The Great and Terrible

by Chris Stewart

  “He said . . .”

  “The Secretary’s been delayed.”

  Sara watched the stranger. Thin. Wire glasses. Much too young. She wanted to ask what was happening, but she knew he wouldn’t tell her. She hesitated a moment, then started following him down the hall.

  “The Secretary thought he’d have some time to see you,” the man explained in a sincere tone. “He sends his apologies. But frankly, right now there isn’t much that he can tell you anyway. The endeavor into Raven Rock has been stalled, leaving us without access to critical information that we need before we can finalize our plan.”

  “Do you think—”

  He cut her off abruptly. “There really isn’t any more that I can say. We’re still in the information-gathering process. As soon as the Secretary has anything at all to go on, I know he’ll bring you into the loop. He has far too much respect for both you and your husband to leave you hanging. More, he realizes what an important role he has asked you to play. In no way, Mrs. Brighton, does he mean any disrespect by leaving you waiting. It’s just that he’s a little busy. And regarding our efforts into Raven Rock, there’s unfortunately nothing I can say. All of us are waiting.” They were at the elevator now. He stepped inside, scanned his security card, then punched a button to send it to the main floor. “Someone will meet you when the elevator opens. He’ll take you back to your quarters. Your family is all there.”

  He stepped out of the elevator but held the door as he concluded. “The Secretary wishes for me to thank you. He understands this has been difficult. Again, ma’am, the instant we are in a position to move forward, we’ll be back with you.”

  Sara stepped into the elevator and turned to face him. The door started closing. “Thank you” was all she said.

  Chapter Seven

  Raven Rock (Site R), Underground Military Complex

  Southern Pennsylvania

  The former FBI Director let himself out of the tiny bathroom. His hands were shaking and he knew his face was pale but there wasn’t anything he could do. If they were suspicious, they would search him. If they searched him, they would find the electrical device taken from his stomach and stuffed inside his right pocket. If they found it, he was dead. There wasn’t much more to it. In the next few minutes, he would know.

  The two marines were waiting, obviously impatient. They walked toward him as soon as he appeared. One of them glanced inside the bathroom, pushing the door back to check it out. The room reeked. He instantly recognized the smell. He hesitated just a minute but didn’t say anything.

  If he were being dragged to see the president, he would feel sick as well.

  Holding James by the elbows, the marines started walking down the hall.

  Inside his pocket, James kept the tiny drone tucked in a loose fist, protecting it as if it were as fragile as a butterfly, which, of course, it was. Ahead of him, he saw the set of double glass doors etched with the presidential seal. According to the briefing, he’d have to pass through a final electronic sensor on the other side of the glass doors.

  He had to get rid of the drone before he got there, or they would find it.

  Twenty feet or less now.

  He had to let it go.

  He glanced behind him. No one was there. The hallway up ahead was crowded. More guards waited—two army officers, one of them holding the door. Pulling his hand out of his pocket, the bug tucked gently in the open space between

  his fingers, he pretended to cough, brought his other hand

  to his mouth as a distraction, then dropped the bug behind him on the carpet floor.

  He held his breath, waiting. The men kept walking. No one said anything. One step. Two. Then three. The set of double glass doors was only ten feet before him now. Turning quickly, he dared look back. The tiny electronic bug was in the air, its paper-thin wings buzzing. It seemed to lurch, then climbed and landed on the ceiling, where it started crawling forward, moving toward the open door.

  Offutt Air Force Base

  Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command

  Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska

  The video screen suddenly burst from darkness into light. The image was grainy and halting, but reasonably clear.

  “I got it!” one of the technicians screamed from his cluttered console. “I got it! I got it! Okay, he dropped the bug. It’s been deployed! I’ve got good imagery. Partial feedback . . . okay . . . okay . . . we’re good to go. I’ve got control of the Dragonfly. I say again, I’ve got control. It’s responding to my commands now. We’ve got hover. I’m moving upward. Going to get some space between the drone and the people there so they don’t see it. Okay, okay, up on the ceiling . . . hooks deployed . . . we’re on the ceiling now . . .”

