“Less than sixty hours later an assassin’s bullet silenced Ryan forever, and our government was shuffled around into the hands of madmen who took swift and decisive action, you have to give them that much. There was no hesitation.
“I liked Jim Ryan. He was a moral man who had the misfortune of allowing his morality to sometimes override his political savvy. I well remember the famous line that many credit with winning him the presidency: ‘All problems confronting the human race are and always shall be at their core moral dilemmas, matters of conscience, human decency, and compassion; they only become political issues when someone or a large group of someones can gain wealth, power, fame, or real estate – preferably all four – by exploiting them.’
“How right he has been proven. Except who will buy the real estate when it is decided that the war is over? Who will buy any piece of the scorched and razed land that will greet them when they finally emerge from their underground havens and walk out into sunlight again? Who will even have the money, wealth, fame, and power – illusions that they have now been revealed to be?
“I have seen too much war in my lifetime. Yes, some of these wars were called ‘police actions,’ ‘border skirmishes,’ or ‘peace-keeping missions,’ but when bombs are dropped, villages and cities reduced to rubble, when bullets are fired that take the lives of men, women, and children, it’s a war. And it is not kind, despite the debated irony of that famous poem.
“I remember, when I was covering Vietnam, standing with a film crew on a road outside a Montagnard village that had recently been bombed. The surviving villagers were stumbling and crawling away from the destruction. A few of them had managed to find wagons in which to place their dead or wounded. One old woman was pulling such a wagon, and her strength struck me then as it does now as the kind of superhuman strength one finds in oneself during times of war, for inside this wagon was a young man or perhaps fifteen who was using a sewing needle and some kind of terrible thread to try and stitch up the chest and groin of a child – I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, only that it was a child. The child’s innards were spilling out, and the young man was trying to hold them in place with one hand while he used the other to push the needle and thread through the child’s flesh.
“The child was still conscious and screaming, but it did not try to move or push away the young man’s hands, as if it understood that he was trying to save it. Both were covered in blood and burned skin, their clothes – what remained of them – still smoldering. But what stays with me above all else is what happened when that child saw us as the old woman pulled the wagon passed. Its eyes widened, and the expression of anguish on its face softened for just a moment, and then…excuse me…and then…dammit!
“…and then it smiled at me, one of its small, ruined hands rising up from its blasted body to point at the camera. It understood that it was being filmed, that it was going to be on television. Somehow that knowledge – however the child had acquired it – took the pain away for just a few seconds, and it waved at the camera as the wagon was pulled by.
“That footage was never aired, and it was my fault because I was in tears…not unlike the pathetic spectacle you’re witnessing now. But that was Vietnam. Since then I’ve witnessed similar scenes in the Gulf, in Israel, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, I’ve seen the ‘dying rooms’ in the mountains of China where sick and deformed children are abandoned to suffer a slow, miserable, lonely death, I’ve seen bodies floating in rivers of blood and intestines through the center of Rwanda, I’ve seen corpses piled as high as the sun in El Salvador, and I have seen too many screaming, wounded, terrified children running through bomb-blasted streets crying for their mother, or their father, or brother, sister, anyone to come and hold them, to make them safe, to take away all the pain and fear and make everything all right again…and I am here to tell all of you who might be watching that this time, this time there is no making everything all right again. For those of us left above-ground, there remains between fifteen and ninety minutes of life, depending on where in this country you live. California is gone, as is Utah and Nevada. Was anyone there to record those screams, I wonder. Is anyone there to open their arms to the radiation-charred children who are crawling through the debris, crying for someone to come and hold them? And when it is decided that the war is over, will those children, should they still somehow be alive, find it in their war-ravaged hearts to forgive? Or will forgiveness be nothing more than an abstract concept to them, like freedom and compassion and God?
“Forgive me for raising my voice like that. It won’t do to have my final minutes spent with you remembered for my having done nothing but scream. For over fifty years you have – if I am to believe the Newsweek poll done a few years back – looked to me as the ‘voice of reason.’ A reasonable man would not scream at you, not with so little time left, so, again, please accept my apologies.
