Year Zero

by Jeff Long

  Her heart felt like a stone. Her love had not been enough. In the end, Nathan Lee had succumbed to the past. He had been unable to stay away from the camp. His unfolding revenge looked so slight on the screen.

  But then he stepped away and Ochs climbed to his feet and the crowd obstructed her view again. “Now what?” she said.

  The Captain peered at the screen. “There,” he said. “Above their heads. See?”

  She looked.

  Izzy’s cross was tipping.

  35

  Peace on Earth

  MIDNIGHT

  She watched Izzy fade to black on the lime-green satellite feed. No one could know for sure if it was really him and Nathan Lee down there. Through the veils of storm and night, all they could get on the high resolution views were thermal signatures. But Miranda knew. It would be like Nathan Lee to stay and put his back against the wind and hold his friend.

  A dozen different images from this and other satellites flickered on screens around the busy room. The medium resolution pictures used a scale of one inch per mile, and they showed pools of massed human body heat that looked motionless. But by compiling images from the past twelve hours and running them at high speed, the ASTER experts had been able to display the beginnings of a wholesale retreat. Large, shapeless configurations—hundreds of thousands of people—were moving away from the epicenter. The herd pattern had been most active before sunset. Since then, darkness, plunging temperatures, and the deepening snow had bogged them.

  Most hadn’t made it more than a half mile before halting for the night. But the evidence was clear. The pilgrims were leaving, or trying to. The siege had broken. They had given up on the city. The precise explanation eluded Los Alamos, but it coincided with Nathan Lee’s appearance in the valley. Maybe he had persuaded Ochs to send the pilgrims home. Or he’d warned them of dire consequences, or offered himself as the city’s ransom, or pointed them in a new direction. Something had gone on in that camp.

  Throughout Los Alamos, people were celebrating as if a great war had ended. There had been an interfaith service at the Oppenheimer Center earlier in the evening, televised for those who could not attend in person. Miranda had caught parts of it. Interspliced with satellite images of the pilgrims’ retreat, the city’s priests, ministers, mullahs, rabbis, and a Buddhist monk had given thanks for their deliverance. They said prayers for the poor people now stranded in the blizzard. It was easy to think more mercifully, now that their enemy was dying at their feet.

  Oddly the generals were not pleased. The city had been saved, but they tersely discarded the evidence. “It’s worse than ever now,” one told Miranda. “The fool nearly ruined everything.”

  His fool was Nathan Lee. Miranda flared at him. “What more do you want?” she demanded. “We’re spared. He stole your thunder, is that it?”

  “We have our orders,” the general told her.

  “Whose orders?” Immediately she guessed. Her father’s, the sovereign of the deep. They believed in him and his invincible fortress made of salt. “What grand strategy of yours did Nathan Lee destroy? They’re leaving.”

  “Precisely,” the general complained.

  It was the closest to information she’d gotten from them. But in what way did the pilgrims’ departure unravel the generals’ strategy? She tried the contra position. How could the pilgrims’ coming advance their strategy? Miranda gave up guessing. Plainly something larger had been in motion, and Nathan Lee had derailed it. Or nearly so. The general was vexed, not defeated. The day’s events—Nathan Lee’s attack, the lowering of Izzy’s cross, the mass withdrawal—were an inconvenience. She saw that the generals were fast adapting to the situation. Their plan was still alive.

  “You want a war,” she realized.

  “We want maximum security.”

  “Now we have it,” she said. “By this time tomorrow night, the pilgrims will be gone. You can put your swords away.”

  “It’s a feint,” said the general. “They’re going back into the forests. Into their tunnels. Taking up positions.”

  “What forests? What tunnels?” she demanded. It struck her. Their touchstone was Vietnam. Afghanistan. Or Gaul. The barbarians were wild things.

  “We had them gathered in place, the last of them,” said the general. Now we won’t know where they are. They’re getting away.”

  “Let them go,” Miranda told them. “Now we can stay.”