  The tiny lens, no larger than a fly’s eye, transmitted from the hallway outside the presidential suite. It showed a picture from about shoulder height, then seemed to hover upward toward the ceiling, where it stopped and hung, suspended. The camera angle suddenly inverted as the tiny reconnaissance drone approached the ceiling, then flipped over as the bug dug its Velcro hooks into the tile. Looking down, the lens continued broadcasting to the receiver/transmitter left in the bathroom forty feet down the hall. Then, slowly, as if on tiny

  legs, the image started moving toward the double glass doors. Seeing through the bug’s tiny lens, the men inside Offutt’s command center were able to make out a small group of people in the hallway. Closer, almost directly below them, they saw three men, two of them in uniform, a black man in the middle, the guards’ hands on his arms. The audio started cutting through, transmitting the mix of voices from deep inside of Raven Rock.

  The technicians shouted congratulations to each other.

  Dragonfly was a go.

  Brucius jerked forward in his seat, his chief of staff beside him, their eyes intent, their faces drawn with equal fascination and concern. Brucius couldn’t believe the image they were receiving from what was essentially a reconnaissance aircraft not much larger than a fly. The grainy image was not perfect—it paused and halted and was gritty as a first-generation security camera—but he could clearly see his best friend walking toward two army officers waiting near a set of etched glass doors.

  The Dragonfly was inching forward. James and the two guards in the hallway moved much faster. It quickly fell behind.

  Brucius leaned toward the main screen on the wall. “Can you make it fly to get into the presidential office suite?” he demanded of the technicians.

  “We can’t risk it, Mr. Secretary. If we fly now, they’re going to see it.”

  The SecDef turned around. “It’s got to get through the doorway!” he cried.

  The men were now ten paces farther up the hallway. They were walking quickly. The drone was moving forward just a bare inch at a time.

  “It’s not going to make it,” the chief of staff warned. “It’s going to get locked outside the door.”

  The SecDef turned back to the pilot technician. “You’ve got to take a chance and fly it. If the drone doesn’t get inside the presidential suite, all of this will be for nothing.”

  The technician jerked a finger toward the screen. “If I fly it, sir, they’ll see it!”

  “If you don’t fly it, the door will close!”

  The other technician started shouting, “Come on, baby, GO!”

  Brucius turned around. James and the two guards were at the set of glass doors now, the drone at least ten feet behind.

  One of the officers stepped forward, taking possession of the detainee.

  James started walking toward the doorway.

  The drone was still too far behind.

  The glass door was going to close.

  Brucius sat back in his seat and swore.

  Chapter Eight

  Four Miles West of Chatfield

  Twenty-One Miles Southwest of Memphis, Tennessee

  The sun was higher in the morning sky and the air was almost comfortable. Winter would come, humid and cutting with nor
thern wind, but now it was early fall and there was still enough warmth to let the sun heat up the earth once it was higher in the sky. Bono and Ellie walked again together, giving them time to talk. Ellie kept up a constant chatter about the secret cake she was going to decorate, the weather, Miller, her mom, pretty much anything that seemed to flutter through her mind. She ran ahead of him, skipped back, grabbed his hand, always moving, her mood happy, the brightness back in her eyes.

  Coming across the open field toward the house, Bono was happy to see Caelyn standing on the porch, waiting for them. She looked radiant in the morning sun, her blonde hair illuminated from the back. She wore blue jeans, a light sweater, and leather boots. He stopped. He couldn’t help it. It made his heart thump to see her standing there. “Hey, baby,” he said in a rather poor imitation of a Humphrey Bogart voice. “Looks like you might be looking for a man.” He turned and flexed his biceps, nodding toward his muscled arms with an exaggerated smile.

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” Caelyn answered while seeming to pay him no attention.

