“Boomer!” she called, quickly scanning the inside of the workroom, lit by the approaching fire. She had landed on top of a wire mesh grating that opened onto an engineer’s tunnel and the city’s vast network of drainage canals. Boomer leaped off the hood of a car into the room, just as the fire tossed the vehicle away.
She rolled on top of Dylan, shielding the boy’s body with hers. As the firestorm raged through the tunnel, a stiff wind came shooting upward through the wire grating. The stone walls of the alcove protected them from the brunt of the blast, but the fire had instantly consumed all the available oxygen. Now fresh air was sucked through the grating, creating a wind tunnel strong enough to blow Jasmine and Dylan into the fire. With Dylan locked under one arm, Jasmine put her fingers through the grating and held on for dear life as the fire fed itself. Without the steady rush of cool air moving over their bodies, the three of them would have been incinerated by the heat.
Then, suddenly, it was over. Thousands of tons of boulders and loose earth clogged the tunnel at both ends. The hillside had collapsed. Jasmine, still trembling, rolled over on to her back. She knew she was lucky to be alive. What she didn’t know was that the three of them, the only ones still alive inside the tunnel, were buried under millions of pounds of dirt.
*
Tokyo sustained the highest number of casualties. More than anywhere else, the Japanese had tried to go about their business as usual without panicking. Once the intricate train scheduling system had gotten knocked out of synch, the stations turned into madhouses. Half of those who did manage to get out of the city in time did so on foot or on bicycles. The destruction of the high-rise city, until then the world’s most expensive real estate, was utter and complete. The area leveled by the blast was four times as wide as the H-bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki decades earlier. The wall of destruction ended every human life within a twenty-mile radius. As far away as Yokohama and Omiya, half the population had been killed.
Manhattan was gone. The island was transformed into a barren shelf of land, swept clean of buildings all the way up to Yonkers. Amid the choking swirl of dust and smoke, natural gas lines shot towers of flame into the sky. Twisted brick and concrete foundations showed where the buildings had been torn away. Only a few hundred people, mainly those in deep sections of the subway system, had survived. On the south side of Staten Island and deep into New Jersey, those who had not been killed outright by the wall of destruction lay trapped beneath their collapsed homes, their bodies blistered with severe burns.
There was not a single human survivor anywhere on earth close enough to watch the long, needle-shaped firing cones retract into the ships. The petal doors raised slowly to form an impenetrable, airtight seal. The huge ships, the city destroyers, were ready to move on to the next set of targets.
*
“God damn. I knew it. I knew it! I’ve been trying to warn everybody about these suckers for ten years.” Russell lowered the volume on the radio without taking his eyes off the road. “Kids,” he yelled over his shoulder, “haven’t I been trying to warn people?”
Liquored up, he had no inkling of how distressed and traumatized his children were by what they’d heard on the radio. Alicia was sobbing, her face resting on the linoleum tabletop. Miguel, his arm around her, stared blankly out the window at the Joshua trees passing through the headlights.
“Where’s Troy?” Russell asked into the rearview mirror.
The youngest member of the Casse clan called from his bed at the back. “You guys,” he said in a weak voice, “I don’t feel so good.”
Russell looked over his shoulder. “When’s the last time you had any medicine?”
“I can’t remember,” the boy moaned. “I think about three or four days ago.”
“That’s not true,” Miguel said, “I gave you some this morning.”
“I know, but I didn’t take it. I thought I didn’t need it anymore.”
“What did you do with it, Troy? Where’s the medicine?”
Instead of answering, the boy stood up and moved to the door, gesturing that he needed to go outside. Russell pulled to the side of the road and Troy ran outside. A moment later, he was vomiting into the weeds while Alicia helped him keep his balance.
Russell wandered away down the road a bit, far enough to sneak a swig of whiskey without hearing it from the kids. They were in the middle of Death Valley, somewhere near the Nevada border, and it was a spectacular night. A billion stars burned in the sky. Russell strolled along with his head rolled back on his shoulders. At the crest of a small hill, he noticed something odd, a different sort of constellation.
