On a frigid December morning, Hank Sanders stomped the caked mud off his worn boots and entered Discount Hardware. He couldn’t shake his cousin’s remarks. Put her down, he’d said. The words had rolled so effortlessly off his lips, as if her life meant nothing at all, as if, simply by being old, she’d become too much trouble.
Hank marched up one aisle and down another, searching for a new blade for his knife. When had the shelves become so barren? It hadn’t looked like this the last time he’d shopped there. But with the fuel shortages and the lack of truckers, was it any wonder? And where was everyone? He hadn’t seen any other customer or any staff. With no one to help him find the blade or even care if he made a purchase, he returned to his old pickup, trash crunching under his boots.
He drove south, thirty miles along the Ohio River, where sheets of fog hovered over the water and worn concrete road. As he squinted and leaned into the wheel, he choked down his sense of loss for his nation. Once an abundant land of plenty, it now resembled a third-world nation with food and energy shortages. Little by little, residents were adjusting to lack and uncertainty. Incredible, he thought, how easily people could be conditioned to accept less and less.
At the fenced compound, he punched the access code into the keyboard, and a gate slid open, exposing a comforting wrought-iron sign that read: House of Hope: Where Your Suffering Ends. That sign had greeted him for as long as he could remember. In stark contrast, the massive gray government structure stood cold and uninviting just beyond the gate.
He drove to the back entrance and mentally prepared for another twelve-hour day. When he climbed
