by G T Almasi
Patrick and I reach back into our bags for something to cover our hands. I find my driving gloves. They have ventilation holes along the backs: exactly what I don’t want. Brando finds something he can use and puts them on.
“Oh jeez, really, Darwin?” I grouse. “Socks?”
“Yeah, I know.” He considers his puppetlike hands. “I must have left my gloves back at the House.”
I change my mind about the driving gloves, pull them on, and jam my hands in my jacket pockets.
Doska drily asks, “What if you have to shoot someone?”
“He can do it.” I point my chin at Krysta. “Besides, anyone worth shooting just got blown into nuke-burgers.”
Doska gently nods in agreement.
We watch Munich smolder the way people watch sunsets. Between the unearthly sound and the moonlike landscape, it’s as though we’ve been teleported to another planet. I stare where the middle of Munich used to be. The sky above the city glows an angry orange.
Krysta speaks first. “Fire.”
Doska adds, “Many fires, look.” He points to the right where another column of flame has leaped into the sky.
We listen to the Alps bellow at one another and watch Munich sprout tongues of crimson fury. The hot wind from the blast zone slowly changes direction, and cool air begins to flow past us toward the blazing city center.
Alarm grows on Doska’s face. “Firestorm.” He grabs his partner’s arm. “Let’s get out of here!”
“What about the car?”
“Not secure enough.”
We frantically fetch our bags from the Meat Locker and run across the railway depot, away from the horrible red sky grinning at the city. The cool wind gets stronger.
“Brando!” I comm. “What the fuck is happening?”
“Dos is right, the bomb has started a firestorm.” We scamper along the railroad ties. “The blast might have ignited a gas main. Or the fire spread to the wooden houses in the historic district.” A gust staggers us. “Or both.”
We lean forward and run harder. Some of the detritus from the explosion tumbles along the ground, sucked back toward ground zero.
Krysta comms, “We need cover!”
A dead man’s mangled body bounces across the train tracks, picking up speed as the typhoon intensifies.
I follow Patrick off the train tracks. Doska has spotted a group of houses on the far side of a broad, open park. By the time we’re halfway across the park, the tempest has reached hurricane strength. A kid’s tricycle sails out of the gloom and bashes my head.
Wham!
A bright wall of static is followed by absolute blackness. Windblown grass greets my palms and knees. I’m conscious, but the blow to my head has crashed my vision Mods so hard I can’t see at all. One of the boys runs back for me and grabs my arm to lead me out of the field.
Doska, I think, comms, “There! That house. Krys, open the bulkhead.”
The ground under my feet changes from soft grass to hard pavement. I stumble on a curb.
“C’mon Alix, I got ya.” It’s Patrick, naturally.
We run down a flight of stone steps. Someone slams a door shut behind me. The gale screams through every nook and cranny in the small home above us. The racket is incredible. It sounds like everything in the house above us is crashing to the floor.
We hunker in a corner. Brando patches up a few of my bigger cuts, and tries to help me fix my optical implants.
“Scarlet, I know I said take it easy on your chems, but I want you to increase your flow of Kalmers.” I do this and nod. My partner says, “Okay, now just breathe deeply for a minute. Hopefully this will—”
Suddenly I see a monochromatic version of him. “Hey!”
“What? Oh!” he says. “You can see?”
I blink. Krys, Dos, and Brando all crouch in front of me to see if I’m okay. The cellar’s walls are lined with typical family items: bicycles, extra furniture, and boxes of books. It all appears as very high-contrast black-and-white, but it’s better than nothing.
“Not in color, but, yeah. At least now I can check my Eyes-Up display.”
I initiate my Mods’ suite of maintenance programs. Except for my pounding headache I’m in decent shape, all things considered.
The four of us huddle in our little corner, listening to the typhoon accelerate. Bright light lashes through the small cellar windows and throws an eerie glow on the concrete floor.
My legs stick out in front of me. They have ripped white stockings and clunky-ass country shoes on them. I just ran away from an atomic explosion dressed like a Bavarian cheerleader.
