“You haven’t made me angry, Veronica. I’m hopped up on Benzedrine.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“We all are, in case there’s an emergency.” He took a long drag from the cigarette. “And what do you mean you disagree? You can’t tell me we just acted normally.”
“This is by no means a normal social dynamic. The world just ended. I think we’re entitled to let our inhibitions drop for a minute.”
“You are, but I’m not,” he replied. “What’s Michael going to think about you being gone?”
“Honestly? He’s probably talking to Karen.”
“Oh, okay. So that’s what sent you chasing after—”
“I didn’t chase you anyplace, Jack! You chased me, remember?”
Forrest took another drag and smiled. “Yes, I do.”
“So what happens if I choose wrong?” she wanted to know. “Suppose Michael decides he loves Karen a few weeks from now—which will be my fault, admittedly. Andie is hot on your butt! I could end up alone in this brave new world of ours.”
“Take the time to figure out what you want,” he said. “Either way, you’re not going to end up alone. I promise.”
“You promise?”
“I don’t break promises and I don’t repeat them.”
“I’m gonna hold you to it,” she said, pointing a finger at him before opening the door and slipping back out.
Forrest found an excuse to spend another couple of minutes in the missile silo, then went back to Launch Control, where he found Ulrich smirking in front of the console, watching the grass fires above.
“What the fuck are you smirking at?”
“She didn’t seal either door,” Ulrich replied. “That tunnel’s like a megaphone.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” Forrest said, checking one of the many charts on the wall behind Ulrich to see if the toilet paper count matched the one he’d just taken. “We should probably go ahead and rig some sort of a bidet. Or at least have a plan drawn up for one. There’s no way all these women and children are going to conserve enough toilet paper.”
Ulrich laughed quietly to himself.
“What’s so fuckin’ funny, snickers?”
Ulrich chuckled again, saying in an overly manly voice, “ ‘I don’t break my promises, little lady, and I don’t repeat them either.’ ” Then he broke himself up laughing, slapping his hand on the counter. “Fucking priceless!”
Forrest stood looking at the back of Wayne’s head, chewing his cheek. “Break yourself up, don’t you, Stumpy?”
Ulrich continued to laugh. “Oh, man, wait till Erin hears that one.”
Forrest put his finger in his mouth and got it good and wet before sticking into Ulrich’s ear.
“You motherfucker!” Ulrich said, grabbing the side of his head and springing from the chair, wiping fruitlessly at the offended ear. “You fuckin’ cocksucker!”
“Kinda felt like a monkey’s dick, didn’t it?”
Ulrich used the tail of his shirt to dry the inside of his ear, chuckling some more. “I’m still telling Erin.”
“She’d better keep her mouth shut about it too,” Forrest warned, “or I’ll stick my finger someplace else.”
Ulrich stood tucking his shirt back in, assuming a more serious expression. “You know how goddamn sorry I am about Monica, right?”
Forrest nodded. “She’s not hurting anymore, Wayne. And who knows? Maybe they’re really together again.”
“What a party we’ll all have one day, huh? All of us back together?”
“That would be quite a party,” Forrest agreed, heading for the other door. “I’m going down to check number two silo. Try not to stir up any more shit while I’m gone.”
“Hey, Jack?”
Forrest paused.
“I promise, man.”
“Fuck you.”
Later, Forrest returned to Launch Control to find Kane and Ulrich listening to the shortwave radio. “Getting anything?”
“Plenty,” Kane said. “You should hear some of this.”
Andie came into the room and Ulrich quickly switched off the set. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, masking her curiosity about what was being said on the radio. “Some of us are gathering in the cafeteria for a prayer session. Would you guys like to join us?”
The men shook their heads.
“Are you sure, Jack? You’re the leader. It might be nice if you said a few words.”
“I’m not exactly God’s best representative,” Forrest said with a wink. “Besides, I’ll be saying plenty in the days and months to come.”
“Well, it’s never too soon to—”
“Thank you again for the offer,” Ulrich said, stepping forward to put his hand on the door. “Be sure to put in a good word for us, will you?”
“Um . . . yeah,” she said, backing out of the doorway. “Sure.”
“Thank you.” He smiled and closed the door, signaling for Kane to switch the radio back on.
“ . . . but it looks like the Dakotas are gone! The sky is black and there’s shit raining down on everything! The entire neighborhood is catching on fire! This is the end of the fucking world . . . God’s wrath, man . . . Armageddon!”
“Loon,” Forrest remarked, casually lighting a cigarette.
“Should I go get Linus and Oscar?” Kane asked.
Forrest shook his head. “You can fill them in later. I’ve already told them where I want them and why. Keep the dial moving. We can skip the hyperbole.”
Kane turned the dial . . .
“ . . . since it’s out all over the city, I should say probably not. First CNN went off the air and then the power went out all across town. Nobody knows what’s going on. And don’t even bother calling 911. There’s a lot of smoke outside too. It’s blowing in from the west.”
