Episode 105.3 - Life, Death, and Civil Rights

“Good evening, Survivors! It’s your buddy Nate, and thaaaat’s right, if you can hear my voice, you are officially a survivor. Unofficial numbers list human casualties -- that’s deaths, folks -- at somewhere close to 30 million in the US alone. Taken by surprise by the packs of roaming clones. Close to two thousand dead or missing in our listening area. That’s, of course, so far. In more dense areas, casualties are much, much higher. And none of these numbers are counting the clones we’ve managed to kill in the meantime.

“On that note, the Federal Government has issued an official statement. Here’s the gist: if you are managing to kill our silver-clad friends, stop it! Self defense is still self defense, but until we can get a handle on their civil rights status -- I’m not making this up -- the President says indiscriminate killing of the clones is tantamount to genocide and will not be tolerated.

“I suppose he has a point. After all, they didn’t ask to be created. They didn’t ask to be let out. What we have here is the very definition of lying in the bed we’ve made for ourselves. God help us.

“Lord, now I’m depressed. Here’s some AC/DC. I need a beer.”

Episode 105.2 - Echoes With the Sound of Hammers

Brad wiped the sweat from his brow with his non-hammering arm. He’d been at it -- along with the rest of the town -- for nearly a full day now, everyone doing what they could to secure The Forks against what they knew was sure to be an onslaught of first refugees and then the silver-tinted clones which had been terrorizing the southern part of the state.  

All had seemed to agree at last night’s meeting that, while they couldn’t quite justify an end to Business As Usual, preparations just made good sense. A good portion of the morning was filled with the sound of chainsaws in the nearby woods, felling trees for use in beefing up perimeter fences, in many cases even linking several together toward the outer edge of town. The plan -- the hope -- was to limit and control access into The Forks. Ultimately, between logs and cars, when the time came only a single road would be opened into the town, and that only when the citizens decided to open it.

For the Tompkins family, the task was to add further security to Teardrop Island, the little patch of land between the rivers, upon which sat the Tompkins Family Farm. This would, along with the couple other, larger farms in the area, prove to be a major food supply if the crisis outlasted the projected timeframe. It would also become a more secure fortress should the walls of The Forks become breached to the point of complete failure. It wasn’t a scenario anyone wanted to further contemplate.

Brad inhaled deeply, his ears filling with the echoes of hammers and saws all around his little town, and got back to work.