Warday Read online

  We are going to restore authority in the areas of Texas where there’s a problem. Especially down in South Texas. Those people have suffered enough. They’ve really had it much worse than in most of the rest of the country, what with the destruction of San Antonio and the sickness and all. Plus there has been a tremendously high level of illegal immigration. All authority in Mexico has broken down. Without any significant oil income, with the collapse of trade and tourism, and our inability to export foodstuffs, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mexico hasn’t experienced a greater population decline than we have. I’d put it at forty to fifty percent in five years. I know from personal friends that there have been eight revolutions in Mexico City, and when we were suffering from the famine here, they were absolutely and totally destitute. They had no corn, no bread, no soy products, only their own beans. They lacked cooking oil. In Mexico City there was no potable water because their U.S.-made sewage treatment system failed. Mexico City was hit as bad by dysentery and cholera as it was by the Cincinnati Flu. You had whole huge areas of the city where there was nobody left alive at all.

  If people wonder why in the world they’re still coming north in spite of what we’re going through, that’s the reason.

  You said you wanted me to say what I was doing on Warday.

  Well, I was in Dallas trying to get my campaign for the Senate together. I was going to get that seat from the Republicans. Mary was with me, and so was Elizabeth. The other kids were in San Antonio, I’m sorry to say.

  After we’re finished, we can go over to the house and you can see our war baby, Oliver Junior. Perfect formation. He looks just like his mother.

  I don’t live in the Governor’s Mansion, by the way. The state doesn’t have the money to keep it up. We’re just barely staying solvent as it is, so I live in a raised ranch over on Red River. Maybe next year we’ll reopen the mansion.

  I deal with real basic issues: defense, disease, food, shelter, crime. I classify this whole Aztlan thing as a crime. As far as I’m concerned they’re rebels, no different from the Confederates. I consider Texas a part of the United States, and Aztlan a part of Texas. If there’s ever a new Constitutional Convention, Texas will certainly be sending delegates.

  Other crimes we have, mainly, are crimes of desperation. There is still a lot of hunger. Real, raw hunger. Hell, people are dying of hunger and a lot of other things down in South Texas every day.

  The area between Houston and San Antonio is blighted. I guess you could consider that whole area depopulated.

  You know, from the roof of St. Edwards University south of here—you remember St. Edwards? Well, from the roof you can see the start of the San Antonio Dead Zone. The horizon to the south is charcoal gray. And the sky is brown. It’s a weird sight, like looking across to the surface of another planet.

  You remember my house in San Antonio, Whitley? We finished that bathroom, and we were going to put in a pool.

  I was meeting with the Dallas County Democrats at the Anatole Hotel when the war happened. The lights went out. That was because the EMP killed the hotel’s computer. As it died, it turned off all the lights and sent the elevators to the lobby. I thought it was an internal thing. After a while we continued our meeting in the lobby, which is skylit.

  Mary came in with the news that there were planes crashing all over the place. We went outside and looked up and there was this American Airlines jet wobbling around. It kept banking first one way and then the other. Then we found out my brand-new Lincoln wouldn’t start. I had a lunch scheduled at the Adolphus with Bob Rossiter of Rossiter Industries. We tried to phone him and found out the phones didn’t work. I said to Mary, “Something big’s happened.” We tried to find a working TV. Couldn’t do it.

  We ended up walking all the way from the Anatole to the Adolphus, only to find that Rossiter wasn’t there.

  It was in the Adolphus lobby that we first heard the rumor that San Antonio had been bombed. Mary burst into tears. We held each other. We didn’t know what to believe. Finally we went back to the Anatole. It was almost a year before we left Dallas. We lived with the Clint Rossiters, and I did legal work to pay our board.

  I’ve been governor for three years now. The Senate campaign was canceled, of course. When Mark White announced that he wasn’t going to run for another term, Rossiter and the Dallas County Democrats got me to take it on. Mark’s not at all well. He flew over San Antonio three days after the war and got a hell of a dose. I did it too, last year, at three thousand feet. The way I look at it, that’s not a place anymore. It’s a hole in the world.

  One of our problems in Texas is that we haven’t got the banking technology available to run the state at a deficit. We’re limited to straight-line budgeting. I’ve been thinking of issuing a Texas currency, but I don’t see the underlying assets to do it. I could peg it to the state’s proprietary oil holdings, but with oil at eleven cents a barrel, I wouldn’t get very much out of it. And full faith and credit aren’t going to wash, especially not overseas.

  Look at this. Isn’t this beautiful? A Texas dollar. It’s an engraving, done for us by an outfit in Lubbock. For a while we were dreaming of Texas currency. We’d have bills denominated from a quarter to ten dollars. Sam Houston’s on the one, Austin’s on the two, Davy Crockett’s on the five. We haven’t had the others made up, because Texas hasn’t got any underlying assets that would support a currency, as I said. Texas got hurt so bad in the war, sometimes I’m surprised that it’s still here at all, that everybody didn’t just move.

  But we are still here. You travel around this state as much as I do, you’d end up with a deep feeling of confidence and reverence.

