The Clock Strikes High Noon

Charley looked at her watch: 9:44 a.m.  This was not a typical morning in San Francisco.  Something has gone terribly wrong. She had just biked into Moscone Center, carefully managing up the handicap ramp and into the Martin Luther King memorial.  This was a quite spot where she check out what was going on.  Not even the winos come around the area, and that says a lot.  She biked around the thoroughfare and came to a stop next to bench.  She could hear a couple workers telling people at a refreshment stand the ATM stopped working, cash only.  Minutes ago she saw something she never saw before, a crowd and developed outside a bank Market Street.  The crowd was angry, it seemed no one could their money.  A fight broke out between a black man and Hispanic.  Both were trying to force their way in through the door and words were exchanged.  As she was biking up to the bank she saw a white guy with a shaved head and shirt that had the strange word "Sharp" on it jump in got attempting to end the confrontation when he got hit across the face and a couple more blows later went supine as a pool red bled from his body into the street.  The scene was too violent to approach, someone was yelling for the police and an ambulance.  What was wrong with those people?

Charley took off her well worn shoulder bag.  Sitting down on the bench she rummaged through it's contents, taking out her trusty X40 hit the power button and waited for the familiar penguin to icon to make it's appearance.  She entered her login and opened the command shell.  "Eat your heart out 80211," she thought, executing the command ./launch-evdo A little usb stick jutting out of the usb port of her computer had a neon blue light turn on, then flicker spasmodically.   The blue light flickered like a carrion call and suddenly went solid and the shell returned the message "Connection Active."  She entered another command, "open firefox" and her browser of choice opened, launching all 23 home pages concurrently.  As the data feed made itself visible her eyes squinted in the displays glare making out the text of the Associated Vile Press website.  Across all the top headlines were "Obama assassinated in California," followed by strings of wild developments.  Her jaw slackened as the rapid fire shock of headlines assaulted her mind: "Arrest Warrant Issued for Clintons," "National Emergency Declared: Constitution Suspended," "Chetroff declares bank holiday," "Dow Jones Tumbles before closing by Executive Order."  She poured over each headline, each seemingly more incredible than the last.  She shuttered in spite of herself.  She looked at her watch and inaudibly heard herself say "No, it's not April first."

The Shit Has Hit the Fucking Fan. 

Suddenly Charley feels a gust of cold, something incredibly not right is in the air.  She looks around nervously, is someone there?  She quickly does a 360 scan around the area, turning out to be empty except for a pair of pigeons.  The refreshment stand has put up a closed sign, the workers gone.  "It's time to email in sick today," she thought, and was on her way home.  She sped home, as fast as she could, dodging in and out lanes down Mission Street, keeping one eye peeled for chaos.  The last story she read was about arsons breaking out all over Brooklyn... large crowds forming outside the Chicago Stock Exchange...

As she zoomed her bike in out of cars on the pavement of the street, pedestrians seemed mindlessly oblivious to recent events.  Normally it's possible to dismiss the drones as just being typical of city life, but today you would think would be slightly different.  The usual assortment of elderly Asians and black homeless prominent on this side of the city were here and there on the streets.  She took a left on 6th Street and a right on Harrison.   As she peddled past the Hall of Injustice a a huge number of police cars sped away from the complex, she lost count at thirty three.  She peddled faster.  In record time she got to her place near McKinley Square in what she called liked to call the "whiter and brighter" side of the Mission. 

She pulls into the lawn of the house where her flat is.  She unlocks the two outer dead bolts of the eight foot tall wooden gate, and then the third per some well learned lessons after reading 3,700 pages of "Locks, Safes and Security" by Marc Weber Tobias.  She put them back into the locked position and walks with her bike to the rear of the house.  Placing her Montage folding bike down she takes helmet off and dashes up the staircase behind the house.  She unlocks and enters the top floor flat.  First thing she does is turn on the radio and hears Mayor Slime speaking about something.  She ignores it for the moment and continues over to her desk and turns on the ICOM R-3 and tunes into the charming world of the SFPD.  The static breaks in and out, multiple operators are talking on top of each other.  The radio cackles in and out of meaningless static.  Just when she thought listening to Mayor Slime might be more productive she hears, "Jesus, base this is happening all over the place, 404 at" some radio static interrupts, "request backup."   Mayor Slime continues droning in the background, something about Israel.  Politicians all talk the same useless squawk she thought, laughing to herself. "Well," she thought, "better time then ever to activate the network."  And at that her cell phone started buzzing with a text message.  It was from Dillon, an old hand of the network.  It reads: "DONT FGET SALSA"  Great, she thought.  That triathlon training is going to come in handy today.  "Dont fget salsa" was the networks code that rally point Lima has been activated for members to meet at during an emergency  The network has pre-established supplies at different rally points in the Bay Area in case of a disaster like an earthquake or if a national cluster fuck should commence.  Rally point Lima has some food production potential and enough supplies to last for a long enough time to support several people for an extended period.  Members of the network know each other are trained to work in conjunction with allied groups for what they call the NAZ, National Autonomous Zone, where people can be trusted to keep the zombies away.

The problem was getting there.  North Bay is quite far away from the Mission without a car, separated by the Bay and a few hundred thousand (million?) zombies getting more rowdy by the minute.  She knows for a fact that she doesn't want to go over Golden Gate bridge, the police are likely to shut it down to traffic.  A ferry seems like the best bet.  Charley knew she had to act fast.  She could be in deep do doo when the zombies emerge from the confines of the projects and barrios the city likes to keep their surplus labor contained.  She looked at the clock and it was 10:49 a.m.  She went to her closet and grabbed her Bug Out Bag.  Made out of a Blackhawk rucksack, it had an integrated water satchel and was packed full of essential survival items, enough food, water, and tools to get her by for three days on the road if need be.  She's biked to point Lima in the past was half a days biking distance away.  Hopefully Dillon could pick her up in North Bay if the situation is calmer there.  She grabbed the ICOM so she could continue to monitor police happenings on the road radio monitoring and a couple of additional items.  The adrenaline is pumping now.  Out of her window she can see smoke rising from the city.  She started rushing, now almost out the door on her way, she suddenly snapped back in the opposite direction.  She went to her bed stand, "Don't forget this!" she told herself, coolly checking the chamber for a sweet round of a double action Springfied XD .45 caliber pistol.  Satisfied with a round in the chamber, she smiled.  Her clock chimed again, with both hands at twelve o'clock noon.

It's time to get out of dodge.