Desert Angels

by George P. Saunders

  He turned and noticed a piece of paper, with handwriting on it. He began to read.

  As he finished, he did not realize he was standing.

  He looked up and around his quarters. In another moment, he opened a cabinet behind his desk, and pulled out an M-16 assault rifle, and a .9 millimeter Beretta automatic pistol.

  He moved toward the entrance of his room, and looked into the hallway, in either direction. He realized he was breathing rapidly.

  He also realized the obvious: There had been an intruder to the facility last night – someone who had the opportunity to have killed him if he so desired.

  But how the hell did anyone get in here? Electrified fencing, motion sensors on all entrances and exits; video surveillance on all ports of entry as well. It wasn’t possible?

  Could someone have come up through the underground water tank rooms? No, that wasn’t possible, either, the floors were steel and virtually welded into the bedrock of the mountain.

  Jack spent the next two hours searching high and low, every room, sub-lab, bunk room, kitchen, water-room and generator-room, for any sign of a trespasser. He thoroughly searched the enormous bunker that had been constructed to house shelter for hundreds of refugees, when and if they were ever to arrive from out of the nuclear wasteland.

  At the end of his search, and after he had determined there was no breach to the main or rear tunnels carved out of the mountain and which exited half a mile behind the main Dome superstructure, Jack determined that whomever had written the letter to him had obtained entry into his home by some other means than conventional entry.

  He returned to his quarters, after stopping by one of the kitchens to pick up a Coors, and re-read the ambiguous letter from his new acquaintance – His Guardian Angel.

  “What the hell am I dealing with?” Jack muttered to himself.

  He sat back in his chair, as Walter flapped over to the desk, and began to cluck and coo and stare at him with those beady red eyes that reminded Jack (for no particular reason) of Dorothy’s ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz.

  “Looks like we have company, Walter,” Jack said, pouring some wheat grain from a bag onto the desk. Walter pecked at it greedily.

  Jack skipped his exercise routine that day in favor of concentrated thought on who the hell had gotten inside his otherwise inviolate sanctuary. At the end of his point-by-point mental analysis of the conundrum, Jack came up empty.

  The Guardian Angel was a ghost.

  He did not really believe this but at the moment he had no other logical answers. Of some comfort, whomever had breached his private refuge had no immediate interest in harming him. For this relief much thanks, he thought idly.

  But someone had gotten in.

  Was the intruder still here, cleverly eluding his every search attempt?

  Not possible.

  No, it was possible. And probable.

  But how?

  God damn it, he hated mysteries.

  Someone – or something – now had access to his home, and promised to pay him future visits, unannounced and uninvited.

  And there was nothing he could immediately do about it.

  * * *

  Jack spent the remainder of December 22, into the wee hours of the morning, setting up additional video surveillance cameras in his sleeping quarters and the adjacent hallway. In this way, he reasoned, he would capture images of the alien intruder at some point in the near future.

  Walter accompanied him everywhere, every moment of the day and night. So hell-bent on his mission in discovering the identity of his uninvited guest, Jack barely noticed the bird’s constant presence.

  He set up the first camera in his room in a place that he was confident would never be detected, wired in the corner opposite his bunk bed, and able to survey the entire area through a wide screen.

  By five a.m. in the morning, Jack was so exhausted, he forgot that it was now officially December 23, the ostensible day of man’s nuclear demise.

  His last thoughts before falling asleep were of Angela.

  * * *

  Angela transformed into human form at around five thirty a.m. when Jack had finally lost consciousness. She was careful to occupy a position directly under the newly mounted video camera so that she remained undetected to the camera’s prying lens-eye. She immediately hit the switch that terminated power to the camera, thus rendering her movements in the room free of detection.

  She walked over to Jack, looked down at him and smiled, but then remembered there was one more camera to render non-operational, the one in the hallway.