  Texas is the land of the strong. People are working to rebuild. You know who really runs this state? Volunteers. People see something that needs doing and they just do it. Fill a pothole. Pull down an abandoned house. You name it. When we censused in 1990, every single census taker was a volunteer. That project of mine, naming the dead—you must remember it, Jim, you wrote a tiling about it in the Dallas paper—that was all volunteers. I know you didn’t think it made sense, Jim, and maybe it didn’t. But it means something to name the dead. I think it does. Here’s what they did.

  There’s over a million names in these books. Handwritten, every one. Over a million.

  San Antonio was so pretty. God, I remember when I had my Austin Healey and we were running the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Youth, right? We were a bunch. Who was that priest in charge of the thing? Oh yeah, Martin. Father Edwin Martin. I remember him well. He always had high hopes for us. We put on some pretty good things, really. For a bunch of overheated intellectuals we did a good job.

  Is that thing running? Lemme see it. Sanyo. You got this from the paper? I’ve never seen one like it. Two hours of recording on that? It looks like a quarter. That’s amazing. Well, let me get back to business. You’ll have to edit this tape a little.

  Another thing we’re doing is working very intensively with some of the other states. California, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona. We’re going to form a sort of loose coalition. California will lead it. That’s got to be. They’re ten times the size of Texas. You know that California is almost like the old days? You been out there? Well, it’s just beautiful. One thing, the Japanese are everywhere. And electronics are a good bit easier to get. I don’t think there’s any conspiracy to deprive America of electronic devices, by the way. That’s a subject the Legislature’s been farting about an awful lot lately. They don’t want to debate Aztlan. Don’t want to think about the rough stuff. Can’t say as I blame ’em. But I’m going to have to get the Speaker to get the House off its ass on my military bill. Trask’s got the Senate wrapped up tight. No problems there. I need an army to go after Aztlan. Or they’ll come after us. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find them on their way to Midland–Odessa within a year if we don’t take some very damn decisive action.

  Anyway, getting back to the electronics. This thing is really beau
tiful. How big is it—let’s see—yeah, I could put two of these inside a cigarette pack. Three of ’em. Nice to see a Japanese thing like this again. Beautifully made. Running flat out, the Japs can build fourteen million televisions a year. If we bought ’em all, we’d be back to prewar standards in about 2000. But we can’t afford the foreign exchange. We imported six million last year and made eight hundred thousand here in the States. We managed to get a hundred and thirty thousand of those sets in Texas. That tells me we now have a million televisions in Texas. Here’s a piece of sweet news. Starting next July, we are going to be getting HBO via the new communications satellite California sent up from Vandenberg in June. And NBC is starting up again in the fall, broadcasting from Los Angeles. It’s going to be all reruns at first, but who the hell cares? Maybe you ought to go back to writing, Whitley. Somebody told me you’d become a gardener. Well, I’ll bet you could make some money in television. A growth industry all over again.

  We’ve got the Texas State Network, of course. I think the Hunt brothers bought two prints of every John Wayne picture ever made. I do a program once a week, “The Governor’s Desk.” I think people need to feel that the governor’s there. Without a President, the governors are that much more important.

  You know, the amazing thing is, when we’ve polled the citizens, we’ve found that they aren’t too interested in having a Presidential election. There just isn’t all that much interest. Concerns telescope when people are having trouble. Somebody who has a sick kid or is facing cancer or NSD, or just living in these times, they don’t care about the Israelis slaughtering the Arabs or the South Africans marching into Zimbabwe or the Poles into the Ukraine. They’re indifferent to world affairs. And about all they remember of the U.S. is the flag and taxes. We still have the flag, so they figure the hell with the taxes.

  I just think one thing, though, and it’s the message I want to leave at the end of this tape. Aztlan is a serious problem, and the only way Texas can deal with it is by going in there and establishing strict martial law. If we don’t, Aztlan will get stronger and stronger, and we’ll soon be facing an army. The Legislature has to act on my military bill. That’s the key issue in Texas right now.

  Documents on the Triage

  Mother, mother, I feel sick,

  Send for the doctor, quick, quick, quick.

  Doctor, doctor, shall I die?

  Yes, my dear, and so shall I.

  —Skipping rhyme

  FROM THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

  The most feared and controversial medical decision of this century has been the CDC’s triage recommendation.

  Both Whitley and I have been especially eager to include as much information about the triage as we can, since it affects American life so profoundly.

  I don’t have any really good sources at the CDC headquarters in Dallas, so I was very glad for our stopover in Austin. It gave me a chance to visit a friend who works for the CDC here, and who was willing to give me the kind of documents that would be useful.

  I wanted information that few people had seen before.

  I hit a vein of gold, as it turned out. My friend gave me the three documents reproduced here. For this I thank him and I guarantee his anonymity. It is ironic that more lives have been affected by these three short memoranda than by any number of critically important medical discoveries.

  Because of these memos, millions of people have been denied even rudimentary medical care. But the triage has also guaranteed that those who can be helped are given what they need.

  During the flu, twenty percent of the population needed emergency help. This occurred against a background of chaotic supply problems, high doctor mortality in affected areas, and a tremendous demand for drugs at a time when the industry was having trouble even maintaining normal production levels.

