FOREWORD

by Ten To Midnight--Free(Lit)

  “What?” Sandler barked.

  “Doug, we need to start moving people to Olney. We’re being overwhelmed here.”

  “You’re telling me,” Sandler snapped without a trace of irony. “Jo, if you want to move people to Olney, fine. You organize it. And while you’re at it, see if you can rustle up some more help.”

  “I’ll do my best,” she promised. Suddenly remembering Rose, she hurried back down the corridor to the waiting room where the old woman had been laying. But when she arrived, Rose’s eyes were staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, her mouth agape. She hadn’t waited for Jo to return before giving up on life.

  Some way to die…

  Jo gently lowered Rose’s eyes shut, hoping that the old woman would find some peace in the afterlife and wondering whether she had any children in far-flung places who would never know what had happened to their mother. Jo quickly dismissed the thought. She had no time to concentrate on the dead; not while there were others still suffering. In the hallway, she grabbed a chair and stood on it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she called out, raising her voice above the chorus of agony. “My name is Dr. Joanne Miller. If we’re going to treat people properly, I’m going to need your help.”

  A few people looked up, but most were too lost in their own misery to care. “We’re going to have to move some of you to the FEMA bunker at Olney. I need anybody who has means of transport and is not seriously injured to help me do this. And I also need people with medical experience. Any medical experience at all. We need all the help we can get.”

  An impossibly obese man in a baseball cap stood up. Apart from a few burns to his face, he appeared to be in reasonable shape. “I’ve got a pick-up outside,” he volunteered. “That’ll take at least a dozen folks.”

  “Great,” Jo enthused, hoping that his offer would encourage others. She was right.

  A large, black woman with gaps in her teeth raised her hand. “I trained for two years as a nurse. That any good?”

  “That’s great. Go to the reception area and report in.”

  “One condition, girl,” the woman said. She brought forward her two children, a boy and a girl both aged no older than seven. The girl was half naked, the left side of her body horribly burned. The boy had similar burns to his back and legs. Both children were crying in agony. “This place where you goin’. They got medical supplies there?”

  “Yes, they’ve got supplies,” Jo promised. “More than enough.”

  “Then you take my kids there and make sure they get treated good. This is no place for kids to be seein’.”

  Jo nodded sympathetically. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Ma’am.”

  Within a few minutes, she had rustled up twenty qualified medical staff – including three doctors – to assist the hospital staff. More importantly, she had organized a small convoy of vehicles and over ninety patients willing to transfer to Olney.

  In the grand scale of things, it wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  XV

  THE SPIRIT OF DESTRUCTION

  “Everybody’s going to make it (Nuclear War) if there are enough shovels to go around… Dig a hole, cover it with a couple of doors and then throw three feet of dirt on top. It’s the dirt that does it.”

  T.K. Jones, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (1982)

  BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON AIRPORT, DELAWARE

  Like most airports in the United States, Baltimore-Washington had been rapidly taken over by the military and other emergency services. Commercial jets were being used as military transports and as crucial elements in the supply process by FEMA officials. Airport terminals had been largely closed to civilian passengers vainly attempting to flee the country.

  Although military operations were still the responsibility of America’s executive branch, FEMA was effectively in charge of civilian recovery efforts on the ground. In as much, they had almost unlimited authority under the provisions of emergency powers granted them by President Mitchell shortly before his heart attack.

  It was the job of FEMA staff to ensure that the runway was clear for KNEECAP’s landing, and that the chopper responsible for getting the President to a medical facility was ready to go.

  The head of FEMA’s Baltimore bureau was Kyle Jagdar. A 26-year-old Californian who’d only obtained his MBA six months earlier, he felt like he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards after the events of the past several hours. Although he’d trained for the eventuality of nuclear attack, he had never taken it as seriously as the exercises geared towards, for example, an earthquake or a biological event. The most important lesson he’d learned in this, his first real disaster, was that reality was invariably more horrific than theory. And now, on top of everything else, he was responsible for ensuring the President’s safety. Who’d have thought it? Any of it? He’d have time to wonder about that later. But not now. He was too preoccupied to think about anything but the immediate task at hand.

