“Please, I will do my best to answer your questions, but if you would allow me to finish first that would be helpful. Our job here is to sustain society by reforming the government, at least in a small way. We will be a beacon of hope to those people that are struggling to survive and make sense of what has happened. People will come here, just like you have done, just like I did, looking for a place where people aren’t just surviving, but thriving. We will be those people.”
A few of the group clapped, but Daniel again raised his hands.
“I’m not looking to be your leader. I just happened to be the first one here. So, I guess I’ll answer your questions, if I can.”
For the next hour and a half, Daniel answered questions. He discussed what he knew of the plague and shared that there might be answers at the Pentagon, if they could find them. He talked about the need to maintain the safety of the White House and ensured everyone that they could rest easy knowing that the entire perimeter of the property was being constantly monitored. People asked questions about the bunker, some of which he could answer, but mostly not. He talked about basic groups and work that should be done immediately and tried his best to stay positive, no matter how unsure he felt. The group was obviously tired, but they had been struggling for so long that even the small bit of structure and guidance that Daniel was able to give them was like water in the desert. No one seemed interested in going to bed, but after a while the questions slowed and Daniel felt he could end things.
“We’re keeping the lower levels sealed, along with a few other places, until we have more time to find out exactly what we have and what we need to do. That’ll be a job for the people we elect to lead us. So, Jason McPherson is going to take the men to a bathroom facility, Dakota will be taking the women. Again, let me emphasize that for the next several days, as we get used to each other, that you use common sense and try to treat others with dignity and respect. Let’s all get some rest, and we’ll get busy first thing in the morning.”
The group moved off and Daniel rubbed his face. He desperately wanted to get back upstairs to relieve Lana. Actually, he wanted her to reassure him that he was doing the right thing. But he stuffed those feelings down, knowing that she was in no place emotionally to build him up. Still, he had come to trust her, to love her in the last few days. The realization of the fact startled him a little. He wondered why he hadn’t told her before now and resolved to rectify that situation as soon as he got upstairs.
He turned to go, but found Scott waiting for him.
“I’ve split the whole population into groups. Some of them have really good experience and others seem more likely to be able to adapt to new jobs and challenges.”
“How many groups?” Daniel asked.
“Let’s see: I’ve got a medical team and a food team, then a maintenance crew and several teams of men who could start the offsite work. I’ve also got a group that should be able to help us keep track of what’s happening around here and make sure we’re doing things in the most efficient manner. I’ve got a small group that could help Jason with security.”
“We’ll need to let him pick his own guys.”
“Yes, these are only suggestions.”
“And we’re going to need at least twelve people to learn security and work in shifts monitoring the grounds.”
“Okay,” Scott said as he made notes on his pad.
“I’m going to take you into my confidence now, Scott,” Daniel said, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I want you to help me for the next couple of days, be sort of an executive assistant. Can you do that? It’ll mean long hours and lots of criticism and having to know things you can’t talk about.”
“You make it sound so appealing,” Scott joked.
Daniel smiled, “I doubt it’ll be that bad, but you just never know. The more opinions you have about any topic, the more difficult things get, and us all living under one roof, so to speak, won’t make things any easier.”
“I see what you mean and, yes, I’ll help. I’m just glad we’re here, glad to be doing something constructive for a change.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve got a lot to do,” Daniel said, wanting to go upstairs but knowing that he needed to stay and work out a few more details. “Let’s see if we can get some coffee while we work things out.”
They found the red-headed Cindy in the kitchen; she had decided to explore her new workspace before heading off to get cleaned up. Daniel asked if she had come across a coffeepot and got a big smile from the small woman.
“I’ve already got it up and running,” she said. “And it is good stuff, too. No instant, freeze-dried stuff here. I just ground some beans, and it’s probably percolating right now. I’ll bring you both a cup.”
Daniel and Scott settled back around one end of one of the long, bench tables. Daniel explained the facilities, namely the satellite and war rooms. Scott agreed that they would need to learn to use the stations and be very discrete about who else knew about them. They decided on a few people to keep their eyes on as possible candidates to learn the systems. Soon they were joined by Jason, who talked about security for the next half hour.
After several cups of coffee and decisions made about the next day, they were joined by Dakota. She had overseen the sleeping arrangements and reported that there was enough space for thirty or forty more people without getting into the apartments that had been used by the president’s highest ranking officials.
“Alright, we’ve only got a few more things to finish up here,” Daniel told her. “Why don’t you go up and get some sleep?”
“What about my shift in the security room?” she asked.
“I’ll cover it,” Jason said, smiling.
“Oh, thanks,” she said, her face brightening considerably.
She turned and hurried away. Daniel noticed that Jason watched her go. His first impulse was to reprimand the soldier, who had to be at least ten years her senior. But they were both adults, he reminded himself, and so he said nothing.
“What’s left for tonight?” Scott asked.
“Nothing, really,” Daniel said. “My main concern is seeing how these folks get along together.”
“I was with them on the road and they seemed like a good group,” Jason said.
“I imagine they’re all too tired to make any trouble tonight, anyway,” Scott said. “I know I am.”
“Yeah, it’s been a long day. So who is taking the first group out tomorrow?”
“You think they need armed security?” Jason asked.
“I’d like to think not, but all three of us have run into groups who are militant, if not crazy. I’d rather not run the risk of having people hurt.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Scott said.
“Alright, but I don’t feel comfortable arming people I don’t know that well yet,” Jason said.
