The Big Bang

by Roy M Griffis

  Abu died three days later from radiation poisoning. Those chips of metal and their even tinier counterparts were his death; the object that Barodi had been striking was a globe of uranium. Abu did not inhale much, but he inhaled enough. Without proper medical care, he was doomed but he died happily enough. This country had been good to him. Back home, he would have never been allowed to be a rich man and own a car. He would have been forced by caste to be a dung collector, as had his father. At least before he died, he’d been able to give something back to America.

  A nuclear arming device requires a certain amount of electronics and explosive material to begin its deadly work. A pistol requires the ability to pull a trigger. A metal hammer just needed a reason, and Abu had a lifetime of reasons to wrench the hammer away from Barodi and bury it up to the handle in the man’s skull.

  Someone had started a neat pile of the dead next to the sidewalk. Karen covered Tarik’s face, and with Kevin’s help, carried him over and laid him with the other victims. The pile was nearly waist-high. She was glad of that. It allowed them to gently place Tarik with the others, not toss him like a sack of garbage. She crossed his wrists and stood for a moment, her hand on the dead man’s shoulder, as ashes drifted down on the streets.

  It was funny. She could feel he was gone. This body that was left, it was like a suit of clothes that he had worn for a while. Tarik had moved on, and left them behind. She had no special feeling for this suit of clothes—they were simply a memory of the man who’d inhabited them. The least she could do was treat them with dignity, out of respect for Tarik.

  “What now?” Kevin asked after a while. He sounded so young. Lost.

  Karen wiped the tears from her face, smearing the ashes. She looked around. Other buildings were still burning, wounded people wandered the streets. “This is pretty big. The government is going to meet. They’ve got to have some kind of emergency plan. Harriet should know it.”

  “Have to get her leg fixed,” Kevin pointed out.

  “Then we have to find an EMT,” Karen said wearily, walking back to the group from their office. By now, the park was filling with survivors, mostly adult men and women. Most wore torn clothes and similar expressions of shock. And most of them were huddling in groups, trying to gather comfort from the presence of something normal and known, even if it was just their coworkers, while within those groups some were already attempting to restore order.

  When she had a moment to think about it (later, before falling asleep on the couch on display at a furniture store, surrounded by other exhausted refugees), Karen realized there was nothing about her experience that long day that was different from a thousand other stories of heroism, pain, loss, and death. If it was only a thousand. No one yet knew the extent of the damage or the attacks. It was strange…she had come of age in the clammy embrace of a technology that had the ability to keep her in touch with Paris Hilton’s every gymnastic gynecological exploit. Yet now, when she really needed to know something important, the technology failed. Cell phones, radios, computers…almost anything electronic was as inert as the silicon that once gave it life.

  What they had was rumor. People passed by in a constant, meandering stream, some silent, others shouting out what they knew. A paramedic in a torn uniform walked by slowly, doing quick triage on the survivors in his path. “National Guard is on the way,” he’d tell people, separating those who had a chance from those who were doomed. His supplies were long gone other than a plastic bottle of Betadine, a stethoscope, and a pair of penny-cutter scissors.

  Kevin pulled the paramedic away from a crowd. “I’ve got a hurt Congresswoman here.”

  The medic was in his late thirties, a little overweight, with dark hair and a nose like a falcon’s beak. “Boy, have I heard that a lot today,” he said, but followed Kevin anyway.

  Karen met them, and held out the plastic first-aid box for the EMT to inspect. “It’s not much.”

  The hawk-faced medic flipped open the lid as they walked. Within, a few small empty cardboard containers slid back and forth. The contents—Band-Aids, over-the-counter analgesics, even the crushable ammonia capsule—were gone. The only thing left of use was a bottle of iodine pills. He tossed the plastic box aside and gave the pills to Kevin. “Hold onto these.”

  The medic didn’t have the time or energy to display much of a soothing bedside manner. He ran his hands down The Congresswoman’s body, squeezing and flexing her as if she were a turkey at Safeway. He lightened his touch around her lower leg, and announced, “Tib-fib break. Simple fracture, no displacement.”

  Harriet winced. “Is it bad?”

