The Big Bang

by Roy M Griffis

  “Airburst slams us with explosive force. Ground burst sucks up everything nearby, turns it radioactive, and then sprays it all to hell and back.” Hanner turned and gave him a particularly mirthless smile. “Depends on how you prefer to die and how quick.”

  That was a question worth pondering, but one Alec would never get around to answering until it was too late. He was distracted by a feeling of warmth on his hip. The warmth grew rapidly to uncomfortable heat. He glanced down. All he had on his hip was his cell phone, but the damned thing was warm. He reached for it, and it was almost too hot to touch. He unclipped the phone, dropped it, and kicked it down the ditch.

  The old cowboy turned his head at the sound of the phone bumping along the floor of the ditch.

  “Son of a bitch just heated up,” Baldwin told him.

  Hanner crawled over to the phone, gently lifted it by the stubby antenna, rotated it for a closer inspection. The rear plate on the phone was swollen and misshapen. He held the phone way from him, scuffed a hole in the ditch with the toe of his boot, dropped the phone in the hole and covered it up.

  “I need that!” Baldwin protested. All the phone numbers, the contacts.

  “It’s junk now,” Hanner replied. He straightened up, took another look at the distant sky, and spit.

  Mike shifted uneasily. “Uh, sir…?”

  Hanner extended a hand. “John Hanner.” Mike reached out hesitantly, and the old cowboy pulled the trucker to his feet. He jabbed a thumb toward Alec. “That’s Alec Baldwin. You might’ve seen some of his movies.”

  “I don’t watch many…what about the airburst, Mr. Hanner?”

  “That’ll come later,” Hanner said, climbing out of the ditch. “They’re softening us up.” Queenie scrambled up the bank after her master.

  “What happened, John?” Baldwin said, stepping up behind him.

  “Somebody hit us with an EMP bomb. Electromagnetic Pulse. It’ll fry the electronics for hundreds of miles around.” To Alec, he added, “Made your battery overheat.”

  Mike stood beside them. “All electronics?”

  “Anything newer than about 1970 or so.”

  “Our missiles, then?”

  Hanner shrugged. “Maybe. Hard to say. Government’s known about this problem for a while, they might’ve taken some steps.” He opened the door to the Jeep, leaned inside. The keys were still in the ignition. He flipped the radio on, toggled the interior light switch. No response.

  Knowing what he’d discover, but having to check anyway, he settled into the driver’s seat, and turned the key. Nothing. No click of starter, no slow whir of engine fighting to catch. It was dead, the hundreds of tiny microprocessors that controlled everything from the ignition to the air conditioning scorched into black carbon by the EMP burst.

  Ignoring the useless keys dangling from the steering column, Hanner walked around to the back of the Jeep and popped open the hatch. Both the younger men were staring at him. Shit, he thought. Leave these two specimens alone and they’d be dead in a week. ’Course, they could all be dead in a week, depending on who was shooting at them and what they were lobbing across the ocean, but that was out of his hands. “Give me a hand with these chests, boys,” he said.

  As they unloaded the Jeep, Hanner laid it out for them as simply as he could. “Maybe the Arabs have hit us in the cities. That’s easy, truck in a car full of fertilizer and medical radioactive waste. But that airburst, this EMP…that’s harder. Much higher technical requirements. Some other country decided to take a shot at us while they could.”

  Mike, though round and short, was apparently strong as a bull. He took the first chest and lowered it to the ground while Queenie frisked near his feet. “Who?”

  “Who knows? Lotta people wanna piss in our cornflakes. Doesn’t matter.”

  Alec took the other end of the second ice chest, and he and Hanner set it on the pavement while the trucker lifted free the final one. “Because they’re going to follow it up.”

  Hanner took out a cigarette and lit up, even though it was hotter than the hinges of Hell out there. “Yes, sir. That’s why we need to get under shelter. It’ll limit our exposure to any fallout from the next bomb.”

  “What then?” Baldwin asked through clenched teeth.

