That made Pevnick smile. He accepted the watch, and put it back on his wrist.
“Obviously, our project is going to have to be put on hold, indefinitely. I’ve got a lot of work to do. Please, all of you, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll…have Mrs. Brown work on getting you all back home, safely. We’ll, uh, talk more tomorrow. Just…make yourselves at home until then. I, uh, I’m sorry. None of us were expecting this…crisis. Please excuse me.”
James held up a hand. “Excuse me, Dr. Pevnick, but when do you think you will have your report ready?”
Pevnick looked confused. “I’m going to try to have something ready by tomorrow afternoon.”
James looked around at his colleagues as if to silently recruit them into the conversation. He held out both hands, palms up. “Why don’t you let us help? Surely Harvey could provide some demographic information. He knows the population of every city in the United States.”
Harvey looked up from a book he’d just finished reading in the time it takes most people to make some breakfast. “As well as the zip codes and directions to any, damn, damn, damn, address.”
Dr. Pevnick was about to dismiss the idea, but something made him hesitate. This was not business as usual. This was a disaster; one of such gravity, most people had never experienced anything like it. He pondered the proposal. At least it would keep them busy, he thought to himself. Besides, they were good researchers. Can’t hurt, might help, he thought. “Actually, James, that’s not a bad idea. In fact, it might be quite useful. You’re on.”
“On what?” asked Jeremy, perplexed.
Pevnick looked at him and smiled. “It’s just an expression, Jeremy. It means I’ll accept James’s offer. Yes, I could use your help.”
“Oh, okay! Zen I am in.”
“Great,” said James. “I’ll get started on how we can stop the disaster…” He opened a laptop he had tucked under his arm and began typing immediately, as if he could easily find a site on how to save the world.
Pevnick looked at him quizzically. “Eh, what?”
James continued to type.
“Look, James, I appreciate your…willingness to try to help, but from what the President said, there is nothing that can be done. If there were, I’m sure they would be doing it.”
James glanced up. “Oh? Just like when they knew the Nazis were launching a war on Europe and they did nothing until the war came to the U.S. via Pearl Harbor?” He returned to typing.
“That’s different,” said Pevnick. “A different time…”
“Uh-huh,” said James. “And what about Hurricane Katrina? You worked on a plan with this same government a year before that storm and they ignored your suggestions. Hundreds could have been saved….”
“That’s enough, James,” said Pevnick, the heat of his anger rising again. “I don’t have time to debate this with you.”
“I’ve already been thinking of some plans, Dr. Pevnick. Actually, several plans they could try.”
Pevnick held up his hand. “If you want to spend the next day or two researching some science fiction scheme, you go ahead. I have real work to do.” He pushed abruptly past the others and out of the room, shaking his head as he went.
***
Washington, D.C. The Oval Office
It was after ten o’clock at night, but President Cooper had summoned Dr. Hisamoto and Dr. Heimel to the White House for a private discussion. They were all obviously fatigued, but Cooper seemed to possess boundless energy; whiskered chin, loosened tie, and all. His staff brought a shining urn of steaming coffee into the room as the three men huddled around the President’s gargantuan desk. It appeared it was going to be a long night.
“I’m sorry to pull you two in here so late, but I know you realize the gravity of this situation.”
“Of course, Mr. President,” said Heimel.
“You gentlemen seem to be the most informed of this situation,” said Cooper, “so I’m going to go out on a limb here. Answer something for me, and if you don’t know, go ahead and make your best guess. Okay?”
“Yes, sir?” said Hisamoto, leaning forward with interest.
“If we could remove some of the deteriorating ocean shelf, could that possibly reduce the impact of the event?”
Both of the scientists looked at each other then slowly, wordlessly, nodded.
“The problem is,” said Heimel, “is that the wall is approximately six-hundred-feet deep and dozens of miles long. What kind of equipment could move that much land mass, and at that depth?”
Hisamoto interjected, “It would be a suicide mission. Anyone in the vicinity of that shelf when it fails would perish.”
