“What about this Red Tide? Tom?”
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack leaned forward in his seat. “I’ll echo what John said, Mister President. It’s a bad blow but we shouldn’t overestimate it. The Algal Bloom is confined to continental shelf areas and then only to isolated parts of that shelf. Those parts make up a substantial proportion of the total maritime area but by no means all of it. The bad news is, we’ve lost the fisheries in the continental shelf areas and that’s hit shellfish production, especially shrimp and lobster, and put the short-range fishing boats out of business. However, deep-sea fisheries and fish-farming are not affected so we’ve got a substantial proportion of our fish supply maintained. It’s the same around the world, shallow-water fishing is hammered but deep sea fishing and fish farming is all right. It’s a blow but its survivable.”
“How did this happen?”
General Schatten glanced at Secretary Vilsack who deferred to him. “At first we thought it was another case of seeding by angels but we’ve ruled that out. The Algal Bloom is a natural phenomena that is kicked off by excess nutrients in the water. Our current hypothesis is that an underwater gate was opened in various areas and a large volume of nutrient-rich sea water was injected into the areas affected. We think, and this is a guess Sir, that other attacks were made on deep-water areas but even with the extra nutrients the conditions there weren’t suitable and those parts of the attack failed. Another encouraging sign for us, Yahweh is nowhere near infallible.
“We know that no angels were responsible for this. We have a nation-wide portal detection network, we set that up as part of the response to the sky-volcano attacks. Now and then, it’s detected portals forming and fading away, we are more or less certain they’re the result of angels arriving and departing. Oddly there are concentrations of such formations around San Francisco, Las Vegas, El Paso and New Orleans. Why that is we do not know. One last thing Sir, the Uriel attacks, the mass die-offs? They’re moving north, towards us. One was reported in Honduras three days ago. Eight thousand dead.”
“Thank you.” Obama glanced around the room. “Now, the economy. Tim?”
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner laughed a little desperately. “What economy Sir? We don’t have one any more, we’ve got a train wreck instead. What most people don’t realize is that the economy was heading for a major crash before all this happened. People had borrowed too much money and couldn’t repay it, the banks had loaned money they had little or no hope of collecting and the whole house of cards was about to come down. As a matter of fact, it would have collapsed by now if it hadn’t been for the mobilization. We’ve been printing money like mad to pay for it, we’ve pumped trillions into the economy, nearly all of which has stayed here in the United States. The result, of course, is inflation which is only being stopped from reaching runaway proportions by price controls and rationing. The overall effect has been to devalue people’s debts. Also, because of triple-shift working at all the mobilized industries, the reopening of shuttered factories and so on, people have more money in their pockets. Rationing means there aren’t many things they can spend it on so they put it in the banks and that’s recapitalized them. After all, they can’t buy cars because no cars are being made for the civilian market, they can’t buy houses because the contractors are building defense installations instead. In economic terms, the mobilization is a massive stimulus program. The problem is, its all just building problems up for the future. When the controls come off, all economic hell will break loose.”
A grim silence ran around the conference room. At last Obama broke it. “Janet, internal security?”
“There, Barry, the situation is pretty good. Crime-rate is way, way down. Spree killings and so on have virtually stopped, it seems like the majority were the direct result of demonic possession. Street crime is way down as well, partly because everybody is working all hours of the day and are simply too tired and partly because the police, U.S. Volunteers and armed citizens are on the streets all the time. Street crime has just got too dangerous. We do have problems with what was called ‘the fifth column’ back in World War Two. Mostly, the remnants of the extreme religious groups who didn’t lie down and die with the rest. There have been some acts of obstructionism, trying to get in the way of military convoys and so on. A few cases of family members of serving military personnel being harassed. Most, all pretty short-lived, the perpetrators have no popular support and in a lot of cases, they’re lucky if the police get to them before the local citizens. You heard what happened to a guy called Phlops?”
The Cabinet shook its collective head.
“Well, he was the self-appointed leader of an extreme religious cult down south somewhere. Offshoot of the Baptist church although they disowned him a long time ago. Anyway, he and some members of his congregation started disrupting the funeral of some troops who got killed on active service. Yelling abuse at the family of the slain, saying the dead got what they deserved and so on. Anyway, the local population went berserk and lynched them. I mean really lynched. Phlops’s body was lashed behind a pick-up truck and dragged around city limits as a lesson to anybody else who might have the same idea in mind.”
“I sincerely hope the people responsible have been punished.”
“Of course, Phlop’s body started to come apart on the second circuit of the city limits. So the police pulled the truck in and charged the driver with dumping toxic waste. No other charges, nobody saw anything or could identify anybody. Oh yes, somebody tipped off a group of deceased troopers in Hell and they were waiting for Phlops when he turned up there. I understand the attitude adjustment was emphatic. But, Mister President, there are a whole load of issues that come out of this. What about capital punishment for example? Pretty much all the logical base behind many of our legal decisions has been swept away and we need to address that.”
The members of the Cabinet nodded thoughtfully. It wasn’t just criminal law that was being affected, the whole legal concept of death was being re-evaluated. Already the health services were beginning to ask how knowledge of Hell should affect the decisions they had to make. Did it really make sense to keep a dying person alive but in a vegetative state when all that was doing was delaying their transfer to a healthy life in an increasingly-comfortable Hell dimension? The philosophers were agonizing over these and many more related questions.
“Let us leave legal matters to the Supreme Court.” Obama spoke decisively. “Let them interpret existing law first before we start making new ones. That’s what they get paid for.”
Training Camp, 1st Mechanized Infantry Battalion (Demonic), Dis, Hell, May 2009
“Spread out, don’t bunch up. Stay grouped together like that and a single inbound artillery round will take you all out at once.”
The Baldricks forming the skirmish line stretched out on either side of their armored personnel carrier obediently shuffled further out, spreading their line as the gaps between them opened. For warriors who had spent millennia training to fight with their shoulders actually touching those on either side of them, it was an aching readjustment. The problems weren’t helped by the fact that all these Baldricks were veterans, some of the few survivors of Abigor’s and Beelzebub’s armies that were fit for military service.
Standing behind them, Sergeant Gray Anderson shook his head sadly. It was much easier training new recruits, they didn’t know anything. These Baldrick veterans were full of bad habits that they had to lose if they wanted to live on a modern battlefield. The shuffling stopped, Anderson sighed to himself, and repeated his instructions. “Spread out! Right out. At least twice as far as you are doing at the moment. Otherwise, you will all die.”