Without warning

by John Birmingham

  Franks was the ranking officer among them, but he deferred to Ritchie, who wasn’t burdened with managing a looming war in the Middle East, and who had the full resources of PACOM at his disposal. The admiral, like all of them, appeared tense and when he spoke it was with a clipped tone that Musso recognised. He heard the same serrated edge on his own words whenever he opened his mouth at the moment.

  ‘I’ll recap what we do know,’ said Ritchie, ‘before moving on to the much greater issue of what we don’t.’

  Musso watched four heads, including his own, nod in a acknowledgement.

  ‘As of three hours, fourteen minutes ago, an event of unknown origin appears to have wiped human habitation from an area estimated at just over four million square miles…’

  Tusk Musso found his throat closing involuntarily. His wife and children were deep inside that four million square miles. His whole country was, close enough. His life.

  ‘We have not yet mapped the exact perimeter of the effect,’ Ritchie continued. ‘But we have good estimates that it lies in a very rough ovoid shape that covers ninety per cent of the contiguous US mainland states, half of Canada, and all of Mexico above a line extending from a point a few miles south of Chilpancingo on the west coast to Chetumal on the east, and extending through the Gulf to transect Cuba seventy thousand metres north of Guantanamo. Of the larger cities on the contiguous mainland US, only Seattle appears to lie outside the area. We’re still checking on Olympia, a bit further south. Things are confused there. The Governor’s office has declared a state of emergency, imposed a curfew and called out the National Guard.’

  Musso couldn’t keep the surprise off his face. Nor could Susan Pileggi, he noted. He hadn’t seen any mention of Seattle in the news bulletins. As if reading his thoughts, Ritchie explained.

  ‘General Blackstone at Fort Lewis sent troops into the local media outlets to forestall a panic. The… uh… Governor and deputy are… unaccounted for. So too are some of the city council people for Seattle. Apparently they were at some conference in Spokane, behind the event horizon. An estimated three hundred and fifty million people were caught within the affected zone,’ Ritchie continued. ‘At this stage we have no information or even speculation about what may have happened to them, whether the effect is permanent, or stable, a natural phenomenon, or technologically based. We’ve been monitoring the reaction from any potentially hostile governments and none are behaving in any way that would give rise to a suspicion that they played any role in this.’

  ‘What’s happening in Beijing?’ asked General Franks.

  Ritchie appeared to direct his answer to a spot just over Musso’s shoulder as he addressed the image of Franks on a screen thousands of miles away. ‘The army is pouring onto the streets in every major provincial capital, General. Martial law has been declared but none of the PLA’s force-projection assets have been mobilised. Nonetheless, our own counter-strike forces are at Def-con 2, just in case.’

  Ice water pooled in Musso’s guts. Ritchie had ordered his nuclear submarines to stand ready should the need arise to reduce the communist giant to a vast crematorium. It raised an immediate question: who would authorise any such strike? Again, Ritchie seemed to be one step ahead of him.

  ‘I’m afraid, before we proceed any further,’ he said, ‘we need to discuss where the executive authority now lies.’

  ‘There’s no designated survivor?’ asked Tommy Franks.

  Ritchie shook his head.

  The further into this they got, the bleaker it grew, thought Musso. The ‘designated survivor’ was a Cabinet member nominated to remain apart from the other – was it sixteen or seventeen? – people in the presidential line of succession, a civilian analogue of the chain of command. The system only really operated when the executive was gathered in one place, such as during a State of the Union address, but now wasn’t the time to play semantics. If they couldn’t legitimately find somebody to step into the office of President, then any military actions they took would have no legal basis.

  ‘Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Labor, is in Geneva,’ said Ritchie, ‘at a UN conference. But she is specifically barred from the line of succession because she’s not a natural-born citizen. As best we can tell, there is nobody from the line… available.’

  ‘You mean “alive”,’ said Musso, unable to accept the euphemism any longer. ‘There is nobody else alive. In the line of succession. Back home. Anywhere within the affected area. You’ll excuse me for speaking out of turn, but I think we need to start responding to this on the basis of a worst-case scenario. It’s permanent. We cannot change it. They are not coming back and if we screw up, a lot more people are going to die.’

  Silence greeted him, and Musso immediately regretted his lack of tact. There was a reason why he was never going to ascend to the rarefied heights of a theatre command, the same reason he’d been slated for forced retirement in the next twelve months. Finally, General Jones broke the moment, speaking from Brussels.

  ‘Well said, Tusk. The world’s been knocked flat on its ass wondering what hit it. But that’s going to change within a day or two. And all hell is going to cut loose. You can bet on it.’

  ‘Gentlemen, if I might?’

  The testosterone had been ramping up very quickly. The intrusion of a softer, female voice seemed to calm things a little. Lieutenant Colonel Pileggi smiled out of the monitor at Musso, at all of them.