“I understand,” said Cooper, “but, throughout history, we have always found brave men willing to make sacrifices for their countries. I believe we still can. As for the equipment? I’ll leave that up to the Army Corps of Engineers. Maybe they can come up with something.” The President sat up and leaned forward in his chair. “I’m going to mobilize them immediately.”
Hisamoto blinked rapidly and cleared his throat. “I…suppose it would be better than doing nothing at all.”
“Agreed,” said Heimel. “But, the more people assigned to the mitigation, the more likely the media will find out.”
“Maybe not,” said Cooper. “Like you said, the problem is six-hundred-feet deep. They can’t get camera crews down there easily, if at all. And if they do find out, at least they’ll know that we are trying to do something. That might give the nation hope. I think that’s the best thing we can offer right now.” He got up and poured himself some coffee, then turned back to the two scientists. “I’m going to begin evacuation in forty-eight hours. If we can make a dent in this thing, maybe I won’t have to evacuate as many areas. The more we can contain it, the better off we all are. I’m going to ask you men to work with the Department of Defense’s top engineers. Put your thinking caps on, gentlemen. Let’s try to generate some hope.”
Heimel stood, nodded, and shook the President’s hand. Hisamoto stood, and bowed slightly. Cooper returned the gesture.
Hisamoto turned back to the President as he was going out the door of his office. He cleared his throat, and said, “Try to get some rest when you can, Mr. President.”
Cooper nodded and smiled benignly. “You, too.”
CHAPTER TEN
The moon shone over a secluded part of a forest in northeastern Pennsylvania. From the air, it appeared to be nothing more than a forest canopy, but underneath the thick foliage, military vehicles moved men and equipment through a maze of camouflaged bunkers and tents. The scent of pine in the air was pervasive, mixed with the fumes of smoke. Generators thrummed and provided lighting to the people who were working here, preparing there.
In one of the bunkers, Vice President Proger was meeting with General Aristotle Haufman. The General was in his fifties; an ash colored crew cut sat atop his head that appeared to be made from steel shavings. His face was stern, determined, with an edge of bitterness from having compromised his own ideals for so long. His opinions had “upset” some of his peers over the years. For example, his willingness to launch bold infantry attacks when covert operations might have served the Army’s mission better wasn’t popular, neither was his willingness to utilize torture tactics that were banned worldwide. These things had been discussed in closed rooms, in hushed whispers, and had prevented him from becoming one of the “chosen few” who shared confidences and strategies with the President’s circle. Still, his men respected him—or feared him—and he commanded total obedience from them.
“Are the men ready, General?” said Proger, shaking the general’s hand.
“Yes, sir. We are armed, ready, and motivated in every state, including those west of the ‘event’ area. We’ve begun to pull our militias out of the eastern seaboard, moving them several hundreds of miles inland. In all, we have some half-million troops at the ready, sir.”
“Excellent,” said Proger. The President has said we’ll keep force
s fifty miles inland, but from everything I’ve heard, that may be too close. They’ll probably lose half the available Army as soon as it happens.”
“And the rest will be so dumbstruck,” Haufman added, “they’ll disband and fall apart. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them came to us as the new military and joined us. There will be soldiers looking for leadership and purpose, especially after the widespread devastation.
Proger nodded in agreement. “And the other matter; you took care of the, uh, other considerations?”
“Of course, sir. The crew of the sub have all been eliminated. It’s part of the mission, sir.”
“Yes. Good. I don’t need to tell you what would happen if it leaked out that we moved a bomb out there.” He paused to consider something and shook his head. “Hell, we were only moving the bomb out there to minimize the fall out on shore.”
“Of course, sir. How could we know there was a fault line there?”
Proger rubbed his jaw, thinking. “Look, I know our plan changed. We didn’t anticipate the tidal wave they’re now predicting will engulf the entire east coast, but…”
“But, it’s better this way,” said Haufman, enthusiastically. His eyes gleamed, fueled by a vision he’d harbored for years. “The President will have most of the armed forces in the hot zone. The troop casualties will be catastrophic, God rest their souls. Our militia will move in and enforce martial law on the fringes of the devastation area. Civilians will be scared, their spirits broken. They’ll be easily maneuvered, like cattle. The President can’t risk air strikes or bombing without incurring massive civilian casualties. So, it’ll have to be a guerilla war and we already know the U.S. Military isn’t very accomplished in that area. The President will appear impotent and useless. The nation will be looking for new leadership and direction.”
