Wasteland

by Noah Mann

  We followed him into the compact space, hardly larger than a college dorm, with a lone bed curtained off at one end, small refrigerator and microwave nearby, entrance to a compact latrine open, and every other inch appearing dedicated to the technology necessary to turn a good chunk of the world to ashes.

  Ben let his body settle into one of the two sturdy seats available, nearly identical to those used in vintage American strategic bombers, and began entering commands on one of several keyboards embedded in the console before him, displays and indicators filling the panel above flickering to life. An identical seat rested ten feet to his left, both mounted to tracks in the floor allowing them to slide easily to multiple workstations along the array of instruments and controls. In a war situation, two officers would occupy the seats, belted in to absorb the effects of blasts from above, their hands turning launch keys in unison after authenticating orders received over any of the communication methods available.

  Colonel Benjamin Michaels’ key was in his mind.

  “Okay,” he said, focusing. “Okay.”

  Neil looked back toward us from the escape tunnel’s sealed lower hatch.

  “I can hear them up there,” my friend said. “If they get that upper hatch open—”

  “If they get it open then they die in the shaft,” Ben assured him. “But they won’t get it open.”

  “Still, maybe you should pick up the pace,” Elaine suggested.

  Ben tapped commands into the system before him. A series of ten lights on the panel glowed to life. Red. Then yellow. Then one turned green.

  “We have our missile,” Ben said, then quieted, his fingers stilled.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  A small detonation sounded above, echoing down the sealed escape tunnel.

  “They’re trying to blow the top hatch with grenades,” Neil said, a hint of urgency in his voice.

  “Let them try,” Ben said, his hands just hovering near the keys he’d tapped to bring the panel before him to life.

  “Ben...”

  The military man looked to me, confused, troubled.

  “I’m not supposed to do this,” he said to me.

  Neil stormed away from the lower hatch and aimed himself at the military man. I stepped between them, holding my friend back.

  “Dammit, do it!” Neil cursed at him.

  Ben looked up, to Neil, and then to me, a true sorrow in his eyes.

  “I’ve never disobeyed an order in my life,” he said.

  “We’re beyond orders, Ben,” I said. “This is about what’s right and what’s necessary.”

  He focused on the keyboard again. Neil eased his bullish push toward the man, stepping back, worried.

  “He could just do what he was supposed to,” Neil said. “We’d never be able to stop him.”

  “That’s right,” Ben said, fingers tapping keys again now, entering commands. “I could.”

  Neil reached for the revolver on his hip. I planted my hand atop his, keeping the weapon holstered. My friend looked to me, just inches between us.

  “Guys...” Elaine said.

  “If he double crosses us, I’m ending him,” Neil said.

  “You won’t have to,” I told my friend.

  He knew what I meant—if the deed was to be done, I would do it.

  “What the hell is happening to us?” Elaine asked.

  “Your friends are deciding which one gets to execute me when I fulfill my mission,” Ben said, his fingers never stilling, keys clicking, green light flashing now. “But they’re never going to get that chance.”

  His hands came away from the keyboard now, body angling in the chair to look at the three of us.

  “It’s done,” he said, slack eye twitching.

  “You son of a bitch,” Neil swore, pulling his .44 and aiming past me, his sights centered on Ben’s face.

  “You might want to hold onto something,” Ben said, fumbling with the seatbelt dangling over the arms of the sliding chair and clicking the ends together. “It’s going to get bumpy.”

  Neil slowly lowered his revolver.

  “You launched?” Neil asked. “The OMP protocol?”

  Ben nodded and looked up toward the ceiling, imagining the world beyond it.

  “Five,” he said.

  I took Elaine’s hand and backed against the wall.

  “Four.”

  Neil holstered his weapon and joined Ben in staring upward, waiting.

  “Three.”

  “We’re going to feel it?” Elaine asked. “Even down here?”

  “Two,” Ben said, nodding.

