidearm in its shoulder holster; this was a deserter who was stealing a vital piece of government property. Lenny was alone and his apartment block was an obvious target; they could set the building on fire, or just break in from too many sides at once, or maybe just plug an exhaust pipe on his generator. Getting to him was the first priority.

“Look,” she said, “I probably can’t stop you anyway, and I guess in your place I’d be thinking of the same thing, but how far up Connecticut Avenue can you take me? I’ve got a friend who might be trying to hold his place against god knows what; that’s the Chevy Chase address you have. It’s more than twenty miles to his place, so I’d never make it before dark. Take me as close as you feel okay with, please? A few hours, and being there before dark, might be life and death.”

“You got it, lady. But the first time I hear a shot or see a mob, you’re out, and I’m running, clear?”

“Clear,” she said.

They had turned off Connecticut, less than a mile from Lenny’s place, when a big crowd spilled onto the street three blocks ahead. The driver whipped a U-turn and stopped for an instant. “Here’s where you get out, ma’am. Thanks for understanding.”

Heather jumped out, her bag already on her back, and slammed the Hummer door. She zagged left and put a mailbox between her and the crowd in the street.

She’d only really seen looting in training films; it just wasn’t something that likely for her to encounter in her areas of law enforcement, security, or intel. They always told us to go around (how far off a main street? How much delay?) or go past (what’s all the running and yelling about there, anyway? But I don’t see any guns). As she cautiously approached, she saw that the people running in and out were teenagers and younger, and the crowd in the street was overwhelmingly mothers and grandmothers. By the front door, a stack of empty coolers with a HELP YOURSELF sign showed how the manager had gotten rid of the frozen foods the day before.