The Final Day

by William R. Forstchen

  She glared up at him, struggling for control. “Matherson, you are cruel beyond any words to describe.”

  “Madam, it was men like your husband who turned this world into a place of such cruelty,” John said coldly.

  She lowered her head but then looked up at a trooper standing in the doorway.

  “Ma’am, your daughter is going to make it. The medic stabilized her; some folks are helping us to take her to the hospital.”

  She nodded, tears continuing to well. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  John looked out the front window. Someone, a civilian, was bringing up a stretcher. Another was holding up an IV bag while the young medic was hunched over Laura, still working on her, but the girl was obviously conscious.

  But next to her, Grace lay as she fell, Reverend Black and Kevin kneeling by her side and crying.

  “Get a blanket, something over Grace,” John whispered. “When we leave here, she goes back with us.”

  “Understood, sir.” A pause. “I’m sorry; she seemed like a good kid. I saw it happen. She was trying to knock the little girl down to protect her when she got hit. She gave her life trying to save someone else.”

  “That was Grace,” John whispered.

  “I’ll see she’s taken care of, sir.”

  John could only nod.

  The woman looked at John. “Who was she?”

  He stared straight at her. “In a way, you could say she was a daughter as well.”

  The woman lowered her head. “I want to go with my girl. Let me leave.”

  “In a few minutes. She’s in the best of hands until then. The way you behave, your being around her might upset things again, maybe trigger another incident.”

  The woman was obviously in shock, and she just seemed to sag, the fight out of her.

  “Your husband is the acting secretary of state,” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “And he is at Bluemont?”

  Again a nod.

  “How did all of you get here and when?” John pressed.

  She looked over at him.

  “Answer my questions and in five minutes I’ll see someone gets you safely to your daughter. Again, how did you get here, and when?”

  “I was flown in along with my twin boys.”

  “When?” John tried to keep the tension out of his voice.

  “On the Day.”

  “When?”

  She seemed to recoil backward, and he realized it was again becoming difficult to contain his anger.

  “When?”

  “The morning of the Day,” she whispered.

  “The morning of?” He paused for a moment. “It was before five in the afternoon in North Carolina when we were hit and everything went down. And you are telling me you were flown in here that morning?”

  She could only nod.

  “How can that be? Part of me just doesn’t want to get it, to believe it. Are you telling me that some in Washington knew we were going to get hit and got their families out?”

  There was a long, drawn-out silence.

  “You see your daughter after you answer me.”

  “All right. Yes. Some knew. I don’t know all the details; even my husband wouldn’t tell me. He just would say there are some questions never to ask, and you are now asking one.” She looked back over at John. “I want to see those e-mails you claim he was sending to that Alicia bitch.”

  “General Scales has them.”

  “Of course he’d get her out too, the bastard. I knew about it even then.” She sighed and looked at John out of the corners of her eyes. “I need a cigarette.”

  “Don’t look at me; I quit.”

  She motioned to a side table. He started to indicate she could go herself, thought better of it, and without taking his eyes off her reached over, opened the side table, and sure enough, there was a pack of cigarettes—British imports—and a lighter. He tossed them over to her, and with hands shaking, she lit one up, and he looked at it hungrily.

  “You want one?” she asked.

  After two years and a half years, he finally broke, nodded, took one out of the pack, and, whispering an apology to Jennifer, he lit it, taking it in deep, the nicotine hitting hard so he felt a bit light-headed for a moment. He felt deeply ashamed about breaking his vow to Jennifer and hoped she would understand at this moment.

  “I don’t know who, whether it was NSA, CIA, or some other agency, picked up the warning we were going to be hit later in the day. Only a few knew. Apparently not even the president, who was flying back to Washington when it hit.”

  “Who are these few?” John asked, head swimming from the nicotine and all that he was now learning.

  “I don’t know for sure.” She hesitated, leaning forward to look out the door where her daughter was being loaded onto a stretcher, the child whimpering.

  “You can go with her as soon as we’re done talking,” John said, and she looked back at him. “Who are these few that you said knew?”

  “I’m not sure. You can guess, can’t you? Not the ones in power up front. Just those behind them that few ever really see. Not many I recognized, but my husband was one of them.” She paused and took another deep drag on her cigarette. “He got drunk one night and said that the country was going to hell anyhow. Some whispered that a reset button was needed to put them in control. Some operatives got a warning that North Korea and Iran were about to hit us by handing nukes and launch systems to terrorists who actually did the attack. They thought it would be a standard nuclear bomb strike, most likely against Washington and New York.”

  She took another drag. “So to play it safe, they set up some sort of practice drill. You know, he said like it was a war game or something. Practice evacuating certain key personnel, leaders to Bluemont, while families and a select few higher-ups were sent up here and stashed away.

  “Then, as you all say, the shit hit the fan for real. Not a mushroom cloud over Washington but far worse, he said. The kids and I were already here. Others were brought in secretly in the weeks afterward. We were told to wait.”

  She sighed after taking another long drag on her cigarette. “Wait. I’ve been in this shit hole for two and a half years, and now you tell me my husband’s slut mistress was here all along as well?