  Through a thin haze of smoke, Hanner gave him a reassuring nod. “We find a vehicle. Old truck, I’m thinking. Buy it, steal it, and we get to Los Angeles. But first,” he said, looking down at the ice chests, “we take our food and water, and hole up someplace. We can’t help anybody if we’re dead.” Hanner reached into the recess of the Jeep, snagged a ball cap. “You got a hat in that truck, Mike, you’d better get it.”

  “I do.” The trucker turned toward his truck. “Say, Mr. Baldwin, could you help me? I gotta let them poor cows out.”

  Baldwin took the gun belt that Hanner passed him, and strapped it on. He snugged the pistol into the holster and pulled the ball cap down low over his eyes. “Alec,” he said. “Call me Alec.”

  With the electronics on the trailer out, it took the two of them to manually lower the ramp and shoo the lethargic cattle out of the stifling, reeking trailer. The cows milled around the back of the truck, confused and unwilling to wander far. Mike found a pair of bolt cutters in his tool box and snipped the barbed wire between the posts that separated the highway from an expanse of scrubby plain. The two men herded the cows into the field and stood a moment watching them amble away.

  The semi’s doors were open when they returned. Hanner had scoured the inside, removed some flares and a first-aid kit. He’d rigged up three rope harnesses that attached to the handles of the ice chests. Damn good thing he’d bought the ones with two wheels. He squatted by the back of the Jeep in the thin rectangle of shade created by the open hatch. Baldwin and Mike joined him and sat on the ice chests.

  “Normally, we would lay up during the day and travel at night. Save our energy, conserve water. But it’s dicey. We could be caught here by a blast or under some drifting radioactive cloud.” He looked up at both of them. “I’m open to suggestions here, boys.”

  Mike shrugged. “I dunno.”

  “Let’s walk ’til we find shelter,” Baldwin said. “Then we regroup, and if we have to walk, we’ll walk at night.”

  Hanner nodded. He handed them each a plastic bottle of water. “Drink about a quarter of the bottle, then stow it. When you get thirsty, take a mouthful and walk for at least five minutes before swallowing.”

  He hunched over, arranged the straps around his shoulders and stood. The harness lifted one end of the ice chest off the ground about six inches. Baldwin took the other harness and struggled into it. It was unwieldy and tight.

  Mike looked abashed in his harness. “What else can I do to help?”

  “You could walk the dog,” Hanner said, settling the sweat-stained Resistol cowboy hat on his head, and striding out into the road.

  Jesus God, it was a brutal walk. There were very few vehicles on the highway, all of them abandoned. “Too hot to sit in a car,” Hanner said. “We might find ’em up ahead of us.” They’d take breaks in whatever shade they could find: billboards, highway signs, even crouched panting in the shadows of abandoned vehicles. Queenie trotted along without complaint, although she began to limp after several miles. Mike took out a pocket knife, and cut some moccasins for her from a jacket he’d found in a stalled and empty Lexus.

  It was late afternoon when they came upon the RV, half on the shoulder and half on the road. All the doors were open. Alec was walking point with Queenie mincing along in front of him, still not accustomed to her new footwear.

  Hanner stopped well clear of the RV, wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his forearm. “Farm house out there, about two miles.” The other men nodded. They could see it as well. “We should make for that.” There was no argument. Inhabited or abandoned, anything was better than walking out here in the merciless heat.

  “Oh, mister, can you help us?” a small voice said.

 
The three men looked up, and Queenie yipped. A small girl stood in the rear doorway of the RV. “My grandpa is sick.”

  “Sure, honey,” Alec said. “We can look.” The little thing was no more than five or six.

  “Is your dog nice?”

  Hanner and Mike pulled the ice chests into the shadow of the RV. “She’s real nice,” Hanner said. “Mike, why don’t you get this young lady a drink and let her pet Queenie.”

  “Sure,” the trucker answered, taking the leash from Baldwin. The little girl tottered down the steps and the men shrugged out of their rope harnesses. Shyly, the child approached the German Shepherd, while the chubby trucker unscrewed the cap on a bottle of water and extended it to their visitor.

  Hanner took a moment to catch his breath. Baldwin asked him, “You ready?” The cowboy nodded without speaking, and followed Alec into the RV.

