uniforms blockaded the road.
After the food ran out.
After one day passed, and then two and then three, and the power came back but the phones, the Internet, the outside world never did.
After that, things were different.
But maybe not different enough.
There were three main routes out of Oleander: State Street to Route 8 ran along the southern edge of the town, skirting Potawamie Lake to the east and tracing the woods in the west before winding into the prairie. Route 72 cut through the farmland in the east and crossed a set of disused railroad tracks on its way to the horizon. The Nanimwe River bordered the town on the north, but crossing Asylum Bridge would take you only to the old power plant or an endless field of corn – in other words, nowhere you’d ever want to go.
All three were blocked by a cluster of tanks and soldiers, each carrying some this-means-business weaponry. The soldiers wore surgical masks. Barbed-wire fences had been erected along the highway lines, while floodlights swept over the lake. Word soon spread of the ATVs that cut back and forth across the farmland by Route 72, hunting for anyone who’d made an ill-advised trek into the wild.
It took a couple of days, and more than a handful of border skirmishes, for anyone to find the time and energy to care. Those first forty-eight hours were about digging out and rebuilding, patching wounds and wiping tears. The lack of access to the outside world via phone, computer, or car was expected. The crimson smoke that still billowed overhead, blocking the stars and staining the sun? That was not.
Nor was the absence of media vultures, eager volunteers, photographers, FEMA paper pushers, politicians, the complete cast of characters who could be counted on to descend after any communal tragedy. The town had waited: for the Good Samaritans who would drive cross-country with bags of ice and racks of barbecue, for the charity groups who would apply their overpriced tool kits and rudimentary carpentry skills to the rubble, for the medical volunteers who would supplement the overrun hospital, for the politicians who would pose with the sad and brokenhearted, for the camera crews who would capture it all on film for
News
at
11.
But the federal disaster workers were the first and last to arrive. And whatever work they were doing beyond the borders, these strange nonsoldiers with their soldier-like bearing, it didn’t include restoring television and phone reception, constructing temporary housing, or bolstering the mental health of the town, the last of which was decaying by the day.
The police department had a staff of five, including two patrolmen who served part-time and devoted most of their energies to buying and selling antique guns online. Oleander considered itself a
nice
town, full of
good
people, and there wasn’t, in those first two days, much looting or vandalism. But there was more than the police were equipped to stop. Especially since one officer was tasked to spend most of his days driving through town, piping announcements through his rooftop megaphone that were intended to calm the populace.
Do
not
panic. The water is safe to drink. The air is safe to breathe. The soldiers are here for your safety. Do not panic. Do not panic.
It was a phrase that tended to have the opposite effect.
Those who had an in-case-of-emergency bottled-water supply drank only from that. Those who trusted neither the police nor the air donned masks or wrapped T-shirts around their faces when they went outside. Those who depended on constant access to the Internet went a little nuts.
And everyone had a theory:
The tornado had caused a nuclear-reactor leak (though there was no nuclear reactor within a hundred miles of Oleander – “as far as we
know
”).
The country was under attack.
The government wanted to erase Oleander from the map, just because it could.
They were all unwitting subjects of a psychology experiment.
Possibly an experiment run by
After the food ran out.
After one day passed, and then two and then three, and the power came back but the phones, the Internet, the outside world never did.
After that, things were different.
But maybe not different enough.
There were three main routes out of Oleander: State Street to Route 8 ran along the southern edge of the town, skirting Potawamie Lake to the east and tracing the woods in the west before winding into the prairie. Route 72 cut through the farmland in the east and crossed a set of disused railroad tracks on its way to the horizon. The Nanimwe River bordered the town on the north, but crossing Asylum Bridge would take you only to the old power plant or an endless field of corn – in other words, nowhere you’d ever want to go.
All three were blocked by a cluster of tanks and soldiers, each carrying some this-means-business weaponry. The soldiers wore surgical masks. Barbed-wire fences had been erected along the highway lines, while floodlights swept over the lake. Word soon spread of the ATVs that cut back and forth across the farmland by Route 72, hunting for anyone who’d made an ill-advised trek into the wild.
It took a couple of days, and more than a handful of border skirmishes, for anyone to find the time and energy to care. Those first forty-eight hours were about digging out and rebuilding, patching wounds and wiping tears. The lack of access to the outside world via phone, computer, or car was expected. The crimson smoke that still billowed overhead, blocking the stars and staining the sun? That was not.
Nor was the absence of media vultures, eager volunteers, photographers, FEMA paper pushers, politicians, the complete cast of characters who could be counted on to descend after any communal tragedy. The town had waited: for the Good Samaritans who would drive cross-country with bags of ice and racks of barbecue, for the charity groups who would apply their overpriced tool kits and rudimentary carpentry skills to the rubble, for the medical volunteers who would supplement the overrun hospital, for the politicians who would pose with the sad and brokenhearted, for the camera crews who would capture it all on film for
News
at
11.
But the federal disaster workers were the first and last to arrive. And whatever work they were doing beyond the borders, these strange nonsoldiers with their soldier-like bearing, it didn’t include restoring television and phone reception, constructing temporary housing, or bolstering the mental health of the town, the last of which was decaying by the day.
The police department had a staff of five, including two patrolmen who served part-time and devoted most of their energies to buying and selling antique guns online. Oleander considered itself a
nice
town, full of
good
people, and there wasn’t, in those first two days, much looting or vandalism. But there was more than the police were equipped to stop. Especially since one officer was tasked to spend most of his days driving through town, piping announcements through his rooftop megaphone that were intended to calm the populace.
Do
not
panic. The water is safe to drink. The air is safe to breathe. The soldiers are here for your safety. Do not panic. Do not panic.
It was a phrase that tended to have the opposite effect.
Those who had an in-case-of-emergency bottled-water supply drank only from that. Those who trusted neither the police nor the air donned masks or wrapped T-shirts around their faces when they went outside. Those who depended on constant access to the Internet went a little nuts.
And everyone had a theory:
The tornado had caused a nuclear-reactor leak (though there was no nuclear reactor within a hundred miles of Oleander – “as far as we
know
”).
The country was under attack.
The government wanted to erase Oleander from the map, just because it could.
They were all unwitting subjects of a psychology experiment.
Possibly an experiment run by
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