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it all? How many acres of forest were chopped down just so Jeffrey had a barrier fortress of boxes for when Lieutenant Miller came by with water balloons as part of a surprise attack?
    Other officers were resigning their posts and leaving in the middle of the night with their families. From the limited news he heard across the country, the same thing was occurring all throughout the military: a colonel or a major snuck away one night and the remaining lieutenants drew straws to see who would be lucky enough to move from a cubicle to a private office. One by one the lower ranks filtered into the luxurious carpeted offices of former generals until even the lowly sergeants could close their doors and put their feet up on their desks for a post-lunch nap.
    There was a time when personnel were categorized as essential or non-essential. Essential personnel had to perform their duties even during the most severe weather emergencies or other unplanned crises. Jeffrey’s feelings weren’t hurt by the knowledge that there was nothing about his job that could ever be twisted to make it be considered “essential.” These days, it was an outdated category anyway; no one was essential anymore. The guard post’s practice of checking badges to get on base was no longer enforced. A man in shorts and a t-shirt had walked past his office the previous week. Jeffrey had never seen the man before. The man walked around the base for a while before disappearing. No one had even bothered to detain him and ask who he was or why he was wandering the base.
    There was no reason to keep the planes fueled or to continue performing maintenance on them. No one did their morning jogs or push-ups. Marching was completely extinct. No one bothered saluting anyone else. All around the base were men who knew they were only biding their time until they packed up with the rest of the city and moved south.
    The schools were already closed. The teachers were either building generators and food processors as part of the Survival Bill or enjoying early retirement. The last students through the high schools’ halls had become young adults and were working alongside the previous generation until the Survival Bill’s provisions were complete. One of Jeffrey’s old math teachers, a seventy year-old man who couldn’t stand not working (doing nothing meant you might as well be dead) was working on roads crews to keep the highways patched and functioning. Every day on his way to work Jeffrey passed his old Algebra teacher manning a paving machine and laying fresh blacktop.
    The roads were in better shape than the runways. An F-14 trying to take off from the main Fort Dix runway would blow out its tires and skid into a fiery heap before ever getting off the ground. Any planes that still resided on base were destined to remain there for the rest of time.
    The constant paving of roads, though, made people feel safe because it kept them reassured that travel was still possible. God help the fear mongering that occurred each time a car’s tire went flat because of a pothole. The nightly talk shows put up a picture of a Porsche with a flat tire, as if anyone should be driving a small sports car these days.
    What they really needed, Jeffrey thought, was for the road crews to abandon the constant paving and re-paving and focus solely on clearing abandoned cars from the sides of the road. A family of four that owned three cars only needed the largest vehicle for their trip south. The other two cars would be put to better use, the family thought, if they were left with the keys in the ignition on the shoulder of the highway. The only problem with that practice was that abandoned cars started piling up on the freeways. It wasn’t long before not only the shoulder of the highway was blocked, but also the far right lane, and then the middle lane. Some nights on his way home from work, traffic was still as slow with only a hundred cars on the road as it had been when there were