  ‘We all took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. No matter what catastrophe has overtaken us, that oath and the Constitution still stand. Millions of American citizens are still with us. Some of them back home, in the unaffected Northwest. Most of them scattered around the world. I don’t know the exact figures but there must be, what, four or five million Americans overseas on any given day? There are embassies, consulates, military bases and personnel – the sinews of government, if you will. But it is a government of the people. Not of us. If we are to act, it must be as servants of the American people, no matter how few or far flung they may be.’

  Pileggi spoke with controlled passion. Nobody spoke at all until Tommy Franks’s thick Oklahoma drawl poured out of the speakers.

  ‘Granted, Colonel, we can’t just pick a President out of a hat. But we need to act, and damn quick. I’ve got close on a quarter-million men and women out here in the desert waiting on orders to go. Saddam has even more waiting to receive us, and a lockerful of dirty weapons ready to fire off. I got millions of potential enemy combatants all around me – Israel sitting on top of her nukes, and that asshole bin Laden spooking around in the back of it all. Pretty soon I’m gonna have to shit or get off the pot, and either way now it’s gonna make a helluva goddamn mess. You are right. It ain’t my decision to make. But somebody has to make it, and I don’t see anybody we can turn to.’

  Pileggi nodded. ‘In the end, we have to turn to our citizens,’ she said. ‘But given the extreme nature of the immediate crisis, I suggest we return to first principles. We are a representative democracy. I suggest we find the senior surviving elected representative. If we can’t lay our hands on anyone from the federal level, then we go to state, to the Governor of Alaska, or Hawaii, or Washington State. We frogmarch them into office if necessary, for a strictly limited period, pending an election of a new Congress and executive.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ agreed Franks.

  ‘Consider it done,’ said Ritchie.

  Musso watched him drop his hand to make a few notes.

  ‘If and when we do find someone to assume executive responsibility,’ the admiral continued, ‘we will need to be ready to do whatever is needed of us. General Musso, you’re the closest out of us to the phenomenon. It might be time to tell us what you know.’

  What I know? he thought. What I know is that we’ve been fucked three ways from Sunday. When he spoke, however, it was in the same brusque style as his peers.

  ‘The edge of the effect, the event horizon, manifested itself as an observable atmospheric
phenomenon, seventy kilometres north of my position at Guantanamo,’ he began.

  * * * *

  8

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  ‘He’s… Barb. The Air… Guard picked him… ago… and later… for now…’

  ‘Barney? You’re breaking up. I can’t hear more than two words in five. Did you say Kip was fine? Is he okay?’

  The phone beeped in her ear, the connection lost.

  Barbara Kipper slammed the handset down in its cradle. It had taken her nearly an hour, trawling around in hellacious traffic, to find a payphone that actually worked. Twice she’d been stopped by soldiers who informed her, politely enough, that a curfew was in place and she’d need to get home. But Barb knew that, given the traffic, home wasn’t going to be that easy to reach, and she needed to talk to Kip. Only for a moment. Just to make sure he was safe.

  She was convinced the phone companies let their booths fall into disrepair to force everyone to buy a cell. Not that cell phones were worth anything today. The network was obviously melting down. She only got through to Barney Tench on her eighth attempt, and even then the interference had been so bad it was hardly worth it.

  But Kip was okay, wasn’t he? Barney had said that. The National Guard had picked him up somehow and were flying him back, right? Or driving. Or whatever. But he would be back ‘later’. She realised she was shaking and close to tears.

  ‘Are you all right, lady? Are you done with the phone? I really need to call my mom, is all. She’s in San Francisco this week, visiting her pop. And, you know, I really need to call her now.’

  Barb came out of her trance with a start. The young man in front of her, a boy really, had almost pushed his way into the booth. He was dressed in some sort of uniform. A Wendy’s employee, she realised, and his eyes were large and fearful, darting over her shoulder to lock on the phone as if it were a life jacket in high seas.

  ‘Can I just get in, ma’am? And use the phone? You made your call and…’

  ‘It’s okay. I’m sorry,’ said Barb. ‘Let me get out of your way’

  He waited until she was half out of the cramped space before pushing in past her. On any other day it would’ve set off all of her New York alarms, made her think she was being mugged. But the kid only had eyes for the phone.

  ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘With your mom.’

  He muttered ‘Thanks’ and began feeding coins into the slot.

  She hurried back to the car, where Suzie was sitting up in the front seat, keeping an eye on her. Barb had parked outside a bar and grill near the corner of Northeast 106th and 4th Street, far enough away from the Bellevue Square mall to have avoided the traffic snarl that had frozen the streets for a few blocks around there. But, even so, the road network here was peaked out also. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to be at their desk and thousands of people had poured onto the streets in their cars, all hoping to get home or to their kids or partners. Maybe it was the dumbass curfew too, she thought acidly. No one wanted to get stuck away from home today. The sun flared off windscreens in hundreds of small supernovae, horns blared and thousands more people on foot picked their way through the slow-moving traffic, all of them looking to be somewhere else. It was like 9/11 except in the ‘burbs.

