The Julian Year

by Gregory Lamberson

  Sherry Ann flinched as if Rachel had punched her.

  “What time does Carmudy get in?”

  “They all come in at nine.”

  “Like true civil servants. Let me tell you, you’re all doing a bang-up job.” Turning and striding away, Rachel pictured Ashanti, sleeping in their bed. Just when I found a reason to live.

  She crossed the track and stared at the fire alarm box. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Drew approaching her. Without pausing to take a breath, she pulled the alarm and a ringing filled the concourse.

  Drew ran over to her. “What the hell did you do that for?”

  The shop owners and workers scrambled into the middle of the concourse with panicked looks on their faces.

  Rachel nodded to the administrative offices. “They have Internet access, and Sherry Ann sent a Facebook message to her mother. I’m going to get my daughter and take her to school. When the council members arrive, tell them I’m calling an immediate emergency meeting, with or without them. The Regan MacNeils are on their way.”

  As she headed in the direction of her corridor, her fellow residents poured out of their units.

  “Assembly in twenty minutes!” she said. “Bring your life kits. If you don’t have them, go back and get them. Assembly in twenty minutes!”

  Rachel heard Ashanti crying even before she unlocked the door to their unit. Throwing the door open, she rushed over to the little girl and scooped her up in her arms.

  In the corridor residents ran in both directions.

  “Shh. It’s okay.”

  “What’s happening? Are they here?”

  “No, we just want to be safe. Come on. We have to get you dressed.”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay here with you.”

  Rachel shook her head. “I have to take you to school. You’ll be safe there.”

  “No! I want to stay with you!” Her words came out as a shriek.

  “I have to go to the assembly, and then I’ll come back to the school to be with you. I won’t be long. I promise.”

  “Why can’t I go with you?”

  Because we don’t want you to know the truth. “This is a meeting for grown-ups.”

  Rachel carried Ashanti into the bedroom and dressed her: sneakers for running, jeans, and a sweatshirt. Then she stuffed boots and winter wear into her school bag.

  Just in case.

  Except for when she ran, she always carried her .22 in an ankle holster. Now she also took her Glock, secured inside her life kit, in an emergency bag she wore belted on one hip.

  The alarm stopped ringing.

  “Ready?”

  Ashanti nodded.

  “Then let’s go.” Rachel carried her out of the unit, closed the door, and followed the crowd. She held Ashanti close to her and jogged.

  When she reached the concourse, she turned right, away from the administrative offices and toward the live-in school, where Ron and Betty met her at the door. Rachel passed Ashanti over to Betty.

  “What is it?” Betty said. “What’s really going on?”

  Shaking her head, Rachel hoped the look in her eyes conveyed the proper gravitas.

  “I’m going with you to the assembly,” Ron said.

  “Come on, then.”

  When Rachel and Ron entered the assembly hall, the council members were already seated at the table onstage and every chair in the chamber was occupied, something Rachel had not seen before. Leaving Ron behind, she walked up the aisle to the stage. Carmudy looked sick to his stomach.

  “Miss Konigsberg,” Lois said from her perch, “since you called for this meeting, perhaps you can explain exactly what’s going on.”

  Setting her palms on the stage, Rachel hopped up and stood before the table where the council members sat. She looked at Carmudy, who looked away. Facing the crowd, she realized that she now knew most of the people in attendance. She gestured to the council members. “Our illustrious leaders have been keeping a secret from us: they’ve had Internet access ever since we came down here.”

  Murmurs filled the chamber.

  “They know exactly what’s happening above. And now, thanks to the stupidity of one person who violated a pathetic level of security and sent a private Facebook message”—she glanced at Carmudy, who slouched in his seat—“the Regan MacNeils know we’re down here, and they sure as hell are going to come after us.”

  The murmurs became a cacophony of gasps and raised voices.

  “It wasn’t me,” Carmudy said.

  Lois leaned close to her microphone. “Calm down. Of course we maintain an Internet feed. We have to know what’s happening above for everyone’s good. All governments keep secrets from the general population.”

  So much for your idealized state, Rachel thought.

  Ron stepped forward. “Even if that’s the case, why weren’t safeguards put in place to prevent something like this from happening?”

  Lois turned to Carmudy, who blanched before raising his hands in a defensive gesture. “We did have safeguards in place. I’m not sure how they were overridden.”

  “Bullshit,” Rachel said. “You’re sleeping with the woman who signed our death warrants. She told me she took your log-in information without you knowing it. Even if that’s true, don’t tell me she had the brains to override government security measures. You circumnavigated those measures for your own purposes, and then she took it a step further without you knowing it. I hope to God you didn’t throw us all under the bus.”

  The voices in the chamber grew deafening.

  Captain Morgart walked to the stage, and Drew and two other police officers joined him.

  With sweat visible on his forehead, Carmudy said, “Some of the approved news sites went down a month ago. I eased the security to nose around and see what I could find.”

  “What did you learn?” Eric said. “What did you learn all along?”

  Carmudy looked to Lois for help.

  “Don’t look at her. Look at me,” Eric said.

  Shaking her head, Lois stared at the table.

