Hidden (Final Dawn) Read Free Page B

their viewers informed.
         The anchor switched from the studio in Atlanta to a reporter in Kansas City. Kansas City had just implemented the first government run mass suicide facility in the country. And it was not lacking for customers.
         The concept was simple. Offer a painless and effective way to die for the doomed, and most people would choose the easy way out.
         So Kansas City took a basketball arena. And they made it airtight. And outside they brought in eight high powered gasoline generators. Each one of them was hauled in on the back of an eighteen wheeler and was as big as a locomotive. By running the generators at full capacity for two hours, and by connecting their exhausts to the air intakes for the arena’s ventilation fans, they were able to gas twenty thousand people at a time. Quickly, efficiently and painlessly.
         The CNN cameras showed a long line of families queued up outside the facility. Most of them had forlorn and resigned looks on their faces and many were in tears. Virtually all of them were holding hands, relishing the last hours of their lives together.
         The network switched to another camera just inside the building, where the families were slowly filing past tables staffed with nurses in crisp white uniforms. Each was handed a dose of a heavy sedative and offered a choice of Kool-Aid or various flavors of soft drinks to wash the pills down with.
         The CNN reporter noted succinctly that none of the drinks offered had caffeine which might slow the effects of the sedative. He also noted that children and babies were given the same heavy dosage as the adults. It would knock them out first, of course. But that was the intent.
         The adults were handed flyers with simple instructions. Since the sedatives had already been taken, their children would fall asleep in between ten to twenty minutes, depending on their weight and level of anxiety. The parents would follow suit in forty five minutes to an hour. They had that long to find their own corner of the arena to spend the rest of their time together and to relax and say their goodbyes. If they chose to, there were twelve thousand folding cots laid out throughout the facility, on the basketball court and on all the concourses. They could lie down if they wished while they waited to fall asleep.
         Dozens of ministers and priests were going around the facility administering last rites and providing solace where they could. In most cases, though, the citizens of Kansas City had already accepted their fate and said their prayers.
         Once the building was filled to capacity, a loud horn would sound to tell all medical personnel and clergy they had twenty minutes to clear the building.
         After twenty minutes the doors were sealed and the generators were powered up. After two hours they would be turned off again and the doors reopened.
         After four more hours the cleanup process would begin. Eight hundred volunteers would use tractors and luggage trailers, borrowed from the airport, to gather 20,000 bodies and place them on trucks for transport.
         The CNN reporter didn’t ask where they were transported to. He didn’t have to. A thick, acrid smoke had been drifting over from the city dump a mile and a half away for the last four days.
         The reporter sent it back to the studio with a tear in his eye, stating matter of factly that the process would be repeated around the clock until there were no more lines at the facility.
         Hannah and Sarah had seen enough. Hannah felt sick to her stomach. It wasn’t morning sickness.
         Sarah asked, “Are you all right, honey?”
         “Yes. It’s just that…”
         She swallowed hard.
         “It’s just that seeing those children’s faces… they looked so sad. And so hopeless.”
         She looked Sarah in the eyes before going on.
         “I should feel so guilty, but I