In densely populated areas of Canada, and U.S. regions just south of the Canadian border, numbers were decreasing so quickly that it was entirely possible that they would experience a 50% loss of human life by the end of the first week. And nobody was coming to save them.
Every vehicle still running and the people in them who couldn’t find a warm place to stay, headed south on the major snowbound highways—many with nothing more than the gas in their tanks, which gave them about 300 miles at the most with the vehicle’s heater on at full power.
With no snowplows to clear the roads, the conditions were treacherous, and many skidded off the icy roads and couldn’t get any further. There, the occupants had to find new shelter or perish once their heaters stopped working.
Many of the survivalist-types found farm houses or rural communities where they were accepted and taken into the warmth of the homes, often dealing with frostbite on several parts of their bodies.
Chapter 1
Captain Mike Mallory – Escape from New York
Captain Mallory was working hard. It had been exactly twenty four hours since he had taxied to the end of the runway at La Guardia and waited to be cleared for take-off. They had been running 30 minutes late on their flight down to Reagan International in Washington, with airport authorities de-icing the aircraft for ice build-up only an hour earlier.
There were well over 100 boxes waiting for what he thought were their customs clearance—either incoming or outgoing. What interested him were the military vehicles and several of the military looking boxes heading out of the country.
Many of the passengers did not want to take part in the search, several complaining that it was against the law to look inside what did not belong to them. The captain understood and agreed philosophically with the passengers, but what he had seen out of the window made him certain that there wasn’t much chance of being saved by orderly troops or police coming down the street. The passengers hadn’t seen the devastation of the aircraft in the skies above New York the way he had witnessed the destruction through the cockpit window. There had been many aircraft with hundreds of passengers each, exploding and crashing into each other. The passengers had only seen the world around their flight and he knew they did not understand what was really happening outside.
An angry passenger shouted to the flight crew helping the captain that he was an important government official and nothing should be touched; they were breaking the law and everybody should just sit tight until the government, police or Army came and rescued them. He was adamant that they should just sit down and leave the property alone. It belonged to the U.S. Government and he would see that there were repercussions once help arrived.
John, the co-pilot, got angry and asked him if he would like to go and get help. He would be happy to open the door for him and he could bring back the U.S. Cavalry anytime he wished. The bleating man grew quiet and blended back into the crowd of passengers.
The cases weren’t badly broken, just opened gently with crowbars, and the higher cases were brought down with the fully-operational gas-powered forklift and checked for food or weapons. So far, every case had been packed with electrical gadgets. There were large wooden boxes full of toys, iPhones, and every other type of communication tools by the thousands—new and shiny plastics commodities that were now useless to them. One case, however, had red, Chinese-made 5-gallon gas canisters which might come in useful.
Captain Mallory looked at his Rolex. It was ten minutes to midnight when they got back to the military vehicles and the nine cases in that area that had military insignia and markings on them. These cases were uniform in size and were about three feet by nine feet and packed three high on long pallets.
The co-pilot, now qualified enough to ‘fly’ a forklift, brought the first of three military cases down from the top rack. The first wooden case was hard to open. The wood was at least an inch thick and the box was built well.
With considerable pressure on the crowbar, they finally opened it, and the captain moved away light straw packing to find a 9-foot long missile of some sort sleeping peacefully inside. It looked sleek and deadly, and there were at least a dozen of them in the case. It was certainly not something to be close to if this building went up in flames.
The second and third cases on the top tier were brought down and revealed the same contents. He thought about leaving the other six alone, when he noticed that the numbers on the cases in the second tier were different. John brought the first case down and the captain found what he was looking for—weapons. They had found the best, a case of brand new M4 carbines with all their fancy attachments. Captain Mallory and his co-pilot had been briefed on these weapons as part of their anti-terrorist training with the airline, and they had completed a two-day course on firing M16s and M4s—a shorter barreled weapon that might show up in cockpits as protection sometime in the future.
There were five new and complete M4s in separate boxes in the case, on top of hundreds of boxes of ammunition. There were also boxes of night sights and single rifle grenades—just what he wanted to arm his crew with.
The problem was that there were six cases of them, and all he wanted was a few of the weapons. He knew that the bad elements out on the street would have a field day with these if they came across them. This pile of military equipment would certainly go up with a pretty loud bang if fire ever got into this area. The boxes had been destined for Somalia. He found himself questioning why these materials were being sent there, of all places, but he knew it was not up to him to question. Suddenly, however, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up—there could be hundreds of other military supplies in the warehouses around here. His mind was made up. They were definitely leaving in the morning.
Smoke and the smell of fire and burning debris was getting worse outside. The passenger lookout on the second floor came down to give a report. Captain Mallory walked back with the girl, looked out of the second story window, and saw that the horizon above the buildings on the opposite side off the street to the north was getting brighter and brighter. Was it the sun or was it fire? He couldn’t tell, but they could now work better with the brighter light coming through the windows.
Captain Mallory suggested to the couple of dozen of faithful helpers around him—his crew and many of the male passengers—that it was time to get the contents of at least one case of guns to the vehicles, then get the fuel through the door and pump as much into the five vehicles’ fuel tanks as possible. Any remaining gas in the drums could then be lifted into the SWAT trucks. John, the co-pilot reminded the captain that the forklift could not get through the doorway.
“No problem,” replied the Captain. “I saw a case of green garden hoses back there and there is a manual gas pump in the workshop. We can push a full barrel on its side, get a rope around it, and have a team pull it through the doorway into the other room on its side. Then we can right it, and use the manual pump.”
It took the first hour to empty the military cases and share the guns and ammo between the five vehicles. It took another hour before all the vehicle fuel tanks were filled and they knew how much fuel was left over—about 40 gallons in one drum on the back of a SWAT vehicle. For another half an hour, the team searched for food and loaded all they could into the vehicles. It was a reasonable amount, including several pounds of cheese, a case of caviar, several dozen cases of frozen sausages and steaks found in the freezer with “Produce of Australia” stamped on them, dozens of 1-gallon bottles of frozen orange juice, frozen carrots from New Zealand, a case of Japanese rice wine, two bags of Indian rice, and several boxes of Swiss chocolates. They also found and stored one of the gas grills with a couple of bottles of propane, three large steel turkey cookers, and two working gas heaters with full bottles of propane.