Down: The Fall

Chapter Fifteen: The Mayor

One Month After The Event:

Mayor Elizabeth Quimby sat cross legged on top of her desk in the town hall of the town of Sentral Alabama. Sentral was a small town, almost close enough to Huntsville, Alabama to be one of its suburbs. It was named for its founder James Sentral the man who had opened the towns first coal mine. His family had become one of the more wealthy families in this town over the last one hundred and forty seven years. The last couple of years they'd been a pain in her butt, trying to undermine her every decision. At times like right now they especially tried her patience. With a whole town and neighboring towns full of shrunken people they still felt as if the world revolved around them.

It had been a near impossible task of rounding up all the survivors of the first few weeks of the events. Close to a hundred had died in the first week while people were still waiting for the government to help. People had been eaten by animals, died from suffocation in hot cars, died of thirst trapped in their bed rooms, and the list went on. Within a few weeks the death toll had reached over two hundred. The towns population was a little over a thousand before the mists had hit. The town hadn't lost a quarter of its citizenry yet but it was close.

Now she had complaints coming in from the Sentrals that they wanted to know when she planned on doing something about this situation.

It wasn't like she wasn't trying because she had just about exhausted her self and others trying to do something.

She'd been the one who initially went out gathering the towns emergency personel. This consisted of eight of the remaining police officers and twelve volunteer fire fighters. They had also enlisted the help of two emts they'd rescued from an over turned ambulance. As time went by everyone they found was given a task whether it was finding food, making weapons, or much needed cloths. Luckily they had plenty of women who knew how to sew. Most had clothes that fit whether it was hemmed doll clothing or made from scratch with cloth ,needle, and thread.

The lists of things the town, if you could call it that anymore, needed were long and getting longer. She had been looking over them for hours that day. She had been deciding what tasks needed to be focused on first. She also had to decide who to deligate these tasks to.

After the mass texts the towns tablets, phones, and computers had received she'd hoped that the state or federal government would have arrived by now. They would have lightened her load tremendously. When they started hearing the radio broadcasts on all radio stations they'd all felt a little more hope. But when all the power began failing two and a half weeks in that hope began to fade. The internet soon followed probably half a week to a week later. That's when they really began to realize they were on their on, at least for a while.

She had begun having everyone brought to the townhall. She figured they all would be safer in large numbers. She also hoped that with all of the collective thinking they could figure out how to make it through this.

The Sentrals had taken over a whole office for their family. They would have taken over her office and planned to if she hadn't stood her ground. She flat out refused to allow it. Threatening to have the chief of police arrest Daniel Sentral, the head of the family, if they even set foot in her office was all that stopped them. He'd just laughed and said " It ain't worth all that trouble now Quimby".

She had knew then that she would have more trouble out of him and his family. Of course she had had trouble with them for years. Her sister had been married to Daniel's brother in law. She had had an on going custody battle with his wife over her nephew that ended two years ago. His wife's brother had killed his girlfriend in Tennessee leaving the child he and her sister had had together without a legal guardian. The guy had always been nuts and had treated her sister like trash. It had been continuous up until her dying days when breast cancer finally took her.