“Miguel!” he called quietly. “Come take a look at this!”
Spread across the floor of a shallow desert valley, a thousand campers, trailers, RVs, and passenger vehicles had congregated at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. The shimmering lights coming from this makeshift refugee city echoed the stars above. In a way, it was a beautiful scene.
“Ain’t that somethin’?”
“Maybe somebody down there’s got some medicine,” Miguel said. “Let’s go ask.”
*
At the beginning of the end of the world, Steve was in the empty cafeteria building trying to make a call. Over and over, he dropped the quarter into the slot and carefully pecked out Jasmine’s telephone number. And every time, a mechanical voice answered: “All circuits are presently busy. Please hang up and try your call again later.”
Fishing the coin out of the cradle, he dumped it right back in. He knew the base commanders were itching to order a counterstrike, but until they got the go-ahead from Washington, there was nothing for Steve to do but imagine all the horrible things that might have happened to Jas and Dylan.
“All circuits are presently busy. Please hang up and—”
“Damn it!” Steve slammed the phone down on the hook just as Jimmy turned the corner and came sprinting down the hallway.
“Let’s roll, daddy-o,” he shouted. “Orders just came in.” Jimmy, already in his flight suit, was pumped full of adrenaline, but he calmed himself when he noticed Steve was torn up about something. “Wassup?”
Steve didn’t try to hide his feelings. “I can’t get through to my parents’ house or to Jasmine. She was supposed to be here hours ago, man.”
Jimmy approached his friend carefully, as he would a spooked thoroughbred race horse. “Hey brother,” he said laying a hand on Steve’s shoulder, “didn’t you hear what happened? These freakazoid spacemen took Los Angeles out. Blew it up. Did the same thing to Washington, San Francisco, and New York. They’re packing some very serious firepower, bro.”
When he heard the news, he pressed his hands to his head. “No,” he moaned, “don’t tell me that, man. Oh, I fucked up, Jimmy. I fucked everything up. Why didn’t I just put her in the car and bring her with me?” Steve kicked a nearby vending machine a couple of times, then punched himself in the forehead. “What the hell was I thinking?”
Jimmy grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him up against the wall, shocking him temporarily out of his anger. “Listen. She might still show up. If she was on her way here, maybe she got out in time. But either way, don’t you go ballistic on me. We still have a job to do.” He let go of his friend’s uniform and backed away. Steve was looking straight at him, but his mind was obviously elsewhere. Jimmy didn’t know what else to say, so he decided to give him some space. “There’s a meeting in J201 in five minutes. Be there.”
Fifteen minutes later, Steve stood outside the briefing room. After a deep breath, he threw the door open and sauntered in, his old cocky self. In all, there were thirty-five pilots sitting at school desks listening to Lieutenant Colonel Watson feed them intelligence about the enemy. Watson, muscular and fifty, was one of those spit and polish marines who expected everything to be by the book and wasn’t real bashful about criticizing you if you did it differently. He never knew exactly what to think of the Hiller/Franklin team. They were his best pilots, his
aces. But they were also a pair of jokers who were constantly bending the rules.
When Steve walked in, one look at Watson stopped him dead in his tracks. The colonel wasn’t in uniform. He was wearing Levi’s and a black crew shirt, the clothes he’d rushed back to the base in. Caught up in the crisis, none of the other men had commented on the boss being in civvies. But when Steve walked in, the whole atmosphere of the room changed. He gave Watson a long, dead pan stare, then let his jaw drop wide open as he turned to the roomful of pilots. They had to laugh.
“Captain Hiller, you found time to join us!”
Steve knew what that meant and quickly found the seat his boys had saved him. Watson described how the mother ship was lurking behind the moon, well out of missile range, and how the city destroyer ships had detached themselves for the flight down to earth. He showed them the piss-poor satellite photo faxed to him by Space Command, but there was little he could tell them about it.
