Daniel had made sure his family got safe on one of the last trains to Canada, kissing his wife goodbye and hugging his children, making his son promise to be strong and to protect them. Then he had taken a knife from the kitchen and gone to stand outside his factory, waiting for the mob to come. He would lose that fight, he knew, but he was a man. And he would not let his property be taken without trying to keep it.
If he had another option, he would take it. He would go to the police, except they had been disarmed. He would go to his farmhands, but they had either run off or been found hanging from a tree. So he would stand alone. And he would die alone.
He closed his eyes and began to pray, waiting for the sound of the mob. It took time, longer than he expected, but he heard it, the tramping of booted feet, the singing of rebellious songs.
He opened his eyes and started swinging the knife around, daring them to attack him. They had guns, and tools, and one man up front who he didn't recognize had a long stick. Daniel was ready to die.
There was movement, and then he felt something crack in his arm and someone made a shrill scream. His eyes were blinded by tears as something smacked against the back of his knees, and his legs buckled.
A pair of arms roughly grabbed Daniel around the shoulders and he was thrown off to the side.
"He doesn't matter anymore," someone said, but Daniel could barely hear them over the sound of his sobbing.
The New York Planning Office had taken over the former stock exchange, in what had been both a calculated insult against capital and a desperate maneuver for more space. The floor was as busy as she had ever seen it when she had first become a secretary, but everything else was completely different.
Ethel took a moment to compare things in her head. Gone were the fine suits, replaced by everything from one foolish man in a skirt to a dizzying variety of workingman's outfits. Gone were the refined, polished accents.
But the noise, the enthusiasm, the note of desperation...that was all familiar, as was the smell. You couldn't pack this many people into a building and not have it smell, especially since something was wrong with the plumbing.
A pale man in a ragged, ill-fitting vest was trying to get her attention, she realized, and Ethel shook herself from the stupor.
"We still don't have anything concrete from the Pennsylvania oil fields. The workers have seized the pumps, we've confirmed that, but the situation is too chaotic, and I think they have lost a lot of records, or they can't get them to us for some reason."
The man murmured a thank-you and ran off, presumably to tell someone else and then make a guess at how much fuel they would get. It was like that everywhere. The sheer number of seized factories and claimed property was starting to overwhelm people, not helped by resistance, sabotage, and arguments.
But the most important factories were working, and lines of communication were kept functional. Boys and girls had been pressed into use as runners in the city, and outside of it she had heard some were using horses for it wherever telegraphs didn't reach. The train lines stayed running, even if she knew they were getting increasingly stressed.
She shook off her woolgathering again and decided she would head home once her eight hours were up. She clearly was getting distracted in her old age.
Charlie's stomach growled and his legs ached, but he had a rifle and a job to do. The cold made him shiver, even though he had a thick woolen coat. Most of the men stayed in the warmth of he caboose or the engine car, but someone needed to stay in the lookout tower and he had drawn the short straw. But soon he would have something else to do.
Sure enough, the train pulled to a stop in another of the dozen little towns they were visiting. It was a routine for them by now, and they knew their jobs. Four of the Red Guards started shoveling some coal out of the train, piling it up on the station floor, while another two stood guard. The rest clustered around the lieutenant and marched off to find the mayor.
They always looked more or less the same, Charlie had found: fat and angry that they were losing power. The lieutenant gave him the usual speech, about how half their grain supply was being confiscated as an emergency measure, how they would be getting a free supply of coal and a voucher for the food, and that he should round some people up and bring the grain to the station.
There were the usual objections, but that was why the lieutenant had men accompany him. A few polite reminders and the grain was being hauled off, with a small bonus for the squad. It was piled into a train car and the coal was left on the station floor, and they gathered to draw straws on who would be lookout for the next stretch.
Charlie was lucky this time, and got to stay in the caboose. So he played cards with his buddies and listened to the lieutenant chatter about how many towns they had left to handle and what they were to say to the Commissar when they got back.
"Food and coal stockpiles are low, we are all but certain to face major shortages of each. However, I would like to commend the United Mine Workers for their efforts in trying to alleviate the coal shortages. Their heroic overproduction efforts and enthusiastic cooperation with distribution bodies well keep many warm these upcoming months. Similarly, the Refugee Housing Commission has requested I pass on their congratulations to Ben Little and John Brophy for their efforts in establishing temporary shelters and preparing a transition to more permanent housing for the refugee communities...
...a famine will be avoided in the major cities this year, but the efforts to accomplish this are not sustainable. We need a better harvest for next year, or we will face a widespread famine. A number of proposals have been put forth to solve this problem, including using refugees to help substitute for shortages of farmhands and farming equipment...
...Efforts at establishing quarantines have been successful on a small scale, but with limited medical capabilities we are forced to quarantine entire factories and apartment blocks at a time, which is unsustainable, especially since several war-vital factories have been temporarily shuttered due to tuberculosis outbreaks threatening the workers. Meanwhile, the quarantines themselves are often leaky, and those who have experienced them report them to be very dull and unpleasant, with food in quarantine even scarcer than normal...
We will survive. We will endure. There will be a price, but we will be victorious."
- Internal CAS report
Penny couldn't stop shivering. She had a thin, moth-eaten blanket and a stained tent full of others between her and the chilly November air, but it wasn't enough to keep her warm. And even if it had been, she still would have shivered. She was alone, naked but for the blanket, in a tent full of strangers, and she was so very far from home. The Reds running the camp had taken her clothes to disinfect them of lice and stuck her here with a numbered slip.
She probably wouldn't ever get them back. And she didn't know what would happen to her. Her parents were dead, her brother was gone.Her grandfather was probably still sitting on his farm, too drunk to know the world was falling apart around him. And here she was, sitting in a tent outside Louisville, trapped and terrified.
Occasionally someone came in or someone left, but the tent was always packed full, bunks pressed together until there was barely an inch between each one. Despite that, it was almost painfully quiet, the thick silence only interrupted by footsteps and breathing. She stayed curled up in her blankets, just another piece of the silence, until at last she fell asleep.
At some point, she awoke, bleary eyed, to find a handful of clothes shoved into her face. Awkwardly, she dressed herself under the blanket and hobbled out, limbs stiff and aching. She was directed into another tent, told when meals were, then she was left alone with her thoughts and her fears.
The mood in the CAS is all-around congratulatory as the progress in economic areas is lauded. Under difficult circumstances, in the midst of chaos, production kept going. Refugees were housed, quarantines established, train and telegraph lines repaired. Compared to what you saw in Russia, it is a miracle, and one you praise the liberated and determined workers of America for accomplishing. But all the will and spirit cannot overcome material conditions, and so serious issues remain.
Logistics are still limited, planning is falling short in numerous areas, a black market has formed, the blockades are crippling, but most importantly of all, there is simply not enough food to go around. Devastating dust storms, instability in the Corn Belt, and deliberate action has all led to the specter of a future famine hanging over everyone, and the DC junta has openly declared their intention to starve you out if need be.
With that open threat, a series of rationing guidelines have been presented to the CAS and other bodies by the Economic Planning Commission. Coal, oil, iron, copper, zinc, and many other resources are all rationed, with priority given to their uses for military or other "essential" production. All that is passed with widespread support, but the segment on food rationing proves a bit more contentious. Some parts of it go better than you expected, some parts go worse.
But there is one problem that you have to deal with:
[] Obstinate representatives only agree to support the food rationing after you offer them a future favor
[] The requirements of rationing mean that people will have to get used to monotonous meals
[] Due to errors in the rationing scheme, people might have some deficiencies in their diets
[] Complaints about food hoarding, corruption, and other issues begin almost immediately
