The Great and Terrible

by Chris Stewart

  “He’ll be along,” she said.

  “I don’t know what to do or where to go.”

  “He hasn’t forgotten us.”

  After about twenty minutes, Luke opened his eyes and sat up slowly. Ammon looked down at his brother. “Luke, buddy, you okay?” he asked.

  His younger twin smiled. “Doing pretty good.”

  “Do you think that you can make it?”

  “What do you mean by make it? ”

  “We need to do some walking.”

  “Yeah. I can walk.” Luke started pushing up.

  Sara suddenly squealed and pointed toward the crowded intersection. “Look!” She stood up beside Luke. “There’s Sam. You can see his uniform.”

  Ammon turned and looked. There, almost lost in the line of dead cars and the mass of people, a young man, taller than the others and dressed in a tan camouflage army uniform, was walking quickly toward the hospital entrance. Sara called his name, and he started moving toward them. “Okay. Very cool,” Ammon said as he turned to Luke. “Sam will be able to help me hold you. He’ll know what to do.”

  Sam approached them, almost at a run. Seeing Luke, he stopped suddenly and stared. A long moment passed. “What are you doing here?” he asked in disbelief. “You should be in the hospital!” He broke into a smile. “You know, with a bedpan and good-looking nurses all around.”

  Luke laughed and caught himself, his hands shooting to his side. “Been there, done that, the whole bedpan thing.”

  Sara threw a knowing look to Ammon before she said, “They kicked us out of the hospital. They don’t have room for him.”

  Sam’s face turned angry. “Are you kidding me!” He motioned toward Luke. “Sit down there. Save your strength.” He turned toward the entrance and started walking. “Come with me, Ammon. We’re going to talk to them.”

  Sara ran beside him, reaching for his hand. “Sam, Sam, it’s okay.” She tried to pull him back. “He’s going to be all right.”

  Sam stopped, staring at her. “What do you mean? He’s clearly not okay.”

  She looked into his eyes. “He’s okay,” she said.

  “He isn’t okay. He’s been shot. They just don’t want to have to keep him. They want to—”

  “No, Sam, he’s okay.” She emphasized the word. “He’s hurt, yes, and he’ll have to be careful, but he’s going to be all right.” Glancing around her, she motioned to the burgeoning mob of people on the street. “There isn’t enough time to explain everything right now. We’ve got to get him off the streets. We’ve got to figure out where we’re going, how we’re going to get there, and what we’re going to do.”

  Chapter Four

  The Paris Office of Danbert, Lexel, Taylor and Driggs

  Paris, France

  rexel Danbert was dead. A new leader of the firm had been selected and put in place.

  As the sun set, the lights about the city began to shine, a million dots beneath a haloed prism that had formed around the moon. The sky was clear of clouds but tinted with blood-red dust from the strong currents that stirred in the upper atmosphere. A faint smell of smoke and acid still drifted in the air.

  The penthouse stood atop a glass high-rise building in the 2éme, the primary business district just north of central Paris. Across the street and down one block, the Bourse, the French stock market, was still abuzz. The Bibliothéque Nationale was to the right, the Louvre directly ahead.

  The recently elected senior partner of Danbert, Lexel, Taylor and Driggs closed his eyes. He smiled, thinking of his old boss. Drexel Danbert had simply disappeared, leaving his apartment and walking off into the night, a fitting end to a life that was as storied as it was mysterious, as convoluted as it was dirty. The problem was (and they had all known this would be a problem), the old man had retained some sort of conscience, and it had driven him insane. Too bad. He had been a great talent. The good news was, they didn’t need his kind of talents anymore.

  With the old man’s disappearance, Edward Kelly was the senior partner now. Thin, with white hair, bushy eyebrows, and a mean downturn in his lips, he stared in silence, sniffing the breeze that blew in from the partially open window. The air was warm but far below him, in the floodlights, the foliage around the Jardin du Palais Royal had turned prematurely red. No one could remember a fall that had come so early or so fast. It seemed that overnight every tree within the city—and there were many—had burst out in red and deep orange. Now, just a few days later, the leaves were falling, turning brown and lifeless just as quickly as they had ruptured into flame. The grass was also prematurely turning brown. And there was no reason for the sudden change: It hadn’t been cold, it hadn’t frozen, there’d been plenty of rain. It wasn’t just the dormant sleep of coming fall, nature getting ready for the freezing snows and colder temperatures that December would bring. This was something different. Something none of them could explain.

  The grass wasn’t hibernating, it was dying, turning brittle as strands of dry confetti.

  Earlier in the afternoon, Kelly had walked along the rock-lined pathways that ran around the Palais Royal, pulling occasional tufts of dead grass and examining the roots beneath, all so dry he could blow them away with his breath. Wondering, he had stared. It was happening all over the city. All over Western Europe. Crops dying in the fields. Fruit shriveling on the limb. Vegetables decaying on the vine before they could be picked. Most suspected it was some kind of unforeseen effect from the nuclear attacks in the Middle East, United States, and Iran, but anyone who knew anything about the effects of radiation and nature knew that wasn’t true.