  Jagdar was standing at the point on the runway where KNEECAP would brake to a halt. The voice of his Assistant Director, standing beside him, caused him to look up.

  “Here she comes.”

  In the distance, through the charred spring air, Jagdar could just make out the blinking red lights on KNEECAP’s wingtips as it began its descent, although the roar of the E-4’s engines hadn’t yet reached him.

  “Okay, people, we’re on,” he yelled into his handheld radio. “Let’s go.”

  A paramedic crew took up their positions just a few yards behind him. Across the runway, a Marine Black Hawk helicopter started its engines. The slow whir of the rotor blades began to increase, creating a brisk artificial breeze that swept through Jagdar’s blonde hair. Jagdar had also been asked by the USSS to ensure an FBI presence, although the reasons hadn’t been explained to him. Accordingly, two FBI agents and the airport’s Chief of Security had also joined the welcoming party, if one could think of it in such terms.

  Now he could hear KNEECAP’s engines, getting louder and closer. He swallowed hard. All he knew was that there was a medical emergency onboard the E-4 involving the President. He had no idea what sort of emergency, although the Secret Service had told him to have resuscitation equipment and oxygen supplies on standby. They had given him no more than ten minutes’ warning. The fact that all his staff had got to where they were supposed to be at such short notice during a nuclear war was testament not only to FEMA’s professionalism, but to the architects of the emergency provisions under which FEMA was now operating.

  The E-4, emblazoned with the distinctive ‘UNITED STATES OF AMERICA’ legend, came to a halt precisely where it was supposed to have done. Good flying, boys,Jagdar thought. Yep, everybody’s doing their duty today. A staircase was rushed to the cabin entrance, the door to which was already being opened. Jagdar sprinted to the bottom of the staircase, the paramedics right behind him.

  First out of KNEECAP was Agent Angela Nichols, who raced down the steps, taking them two at a time.

  “Are you Jagdar?” she asked, urgency in her voice.

  “Yeah. Agent Nichols?”

  “Right. The President is still alive, but unconscious. He’s suffered a suspected coronary. Your people ready?”

  Jagdar glanced up at the stairway. Two more agents were bringing the President down the steps on a stretcher. They were being deliberately careful, but nonetheless brisk for that. Behind them was the First Lady, her face gaunt and pallid, her eyes staring blankly into mid-space. Jesus, that’s a lady who’s been to Hell and back, Jagdar thought.

  “Yeah,” he said. “They’re ready.”

  “Good. Excuse me if I don’t stop for a chat,” she said dryly, “but we’re still EWO and we need to get back up in the air right away. Agents Carver, Herbert and Simonsen will stay with POTUS and FLOTUS. They’re good at what they do, so just let them do it.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Jagdar nodded, watching the paramedics attach an oxygen mask to the President’s face as they hurried him across the asphalt toward
s the waiting helicopter.

  Nichols waited until she saw that the President, First Lady and their respective security details were safely aboard the chopper. Then she shouted into her radio as it lifted off. “TeacherandMatron are in the air. Bring him out.”

  A tall black agent appeared at the cabin door, pushing Dr. Lewis Stein - whose hands were bound by handcuffs - before him. Jagdar reviewed Lewis’s face and saw -

  - nothing. Not a trace of emotion. Not even a hint of defiance. Jagdar wasn’t a soldier, but he knew danger when he saw it. Lewis reminded Jagdar of a caged animal, patiently awaiting an opportunity to break free of his shackles. The thought caused the FEMA official to shudder.

  Lewis casually glanced at the FBI agents rushing to meet him at the bottom of the steps. Even now, his face betrayed nothing.

