The early evening drive down to the Governor’s residence in downtown Honolulu was enough to convince James Ritchie that the Hawaiian islands were going to go down a tube at high speed unless someone got their act together. The curfew seemed to have had no effect and the state government no interest in enforcing it. Thousands of people were milling about the streets, many of them agitated and besieging any place where they could buy emergency supplies of food and water. Large, increasingly unstable crowds had gathered outside travel agencies and airline shopfronts, which remained open well after normal business hours. Every gas station had a trail of vehicles snaking away from its bowsers, leading Ritchie to wonder where the hell these people thought they were going to escape to in their SUVs and family sedans.
His latest reports from Gitmo and Canada spoke of a strange glow, as if from a distant furnace, emanating from the energy wave, and as their route down to the Capitol District allowed Ritchie glimpses of the Pacific reaching away back east, he couldn’t shake the impression of a sunset that seemed denser and richer than normal. Long, slow lines of surf banked up in sets of three off the beach at Waikiki, a strong offshore breeze blowing thick foam back off the lip as they crested. The weird, almost ethereal light lent the spray a bright, burnished cherry colour, and seemed to paint the mass of surfers and body boarders bright pink as they carved up the barrels.
The Capitol District was less crowded, probably because it offered little in the way of supplies that could be bought up and hoarded. Police and state troopers were out in force, however, and the pulsing lights of over a dozen Honolulu PD squad cars bathed the district in a rich, electric red that overwhelmed the otherworldly light Ritchie had noticed before. His BlackBerry buzzed as the staff car swung off Beretania Street and in through the gates of Washington Place. It was his wife.