Apocalypse Machine

by Robinson, Jeremy

  Dramatic, I know, but not an exaggeration.

  When I realized the argument was unwinnable, and that in three hours, I would be heading back across the Atlantic, I made a request. Perhaps my final request. And that has led me to where I am now, standing outside a White House bedroom door with Sonja Clark.

  “They’re inside,” she says.

  “How long do I have?” I ask.

  She looks at her watch. “Forty-five minutes.”

  God...

  “How are your legs?” she asks. The last day has been a whirlwind. I all but missed the sun’s passage through the sky. My body, still acclimated to Iceland time, is telling me it’s time to get up, but here, it’s the middle of the night. The boys will be fast asleep. Their mothers...who knows? Bell sleeps more soundly than Mina, but given everything that’s going on, I suspect both women will have trouble sleeping. Even more when I tell them I’m leaving.

  I shift my weight back and forth, stretching both limbs. “A little stiff, but mostly better. If I don’t have to outrun a volcano, I should be fine.”

  Her forced smile looks more like a frown. She and I both know there is a good chance I’ll be running for my life again. Hell, I might not even get the chance to run.

  “I’ll knock when it’s time.” She twists the door knob and pulls the door open.

  Feeling equally desperate to see my family, and terrified to reveal my fate, I step inside the dark room. Clark closes the door behind me, and I stand still for a moment, willing my heart to slow down and waiting for my eyes to adjust.

  The White House grounds are well-lit and artificial light seeps through the spaces around the drawn shades, making my transition from light to dark a little easier. There are three cots, all made up like they’re fancy beds, no doubt intended to be used by the boys and either Bell or Mina. All three are empty.

  On the far side of the elegantly furnished room is a king size bed with a hardwood-framed high canopy. The crystal chandelier overhead, old paintings in golden frames and display cases full of china make the space feel like a museum, like I snuck past a velvet rope to get in here. But none of this strangeness holds my attention long. Ike and Ishah are fast asleep on the bed, framed by their mothers, who are both laying on their sides. There’s a gap in the middle, which I have no doubt was left for me.

  We don’t sleep together as a single unit often. Once, when the boys were younger and frightened during a power outage, and once when we all went camping in a single tent, but it never feels strange. To the rest of the world, we’re a circus act, and I understand why, but to us, it’s just the way our family is. And to the boys, it’s the way we’ve always been. Bell, Mina and I have always been up front about our situation. None of us intended this to happen. All of us made mistakes. Had Mina and I had a little more faith in her ability to bear a child, that rift would have never formed, and I would have never found myself sleeping on the couch of our surrogate mother. But at the same time, now that we’re years beyond the pain of that tumultuous time, none of us regrets what happened. Instead of one son, we had two. Our family became complex, but full of love.

  I crawl into the bed, happy to find the mattress firm and unbending to my weight. The boys don’t stir when I lie between them. Surrounded by my loved ones, a weight lifts from my body, and I nearly fall asleep. But in that twilight space between consciousness and sleep, my mind’s eye replays those brief moments where I saw it—the aberration—slipping in and out of the ash cloud. So big. And alive.

  My stomach twists.

  My eyes open wide, staring at the ceiling.

  You’re not here to sleep, I tell myself, and I turn my nose against Ishah’s head, breathing deeply. I kiss his forehead, my nose tickled by his coiling hair, and then I repeat the process with Ike. Nine years ago, before the boys were conceived, I believed I would never be a father. It seemed impossible. But then, two of them. Sons.

  I glance at each of them, tears welling in my eyes. The emotions swirling through me are complex. Fear, regret, longing, pride. But there is something larger, something blanketing every torrid emotion this horrid situation has conjured. I look at Mina, her soft eyes closed, peaceful in sleep.

  I am blessed, I think.

