After The Day

Congress was having an emergency session. The state of emergency that they were under was becoming a new norm. Every three months was a new fight for a budget deal. They never discussed creating a budget that reduced the deficit but instead would try to justify keeping things normal. They would reduce the budget for things like health coverage, food stamps, and other social programs while their coverage stayed normal and in some cases increased because of national security. The fight was getting worse on Capitol Hill. The Tea Party had come back with a vengeance with new support from the minorities. The senators, with help of other members of the Republican Party, were hell bent on blocking the new budget. Looking at a debt of twenty trillion dollars, the public was backing the fight to cut spending and reduce cost from the government. The President flew back from Hawaii to do a few speeches for damage control and try to pass the new bill. With the Federal Reserve tapering off the flow of money into the stock market, the unemployment in the U.S. started to rise. Under-employment had already surpassed 25% and the official unemployment was quickly reaching 10%. Still Congress acted unaffected and tried to continue on as if everything was normal. CNN and the other news channels had minute to minute coverage of the battle on Capitol Hill. The senators and congressmen argued back and forth. The Republicans held their ground and the clock was ticking towards another government shutdown. The President was scheduled to deliver a speech before congress addressing the state of the economy and how things would be worse if the budget was not passed. At 9am he would take the podium. He would have taken the podium, if the podium still existed. If the Capitol Building still existed. If there was a Congress that still existed. In the flash of light that blinded the city for a split second all the problems of budget, party lines, national defense, international policy, public welfare, social security, domestic spying, terrorism, was gone. The question of who detonated the bomb was speculation. The news channels ran with the normal finger pointing towards terrorists and Al Qaeda. For the few hours they were still on the air, rumors spread and that was all they had. Talking heads with worthless information. All commerce stopped, ports were closed, trains didn't run, trucks continued on the highways but were soon dead hunks of metal when diesel was no longer delivered to gas stations. After the power went out and never came back on America was dead. That was the final bullet to the head. Communication was limited, travel was non-existent. Police no longer went to work. National Guard couldn't receive orders to show up to work. Without the delivery of food, cities soon went into chaos. With hunger came disease. In a year the population was a fraction of what it was.