  The back door opened onto a living room/kitchen area. Inside the stalled RV, the heat was oppressive. “Hello?” Baldwin called. He found some latches, slid open large windows. A blessed cross-breeze appeared, and the temperature lowered to a balmy 110.

  Hanner crossed to the rear of the RV, stuck his head inside a bedroom. Nothing. Baldwin moved to the front. Water was dripping out of the refrigerator, ice melting in the heat. He found the grandfather in the front, sprawled across the passenger seat. “Up here!” he called out.

  The man wasn’t that old, maybe in his sixties, and he didn’t look infirm, but his breathing was shallow and there was a faint bluish tinge to his lips. There was no room to work in the cab of the RV, so Baldwin eased the man out of the seat and dragged him back to the floor of the entertainment center area. Hanner knelt on the other side of the man, checking the classic ABCs: airway, breathing, circulation. The man was wearing a polo shirt. Hanner ripped it up the center, and then stopped.

  There was an old scar about two inches long on the center of the man’s chest. “Shit fire,” Hanner said.

  “What?” Baldwin asked, confused.

  “He’s got a pacemaker.” Hanner sat back on his heels. “It got fried along with his RV.”

  They stared at each other. “Can we do anything for him?”

  “I doubt it. His heart is already unstable. In this heat…he’s probably done for.” Outside, Queenie growled. It was the first time Alec had ever heard her do that. Hanner stared down at the dying man. “Go check on that little girl. I’ll see if I can bring her grandpa around.”

  Stepping out of the dimness of the RV, Baldwin was momentarily blinded by the hard light of the afternoon. He blinked back tears, and when his vision cleared, he saw Mike sitting on one ice chest, the little girl clutched tight up against his left side, and his right hand circling Queenie’s muzzle. The dog quivered.

  Two people stood facing Mike. They had gym bags slung over their shoulders and rifles in their hands, deer rifles, Alec thought. “I’ll kill that dog,” the shorter one was saying. The other one, almost as short, spun his rifle toward Alec.

  Alec froze on the steps and his hands drifted up near his shoulders of their own accord. “Whoa, gentlemen. Did I miss something here?”

  “You’re in our RV,” the short one said, his rifle still pointing at Mike and the girl.

  “It’s my grandpa’s RV,” the little girl insisted.

  The rifle centered on her. The short one had terrible teeth that he displayed in a feral grin. “It’s on our land.”

  Alex took a slow deliberate step down onto level ground. “Gents, we’re just passing through—”

  “Every man for himself,” the short one said. The silent one with the rifle was just staring at Alec intently, as the short guy went on, “Haven’t you heard the radio? They’re bombing us now. Dog-eat-dog world.”

  The rifleman lowered his rifle. “I know you.”

  He said it in cadences familiar to Baldwin. Slightly halting, as they tried to put together remembered images from some beloved or beloathed film and compared them to the real human standing before them. “Yeah,” Alex said, nodding.

  The silent rifleman half turned to the short one and finally spoke. “He’s in movies. His name is…”

  Alec was smiling as his hand dropped smoothly and without apparent hurry toward his holster. He lifted the pistol free, raised it, and fired as if he’d been doing it his whole life. He made the error of aiming for the head (he’d later learn to aim for the points of greatest body mass), even so, pointing the pistol like a finger the way Hanner had taught him was effective enough. His first shot blew off much of the mostly silent rifleman’s face.

  Baldwin should have died there. He wasn’t yet fast enough or experienced enough to have known to swing from one target to the other, firing all the time, trying to keep your opponent ducking for cover instead of drawing a bead on you. The short man had all the time he needed to swing the rifle over at Alec, away from Mike and the girl. Maybe he was inexperienced, too, as deer tend not to shoot back. The first shot whistled just beyond Baldwin’s head, and later he’d remember hearing it whine off the side of the doorframe.

  From inside the RV, two bullets blasted through the screen to Alec’s left, whirling the short rifleman around and dropping him to his knees. The rifle spun away from his fingers.

  Alec was inside a bubble, the gunshots temporarily deafening him. Only able to hear his own breathing and the beating of his heart, Baldwin walked through blood and chunky viscera to the short man, who was wheezing horribly and scrabbling toward his rifle. “Leave it,” Alec said, his voice unnatural and echoing in his head.

