Remnant: Beverly

“I see your point about needing to speed up but we don’t run for anybody. Hell, we can’t run” Junior said.

“But I am not asking you to run. I am asking you to work steady, not faster” Jarrell pleaded.

“That just ain’t gonna fly” Junior said dismissively. “Me, I am willing to try anything but the person you are going to have to convince is Beverly.”

Jarrell had to think for a minute. “Beverly? The woman who never stops talking?”

 

The picture in Jarrell's head was of a stout woman who was on the far side of seventy. Based on how she walked, her feet hurt and she had very little flexibility.

“Yep. That’s her. She is something else, isn't she. You know she is my neighbor?” Junior said.

“No, I didn’t know that” Jarrell said, voice filled with puzzlement. “But she is not the boss.”

“Don’t matter” Junior said. “The boss, he don’t like conflict. Beverly makes conflict. The boss back-pedals.” 

 

"The boss can't do nothing. The Governor's Executive Order makes it impossible to fire anybody in an essential service, not that the boss would do that anyway."

“So what is it going to take to convince Beverly?” Jarrell asked, not really expecting an answer.

“Well, if you give me a few minutes and pour me another glass of chocolate milk, I might think of something” Junior informed him.

*

The head of the State Police was twisting in the wind.

He knew he was in for a brutal month. Word was out that the Governor "managed" by finding somebody she did not like and then pounding on them for a month. There was nothing the victim could do to redeem themself. And just as suddenly as they landed in the ditch the Governor would choose another object-lesson.

He had delivered his report to the Governor and she didn’t like it. Not that there was anything wrong with it. Rather, she saw him as a hold-over form the previous administration who she had not gotten around to brooming out.

The gist of his report was that the terrorists could execute another attack and there was almost nothing the Michigan State Police could to to stop them. There were too many miles of pipelines and wire. The means to sever them were too available and could be stealthily inserted or balloons could be launched from afar.

That was the wrong answer.

The Governor did not dismiss him. He sat on the hard, office chair...waiting.

Two hours later the head of the Michigan National Guard showed up. The Governor had made no mention of a reason to hurry.

The Governor tasked the National Guard with securing the pipelines and electrical transmission lines and she gave the head of the State Police a direct order to support the National Guard.

You don’t get to be the head of the National Guard by being an idiot. He had already looked over what it would take to secure the pipelines and transmission lines.

“I must inform you that we can only secure the highest risk areas” the General said.

The Governor pierced him with a stare with all of the warmth of twin ice picks. “Just make sure it is in the most highly populated areas” she said.

The General saw no reason to point that except for the attack on Port Huron, all attacks had been in extremely rural areas. If the Governor told him to guard the pipeline in the most populated areas, he would do that.

But he would also install surveillance every place a pipeline crossed a river. He had read the reports of the bombings in Connecticut. The official assessment by the ordinance experts estimated that the Connecticut explosion delivered five times the “Bang!” per kg of ANFO as the Michigan and California explosions.

If Gaia Liberation Front had a brain, or moles in the military, then future attacks would be where lines crossed beneath rivers. 

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