by Sandy Nathan
“I can’t believe it. I trained my whole life for the revolution, and it gets called off. I wanted to fight that revolution. I wanted some action. I wanted the scientists to come here. I wanted to build a new world.
“Now what? My boss is leaving with a pretty girl—or pretty something. How fucked is that?”
Sam laughed again, and sat next to Arthur. The flask in his pocket bumped his elbow. “Ah’ve ne’er been away from th’ village farther than Jamayuh. Always wanted to go to New York City. Now ah’ll be here forever. Ah’ll drink to that!” He pulled the flask out of his pocket and raised it. His hands shook.
“How long have your hands been doing that?” Arthur asked.
Sam let out a long breath. “They’ve been wantin’ to all day. Ah been able to control ’em.” He’d seen people come off the hooch too fast. They screamed about bugs crawling under their skin and snakes going up the walls.
“I’m a medic, Sam. I can take care of you, if it gets bad. I’m trained to do almost anything but operate. I’ll watch your back.” Arthur’s face was serious. “You should have a slug of that, or, better, this.” He took the canteen from his belt. “It’s the Edgarton’s finest bourbon. I liberated it from the crystal flask on the sideboard.”
Sam took a swig hungrily, then almost spat it out. “Jeremy said no hooch down here.”
“This is medicinal, Sam. You need this”—he took the canteen— “and so do I.” Arthur pulled a long slug, and then wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm. “I never thought I’d be sitting down here drinking with you. I was supposed to be riding herd on a bunch of geniuses. Settling them in. Keeping them from killing each other.”
“Killing each other? They fight?”
“They fight with words, usually. Academics wage wars with words. We didn’t know what might happen when they were locked this far underground with no escape.” Arthur took another swig and passed the canteen to Sam. He shook his head. “Take it. You’re going to be hallucinating without it.”
Sam did as directed, not feeling any better for the warmth in his gut. “Ah’m gonna carry out Mr. Egerton’s commands. All of ‘em. After t’night.” He handed the metal flask over to Arthur, his eyes reaching across the large common room to the corridors on the other side where the cells were. Where the people of the village were to be locked up.
“So’s it gonna be the way it was above, when we’re down here?” He glared at Arthur.
“What do you mean?”
“The village locked up with the animals, and the big house gettin’ the best.”
“What are you talking about, Sam?”
He nodded in the direction of the cells. “Ah seen it all when Mr. Egerton took us around: the lockup, the doors hid in the walls, the way this place can be shut down. Is we t’ be in the cells o’er yonder?”
“No. Why do you think that?”
“Because that’s how it has been all ma life. The village takes the leavin’s of the big house. What ‘er them cells for? The scientists?”
“Yes, Sam. They’re for the scientists. We didn’t know what would happen to anyone locked up like this forever. Just because those scientists and scholars are brilliant doesn’t mean they won’t go crazy. Half of them already are!”
“Crazy?”
“Yes, Sam. They’re brilliant. Half of them could disarm those nuclear weapons. You know why? Because they could build them. They’re dangerous. And they come from every sort of political persuasion. Half of them can’t get along with their own families.”
Arthur looked straight at Sam. “You thought the lockdowns were for you?”
“Yeah. That’s the way of it.”
Arthur took a long swallow from his canteen. “Sam, my friend, the village wasn’t going to be in here. What Jeremy said was correct: we planned for you and Rupert and one wife each, plus some kids. You would be here, but that’s all.”
Sam jumped up, cursing. “Ah told you tha’s how it is. We are the last.”
“Well, now you’re first, Sam. We’ve got one of the great reversals of history, right here. You and your people will form the great new world.”
“Lor’ help us all.”
“Amen.” Arthur took a swallow and put the canteen back in his belt. “We’ve got a problem. There were supposed to be twenty like me. Twenty all-purpose, rootin’-tootin’ commandos who could handle anything. We were supposed to have six medical doctors, including a surgeon and a dentist. Back in the VIP area, we’ve got enough medicines to cure the world, and an operating suite. With me to run it.” He stared at Sam. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Run it.”