“I came back here to the city where my career began so that I might see my daughter, my son-in-law, and my grandchildren. They were so happy to welcome me into their homes, even knowing how terrible things had become. My son-in-law, you see, was not one of the people deemed ‘of use’ for the bunkers and caves and mine-shafts where now America functions and will continue to do so for years to come. My son-in-law, you see, is a factory worker whose only ‘useful’ skill is cutting saw blades. My daughter is, by choice, a stay-at-home mother. I could not possibly be more proud of either of them, or of my wonderful grandchildren. They took me into their home at this worst of all possible times and made me feel a sense of being loved again, of being needed, of being necessary.
“They didn’t know that I had been offered a place in the bunkers, in the caves, in the mine-shafts of America Below. They didn’t know that I had told the military officials who came to ‘collect’ me that they could go straight to Hell – which should be easier for them, since they’d be so much closer to it than I. I had watched these same officials literally pull a physicist away from his wife and children, telling him that they were not ‘on the list,’ that they were ‘acceptable losses.’ I watched these officials knock that physicist unconscious because he refused to leave without his family. And I watched as his family, screaming and in tears, chased after the vehicle into which he was thrown.
“When it is decided that the war is over, perhaps it will also be decided that there is no such thing as an ‘acceptable’ loss. I don’t know where that physicist’s wife and children are now. Maybe they’re watching this broadcast, If they are, I want you to know how sorry I am that the government and the military in all of their collected wisdom somehow found it ‘acceptable’ to offer a place in America Below to an old newscaster in his seventies who’s dying of cancer, rather than allow you to remain a family.
“My daughter and her family did not know about my cancer. Nor will they. You see, my doctor is an old coot, like me, who knows there are better and more peaceful ways to shuffle off this sad mortal coil than to be consumed in slow degrees by a disease that leaves you without any dignity in the final hours. And so my doctor, he gave me something. I don’t suppose it will matter much to tell you about it now. What he gave me were two vials of Potassium, enough for several sixty milli equivalent doses. Death is instantaneous and painless when it’s injected.
“This morning, before leaving to come here, I left the vials and the hypodermics in the refrigerator, and I left a note for my son-in-law, explaining the dosage amounts. If he loves his family as much as I hope he does, he’ll do the right thing.
“I showered, shaved, chose this tie from the three I’d packed, and came here to the roof of this local television station. The sentimentalist in me, the little boy who believed and embraced the idea of God and Heaven and Peace Eternal, hopes that my daughter and her family are with Carol at this moment, and that there is no more suffering, no more pain. As sad as I am that they are gone, I feel not one bit of regret for my actions.
“So in these last few minutes, let’s not talk about wha
t is or what was. Let’s talk about what’s to come – much later. Let’s talk about what will happen when it is decided that the war is over, shall we? This is Lowell Douglas Pearson, broadcasting from not-so high atop your favorite local television station, and it’s time we spoke directly and honestly.
“Can you see it in your imaginations? The day when the nuclear winter is past, when the radiation levels have dropped to an ‘acceptable’ level, when the sealed solid-steel doors of the American Below are opened and the survivors walk into the new day?
“When it is decided that the war is over, they will all embrace one another and shake hands and kiss each other’s tears away. When it is decided that the war is over, they will pour one another celebratory drinks and organize parades. When it is decided that the war is over, they will gather in public places and sing happy, spiritual songs, even if it is raining or well above ninety degrees. They will feel good about themselves and all they’ve managed to protect and save, because feeling good will be the first step toward doing good when it is decided that the war is over. And they will believe in doing good, just as J. Robert Oppenheimer and everyone who worked on Fat Man and Little Boy believed they were doing good. ‘It’s good to feel good,’ they’ll say. ‘It’s good to do good,’ they’ll say, then all join hands and sing ‘Shall We Gather at the River’ or ‘Teach Your Children’ or ‘Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore.’ Their pets will eat only organic food along with them when it is decided that the war is over. And all of their artists, all of their composers, their philosophers, their poets with their visions and their novelists constructing new visions and all their lyrical essayists who have been busy scribbling or typing or recording their thoughts and memoirs, all of them will rethink their stances and outlooks and viewpoints when it is decided that the war is over. And their leaders will all assemble and say to one another, ‘This must never happen again,’ while their assistants secretly gather the sticks and stones that will be needed to fight the next war that no one wants to think about but knows is coming.