  Perhaps one in ten of the flu victims saw a doctor, one in a hundred entered a hospital.

  There is no way to tell if triage saves lives. Not only the triage, but so many other things that we now take for granted—home care for the dying, euthanasia, black market and alternate medicine, the British Relief—came about because the demand for care simply overwhelmed the nation’s medical system.

  The existence of the triage means different things to different people. For me it means the constant, niggling fear that my lifedose will creep up and I’ll find myself suddenly denied medicine for some small ailment that will therefore become large and finally kill. For Whitley, the triage means a shortened life. He cannot legally enter a hospital or consult a licensed physician.

  Like so many triaged people, he has learned a great deal of medicine. Doctors who can’t treat a triaged person can and do organize seminars for ten or twenty such individuals at a time. And then there are the underground medicals—the witches and the doctors who practice illegally.

  And there is always the balance of hope.

  These three short memoranda seem innocent enough. But they are not innocent. They are the foundations of postwar American medicine.

  * * *

  ATCEN/DC/35A.1038

  VOICE TRANSMISSION FROM CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL/ATLANTA TO ALL REGIONAL OFFICES

  [CONFIRMATION BY COURIER]

  FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION TO STATE/MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS

  30 OCTOBER 1988

  Recent Soviet bombing of U.S. cities of San Antonio, Washington, D.C., New York area, and Upper Central and Western states creates unprecedented numbers of dead and whole-body radiation-induced injuries.

  Immediate burial and/or destruction of dead is imperative in order to contain spread of disease. Wherever possible, mass burial with suitable chemical agents is recommended. Civilian populations should be warned of disease potential.

  Triage procedures must be implemented to assist individuals with radiation-related injuries. First-degree thermal radiation burns, i.e., “flash burns,” are likely to occur to exposed individuals within 30 miles of detonation point given estimated Soviet weapon yield of 9–10 Megatons. Second- and third-degree burns are likely in unprotected individuals in 15–25-mile range. Appropriate medical treatments should be as prescribed for injuries of this type.

  Nuclear radiation injuries caused by gamma rays and neutrons are most serious, and high dosage can be life-terminating.

  Populations in two-mile radii from detonation points might have received 1,000+ rems. Critical level is 400–500 rems where radiation symptoms are strongly evident and casualty rate is 50 percent or higher. Exposures below 200 are not believed life-threatening and little treatment is recommended. Death rate at 1000+ is almost 100 percent.

  You are requested to provide every assistance possible to medical authorities to facilitate treatment of victims. Further triage instructions will follow.

  William T. Adcock, M.D.

  Director ATCEN/DC

  * * *

  TO:

  ALL MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS, SOUTHWEST AREA

  FROM:

  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES/CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL/EMERGENCY TASK FORCE ON RADIATION INJURIES

  DATE:

  VOICE TRANSMISSION 15 JANUARY 1989

  COURIER DELIVERY 16 JANUARY 1989

  SUBJECT: EMERGENCY MEMORANDUM ON ACUTE WHOLE-BODY RADIATION INJURIES

  You are being provided herein with guidelines for the identification of suspected radiation dosages based on readily observable physical symptoms. These guidelines are intended for municipal and/or county representatives enlisted to screen civilian populations for subsequent medical treatment or attention. The severe drain on surviving medical facilities requires operating knowledge by all government personnel in order to direct individuals or groups to appropriate medical services.

  Most urban centers sufficiently distant from radioactive or zoned areas have created several “screening areas” to process incoming refugees and native citizens: Level One areas are for those with no apparent radiation symptoms; Level Two areas are for those with limited hematopoietic or gastroint
estinal symptoms; Level Three areas are for highly traumatized and ataxic victims. Some version of this system is urgently recommended to all municipalities. Refugee movement rates are still inordinately high and unpredictable; virtually all communities in this region have reported high levels of influxing populations.

  Similarly, these populations are demonstrating varying levels of whole-body radiation injuries. You have been notified previously of emergency steps necessary to screen physical objects and food supplies for potential radioactivity.

  Because trained medical staff are limited and generally unavailable outside of central medical facilities, it is imperative that municipal staff, including police, fire department, civil servants, and temporaries, be aware of radiation-related illnesses. Because of many factors, but particularly because of proximity to bombed area and total radiation exposure, individuals may or may not be viable candidates for medical treatment.

  Large emergency treatment centers have been set up in key cities such as Lubbock, El Paso, Beaumont, Baton Rouge, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, and Albuquerque to treat individuals with medium to high levels of radiation dosages. Guidelines for treatment are under preparation and will be distributed to you as soon as available and approved by the Emergency War Recovery Administration.

  Guidelines to be employed by municipal authorities in screening war victims are as follows:

  LEVEL ONE SYMPTOMS: 0 to 100 REMS

  No apparent symptoms in this range. Internal blood changes will occur but are not apparent with superficial inspection. Care should be taken, however, to query all victims in order to determine point of origin, proximity to hit areas, and exposure to contaminated foodstuffs and objects from contaminated areas.