After the Day- Red Tide Read online

  After The Day: Red Tide

  Book 2 of the Future Collapse

  Written by: Matthew P Gilman

  Edited by: Kara E Stanton

  Preface

  I would first like to thank everyone for the success of my first book, After the Day. I never thought that it would be as popular as it turned out to be. I must apologize to those that bought early unedited copies and assure you that this book has been fully edited to the best of our abilities.

  I would like to thank Kevin at Tibbs Brewing Co. for creating a great environment for me to work in and making the beer I enjoy while I write. If you keep making beer, I will keep writing. I would also like to thank my editor, Kara, for helping me on this adventure and putting up with my impatience at times. If it wasn’t for her, the first book wouldn’t have turned into the better version it is now.

  Finally, I would like to thank you, the reader, for doing what you are doing now. To read the reviews that you guys (and gals) are looking forward to the next book was the best encouragement to get this done. I hope you find Red Tide just as enjoyable, if not more, than After the Day. You will meet new characters and meet up again with characters of old. If there was anything that surprised me with After the Day it was how much you, the reader, were captured by the characters. Sometimes, it takes someone else looking in to show you what you have. I hope that magic has happened again here. Enjoy!

  Part 1

  The Day

  Chapter 1: Washington D.C.

  The coffee pot gurgled in the kitchen and the smell of hazelnut floated through the air. In the bathroom, Michelle finished her makeup and swiped powder off of her blouse. She checked her blonde hair and fixed a few stray hairs. Opening the door and turning the light off, she walked to the kitchen and listened to the coffee machine finishing its last coughs. She opened the freezer and a fog of cold air hovered out from under the door. She grabbed a toaster breakfast bar and ripped the package open. Closing the door, she placed the bar into the toaster and pressed the switch down. Opening the cupboard, she pulled her favorite coffee mug out and poured her first cup. Before she took a sip she went into the fridge and took her flavored creamer out and poured some into the mug until the mug was almost full. The creamer traveled through the coffee, creating swirls and cloudy feathers until the cup was an even tan color.

  She took her first sip. The flavor of hazelnut on top of hazelnut was exactly what she wanted. She looked at her cup, reading: I Get What I Want.

  The toaster dinged and she pulled the bar out, a sizzling sound accompanied the bar, and let it fall on her plate. Steam was rising up from her plate and she knew it would be hot.

  She still had twenty minutes before she had to leave the house. She blew on the breakfast bar waiting for the egg and cheese to cool down.

  Michelle turned the television on and saw one of the morning shows. The hosts were presenting a series of videos with dogs doing destructive things to their owners’ homes. The audience laughed and the hosts were clapping their hands, laughing. She got caught up in the commercials more than the show and before she knew it, she was late going out the door for work.

  How does this always happen? she thought to herself. She pressed the button on her keychain to unlock her car and remote started the car before she was in it. She was excited to buy this car. Complete with On-Star in case she locked her keys inside. Everything was new, brand new when she drove it off the lot. It was her first new car, better than the one her parents bought for her a few years before when she was in high school. She cruised onto the beltway and flowed with the traffic until everything came to a sudden stop.

  “What is going on?” she said to herself.

  The radio finished their song, something by Lady Gaga.

  “Welcome back to Todd and Bob on the morning show. We will be back momentarily with Todd and Bob but first your local news.” The voice changed on the radio. “Hello and welcome to News 7, your local news. Well, if you’re planning on taking the beltway you better have an alternate route in mind. Traffic is backed up for miles due to a jackknifed rig that lost control trying to stop for a two-car collision.”

  “It’s not news if I know it before you.” she said irritated.

  Michelle changed the channel and listened to some more music. She sent a text to her co-worker and let her know she was stuck in traffic.

  When she was finished she waited and waited.

  “This is so boring.” she whined.

  Then, in the distance, a bright flash. It grew brighter in a fraction of a second. Like everyone on the freeway she looked at it. She didn’t know when the flash subsided. Permanently burned into her retina she continued to see the flash and thought she was still watching it. When she looked down to find her phone she noticed that everything was a bright white. She started to panic. She felt her phone but couldn’t operate it without seeing the screen. She didn’t know that her phone and car were no longer working. Everything was quiet. Nothing was moving. Then she heard the rumble.