  And this thought causes me nearly as much consternation as facing down a colossal monster risen from the Earth’s depths. Because to be blessed, to be bestowed with something good, requires a second party. I believe in the power of the mystical universe even less than I do an omniscient God. Reality itself, as defined by science, is incapable of blessing. It provides, or it doesn’t. Blessing requires intention.

  And if I don’t believe in a higher power, how can I feel blessed by something larger than myself?

  I turn toward Bell. Her big brown eyes are staring back at me. Her thick lips are curved up in a smile. “You have the look of a man contemplating big things.”

  Our hands meet over Ishah’s back, fingers interlocking.

  “You don’t have to believe in Him, to be heard by Him,” she says, getting a smile out of me.

  “There’re no atheists in foxholes,” I say, recalling my thoughts on Diego’s prayer.

  Her smile fades. “What’s that mean?”

  She knows what it means. Understands the saying. What she doesn’t know is that I’m about to head toward a battlefront where foxholes are useless.

  “It means...” Mina’s slender hand wraps around my shoulder and pulls me back, flat onto my back. “...he’s leaving us.”

  I say nothing.

  What can I say?

  I have trouble looking Mina in the eyes, but there’s no hiding from her. “You said you wouldn’t leave.”

  “They didn’t give me a choice.” It’s a pitiful excuse, but the best and only one I have.

  “When?” Mina asks.

  “Soon.”

  Her fingers find my free hand. I pull both women’s hands to my chest, squeeze and then kiss them. I feel ready to break. Vulnerable. General Stone would probably roll his eyes and call me a Nancy, or worse. But this is who I am. I’m an emotional guy. In the early days of our strange relationship, I was plagued by doubts. Would Mina and Bell accept each other? Could we really function as a family? Could I really love two women, and two sons from different women, with the same level of affection and devotion? While Mina and Bell found their natural rhythm, balancing their relationship, and finding joy in the closeness of their sons, who seemed more like fraternal twins than half brothers, I felt lost. ‘You have enough love for us all,’ Bell had told me, and Mina had agreed. ‘None of us doubts that.’

  While Mina had felt betrayed at first, and Bell was guilt-stricken because of her conservative beliefs, something drew them together. And they were better for it. Once I saw that, I was too. We had sons—plural—when it seemed none would be possible.

  Mina called it fate.

  Bell said it was a miracle.

  I chalked it up to luck, though I didn’t believe in that, either. But it sounds better than being driven by a biological imperative to reproduce. Science, for all its unflappable truth, is cold. Not only does it remove a creator from the universe—Bell argues it doesn’t—but it reduces love to a series of chemical reactions. And that’s where science and I part ways. Love is the chink in science’s armor.

  And as I lay in that bed, surrounded by an Old World, gaudy, White House bedroom, I feel more loved than I think any man should. In my heart, I know there is more going on than a simple rush of dopamine, adrenaline and serotonin. In my brain, I have no idea what that might be, and what it might mean.

  “Why?” Mina asks.

  It’s a simple question, but I hear far more. Why you? Why now? Why are we here? Why did you lie about staying? Why not someone else?

  I turn toward my wife and see an uncharacteristic amount of emotion in her deep brown eyes. They glisten with tears, like she already knows my fate. She and Bell usually balance each other. Logic and emotion. Realism and dreams. Pragmatism and hope. But now, we�
�re all on the same page, feeling...what?

  Loss.

  I haven’t told them what I’m doing, or where I’m going, but they can sense the finality of this visit oozing off of me.

  Her question lingers in my mind, and I decide to break my promise to guard our nation’s secrets. I tell them. Everything. Words of unnatural death and destruction whisper into the darkness. Their fingers grip mine tighter, as I detail what I saw in Iceland, how it moved across the island nation, plunged into the sea and ended millions of lives. And now, taking the advice I gave him, the President of the United States is sending me to the far side of the planet to figure out what is happening and why it’s happening, and hopefully to devise a way to stop it.

  I try to reassure them by making a promise I’m pretty sure is a lie. “We’ll keep a safe distance.”