It didn’t take long for Steve to figure out that Jimmy had said something to the other guys. He felt them looking at him, searching his face for signs of distraction. But Steve was too good, too smart, too much of a pro to show the slightest hint of doubt to the men he expected to follow him into battle. While Watson lectured, he leaned over real slowly and, with a sideways glance at Jimmy, asked, “You scared, man?”
“No,” he whispered. “You?”
“Naw.” Steve dismissed the idea, but then twisted his face up as if he were about to cry. “Actually, I am. Hold me!” That was it. The Black Knights burst out laughing in the back of the room.
Watson was just about finished when the laughter erupted. Normally he’d be angry, but he knew why Steve was acting the way he was. Besides, he didn’t know if any of these boys were going to live past lunchtime.
“Captain Hiller,” he asked sarcastically, “did you want to add something to the briefing?”
“Sorry, sir. It’s just that we’re all real anxious to get up there and kick us some alien ass.”
Watson smiled. “Then let’s do it.”
*
The Black Knights marched to their planes, clearly in possession of something no amount of equipment or training could give them. They had the supreme confidence that only comes from knowing you are the very best. They came striding across the airfield in a loose cluster around their leader, Captain Steven Hiller. As they approached their fortified hangar, the huge doors rolled open exactly on cue. Inside were thirty-five F/A-18s, the USMC’s elite air-fighting equipment, the gleaming planes surrounded by technicians making last-minute adjustments.
“Now remember,” Steve shouted to his men before they scattered, “we’re the first ones up there, so we’re just gonna check ’em out. See what they got. If we run into anything real hairy, we’ll break it off and regroup back here. All right, let’s fly.” The men broke ranks and headed for their individual planes. As their boots squeaked across the polished concrete, Steve asked over his shoulder, “Jimmy, you bring the victory dance?”
“That’s a big affirmative, Captain.” He pulled a long Cuban cigar out of his breast pocket, popped it in his mouth, and sparked up his lighter. It had become a ritual with them to light up these expensive, smuggled cigars after every successful mission.
“Don’t get premature on me, Flash Gordon,” Steve called out, climbing into the cockpit. “Remember, we don’t light up till the Fat Lady sings.”
“Gotcha, cap,” Jimmy answered, feeling good that Steve had bounced back from the loss of his girlfriend.
As soon as Steve was alone in his plane, he doubled over in pain. He couldn’t stop thinking about Jasmine and Dylan. The pilots strapped themselves in, ran through their equipment check, then fired up their engines and taxied out to the runway.
*
The president sat by himself in one of the conference areas, lost in thought. Connie slipped into one of the big leather chairs next to her boss. For a few moments, the two of them sat there listening to the muted roar of the engines. Everyone on the plane was suffering through their own personal state of shock, but it troubled her to see the president sitting motionless, staring blankly at the palms of his hands. She didn’t need to ask what he was thinking. She already knew his conscience was torturing him. Millions of Americans had died within the last hour and he took personal responsibility.
“You played it as well as anybody could, Tom. You saved a lot of lives. There’s no use in second-guessing yourself.”
Whitmore didn’t look up at her, didn’t move a muscle. “I could have evacuated the cities hours ago. I should have.” He sighed deeply. “Everything was so simple when I flew in the Gulf War. We knew what we had to do, and we did it. Nothing’s simple anymore. A lot of people died today, Connie.” He looked up at her for the first time. “How many of them didn’t have to?”
Connie realized he was in no mood to be comforted. Instead, she showed her support by staying with him, sitting quietly until General Grey came down the walkway. Before he could deliver his news, the president looked up and asked eagerly, “Is there any news on my wife?”
Grey’s face lost all its strength. He hesitated for a moment before delivering the blow. “The helicopter still hasn’t arrived at Nellis and there’s been no radio contact. I’m very sorry.” The general looked down at the tops of his shoes and added, “I’ve instructed the tower at Nellis to send out a search plane to look for the beacon signal.” Each of the presidential helicopters was equipped with an isotope-powered signal beacon allowing the authorities to trace it in the event of a highjacking, but so far nothing had shown up on the radar screens. Either the cloud of debris and smoke in the air around Los Angeles was blocking the signal, or, as Grey suspected, the machine had been hit so hard that everything, including the titanium casing around the transmitter, was blown to shreds.