I drag my duffel toward me and fish out my boots, black pants, red jacket, plus a blue Smurf shirt Patrick bought for me at a gift shop near the hotel. I wiggle my fingers at Krysta and Doska to make them look away for a minute. While I change clothes, I ask, “Any idea how long this storm will last?”
“A few hours,” Brando says.
For once, Mister Giant Floating Brain is wrong. The firestorm rages for two days.
—DARE: News Feed—
AP
23 Sep 1981, 12:30 A.M. CEST—CATASTROPHIC EXPLOSION IN MUNICH. ESTIMATE BETWEEN ONE AND TWO KILOTONS. POSSIBLE MILITARY STRIKE BY USSR.
23 Sep 1981, 12:32 A.M. CEST—MUNICH EXPLOSION ESTIMATE REVISED: UNDER ONE KILOTON. FIRES SPREADING.
23 Sep 1981, 12:56 A.M. CEST—USSR DENIES RESPONSIBILITY FOR MUNICH EXPLOSION. ALL QUIET CONFIRMED BY REICH BORDER UNITS. POSSIBLE TERRORIST ACT.
—DARE: MUNICH—
23 SEP 1981, 3:34 A.M. CEST
ASSOCIATED PRESS
DISASTER IN MUNICH
MUNICH—A massive explosion ignited a citywide firestorm that left tens of thousands dead and millions homeless. Ground zero was in the city center near Marienplatz, which has completely evaporated. The explosion and firestorm inflicted comprehensive destruction for at least a mile in every direction, and the blast was heard as far away as Madrid.
Military officials in Berlin have engaged in tense conversation with their opposite numbers in Moscow, although it seems this disaster was not the result of military action. One government source supposed the explosion may have been caused by a ruptured gas main, but civil engineering experts quickly dismissed this possibility, saying that scenario wouldn’t even approach the scope of ruinous devastation surrounding Munich.
Reich security officers are investigating possible links to terrorist groups. None have claimed responsibility. One of the most active terrorist organizations, the Red Army Faction, was based in Munich. This makes them, for once, unlikely suspects.
UPDATE 4:45 A.M. CEST
The cause of this morning’s calamity in Munich was a nuclear bomb. The observed destructive power of this device matches the approximately one-kiloton payload of a weapon prototype stolen earlier this month from the navy yards in Antwerp. Red Army Faction is suspected in that theft. Experts surmise the notoriously disorganized terrorists may have accidentally triggered the stolen device.
34
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 4:05 P.M. CEST
MUNICH, GREATER GERMANY
The flayed city lies in ruins. Munich’s vaporized contents gently fall to earth as radioactive snow, silently softening the dark, twisted remains of flung-apart buildings, melted streets, and desiccated parks. As we walk toward ground zero the landscape becomes flatter and hotter. The air smells of roasted meat and burned hair. The gusting wind is only accompanied by the crackling of Patrick’s Geiger counter, measuring the radioactivity of our surroundings.
Speaking of radioactive, opening Talon’s lead jacket was a bad idea. Troust’s poorly shielded nuka-mod hit us with more rads in those few seconds than we would normally receive in five years. Ironically, suffering from radiation sickness wound up reducing the time we spent in our baseme
nt shelter. Doska and Patrick calculated a safe-ish departure would be after seventy-two hours. We left after sixty, driven partly by thirst, but mostly to get away from the stinking puddles of puke Patrick and I upchucked that first night.
Fires still blaze in the densely populated outer neighborhoods, but the conflagration in downtown Munich has burned itself out. This is why our route takes us toward ground zero instead of away from it.
My breath humidifies the fabric of my T-shirt breathing mask. Our feet slip and slide across charred rubble. Finally, we find ourselves at Munich’s main waterway, the Isar River, now nothing but a dry bed. The firestorm’s thousand-plus temperatures boiled the whole fucking river away.
