The Final Day

by William R. Forstchen

  Linda motioned to a couple of chairs set up behind the three and then pulled up a chair herself in front of the color monitor. “Ernie just finished another calibration this morning on a geosynch sat comm device we think is of interest.”

  “Froze my ass off up on the roof in this damn weather,” Ernie growled. “Samantha, that’s your job from now on.”

  He tapped the shoulder of one of the girls sitting in front of an Apple screen. The young woman’s hair was unruly, pulled back in a ponytail, and definitely needed a good washing. John remembered her as someone who had been quietly defined as 4-F for service with the college’s militia due to asthma and a propensity for catching any bug floating around and had been down with pneumonia more than once. If not for the town’s production of antibiotics, the last bout would have killed her. She had finally been tasked with helping to weave the wire for the generators being produced down in Anderson Hall and was doing a rather poor job even with that, but now she apparently had found her niche.

  “Ernie, you keep this girl out of the cold,” Linda said protectively. “She’s needed more right here.”

  “So I freeze at my age, and she sits here snug and warm.”

  “Just shut up and leave her be.”

  Even as the two started to argue, Samantha pointed at the screen where an endless stream of numbers and letters without any semblance of order or reason were cascading down at a near-blinding rate at times. “There it is again, same pattern.” Samantha hit a button on the keypad, which froze the image with an old-fashioned screen capture.

  Ernie leaned over her shoulder to look.

  “What is it?” John asked, curiosity filling him.

  “Encrypting,” Ernie announced, continuing to stare at the screen.

  “Bluemont?”

  “No way of knowing yet. If we were sitting on top of a hill looking down at the Bluemont facility, that would be easy enough. Aim a little eavesdropping antenna at one of theirs and start listening in. Most people just assumed everything on computers just flashed around on fiber optics or microwaves, but a lot was going up and down as well, especially government stuff, and of course it was encrypted. You have the right software on your computer, and what looks like gibberish in raw form becomes standard text.

  “Do you remember Kindles? You buy a book, and thirty seconds later it’s in your computer, but what was sent was not the actual real text and photos; it was all encrypted to keep hackers from snatching it and then torrenting it out on their own.”

  “Torrenting?”

  “The bane of every author, for starters. Easy, actually. Some bum just scans the text of a book into his computer and then just put it out there as a PDF file. They make a buck or two, the author gets ripped off. Go downstairs and ask my daughter’s husband about it, and he’ll start raving like a crazy man about getting robbed of hundreds of thousands of dollars from torrenting.”

  Ernie continued to stare at the screen while talking. “All those Internet sources for books, music—like Kindle, Nook, iTunes—were dependent on encrypting, and they were damn good at it and were updating their codes almost daily. So that is what we’ve got to get around.”

  John looked at the other screens. The color one that Linda was sitting in front of was actually showing a wavering video image filled with static.

  “And that?”

  Linda smiled. “Raw feed from the BBC. Off-the-air stuff. A reporter somewhere up in Canada cursing about getting kicked out of the country. Stuff like that is going out all the time.”

  “Can we talk to him?” John asked hopefully.

  Linda shook her head. “We don’t have any kind of uplink here, just listening.”

  “Should we get our ham operator guys to try to establish contact with them?”

  “Already doing that,” Ernie replied.

  “Remember one of them talked with us several days after we snatched that Black Hawk,” Maury interjected. “Then nothing. We can only run the radio in the chopper for so long before we have to fire it up to recharge.”

  John looked around at the equipment scattered on the table—boxes of additional equipment, computer boards, old empty mini-frame stacks, heavy-duty backup batteries that used to be standard external equipment for most home computers so that if the power blinked off the battery kept the system running. John spared a glance into the open door of a bedroom across the hall and saw where there were yet more boxes piled up, some of them stamped Montreat College.

  A couple of more students whom he had vague recollection of once being in his classes were in that room, leaning over a ubiquitous green computer board, probing at it with a voltmeter.

  John caught Ernie’s eye and motioned for him to follow, not sure where to go until Ernie gestured toward a back room, a spacious affair, and within were yet more boxes, stripped-down computers, television monitors, some flat screens, others old-style heavy fourteen- and sixteen-inch monitors. There was barely room for a desk and a couple of chairs, with Ernie gesturing for John to sit down in one, while from under the desk he pulled out a bottle of brandy, opened it, and without asking poured a couple of ounces into two rather dingy-looking glasses.

  John did not argue the point this time and was glad for the warmth of the drink coursing through him seconds later. Ernie also pulled out a cigar and looked to John quizzically at least for this offer. John reluctantly refused, and Ernie shrugged, bit off the end of his smoke, produced an old-fashioned friction match, and lit it up, the blue smoke curling around John.

  “Something bothering you?” Ernie asked.

  John wasn’t sure how to start as he sipped his drink. “For starters, I finally relented and said it was okay to recruit a couple of kids for this scheme of yours. Then I find out you all but hijacked the equipment from the college library basement and hauled it all over here without a by-your-leave. I now see five or more kids working here. Where did you get them from?”