  The generals departed, but their staff officers remained, circling the room, leaning over monitors, writing down coordinates, making notes. Every now and then one would leave the room to make a call. Their doomsday expressions were stark amidst the overall jubilation. Except for them, it was like an office party in here, the happy faces, the little pine tree with paper decorations, the strings of electric red chili lights on the wall.

  Miranda kept to one corner. She didn’t want to sour their joy. The retreat was exactly what they’d been hoping for. They could stay in the open now. They could inhabit the sunlight, carry on their research, embrace the survivors, find the cure. Their high fives and hallelujahs confirmed her vision. They belonged in the city, not with her father.

  She wanted to share in their gladness, but they knew she was in mourning. Their smiles faded when they looked at her. She saw their deep sighs. If not for monitor number eight, she would have gone home to grieve in private. It was too soon to grieve, in a sense. He was still alive down there. But he had killed himself. It was all on monitor number eight, a few seconds past real time, however long it took to transmit from the valley to space and back down to this room.

  His luminous, hollow-eyed head turned to one side, then bent over Izzy again. She touched the screen. If only she’d known what he was thinking. She would have wrapped her arms around him, paralyzed him with her love, ordered his arrest. But in saving him, she would have doomed the city. He had given her what she wanted.

  Los Alamos was aware of his sacrifice. Whatever he had done down there, he had done for them. Whether that was true or not, they believed it was so. They had chosen Nathan Lee to mark the epicenter. It was a sort of cartographic honor. All their bull’s-eye overlays centered on him. They measured their new hope outwards from where he sat.

  She placed her chair sideways to the monitor so that her back was to the room. She sat next to him, inches from the screen. They’d tightened down on him to the maximum resolution, but he still looked so tiny. His skull was a matter of pixels. Sitting there, he fit under her fingertip. The image pulsed.

  He had not self-infected with the Sera-III. Miranda had checked the freezer, and all the samples were accounted for. She understood. By the end of forty-eight hours, Izzy would have been dead. Ochs might have invaded. The generals might have made their move. By going immediately, Nathan Lee had preempted the alternate realities, or at least some of them.

  Izzy had died. She wasn’t sure Nathan Lee even knew. For several hours she’d been watching darkness creep through Izzy’s limbs and into his core. Now he was little more than a shadow on Nathan Lee’s lap.

  Beside her, a computer’s screen saver showed clouds whisking past the Matterhorn. The scene switched: the Grand Canyon at dawn. A Hawaiian waterfall. Fields of red poppies. Mount Everest at sunset. It was a box full of dreams. At last she figured out the screen theme. There were no people in the pretty places. The computer was showing her the Garden before man. She reached over and turned it off.

  They had supplies to last a decade. With care, there seemed no reason they could not last forever. If the plague approached again, they could always self-infect. Three years, Nathan Lee had argued with her. A whole lifetime.

  She returned to the monitor, to her spectral lover. How long are you going to sit there? His hands were losing light. She could see it. He was freezing. She resented that. He knew how to take care of himself. If he could make it across Tibet in the dead of winter, this should be a snap. But he just sat there.

  Finally she could not bear to simply watch. She got to he
r feet. Her jaw was set. Her decision was made.

  Nathan Lee would be hot with the virus now, but she could wear a biohazard suit. The roads were piling up with snow, but she could take one of the big Army trucks with chains. For that matter, she could walk. It was only twelve miles. The snow couldn’t be that deep.

  The Captain intercepted her at the door. She hadn’t even been aware he was here. “Forget it,” he said. “One sacrifice is enough.”

  “I’m bringing him back,” she told him. “He can live out what’s left in a warm bed in South Sector.”

  “That’s not what he wants.”

  “Oh, he told you?”

  “I have eyes.”

  “Well I’m not giving up on him.”

  “We need you here, Miranda,” he said.

  “Then send a team of men for him.”

  “Don’t spoil it,” said the Captain.

