by Carl Damen
Amanda slowly nodded, then bent back down and whispered in Than's ear, "Go with the nurse. Whatever you do, stay away from the Defenders. I don't care what your father said, I don't trust them."
She sat on the edge of the bed as Than slipped over the edge, pulled on a tee-shirt, and followed Grant from the room. When the door closed, she was able to breath again.
"What do you want, Lob?"
"Look, I know you don't trust them out there, but they really are trying to help you. I know some of them have been... rather extreme in there actions, but Ed trusted them, and maybe you should, too." Good; he was starting to sound more like the Mistaren she knew.
"Of course Ed trusted them; he's one of them."
She surreptitiously looked up to see what kind of reaction this would illicit. Lob was half-smiling, his expression looking almost wistful. "Knew it would happen sooner or later..."
Now she was standing, towering over the little General, flailing at him. "You knew? You knew he would do this, knew he was part of this—"
His hands gripped her wrists, far stronger than their age and frailty would suggest. She gasped, then fell quiet.
"There is no time for this right now," he hissed. "The E.H.U.D.s are here for a very specific purpose: They have intel that there's about to be a nuclear assault on the U.S. It's been a possibility for the past two months, a strong probability since last week. Now we have confirmation that someone is gunning for us. They're going to take out the Defenders before the Defenders or some other faction gets their hands on our nuclear arsenal."
That stopped Amanda, held her in place. Nuclear war... always such a remote possibility, something she knew no one would ever try... but always the worst-case scenario, the great fiery cloud she couldn't protect Than from, no matter how hard she tried. She found herself slipping backwards; Mistaren released her, letting her fall back on the bed.
"Who... who's firing at us?"
He ignored her. "Right now I need you to focus, Mandy."
Mandy. No one called her that except Edarus. She was focused now.
"The E.H.U.D.s think they can make an energy barrier to keep us safe, but they're relying on the the structure of this building to give them a guide. That means that we need everyone outside, all the refugees, all the soldiers, all the supplies, moved into the tower or the mall. We have about five hours, so we have to do it now."
She pushed herself up, walked to the closet, dug around until she found a pair of loose khakis and some comfortable shoes. "What do you want me to do?"
Mistaren nodded in approval. "You're the CFO of one of the country's largest non-profits, you're the only public face we've had for the presidency during the worst domestic dispute since the Civil War, and you're the one who got all of us here." He gestured expansively to the room, the building, the unseen refugee camp down below. "I want you to make sure every one's inside and safe by the time the nukes start falling."
The shoes made a tremendous thumping sound as they hit the floor. "Do you really think I can do it?"
Mistaren smiled his sweet, sinister, grandfatherly smile. "Why do you think I came to you first?"
Edarus sat on the edge of his bed, staring down at the blue sheath that bulged from the end of his robe. He flexed his leg, watched as the hunk of plastic and plaster moved, felt his thigh straining at the extra weight. It was getting better...
He dipped down into his leg, found the last place where bone was still held together be metal. Ideally, he would get the pin out first, then seal the bone. But that would take too long, require another surgery. For now, he'd seal the bone, build his strength back up. Then, when Dolad made good on his strike against Lob, he could help him remove the metal. God, it would be good to be able to do that, to control every aspect of his body. Never to be hurt again...
Faint music pulled him from his thoughts. He listened for a moment, recognized the jaunty tune of "Home Means Nevada." Mandy. He lunged from the bed, stumbling and grumbling as he found his balance, then clumped across to his dresser where his mobile lay gently twitching.
Click. "Mandy."
There was a moment before she spoke. In that moment were a multitude of other voices, of heavy machines groaning, of a city in a great hurry. "Ed. I'm sorry I didn't call earlier. I've just been so busy, and I knew you would be too, but—"
"I, I haven't been..." He cleared his throat. "I haven't been too busy—"
"I'll keep this short. I know we didn't part on the best of terms, and I still don't completely trust you, but Than misses you, and I see now how important it is for him to have you, so," her voice became thicker, "if we survive this, I want him to come visit you. We need to be together."
"If you—Mandy, what the hell are you talking about?"
She sniffed. "I know, stay positive. You trust them—hell, you're one of them—and you showed what they're capable of with Melana. Yeah, we'll get through this."
"Mandy, I—" Pain shot through his leg and he scuttled back to the bed, falling back just as he reached it. "Fuck! Mandy, what are you talking about, what's going on?"
"Lob hasn't told you?"
"I haven't talked to Lob since he needed approval for the LCR strike."
There was another moment of silence, another moment of the world around Amanda operating in a flurry of activity. Then: "Shit. The bastard was lying."
Edarus felt a twist deep in his stomach. Mistaren was doing something again. How long since he had told Lob to leave his family out of it, to stop manipulating him? Seemed kicking him upstairs to a desk job hadn't kept him from meddling. "What exactly did Lob tell you?"