  Bono flexed again. She pretended not to notice. He stretched his arms above his head in an exaggerated motion, his T-shirt pulled tight against his chest. Caelyn continued looking past him. “Still looking for a man,” she said.

  Bono had had enough; he ran to her and lifted her up high, holding her weight easily above the ground. She screamed and started laughing. “Let me down,” she cried.

  “Go, Daddy!” Ellie joined in, running to him. “Look at this! Look at this. Mom, he could make you fly!”

  Caelyn punched Bono on the shoulders. “Put me down, you lunk!”

  “Not until you say it!”

  “Say what?”

  He kept her in the air, her feet kicking at the emptiness, completely at his mercy.

  “Say it!” he laughed.

  “Okay, okay, let me down and I will.”

  He lifted her a couple of inches higher. “Come on, Caelyn, you gotta say it or I’ll keep you there all day.” He pressed his fingers into her ribs.

  She punched at his shoulders again, still laughing. “Let me down first.”

  “Not until—”

  “All right! I love you! There, I said it. Now will you please let me down!”

  He lowered his arms, letting her feet touch the ground. “There you go again,” he laughed, “getting all smoochy on me.”

  “I hate it when you do that. You make me feel like a little kid.”

  He smiled. She tried to look angry. Ellie skipped around them, laughing. “Mommy’s smoochy, Mommy’s smoochy.”

  Caelyn looked down, feigning anger. “See what you did? How do you expect her to respect me when you do that?”

  Bono crossed his heart. “Never again. I swear.”

  Neither of them believed it.

  “You still feel like walking?” Caelyn asked, nodding to the open fields behind her shoulder.

  “Are you kidding? Like I would pass up the opportunity to walk in the country with such a beautiful girl?”

  Ellie looked up excitedly. “Can I come too?”

  “Sure, Ellie,” Caelyn answered.

  They started walking, Ellie between them. Grabbing their hands, she tried to swing, but she was too big now, and even though she bent her knees, they dragged across the wet ground. The threesome approached the end of the grass. “Which direction?” Caelyn asked.

  Bono nodded toward the narrow country road that ran north. “Let’s go that way,” he said, nodding down at Ellie. “It’s much less muddy.”

  They crossed the gravel driveway and started walking down the road. It was strange to see the country road so vacant and quiet. Half a mile ahead, a stalled car had been pushed off into the barrow pit; behind them, far in the distance, another couple of cars lay motionless where they had died when the EMP swept across the country not long before. Bono cocked his head and listened, noting the empty silence; a hint of wind in his ear, the sound of their shoes against the pavement, their breathing, and the movement of Ellie’s polyester jacket were the only sounds he could hear. He glanced skyward. Completely empty. Looked across the fields, left and right. Not a soul or a hint of movement anywhere.

  “Kind of strange, isn’t it, honey?” Caelyn said, watching his eyes and gesturing to the empty landscape all around them.

  Bono slowed and then stopped walking.

  “It took a while for me to get used to it,” Caelyn continued. “The first couple of days I would sit on the front porch waiting, certain that someone would show up. There I’d sit, staring at the empty road and wondering where everyone had gone. It was kind of like the Twilight Zone. No one was around. For a time I wondered if we were the only ones alive. Then I saw a couple of the neighbors walking with some people who’d come down from Memphis. They stopped to talk. That was the first time I really understood what had happened. Since then, I haven’t talked to many other people.” She thought about the violent gang and the confrontation in the field. “At least, not many who I wanted to talk to.”

  She fell silent in her memories. The sky overhead was vast, blue and empty, and the wind was pure and cold. She went on. “I really thought it would be different. I don’t know, I guess somehow I thought we’d be out with other people, you know, banding together, trying to work something out. It seems like just the opposite has happened. Seems like everyone wants to stay home and see what happens before they take any action. Everyone’s too scared to make a move. Guess it’s every man for himself.”