  She felt skinned, she was so raw. “Spoil it?” she shouted. People looked. She lowered her voice. “He’s throwing himself away.”

  “You know better.” He crooked one arm around her shoulders.

  She thought he was going to offer a sympathy hug. “Save your pity,” she said.

  But with a motion, he swept her to face the wall like a naughty child. He put his head next to hers. “The man’s doing his job,” he whispered in her ear. He was stern. “Do yours.”

  The reprimand took her breath. He wasn’t finished. He laid one hand on her stomach. On her womb.

  She flushed. He’d learned her secret. “He told you before he went,” she whispered.

  “No,” said the Captain. “Like I said, I have eyes. My wife, she knew you were pregnant a long time ago. I wasn’t so sure. But I am now.”

  She fought with her joy, fought with her sorrow, which was it?

  “You need to be thinking,” the Captain said. “What will you tell the city in the morning? They’ll want to hear where things go from here.”

  That hadn’t occurred to her. She would have to go public with something. Their victory needed enunciation. “What am I supposed to say?” she murmured.

  “Give them a story. Tell them about the future. Make it up. A new land. Wherever it is you see us going.”

  He let go of her shoulder, and it felt like she was tumbling through empty space. She put her hands against the wall to steady herself. She laid her forehead against the hardness and breathed out. Tears began burning down her cheeks, her first tears. She was shaking. Now was the time for the Captain to give her his shoulder. But he didn’t. No pity. He just stood beside her, faced out to the room, and guarded her tears.

  Then, for some reason, the sirens began.

  Swiping at her tears, Miranda glanced around. All through the room, heads were lifting from monitors. People stood hesitantly, half certain the wailing would shut off. But it went on.

  “What’s happening?” Miranda asked. “Are we under attack?”

  She looked for the generals’ staffers. Maybe they could explain. But they had left.

  Men and women had begun checking each other’s screens, confused. “It’s got to be a false alarm,” someone insisted. “There’s no movement in the valley.” Even so, people began drifting to the doorway, reluctant to leave their stations, and yet tugged by the sirens. They didn’t know what to trust.

  Out in the hallway, men and women were streaming for the exits, shrugging on jackets, grumbling about the bother. Miranda pushed through them, making for the stairway to the roof. The Captain was at her heels. She climbed the stairs two at a time.

  The rooftop was bright with floodlights. The snow sparkled like jewels. It was piled to her knees, deeper than she’d thought. The air swirled with heavy white flakes. On the edge of the dark forest, tall phantom pines came and went in the gusts.

  Miranda went to the edge of the building and looked across at the glittering city. It was beautiful, all decorated with holiday lights. Big snow plows with flashing blue lights were blading clean the roads. Columns of soldiers were filing through the streets. The air raid sirens went on howling at them, waking the city, waking the dead.

  The generals, she thought. They weren’t finished yet.

  NATHAN LEE lifted his head. He heard the song. He opened his eyes.

  The world was pitch black. He had been nearing the bottom. Hypothermia was its own realm. Now he floated back to consciousness.

  Who could be singing? It was so beautiful.

  He took a long minute to remember where he was. He didn’t see the snow. He didn’t feel the weight across his legs. His arms were stone. He felt rooted to the earth. Ancient as a relic.

  He thought, I’m blind. Then he lifted his head a little more, and there was the faintest glow on the far horizon. Dawn, he smiled. Night was passing.

  The singing had no words. He listened more intently. It came to him. The throats of angels.

  Then there was light.

  36

  Exodus

  The valley lit white.

  Miranda stepped back from the flash.

  The far mountains went dark. Abruptly they surged to orange and red in the gathering fireball. That suddenly the air raid sirens fell silent.

  The only thing she knew about such things came from movies. Next would come a tidal wave of wind and fire. Buildings would ignite, glass fly, forests bend. Their flesh would melt.

  The Captain thought so, too. “Get down!” he yelled. They fell into the snow on top of the roof.