  “How do you keep a safe distance from something that big?” Mina asks.

  “We’re not exactly sure how big—”

  “Miles,” Bell says. “You said ‘miles.’”

  “We’ll stay out of its way.”

  “The radiation,” Bell says.

  “It could change direction,” Mina adds.

  They’re thinking up all the horrible possibilities that I’ve already considered.

  “You can’t go,” Bell says. “The boys...”

  She stops when a tear rolls down my cheek. Leaving Mina and Bell is hard enough, but leaving the boys again… I know they struggle when I’m gone. Despite the traveling I have to do for my job, we’re a close family. And I’ve been away a lot lately. Too much. After the trip to Iceland I was going to focus on more local stories, maybe even take a lower paying job at a local paper. Or try blogging.

  “Sometimes the best thing you can do with your life, is risk it for others.” My words sound hollow, like some action hero’s last words. I can’t help but feel that I have finally and completely failed them all. At least they have each other, I think, and then I turn to Bell. “Maybe you could pray.”

  She slaps my chest, looking angry. “This is not the time for sarcasm.” It’s true. I have teased her about her beliefs before, especially in the wake of one religious scandal or another. Mostly about TV news anchors and politicians, who she says (and I agree) have hijacked the religion for their own gain.

  But this is not one of those times.

  “I’m not joking.”

  I’m as surprised as she is. But she nearly falls out of bed when Mina props herself up on one elbow, looks over me and says, “Go ahead.”

  It would appear that there are no atheists in foxholes, nor in the homes of those who have loved ones in foxholes.

  “Jesus,” Bell says, closing her eyes. She has a very simple way of praying, like God is right here with us and has been all this time. “Please protect Abraham. Bring him home to his family. But also guide him. Make his mission a success. Reveal this...creature for what it is. Reveal its purpose. And give Abe the wisdom and discernment to understand your purpose in this mess. We give our fears to you. Our anxiety, too. Your will be done.”

  There’s a gentle knock on the door.

  “Amen,” Bell finishes.

  When I open my eyes, I see tears in hers.

  “I have to go,” I say.

  She and I lean over Ishah to kiss.

  When I roll the other way to kiss Mina, I’m once again taken aback by her emotion. Like Bell, she’s crying, but she’s really struggling to control herself. An invisible force clutches my throat, angrily choking me for leaving.

  I kiss my wife, then the boys.

  A second knock draws me from the bed.

  Half way to the door, I stop and turn around. Both mothers are sitting up.

  “Love you,” I say.

  “Daddy?” Ike rises, rubbing his eyes. “You leaving?”

  I head back to the bed, greeting him as he slips onto his bare feet. “For a little while, bud, yeah.”

  He hugs me tight, and then Ishah is there, arms around us both.

  Then Mina.

  Then Bell.

  When the door opens, filling the room with ambient light, we’re enfolded in a group hug that puts the corniest Hallmark card to shame. I turn toward the door and see Clark, who looks ashamed for having looked in. I say one more quick round of goodbyes, and then meet her in the hall, wiping away tears.

  I close the door behind me, knowing that if I stop again, they’ll have to send Secret Service agents to drag me away.

  “Sorry,” she says. “That was...touching.”

  “Are they all set?” I ask.

  She looks at the door and nods. “Where we go, they go. There were a few complaints, but Mrs. McKnight silenced them. They’ll be safe. You don’t need to worry about them.”

  I turn and start walking down the hall, trying my best to feel confident and brave.

  Clark clears her throat, turning me around. She points in other direction and offers a smile. “This way.”

  I’m so screwed.

  15

  Emil

  The house was quiet.

  Emil Chovanec was accustomed to having the kitchen to himself at four in the morning. His wife, Hana, and their three children were sound sleepers. But their absence had left the house feeling empty. Soulless, Emil thought, if such a thing is possible. As a security specialist for the Dukovany Nuclear Power Station, Emil’s job was to secure and protect the four reactors and eight cooling towers—visible through his kitchen window—from all manner of threats. Terrorists and natural disasters were part of the job, but the most dangerous peril faced by the plant was human error.