  The short man’s hand closed over the stock of his rifle. Alec lifted his pistol, and the shot smashed the man down like he’d been hit in the spine with a sledgehammer.

  Still wrapped in his cocoon of deafness, Baldwin turned and scanned the area. No other threats. He noticed the little girl was doing something with her face: her eyes were screwed shut, her mouth was open, her fists clenched. She was screaming. “Take her for a walk, Mike,” he said. “Get her away from this.”

  White-faced, without a word, Mike lifted the little girl in his arms and carried her toward the field. Queenie growled at the bodies and then trotted after him.

  Hanner was beside Baldwin. He said something, and then repeated it more loudly. “You all right?”

  Alec slipped the pistol back into his holster. After a moment, he nodded. Yeah, he was shaky, but he was all right. The first two people he’d killed in the war were Americans. Americans, but still the enemy.

  It took Hanner and Baldwin two trips to get everything from the RV to the farm house. The girl’s grandfather died in the RV, expiring quietly without regaining consciousness. They’d laid him in a shallow grave covered with rocks and brush, and at Hanner’s insistence had hidden the riflemen’s bodies in the scrub well away from the highway before dumping dirt over the blood turning to a gooey jelly on the road. “Those two scumbags might have relatives,” Hanner had explained.

  They stripped the RV of any food and water, and slung the deer rifles on their backs before heading back to the farm house. From outside, the farm house was typical of the area a hundred years ago. Two stories, clapboard siding, slanted roof, shutters around all the windows. It was also typical of derelicts they’d passed, the whole of the house so weathered and beaten by the elements that it looked slate gray, even the chipped paint still clinging to the wood.

  Inside, it was disgusting; the kitchen full of garbage and unwashed dishes, while trash was scattered throughout the house. It wasn’t hard to guess the two dead men had lived here.

  Mike took a look around the filthy house, and said, “Can’t let no little girl stay here.” He picked her up, held her out to Alec, and said, “You all take Queenie for a walk.” Hanner was scouting out the rest of the interior of the house. He nodded down at them from the stairs.

  The little girl was curled up, sucking her thumb. Baldwin unslung the deer rifle from his back, laid it carefully on the sticky kitchen table, and took the girl with one arm. “What’s your n
ame, honey?”

  “’Becka,” the girl mumbled around her thumb.

  “Okay, Becka. We’re going to take Queenie outside. She needs to use the potty.” He realized he was holding her with his right arm. He couldn’t get to his pistol, if he needed it. He shifted the little girl over to his left, hoisted her higher up on his hip. She threw her arms around his neck, buried her face in his shoulder.

  The memory of being surprised outside the RV by those two…whoever they were…was still fresh. He edged the door open with his foot, took a careful look around. Queenie waited patiently. The Shepherd’s lack of response made him feel better, so he stepped out. Queenie darted out into the scrubby yard.

  “’Fraid,” Becka said.

  “I know, honey,” Baldwin said. Through the grimed windows, he could see Mike in the kitchen. The roundish man wasn’t of a mind to be delicate. He swept a bunch of food-gummed plates off the counter, sent them crashing into a trashcan.

  There was a bent tree, about fifteen feet tall, around the side of the house. On one good-sized branch, a semi tire hung horizontally suspended at three points by fraying yellow polyethylene rope. Baldwin carried the little girl over to it. “Look, there’s a swing.”

  “Don’t wanna,” Becka said into his chest.

  He carefully lowered himself into the tire, still holding Becka. The rope creaked a bit, but it held their weight. He rocked back and forth gently.

  “Bad men,” she said.

  He nodded. There was some shade here, under the tree. As the sun was lowering in the sky, a breeze had sprung up, cooling them.

  “Will they be back?” she asked suddenly.

  “No, honey,” he told her. “I killed them.” It was strange to say it aloud that way, but it was true. He’d portrayed killers, usually mad-dog nutcases, but all the Method in the world had nothing on the reality. He was glad he’d smoked the two sons of bitches. They wouldn’t have taken care of this little girl, might even have hurt her. He hadn’t enjoyed shooting them, but he didn’t regret it.