  It was better that she was blind. She would not have wanted to see the wall of fire that was approaching her car. The city had already disappeared from view. Cars were being picked up and carried down the freeway. Her car lifted and was thrown, rolled and smashed, against everything and anything. The sudden rise in temperature was too fast for her body to feel. Her head had smacked against the driver’s side window when the car was first jolted knocking her unconscious. She was one of the lucky ones. She didn’t feel it, didn’t know it was coming, and when it was over she was already in a better place. One out of tens of thousands of casualties, she had gone quick and didn’t have to suffer from radiation burns, lifelong blindness, or cancer. Her hair would never fall out. Her body would not form large tumors or growths. She didn’t have to worry about going through pointless chemo treatments. She was one of the lucky ones.

  Chapter 2: 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, internatio
nal 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. Government didn’t come back, if it had nobody knew about it. Soldiers that were overseas fighting the rich man’s war were abandoned. Now America knew what it was like when Russia fell and thousands of soldiers were left in places like Afghanistan. The men who could assimilate to the local societies would restart their lives. The one’s that tried to fight on died. Around the world on military bases rumors spread that America was still alive, there still was central leadership. The current leader depended on the rumor you heard. As supplies stopped and resources disappeared, the reality of what had happened sunk in and the soldiers made their plans for survival.

  There were of course revenge assassinations worldwide and soldiers, like the bases, disappeared. Okinawa, who had been frustrated with yearly rapes and occasional murders due to the soldiers from the U.S. base, wiped out the base in one week. It was a blood bath at first but eventually the base ran out of ammo and had no fuel to operate the heavy machinery. In the end, the locals won and reclaimed their island that had been under U.S. control for almost seventy years.

  After the bomb, there were drastic changes in the U.S. along the borders. Mexicans no longer traveled north over the border. Farms in Mexico started growing corn again with the loss of subsidized American corn. Canada shut their borders to limit the refugees. While Canada was a large country, it didn’t have the planting season or land to provide for the amount of people coming in. Mexico did the same. With U.S. money no longer having any value there was no reason to allow Americans into the country. Americans had become the dregs of society and had to learn to fend for themselves. Five percent of the world’s population had gone from the top of the food chain to the unwanted bastards of a fallen empire.

  Around the world leaders made arguments about how democracy had failed. Nations either stood back and stayed neutral in foreign affairs or tried to stake their claim as new super powers. The only two countries that were able to pull off the fight for power were Russia and China. In a year the rest of the world had learned to obey what these two powers said and feared the repercussions if they didn’t. The Japanese stood back as China claimed their dominance. Japan was still dealing with the fallout of the tsunami and the nuclear power plant in Fukashima. Needless to say, Russia and China quickly gained many allies and became the new police force of the world.

  The Chinese yuan had become the new reserve currency of the world after an aggressive buying period of gold prior to the bomb in Washington. China quickly acted in devaluing the yuan but backed it by their large gold reserves. The yuan flooded the market and restarted international trade. For the rest of the world things were close to normal again three years after the bomb. For America, that was another story.

  China and Russia made it clear to the rest of the world that foreign aid was not allowed towards the United States. To do so would mean serious repercussions against the country that failed to adhere to these rules. These threats were not pertaining to sanctions, China and Russia had no plans to act as their predecessor did before. Their policy was to act instead of signing papers. Countries that didn’t play along with their new rules were punished severely.

  Part 2

  Before the Day to 3 Years after

  Chapter 1

  Midwest United States

  Prohibition had been gone for over eighty years. The art of making alcohol had evolved from a basement hobby to a multi-billion dollar business by the 1990’s. Before the collapse he remembered breweries sprouting up all over his county. Once the government made it legal to make home brewed beer and wine in the 1980’s, all bets were off with where a man’s hobby could take him. It wasn’t beer that he was interested in. Kevin enjoyed the history of brewing and tracked down old recipes, the drinks of kings, poets, and pharaohs. Drinks like sake were incredibly easy to make, a mix of cooked rice and malt rice. The one ingredient that most men couldn’t get right was the patience. Mash and fermenting drink had to sit for weeks. To not let the batch do what it needed on its own was to not respect what it was meant to do. If you left it to achieve its full potential, it would reward you.