My partner points us north. We trek past torn-up railroad tracks, corpses burned to cinders, black-stained bits of porcelain, and crumbling brick. All that remains of some blocks are puddles of melted glass and charred human rib cages scattered across blackened stonework crisscrossed by glinting smears of melted trolley tracks, light poles, and automobiles.
“Which was worse, do you think,” I comm, “the bomb or the firestorm?”
Patrick and Doska both reply, “Firestorm.”
We pass what used to be someone’s house, now burned to the foundation, exposing the stone-walled basement. In it, a family of five roasted human skeletons sit huddled together, two adults and three kids. Some of their clothes remain, stuck to what’s left of their flesh. Their faces are ghastly: mouths, ears, and eyeballs, all burned away. The fronts of their skulls are nothing but gaping howls.
I press my teeth together and comm, “Darwin, get us out of here.”
“C’mon.” He tramps on ahead. “We’ve probably seen the worst.”
Wrong. Stretches of melted pavement trapped people in mid-stride. Stumps of legs droop above heaps of black bones. Up the street, the initial blast caught a group of children in the open and scorched their shadows onto the sidewalk.
Our trek north takes hours. Eventually we’re joined by other dazed survivors, many weeping. Emergency vehicles streak past us, police, ambulances, fire trucks, all headed for the city.
We reach an intact town, Ingolstadt, I think. The train station teems with activity. Hundreds of relief workers disembark from trains originating in cities north and west. Thousands of wounded and displaced civilians board the trains to be transported out of the region. No officials examine papers to see if anyone is—for example—an American covert-action operative. The trains’ conductors don’t even check for tickets. We normally drive everywhere, but we’ll be less conspicuous if we remain with this large group.
On board we find two rows of facing seats. All of us plop our duffel bags on the floor, park our butts, kick off our boots, and stretch out with our feet in one another’s laps. I try to sleep, but the inside of my eyelids are playing a horror-movie marathon. So instead, I watch the slowly passing landscape. Our train halts to wait for a firefight to finish. The shooting stops, and we continue north.
The sky doesn’t clear until we pass by Nuremberg, over one hundred miles from Munich. The remainder of the trip to Berlin would normally take seven hours. It’s a testament to the Germans’ indefatigability in the face of disaster that it only takes twenty-one.
On arrival, our train is diverted to a secluded old siding where a hastily assembled decontamination center has been set up. It’s like a tent village populated entirely by doctors, nurses, and radiation engineers. Everyone wears gas masks, heavy rubber boots, and bright-orange overalls.
We refugees form a tired, shuffling queue that snakes around and through Tentville. While we wait, Patrick has us dump all our weapons and gear in his X-bag. He sneaks into one of the tents and hides his bag inside somewhere.
When we get to the front of the line, we begin a guided tour of the latest in irradiation procedures. First all of our clothes are taken away to the laundry trucks. This includes the clothes we’re wearing, which are replaced with thin robes. Then we’re given an initial radiation check where a technician writes a number on the back of our hand. Next we’re given some potassium iodide pills before being led into a room full of showers. After we dry off we get more pills and a second radiation check to see if we’re safe. If this second number is sufficiently less than the number written on us—which it is for me and my guys—we’re turned loose into a changing area to wait for our laundry to finish.
When our stuff comes in, Patrick quickly yanks his pants on and runs back to the tent where he hid his X-bag. I corral the rest of his clothes and set them beside mine. Next, I slide into my underwear, then sit on a wooden bench, trying to tug my cargo pants on. They’re not dry, and the damp fabric sticks to my wiggling legs. I nearly fall backward off the bench. My light robe doesn’t do much to protect my modesty.
Krysta pulls on his shirt. “Hey, Scarlet.”
“Yeah?” I get to my feet and hop like a jumping bean until my pants skid up and over my hips.
“Why Tuesday?”
He’s referring to my bikini briefs. They’re red with white TUESDAYs written all over them.
I glower at Krys as he drapes his long coat over his shoulders. He glibly glances at Doska and says, “I mean, it’s the wrong day.”