  There was no correlation.

  This was something else.

  It was as if nature were completely disregarding the rules that had governed it before.

  They would eventually understand it, Kelly was certain. There was no need for real worry. Still, it was curious and caused him just a hint of alarm.

  He stared through the deeply tinted windows of the high-rise building. Below him, business carried on as usual, thousands of people going on about their lives, working late, putting in their time for the system they adored. Money. Always money. War, nuclear explosions, massive death and rage, whatever else, it didn’t matter as long as there was money to be made. And since the partners had been warned to move their headquarters from Manhattan to their building here in Paris, they were in a great position to make more of it. A lot more. More than they could count. More than they could ever comprehend.

  He stared as the moon rose, casting a yellow shadow across the great city. Normally he loved this view, but with the city so brown and lifeless, it offered no beauty to him now. He breathed and stared another moment, then turned to his partner. “Drexel thought we went too far,” he stated matter-of-factly. “He told me that. He thought we pushed them beyond their ability to rebuild their country.”

  The other man smoked, a blue haze drifting toward the wood-paneled ceiling twelve feet over his head. He pretended to think, but he wasn’t really doing so—he had already made up his mind. “I think they will,” he answered slowly. “Some will try to stop them, and of course there will be many who won’t help, but most will buy our vision. When we step in with the answers, how could they possibly tell us no?”

  The first man grunted, unconvinced. There was a tension between the two partners, subtle but pervasive in everything they did or said. They were no longer friends but contenders in an always deadly game, especially since Kelly had been named managing partner of the firm. Theirs was a game for money, a race for power, for supremacy in the order. There were no friends. All of the partners walked around with targets on their backs. Still, he didn’t worry about it. He was prepared.

  The smoking man, a former U.S. senator, lifted his heavy body from the Chippendale mahogany camelback sofa (circa 1770, $464,800 U.S. dollars) and moved to stand beside the window. For a moment the two of them were silent, looking out. The smoker finally spoke. “They will rebuild.” His voice was tight with impatience, a
s if he were speaking to a foolish child. “I don’t think that is the question. The question is, will they rebuild on our terms? I am certain that they will. They are pliable and open now. Vulnerable and defeated, beat down to their knees. It is hard, once the top dog, to get knocked off the pile. No, they’ll do anything to get it back, believe me, they will.

  “And we have laid the foundation. Three generations of work have come to fruit. A constant dripping can hollow out the hardest rock, and we’ve been dripping on them a long time now. All around the world, their values and ideas are despised. Most of the Americans hate their own country as much as the world hates them now. Former government leaders—even one of their former presidents— academics, entertainers, educators, trusted officials, all of them have been our allies, helping to spread the word.

  “We’ve actually convinced them that their country was the problem, not the answer; the cancer, not the cure. They think their nation was too powerful, too greedy, too racist and full of war. The time is right. It’s almost perfect. We have our man. We have a plan. They’ll listen to us now.”

  The senior member of Danbert, Lexel, Taylor and Driggs grunted again, then sipped his wine. He was not young, and the sense of history was not lost on him.

  He thought a moment, letting the words they and them turn over in his mind. Then he thought about his home. Born and raised in Massachusetts, he traced his family roots back to Plymouth Rock, almost four hundred years before. Yet he and the partners always spoke of the Americans as them and they.

  There were the Americans and there were the others, and the members of the firm were part of the others now. Their society had no borders, no love for country, no love for people or culture, and certainly no love for home. They were above that—no, beyond that—and happy that they were. America was not the enemy, just an obstacle that had to be overcome. Very simple. No emotion. Just another part of their job.

  Still, Kelly understood the United States more than most. And yes, its people had the tenacity to rebuild their nation. If the partners didn’t think they would run into opposition, they were painfully wrong.

  Sensing his thoughts, the fat partner glanced toward him, hiding his contempt, then took a final drag before snuffing the half-smoked cigarette onto the palm of his hand without feeling any pain. “The Great Experiment failed, and you know it,” he almost sneered. “We knew it would. You and that idiot Drexel might not have believed it, but the rest of us knew. They tried to share it, they tried to force this thing they call democracy, ” his voice slipped into a sneer, “but the Middle East wasn’t ready and their timing couldn’t have been worse. Democracy doesn’t mean anything if you’re worried about getting shot out on the street. Democracy doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have anything to eat. They pushed too hard and failed. Just as they were at the apex of their rotting, they tried exporting their philosophy throughout the world. Now it has failed, or it is failing, in every quarter of the globe. Iraq. Iran. South America. Central and Eastern Europe. Tiny convulsions of democracy sprouted here and there, but none of them were self-sustaining. Some of them survived a generation, some more or less than that, but it’s over for these countries. Everything is crashing down.”

  Kelly stared down at the glistening city as he listened. Sipping his wine, he wished that he were drunk.