  “That’s all I know about what everyone calls the Day.”

  “Why aren’t you in Bluemont?” John asked.

  “My husband said the place was too small to take care of us all. Also, after it was all over, with representatives from other countries going there, even that damn pesky BBC could be there at times. If families were seen by them…” She paused again and looked at him coldly, and he realized that regardless of the enormity of what she was revealing, it was the news about the mistress that was driving her to now talk.

  “Family and other people of special interest,” she continued, “if we were there, outsiders might start asking why. Those in Bluemont, which is half the distance from Washington as this place, could claim a lot of excuses for getting to that place, even that they were part of a training exercise. But nearly two thousand of us? Some of them with very deep pockets who in reality controlled most of the political machines, at least before everything went down?”

  “Two thousand?” John asked in surprise.

  “Yeah, something like that.” She took another drag on her cigarette, which burned clear down to the filter. She didn’t bother with the ashtray, just let it fall to the shag-carpeted floor and ground it out. She got out another cigarette and lit it, continuing to smoke.

  “More would come in after everything hit. Those with the real deep pockets—you know what I mean—people who shoveled out the cash before the war to buy what they wanted in Washington and could pay even more to survive here in safety. The ones that came afterward said it was beyond hell up above.”

  She stopped looking at him, head lowered as if waiting for an angry response or even a physical blow.

  “It is indeed hell,” was all he could s
ay, and she took another drag on the cigarette. “So all of you have been here for over two years?”

  “Yeah. Hell of an existence, isn’t it?” She looked around at the sparsely furnished Quonset hut. “Water rationed to one shower per person every third day, one load of laundry a week in a communal laundry area. A communal laundry area with everyone else. Can you believe that?” She actually had rage in her voice over that indignity. “Meals are usually MREs, some of them twenty years old. Television is a library of old videotapes. I’ve watched every episode of Three’s Company and Sesame Street maybe twenty times each until I’m ready to scream. The cigarettes he brings to me he gets through some trade deals—bet he gives most of them though to that bitch of his.”

  John looked around at her quarters, her slightly frayed but clean clothes, the electric lights outside illuminating Main Street, the subdued rumble of the ventilators lining the street that kept the temperature in the midsixties year round.

  “Yeah, one hell of an existence,” John whispered.

  She could not even catch his bitter irony, she was so consumed with her own self-pity and rage at this moment.

  “You ever go outside?”

  “During the day, no. They say we can’t be seen by anyone that might be watching. On special occasions, they’ll let the kids out at night to run around and play for an hour or two.”

  “And your husband coming here?”

  “Him? Every week, they bring a big helicopter in from Bluemont for what they call ‘family visit weekend.’ He gets to come once every six weeks for what he claims is one night, but I have the answer now.” She glared at him, features bitter. “He got that bimbo who was his administrative assistant out as well, stashed her in the highly secured area at the far end of this damn cave, and spends the other night with her.”

  Her early attempt at sounding upper class, arrogant, and used to power had all but disintegrated. Her tone was now that of a bitter shrew.

  “I can’t wait to see him again,” she announced coldly as she simply let her cigarette fall to the carpet, watched as it burned a hole into the worn green shag, finally crushed it out with the heel of her shoe, and lit yet another one.

  “I’ll loan you my gun when you see him again if you want,” John said softly, and she looked at him, and he could see a dark glimmer in her eyes.

  “Who else is here?”

  “I don’t know. Those in charge keep us kind of separated. My neighbor Gal, her husband was a senator as well; Pamela across the street, her husband was with the CIA. There’s a section in the back, some nice modern trailers back there, that’s cordoned off separately. Some say that’s where the bigwigs, the elite, are stashed. You can smell their cooking at time, real food, not the shit they give to us.”

  “I would think acting secretary of state would be a high rank.”

  She sniffed derisively.

  “Yeah, right. He’s a puppet. I mean the real high rankers.”

  “The president’s family, maybe?”

  “You mean that fool in office when it hit? They never got them out—at least that’s what my husband said. But the acting president now, yeah, that family is back there somewhere.”

  John looked down at his cigarette, which had burned out. He let it fall to the carpet.

  She looked over at him, and he could see tears. “Maybe it was as I heard someone whisper, it was to reset things, others like my husband would take over, figuring just D.C. would be hit. I don’t know. I asked my husband more than once what happened and why. He gets drunk a lot now, and all he says is that it’s ‘better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.’ He says that a lot.”

  He looked at her, no longer with contempt but almost a sense of pity. He looked back out the window. The stretcher with her daughter was up, being moved, medic still by the girl’s side, a civilian walking along the other side of the stretcher holding the plasma bag high. Maury was sitting across the street while a trooper was cutting his pant leg back and wrapping a bandage around the wound. Maury was crying, but not for himself; he was looking down at Grace, whom someone had thankfully covered with a poncho.

  “They’re moving your daughter. Go with her,” John whispered.

  She stood up without comment and started for the door, paused, and looked back. “You want any more cigarettes, go ahead and take them. That bastard of a husband brings me a new carton every time he comes here.”