  “What the hell is this?” Jagdar demanded, correctly guessing that somebody had not wanted either the President or First Lady to witness this element of the drama. Nielsen, aware of the close relationship between Lewis and Margaret, had insisted that he be kept apart from the First Couple. In fact, Margaret still knew nothing of the incident that had led to Lewis’s arrest.

  Nichols addressed the FBI agents. “This is Dr Lewis Stein. He’s to remain in custody until we can decide what to do with him.”

  “What’s the charge?” the airport’s Chief of Security asked her, his eyes fixed on the suspect.

  “Mutiny and attempted assassination of the commander-in-chief.”

  “Jesus,” Jagdar muttered under his breath. You’re in a world of shit, boy.

  “Okay buddy.” The senior FBI man coldly addressed his suspect. “Let’s go.”

  “Agent Jefferson will be going with you,” Nichols said. “He’s not to let Dr Stein out of his sight for a moment, okay?”

  “Fine,” the junior FBI agent agreed, acknowledging Jefferson with a nod of professional courtesy. The Secret Service was nominally in charge of the investigation given that it had involved a physical attack against the acting President. The FBI’s role was to take care of the legal technicalities and ensure that everything was done by the book. It was therefore required that representatives of both organizations accompanied Lewis every step of the way.

  Nichols watched the law enforcement officers lead Lewis to a waiting car, Jefferson a couple of steps behind them. She turned back to Jagdar.

  “Thanks for your help, and good luck,” she half-smiled before ascending the staircase as quickly as she’d descended it.

  “You too,” he called after her.

  As she reached the top of the staircase, Nichols yelled into her radio, “Delivery has been made. Let’s go, go, go!”

  Less than five minutes after landing, KNEECAP was back in the air again.

  ABOARD ‘MARINE ONE’, BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON AIRPORT

  The President’s breathing was becoming increasingly shallow, Margaret noted, as it echoed inside his oxygen mask. She was sitting beside him, tightly gripping his icy hand. Her tears were all spent, and all that remained was a sense of cold bitterness. Bitterness at the demands placed on him, demands that had finally caused his heart to fail. Bitterness that all the work her husband had done to ensure a safe, peaceful world for subsequent generations had been undone in just a few hours. Bitterness that a man who wasn’t even fit to occupy the same room as her husband was probably, even as she thought it, plotting to undo not only the President’s work, but that of God.

  Perhaps, she thought, it was best that the President was unconscious and didn’t have to witness whatever came next. The fate of mankind was now in the hands of Paul Nielsen and whoever happened to be today’s Russian President. Only the egos of those two men stood between recovering whatever was left of civilization and the killer blow from which mankind would never recover.

  “ETA at Olney is twenty minutes, Ma’am,” Agent Sarah Herbert shouted above the noise of the Black Hawk’s engine.

  Margaret nodded distantly, hearing but not really registering Herbert’s words. Her eyes were staring blankly out of the window, onto the streets and towns below. The northbound highway leading out of Baltimore was congested with traffic. Likewise for the back roads out of Washington D.C., although not, Margaret noted, the highways. She could also see tiny dots that were people -flesh and blood, hopes and dreams - moving slowly north, part of the general exodus. The Interstate to Washington passed beneath the chopper; devoid of traffic, apart from occasional convoys of military vehicles and tanks heading towards the devastated capital. Elsewhere, secondary fires burned out of control with no firefighters available to deal with them.

  It was her first experience of the nuclear aftermath that, aboard KNEECAP, had been little more than a nightmarish abstraction, and Margaret realized that she was looking at the New America, a nation she no longer recognized as her own.

  GARDNER, MISSOURI

  “There,” Beth pointed straight ahead of her when she saw a row of floodlights in the distance. Squinting through the smoky air, she could just make out a barricade of Army vehicles. She guessed they were Army vehicles because of their shape, rather than because of any distinctive markings that she could identify. Food, shelter, medicine… help…

  Cathy tiredly followed her daughter-in-law’s pointed finger. She wasn’t really interested. Others may have been excited by the first signs of civilization since Civil Bend, but the only prospect that interested Cathy right now was that of joining her husband in Eternity.

