Cannibal Reign by Thomas Koloniar Page B

“We’re tapped into a natural gas line and we have our own well, so there will always be plenty of hot water.”
    “Excellent,” she said getting up. “This feels a little like being away at camp.”
    When she was gone, the trio went back to playing Halo and Forrest turned to Michael, asking, “Does she fully understand what’s going to happen? It’s the ‘camp’ remark that makes me ask.”
    “She understands as well as I do,” Michael said. “But then I’m no less a stranger to death and destruction than she is. Regardless of how much we prepare ourselves, it’s still going to be an incredible shock if and when it finally happens.”
    “I understand you’ve got a big family.”
    “I do.”
    “It won’t be easy to leave them,” Ulrich said. “How does Veronica feel about leaving hers?”
    “She’s not really close with her sister,” Michael said. “She’s all for this, so if we choose to pass on your offer, it will be because of me.”
    “I feel I should apologize for the way this has played out,” Forrest said. “It was purely on a lark that I said anything to her that day.”
    “And I appreciate that. But it is what it is. Had you not found her attractive, and vice versa, I wouldn’t be sitting here trying to decide whether I want to take advantage of such an opportunity. And maybe that would be a good thing . . . I don’t know. But I guess the truth is that hundreds of thousands of people might soon find themselves wishing they’d had such a decision to wrestle with.”
    Ulrich leaned over to put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “There is no ‘might’ in this equation, Doc. The four horsemen are right over the hill . . . and they’re riding hard.”

Eleven
    M ichael stood in his parents’ backyard looking north into the night sky, a glass of wine in his hand, listening to his brothers and sisters and their families visiting inside the house. He’d been drinking a lot of wine lately. Many of them had. There were dozens of bottles in his father’s cellar, and there was no point in letting so much expensive wine go to waste. No one knew exactly where the asteroid was going to strike, but Phoenix was almost certainly within the danger zone.
    He felt his father’s reassuring hand on his shoulder and turned to give him a smile. “Hey, Dad.”
    “Can you see it?” his father asked, looking up with him.
    “No, but it’s hard not to look.”
    “And even harder to believe,” his father said. “It looks so peaceful up there. But it’s actually a very violent place.” Robert Porter was a retired vascular surgeon in good health, with a head of thick white hair and discerning eyes. He had always been well respected by his friends and neighbors.
    “Did you hear about the food riots in L.A.?” Michael asked.
    “Yes, I did.”
    “And they’re hijacking trucks along the interstate now.”
    “It’s only going to get worse,” his father said. “Wait until the food actually runs low. The riots will be ten times as big, and the Army will be shooting people in the streets.”
    “There are police in every supermarket now,” Michael said. “To keep people from hoarding. Nobody’s allowed to buy more than fifty dollars worth of groceries at a time.”
    “Your mother tried to withdraw a thousand dollars from the bank this morning. There’s a two-hundred-dollar-a-day limit on withdrawals now. People have stopped paying their bills. By this time next month, the banks will probably be busted. First the economy collapses, then society itself. Rome fell in the same order.”
    “Yeah, but the Romans only had to deal with the Huns.” Michael took a sip of his wine and looked back up at the sky.
    “I understand that you and Ronny have received a rather interesting offer.”
    Michael was startled. “She wasn’t supposed to tell you about that.”
    “She didn’t say anything to me. She told your mother. And you know how good your mother is at keeping secrets.”
    “I didn’t