  Elaine looked to me. I smiled, reassuring her, though I had no idea just what we were about to unleash upon the world we’d just abandoned.

  “One.”

  Forty

  Ten thousand and sixty feet above us a man-made sun bloomed. It expanded in every direction, fireball groping toward the sky and the earth below, but not able to set its hellish touch upon the land. That mattered not at all. The heat radiating from the maelstrom washed over the land, scorching all that was not yet dead, setting ablaze that which would burn, blinding those who could still see for a microsecond until their bodies were turned to vapor. If one were able to blink, it would have been about the length of that action until the blast wave hit, slamming down from the point of detonation, pulverizing every structure and object, boulder to grain of sand, before spreading outward like a biblical wind, scouring the landscape like an artist whitewashing a canvas upon deciding to start fresh.

  That was above, as I imagined it.

  Twenty yards below the surface, the blast reached us as a dull, deep thud. One that you heard in the lowest tones, and felt, rippling up through your feet, past your knees and hips, until it jolted you in the gut like an invisible body blow. Equipment within the compartment rattled. Small items fell. But there was no violent tossing of the space back and forth as one might have expected from seeing too many Hollywood blockbusters. A surface burst surely would have resulted in a far more devastating reaction where we sat, braced against stiff steel and padded synthetics, but the reality was that shock absorbers built into the launch control center’s structure mitigated much of the force, leaving us riding something akin to a drowsy roller coaster for less than a minute.

  When the space around us stilled, we looked to each other.

  “That’s it?” Elaine wondered. “It’s done?”

  Ben stared upward. He didn’t say anything. Not for a long moment. It was as if he was regarding the action he’d taken with some terrible awe.

  “I’m the third,” Ben said. “The bombardiers on Enola Gay, Bockscar, and now me. The only men to use a nuclear weapon against their fellow man.”

  It was a statement that hinted at regret. At a depth of self-awareness I hadn’t thought the man capable of.

  The interlude lasted just a few seconds after he spoke, the lights suddenly dimming around us turning Ben’s attention back to our situation. He reached to the panel and threw a series of switches, indicators lighting up, their glow weak and flickering.

  “We have to get off of entry power,” he said. “Get switched over to the generator.”

  The illuminators built into the switches dimmed noticeably.

  “What are you doing?” Elaine asked.

  “There’s a generator in another chamber beyond the blast door,” Ben answered, pointing to the massive steel and concrete barrier that sealed the LCC. “I have to get that running if we’re going to actually want to breathe. And key to that is one bit of luck I hope we’ve had.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  He twisted dials and pressed a black button, the truncated word GEN stamped above it on the console faceplate. The LCC shuddered lightly, the rumble of a big motor struggling in the unseen chamber.

  “There’s an air intake and an exhaust,” he said. “The rubble I saw above looked like it had choked both off. If the blast did its thing, there should be no more rubble.”

&n
bsp; “And no more intake,” Neil said, not optimistic. “Or exhaust.”

  “We just need holes in the ground where they penetrate,” Ben said, thumb holding the button down. “Come on. Come on!”

  The chugging continued, oddly familiar, like a big diesel churning to life in cold weather.

  “Come on,” Ben repeated.

  “And if it doesn’t start?” Elaine asked.

  “We die,” Ben answered without hesitation.

  The generator spun, and coughed, and caught, a rhythm beginning, stuttered and useless.

  “Start, dammit!” Ben shouted. “Start!”

  The hidden beast growled and groaned and fought up from its cold slumber, pistons hammering, fuel exploding within cylinders, flywheel spinning, faster, and faster, until the sound coursing through the buried structure was almost melodic. Lights brightened. A wash of air spilled from vents above, tiny strips of ribbon tied to each whipped straight by the man-made breeze.

  “Okay,” Ben said, easing his thumb from the button. “We’re good.”

  I slid down along the wall, sitting, spent.

  “How long will it run?” Elaine asked.

  “It’s a miracle it’s running now,” Ben said. “Considering how long it sat idle. No monthly cycle to keep everything lubed and the filters clean.”