  “What do you want me to say?” Carmudy said. “We wouldn’t still be down here if there had been a miracle, and even if a miracle was reported, how would we know it wasn’t a trap? President Rhodes ordered the execution of every possessed person in US custody, and they gassed them just like the other countries did. The detention centers became death camps. Anyone who turned himself in did so knowing he was going to be executed, including Rhodes.

  “When Lopez took office, the Regan MacNeils struck a bargain with her: they’d stop killing our people if she’d stop executing theirs. Everything fell apart after that, and we have to assume the worst. Most of the world has turned by now, just like we expected.”

  “So you screwed us for nothing,” Rachel said.

  “We have to get out of here,” a woman said. “We have to make a run for it. At least we’ll stand a chance.”

  A chorus of cries backed the woman up.

  Rachel stood at the edge of the stage, blocking Lois and raising her arms. “No! Leaving here in a panic will be a disaster. They could be waiting for us, and if they aren’t, how far do you think you’ll get? Do you really want to be mowed down like helpless animals? What chance? We’re hopelessly outnumbered.”

  David stood. “You’re the one who ordered the evacuation drills. Six air shafts, remember? Running is no more futile than standing and fighting here.”

  “What about the children? Even if they make it out, how fast and how far do you think they can go?”

  “We all run the same risk.”

  Rachel realized David was right. During a massacre, it was every man for himself.

  Let them go, she thought. I’ll stay and euthanize the kids in a humane manner. Maybe Ron and Betty will help.

  The lights went out.

  Fifty-four

  “They cut the power,” someone said.

  The emergency lights mounted on the walls came on, projecting oval pools of illu
mination that reminded Rachel of moonlight.

  The council members rose from their seats, harsh shadows on their faces, eyes masked by darkness.

  “How long will those lights last?” Lois said.

  “The batteries have a six-hour limit,” Carmudy said.

  “What about the air system?” Rachel said.

  “We have enough kerosene to keep the emergency generators running for weeks.”

  “I don’t think we’ll need them that long.”

  “We could have escaped instead of meeting like this,” a woman said.

  “No. If they located our power source this quickly, then they were already in position above us.” Rachel swallowed. “They could have taken over Fort Drum a month ago. They’re right on top of us.”

  A faint hissing sound filled the air.

  A man pointed at the wall behind the council.

  Drew shined a flashlight on the vent there, revealing yellowish mist escaping through the grid.

  “Gas,” a woman said.

  The council members scrambled off the stage, and Rachel hopped down as well, her heart pounding. Amidst screams, the audience stampeded for the exit.

  Rachel waved her arms. “No, wait! Put your gas masks on!”

  The residents continued forward like a herd, trampling each other.

  Rachel opened her life kit, which included rations of water and freeze-dried food, pulled out her gray gas mask, and put it on. She put on a head flashlight as well. Morgart, Drew, and the other cops did the same. Rachel knew the mask would only protect her until the toxins saturated the filters. She also knew that her unprotected skin could absorb the poison.

  The clock is ticking, she thought. Then the alarm resumed. She needed to reach Ashanti.

  The crowd continued to push through the two sets of double doors, the movements of the fleeing people made even more frenzied by the alarm. Three people lay injured on the floor. David was one of them. Rachel ran over to him and rolled him onto his back. He looked at her, clawed at her arm, then coughed and died.

  This is what happens in war, Rachel thought.

  Wasting no time on the dead, she sprang to her feet. The cops tended to the other fallen citizens. One had already died, and the other, holding his breath, kicked while Drew opened the man’s life kit, took out his gas mask, and pulled it over his head. The man stilled anyway. The remainder of the crowd piled through the doors, which closed.

  “Let’s go,” Morgart said, his voice warbling as if he were underwater.

  Rachel followed the cops into the corridor, where people continued to run in both directions and every third ceiling fixture cast orange light.

  A gunshot rang out behind a closed door.

  It’s beginning, Rachel thought. Suicides committed by people afraid the pills wouldn’t be fast enough to spare them an agonizing death by the poison. At least most of the people running through the corridor wore their masks.

  Morgart and Drew reached the opening to the concourse first and froze in position as Rachel and the other two cops joined them.

  Pandemonium had broken out: at least one hundred people crisscrossed the concourse, screaming and knocking each other aside. The space swallowed the light from the emergency fixtures. Lois and Carmudy led the other council members in the direction of the administrative offices. They didn’t stop to help their fallen constituents.

  Thunder rose above the alarm, a distant rumbling that grew louder. Rachel felt a tremor in the floor, and she raised her gaze to the darkened high ceiling.

  An explosion, the thought. The enemy had detonated a bomb overhead.

  A loud cracking echoed through the concourse, and a jagged fissure opened up in the ceiling, spilling powdery dust on the people below.

  “Look out!” Rachel tried to push her way through the police officers, but Drew held her back.

  Debris rained down on the panicked citizens, followed by slabs of concrete and steel girders that smashed the tables, chairs, and shops. Agonized wails rose from the swirling dust, which obscured the fountain. Then the entire ceiling came down, followed by rocks and earth.

