Chapter 2

I felt sorry for myself for the next few hours. Mostly I used my assets to take a peek at what was left of earth. I didn't bother looking over China or Russia or anyplace like that. I did take a look at Japan and it was a fucked up mess. I expected as much with it being an island and the tidal waves hadn't let me down.

Hawaii was as bad, or even worse. Most of the large hotels and other tourist attractions were destroyed if not completely submerged. I thought I could see a few newly made structures near some of the beaches and it looked to me as if everyone was hanging around them, mostly in rags. I could see big fires where cooking was going on, but I wondered how in the hell they were going to have anything to cook for very long. Oh well, they'd have nice warm weather to live out their days in.

Or would they. Several volcanoes had gone from dormant to active since the strike and tons of shit was being ejected into the atmosphere, not to mention all the shit that had been thrown up from the panama canal zone. In fact it seemed a cloud cover was forming worldwide. At least there hadn't been literal thousands of tons of sea water boiled off from the hot rocks that had come to ground. There was a little of that going on, but the water had mostly been boild off from where they hit the canal. More was pouring in of course, but not as fast as you'd think.

All in all Mexico City had the worst of it. They were close to ground zero and their dried up auqafer had collapsed letting the whole city sink several dozen feet. Their emergency services hadn't been much to start with and the destruction had about done them all in.

My leisurely perusal of the sad state of world affairs went undisturbed for nearly four more hours until I got a radio signal from earth. They almost sounded like they were amazed to get into contact with me, but it didn't slow them down. They started asking for downloads of the views from any of the cameras I now controlled.

Apparently the NASA facility that had been in nominal control of them was now underwater. The tidal waves generated by the incoming had shot directly up the ship channel. The first wave had upended several tankers in a critical spot and following waves had used the disabled ships to block off the channel and the water had spread fast.

With the help of some on the ground experts I was given more detailed instruction in using the new hardware and software they'd installed right near the end. They worked me long and hard for four straight hours before they noticed I was getting worn out. They suggested I take a short nap and said they'd call me if they came up against something they couldn't handle. They even promised to let me have at least four hours undisturbed. It didn't really work out that way though.

About eighty minutes later I got a call from Major Jenkins, the one who'd given me shit last time. It really pissed me off since it seemed like I'd only been sleeping about fifteen minutes.

I replied all right. "Let me speak to general Frankston," was all I said, and of course Jenkins tried to override my request."

I didn't have rank on him of course, but I was holding the whip and I laid it on him.

"Jenkins, if you don't get off the radio and let me speak to General Frankston you're not getting one more scrap of information from up here. I can and will cut off everything I've already turned on. Now, get your sorry ass off this radio and don't let me hear your voice again," I said, and stopped talking.

General Frankston must have been in earshot and I got to talk to him right away. I didn't end up cutting off anything, and Frankston asked me what was wrong right away. I explained about my four hour nap being cut to eighty minutes by Major Jenkins and just then he hit the ceiling down their, calling a couple of MPs over and having them escort Private Jenkins to his next post, on clean up detail outside.

Apparently Frankston realized I'd been pushed to the end of my twine already and he told me to go right back to sleep to start my four hour nap all over again. I'm sure he kept the mike keyed on purpose as he explained to the MPs they should shoot the next person who tried to disturb me before the four hours were up.

I went back to sleep, and woke just as my four hours were done. I went ahead and called down to ask them what was next. Something was surely changed down below because a slightly sexy voice replied and my instructions were relayed with a lot more tact than I was used to. From then on the only male I talked to was Frankston and I never had to wait long to talk to him again. I had several handlers down on the ground now, but they were all female and had very pleasant voices.

Of course I realized what they were doing and I didn't blame them one bit. They had me inserting bits of programming and testing it out and they also had me change some of the wiring. They were doing their best to get a handle on the equipment from down there and I was more than willing. I didn't want a position of power where I was, I wanted some relief. To tell the truth I already wanted to hop into the Russian machine and get my ass down.

Within a day it seemed that General Frankston wanted the same thing. In spare time he asked me what I wanted to do when I got down and I told him I wanted to see if I could equip myself to make it back to my hometown. I'd been using off time to look over darling little Atlanta, Texas and it seemed to be one of the least out of order places I could find. Hell, their street lights still came on at night and the whole town appeared to still have power.

During the day I could even see that the Wal-Mart Supercenter was still opening up. I did notice that things seemed to be moving back to horse drawn transportation, kinda, but there were still cars moving around. I wondered about fuel for the cars until I noticed the tanker truck for Smith Wholesalers still dropping fuel in their small tank farm and I even saw their small delivery tanker carrying fuel to their stations.

After about a week of smooth operations General Frankston again started asking me about what I wanted to do once I was on the ground. I told him what I wanted to do was get my fourwheel drive pickup running and get back to civilian life, or what passed for it now. He even made noises like it might be possible. Apparently they already had a handle on most of the country. He even told me that the conflicts we had been involved in were mostly winding down now.

Apparently the weather had not been kind to the middle east and especially not to North Korea or the Russians, whatever they were calling themselves now.

Russia was on the sharp end of the stick for the weather changes. It seemed the next ice age had arrived, or was at this moment arriving. Everyone in Russia had their eyes on the coming ice and they were about to shit or go blind over the details.