  “Now that it defied the odds...”

  Ben looked to Elaine.

  “It should cycle on and off, recharge batteries, keep the air filtration working,” Ben said. “The design time for that is fourteen days. By that time, with just an air burst, any residual radiation should be within acceptable limits.”

  “That’s fine,” Neil commented. “But you said we could survive down here. Two weeks with air and no food won’t do us much good.”

  “I don’t see a smorgasbord laid out, Ben,” I agreed with my friend.

  Ben pushed himself up from the seat and limped past us, stopping at an equipment rack at the extreme end of the chamber.

  “Give me a hand,” he said, pointing with his working hand at a series of release levers along the edges of an electrical panel set into the wall. “Pull those.”

  Elaine and I joined Ben and did as he instructed. The three foot by three foot panel popped free of its mount and swung easily out. Wires snaked from it to conduits disappearing into the four foot thick concrete encapsulating the LCC.

  “Neil, there’s a flashlight mounted over the bunk,” Ben said.

  My friend retrieved it and brought it to me. I clicked it on and shined it into the space we’d just uncovered, its beam revealing an access cover slightly smaller than the panel that had concealed it. Four screws, one at each corner, sealed it to the bulkhead behind the open panel.

  “Screwdriver to the right,” Ben told me.

  And there it was, snapped into a holder attached to the bulkhead. I took it in hand and began removing the screws.

  “Any order to this?” I asked, half joking, and half not. “Or will it not blow up no matter which way I unscrew these.”

  “Can’t recall,” Ben said.

  “What’s behind that,” Neil asked.

  “PR LR stores,” Ben answered.

  “You guys sure love your acronyms,” I said.

  “Presidential Retreat of Last Resort stores,” ben explained. “Every LCC could be used as a refuge of last resort for the president.”

  “Just kick the missile crew out to fend for themselves?” Neil asked.

  “Yes,” Ben confirmed with cold authority.

  “How much is in there?” Elaine asked.

  “Six weeks for two people,” Ben said.

  “The president was going to be a lonely guy,” I said.

  The last screw popped out and the access cover unlatched, tipping out. I caught it and passed it carefully through the panel opening to Elaine. She set it aside and I shined the flashlight into what we’d just opened.

  “MREs, medicines, extra water,” Ben said. “Though there should be enough in the storage tanks. Hygiene supplies. Ammunition. Rifles. Sidearms.”

  Elaine reached past me and took an MRE in hand. It was no different than what she’d left behind for the little girl in Utah. Now, here, we were being given a chance. Another chance. To live and to carry on.

  “She’s probably dead by now,” Elaine said softly.

  Engaging her in some reminiscence of what she’d done, what she’d tried to do, would only be feeding the flash of sadness she was feeling. She needed to focus not on what any of us had done, but on what there was still to do. And how to do it.

  “Six weeks for two people means three weeks for four,” I said, making the simple calculation.”

  “We have plenty for while we’re down here,” Ben said.

  “Still, we need to ration it,” I said. “And keep track.”

  I took a few MREs from the storage space and handed them to Neil.

  “But right now we chow down,” I told my friend.

  He held the packages and smiled, nodding to me.

  “Hell yes,” he said.

  We could make lists and schedules later. Plans would be formulated. Thoughts on our route home would be discussed. For now, though, we would rest, and eat, and revel in the pure, simple joy of being alive.

  Forty One

  On the third day of our confinement Ben looked at me from where he sat against a wall of electronic equipment gone silent.

  “You think it’s going to be that easy?”

  I looked to him. To that face with one side dragged down, left eye drooping, cheek and corner of his mouth gone slack.

  “What?”

  He gestured with a nod to the notebook in my hand. I’d been looking over the scribbles and scrawls the dead professor had made, trying to understand how he’d done it. How he’d beaten the blight.

  “You think if it’s all in there, the way to make things grow again, then that’s it. The corner is turned.”

