by Sam Clark
It had been all Preston’s mother could do to stop Edward from drowning him in a tub. Edward had told his wife Edison had been born first and would be his heir and not another word was to be said about it. And not another word was, until his mother had confessed to Preston on her deathbed. Preston wasn’t sure if Edison knew, but he was obsessed with finding out. If Edison did know, his face gave nothing away at Preston’s words about birthrights and inheritance. He simply continued to chew on his lip, lost in thought.
I’m getting through to him. Maybe he’s ready to hear my plan of how to make such a world a reality after all. Why it necessitates him waiting to challenge Thoka—until a time when it won’t matter if Thoka kills him. Of course, he need not know that last part. That’ll be my little secret. The road’s clear. Bear being here isn’t ideal, but he’s inconsequential. Wait a moment more. Let it sink in. Let him think of the possibilities. It’ll be best if he sees them on his own. Patience is my weapon.
Before Preston could speak, Bear interjected. “What a terrible fucking world that would be. Nothing but a bunch of entitled pussies walking around, and not the good kind neither.
“Everybody would be soft,” Bear continued, “looking for handouts. Having everything given to em because their daddy had it. Awful. Your father would spin in his grave to hear you say that. Everybody should take their own measure. Take what they can, and if they can’t, then boo fucking hoo. Too damn bad.”
As Bear rambled on, Edward started nodding agreement. Preston had missed his moment. Bear continued for some while longer, but Preston wasn’t really listening. He only heard the occasional word, until Bear’s last line: “Your brother beat me pretty good, so I think he’ll be able to handle Thoka.”
“Elegant as always,” Preston snapped. “Tell me, Bear, what do you think Thoka would do to you in a fight?” He paused a moment to regain his composure, then went on in a more measured tone. “Bear, if you could beat Thoka, then you’d be king. But you can’t, so you aren’t. Besides, Edison has ‘beaten you pretty good’ for years, and it’s amounted to nothing when it comes to Thoka.”
The three men stood silently staring at one another, and Preston cursed himself. Not only had he missed his chance, but by suggesting Edison would lose, he had likely ensured his brother would, once again, issue his challenge to Thoka.
The silence was finally interrupted by a lovely high voice asking, “Are you three about to start kissing?” It was the voice of the woman Preston loved.
It was the voice of his brother’s wife, Kathy.
The voice of the woman who would have been Preston’s wife, if his brother hadn’t stolen his life.
“Only if you plan to join us,” Bear said.
Kathy laughed, though Preston was sure it was just to be polite. She wanted everyone to feel good about themselves, even a lout like Bear whose opinion of himself was already inflated beyond all reason.
“No, dear, we were just discussing politics,” Edison said, his smile returning—whether from the presence of his wife, or from Bear’s inappropriate comment, Preston couldn’t say.
“What a dreary thing to be talking about on such a beautiful spring morning,” Kathy said. “Preston, Roger is looking for you. He says it is time for his lesson. That it cannot be delayed. All in a very stern voice, too. I had half a mind to take him to task for it. However, I did tell him math wasn’t going anywhere, and he could wait until his uncle was ready.”
Preston turned to look at Kathy. Love for her and anger for his family warred inside him, two rabid dogs fighting over a bone. She was the perfect woman: smart, kindhearted, and stunning. Her complexion was quite fair, yet her hair, which hung down to the middle of her back, was blacker than a winter’s night. She was of a height with Preston, so her eyes always met his. And they were the most beautiful things he’d ever seen. So thoughtful, so sincere—and then there was the color, a deep vibrant blue. Although he’d never seen one, Preston liked to imagine they were the color of an ocean.
He would have loved nothing more than to stare into Kathy’s eyes for hours. However, he had difficulty meeting her gaze for more than a few seconds at a time. He worried his own eyes would betray what he felt.
Today, she wore a pale blue dress that made her eyes stand out even more. It also accentuated her full figure in all the right places. As he thought about those aspects of her body highlighted by the dress, Preston could feel his cheeks coloring, so he quickly dropped his gaze to the ground.
“No, he’s quite right,” he said. “I expect him to be on time to our lessons, and I should be as well.”
Preston turned and began making his way to the manor house, thinking about everything that should have been his—and what still might be.
TWO
Location: Underground
Date: 8-15-61
The Third World War lasted but a fraction of the time of the first two. Just a few short weeks, rather than several long years. A great testament to man’s achievements in the destructive arts. The obliteration of civilization in just over a fortnight. Then again, perhaps it would be more accurate to say the Third World War never really ended. Rather it has raged ever since, only at a more intimate level. As if the destruction from on high of all humanity’s greatest achievements wasn’t enough. As if only our extinction would do this time. I suppose it is only fitting that as we pursue our annihilation—which, with the single-mindedness of obsession, we have so desperately sought since the beginning of our history—that we have the decency to look each other in the eye as we kill.
Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to answer even basic questions about the war, such as who started it, what it was about, or how many people perished. I think the only question about World War III that can be answered with any degree of certainty is who won, to which the obvious answer is ‘no one.’ One might find this lack of knowledge about such a seminal event in the history of humankind surprising; however, civilization ended so quickly there was no time for a play-by-play, and afterward there was no time for retrospection, as more pressing concerns—such as survival—intervened.