  The alarm stopped ringing, and Rachel and the cops turned back into the corridor. The ground shook and Rachel lost her balance, and as she struggled to rise again, a wall of chalky dust struck her from behind, blasting her forward and driving her face to the floor, sweeping over her like a wave.

  The ground stopped shaking, and Rachel lay there for what could have been several minutes. She was reluctant to get up, but she knew the gas mask would only help her for so long. She moved her legs, then her arms, making a snow angel in the dust.

  Convinced she had no broken bones, Rachel pushed herself up and dust poured off her arms. A field of white as dense as any snowstorm filled her vision, streaked with emergency light beams. She wiped the plastic shield of her gas mask.

  A human silhouette formed in the wafting dust, then one more.

  “Are you all right?” Drew said.

  She nodded, then realized he probably couldn’t see her. “I think so.”

  The other silhouette motioned to them. “Come on. Let’s see what’s what,” Morgart said.

  They returned to the end of the corridor and waited for the dust, which obscured most of the emergency lights, to clear. Patches of a mountain came into view: tons of rock piled from floor to ceiling where the concourse had been—a giant tombstone to mark the lives of those it had crushed, including the council members.

  Using the corridor behind them to get her bearings, Rachel turned right and trudged through the dust in the direction of the live-in school, her footsteps leaden.

  I wonder if this is what it’s like to walk on Mars, she thought.

  She walked into a wall of rock.

  Patting the bulky rocks with both hands, her heart pounded in her chest. This was the way to the school, but the mountain that had fallen on the concourse wrapped across the track here, cutting off her access. She slapped the rocks protruding from the obstruction and pulled on their angular edges, shrieking at the futility of the challenge.

  A hand fell on her shoulder. “Enough of the track is clear for us to reach the station,” Drew said. “Maybe we can circle around it the long way to get to the school.”

  She considered his proposal, then nodded and followed him to the other officers, who crossed the still swirling dust with head flashlight beams. The weight of the mountain beside them intimidated Rachel; it felt as though a building had dropped beside her. They walked slowly because they kept kicking rocks and bruising their shins. More than once, Rachel had to scale a boulder and slide down the other side.

  Morgart moved to his left and wiped the dust from a sign. “We’re almost there.”

  Rachel also wiped powdery dust from her mask. Breathing became difficult, so she wiped the filters as well, hoping to unclog them. The dust cleared enough for her to see the inside of the police station. The windows and door had shattered, and dust covered the floor and counter like snow.

  Morgart forced the door open and they staggered inside. The cops followed their commanding officer through a door into a hallway untouched by the debris but no less frightening due to the stark emergency lighting. Rachel felt relieved to be walking on a floor again instead of layers of dust.

  Morgart took out a set of keys, held them close to his mask, and searched through them for the one he wanted. He unlocked a wide gray metal door, and they poured inside. Rachel stared at the gleaming guns in the wall racks that surrounded them as Drew closed the door with a hollow thud.

  Morgart set a box full of gas masks on the table. “Leave your masks on for a second. Take a fresh one from the box. Close your eyes, hold your breath, rip your old mask off, and put the new one on, then breathe and open your eyes.” As if to demonstrate, he followed his own instructions.

  Facing Rachel, Drew gestured to the box. “Ladies first.” Without responding, Rachel grabbed a gas mask. She held her breath, closed her eyes, and ripped her mask off, the rubber pulling
her hair. Dropping the old mask on the floor, she put the fresh one on, snapped it against her skin, then opened her eyes and took a breath. She expected the air to be yellow, but it appeared clear.

  Drew and the other cops changed their masks.

  Rachel peered at the vent. “They stopped pumping gas.”

  “That means they think they gave us enough to wipe us out,” Morgart said.

  “Or it means they’re coming in and they don’t want to wear masks themselves.”

  Morgart moved to a long rack from which dark blue jumpsuits hung. “We’ll be better off in these.”

  Rachel raised one arm and looked at the dust caked on it. “All this dust is probably protecting our skin more than that fabric will.”

  “These are insulated. They’ll protect our skin and keep us warm if we make it out of here.” Morgart gestured at another rack. “Go a size larger and wear it over what you have on.”

  They all put on the SWAT suits and combat boots. Zipping the front, Rachel had to gaze at herself in the mirror. She had never expected to wear a police uniform again.

  Morgart faced the guns on the wall. “Okay, let’s arm ourselves.”

  Rachel moved her .22 into her life kit and slid her Glock into the holster hanging from her military-style belt. She stuffed a new Glock into a shoulder holster, slung an M16A over her shoulder, and stuffed her pockets with ammo magazines.

  When they returned to the lobby, the dust in the air had decreased enough to enable Rachel to see half a dozen men and women covered head to toe in powder, their faces concealed behind their masks.

  “We need more guns,” a man said.

  Eleven people dressed in identical SWAT uniforms and gas masks departed the police station, carrying assorted rifles and machine guns. The combination of the emergency lights and the remaining dust created an unnatural haze.

  Rachel knew that the track around the concourse was one-quarter of a mile—440 yards—and estimated they needed to travel 330 yards to reach the school, if the path was clear. She didn’t allow herself to question whether or not Ashanti was still alive. She had to be.