  Bono looked down the empty road. “I think people are kind of catching their breath, you know, hiding out, hoarding their resources, protecting home court before they venture out. Some people are afraid.” He nodded over his shoulder toward the house. “Your mom is terrified, it’s pretty obvious. She tries to act brave, but that’s not how she feels. She’s becoming more and more suspicious and withdrawn. It’s understandable how she would feel that way.” He bent down, picked up a small rock, felt its round edges, tossed it up and down a couple of times, then stood and threw it across the open field. “You should have seen what it was like up in D.C. It was amazing. And scary. Even now, I don’t know if I can quite figure it out. It was like everyone was instantly ready to give up. Can you imagine that? I saw people literally sit down on the side of the road and surrender, waiting to die rather than take some responsibility for themselves. It was jarring. No, it was more than that, it was shocking. I mean, they gave it up so easily. Like a bunch of helpless babies. I mean, come on, people, are you kidding me! You gonna quit, just like that? Bunch of spoiled brats. Is that the only thing you got?

  “But you know, Caelyn, I thought a lot about it—and it’s funny, but I think I realized something I’d never thought about before. They didn’t give up so easily because of all the difficulties that lay ahead. They didn’t lie down and surrender because the future looked so bleak. That wasn’t it at all. It wasn’t the difficulty of the future that made them so despairing, it was the emptiness of the present, the meaningless of their lives, the barrenness of how they had chosen to live, detached from their families, their religion, any sense of purpose or worthy cause. Hey, dude, my iPod isn’t working. Guess I’ll lie down here and die. I mean, it was almost like that. You’re telling me my 401k isn’t worth anything? My Mercedes won’t start? My 80-inch flat screen got quick-fried into smoke? Well, I guess that’s pretty much it for me, dudes. Mix up the Kool-Aid and let’s get this over with.”

  Caelyn looked at him. He half smiled, his sarcastic humor biting.

  “You really think that’s the way it is?” she asked. “People lose their easy lives, their possessions, and that’s it, they give up? They roll over and just give in? I don’t know, honey, I think you might be underestimating your fellow Americans.”

  Bono ran his hands through his hair, thinking of the hellish highway he and Sam had walked around Washington, D.C. “Maybe, Caelyn, maybe.” They started walking again. He didn’t know how much to tell her. What good would it do? He didn’t even w
ant to think about it himself.

  Ellie let go of their hands and ran before them. Bono thrust his fists into his pockets as they watched her go. “I don’t know if I can explain it very well, Caelyn, but it was pretty much unbelievable. I saw hundreds, no thousands of people on this highway who had absolutely no idea what to do. I understand that they were shell-shocked—I mean, the people in D.C. took a double hit: first the nuclear explosion, then the EMP. I understand that’s a lot to live through, but there we were, twenty-four hours after the EMP attack, and some of them were still sitting by their cars. Sixty miles to make it home. Way too far to walk. Someone’s got to help me. I wanted to shake them. I wanted to scream: ‘This is your life. Take responsibility. It isn’t over. There is hope. You can make it through this.’ It wasn’t until later that I realized how many of their lives had become meaningless and sterile, an empty candy wrapper in their hands. Might as well check out now as later seemed to be a common attitude. All they wanted was for the end to be painless. Geez, Caelyn, if you had seen it, it would have driven you insane.”

  She pressed her lips together and glanced down the road to Ellie, who was balancing on the white stripe in the middle of the road, her hands extended at her sides. “I did have a visitor a few nights ago,” she said, recalling a different side to the bleak picture. “You probably won’t remember him. Brother Simpson. He used to be the bishop of the ward here. We’ve met him a time or two.”

  “A big guy? Kind of a down-to-earth farmer, as I remember?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  Bono leaned toward her, instantly interested. “That’s good. That’s really good. What did he want?”

  “He didn’t want anything, really, though he did bring a couple of boxes of dry goods. More than anything he was checking up on some of the members of the ward from these parts.”

  Bono noted the “from these parts.” His wife tended to revert to the country vernacular when she’d been home awhile. “Why did he stop at your parents’ house? How did he know that you were here?”