“That’s from the flash fire,” another replied. “No telling how far that will spread.”
“No sign here in Maine,” said another. “Still a bright sunny day. We still got TV too. The news is showing fires all over Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland . . . Canada too. People are still rioting in New York City, and the army has pulled out. Wait . . . they’re showing shots of the sky now. Looks like it’s on fire!”
“Where’s that?”
“Hold on . . . the caption says St. Louis . . . Oh, shit! People are running past the camera in flames!”
“Keep that channel, Marcus. Sounds like it might be a party line.”
“On fire? In St. Louie?”
“It’s what it says . . .”
“Should I lock the door?” Ulrich wondered.
“Dunno,” Forrest said. “What do you think? I hate keeping information from the others. Feels a little like communism.”
“ . . . Oh, now they’re showing somewhere in Southern California . . . It’s all on fire—nope, they just lost the feed.”
“This shit here might freak the women out,” Kane said.
“I’ll lock the door,” Ulrich decided. “We’ll tell them about it if they ask. People on fire won’t play well.”
“My wife just came in from outside . . . she says she can see a darkness to the west. Christ, it’s moving fast. We’ll be going to the basement soon . . .”
“Hey, I’m down here in Jacksonville . . . It’s raining like hell here. Loudest goddamn thunderclap I’ve ever heard in my life . . . and the wind! Jesus, the wind!”
“That’s from the asteroid, you’d better bet!”
“Hey, what about the government? Has anybody heard a damn thing?”
“Ha! The government? Remember 9/11? Katrina? They’re running for the bunkers . . . or out fishing! We’re on our own, pal.”
“Nobody’s fishing today, ass-wipe . . .”
“But he’s right. We’re on
our own . . .”
“White Horse calling . . . anyone hear me? This is White Horse calling . . .”
“Go ahead there, White Horse.”
Kane looked over at Forrest. “White Horse?”
“Capital of the Yukon.”
“Earth’s quakin’ like hell up here, folks. A giant crack ripped right through the center of town. Power’s out too and it’s getting dark. Gonna be a long winter, you betcha . . .”
The three men listened for the next hour, and the news was all the same, more or less. The continent was dying and, for the most part, people were saying their goodbyes in surprisingly calm and dignified ways. By the end of the hour, Forrest decided to meet with the rest of the population, and he shared with them much, though not all, of what they had heard. To his relief, most of the women were satisfied to hear it from him and made no requests to hear it for themselves, many of them suspecting things were worse than he was letting on and choosing to remain willfully underinformed.
Later that night, as everyone was milling about getting ready for bed, Andie cornered Forrest at the end of the hall near the blast tunnel door as he was reentering the corridor.
“What are you keeping from us?” she asked quietly. “I’d like to know.”
“Ever read Revelation?” he said with a rueful grin.
Book Two
Twenty-Eight
Three months had passed since the asteroid strike, and the skies had long since grown dim. The average temperature in the Hawaiian Islands now hovered at thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit, and the ocean life had at last begun to die off. However, there were still fish in the sea to be caught, and the Navy had their hands full protecting the fishing vessels from pirate attack. Admiral Preston Longbottom drew a careful breath before making his response, reminding himself that the people of Hawaii had elected a government, and that a military must exist to serve that government.
“Madam President,” he said patiently, “I am not disagreeing with you, but you must understand that we need to patrol the Islands. There are still pirates in these waters.”
Ester Thorn, now the president of the United Hawaiian Islands, had reluctantly accepted the office six weeks earlier, and so far she was not terribly pleased with the progress they were making toward securing the future of the Islands. The population of 1.2 million was doing well in terms of cooperation with their newly elected government, but there was growing unease over the dwindling food supply, and the announcement that rations were to be cut again had not been well accepted.
“I don’t mean to be obstinate, Admiral,” Ester said, “but I’ve told you before that your men and their expertise are needed elsewhere. If the pirates attack the fishing boats, by all means blow them out of the water, but don’t waste time looking for them. You’ll never hunt them out of existence. We’re bringing half the vessels back into port and that’s my final decision.”
Longbottom sat back looking pissed. The idea of taking orders from an astronomer did not ride well with him at all, but the crotchety old bitch had been elected in a landslide. At least her vice president was Barry Hadrian, former twice-elected President of the United States and hugely popular in the Islands.
At first Hadrian had not approved of the idea of canning the old state government in favor of an entirely new federal government, but saw that it was inevitable—the vast majority of people in the Islands were demanding a fresh start. When he began to hear talk that the military element in the Islands was considering militarizing the government, he approached Ester and offered himself as her vice presidential candidate. With his support, the other three candidates, all of them lifelong politicians, didn’t have a prayer of being elected.
“I think what President Thorn is trying to say, Admiral,” Hadrian interjected, realizing that Longbottom was mostly trying to preserve the size of his force and thus maintain his importance, “is that we’re in dire straits as far as feeding the population is concerned, and that your engineers and other servicemen will be better utilized trying to solve those much more immediate problems.”