  “Paul Hawkins recommended them.”

  John nodded slowly. “And what jobs did you take them from?”

  “Here and there,” Ernie said with a bit of a grin.

  “I would have liked to have known.”

  “John, you know you are sounding a bit like a bureaucrat with that. Were we supposed to ask permission?”

  “Ernie, you know how many mouths we have to feed between now and when food starts to get produced come late spring. Every hand counts.”

  “And we’ve got hundreds working on making generators, retrofitting vehicles to burn alternate fuel, even some on your obsession with steam-powered tractors or some sort of mini locomotive.”

  “We try to find a job everyone can do, but unless under attack, our first priority is food and more food.”

  “And those tech nerds out there, how much food or whatever can they make versus what they are doing now?”

  John nodded, finishing his drink and putting his hand over his glass in refusal while Ernie poured several ounces more for himself.

  “Dare I quote someone we both disdain?” Ernie pressed. “‘From each according to his ability.’ You know the rest.”

  “I’m not saying that, Ernie.”

  “Well, in defense of what I am doing here, I’m saying it. Those kids are bloody geniuses when hunched over those old screens and damn near useless when it comes to canning beans, trapping rabbits, or toting a gun through the woods without accidentally shooting themselves or someone else. I’m maximizing their effectiveness, and their effectiveness might actually mean figuring what in hell is really going on out in the rest of the world and how it might hit us. Hell, you’re the historian; you tell me what role kids like that played in previous wars.”

  John took that in and finally nodded. “You telling me you got a Bletchley Park out there in the next room?”

  “Could be. Maybe one of them is the next Turing who will figure out how to crack the German Enigma code by building a machine to mimic how it works. Maybe not that dramatic, but if you are here on some kind of inspection tou
r and are about to order them back to whatever they were doing, I’m kicking you out of my house. The Franklin Clan will close up the gates and survive on our own again.”

  “And those kids stay here!”

  John looked up to see Linda standing in the doorway, most likely having listened to the entire conversation.

  “You feeding them as I requested?” John asked.

  “That’s right,” Linda replied with a smile.

  “You have that kind of surplus?”

  “Be prepared, as my husband said.”

  John looked down at the freshly opened bottle of brandy stashed beneath Ernie’s desk, the cigar resting in the ashtray, and wondered how, after two and a half years, this family still seemed to have enough to keep going without ever asking for additional help. But as he had resolved back in the first days when the responsibility fell upon him to try to organize his community to survive and defend itself, when it came to those who had prepared before the Day, his policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” had to stand. He was not a commissar out to redistribute what was left or, as most likely happened in far too many places, point a finger at the 1 percent who’d had the foresight to be ready and shout for the other 99 percent to kill and loot them, just so all could fill their stomachs for a few extra days and then go back to starving.

  “We’ll feed and house them,” Linda announced, pressing in on John’s musings. “That poor skinny rail Samantha was half-starved to death; most of her peers pitied her but saw her as not good for much of anything other than consuming a ration a day. Here she is back where she belongs, and the others view her as some sort of guru and definitely a leader they turn to for advice. John, in the vicious triage of the world you have to deal with—and God save you, I know what a hell it must be—that girl most likely would have died before spring and except for a few close friends been mourned by few.”

  Linda’s words were a slap of reproach, and they stung. He lowered his head. “Point made, Linda. She stays.”

  So many like her had indeed died, so ill-suited to be hunters—at times hunters of other men—or gatherers and sowers. Samantha was the luxury of an advanced technological age that so many like her had actually created. A world that all others once lived off of, even though they did not understand the hows or whys, but would curse if their sixty-inch flat screen hooked to a satellite dish went on the blink during a Super Bowl, or news of what some star had done that day to further titillate a society even as it headed to the brink of disaster and then fell.

  The “nerds in the basement,” which too many once mocked—even while dependent upon them for their jobs, their entertainment, and indeed their very lives when it came to the infrastructure—had been held in mocking disdain by far too many. Little did anyone realize their importance until the moment everyone was brought to their knees in sharp flashes of nuclear light far above the atmosphere.

  “All right, it stays as it is. Now tell me your goals,” John said.

  Ernie, seeing that John’s hand was no longer covering his glass, poured him a few more ounces, and for once John did not resist. Linda and Ernie were running the show for the moment, and he realized it was time to just listen and perhaps relax a bit.

  “Something is about to happen,” Linda announced. “Ernie and I worked in our fields for about fifty years. Good years with NASA, IBM, and then our own business with the satellite antennas. We were good because we learned to have a gut feel for things at times and stay a jump ahead of the game.”

  “What she is trying to say—” Ernie started to interject.

  “Damn it, Ernie, I know what I am about to say,” she snapped, and John could not help but smile. Ernie might intimidate most folks in town, but in this house, he could see it was an open fight at times, and at times Linda won. “We knew Apollo would work, but the shuttle was an insane design. Putting a manned crew atop solid rocket boosters that could not be turned off once lit, the way a liquid engine could be shut down, was asking for disaster. We and others warned and were ignored. We along with others tried to point out the fatal flaw of the insulation coating in the liquid fuel tank as well. It might just be spray-on foam, but if a piece the size of a kitchen counter snapped off and struck a wing during liftoff, it could prove fatal. The math was simple; regardless of mass, it was about velocity at impact that counted. Again we were ignored, and then we watched in horror as Columbia broke up on reentry because of that exact reason.”