  He liked to say that Dukovany had the highest safety record of all nuclear power stations in the Czech Republic, which was true, but the country had only two such facilities. His other job, the one he took even more seriously, was to protect his family. So when it became clear that the ash cloud from Iceland would blanket the Czech Republic in a chilling, lung-choking darkness, he sent his family south, to Italy. Hana’s sister lived in Manfria, on the southern coast of Sicily, which was about as far south as you could travel in Europe without jumping the Mediterranean into Tunisia.

  The crunch of his knife scraping honey across the slice of toasted rye made him flinch. Then he remembered that they were gone. There was no one to wake up. Relax, he told himself, conjuring a burp and letting it out. It’s like a vacation.

  But it wasn’t. He was here, instead of with his family, because it was his job to make sure the four nuclear reactors, still running despite his warnings, stayed functional. Information from neighboring countries to the north and west was scarce. Power was out. Communication came from those with radios, but most people transmitting were asking for information, not providing it. Germany had gone dark, first from the ash cloud that now covered most of Europe, and then from a lack of power. There had been news of a tsunami, caused by the eruption in Iceland, but then nothing else.

  When Emil had gone to bed, just six hours ago, Prague had gone dark. Power was failing across Europe, and he couldn’t understand why. No one could. But it was their job to make sure that the millions of people depending on Dukovany for electricity wouldn’t go without. That was what he was told when he proposed they shut down the facility until they knew what was happening.

  Sucking honey and rye crumbs from the knife, he checked his phone. No updates from the power plant, which was good. It meant that everything was operating normally, and maybe he was wrong to worry. He checked his texts. The newest was from Hana, and he’d read it before falling asleep. She and the kids had made it to Italy, and they had learned that the border was being closed. Even if he wanted to join them, he couldn’t. But they were safe. And not asleep upstairs.

  He leaned back in his chair and pitched the knife into the metal sink, creating an explosion of noise so loud it seemed to rumble through him. Early morning jitters, he thought, and he looked down at his breakfast. Coffee, honeyed rye, slices of cheese and salami and two eggs, hard boiled the day before. As an early riser a
nd late lunch eater, Emil always had large breakfasts.

  He bit into the thick toast, the crunch vibrating through his body in a way that felt unnatural. He chewed once and paused, his senses telling him something was wrong. But what? Is the bread spoiled? He flipped the toast over, looking for mold. When he found none, he chewed again and felt nothing strange. The honey’s sweetness hit his tongue and relaxed him.

  Drawn by the bitter smell of his black coffee, Emil picked up the mug, lifted it to his nose and breathed deeply. The scent alone was enough to lift away the lingering weight of sleep. He moved the mug to his mouth, the hot liquid stinging his lips, as he sipped. Then he froze. The liquid jittered, as though blown on. A vibration moved through his body, starting from his feet and butt. Then it faded.

  He remained motionless, trying to decide if it was the world around him shaking, or his body. Did I just have a seizure? he wondered. When the coffee burned his lips, he pulled the mug away. Placed it on the table. Watched it.

  Fingers gripped the table sides, squeezing, waiting.

  A rattling buzz filled the silent house. Emil reeled back from the table, nearly falling over. But it wasn’t the house shaking, or a seizure, it was his cell phone on the tabletop. Emil smiled at his paranoia, and leaned forward, expecting to see an update from Hana. But the message displayed on the screen wasn’t the white text on a green background he associated with a text message. It was black text on a white background.

  Work.

  The power plant.

  He leaned forward, reading the brief message from his counterpart, Bohumil, whose shift ended in an hour, when Emil’s would begin.

  1.2, 1.9, 2.5 richters. Escalating tremor sequence. Shutdown in progress. They should have listened to you.