  The survivors who had been staggering north in a disorderly clutter suddenly appeared to find a new lease of life. Their pace quickened as they hurried urgently to make contact with the apparition before them. Beth found herself dragging Cathy along, hardly noticing the reluctance in her mother-in-law’s shuffling steps.

  As she got nearer, she began to make out white shapes. Man-shaped figures dressed in strange suits that didn’t end at their necks. And then she realized. They were protective suits. Protective against what? Radiation? Closer still, she saw that all of them were armed and that none of the shuffling masses ahead of her seemed to be getting past them. She became vaguely aware of voices raised in anger. Although she couldn’t ascertain what was going on, it didn’t sound encouraging.

  About a hundred yards away from the Army blockade, Beth and Cathy had reached a point where the crowd was no longer moving forward. As others arrived behind them, Beth found herself being pushed forward against her will. The despairing moans of earlier had been replaced by angry shouts.

  “What the fuck is going on?” one man yelled.

  “Why won’t they let us through?” another cried

  “Keep moving… Keep moving…”

  “Push!”

  Beth was still gripping Cathy’s hand, afraid that she was going to lose her mother-in-law in the maelstrom. “Hold on Cath,” she shouted. Cathy’s muttered response was inaudible above the noise of an incensed multitude whose increasing rage seemed to surround her.

  A helicopter buzzed ahead, its engines temporarily drowning out the noise. A disembodied male voice addressed the crowds through a loudspeaker. The tone was firm and left no room for ambiguity.

  “The Interstate has been closed by Federal Order. There is to be no civilian Interstate travel until further notice. This road is reserved for military and essential personnel only. Red Cross and Army relief facilities have been set up at Gilman City and Wildwood. Those of you in need of shelter and medical assistance are advised to proceed to these facilities immediately.”

  The announcement seemed to have no effect on the crowds, other than to further antagonize them. Several people yelled abuse at the chopper. Somebody fired a handgun in its direction, provoking a minor wave of hysteria. It didn’t take much to trigger panic in these circumstances.

  Beth was being crushed as the weight of people behind continued to push harder. Although she still had Cathy’s hand in her own, she could no longer see her mother-in-law.

  The chopper circled over the crowds again. This time, the announce
ment was more austere.

  “You are to disperse immediately. If you do not, we will be compelled to use force to disperse you. Proceed immediately to the Red Cross and Army relief camps at Gilman City and Wildwood. This is your last warning.”

  They can’t use force against civilians, Beth’s mind screamed in outrage. This is America, for God’s sake. But it was not the same America of twenty-four hours ago, she knew. The rules had changed, and so had the definitions of right and wrong. What would yesterday have been condemned as tyrannical could now be deemed in The National Interest. Right had become a matter of perception, measured in terms of what was necessary to preserve the crumbling social order. Wrong encompassed anything beyond that.

  Another wave of screaming swept through the crowd, although she didn’t immediately realize what had provoked it this time.

  She soon would.

  Tear gas canisters started bombarding the crowd, causing people to stagger and choke. The ensuing panic was totally disproportionate to the effects of the gas. People tried to run away, but found their paths blocked by the multitude. Punches were exchanged. Gunshots were fired. A stampede began.

  Chaos.

  The tears were streaming so hard from Beth’s eyes that she could no longer see. As she raised her hands to her face, desperately gulping oxygen, an anonymous elbow smashed her in the forehead and knocked her to the floor.

  Instinctively, she covered her head with her hands to protect herself against the stampeding feet all around her. Part of her mind was vaguely aware of the screams and coughs that filled the air. She curled into a fetal position on the asphalt, and stayed there for what seemed like an eternity, too terrified to move.