“Sam, I’m a soldier. I worked for Jeremy. I worked alongside him and I learned from him.” He shrugged. “He’s so smart, Sam, that I couldn’t believe it. What he can do writing code is impossible. I would have worked for him the rest of my life and considered myself lucky to be down here.” He laughed ruefully. “That’s over. I’m a soldier, Sam, not a general. I can follow orders and carry out objectives.”
Arthur would be lost without Jeremy, Sam could see. That’s why Jeremy had put him in charge down there.
“Ah’m a general, Arthur. Nothin’ else. Cain’t take orders at all, though ah’ll do what Mr. Egerton said. He’d find some way to ‘lectrify me if ah didn’t.
“Ah’ll be yer general, since ye need one.”
Arthur looked grateful. “I’ve always seen what you were, Sam. You never got the chance to show what you could do. I’ll teach you everything I know, starting with reading. And I’ll watch your back, Sam. I’ll watch out for you, just like you were Jeremy.”
Sam grabbed him and pulled him to his feet, wrapping his arms around him in a bear hug. He whispered in Arthur’s ear, “An’ ye’ll never hit me again, Arthur, or ah’ll pop yer eyes outta yer head.” He gave him just the tiniest bit of a squeeze, to show him what would happen.
Arthur pulled away when Sam let him go, staggering but righting himself. He stood defiantly. “I couldn’t let you get Jeremy, Sam. I’d kill you if I had to. But that’s over.”
“Aye. ‘Tis over. An’ ye’er ma man, aye, Arthur. Tell me y’ are.” He used a pretty good jolt of the Voice. Arthur fell to his knees. “Tell me Ah’m yer liege an’ yer lord, Arthur. Ye’ll follow me th’ rest of yer life.” He stared steadily at Arthur until the other man dropped his eyes, and his forehead, to the floor.
“You’re my lord, Sam. OK. Stop it. Don’t do this to me.”
Sam let him up. “Ah jus’ wanted t’ let ye know how things were, Arthur.”
“Look, you can bend me like a pretzel if you want, but you can’t fix the computers or any of the systems without me. And you can’t make my brain solve a problem by jamming it up. I’m on your side, Sam. OK?” Arthur’s eyes looked moist. “I wanted to be friends.”
“Ah’m sorry, Arthur. Is how ah’m used to it. Ah’m not much good at friends. Don’ work tha’ way in th’ village.”
“We need to change that, Sam. I’ll work for you, but I need respect.”
“Aye, lad. Lots must change.” When he hugged Arthur again, it was a friend’s hug. And then his worries surfaced.
“Tell me wha’s gonna happen t’morrow, Arthur.”
“I’ll show you.” Arthur led him to the library and turned on one of the computers. While it was warming up, he talked. “When the bombs go off, there will be a flash of light.” Arthur made a quick outward motion with his hands. “That will be followed by a blast wave. Tremendous force will radiate from the explosion site. Jeremy said it will level the mansion. After the blast comes fire. It will burn everything above ground, Sam. The village. All your animals, the forest, the meadows.
“It will burn the whole world.” Arthur’s voice grew tighter as he continued. “I can’t even think about it. What Jeremy has said makes it sound like it’s going to happen all at once, but that’s not true. The blasts will take place over a few days. One salvo of bombs will head in our direction, prompting a returning salvo
. But that’s all over the world, missiles shooting from everywhere, counterstrikes coming from wherever they hit. All of it is automatic and programmed in.
“It’s already started: missiles have already been launched in some parts of the world. The party’s on; it just won’t hit our part of the United States until the morning.”
“At 7:35?” Sam wondered how he would know the time.
“Or thereabouts. It won’t be too much later. The missiles in Jamayuh will launch, and missiles from elsewhere will begin to land here.” Arthur frowned. “We should be locked in by 7:35. Once it starts, we’ll be rockin’ for days. We’ll survive anything but a direct hit.”
Sam’s heart raced. Jeremy hadn’t said all this.
Arthur guessed what Sam was thinking. “I have a higher security clearance than Jeremy, Sam. He told you what he knew, but I know more. Do you want to see what will happen?” Sam nodded. “Atomic weapons have been used twice, back before the Second Revolution. I’ve got some pictures of the damage.” He typed on a computer and pictures appeared on the screen.