She quickly relayed the General's words, telling him of the Defender's involvement, of the fiery death that loomed in about two hour's time. By the time she finished a persistent nausea had taken root in the pit of his stomach.
Once again, the General seemed to have the E.H.U.D.s marching to his tune, despite what he had done to them in the past. Just like Shara, sent to drive Edarus to Lob; just like Merd, sent to catapult Edarus into the public consciousness, to open the floodgates on the reality of the Defenders. Just like Melana...
He swallowed. It was so obvious in retrospect. He had sent her to push him here, to cut him off from Amanda and Than. The General had never stopped manipulating him, had never left his family alone; he was sill playing some deranged game.
Edarus was about to speak, was about to warn Mandy away from Mistaren, was about to tell her everything, how Mistaren had been using him to empower the E.H.U.D.s, tempting him with the Oval Office, when the doors to the bedroom burst open, splinters of wood flying out from around the deadbolts. Four armored guards rushed in, followed a moment later by Ashheart and her intern, Amanda. Each woman was carrying a stack of mobiles.
"Mandy, I love you. I'll try to call you back."
"Ed? What's going—" Click.
Edarus dropped his mobile and sat up to face the intruders. "What the fuck are—"
"India, Pakistan, France, and Russia just launched nuclear weapons," Ashheart said, her voice higher than usual.
"And Iran and Korea," Amanda added.
Edarus whimpered. It looked like Mistaren hadn't been lying after all; he just understated how many missiles would be in the air.
A mobile buzzed, and Amanda swallowed. "Israel."
He pushed himself up, stood, stumbled towards Ashheart. "How long ago?"
"France was first. Four minutes."
"We have trajectories?"
"So far it looks like only European and Asian capitols are being targeted. NORAD's still trying to work out exactly what's going on."
"Um, and the Russian premiere and Iranian president both called," Amanda said. "They said missiles were fired without orders, and all attempts at aborting aren't working." She was shivering, twitching with nervous energy; this wasn't what she signed up for.
"Right. Call NORAD, tell them to have planes in the air and anti-missile precautions prepped. They've probably already done that, but I'm taking no
chances. Next, get the conference room prepped. I want to be on with every fucking world leader in five minutes."
Ashheart nodded. "Amanda, conference room. There's a corporal on duty who knows how to work everything. Put out a general call." They both turned and left.
And suddenly, Edarus was alone, the world collapsing around him. Before the call from Amanda, this would have been a horrible tragedy, a moment of intense stupidity that would doom all mankind. But after that conversation... this was clearly the action of one man, operating on a plan of far greater intensity than Edarus had ever suspected...
Amanda stood on the sidelines of the end of the world. The president, flanked by two military advisors, sat at the middle of a wide oval table, faced by a curving wall screen filled with hundreds of windows. In each window a terrified face peered out: a president, a premiere, a prime minister, a general, even one or two monarchs. Each had their turn to mumble out a weak apology for what their arsenal was doing, then provide an even weaker excuse that, whatever was happening, it wasn't their fault.
In the middle of the screen was a map, lit up with a little red light for each calculated target. Amanda watched in horror as the little red dots multiplied and spread, plague-like, over the world. A sparse sprinkling in central Asia, growing thicker towards the edges of the landmass, flaring brightly in India, eastern China, Japan. Subsaharan Africa glowed, topped by a void of tan, then more red, then Europe, badly infected.
At the table, Edarus was getting angrier and angrier, his shoulders raising higher and his head dipping lower as the meeting stretched for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. Then a voice, dripping with a midwestern drawl, said, "Sir, ours are off, too. I don't know how, sir. There was no electronic traffic, sir." And then it was Edarus's turn to weakly apologize, to say it wasn't his fault.
On the map, the infection jumped the Pacific and Atlantic, striking the new world from both fronts. South America was aglow with sores, a green swath of rain-forest being its only safe zone. North America glowed brightly along its coasts, around its inland seas. Then, for no apparent reason other than dividing the world, a deep red sore appeared across the Panamanian isthmus.
Amanda absorbed all this in a kind of detached horror, not really hearing any of the words, only watching as the world was split apart by the engineers tracking the missile's trajectories. Everything seemed remote until she saw southern California and New England erupt, and then she silently cried, knowing that in less than an hour her parents, her friends, the father of her child, would all be dead.
Then there were words, a slight glimmer of hope. They were in French, but quickly translated : "We have birds on a missile. We are engaging." Then the hope died. "Automatic surface-to-air defenses have targeted the birds. We have lost communication. Repeat, we have lost communication with the birds."
And then, one by one, the windows went dark. With some, their was a definite sign-off, a sad farewell to their colleagues. With others, the screen merely went dark mid-sentence.
Wheels rumbled on hardwood as the president pushed away from the table. He awkwardly stood, stumbled over to Amanda, stared down into her eyes as he rested his weight on her shoulder. "Your family should be fine. The Defenders have thrown in with Mistaren and are making some kind of energy shield. In any case, you're free to make any calls you need to."