  Barbara climbed back into the Honda and strapped in, keying the ignition and searching the radio band for a reasonable voice. The national stations were offline, and many of the locals had thrown open their switchboards to a rising cacophony of nutjobs and crazies.

  ‘Mommy, did you get my treat?’ asked Suzie.

  Barb squeezed her eyes shut. She’d promised Suzie a small chocolate bar or a piece of candy if she’d sat quietly through her mother’s increasingly anxious search for a working public phone. And of course, in the rush and the worry, she’d completely forgotten. The sharp, rising inflection in Suzie’s voice, which was quavering towards meltdown, meant she couldn’t put it off.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetie. Mommy forgot. But, I’ve… uh… I’ve got some gum here. Would you like some gum?’ She fished a packet of Double Bubble out of the coins and scrunched-up petrol receipts in the cup holder.

  ‘But Mommy, I’m not allowed to have gum. You know that I-’

  ‘Today, you can have gum,’ Barb said, more brusquely than she’d wanted to. ‘Here, knock yourself out.’

  She tossed back the packet and immediately regretted it. Suzie was always a little more sensitive to Barb than to Kip – admittedly, because Barb tended to have a sharper tongue. The little girl’s lower lip was trembling and the glassy sheen in her eyes warned of imminent tears. A tension headache began drilling in behind Barbara’s temples.

  ‘… estimates of the dead or missing run into the hundreds of millions,’ declared a sombre voice on the radio. ‘A joint statement from the Governor’s office and the commander of Fort Lewis advises people in the metro area to stay off the roads, keeping them clear for emergency service vehicles and military transport. The curfew will be enforce-’

  Barb flicked off the radio with some irritation. It couldn’t have been helping Suzie’s mood.

  ‘I want Daddy,’ she sobbed, as the tears finally came. ‘I want Daddy home. I don’t want him eaten.’

  ‘It’s all right, darling. It’s all right.’

  But the collapse had begun and within seconds her daughter was a heaving, squalling ball of misery in the back of the car.

  Where the fuck are you, Kip?

  * * * *

  ‘Goddamn. That mother’s gotta be twenty miles high.’

  ‘Higher, sir,’ the airman informed him. ‘Seems to fold over somewhere up in the mesosphere.’

  James Kipper nodded but said nothing. Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and confirm the fact, as his granddad used to say. Pops Kipper was full of such quips for all occasions like that. He used to keep a dictionary of quotations on the kitchen table at his place, ready to deploy somebody else’s wit at a moment’s notice.

  Christ knows what he’d have said about this, thought Kip, as they banked down and away to the west to begin their long approach to Seattle. The C-130 wasn’t designed for scenic flights, but even through its small, grimy windows he was afforded a scarifying view of the energy wave that ran in both directions right out to the very edge of the world, and over it. He was the only passenger in the plane, a service laid on especially for him by the military at the city’s request. The loadmaster – that’s what they were called, he was sure – stayed glued to the window nearest his perch at the rear ramp, jamming his head up hard against the Plexiglas to keep an eye on the phenomenon as their course change took it out of direct view. It was far enough away from Seattle that you couldn’t see it from the ground, they told him, which Kip thought of as a small mercy. The city would’ve been a nuthouse if you could – probably was anyway, he reflected. The flight crew, after exhausting the possibilities of speculation and conspiracy theory when the vast, shimmering wall had first hove into view, were restricting themselves to terse monosyllables as they prepped the craft for descent and approach.

  ‘I reckon it came from space,’ said the airman, a native of New Orleans, to judge by his accent. ‘Something like a black hole that brushed up against us.’ He was young, with a smattering of pimples on his fleshy pink jowls.

  ‘Black holes don’t really brush up against anything,’ replied Kipper. They suck in whole planets and crush them to a singularity.’ He’d seen that on the Discovery Channel once. It made him feel better to have something to say.

  ‘A singu-what now, sir?’ asked the airman.

  ‘A singularity,’ Kipper repeated. ‘It’s, uh, where energy and matter get crushed down into a single state that is so small it’s almost not even there.’

  ‘Shit,’ said the young man. ‘Well, I guess that ain’t no singularity out there.’

  ‘Nope,’ agreed Kipper. ‘Guess not.’

  ‘Do you know what we’re gonna do about it, sir, to turn it off?’

  Kipper could se
e from the strain around the boy’s eyes that he was really asking another question. How are we gonna make this better? Or perhaps: How are we going to get our world back?

  ‘Son,’ said Kipper, who felt old enough to call the airman that, ‘you and I are going to do our jobs. And somebody, somewhere else, is gonna see to punching the lights out on this motherfucker.’

  ‘So you think it can be turned off, sir?’

  The need in the boy’s voice was almost painful. Kipper tried for a nonchalant shrug.

  ‘I’m an engineer. I was always taught that if something can be turned on, it can be turned off,’ he said.

  But he didn’t believe that for a second. Not after seeing the thing with his own eyes.