“You can’t see radiation or feel it until your skin starts to peel off and you start puking blood. If not protected, radiation will kill anything that survives the blast.”
Sam had seen pictures of people with their flesh melted. Faces that looked like soft butter. Bodies with blisters covering them. Flesh popped open like the dead animals he found in the forest.
“Do we have to stay down here forever?” Sam had asked.
“We’ll die here.”
They’d been silent awhile, looking at more pictures. Arthur had brought his canteen out again and they’d pulled on it until it was empty.
Arthur had loosened his collar, and leaned back in his computer chair, relaxed and a little drunk. “Do you think Ellie’s people are going to come?”
“Aye,” Sam said, and belched.
“I’m staying here even if they beg me to go with them,” Arthur said. “I trained to be here. You can’t run this place without me. Jeremy expected you to learn from videos? That’s stupid.
“And a golden world? Who knows what it’s really like?”
Sam agreed. If her people were all like the beautiful Eliana, he’d go. But they probably weren’t. He knew his people. They were a strong-minded bunch of brawlers, with the hooch or without it. Give them mushrooms to chew or anything stronger, and they became killers. What if Eliana’s people were like his? Some lovely and many not.
Sam knew that the village would never be invited to go. When they were in the depths of the shelter earlier, he’d seen the gold people around Ellie when she was asking about killing. He’d felt them reaching toward him; their minds were like the tendrils of ferns. As he’d felt that feathery touch, Sam knew the village had been rejected for its violent ways. Aye, he’d killed. More than he had to? He didn’t think so. But he was bathed in blood, and so were his people.
Sam had never felt worse. Who could hate so much that he’d destroy the world?
It knocked the sense out of him. Everything would die: his horses, cattle, and sheep. The chickens. The ducks. All would be blown to bits and burned to cinders. Their flesh would melt. Or they’d bleed to death from inside. Or starve.
He could not allow it. Just before dawn, he had said good-bye to Arthur and told his people to start moving their things down into the shelter.
“Show ‘em, Ru,” he had said to his son. “Show ‘em where t’ go.” He’d picked up his sledgehammer and big knife and gone out to the stock pens. Sam normally slaughtered animals with a blow from the hammer between the eyes. He slit their throats and collected the blood for his wives to make sausage. The knife wasn’t necessary; they were dead when his hammer connected with their skulls.
Now he walked into the corral with his stallion, the beautiful dark creature, with the brilliant eyes and blaze face and white stockings.
“Aye, Oned. This is the end, my beauty.” He stroked the animal’s sleek coat, vision wavering with tears. Damned if he’d cry. Sam of the village never cried. He raised the hammer, tensing for the swing and the impact.
He couldn’t do it. He could not move. Could not kill what he loved.
“Aye, get outta here, y’wastrel,” he said. He spoke the language of the village, and he let every one of his animals go. “Git! Git! Run outta here, y’bastard. Run outta here!”
He turned all the animals loose, the hound dogs last. They ran around the meadow joyfully, and then turned back to him, forming a circle around him. He screamed at them. “Git! Git! Y’stupid bastards. Git aw’y or die!” Flossie was the worst, his little bitch, a killer on the hunt and his best friend by the fire. She refused to listen until he chucked a stone at her.
He staggered back toward the mansion. They would be leaving, Jeremy and those who were traveling with him. He wanted to say something—what, he didn’t know. Thank ye for the fine coffin ye made me, Jeremy? Thank ye for letting me live in hell? Maybe ye’d just as soon die with us, thank ye kindly?
As he walked, his heart beat vigorously and the air went in and out of his lungs the way it always did. He felt his strength and will. He was as alive as the beasts he’d set loose. He didn’t want to die. He would live and make do, as long as life moved in him.
Rupert caught up with him as he walked toward the mansion’s rear door. He knew they would come out that way. Something in the extra bright sunrise told him.
“Da,” his boy said. “There’s a’...”
“Speak right English, boy. It’s the command of the Tek. Pretend you’re talking to the hooch man. You talk proper with him.”