All three of them were positive now that the First Lady had been killed in the blast. The president’s face lost all its color. He felt like he’d just been kicked in the gut. But he was still the leader of his nation and he responded by quickly refocusing on his duty. “What other news have you got?”
“The fighters are in the air.”
Whitmore took a deep breath, got to his feet, and followed the general to the rear of the plane. Everything had just gotten a lot simpler. It was time to make war.
The two men stepped into the military command center set up aboard Air Force One. In sharp contrast to the muted colors and executive comforts on the rest of the aircraft, the command center was a tight space crammed to the gills with sophisticated equipment that hissed, blinked, oscillated, and scanned. From floor to ceiling, the narrow room was buzzing with radar screens and multichannel radio consoles, technicians in headphones working at computers, maps, and a small glass war table along one wall on which they could keep track of enemy positions.
Nimziki was already inside, staring down into the lights of the war table, studying the movements of the city destroyers. The expression on his face was somewhere between sorrow and disgust. Without being able to pinpoint what it was in Nimziki’s attitude, Whitmore knew at a glance that the man was acting a role, trying to convince the others in the flying fortress their president was incompetent. Right from the start, he’d been using the crisis to chip away at Whitmore’s self-confidence.
And it was working. Although he despised the secretary of defense on a personal level, he began to wonder whether this kind of situation would be better handled by a stone-hearted tactician like Nimziki. Whitmore felt like perhaps his instincts were beginning to fail him. His political instincts, he knew, were already in sad shape, but he was also starting to lose confidence in his combat instincts. He knew beyond question that he was a warrior, but the business of commanding whole armies was another matter. He strode over to the war table and looked into it, assessing the depth of the catastrophe.
“All satellites, microwave, and ground communications with the target cities are gone. We believe we’re looking at a total loss,” Grey expl
ained in hushed, somber tones. Another slug in the president’s gut.
Maintaining his composure, Whitmore looked up at one of the several tracking screens.
“Where are the fighters?”
Grey checked with a technician quickly before calling out, “ETA with target is four minutes.”
Nimziki crossed the room and sat down at one of the radio consoles, putting on a set of headphones for a phone call to NORAD and the joint chiefs.
*
Flying through pockets of mild turbulence over the Midwest, the 747 experienced some slight shuddering. The unsteadiness went completely unnoticed by the men inside the command center, but out in the passenger area, David suffered through each lift and fall as if it was the Coney Island Roller coaster. His face was covered with sweat and he had a barf bag, emblazoned with the presidential seal, lying ready on his lap. Connie sat nearby, making a string of phone numbers on her cellular. Julius kept a watch out the window, trying to enjoy the view, but David’s behavior was becoming an embarrassment.
“It’s Air Force One, for crying out loud,” he said in disgust, “and still you get airsick?”
“Dad, please. Don’t talk.”
Either Julius didn’t hear him, or he didn’t care. “Look at me,” he stood up in the aisle and pounded his fist against his stomach, “solid as a rock. Good weather, bad weather, doesn’t matter.” Then, with David looking weakly up at him, he used his hands to illustrate his story. “We can go up and down, up and down and it doesn’t get to me. Back and forth, side to side…”
David’s eyes went wide and watery as he watched his father show all the ways a plane ride could make you sick to your stomach. Suddenly, he and his barf bag hightailed it toward the restrooms at the rear of the plane. Julius looked at Connie. “What did I say?”
Connie slid into the seat beside her father-in-law. “He still gets airsick, huh?”
“Hodophobia. Fear of travel, that’s what he calls it.”
“Listen,” Connie reached across the seat and took the old man’s hand, “in all the excitement, I haven’t had a chance to thank you two. You saved a lot of lives. Mine included.”
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 14