“And what of us, we who will never savor the joys and safety of America Below? We will be the bodies they have not seen and so do not speak of as they step into the light of the new day. When it is decided that the war is over we will still be here, mud, rot, dust, bones, sleeping peacefully beneath the soils of a ruined land, and the survivors will hear our bones crunch under their feet and smell the faint scent of our charred flesh and, perhaps, a few of them will imagine that they can still hear our final cries wafting by on the breeze, a paper cup tumbling in the wind when it is decided that the war is over.
“But we’ll be beyond all of that, you, your families, and I, because when it is decided that the war is over we will not be the ones in need of forgiveness, or comfort, or a way to fall asleep at night without the faces of the dead marching across our memories.
“I don’t know how much time we’ve got left, so I’m going to tell you the thing you most need to hear, the thing we all want to hear, the only thing that can perhaps be that warm hand reaching out of the smoke from a death-stinking battlefield to pull you in and enfold you in understanding arms. And maybe, just maybe, when it is decided that the war is over, some part of this broadcast will remain, and they’ll know that we who were not part of America Below spent our final minutes caring for one another, soothing the fears of our children, giving thanks that our loved ones would not leave this world alone.
“So come closer, my family, my friends, all of you. Come closer and look into my eyes and listen to the sound of my voice as you kiss your wives and husbands and brothers and sister and children and grandchildren. Listen to me, listen to the sound of my voice.
“Don’t be afraid, everything’s all right, it will all be over soon. Don’t be afraid, everything’s all right, it will all be over soon. Don’t be afraid, everything’s all right, it will all be over soon. Don’t be afraid, everything’s all right, it will all be over soon. Don’t be afraid, everything’s all right, it will all be over soon. Don’t be afraid, everything’s all right, it will all be over soon. Don’t be afraid, everything’s all right, it will all be over soon. Don’t be afraid, everything’s all right, it will be
OTHER TITLES
FROM DARK ARTS BOOKS
Candy in the Dumpster
Waiting For October
Sins of the Sirens
Like A Chinese Tattoo
When The Night Comes Down
Swallowed By The Cracks
www.darkartsbooks.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Information
BILL BREEDLOVE:
Introduction: Alive & Kicking
CODY GOODFELLOW:
About Cody Goodfellow
Venus of Santa Cruz
The Weak Sisters Bust Out
The Wet Nurse
Love To Give
GEMMA FILES:
About Gemma Files
Ring of Fire
Crossing The River
The Speed of Pain
MORT CASTLE:
About Mort Castle
Moon On The Water
I Am Your Need
Bird’s Dead
Dreaming Robot Monster
Music On The Michigan Avenue Bridge
GARY A. BRAUNBECK:
About Gary A. Braunbeck
Merge Right
As It Is In Your Head
Bargain
…And When It Is Decided That The War Is Over
OTHER TITLES FROM DARK ARTS BOOKS
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Information
BILL BREEDLOVE:
Introduction: Alive & Kicking
CODY GOODFELLOW:
About Cody Goodfellow
Venus of Santa Cruz
The Weak Sisters Bust Out
The Wet Nurse
Love To Give
GEMMA FILES:
About Gemma Files
Ring of Fire
Crossing The River
The Speed of Pain
MORT CASTLE:
About Mort Castle
Moon On The Water
I Am Your Need
Bird’s Dead
Dreaming Robot Monster
Music On The Michigan Avenue Bridge
GARY A. BRAUNBECK:
About Gary A. Braunbeck
Merge Right
As It Is In Your Head
Bargain
…And When It Is Decided That The War Is Over
OTHER TITLES FROM DARK ARTS BOOKS
Mighty Unclean Page 27