Veronica's Journal, June 24 (morning light)

June 24

Morning (sunlight)

There is a small window in this room, high in the wall to the left of the door; there's a sort of bench seat built in beneath it, and by standing on it I can see outside. I see roof and some other parts of the house and a large garage, then a steep hill / mountainside covered with trees going up behind the garage. Garages. Looks like there's more than one. No clear view of the valley, though I do see a lot of smoke in the sky. But the light is bright and golden when the smoke isn't obscuring the sun.

I woke up and there was a small TV on a stand here, with a remote, hooked up to Cable. It's amazing that there's still Cable television, and the world keeps going -- it's just our world here in this portion of California that has fallen apart. Is falling apart, I should say. There is strange stuff happening.

That earthquake last night was another big one, and there were more off the coast in the last hour. The Bay Area is bracing for another Tsunami, this one has the potential to be even bigger.  The explosion we heard last night was, as it appeared at the time, Mt. Diablo. The Northeast Flank has collapsed and now the town of Clayton is being destroyed by lava and Concord is being evacuated.  There's a major problem at the Livermore Labs, but nobody will tell the media what it is. Jets are flying into Livermore but landing at the Lab, totally bypassing the airport. The lake of fire in Pleasanton has reached El Charro. The exit, not the restaurant.

I hope Tad is awake and can watch some of this. He is fascinated by disasters. I am really worried about him. I could tell what he was doing last night in the car, when he started preaching and shaking and contradicting the Prophet guy, and I kept trying to think of ways to join in and help him, but improv scares me. His response to that would be, "What scares you more, improv or having the Prophet of the Mean Greenies bite something off of your body?" And he would be right. But I froze.  Some of his shaking and stuff was real.  The vomit was real, and really gross.  He seems to have an adverse reaction to Morphine.

Wow, they just showed Danville and San Ramon. Nothing but lava and smoking rubble on the East side of 680.

Now they're talking about the fishkill. All Government offices have been moved to the highest altitude possible in every city, with some cities sharing offices if one city is mostly near sea level; they are moving into schools or colleges that are in the hills -- apparently Hayward is wrangling with Cal State East Bay to move its Government into the University, but the University is saying that as it is no longer Cal State Hayward, it is the school and not the city that will call the shots. Interesting and petty. What's left of local Government is trying to rally and help people. But everything is a mess. So what they're saying right now is that almost everyone in the immediate Bay Area -- people in Hayward, Oakland, Berkeley, Martinez (what's left of it), San Mateo, Redwood City, San Jose -- everywhere that's flat -- all of those people are dead. The ones who lived or were at sea level the night of the nitrogen bloom all died. All of them. And there are not nearly enough people to dispose of the bodies. They are conservatively estimating 100,000 dead people. Rotting away. It has to be more than that, I think.

FEMA set up their trailer shantytown in the Coliseum parking lots. Of course. And in one night, most of the trailers disappeared. Some have been found, but all this was before the fishkill, so everyone in the trailers and everyone who stole a trailer is, presumably, dead. Tad would have a field day with this.

All I can think about is all the children.

Someone is knocking at the door.