  His brewing kit was a series of simple glass jugs. He bought more equipment over time. The large steel pots and pans he had picked up at second hand stores over the years. He didn’t bother with the chemistry equipment, the simpler the recipe, the more pure he felt the drink was.

  Every month Kevin would try to make a new recipe of mead, the honey wine that kept Europe filled with drink, the drink of Odin and the Vikings. His first few batches reminded him of rum and not the honey that was the source of the sugar.

  Honey, he quickly learned, was expensive. He looked to other sources of sugar. He tried making fruit wine and in every recipe the sugar in the fruit wasn’t enough to make the batch turn with any decent alcohol content. Unlike honey, sugar was cheap.

  Then he bought a book that changed his home brewing forever. The book was a foraging book that tried to use plants around the home for various things, salads, medicine, and of course wine. He found recipes for oak leaf wine, and his favorite, dandelion. The dandelion was the wine he got the most looks of interest and hesitation for people to try.

  “You mean you picked these from your yard?” was a common question he heard from people. After the first taste people didn’t ask any more questions. He had found his hit. An old recipe that needed the dust cleaned off and brought forth to a new generation. In a year the flowers that people killed in their yards had a new look to them. He continued to look for more old recipes but every year he was sure to make a new batch of dandelion wine.

  Because of his hobby he got in the habit of buying several bags of sugar at one time. He sealed them up and they stored well in the cool dry basement. He would keep a dozen bags in his basement at all times. He never knew when he would get excited and make a large batch of the latest great find.

  On The Day, he went down to the closest market he could find and bought two pallets of sugar, something that the store had never seen before. Things were getting chaotic and people were buying more than they usually did. When he loaded the sugar into his van and drove away, the employees of the market thought twice about what they should go home with.

  Living off of disability gave Kevin plenty of time to tinker with his hobby. Working as a mechanic he was nearly blinded when a new employee to the garage started a blow torch too close to some gas canisters. Almost twenty years on the job without anything more than a cut to the hand and he was almost killed from a careless act.

  The scar on his face healed well but he always saw it as the fresh burn that was in the mirror at the hospital. His hair grew out enough to cover the hairline that had been burned back a few inches past his right temple. He was legally blind in one eye. It wasn’t hard for him to be approved for disability when he walked into the case workers office with his scarred face still covered in bandages. The case worker filled out the paperwork in record time and he was receiving checks not long after. He had always been conservative with his money. He paid off his house in the first ten years he was there. He paid for everything in cash and he had money stashed away for a rainy day. By the time the accident happ
ened he was ready to finally do the things he wanted and live a little.

  Coming from the usual redneck family he had several hunting rifles in his home. His dogs were diligent of notifying him when people came around the house, and his pantry was always filled. It wasn’t below him to go outside and shoot the woodchuck or raccoon in his yard and then throw it on the grill. He figured out the power went out when he flipped the switch to go into the basement. He missed listening to his AM radio shows while mixing a batch of wine. The talk shows he normally listened to appeared to be right. For years the hosts talked about the end of the world. Whether it was a galactic space invasion or a zombie apocalypse the world had come to an end in a way. He was alone now.

  After The Day the mail stopped coming, people stopped driving, and when winter came he was heating his house with a make shift stove from an old fifty five gallon drum. He caught a virus and was stuck inside for two weeks until he was able to move around again.

  His dogs had been living off of scraps for weeks. He had three altogether, mutts of all kinds. Stuck in bed he watched them huddle together to stay warm. Eventually, they would serve him one last time. His own food was running low and unable to hunt he had little options left in the end.

  He forced himself from the bed and the dogs followed him waiting for food to magically appear from their master’s hands. He looked in the kitchen one last time and sighed as his fears were confirmed.

  Working his way back to the living room he pulled a rifle from the gun cabinet and loaded a round in the chamber. Looking at the dogs he picked the largest one, Max. He was the oldest of the group and he hoped to buy some more time for the other two. Opening the back door of the house he called Max to follow him and they disappeared outside while the other two waited. The shot rang out and he had enough food for another week.