  The other man lit another smoke. “Little wonder it fell upon them. The truth is—and even you recognize this—most people no longer want to bother with actually governing themselves. They want a nanny more than freedom, someone to feed and bathe them and take care of the details, someone to make decisions, to make life easy if not satisfying or complete. They don’t want to really understand and analyze all their problems—those are far too complex. Free will is such a bother when there are so many other things to think about. Morality is such a distraction when there are parties and food and sports and drugs and sex and computers and corruption and . . . well, you get the point.”

  Kelly didn’t answer.

  “Life in the States was so easy and undemanding, the Americans would have given up anything to preserve it,” the junior partner continued, smoke escaping from his nose. “And in the end, they did. They gave up everything. Now they are the cotton candy of world cultures, soft and sweet, entirely without substance.” Another whiff of smoke drifted from his nose. “So,” he concluded, “there will be no rebuilding, not without our help. We’ll be able to fashion the government. Shape it and mold it. And we will hold the power.”

  Kelly shook his head. It might have proven true in Asia, mostly true in Europe, and certainly true in former Russia and dozens of other countries throughout the world, but the United States was different. It had always been different. And it was different now.

  Still, he held his tongue as he stared at the dead trees that lined the streets below. It was too late to convince his partners, and he just didn’t care that much about it anymore.

  The partner watched him out of the corner of his eye, shifting his massive weight, and started in again: “The United States is the most hated nation in the world. Is there a better indication of the magnificent job we have done! The United States is the monster— not Cuba or North Korea, who have institutionalized starvation and poverty for generations now. Not Middle Eastern monarchies who beat little girls who learn to read and behead their older sisters who have the misfortune of being raped. Not China with their forced abortions—where are the civil libertarians on that?” He stopped and laughed, the irony forcing his fat belly to roll. “Evil is good and good is evil. We have crested that plateau. As long as they believe that, as long as they really hate each other as much as they love themselves, as long as they think their own nation is the evil one, they will comply with our demands.

  “We can take the Constitution and shred it, then mold a new society into what we think is right. The Society we all belong to. It is clear our time has come.”

  Kelly sniffed again. A long silence followed. “You are aware, I am certain, who the president of the United States is now?”

  “Of course,” the fat man grunted.

  Kelly turned, looking directly into his eyes. “She is not a part of us.”

  The fat man lit yet another cigarette. “I know that. They know that.” He gestured vaguely in some direction toward the east.

  “So, then—how do they propose we get past that?”

  The fat man shook his head. “Of course they’re going to kill her. What did you think they’d do, my friend?”

  Chapter Five

  Raven Rock (Site R), Underground Military Complex

  Southern Pennsylvania

  There was no reason to lie to her. She was with them or she wasn’t. Either way, she wouldn’t leave the command post without making a decision. Nor was there any reason to soften the impact of what they wanted her to do. And there certainly wasn’t any reason to speak to her as if she really was in charge. She was a custodian of the presidency, but she hadn’t been elected. She didn’t speak with the voice of the people, nor did she carry the support of the military or the cabinet or—more important—the men who were in charge. She was a happenstance of the Constitution and that was all.

  The blast over D.C. had already killed the president and vice president. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, third in line to the presidency, lay in a hospital somewhere in western Virginia, but she hadn’t regained consciousness since the explosion. If she ever did (and the two men were absolutely certain that she wouldn’t), it was extremely unlikely that she would regain even a fraction of her faculties.

  Which meant the poor woman propped up before them, the former president pro tempore of the Senate, was now in charge.

  A fractured leg and third-degree burns, hardly worse than a sunburn from a too-long nap on the beach, were the disappointing total of her injuries. Which meant that, one way or another, they had to deal with her before they could move on.

  The new president of the United States sat at the head of a huge wooden conf
erence table, her casted leg hidden under a full skirt, a pair of chrome crutches leaning against the side of her chair. Her hair was full and straight, with fashionable strands of gray. Her face was red but weary, her eyes full of energy, her mouth puckered in determination. She looked off as she thought, breathing in the purified underground air.

  Her name was Bethany Rosen. Fifty-six, a Californian, three terms within the Congress, she had been selected as a Senate leader for her congeniality and middle-of-the-road politics—that, plus the fact that her husband had made a billion dollars producing movies and could raise more money for the party than any other person on the West Coast.

  The new president put the red binder aside, took a frightened breath, then reached down and moved her leg, feeling the heavy cast against the chair. A shot of pain moved up her spine and, for a moment, she thought of the day the injury had been sustained. She remembered the emergency alert, her cell phone going off, scrambling down the front porch of her townhouse east of the Capitol, the wailing sirens, the sound of an approaching chopper sent to take her away, the white-hot light, the blazing heat against her face and arms, the falling steps and crashing metal, the sound of splintered wood, the pain against her knee. She remembered passing time, blurred visions and urgent voices, an ambulance ride and then a chopper, the softness of white sheets and the peacefulness of sleep as someone poked a needle in her arm. Then she remembered slowly waking and finding out that she was in charge.

  If the rush of power was good for recovery, then she would recover very soon, for the office of the president was something she had coveted for almost thirty years. And she intended to make a difference while enjoying every moment of her command.

  Which might be a long time or a little, depending on the decisions she now made.