On the internet news feeds, the government was telling people to evacuate the big cities and go to one of the temporary military bases they’d set up to handle everything. The footage was horrific. People fighting in the streets. The sick being hauled away in military vehicles. It seemed more like a bizarre nightmare than the truth. This couldn’t be America. Surely this was a bad dream and she’d wake up soon and everything would be fine and everyone would be safe and healthy. Just because she wanted it to be true, didn’t mean it could be.

The camera angle showed a mother and her young daughter riding in the bed of a huge, military truck huddled together under a blanket for warmth. She wondered where they were being taken. They wanted to evacuate cities. They told people to get out, flee, take what they could with them and leave. They weren’t telling people who already were out, people who already lived in the country, what to do. They weren’t telling the city people fleeing to the country that it wasn’t safe there, either. Why were they lying to everyone?