  “Nah, pretty common.” The medic called to Karen. “Hey, lady! You know any first aid?”

  Karen nodded, and he saw the bloodstained tie around her head. “Lemme look at that, and then you get a splint on the Senator here.”

  “Congresswoman,” Harriet insisted.

  “Yeah.” The medic put his hands on his thighs, pushed himself to his feet. His joints cracked when he did. “I’m gonna sleep good tonight,” he muttered.

  He unwrapped the tie from Karen’s head. The blood had started to clot around the fabric, and she couldn’t keep herself from wincing when he peeled the tie up, pressing his bare fingers against the scalp to keep the flesh in place. “Not too bad. You need stitches, try to get some soon, okay?” He fished the bottle of Betadine from a cargo pocket on his pants leg. “This is gonna sting, but if we get it clean, you’ve got a better chance of keeping that on your head.”

  She had barely nodded before he tilted her head back and poured the Betadine into the wound. She gasped and her muscles began cramping again as she fought to keep herself still against the pain. “Sorry,” the medic said, and sounded as if he meant it. Kevin was hovering nearby, knowing he should be doing something to help, but unequipped by his background with any useful skills or real knowledge. “Yo, homeboy,” the medic said. “You wearing a tee-shirt? Give it up.”

  Kevin unbuttoned his Bill Blass dress shirt, peeled off the white tee-shirt. The medic quickly cut it into strips and neatly bandaged Karen’s head. The remains of the tee-shirt he stuffed into one cargo pocket. She never would get stitches, but the cleaning and the tight bandaging kept her from losing that chunk of her scalp or dying from infection. She would have a triangle-shaped scar through her hairline forever afterwards, and the hair that grew from it was dead white, leaving a startling streak through the brown that made her look unaccountably fierce.

  “You folks need to get inside,” the medic told them. “If there’s any radiation drifting around, you don’t want to make it any easier for it to find you. Take those iodine pills, alright?”

  “Can you stay with us?” Karen asked, instantly hating the neediness in her voice.

  “Nah,” the medic said kindly. “I’m just tryin’ to get home myself. But remember what I said. You guys get inside somewhere. And boil your water,” he added over his shoulder as he walked away. “No idea if it’s safe.” He disappeared in the slow stream of people moving down the street, and Karen was unable to ever discover what happened to him or even his name. He became just one more of the dutiful, unknown heroes of the Big Bang. She finally decided he’d died in the plagues that ran rampant in DC in the weeks and months that followed. She could easily imagine him working with no mask and no gloves, cleaning the sick, cooling their brows with damp rags, working until he was barely able to stand, and then dragging himself off to a dark, quiet corner to die quietly.

  Harriet’s hand clamped on Karen’s arm. “My leg…he said you’d splint it.”

  Karen looked down at her. “He did.” She stood in spite of her weariness. Kevin was loping toward her, from the far side of the park. His arms were filled with plastic bottles of water.

  “The Armenian grocer, across the way. He opened up, he’s passing out whatever he’s got.”

  She gratefully took a bottle from him, fumbled at the cap with weak hands, then cranked it off with her teeth. She took a long, sh
uddering drink. A wave of trembling shook her. She was famished. “Did he have any food, anything decent?”

  “Beef jerky, some sandwich meat.”

  “Get anything you can that’s not junk food. Please.”

  “Sure.” He turned and sprinted back across the park.

  Harriet moaned. “My leg…it’s really hurting.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Karen replied. “Let me get something. I’ll be right back.” She needed something straight. Since she’d left her woodsman’s axe back home with her girlish innocence, no tree branches for her. She wandered toward the street, coming out from under the foliage of the park, and noticed it was getting dark. She hoped they’d get some kind of official word before nightfall. The idea of huddling in the darkness with nothing but ignorance and fear to keep them company had no appeal for her.

  Out in the road, the slow stream of dazed survivors had slowed. She wasn’t sure why, maybe they’d fallen from exhaustion, or maybe the streets had been closed. Dammit, there was so much she didn’t know. But it made it easier to walk out into the street, kick through the debris. She found a few pieces of thin PVC pipe. A quick sniff, and she guessed they’d only been used for water. A little more searching led her to a telephone cord and a woman’s jacket under a chair. She could pad the PVC with the jacket and tie everything up with the phone cord.

