Day After Tomorrow

by Whitley Strieber

  “Mr. President, I’ve just received a shortwave radio transmission from Jack Hall. He made it to New York.”

  The president’s eyes flickered with surprise. Something like a smile played in his face.

  “He says there are survivors.”

  For a long moment, the president stood with eyes closed. It was as if he were communicating with somebody somewhere far away … and yet close to his heart. “Thank you, Tom,” he finally replied. “That’s good news.”

  What happened over the next hours Tom Gomez would remember for the rest of his life, remember as if they were still happening, as if they were always happening and would continue unfolding again and again forever, days that had entered eternity.

  He had seen an amazing thing: a devastated nation in a hopeless situation deciding to fight back anyway, a greedy man who had found what was sacred within himself organizing a gigantic rescue operation that would sweep across America’s frozen cities, seeking who remained, to bring them out to safety, to bring them to a thousand times, a thousand meetings beside the Fence of Hope and wherever Americans were lost and needed to be found.

  A fleet of helicopters was taking off, and Tom hopped aboard one of them. They would go north, joining a larger force in Houston, then fly across the frozen wasteland where the air force was already arranging fuel and supply dumps, to the great cities of the north, Boston and Washington, Chicago and New York.

  New York. There they would begin, with the largest city, the most needful city.

  As they ascended, President Becker’s voice, strong and resolute, the voice of your firm but kind grandfather, came over the radio. “These past few weeks have left us all with a profound sense of humility in the face of nature’s destructive power . .

  In a rambling medical tent, in an area marked off by ropes on which had been taped handmade paper signs, Pediatric Division, Lucy sat beside a small boy, Peter Upshaw, whose own message she had personally put on the Fence of Hope: “Peter Upshaw is at the National Emergency Hospital in Matamoros, Mexico. Pediatric Ward. He is getting better every day.”

  President Becker’s face looked out of a television. You could never tell that he was speaking from an embassy far from home. It looked exactly—heartbreak-ingly—like the White House backdrop so familiar to Americans. “They have also forced us to reevaluate our priorities. Yesterday we operated under the belief that we could continue consuming our planet’s natural resources without consequence …”

  In the dusty streets of refugee camps, along the Fence of Hope, in the Red Cross villages that had sprung up in the Mexican desert, across the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and in still-functioning cities like Miami and Houston, people stopped what they were doing and watched and listened.

  “We were wrong. I was wrong.” The president looked straight into the camera. He did not flinch at saying those words of courage. “Today many of us are guests in the nations we once called the third world.”

  In the International Space Station, the astronauts were watching the broadcast also. Below them, they knew that the shuttle was being prepared to rescue them.

  “In our time of need, they have taken us in and sheltered us and I am deeply grateful for their hospitality.”

  As the helicopters swept north, the president continued, “Their generosity has made me realize the folly of yesterday’s arrogance and the need for cooperation in the future.”

  Tom Gomez listened and knew that these were more than hollow words. They were the first utterance of a new man in a new situation, in a very new world.

  Resting on the shoulders of those who had paid the ultimate price for it, humanity was gaining a new wisdom.

  Brian’s radio, which was now alive with messages, had told them that help was coming. They had left the Trustee’s Room and the library behind and marched off toward the open ice that Jack knew lay near the Statue of Liberty. Here, they would be seen, out here on the flat, windblown harbor.

  Tom Gomez had insisted on going with the contingent that was bound for New York, and after a day of traveling, stopping to refuel outside Atlanta and again outside Washington, they were now flying through the sky of morning, toward the glittering towers of Manhattan.

  As they circled the island, Tom saw no sign of life. He listened to the president in the background, who was giving another of what were becoming daily addresses to the nation. “Working together, we can move past the mistakes of yesterday and look forward to a better tomorrow.”

  Still no life. This was not looking good.

  “Only hours ago, I received word that a small group of people survived in New York City—”

  Tom hoped. Surely they had not ended up losing even this small symbol of human hope, not right at the end.

  “—against all odds and in the face of tremendous adversity.”

  Tom could not let the president down—not his president, their president. He was going to find Jack and his crew.

  “As I speak, a search and rescue mission is under way in New York. Plans are being made to send similar missions to all the cities of the north, all around the world.”

  Then Tom saw something—down there, near the Statue of Liberty, just this side of two ruined ships, moving dots. They were barely visible in the gray light of predawn.

  The pilot saw them, too, and swung the chopper around.

  “The fact that people have survived this storm,” Becker was saying, “should not be treated as a miracle, but rather as proof that the human spirit is indomitable.”

  They landed on the ice, and as they landed, Tom saw that the survivors, instead of running toward the chopper, had turned and were pointing at the city.

  And he saw, in windows up and down the island, tiny lights appearing.

  Candles. People were announcing their presence to the rescuers. There wasn’t just a small group still alive here. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, had lived and were alive and were declaring themselves now in a sea of flickering lights in the brutally cold predawn: “We are here.”

  Tom and Jack came together. A young man with badly cracked glasses stood nearby, his breath blasting, a smallish black book clutched to his chest. Tom recognized it immediately as something very old. “It’s a Gutenberg Bible,” the young man said, stamping from foot to foot.

  jack and Tom locked arms. Sam knew that they would not celebrate wildly, although they wanted to. There was a lot of hope here, but also a lot of destruction and death, and the dead were to be respected.

  Then the sun rose. Light poured across the city, strong and warm, and Sam heard something he had not heard in days, had never expected to hear again. It was dripping, loud dripping, lots of dripping.

  An enormous icicle was hanging from the torch of the Statue of Liberty, and dropping from it were millions of particles of fire—water droplets forming as the ice melted.

  Sam laid his arm around Laura’s shoulder and drew her close. J.D. stood on her other side—no doubt still hoping against hope. Sam kissed her and she kissed him, and for just that tiny, private moment between two young people standing side by side at the gates of the future, all was well.

  The astronauts were gazing down at the earth. They, also, had changed profoundly, drawing together as human beings in the face of what might have been a

  lingering death, trapped and starving in the glory of the heavens.

  Yuri said, “Look at that.”

  Parker didn’t fully understand. “What?”

  “Have you ever seen the air so clear?”

  He was right. The air of earth was absolutely clear, like looking through some kind of perfect crystal.

  Earth lay like a jewel in the great sky, not only bruised by the storm but also purified, hanging there in space as black as the darkest memory, amid stars as bright as the brightest hope.

 

 

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