Meltdown at North Fork A Novel

This black comedy is set in rural North Fork, Connecticut—pop. 2000—in the near future. A Wall Street meltdown has caused the financial collapse of the former United States. Public services evaporate through lack of funding. The whole North East of the US ceases to function. North Fork bumbles along but outside dangers soon threaten the little town. There are no Connecticut police since they walked off the job after their pay stopped. Similarly the prison guards release all prisoners and go home. The little town is on its own. In the opening scene Peter Smithers, the narrator, aids in the kidnapping of a morbidly obese woman who then has involuntary bariatric surgery performed on her by a senile retired veterinarian. The local trust fund kids—elitist do-gooders under the leadership of the dictatorial Pru— organize the kidnappings and surgery. Obamacare and Medicaid have vanished; there is no medicine to treat the town’s sick, abandoned children—holed up in the church—since the needs of adult fatties soak up all medical resources. So Pru’s gang decide to sort out the fatties—permanently. Smithers, a total wussie, is married to Amanda, a much tougher character. Their beautiful, athletic daughter, Libbet, has ditched her city-loving husband and come back to live with them. Can Libbet now find a real man? She fights constantly with Oliver, a handsome hunk who chose a back to nature lifestyle pre-Meltdown. They may bicker, but there is definitely something going on… North Fork is run by Mayor Byron Weinberg, a macho gay libertarian—gay but in the manner of Alexander the Great—not your mother’s hairdresser. Weinberg becomes aware that a mob in Waterbury led by a violent ex-convict, Wat Tyler, plan to invade North Fork. Weinberg and Smithers visit Tyler to try and buy him off but instead enrage him. Simultaneously Randall Schwule, who has made a fortune through anticipating the Meltdown and ripping off Goldman Sachs, is diverted from his hilltop farm’s isolation. Thanks to his German ancestors, Schwule is also a werewolf. He has needs…unpleasant needs…and heads down the hill for town. When the Waterbury mob attack North Fork, Byron and his Vietnam-era ex-soldier pals and one lethal woman man the barricades and fight back fiercely with old, but deadly weapons but they are hopelessly outnumbered. Defeat seems only a matter of time. Night falls. Tyler and his mob are on the verge of victory—and slaughtering all the town folk—when the werewolf intervenes to defend the sick children. This gives Smithers the chance to save the small band of defenders with a suicidal, solo attack. Smithers overcomes his normal cowardice and fights like a hero, re-gaining Amanda’s respect. Tyler’s mob vanish but this is clearly just a respite. The people who stay in North Fork will always have to be prepared to fight. So the pacifistic do-gooders are forced to escape to the South. Libbet and Oliver take over the hilltop farm and plan to live the life of early farmers—with their first child on the way. A gruesome discovery on the farm may complicate their future… North Fork is once again a community of self-reliant pioneers. Will it survive?