  By the time she’d finished the splint on Harriet’s leg, Kevin returned, bare-chested, carrying his haul in his shirt. Proudly, he knelt beside them to display his treasures: beef jerky, canned tuna and chicken, vegetable beef soup, some crackers, One A Day vitamins, and more bottled water.

  “That’s great!” Karen said, and smiled at him. Then she noticed the scrape on his face and his bloody knuckles.

  He smiled back. “Some guy wanted our stuff. I told him no.”

  “Good job,” Karen told him. Others from the office were gathering around. Karen began dividing up the food into roughly equal piles. She was almost drooling with hunger. “Dig in,” she said, forcing herself not to grab at the pathetically small pile in front of her. “Chew slowly,” she reminded them. “It’ll help your brain realize you’re getting food.”

  Harriet spoke quietly, without warning. “Oh, Lord, for these gifts we are about to receive, let us be truly grateful.”

  Karen looked over at the reclining Congresswoman in surprise. She’d never heard anything other than perfunctory references to God in Harriet’s speeches, and in private, she’d heard a lot of scorn for the Bible-thumpers. “It’s something my grandmother used to say at dinner,” Harriet said, abashed.

  “Mine, too,” Kevin added.

  “It’s a good prayer,” Karen admitted, starting to eat. The beef jerky was full of preservatives, the crackers were stale, and the tuna smelled pretty strong, but she ate the first meal of her new life as reverently as if it were communion.

  After the few fishes and loaves had been consumed, they decided to find shelter. Ash had continued to fall and people were coughing. Kevin and his posse, Aaron and Jay, took turns carrying Harriet as Karen led the way. A man inside a modest office store saw them and beckoned them inside. “Come, rest, sit down!” he called.

  Their group of nine shambled inside the dark store and numbly followed the man to an area devoted to furniture. There were soft chairs, futons, even convertible couches—everything an obsessive career-ladder-climber would need to sleep in their office.

  Kevin eased Harriet into a recliner. Karen was talking to the man, the owner of the store, who was largely as ignorant of the full events as anyone else. “No looting here. Nothing works, and nobody wants to carry couch on their back.”

  Kevin joined her. He told the owner, a short, broad-faced Oriental man, “Thanks.” Kevin took a bottle of water from his pants pocket, extended it.

  The Oriental man half-bowed, an old reflex, and nodded vigorously. “Thank you! Thank you very much. I’m Bao.” He and Kevin shook hands.

  Karen looked outside at the dark streets. She could see a glow in the far distance and as she looked, more across the horizon and in her nearer field of vision. Fires. She hoped they wouldn’t spread. “I don’t think we can do anything until daylight,” she said. Kevin and Bao agreed. Bao had an older mechanical wristwatch. It hadn’t been affected by the EMP blast. “8:15. Daylight about 5.”

  She pointed to the glow. “We have to keep an eye on that.”

  “I’ll watch it,” Kevin offered. “You get some sleep.”

  “Sleep,” Bao said, and then, with a flourish, pulled on the bottom of a sofa. It lifted and then folded out into a bed.

  The sight of the bed hit her like a chop to the throat and she was ready to weep with fatigue. She swallowed it down, turning to the two men. “Let me sleep four hours, then we’ll trade, okay?”

  Bao took off his watch, strapped it around Kevin’s wrist. “Okay.”

  Karen dropped onto the edge of the sofa bed, hardly able to keep her head up. Bao walked among the survivors, exhorting them to get comfortable. Karen heard him say cheerily, “Insurance pay for everything, don’t worry!”

  Insurance, she almost laughed. Who knew how large this catastrophe was. Tomorrow, they could find out. Even if Harriet was a member of Congress, it would be simply stupid to blunder about Washington, DC in the dark. Karen curled up on her side, put one arm over her eyes, and before she knew it, she slept.

  Thus, did she come to the end of the first day of her new life.

