by Kevin Gordon
It was raining again.
Long, leisurely sheets of blue enveloped the ocean, cradling the tides with the rumble of thunder. It smelled of purity, of rebirth, of the endless wellspring of maternal love, given freely from the Earth to all its children. Mother may have been burned from the unknown fire of Countdown, but her love was still free, still unconditional.
Charlie lay on a lawnchair, his eyes closed, his arms spread wide, his palms open to receive the mother’s love. He lived for the rain, for the peace and quiet. The rain had a way of bringing the most industrious of men to a standstill, of slowing the most aggressive racer. The downpour was as a speedbump that suddenly sprang in the midst of human life, a reminder of perspective. As every flower, every leaf of every tree paused in the past to spread wide every membrane to drink in the mother’s milk, so Charlie now paused in his duties to acknowledge the consistency of life, the unknown symphony of which he was merely a brief note.
“You’ll catch a cold, Charlie!” yelled Frank, his constant buddy. He had watched Charlie do this same thing ever since the Countdown, and since the rain came more and more often, it was beginning to really slow down their operation. Thunder rumbled in the distance and a bolt of lightning could be seen, momentarily connecting the sky to the horizon.
“We’ve got all the time in the world, my friend. All the time.”
Frank shook his head, and trampled back to the truck, flipping on a TV, turning the volume up to its limit.
Damned shallow-minded asshole, thought Charlie, as he tried to empty his mind once again. Unfortunately, the rain was letting up, and the sun was just peeking through the grey clouds. He sat up, and glanced for a long while at his submarine, a wide smile on his face, as he knew it was going to be another gorgeous day.
Charlie was one of the few lucky ones. At forty-six, he was thirty when the Countdown cataclysm scorched the earth. A private in the Navy, he was stationed on the nuclear-powered, ballistic missile submarine USS Ohio, patrolling deep waters of the Pacific. The day it hit, the moment it hit, he instantly knew it, by the dropoff in chatter on the airwaves. When the sub breeched from the deep, he felt born anew, a man created to inherit the Earth.
No other sub from the U.S. Navy survived that day. All other subs were sailing high, and their crews were hit and decimated by the Countdown. Thankfully for Charlie, the captain of the Ohio wanted to run some more tests on the ballast system. Unluckily for that captain, Charlie slit his throat, along with the XO’s as soon as he realized what happened in the outside world. In the battle for control that followed, only Charlie and fifteen others made it out alive, thanks to Charlie’s ruthlessness and determination. There were two others with more experience with computers and weaponry than him, but afterwards they died quickly in ‘accidents’ that Charlie helped to orchestrate. It left him as the most valuable human still alive, and he milked the title for all it was worth.
“Charlie! We got a call from the Homestead! Come over here quick.”
“The Homestead,” chuckled Charlie, as he got up and folded his chair. Bunch of old geysers playing at power. In only a few short weeks all of you will be dead, and I will finally have it all.
He got over to the truck—one of his personal favorites. He had ample time after countdown to find all the toys he had ever wanted in life. He had almost eighty cars, three choppers, two copters, an F-22, and his personal favorite sitting before him—a Lamborghini LM002. One of the first true luxury SUV’s ever created, he spent four months tracking down the exact one he wanted. After all, there was no factory to do any aftermarket additions. Frank got himself a Hummer, but Charlie called it ‘pedestrian,’ and took the LM002 wherever he went.
He snatched the phone from Frank, and pressed it close to his ear. “Yeah, go ahead, this is Charlie.”
“Charlie, we need you at Scott,” said the voice that he recognized to be General Franklin. Everyone was a General in the Homestead. They wanted to keep the guise of it still being an American democratic government, even if it was redder than the Soviet Union ever was. “Get over there ASAP.”
“Why? What’s goin’ on over there?”
“We’re having problems with the shuttle you scrounged for us. The heat tiles are too far gone. It’ll never do.”
Damn. “Well, no sense in me going over there. We’ve got one left—the Endeavor. It’s in some deep storage, but we might have enough men now to get it out. I’ll go over to the California Science Center, drag it out, and load it on a B-52. We should be there in a week.”
“What about the Russian shuttles? Any luck?”
He laughed. “The Burans? Too many damned pieces! But the boosters they made were some fine pieces of machinery. There’s just no way we could get it all over to Scott. And I wouldn’t suggest that long a flight for the shuttle. We’re gonna hafta launch it into space on piggyback, and that’s that.”
“That’ll mean it’ll be a one-way mission—we’d lose too many heat tiles from the shock of separating from the bomber for it to make it back through re-entry. We’d lose the only shuttle we’ve got.”
“Then you’ve gotta make some hard choices. Is this mission what you really want to do? If you change your mind, give me a call. Otherwise, I’ll be at Scott in a week with the black-and-white.”
“When you get there, Councilman Davis requests your presence at a full meeting of the council.”
Damned pricks. “Fine. I’ll be there.”
He pressed ‘END’ on the cellphone and burst out in riotous laughter.
“What a fool!”
“Yeah,” said Frank, chuckling with him.
“What do they hope to accomplish with this stupid mission? Ah well, whatever makes them think they’re actually doing something.”
“You actually gonna take ‘em all down?”
“Well, you tell me? The council is now in their late eighties. Half of them are startin’ to lose their memories. And the new generation is just entering their mid-teens. There’ve already been riots, Frank. We’ve got to take over things, got to give the young ‘uns somethin’ to follow, or all that has been done will unravel in a second.”
Frank shrugged, as power plays were never his strong suit. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Damned right. Charlie leaned back on the truck, to take one last long look at the Ohio, before he took a shower and they got things going. Who would’ve thought that floating coffin would have been my salvation? Call me Ishmael, for I am the last of what was, and the beginning of what will be.
Chapter 7