THE MOTHER SIEGE: A DYSTOPIAN THRILLER

Chapter 17: THE MOTHER SIEGE: A DYSTOPIAN THRILLER

Copyright (c) 2013 Phyllis Zimbler Miller

All rights reserved.

Part II

West of the Mississippi River – 2049

            In a half hour Natalie knew she should reach what she called the siege site.  With only two more days to go before the group home deadline, they were cutting it close.  But the logistics of getting the people and supplies to the same location without appearing on any government monitoring systems was not easy.

            Things were going okay so far.  In the past weeks Harold had found a siege location and her mother had been able to tell Natalie what supplies they needed to bring to reinforce the site and to construct the siege weapons.

            As a nutritionist Catherine had been tasked with figuring out their food supply.  Although chicken and beef were now grown in lab dishes, Natalie and her children were vegetarians because the artificially grown meat had never been declared kosher.  While the others usually ate the artificial meat, Catherine had decided it would be better to plan a vegetarian diet.  Obtaining the lab ingredients to grow the meat might cause her to be monitored.

            Using the end of the school year and the deadline for group home submission, Natalie and her mother as well as Catherine and Graciela had told people that they were taking one last family vacation.

            Of all the people Natalie felt badly about leaving behind, her biggest regret centered on the grandchildren of the elderly Jewish woman who had taken care of Jonah and the twins from their birth until Jonah was old enough to stay home alone with the twins.  Natalie had trusted the woman with the secret of Julie because the woman, a secret Jew as Natalie, personally understood the need to stay under the radar of the Provisional Government.  Now Natalie felt as if she had betrayed the woman’s loyalty.

            Natalie shook her head.  She had to stay focused on her mission.

           She had taken her children and her mother in their coupled movicles.  Catherine, her children and her sister Rosalind had taken a train to a nearby town from which Natalie would retrieve them with her movicles.  Graciela and her children had flown to a different nearby town and would also be retrieved by Natalie.

          Harold had flown to a medical convention in a nearby major city and told his brother he would be checking potentially infectious disease locations on his return trip and would not immediately be back in his office after the end of the medical conference.

            As part of the plan, no one was going off the grid until they got to their first destination.  Natalie’s plan required the government to find them, just not immediately.  Thus the children still interacted with their personal comm units during the trip and Natalie tracked the news on her Twitterverse earpiece as if they were indeed on a normal vacation trip.

                                                             ***

            The meeting in William’s office had already been in progress for an hour.  Numerous agenda items had been covered, all satisfactorily.

            “Now where do we stand on the group home project?” he asked.

           “Ninety percent of the children have already arrived at their designated homes,” Gregor said.

            “Excellent,” William said.  “What’s happening with the remaining 10 percent?”

           “At midnight on Tuesday the location info for any stragglers will be supplied to the appropriate militia,” Samantha said, “which will immediately begin roundups.”