  She exited Jack’s room and carefully made her way to the wall camera and, as she had done with the video camera Jack had placed to survey his personal space, deactivated the hall device in short order.

  Angela went back into Jack’s room, and wrapped herself in one of Jack’s blankets, strewn on the floor. She then walked over to the computer stations and sat down, typing in a few keys to power-up from the screensaver of herself (an old photo Jack had found awhile back) and called up the CNN web site.

  The anticipated war had started, so far confined to the Middle East. Iran had launched its arsenal of three nuclear weapons; one had hit Tel Aviv, and two had vaporized most of Jerusalem.

  Israel had counter-attacked with twenty missiles to every major city in Iran, and early reports described that country presently as a smoldering funeral pyre of 60 million souls; every metropolis having been pounded to dust by the sophisticated IRBM missiles that Israel possessed.

  Russia was in an uproar, and declaring openly that this was the beginning of World War III. China echoed Russia’s sentiment, and while the United States whinnied on about room for dialogue and a ceasefire, it appeared that all other nations were gunning up for the worst.

  Angela perused the news in silence and without any sense of surprise. She had seen all this in her psychic eye two years ago. This was just the inevitable reality of things now playing out in very real time.

  She exited the Dome, after deactivating the motion detectors as she had done the day before, along with the outside video camera monitoring the front entry to Eden.

  The dawn was slowly breaking over the eastern horizon, and she noted that this would be the last normal sunrise she would ever see again. In her mind’s eye, she could already prognosticate dusk and dawn consisting of a pale green to purple hue, once the radioactive dust clouds had cleared. The first few days after Blast Day (today) would be filled with nuclear rain that would consist of white ash and black, oily vapor that would turn the landscape as ebony as volcanic glass. This would pass after 48 hours, and then the sun would slowly fight for some kind of supremacy over the cloud cover, and emerge partially victorious with scattered moments of visibility to those on the ground.

  Jack would not have his first refugee for a few weeks, as the survivors to Blast Day in nearby Ashwood would remain in their houses primarily out of panic.

  Not so with Dr. Mathias and the surviving members of his dysfunctional religious commune. They would be Jack’s first visitors, seeking help for radiation poisoning.

  When Jack woke up, Angela knew it would be to a profoundly disturbing day filled with madness and global chaos.

  Angela took a pen on Jack’s desk and a piece of paper nearby. She told herself she could just as easily type out her message and leave it on the screen for Jack to read … but that approach to her seemed oddly detached and impersonal for a day like today.

  A hand-written note was more intimate. Personal. From the heart.

  She began to write her second letter to Jack, warning him of the horror of this last day of human normalcy, December 23rd.

  TWO – BLAST DAY

  He held her hand in those last few precious moments, holding her gaze as life slowly slipped from her body.

  “I don’t know what comes next,” Angela said, a strange smile on her lips, “but I’ll always love you, Jack.”

  Jack nodded, caressing his wife’s hand with his other hand,
fighting off a sniffle of despair. “Feel free to come back and haunt me,” he whispered.

  “Kiss me good-bye,” she said softly.

  Jack leaned in and kissed her on the lips.

  Angela breathed in one last time, and then she was gone.

  * * *

  Jack awakened with a start, and suspected that the reason for his uneasy surge back to consciousness was due to Walter pecking at his ear, as the bird had done the night before.

  How easy it is to blame that damned pigeon for everything.

  Then he remembered that his rousing was due to his immense and immediate curiosity to see if the Guardian Angel had again written to him and to see who the Angel was thanks to the video camera.

  He was not to be disappointed.

