The onslaught of a winter not seen in a hundred years was bearing down with a blanket of ice and snow across America. Mismanaged cities downsized due to debts that could no longer be paid to support the needed complement of police, fire fighters, and maintenance crews. Affluent communities fell into a state of decay tangled with broken power lines no longer able to withstand the crush of ice and snow. Copper thieves brought darkness to abandoned streets. Arches of ice frozen in space hung above broken water lines. Trees that had stood for centuries fell on houses and cars. Hundreds of these giants lay scattered across roads making it impossible for crews to reach fires ignited when gas mains broke consuming entire communities. Factories, businesses, houses and apartments were going dark and cold when the power went off and gas was no longer available for heat. Churches, gymnasiums and community centers were swarming with desperate families out of money and nowhere else to go. Thousands of families out of work spent their depleted funds and final unemployment checks to head south in search of work in places that promised sunshine and warmth. The highways were scattered with abandoned cars draped in mountains of fresh snow. Trucks heading north into the cities whose shelves were bereft of even the basic needs of their patrons stalled in the snarl of abandoned vehicles to be pilfered by desperate travelers heading to places unknown. In the quiet remote forests of Arkansas, Austin and Gayle Milo cleared their land and built a prime herd of cattle raised on the land they had claimed from the encroaching grasp of Mother Nature. Into this quiet place, dangerous and desperate men and women planted themselves saying they came in peace, but they defiled the land.