  “I hope your daughter is okay,” John said in reply, but her back was already turned to him, and she disappeared from view, suddenly shouting melodramatically that she needed to be by her baby.

  John could see that Forrest was leaning against the wall, just outside the open door. Their eyes met, and Forrest, scarred and wounded veteran of Afghanistan, came into the room and sat down by John’s side.

  “I heard most of it,” Forrest said softly.

  John could not reply.

  “Scales sent a runner back; he wants you with him.”

  “In a minute.”

  Forrest reached over to the carton of cigarettes. There were still several packs inside. He opened one, lit it with his battered 101st Airborne Zippo, and looked over at John, offering him a puff, which John gladly took.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Having been escorted through the vast cavern labyrinth by the runner sent back by General Scales, John passed row after row of old-style barracks and Quonset huts. Most of them were empty, windows dust covered with no sign of habitation.

  There was a grim triage logic to it. Designed back in the 1950s to house twenty-five thousand for how long? A month, six months, maybe a year? Two thousand could stay down here for years, a decade if need be. Also, moving twenty-five thousand in? Surely it would have drawn notice. Bob had been in the Pentagon on that day of days and was clueless as to what was going on at the moment everything hit. The number who were in the know and slipped away earlier that day or even before that? A hundred or two at most? Their families added in?

  It was the sick mathematics of living versus dying. Who is the inner elite who cared no more for their duty and moral responsibility and thought only of themselves? Triage at its most sickeningly self-centered. It was time to confront it.

  As they hiked to wherever Bob had gone, John could see scores of civilians lingering, watching. Some were even tanned. My God, did they even have tanning beds down here to get a dose of vitamin D and look good in the process?

  He looked at his friends Forrest, Reverend Black, and Kevin, so clearly showing the ravages of two and a half years of survival, and he knew how he must look to them. Kevin was struggling to keep it together, an affirmation of what John suspected: that he and Grace had become close. Reverend Black was whispering to him, a supportive arm around his shoulders. He was barely keeping to his task, and John was tempted to relieve him and send him back to Grace’s body and see that it was tended to with loving respect, but at this moment, he needed him far more than sentiment could allow.

  After nearly a half mile of walking, John could see, of all things, a Cyclone fence that went from floor to ceiling, warning signs to either side of the entryway that they were about to enter a secured area. That almost made him laugh if it hadn’t been so ironic. The gate was wide open, two of Bob’s troopers posted to either side. A dead body covered with a poncho lay to one side, a massive pool of congealing blood having leaked out from underneath the poncho. He paused and made eye contact with the troopers.

  “One of theirs,” a trooper announced, her voice clipped, grim. A field bandage was wrapped around her upper left arm.

  “You all right?” he asked her.

  “Yes, sir. But that son of a bitch isn’t.” She nodded to the body. “He nearly shot the general.”

  There was a gaze of intense hatred in her eyes, and it was obvious she had killed him and now showed no remorse. How could he blame her? How could he blame any of them? After all they had been through, after all they thought they had been fighting for, and now to see this?

  “The
general is in that bunker complex over there, sir,” she announced, nodding back beyond the fence, wincing as she did so from the wound to her arm.

  He looked over at the other guard, a sergeant. “Can’t we get her over to a hospital?” John asked.

  The sergeant nodded back down the street that John had just traversed.

  “Sir, we’ve got less than fifty in here,” the sergeant whispered. “No telling how many we’ve yet to secure who will fight back once they get organized for a rush on us. The general said everyone who can hold a gun stays on station until we get things straightened out.”

  The sergeant turned his attention away from John, shouldered his weapon, and aimed past him. “You there! Halt and keep back, or I will shoot!” the sergeant snapped.

  John looked over his shoulder. A group of milling civilians was getting closer and at the sergeant’s command sullenly started to draw back.

  “If they were all armed, we’d be in the shit,” the sergeant said softly. “Word is that there are some additional personnel in a highly secured area.” He paused. “You know anything about that, sir?”

  “I do,” was all that John felt comfortable with saying. “Just be ready; there could be some well-trained personnel in there.” He looked just beyond the gate; there was a Humvee parked inside. “See if you can get that thing to start. If not, drop it into neutral and roll it to block this gate. Stay behind it as cover just in case.”

  He looked over at Forrest, who was nodding in agreement. “Mind staying here?” John asked him. “Kevin, Reverend Black, maybe you two as well?”

  “Okay.” Forrest smiled. “Sir.”

  The two guards were obviously grateful for the reinforcements, and leaving them behind, John started for the bunker complex. As he approached, he eyed the building. Unlike the living quarters, it was made of poured concrete. A lone guard from Scales’s unit guarded the door, offering a salute as John approached and opening the door for him.

  As he went through the door, it felt as if his ears were about to pop. The room was overpressured, the air pressure higher within to keep any ambient dust or anything else, such as chemical or biological agents, from filtering in. He could see wire meshing in the heavy glass of the door. It wasn’t armor against bullets; it was faraday caging of the entire building, proofing it against an EMP. Of course it was known about back in the 1960s, and he could recall some of the secured briefing rooms down in the basement of the Pentagon having the same kind of protections.