Vice President Proger grinned. “That’s where I’ll come in,” he said, “just as we’ve planned. Instead of showing Cooper as just a weak leader who could allow a nuclear bomb to be detonated right off the nation’s coast, we’ll show him as an indecisive president in times of a true crisis. History has shown conquered nations quickly adhere to their new leadership. It won’t take long for the nation to embrace our militias. We’ll build a better America. Then, we’ll show the world what we’re really made of.”
“I’m looking forward to a new dawn, sir.”
“New dawn. I like that. Let’s rename this strike. Keep your men vigil, General. Operation ‘New Dawn’ begins as soon as the tide subsides.”
Haufman maneuvered behind the desk in his makeshift office and opened a drawer. He withdrew a bottle of good whiskey and filled two glasses with the brown liquid.
“To you, Mr. President,” said Haufman.
The two men toasted and downed their drinks in one huge, satisfying gulp.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The sun came up over the ocean the next day, peaked into the windows of the Beehive, and found Dr. Pevnick seated at his desk, his eyes red and tired. He sipped some coffee, studied his computer screen for a few moments, and continued typing.
Harvey Peet entered the office looking as if he just woke up, unshaven, hair mussed, glasses smudged and crooked, wearing a wrinkled shirt and underwear that did not appear to have been changed for perhaps several days. He squinted like a bat at the light in the room. “The sh…cuss, cuss, sun is up.”
Pevnick looked up at him. “Harvey, would it be too much for me to ask you to take a bath today?”
Harvey shrugged. “You can ask.” He reached over and stuck his finger in Pevnick’s coffee. “That’s disgusting. Cold coffee. Indeed!” He wandered around the office as if he were lost, pulling a book off the shelf and reading—almost finishing it—within a few minutes. “Will there be anything else, Dr. Pevnick?”
“Huh?” he said, distracted. “Er, uh, no, Harvey. God, you’ve been great. I could never have finished this report so quickly without you. You’re amazing!”
Harvey grinned and wiped his glasses with the tail of his shirt that was tucked into his underwear. “That’s what all the women tell me.”
Pevnick smiled for the first time since he and the President talked the day before. “Why don’t you get some rest? Your parents would be furious with me if they knew I’d kept you up all night.”
“Yeah,” said Harvey, rolling his eyes. “Then you wouldn’t get any fu…fu…frikkin’ ice cream.” He picked up the book again and raced through the pages, then stopped abruptly and slammed it shut. “Thanks for letting me help, Dr. Pevnick. This is the first time I’ve felt like an adult.”
Pevnick wasn’t sure what to say to that, but pondered what it meant.
“When you are afflicted, as we are,” Harvey said, “people assume you are dumb.”
“People…are…” Pevnick struggled with what to say.
“S’okay, Dr. Pevnick. You cannot possibly find the right words for those people, such as we know them.”
Pevnick nodded in agreement. “Are the others still asleep?”
Harvey shrugged. “Jeremy, the bastich, cuss, cuss, might be. But James and Etta were up all night, too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I think he—James, that is—might be sweet on Miss Etta. Ha, ha! You should see what they’ve been doing.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“You better go see for yourself. I’m going to, fu…cuss, cuss, sleep.”
Pevnick stood up, his knees popping, and rubbed his tired eyes as Harvey stumbled off to bed. He ambled through the facility feeling that loss one endures after pulling away from an all-nighter on the computer. Mrs. Brown had made some fresh coffee, and Pevnick found his way to the aroma and poured himself another cup.