With the above caveats in mind, I can provide some limited anecdotal information on the earliest events of the war based on my own experiences of them. The war began with nuclear bombs exploding nearly simultaneously over Pyongyang and Los Angeles on February 20, 2018BT. Moscow, St. Petersburg, Washington DC, New York, London, Tel Aviv, Paris, Beijing, and Delhi were hit soon thereafter, though in what order, I do not know. I received information only intermittently as I fled my home in Northern California, looking for someplace safe. Then the electrical grid was destroyed, and with it went any updates about the wider world.
Let me conclude by stressing that none of the foregoing should be read as implying the heretical proposition that the Rapture was a man-made event. Since the Council of Minot in 10GT/2027BT, the official Church position has been that the fires which ignited the very air were not the product of man’s destructive capacities but of God’s Righteous Wrath.
—An excerpt from Brother Helix’s A Contemporary History of the Dakotas During the Great Tribulation.
“Czarina?”
“Uhh.”
“Czarina, are you awake?”
Czarina opened her eyes to see the wrinkled face of James, her grandfather, poking through a small opening in the divider that demarcated her private space. For the first time in a week, she hadn’t been awake when her grandfather came in. She’d actually slept.
“Time?” she asked.
“Quarter after five.”
Czarina let out a loud sigh and swung her legs off her narrow cot. As her feet slapped down on the cold concrete floor of the fallout shelter, a shiver shot up her spine, removing the last vestiges of sleep from her system.
“I’m up, James.” She’d never been able to call him Pop-Pop. It just didn’t fit.
James pulled the divider all the way back, filling her personal space with
shadows and the dim glow of the fluorescent emergency lights in the common room. They wouldn’t be able to turn on the overhead lighting until 0600.
“So,” James began, “does that mean you will be going to school?”
Czarina rotated her back to the right and then to the left, stretching her stiff muscles. Her cot was anything but comfortable. “Sure, what the hell.”
“Ah, wonderful. May I ask if the young lady will be staying out of trouble while matriculating today?”
She actually laughed. It was nice to laugh again. It had been a while. “No promises, old-timer.”
“That attitude is going to get you an ass-kicking one day.”
She knew her grandfather was only half-joking. James often warned her about what he called her ‘willful antagonism’ of the militia. Of course, they both knew it was a trait she had picked up from him.
“Probably,” she responded, “but I don’t think it’ll be today.”
With a skeptical grunt, James turned and worked his way over to his desk, which along with three chairs comprised the sum total of the common area’s furniture. This seemingly simple activity was made difficult by the numerous book piles that covered the floor, which left only narrow pathways to move about the room. She watched as James retrieved two mugs of instant coffee from his desk. The return trip took longer, as James had to take care not to spill any near his precious books.
He handed her a white mug with an image of Uncle Sam on it. “Your black-water, ma’am.” He kept the larger mug—blue, with the word ‘mensch’ scrolling across it in red letters—for himself.
“Thank you, my good man,” Czarina said.
James took a sip and frowned, as he did every day after the first sip of the freeze-dried coffee. He shrugged. “Eh, I suppose it’s not too bad for being over forty years old.”
“You’re nearly twice that, old-timer; what kind of shape are you in?”
“Careful, or that ass-kicking might just be today after all.”
Czarina’s lips pulled back to reveal her teeth. An actual smile. The two of them remained silent for several moments, with Czarina simply enjoying the morning, the company, and even the coffee. She had missed her morning banter with her grandfather. Sure, she’d done it this last week like she always had, but she had just been going through the motions. That was something she’d had to do more and more often lately, so James wouldn’t suspect. It felt so good to really engage again, to not feel all washed out inside.
Eventually, James broke the silence. “You might be better served if you stayed here and filled in some of the gaps in your knowledge. Your understanding of political philosophy is especially atrocious. Some time studying the Enlightenment thinkers would do you some good.”
“But I read a bunch of that stuff just last year.”
James took a sip of coffee then said, “Tell me, girl, did you glean everything of relevance from Clausewitz the first time? Or has your understanding grown with subsequent readings?”
“A fair point,” she reluctantly admitted.
“I know,” James said with a self-satisfied grin that accentuated the wrinkles around his mouth and eyes. “I would suggest starting with Hobbes, followed by Locke, then Rousseau and Montesquieu, but the choice is yours.”
“And what a choice it is. Hobbes gives me a headache. Leviathan is like seven hundred pages with teeny-tiny print. At least Locke and Rousseau knew there was something to be said for brevity. Tell me something—why is it that after making his case for a strong state by appealing to reason, Hobbes starts all over again and makes the case by appealing to Christian theology? Talk about overkill.”
