services garage, Corinne walked around most of the chattel in her way. She was bumped and jostled as she tried to make her way over to the west side exit; to the same door that she had entered through only an hour and a half before.
In an oddly calm way, everyone started forming lines. They all still expected to be given something and anybody holding a ration card from Social Services split into a separate queue from those trying to get up the stairs in to the Bank. Fuel backed the city’s municipal stipend program and ran its vehicles and generators, without fuel the city was as good as lost again.
By making a cut-back across the lobby, Corrine made it around the thickest concentrations. Everyone in the room, except her knew that something was starting to go wrong at the head of the lines. The shouting was growing steadily louder.
“What did he say?” the crowd mumbled behind her.
“Why did this have to happen to me?” Corinne’s mind demanded.
“I don’t want to deal with this shit.” This she said aloud, but only after reaching the hollow acoustics and solitude offered by a vestibule near the back stairwell and elevator. The small act of breaking the law by swearing inside City Hall seemed outrageously unfulfilling.
Failing to stalwart herself, Corinne mumbled curse words at the world the entire way to her car. The thought of going home gave her even more grief. There was really only one place else that she could go, and she was looking at it from across the street.
Thoughts of the life spent with her mother came out of waiting, which then morphed into laughable visions of a miraculous reconciliation. This was followed by harrowing thoughts of moving back into the Warehouse. Still, she had not fully accepted what was happening all around her yet. Corinne heedlessly charged ahead with trying to come up with a plan, without reaching out for Daniel’s or her mother’s help.
“Maybe I should just wait here for a while. Let the line die down a bit. It would save me a trip back…How much pay do I have coming?” The torrent flowed, letting the willful ignorance well back up into place.
Counting the days backwards, Corinne came to the total of four. Four days’ worth of pay was worth thirty-two stipends. She did the math several times just to be sure, and to postpone the next thought from forming.
“What should I buy?” Corinne worriedly asked the warm air inside her car. “Mayor Jackass said the Warehouse was closed, right?”
Her procrastination had managed to slow the thought, but it could not be stopped indefinitely by just wishful-thinking alone. In the end reality cannot be shooed away so easily. The brutally honest perception of exactly where she was in life hit her with all the force of the worst case of cramping ever. It was all over.
Panic coursed through her limbs, making them start to itch and shake. It felt like bugs crawling all over her skin.
“I have to get home.” This fully resolved thought was not said calmly.
The two things that Corinne thought about while driving away was the way Chief Campbell had said ‘my police personnel’ and the amount of burnt or empty houses that encircled their home.
“What neighbors, huh? Tell me that,” she laughed, in nervous humor.
……..
While still wearing a grease-streaked, white lab coat and protective earmuffs, Frank Keller was dumped into a freshly-dug hole and covered over with loamy soil. Frank had been the head civil engineer in charge of the Powertrain Warren Power Plant. He had also stopped answering the hails coming from the military-style radio.
A small contingent of D.o.C. troops, part of Project Overwhisper, the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, was sent overland in two LAV-25s and one M915A5 line-haul tractor truck from the Selfridge Air National Guard base to reclaim the tanker of fuel that kept the “Plant” operational. The squad had to call in for new orders when they arrived to find the generator still operating. Frank Keller was summarily executed for not turning off the power on Sunday night. He had been directed to do so by the Department of Continuance. Issued directives from the D.o.C., after all, were not suggestions.
The power plant itself was a four kilowatt generator, housed inside a windowless, soundproofed building within the same industrial complex as the Warehouse. The power plant formerly supplied backing power to the square mile of the General Motors Technical Center. It now supplied power to the small grid