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FOREWORD

The best way to spend the winter safe from the zombies might be to assemble a well-stocked, private little train and find a siding high in the mountains, away from everything, until the Spring thaw. Stumbling across a small, snowbound, but completely deserted town might even seem like a stroke of luck, since nothing can come in. But that makes you the only intruder, and what you can’t see – yet -- can be a lot scarier than what you can.

The accident involving a train and a lake is based on one that really happened in New England during the Depression. The crew lived, but the hoboes riding in the boxcars didn’t, revealing themselves to local townspeople the same way as in the story.

I’m having a lot of fun using Google Earth to tour the locations for the stories. This one was fun to write, and I hope you like it.

Throughout history, politics has always been a showcase for man’s inability to think. Many would argue that religion plays that role, but when religions get big enough, they become politics. The politicians’ inability to think has always ultimately manifested itself in war.

The struggle was never between the haves and the have-nots, or the free and the oppressed, or even the believers and the infidels. It was always people versus the people with power in other countries, and especially the people with power over them in their own. The Constitution itself defines that balance of power in America by making one nationally-elected official the equal of about 200 million citizens.

People have never started wars – leaders have, and usually for the basest of reasons and with a certain disregard toward those who would ultimately do the dying. No president or congress has ever voluntarily reduced or ceded their own power, and this mostly holds true throughout the history of the entire world regardless of government or social structure. Leaders who won’t abdicate or resign usually have to be deposed or killed before they’ll cede power – a dead giveaway as to their priorities. Leaders are usually the ones who define for their people just who the aggressors (ie, bad guys) are, too, to make sure their taxpayers and potential draftees know who to be mad at this year. It’s as meaningless as when television shows and magazines routinely declare who the sexiest person in the world is, and just as believable. At least the sexiest people are never killers -- in spite of the media’s ongoing flirtation with that possibility. But then, some presidents have killed – legally, of course – and one was even an executioner. Blood has spilled in torrents over the freedom to own slaves.

It was in this kind of gross body politic that the greatest calamity to befall human beings on the planet Earth occurred. People got sick, died, and then got up again to kill and eat other humans. It was a disease, a plague, The Plague, and at least half the earth’s population was wiped out in the first round by simply being susceptible enough to it that the germ itself could do all the work without recruiting any human henchmen. Someone later discovered that it seemed to have a link to a nearby comet or asteroid, but by then it was too late to make any use of the information or even evaluate it properly.

When it began and countries around the world started to end, the sitting American president – already thoroughly and proudly incompetent -- was a widely acknowledged and globally recognized horse’s ass. It was an unkind thing for his critics to say, but they were quick to point out that it was, in fact, a very kind thing to say, given his record. For the sake of decency and respect, however, they apologized to horses everywhere.

In his last televised address regarding the emergency, the President was unaware that the cameras were running as he stared at news updates on an adjacent bank of monitors. At least one-third of them were now blank, the stations having gone off the air. The viewing audience could hear his aides in the background trying to get his attention with loud whispers: Mr. President! Mr. President! You’re on! Mr. President!

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