“What you call overkill others might call thoroughness. One might expect an atheist like Hobbes to ignore religion altogether or attempt to negate it. However, given the predominance and strength of Christian beliefs during the period, both of those courses would have been mistakes. Think about what he was arguing. For Hobbes, in an ideal civil society, when God’s law conflicts with the ruler’s law—and for him this conflict was inevitable—the former must give way to the latter. By using Christian source materials to justify such a proposition, he was trying to force religious authorities to engage his arguments, rather than dismiss them out of hand as being the work of an atheist. A rather shrewd move, if you ask me. Of course, if it were me, girl, I would have done it for an even simpler reason.”
She knew her grandfather wanted her to ask him to elaborate, so, to mess with him, she let the silence stretch a bit. To fill the time, and further irritate James, she began taking an exaggerated interest in her coffee, deeply inhaling its aroma before each sip, letting it linger on her palate, and following each taste with an over-loud “ahhh.” When her grandfather began to fidget, tugging gently on his earlobe, she knew he’d had enough. “Well… are you going to enlighten me?”
“A pun? Today is looking more and more like the day with each passing second.”
The smile that had been on her face almost since waking grew even larger.
“Anyway,” James continued, “I would do it because I could, girl. Just because I could.”
She laughed. “I have no doubt that you would. As for skipping school, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t want to fall any further behind in training.”
She saw the smile on James’s face invert to a frown for a split second before he took a sip of coffee to conceal it. The militia was the only thing James liked to badmouth more than the coffee, so she was acutely aware of what he thought about militia training in general, and her insistence on training with the boys in particular—especially since the whole Steve episode. This, even though James was the one who had dogged the leadership until they had agreed to let her into the boys’ training in the first place.
“Czarina—”
Desperate to avoid spoiling her good mood by arguing with James about the militia again, she quickly raised her free hand in mock surrender. “How ’bout a compromise, I’ll skip after-lunch Bible study and read some Clausewitz.” It wasn’t really a compromise on her part, since she always skipped the Bible study, often to read Clausewitz, but she always thought it best to appear reasonable.
James sighed. “War is why you have spent your whole life in a bunker, Czarina. No. Readings on good governance, that is the way to go. Besides, if you read On War one more time it is liable to disintegrate.”
“Machiavelli?”
James stared at her the way he always did when he thought she had said something particularly dumb, dropping his chin so his sharp brown eyes were framed between the top of his wire-rimmed glasses and his bushy eyebrows, which maintained just a hint of their original black color.
“Fine,” Czarina said. “How about some sociology, maybe Garfinkel?”
“Absolutely not. When you read Garfinkel it gives me a headache. The last thing I need at my age is you running around Garfinkeling people for the next week.
She chuckled as she thought back on some of her better ‘breaching experiments.’
“Dare I ask?” James said.
“Just thinking about when Colonel Mueller asked if I had a problem, and I spent ten minutes listing all my problems. I wish you could have seen his face. It just got redder and redder, especially when I mentioned cramps, but he never interrupted. He didn’t even punish me afterward.”
“That is because he decided to punish me instead. I had to listen to him list all your problems, and for far longer than ten minutes, girl.”
“Oh. Sorry about that. As penance, I’ll read some philosophy, but how about something I haven’t read before.”
“Agreed. Plato’s Republic it is.”
James’s response came so quickly she wondered if he had orchestrated the whole conversation to get her to agree to read Plato. However, before she could pursue it, James said, “Go wash up. You smell, even for someone who lives in a fallout shelter.”
She took a whiff of her armpit and had to agree. Setting her half-empty
mug on the floor—she knew James would drink it later, despite his complaints about the taste—she slipped on her well-worn running shoes, then stood and walked to her footlocker. She flipped the lid open and pulled out a clean change of clothes. As she passed her grandfather on her way out, she flicked him in the backside with her rolled-up shirt. She felt, rather than saw, his response, which took the form of a light cuff on the back of her head. She laughed and ran from the room as fast as she could without knocking over a stack of books.
THREE
Location: Underground
Date: 8-15-61
Czarina entered the hall and went straight for the bathroom without slowing. She felt no sense of urgency; she simply ran everywhere she went. She entered the sole women’s bathroom facility in corridor B, which her family shared with nine other families, and locked the door behind her. While the bathroom was small, it was not single occupancy. But she needed solitude for her morning routine, so on days when she decided to go to school at all, she got up forty-five minutes before lights-on to make sure she could have the bathroom to herself, at least for a few minutes.
After washing, brushing her teeth, and putting on a clean outfit consisting of the standard militia-issue olive green cargo pants and a long john top, Czarina felt a million times better. With the mundane activities out of the way, she approached the only full-length mirror in the bathroom. The lighting was dim, but she could see her reflection well enough thanks to the emergency light that hung directly over it.
She began by inspecting her face. She ran a hand through her closely-cropped dark brown hair. It had been about ten days since her last buzz-cut. That was in the sweet spot, where it had grown out enough that she no longer looked totally like a boy, but hadn’t begun to get shaggy again. Thankfully, the dark bags that had been steadily growing under her eyes had vanished. Coupled with her high, prominent cheekbones and sharp jawline, they had given her face a haunted, skeletal look. That they had vanished so quickly, she supposed, was a testament to the powers of sleep and youth.