  On August 23, millions of people awoke to a new world. Whether it was brave or not, only time would tell. But it was certainly different. And for nearly a third of the people alive that morning, it would also be their final day on the planet.

  The President and his cabinet had been evacuated to Bunker 7 in the Alleghenies. Cheyenne Mountain had been closed the year before. As secrets went, the mountain’s location and purpose were as shrouded in mystery as Rock Hudson’s private inclinations. Bunker 7 was reached by a one-hundred-and-twenty-five-mile maglev train ride over two hundred feet underground. The entire bunker complex had been burned out of the mountain from beneath to reduce any impact on the structural stability of the solid granite. Power was provided by a small nuclear reactor that was based on a Navy submarine design. Much of the layout of Bunker 7 reflected training and operational insight gained from the Navy. After all, if the government came to Bunker 7, it was likely they might not see the light of day for many long weeks. Why not use the experience of those who had already been through that kind of life?

  Bunker 7 had the latest in communications, remote control, and protection against many an attack. What it didn’t have was Laura. She was visiting with an elderly aunt in New Braunfuels, Texas. The President sent a detachment of Special Ops forces to protect his wife and return her to the Bunker safely.

  That decision made, the President could turn his attention to the attacks on the nation. It was clear nuclear devices had gone off in a number of major cities across the United States. “Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Dallas, Kansas City, Omaha, Washington.” The list was growing as reports came in from around the country.

  Israel, God bless ’em, had come through. As far as Bunker 7 could tell, Israel was on full alert. They’d offered sanctuary to any US soldiers who could make it to their borders. American troops throughout the Arab world were under attack by various jihadist factions, but these actions appeared more opportunistic than rigorously planned, as had been the assault on America. Apparently, the attackers reasoned that with the Great Satan staggered by the attacks and Allah on their side, they would be able to overwhelm the grunts and the jarheads on their own. So far, this reasoning had proven false. The Marines and the Army were holding their own, their weapons and electronics not affected by the EMP pulses that had battered North America. A lot of martyrs were being sent to Paradise, with their ticket being punched courtesy of the United States military.

  There was worse news to come. The Chinese decided to enter the war.

  It was purely
an economic decision. The appropriate Marxist rhetoric would be drafted afterwards, once the war was over. The Chinese wanted the West Coast. Its harbors would give access to the natural and mineral wealth waiting there. Foreseeing a certain lack of revolutionary zeal from the current inhabitants, the Chinese plan was simplicity itself. First, a series of EMP bombs over the major population centers to knock out what remained of civil and military control, followed by a series of high-altitude-enhanced neutron bombs. Eradication of the population of the cities would leave the majority of the infrastructure intact. A final bombing run would release a voracious bacteria that would convert the bodies into mulch within a month, leaving the cities dusty, but free of corpses.

  The initial series of EMP bombs were launched at first light on August 23, crossing from the darkness of the Chinese mainland, flying across the Pacific and coming out of the night sky into the dawn.

  As plans went, it was a pretty good one. It was based on certain assumptions, one of which proved to be deeply flawed: Omaha, and the Strategic Air Command bunker, was still online.

  Interceptors got most of the EMP missiles well offshore. The light show illuminated the sky for a hundred miles, further terrifying already frightened shrimp fishermen heading for Hawaii.

  Bunker 7 was informed even as pieces of the Chinese missiles were raining down into the green waters of the Pacific. “Did any get through?” the President wanted to know.

  “Three,” was the embarrassed answer from deep beneath Omaha. “They blitzed a good part of Oregon and California with EMP.”

  “You’re sure they came from China.”

  “No question.”

  A General interrupted. “You’d bet your life on it, soldier?”

  “Hell, sir,” came the staticky reply. “I’m bettin’ your life on it, as far as I can tell.”

  The President stared down at his desk. “They’re trying to kick us while we’re already down.” This wasn’t his worst nightmare…it was a nightmare he’d never dared to even allow himself to dream. There really was no decision to be made. His country was under attack from within and without. Her missiles and heavy weaponry, however, were mostly untouched. “Launch now,” he said, waving for the nuclear football. “Torch ’em.”