  But the aftershock never reached them. Not a breeze.

  The weaponeers must have been planning it for days. The bomb was perfectly planted, sized just right. She could picture it from above. With the base of the mesa for its anchor wall, the nuclear wind had cast out across the valley, east and south and north…away from the city.

  At last the sound of a thunderclap cracked above the city. It passed over them to the west, into the night.

  On her elbows, Miranda crawled through the snow to the edge of the roof. The mushroom cloud was flowering to the south and east, midway to Santa Fe. It was pink. The head reached their height, then went on growing, a long, skinny stalk poking at the stars. The stars showed. The blast had melted a hole in the very sky.

  The Captain joined her. Side by side, they peered off toward the valley.

  “What have you done?” murmured Miranda.

  “I had no idea,” said the Captain. His voice was full of shock.

  She closed her eyes. “Not you,” she said. “God damn my father.”

  Everything stood revealed. Ochs had been released to preach. He had unwittingly brought the hordes of faithful into one place. Her father had wielded the people’s faith against them. He had dangled the city as bait, then struck with one swift blow. Their enemy was abolished.

  “Don’t,” the Captain stopped her quietly. “He’s your father.”

  She vomited. Onto her arms, into the snow, over the edge.

  “It was self-defense,” said the Captain. But his voice was hollow.

  “They were leaving.”

  “I know,” he whispered.

  “A nuclear bomb. Against children?”

  The Captain searched for justification. “What did they expect? This is Los Alamos.”

  “They had no warning.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “For some it might have.”

  “They were already dead,” he said. “All of them.”

  “That’s monstrous.”

  “They were done with the world. They’d said their prayers. For them the siege was just another way to die. A quicker way.”

  “The bomb was a mercy?”

  “We’re spared,” said the Captain. “It’s not pleasant how we’re spared. But now they won’t come.”

  “A million people.”

  “Now we have a future,” he reminded her. “The future you wanted.”

  “Not like this.”

  She looked at the Captain and his horror was explicit. He looked old. He didn’t belie
ve his own words. She got to her knees. “Come inside.”

  “Yes.” But he seemed so fragile. He was shivering. She had to help him to his feet.

  They descended the stairs.

  Up and down the hallways, every phone was ringing. It was the signal. The authorities were reversing the 911 emergency call system. Every phone in every office and home in Los Alamos was getting the same recorded message.

  The exodus was beginning.

  She went into an office and picked up one of the phones. A pleasant voice was saying, “…to your designated evacuation depot. This is not a test. Please go….”

  “This can’t be real,” said Miranda. “They’ve just incinerated every last person in the valley.”

  Then suddenly she did understand. The generals’ words came back to her. When the time comes, we will part the waters. While they still had the enemy in their sights, they had taken their shot. Now her father was ready for them.

  “I have to go,” said the Captain. “My wife….”

  “Of course,” she said.

  Miranda advanced down the hallway in a daze. There was no panic. Doors stood open. Scientists were quietly shaking hands and taking last-minute group snapshots by their bench labs and cubicles. They calmly hung up their lab jackets and safety goggles, and walked away. She could read their thinking. They had resisted this moment for years, but now that it was here, they were relieved. The virus hunt would continue, but more reasonably, in safety, with time on their side for a change.

  A man patted her arm. “It was a good fight,” he said.

  “It’s not over,” she said. “Nothing’s changed.”

  He gave her a funny look, and hurried off.

  She went outside and crossed the bridge to the city. It was one in the morning. The streets were filling with people bustling home to their families. There were small details to attend, she knew. Some had decided to poison their pets, others to free them. Through windows with opened curtains, she saw people making their beds, straightening pictures on the wall, looking around to make sure all was neat. They left their Christmas trees and electric Hanukkah candles on. They’d packed their bags long ago. There was no need to say goodbye to anyone. They would all be seeing each other down below. That was the plan. She saw people locking their doors for the last time, and then, unlocking them…letting go.