Hidden (Final Dawn) Read Free Page A

dropped to between five and ten degrees and had pretty much stabilized. It was the dead of winter, after all. The scientists who told the world of the “nuclear winter” explained that the earth would still have seasons. It would still be warmer in the summer, whenever the earth was closer to the sun, and colder in the winter when the sun was farther away.
         They wouldn’t be seasons like everyone was used to, however. Even on the dog days of summer, in mid to late August, the highs would not get above twenty five degrees. At least not initially.
         As the years went by, and more of the dust in the atmosphere settled, the temperatures would rise slowly. But it would take awhile. What the scientists pretty much agreed on was that the temperatures would not rise above freezing anywhere on earth for at least four years.
         In the fourth year, they said, perhaps those countries on the equator would see five to ten days above thirty two degrees, in the hottest part of the summer.
         In the fifth year, those five to ten days might stretch to twenty or thirty at the equator, and those countries five hundred to a thousand miles north and south of the equator would experience their own five to ten days above freezing. Then the following year, the equator might have forty five to sixty days of temperatures above freezing.
          The problem, the scientists said, was that the earth had never gone through this before. At least not in recorded history. They all had their theories, but nothing had been proven or even substantiated. There was no way to accurately determine how long the earth would take to warm again.
         In even the best case scenarios, though, citizens were told it would be at least five to seven years before they’d be able to live normal lives again. Five to seven years before there were enough warm days each year to grow crops. To reestablish civilization. To once again live anything like they were used to living.
         And, they were warned, for those who stuck it out, for those who wanted to survive, it was going to be anything but easy. All precipitation would now be in the form of ice and snow. And it wouldn’t melt. Couldn’t melt. It would be just too damn cold. No, it would accumulate instead. Would eventually be several feet high. And then, when the thaws finally did come, it would take a very long time to melt it all. And when it did melt the floods would come.
         No, it wouldn’t be pretty. Wouldn’t be pretty at all.
         On the television screen, a CNN reporter was broadcasting from Atlanta, and explaining that the city of Atlanta’s power plant was expecting to go off line within a week. Its coal reserves were running down, and it hadn’t switched to diesel or natural gas as many other cities had done in recent years. The coal plants in Pennsylvania and West Virginia were shutting down. They could no longer find miners who were willing to go underground for eight hours a day and get covered in cancer-causing dust to chip coal from the ground so that people a thousand miles away could be comfortable.
         The dollar was worthless now. What good were wages if they couldn’t be spent? Miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania were busy gathering coal for their own use now. For use in the coal burning stoves that would keep their homes warm for seven long years.
         Or they were leaving those homes in search of somewhere better.
         The CNN reporter went on. Once the lights went out for good in Atlanta, the network had about a week’s supply of diesel for their generators. When that ran dry, they’d be off the air for good. Or at least until the thaw came in seven years. After that, no one really knew what would happen. Or what the world would look like.
         In the meantime, they would continue to report the news twenty four/seven, just as they always had. They still felt a duty, despite all that had happened, to keep