Police officers battled gangs and armed citizens for control of the streets. The tenuous power grid that the rest of the United States maintained had totally failed here. At night everything became pitch black and the only lights were those from the cars of people either stupid enough to be outside of sanctuary or up to no good. The mayor declared martial law and imposed a strict curfew at dark while the New York National Guard and the NYPD patrolled the streets. After the first few weeks of darkness, the unofficial policy of the department quickly evolved into a “shoot first and ask questions later” mentality. Thousands of people had been killed in the skirmishes and every morning there were more bodies that appeared out of nowhere. Since most gasoline and diesel fuel went to power emergency services generators the city couldn’t afford to expend the fuel for backhoes and bulldozers. In order to keep the chance of disease as low as possible, the bodies were loaded onto barges and taken to North Brother Island sitting off the coast of the Bronx in the East River.