  The letter was a little more lengthy in breadth and scope:

  Dear Jack:

  I fear you are in for a very long and depressing day. War has already broken out in the Middle East. Israel and Iran are buried under tons of nuclear rubble. The missiles from the United States, Russia, China, Venezuela, North Korea and Australia will soon be launched. You will probably see the nearby mushroom clouds to the west and to the east. Las Vegas will be a radioactive inferno by the end of the day, as will a few nearby air force bases and ICBM missile facilities. Your best bet for the first few days would be to stay within the Dome; the lead-shielding interlaced with the titanium plating will protect you from the immediate and intense fallout. After around 48 hours, it will be safe for you to go outside. I believe that a radius of no less than three miles from Eden will be relatively uncontaminated. Yes, I know this defies logic and the physical realities of radioactive half-life, but this is how things will be in your immediate new world and neighborhood.

  You will also find that the wildlife in the vicinity will be distinctly horrible, unnatural and violent. Take adequate guard against the monsters. There will be other anomalies out there, but we’ll take this slowly, you and I, and learn what the world has turned into virtually overnight.

  Ever yours, The Guardian Angel.

  Jack fairly sprinted to the far end of the room and detached the video camera from the wall. He rewound the video feed from the last night, then walked over to his stand-alone PC and placed the small disk into the machine. He typed in a few keys, and then waited, as the image of his room appeared on the computer screen, with digital time-code appearing on the bottom of the screen, denoting the night’s events chronologically.

  As he realized that he had fallen asleep at roughly five in the morning and it was nearly nine a.m. now, he fast-forwarded to 5:15 a.m.

  It took him a few minutes to cycle through at medium speed the lapsed time from five in the morning until nine. At that point, the video images went black. Power showed being restored at roughly eight in the morning.

  “Well, shit,” he exclaimed aloud.

  The Guardian Angel had gotten past his video camera and rather cleverly at that. The Angel had simply turned off the camera so as to allow unlimited access to his room, undetected.

  Jack examined the video contents of the hall video as well, with the same demoralizing results. This Angel was clever. It was only after half an hour of self-absorbed frustration, that Jack considered the portent of the message contained in the Angel’s latest missive to him.

  But it was at that point as well, that the ground beneath him shook for a brief second, as if an earthquake had just occurred, but of insignificant duration.

  Jack exited the Dome, and looked out over the western horizon.

  Hovering well over the furthest sand dune was the brilliant and frightening form of a mushroom cloud, massive in its girth, even though it was easily eighty miles away, Las Vegas, Jack suspected.

  Jack knew the bombs detonated over or on Las Vegas were measured in terms of megatons, versus kilotons (the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were around 22 kilotons) which made their destructive force thousands of times more devastating than their little brother antecedents at the end of World War Two.

  “Oh, my God,” Jack heard himself declare. “They’re doing it. Just like Angela said.”

  He remained transfixed, staring into the west. Another distant percussive sound, like that of a sonic boom, caused him to turn around and gaze to the eastern horizon.

  Another mushroom cloud was forming, again many miles away, and of no immediate danger to Jack or the Dome.

  Very far away, north by northwest, yet another cloud formed, rising high into the atmosphere. Jack’s view to the south was blocked by mountains, but he was sure that missile bases or key military facilities were suffering similar attack in Northern Arizona.

  Jack forced himself out of his initial shock, and this caused his brain to start thinking in terms of immediate needs and priorities.

  Radioactive fallout. That would be forthcoming within minutes. The fallout and, he was sure, any EMP attacks by the enemy in the upper atmosphere would soon terminate his connection to the outside world. Because of his special insulation of lead within the walls of the Dome, any EMP assault would be impervious to shutting down his electrical infrastructure.

  However, he would still be virtually in the dark as to what was happening globally.

  Jack re-entered the Dome, though the temptation to remain outside and watch the impact clouds from the distant explosions rise 80,000 feet into the sky was almost irresistible. He did not even notice that Walter had been on his shoulder since he had been reading the Guardian Angel’s note.

  He sealed the Dome’s front entrance and ran back to his quarters, Walter flapping behind him and keeping stride by wing. He grabbed a remote and turned on his 36 inch television.