I zip up my fly. Honestly it’s because I couldn’t remember what day it is, but leaders don’t admit that sort of thing, nor do they take this kind of guff.
“You wanna know why Tuesday, Krysta? It’s the day I’m gonna kick your Oregon ass to if you don’t shut the heck up. That’s why.”
—DARE: MUNICH—
24 SEP 1981
New York Times
MUNICH DESTROYED BY TERRORISTS
Nuclear bomb levels entire city. Resulting firestorm kills 250,000 and leaves millions without homes or basic services.
MUNICH—The German Civil War has become a nuclear war. Early this morning a 0.75-kiloton bomb turned the city of Munich into a graveyard of radioactive gas. The explosion touched off a firestorm that consumed what remained of the city and many of the surrounding suburbs.
Turn to Special Section E for full coverage of this shocking tragedy.
—DARE: MUNICH—
24 SEP 1981
DESTRUCTION OF MUNICH CONFIRMED
From: William Webster, Director, CIA
To: George H. W. Bush, XIC
Sir,
The reports from Europe appear to be true. Munich has indeed been destroyed by a terrorist bomb. The device was likely the nuclear prototype stolen from Antwerp. The Loyalist task force attacking Munich was annihilated. Markus Wolf’s army had left the area before the blast, and so continues to march on Berlin, as does the American Expeditionary Force.
We have still not located Director Kennedy or the staff of Extreme Operations Division. It is inconceivable that their fate is the result of competitive action. My feeling is Kennedy has hidden his agency somewhere in or near Washington. We’ll find him.
—Webster, DCI
35
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 8:35 P.M. CEST
BENEATH SÜDBAHNHOF, BERLIN, GREATER GERMANY
A bright light wakes me, but it isn’t the sun. I press my face into my pillow to escape the photonic onslaught.
“Hey, Alix,” Patrick’s voice says from behind the flashlight. “C’mon, get up. Rachel needs our help.”
I wave at him. “Shub nuh aite uvv!”
He shuts the light off.
I grumble into my sleeping bag, “Wha’ happen?”
Brando answers, “Rachel said the Gestapo shut off the water again.”
Damn.
“Okay, okay.”
I roll over, sit forward, and pat myself down. Pistols in my harness, knife on my belt, head on my shoulders. Deep breath.
Ready.
I hold my hand out. Brando pulls me to my feet. We leave the sleeping
area and enter the common hall. The muggy air makes me wrinkle my nose. People. Thousands of ’em, squished together beneath the city.
Patrick and I grab some grub from the makeshift kitchen, then sit next to each other on a warped wooden bench. I dig into my serving of Wündersausage, aka Goat Gut Surprise, and consider our surroundings.
We’re underground in Berlin. Not only the figurative way we’re “underground” everywhere we go. No, this time, we’re literally under the ground. The soil beneath the Reich’s capital serves as both floor and ceiling for dozens of ancient crypts, hundreds of wartime bomb shelters, miles and miles of subway tunnels and subterranean highways, plus the densely woven web of service passages that connects it all. Berlin’s nether regions are more dug out than a fucking anthill.
The bomb shelters are the most densely populated. Although they afford all the charm and comfort of a coal cellar, these indestructible air-raid havens are built like Thor’s shithouse. Each thick-walled hollow has scads of sharp little rooms to provide some privacy in the event of an overnight stay. The little chambers’ eerie illumination from candles, flashlights, and dusty old lamps is nauseatingly supplemented by the weakly glowing phosphorescent paint on all the walls.
These caverns make up for their poor aesthetics with world-class durability. All this reinforced concrete was poured forty years ago, yet the ceilings don’t leak, the walls are perfectly straight, and the floors are dry as a bone. A lot of people live in worse places.
Many citizens of this subterranean society are former slaves. Other residents are political radicals dedicated to hippy-dippy garbage like freedom and equality. The rest of the population are civilization’s typical leave-behinds—odiferous winos, mystified social outcasts, and raving nut-jobs arguing with one another.