He found James and Etta sleeping in the study with their heads on the conference table, a small puddle of drool escaping Etta’s mouth. Taped to the bookshelves were elaborate pencil drawings, picture after picture of fantastical mechanisms the likes of which few people had ever seen or imagined. On the computer, images of downloads popped onto the screen, one after the other. Pevnick watched the screen flash from one diagram to the next, observing the similarities of mechanized devices: explosive and nuclear devices, torpedoes, and blueprints of satellites. He yawned, shook his head, and patted Etta on the head, then slipped out of the room quiet as a cat, glancing back once more at the slumbering couple and closing the door behind him.
He sauntered down the hall, jotting notes on his stenographer’s tablet. He came to a door of the bedroom farthest removed from the rest of the living quarters. His hand rested on the door knob for a moment before turning it. Mrs. Brown and a nurse assistant, a thick, strong Haitian woman in her forties named Magritte, were just finishing placing a young man into a wheelchair. He was Douglas Pevnick, Stephen’s seventeen-year-old son, whom most people believed to be dead. They fussed over cleaning him up and tucking a blanket in around him. His limbs were thin and angled, like crooked branches on a tree, due to muscular atrophy. He made humming noises and grunts; spittle on his lips, one of his hands was in constant motion, as if he held an invisible pencil in his fingers and was trying to scribe a note.
Mrs. Brown glanced at Dr. Pevnick, a flash of heated emotion in her eyes as she wheeled Douglas over to the window and opened the drapes, allowing sunlight to fill the room like melted butter.
“Good morning, doctor,” said Mrs. Brown.
“Good morning, Mrs. Brown,” replied Pevnick, aware of the woman’s disdain; she didn’t approve of the doctor’s regard for his own son. “Is he all right this morning?”
“Well, Douglas, seems particularly agitated. Somehow, he got hold of a pen left next to his bed and made a bunch of marks on his sheets. When we stripped the bed so we could wash the sheets, he became very upset. I think he wants to look outside. In fact, I think he wants to go outside….” She reached down and combed the young man’s hair with her fingers.
“We’ve discussed this before, Mrs. Brown. His brain is half gone from the accident. Dou
glas can’t tell if he is inside or outside, and—”
“I know what you think,” said Mrs. Brown, indignant. “But, if you ask me, even a mole likes to peek its head out now and then. What could it hurt?”
“When we tried it before he had seizures from the light, went into a coma, and woke up with pneumonia that almost killed him.”
“Well, if you ask me…”
“What?” said Pevnick, his turn to be annoyed.
“I…I’m sorry, doctor. We all had a late night.”
Pevnick gathered himself. “It’s okay. I’ll sit with him for a while before I take a nap. Maybe I’ll just lay down here in his bed. I’ll call if I need you.”
“As you wish, sir.”
“Thank you. And thank you, Magritte.”
Magritte nodded, her eyes glancing back and forth between Mrs. Brown and the doctor. Mrs. Brown was aware of the friction that existed between the two, but did her best to stay out of it.
Pevnick went to his son’s side and brushed his hair back, then leaned over and kissed his head. He inadvertently left the writing tablet and pen on the windowsill in front of Douglas. There were scars on his son’s forehead that extended down the side of his face and around his head, like a jigsaw puzzle. The young man stared up into the sky and did not respond to his father’s touch, but his hand began to move again in its jerky, telegraphic fashion. Tears welled in Pevnick’s eyes and fell to the blanket that covered Douglas. He turned away so Douglas wouldn’t see him. Lying on the bed, he watched his son staring out the window, like a statue.
“I wish your mother was still here,” said Pevnick, letting his tears soak into the pillow, fatigue pulling at him until he finally fell asleep.
Douglas’s hand skittered from under the blanket and found the damp spot from his father’s tear. The hand’s spasmodic movement stopped as the young man felt the wetness. His eyes closed for a moment, then opened again to gaze out the window and linger on a movement he saw in the trees. The branches were filled with birds. At once, they all leapt into the sky, regrouped into a formation, moving one way, then the other, but never leaving the sight of the young man in the wheelchair. Suddenly, Douglas’s hand shot up unsteadily and grabbed the writing tablet on the windowsill, though the effort exhausted him as if he’d just run a marathon.
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