  Predictably, all of the channels were filled with static, but one news frequency – Jack guessed it was very local – still had relatively stable feed. A young, frightened woman was speaking to the camera, some video footage lighting up in back of her.

  “… the attacks are widespread. I have confirmation that New York, Chicago and Washington D.C. were hit on the east coast. Kansas City, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver and Tulsa have also been attacked. On the west coast, Los Angeles and San Francisco are non-responsive, and our affiliate out of Seattle reported moments ago that air raid sirens had sounded.”

  Jack looked outside through his room’s only steel-enforced window. A strong wind was kicking up tumbleweeds, and blowing to hell some nearby buckhorn cholla cactuses, and small dust devils were clustering at alarming rates in and around the perimeter of the electrified fencing. This was no doubt from the numerous explosions, this disturbance being the result of the shockwave passing through his neighborhood.

  There was little he could do at the moment, so Jack remained in his chair by the computer stations and watched his immediate landscape slowly transform before his eyes.

  Walter flapped to a ledge bordering the bottom of the window and Jack couldn’t help note how human the bird’s reaction was to what it was seeing outside.

  It almost looks like it is studying what it sees, thoughtfully and with a kind of intellectual acuity one would find in a human being.

  For the next hour, he tried to surf the internet, which was now unresponsive. He again turned his gaze out over the Nevada desert. The sky had turned much darker, and ash was beginning to fall from dark churning clouds that were only a thousand feet from ground level.

  Radioactive soot. The leavings of humanity’s funeral pyre. Black death for anyone caught in the open.

  The end of the world.

  Angela, my darling, you were right. How I wish more than ever you were here with me now.

  From some shocked and remote recess of Jack’s mind, he remembered that Angela’s father, Thurmond, had declined to come to Eden on this day of December 23, even though he believed whole-heartedly in Angela’s prediction of doomsday.

  “I won’t be staying with you, Jack,” Thurston had told him months earlier from his home in Miami, Florida. “When the end comes, I’ll be ready to join my wife and Angela. Y
ou will have to remain alive and fight the good fight without me.”

  Jack sighed, a sudden weariness overwhelming him, more spiritual than physical. He imagined the many people across the globe that were instantly vaporized at ground zero by detonated super-bombs. Could the human soul survive physical evaporation? He doubted it. Of course, Jack was still not entirely convinced of the existence of the human soul at all.

  Jack opted against opening a beer, and instead found a bottle of 12 year old scotch. He began to drink. It was not until another hour had passed that he realized he had been crying. The immediate memories and concern over the Guardian Angel’s intrusion into his inviolate home evaporated.

  At the height of day, it now looked as if it was nine o’clock in the evening.

  The sun, in sorrow, would not show his head. Go now and speak of such sad things; some will be pardoned, some punished. For never was there a story more full of woe, than this of Blast Day and nowhere to go…

  Jack chuckled at his own manipulation of Shakespeare’s closing monologue to Romeo and Juliet.

  Walter flapped down on his lap and looked up at him.

  “Hard day, my friend, a hard day,” Jack mumbled.

  Walter started to coo, and for a moment, Jack thought the bird was doing its own version of crying – or offering the Indian alternative to a death song. The pigeon’s white plumage expanded and contracted, as it sung its song of sorrow.

  At length, Jack fell asleep, the bottle of Glenfiddich resting in his lap. It was a drunken stupor and when Walter transformed into Angela, she took the bottle and placed it on the desk, next to the laptop. She was not concerned that Jack would suddenly awaken; the alcohol would keep him comatose for hours.

  Angela gazed out the window and saw the creature at the front entrance of the electrified gate.

  It was large and had glowing red eyes that somehow pierced the darkness and seemed to be staring right at her. It was huge, easily over six feet tall. It wore what appeared to be nothing more than torn jeans, and its chest was bare, though veins and arteries could clearly be seen at this distance of forty feet away. Angela heard herself gasp, as she kept staring. Fear was quickly replaced by her scientific sense of analysis.