Dr. Harold Shipman, here in his new capacity as adviser, smiled at Ester. Neither of them had any illusions about who at the table had actually kept the Navy in check to this point.
“Yes, sir,” Longbottom said, still respectful to the former commander-in-chief.
“The wind farms are providing us with enough electricity to run our essential services,” Ester continued, “and the natural gas is keeping us warm. But we’re not moving fast enough on indoor farming. Which is where we must focus our efforts, gentlemen, until we have solved the problem. We’re not going out the way they did at Easter Island centuries ago by devouring one another.”
This had been one of Ester’s campaign promises, and she never passed up the chance to restate it, understanding how real the possibility was of the food running out. By now most shopping malls and grocery stores—most buildings with fluorescent lighting—were on the way to being converted into greenhouses. But Ester was well aware that once their fluorescent bulbs burnt out, there was no immediate way of replacing them. New technology had to be developed as soon as possible, using resources available within the Hawaiian Island chain.
“Admiral?” she said, having a sudden idea. “How difficult would it be to use the nuclear reactors aboard your aircraft carriers and submarines to power a new industrial center?”
Longbottom sat forward, casting a surprised glance at Hadrian. “What sort of industrial center?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s for you and your engineers to work out. I’ve already said many times that I don’t believe for a single moment there aren’t enough resources among these islands for us to sustain ourselves without the sun, but we need men of vision. There are civilian engineers here, but yours are the best and the brightest, and I’m convinced that if we’re to be saved by new technologies, your engineers will be the people who develop them. We still need the Navy, Admiral, but we need them to perform an entirely different mission now.”
Longbottom drew another breath and sat looking at the table. “Madam President,” he said at length, “I’m getting old and I’m afraid I haven’t a great deal of faith in new technology.”
“I was reading about Golda Meir last night,” Ester remarked. “For obvious reasons.”
Everyone chuckled, however dutifully.
“And she once said something that I find applicable to our situation. She said, ‘Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots . . . and diffidence falls short.’ Now, we all know that I don’t make a pimple on Golda’s backside, but I’m smart enough to know that she was right. Your men and women have an abundance of ability, Admiral, and they’ll work to solve our problems . . . but I need you on board.”
Longbottom sat thinking for a long moment, realizing that fighting against the tide would serve no one’s interest.
“Perhaps I’ve grown too fatalistic about the future,” he said slowly. “Perhaps there is a way. I don’t know. But I’ll put together a committee and—”
“No committees!” Ester said. “Committees are the old way of doing business and we don’t have the time. Gather your engineers and your mechanics, your avionics experts and every other expert you’ve got. Gather them in the hangar of one those floating airports you command out there and tell them I want them—what we want them to think about! And to start thinking right now! To work to save the life of the human race. And forget about bloody goddamn pirates!”
Hadrian sat smiling in his chair, happy to see that Ester had at last found her way with the Navy. “Does that sound like a great enough challenge for you, Admiral?”
The admiral looked at him, a slight grin coming to him. “Yes, sir, Mr. Vice President. But to be honest, I think I’d rather have to fight the cold war all over again.”
“This is a cold war,” Hadrian replied, “as cold as any of us can imagine. It sno
wed right here in Honolulu last week.”
“I know,” Longbottom said, looking grim. “Dirty, gray snow.”
“It’s a worthy fight,” Ester said. “And we owe it to our progeny to make it.”
“I’ll do my best, Madam President. You have my word.”
“That’s all anyone can ask for,” Ester said. “Thank you for being here today. I know that meeting with me was the last thing you felt like doing.”
“There’s something else that Golda Meir once said, Madam President.”
“Let me have it,” she said glumly.
“She said, ‘Being seventy is not a sin.’ ”
Ester allowed herself to smile at the man for the first time since meeting him. “So then you see, Admiral, why I trust her judgment.”
After the meeting adjourned, Ester sat alone in her office with Hadrian. “You think I’m nuts, don’t you?”
“Not at all,” Hadrian replied. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you knew what I was trying to accomplish in there even before I did . . . and yet you let me twist.”
“You needed to find your own way with him, Ester. You gained some of his respect in there today. Had I done all your talking for you, he’d still be paying us lip service. Whereas now, I think he may actually be with us.”
“In other words, you weren’t entirely on board before this meeting either.”
“This was your sink or swim moment, Ester,” he said with a smile. “Every politician has one. Congratulations. You’ve made it to the edge.”
Ester shook her head. “Me a politician. I swear if I ever see that Chittenden boy again, I’ll crack him over the head with this cane.”
“Who’s Chittenden?”
“The astronomer who got me into this unholy mess,” she said. “If it weren’t for that boy, I’d be rocking in the bosom of my Lord right now instead of having chess matches with admirals.”
Hadrian smiled. “It may well be that the human race will one day owe this Chittenden a great debt of gratitude.”
“That hope lies with the Navy,” she said. “The Navy and a favorable wind.”
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