He straightened and hobbled from the room.
Amanda was alone know, staring at the screen, mostly blank with the red earth glaring out at her from the center. She stroked her belly, then looked down to her hands. Two weeks ago they had scooped up a handful of slush, formed a ball, threw it at Tara. They had scooped up a city filled with nervous energy, formed a riot, threw it at the country. These hands had killed one of her friends, had started a war that had killed thousands and left tens of thousands of others injured. All of that blood was on her hands... And now it would be washed away with fire, by the deaths of billions, utterly forgotten in the apocalypse that was about to begin. She shuddered. She had wanted to wash the blood away, to absolve herself for what she had done... it seemed impossible to believe that now she would give anything for the guilt to remain.
It was tempting to let Eli handle this... He had more experience speaking, had spent more time face-to-face with the American public. But the fact remained that in an hour he'd be dead, and the public needed to see someone a little more lasting, someone a little more interested in their lives.
So it was that Edarus sat in front of a green screen, facing a camera wired in to who knew what. He had returned to his wheelchair, sitting erect, his suit jacket crisp and his hair slicked back. Eli, via video chat, had urged him to shave, or at least trim his beard, but Amanda had quietly insisted that the longer beard was evocative of the earlier presidents, the "better" presidents, and would help to put people's minds at rest.
So it was that Edarus's beard was full and flowing when Ashheart's pet tech corporal counted him down, signaled him to begin speaking.
"My fellow Americans... By now you have heard rumors of what has been happening the world over, heard news out of Europe and Africa and Asia that a massive nuclear assault has occurred. It is my sad duty to inform you that those rumors are entirely true. By the time this message is broadcast, all of the major population and power centers on this planet's main landmass have been destroyed. Millions have died, and hundreds of millions more will surely join them in the coming weeks. There is no way to mount a rescue effort; infrastructure and manufacturing hubs have also been targeted. Furthermore, in the coming hours, the western hemisphere will fall victim to the same rain of fire. Most of the bombs that fall on us will be our own.
"The question I am sure that you all want answered is, 'Why'? Why has this tragedy occurred, who has caused it? It would be tempting to blame the Defenders, to see their influence as the cause for the tension that has engulfed our society in recent months. But in truth, the perpetrators of this act are unknown. Our weapons have been taken from us, have been used against us. We do not know how; we do not know why."
He paused, looked away from the camera, brushed at his eye. On camera, it was endearing, a man weeping for his world. Below camera, his plastic-clad leg was twitching restlessly.
"The question now is, 'What can be done'? The answer: survive. The years ahead are the hardest mankind has faced for the last twenty-thousand years. Civilization as we know it will be gone. Our technology, our industry, everything we have counted on in our lives will be irrevocably gone. What we are left with is each other. What we are left with is human relying on human, the race coming together as we have not done in millennia. Perhaps in the coming years, we can reflect on the Defenders, on what they could have offered us. A world of peace, a world where no man need fear another. A world where all shared equally: ideals, possessions, self. Perhaps this is the world we will make in the coming years, the world we will pass down to our children and our children's children, a world whose very existence is a sign saying, 'Do not go this way. Do not embrace war, do not shun the outsider. Listen to those wanting to help, defend those who cannot defend themselves.'
"And if I live through this, if I can see a new and different world with tomorrow's sunrise, that is the world I will try to build. And if you hear this, and if you, too, see tomorrow's sunrise, I ask that you join me in building this."
He tilted his head back, looking down his nose at the camera. He held the solemn pose for a moment, then leaned forward suddenly. "Than, if you see this, I'm sorry. This isn't the world I wanted to leave to you. I can only hope you do a better job with this new world than I did with the old."
Returning to his previous pose, he flicked his fingers at the corporal, until the corporal sighed and said, "We're cut."
Edarus mirrored the sigh, then slumped down into the chair.
"It's uploading, but broadcast will be slim. There's a fuck-ton of electromagnetic interference, and all Eastern-Hemi servers are offline."
Edarus nodded. "Doesn't matter. Not much this would do fo
r people anyway, maybe distract them for a few minutes." He prodded at the chair's joystick, moving slightly back and forth, then looked up at Ashheart, standing next to the light kit. "Well, it looks like I'm about to be president of a much more local country. Call up all National Guard in the state, get them started this way. NORAD thinks we'll be pretty untouched in the midwest, at least until the fallout starts up. I want supplies stockpiled, police put on alert, prisons on maximum security. The next forty-eight hours are going to be absolute hell... we better be ready."
She nodded, tapped something into her tablet, then turned to go. Just before she reached the door she stopped and turned back, raising the tablet and shaking it. "I'll get some pens and paper and have them distributed to the staff."
Edarus bowed his head in acknowledgement, then followed her out of the room.
With one hand he was controlling the chair, with the other he was repeatedly dialing Amanda's mobile. He couldn't get through; too much electromagnetic interference.