  She was digressing from the discussion of the moment, but he let her continue, knowing she was reaching toward a significant point and expressing frustrations that still haunted her.

  “IBM was going to miss the boat with the PC market. We tried to tell the management idiots in business suits that. Their reply? No one really wanted a computer in their house but would rely on them to provide big mainframe systems, run of course by IBM people in white jackets. Of course that meant all of America would pay to be able to dial in and pay yet another fee via old AT&T to hook in to our machines. I remember them pitching that in one of their World of Tomorrow programs at a world’s fair. So here we are in the world of tomorrow,” she said with a sigh.

  She gestured back to the room where the students were working. “They just might crack something, and it might mean the difference between our surviving or not. Your friend the general was giving you a warning. He is going to come down on us. He wants it to be without bloodshed, but regardless, he has his orders already. But what are the orders? Not just against us but long term. He didn’t say anything about what that poor dying fellow … what was his name?”

  “Quentin.”

  “What that poor man said about an EMP. And your friend didn’t reply. Why?”

  “I think he isn’t sure himself,” John replied, hoping that was the real reason, and not because he was already aware of some plan and going along with it.

  “Then let’s find out.”

  John downed the rest of the drink Ernie had poured for him, and it did go to his head. It was a welcome relief. He realized Linda was right. Something was coming, and unlike the threat of the Posse, or even Fredericks who showed his hand, before he fully struck, this time he just was not sure what the hell was about to happen next.

  “And something else is worrying me, John.”

  “What is it?”

  “You. The general was giving you a personal warning as well. I pray for you every day, and that prayer now includes that you take heed of his warning.”

  John smiled but said nothing.

  “Be careful, John, very careful.”

  “Of course,” he said, trying not to sound dismissive. “And okay. You win. Put them to it, and while you do, you feed and house them. Is that all right with you two?”

  Linda smiled. “You see, Ernie? I knew he’d see it our way.”

  “Five extra mouths to feed.” Ernie sighed. “Sure we can’t draw some rations for them, John?”

  “Five, I only saw three in that room.”

  “There’s two more up on the roof installing another ten-foot-wide satellite dish we salvaged yesterday from a trailer down near Old Fort.”

  As John had already conceded who fed and housed the students, there was no sense in arguing about two more and he let it go.

  “Those things will be damn visible on your roof,” John ventured.

  “Don’t worry, we already thought of that,” Linda replied. “They’re screened with some camouflage made from bedsheets to blend in with the snow covering our roof.”

  John shook his head. If anything, he was feeling a twinge of guilt over the kids like Samantha. Until the realization that there were at least some computers capable of being restored, put back online, and then turned to a useful, perhaps crucial purpose, kids like her had languished, no longer fitting in. And without doubt, more than a few of them had died in this harsh new world. If they again had purpose—perhaps a crucial purpose—then he felt at this moment their society had at least taken yet another small step out of the darkness.


  “I think you Franklins have more than enough rations to go around for five extra mouths, at least until the next harvest starts to come in.”

  Ernie barely cracked a smile. “Be prepared, John. If all of us had thought that way, we wouldn’t be counting every bean or ear of corn and calculating if we should throw them to a pig or eat them ourselves. Yeah, we can feed them.”

  “Point taken,” was all John could say.

  “Fine, then. Now, I’ve got a stew ready to ladle out. You and Maury stay. Agreed?”

  John felt no guilt with accepting. Too often, someone else would offer a meal of watery soup or a stew with some fragments of squirrel or raccoon mixed in with wild onions and greens, and he always politely refused such paltry fare, not because he wasn’t hungry but because it was one extra meal that whomever he was visiting could better use with their raggedy-clad children.

  The entire extended family, Franklins and their newly adopted charges, gathered around their dining room table, Ernie standing to offer grace while all joined hands. The room was actually warm in spite of the cold wintry blast swirling outside their south-facing windows, the fireplace glowing hot with heavy crackling logs stacked in. John felt a wave of nostalgia with the gathering. He often lost track now of exactly what day of the week it was. In warm weather, going to church on Sunday had become a looked-forward-to weekly event in the college’s chapel, which was still under repair from the battle back in the spring.

  But with the harsh weather of the last month and Makala’s advanced state of pregnancy, the walk from their home up to Gaither Hall had been set aside. It wasn’t just the gathering around a family table for a filling meal that hit hard; it was the way everyone held hands with heads lowered, offering a prayer of thanksgiving that filled him with emotion.

  Perhaps Linda and Ernie were putting on a bit of show for their guest and new lodgers, but then again, he knew they were above that. It was a continuation of old Southern traditions, of family and friends gathered together for a Sunday afternoon of sharing and thanksgiving.