“Da, there’s a lot of people on the road, running from Jamayuh. The thing there’s tickin’ away, they say. It’s goin’ off. Today, they’re sayin’.”
“Yeah. That’s so, son. You know that from what Jeremy said.”
“They’re comin’ here ‘cause they know about that.” He indicated the shelter with his head. One entrance was through the basement of the mansion. Another was a cement pipe with a heavy metal top in the grass near where they stood. “They know we’re safe because of Jeremy the Tek. They wanna come and get in with us.”
“The shelter don’t hold more ‘n’ just us. They can’t come in.”
“Yeah. Billy said that to the one he caught, Da. He told him we will kill any of them that come here.”
“Good. What else?”
“Is the hant, Da. Killin’ people on the road. Killin’ all of them he can get.”
Sam had been feeling the presence of something supernatural since the girl had arrived. He thought her people were watching for her. But it was the haunt.
“It looks like a dog, Da. A big hairy dog, big as the field. Bigger. It kills people, Da’, kills them when they’re runnin’ from Jamayuh.”
“Kills ‘em?”
“Yeah. Eats ‘em.”
This was news. “Who’d it kill?”
“Not us, Da. None from the village. Just runners. Just outsiders.”
“It’s protecting us—the hant?”
“Yeah, Da.”
That was the one good thing Sam had heard that morning.
The mansion’s rear door opened and the girl leaped out wearing the party dress from the night before. She pranced all over the field like a young filly after a long winter. She saw him and danced up, spinning in front of him. Oh, what a fine lass. She held her finger up with a ring on it.
“We married! Jeremy and me married!” She ran up and hugged him. “Good-bye, Sam of the village. I remember you.”
“Me, too, lil’ darlin’.”
“I come back, Sam, if can,” she called.
Sam felt so depressed. Jeremy emerged from the house, looking as fucked out as he’d ever seen a man. Sam smiled. He thought he’d never smile again, but the look on Jeremy’s face...
“Sam.” Jeremy stood in front of him. Sam looked at the boy, memorizing his face and form. “I wish I could do more for you.”
“Arthur give me a good look last
night. You did plenty, Mr. Eger—”
“No, I’m Jeremy. Forever. If I can keep in touch with you, I will. That notebook... check it. That’s probably the way.” Jeremy’s eyes were suddenly wet. He grabbed Sam around the elbows—he couldn’t reach any higher. “Oh, Sam, if we were going to do it again, I’d be real friends with you. I’m sorry.”
A sudden glow over the ocean caught their attention.
“Holy shit!” Jeremy exclaimed. “They’re really coming.”
Sam stared at the cliff overlooking the sea. The ocean side of the property was filled with light. The only way Sam could think of it was in terms of the sun. If you looked at the sun, right around it was an area that was so bright you could barely glance at it. That’s how this light was. In the middle of that bright, white light was a darker golden light. That was centered over the cliff edge. The middle was more solid than the outer light. It reminded him of an egg yolk, if it was shiny and see-through.
He could see tall, slender forms in it. Nothing was very clear or hard-edged. He didn’t know how many of Eliana’s people were in there. But they were there, and they had come for the group emerging from the mansion. The light seemed to be engaged in a locking operation with the cliff. It moved forward and back a bit, as though it was docking.
“Oh, my word,” Henry said as he stepped outside. He helped Lena out and down the three steps to the lawn.
“Oh, Henry. It’s beautiful.” She put her hand over her eyes to look at it. “That’s no spaceship like from the comics. It’s a piece of art, just like Ellie. I know we’re going to like it there.”
“If you say so, mother. You’re usually right.” Henry looked like he was anything but sure.
Mel and James emerged next, each of them leading one of the little dogs on a leash.
“Oh, my God,” James said. “They came!”
“I’ll say they did,” Mel added. “We’d better get going.” He walked toward Sam and stuck out his hand. Sam shook it. The little dog growled ferociously. “Oh, stop it,” Mel said. “He thinks he’s eighty pounds.”
“Heaven help us if he was eighty pounds.” James came up and shook Sam’s hand. “They fell in love with us on the ride in and now they’ll protect us until death.”