  “You disagree,” I said, stating the obvious.

  Ben scooted along the wall, leaning awkwardly, his good hand planted on the slick floor like the kickstand of a battered bicycle. The other tremored involuntarily until he clenched it into a fist and held it against his stomach. At the far end of the compartment Neil and Elaine were sleeping, him in the bunk and her on the blanketed floor, the exchange between Ben and me for just the two of us.

  “This place that you’re taking me to,” he began, “do you have a doctor there?”

  “As a matter of fact we do.”

  Everett Allen, MD. Surgeon extraordinaire. He’d given Micah more time. Not much, but enough that the child, the boy genius, was able to point us toward possible salvation. Beyond that he’d become the town doctor. Treating ailments and injuries. Stitching lacerations and removing bullets. He’d done a final patch job on my jaw where Major Layton’s bullet had left its mark.

  “Is he old?” Ben asked.

  “He’s not young,” I answered, the first hint at where Ben was going with this starting to coalesce.

  “So old Doc...”

  “Allen,” I filled in the blank.

  “Old Doc Allen keeps on getting older,” Ben said, confirming my suspicion as to the line of thought he was following. “Then one day he drops dead of a heart attack. Or falls down some stairs. Or gets an infection. Gets shot. Stabbed.”

  “I get it,” I said.

  “What about dentists?” Ben added to the wondering. “Pharmacists. Physicists. Even lawyers, God forbid. All the different specialties that make the world turn don’t just happen because a fruit tree blooms.”

  “None of those specialties, those people, will have a chance if that fruit tree doesn’t bloom,” I countered. “A whole lot of fruit trees. And tomato plants. Bunches of lettuce, carrots, celery.”

  Ben leaned back against the equipment rack, head finding support against the cold metal.

  “I hate celery,” Ben said. “We haven’t even talked about meat. Good old flesh of the animal variety. Fish. Fowl.”

&n
bsp; The protein deficit. I’d thought about that while reading the professor’s notes over the past two days. Sure, there’d been plenty of people who lived on greenery alone. I didn’t particularly want to be one of them.

  “Do you think someone, somewhere, has chicken eggs preserved in a cave like those seeds you found?” Ben asked, his tone scoffing. “Maybe the embryos of some prized cattle are safely frozen in a lab with limitless power to keep things frosty? Yes?”

  I’d known the man less than a week, and already I knew that within him all thoughts cynical had found a place to dwell. Perhaps it was the nature of the position he’d held in the government when the old world was still viable. A position that required him, at a moment’s notice, to facilitate the annihilation of tens of millions of people he’d never met. Hundreds of millions, possibly. Or even more. I wondered if one characteristic required in a person such as that was a dose of cynicism. An acceptance that a horror was inevitable. That the world was always just a misstep from Armageddon.

  What, then, would the slow motion apocalypse that had rolled over the planet have done to that state of mind? Driven it further toward a belief in futility? That wiping a city off the map with the press of a button was within the realm of acceptable measures?

  “Doesn’t matter,” Ben said without getting any answer or opinion from me. “Lack of a viable bacon cheeseburger supply is an issue to be dealt with down the road. You have a more immediate problem once we’re out of here.”

  I waited, no need to prompt the man for an answer.

  “There’s maybe a week’s worth of food left once we pop the hatch. That’s rationed for four people. Four people moving overland on foot a thousand miles. And in case you missed it, exactly half of us aren’t doing too great.”

  I didn’t want to concur in the latter part of his assessment, but reality dictated that I had to. For certain, Ben was the worst off of all of us. But Neil was close behind. Having a warm place to sleep, and relatively plentiful food and water had stabilized whatever was ailing him. But he still was racked by rattling coughs as he slept, and the energy he’d summoned, from will and hope alone, hadn’t rebounded to what it should have been in a healthy state. A course of antiviral medicine we’d administered from what had been stored down here might have helped, but it hadn’t turned the tide of his lingering illness.