“That leaves us, then,” Daniel said. “I guess–”
Before he could continue, Dakota came running up. Her face was flushed and she was holding a piece of crumpled, yellow paper. The sight made Daniel’s heart almost stop. He recognized the stationary; it was a page from Lana’s journal, the one he had seen her writing in almost every evening the last few nights. He had no idea where she had found it, but the paper, with its golden color and grapevine print along the margin, was unmistakable.
“Lana’s gone,” she cried.
Chapter 17
The ride up the elevator was excruciatingly slow. Daniel tried to hold himself together, but he couldn’t help thinking that this was all his fault. She had tried to tell him that she couldn’t handle the crowds, but had he listened? No, he had gone right on with his plan. He tried to tell himself that perhaps the note, which merely read, “Good-bye,” probably just meant that she had gotten too tired to stay in the security room and had gone on to bed. But he knew deep down that he was fooling himself. He knew, somehow, that she was gone. She wasn’t hiding in the White House somewhere, she hadn’t just gone to bed, she was
gone, maybe forever. He vowed to himself to find her, but he knew the odds were against him if she was actually off the property. Where would she go, he wondered? She had no family, no friends. The only people she knew were right here, which left one other desperate possibility. She could be hanging from a rope somewhere, or peacefully lying near an empty bottle of pills.
Once the shiny, stainless steel doors slid open, Daniel sprinted ahead of the group. Dakota had come with him, Jason, and Scott. They all lagged behind as Daniel ran to the security room. He flung open the door and dropped into the empty console seat. The monitors were all off, and he immediately hit the switch and watched as the colorful screen powered on. He was looking at the composite image and, without taking his eyes from the screen, he typed in the commands to view the Queen’s Bedroom. The room was empty. He chided himself for having taken so long downstairs, but he was also relieved not to see her in some grotesque suicidal scene.
He flipped more switches and rotated the joystick to look out toward the long White House driveway. There was no movement. The lighting was dim and he switched to infrared, thinking briefly of how he had first seen Lana as just a glowing blob from the infrared lens. There was no sign of life. He switched to the opposite side of the property, but was once again confronted with a darkened view. There was no trace of the brighter color that would emanate from a warm body. She was gone.
Scott, Jason, and Dakota came quietly into the room as Daniel switched from camera to camera, checking every room and every hallway, just to be sure. There was no sign of Lana, or anyone else for that matter. The new arrivals were all down in the bunker, even the small group that had taken up residence on the top floor.
“She’s gone,” Daniel said.
“Why?” Scott asked. “Why would she leave?”
Dakota and Jason merely shrugged their shoulders. Daniel realized that no one knew her story besides him. He had been alone when he had rescued her from the crazed gunmen who had abducted her. And she had never opened up to anyone but him. He felt a deep wound opening inside of him. It was if a doctor had just sliced through his chest with a scalpel and he was wide awake. He closed his eyes.
“She left because…” he wasn’t sure if he could say it, “because she was afraid. She had a bad run-in with two men, and she couldn’t deal with all the people.”
“Oh, man, Daniel, I’m sorry,” Scott said.
“Me, too,” Dakota added.
“Will she come back?” Jason asked.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What are you going to do?” Dakota said, voicing what was in all their minds, including Daniel’s.
“I’m going to stay here and take your shift,” he said, his voice a little quavery. “I’ll keep looking but…”
“Daniel,” Dakota said, “you don’t have–”
He cut her off with an upraised hand.
“Come on, let’s go,” Jason said.
The three of them left and Daniel spent the next half hour randomly flipping between cameras, then he broke down and cried. He felt abandoned and more alone than he had during the plague. He wanted to die, or at least run away, but he knew he couldn’t. He had to stay and finish what he started.
***
The next day the group left the White House en masse and headed for the local Wal-Mart store. They pushed open the automated doors, which had shut down, probably after so many hours of none use. They collected everything from underwear to deodorant. They got shoes and snacks and almost anything they could carry. After an hour in the eerily quiet megastore, they walked past the unmanned checkout lanes and headed back to the White House. They spent the afternoon in the mall, gathering people into the work groups that Scott had formed based on their work history. Daniel instructed each group to elect someone to serve on the interim council to help him with decisions. He began training the security team to use the surveillance equipment. Once they had the basics, he laid out a rotating schedule so that there was a constant vigil kept over the White House property.
Cindy and her team stayed busy in the kitchen preparing food for everyone, and a group was formed to open the recreational facilities. That night everyone seemed happy, there was an almost festive mood in the air. Daniel couldn’t stand it. He retreated upstairs and smoked a cigar in the president’s living room. The ornate furniture which seemed so untouchable when he had first come there was now filled with memories. He could see Lana sitting in each chair or laying asleep on the sofa where he had held her their first night together. He couldn’t believe how alone he felt and he wondered if every man who sat here in this mansion felt the same way.
The days ahead would be busy, but he couldn’t find any joy in the work that lay ahead. In fact, now that people had come to the White House, he felt he needed to leave. He thought about his parents. He wondered if someone would break into their home and disturb them. And again the same questions came to his mind, the same questions that had been lurking deep in the recesses of his mind from the beginning. Why did all the people who had succumbed to the plague seem to be merely sleeping? And why had he survived when others hadn’t? They were questions as unanswerable to him as understanding the stars he was looking at through the large windows. He could see the stars shining in the night sky, he knew they were there, but he couldn’t imagine what they really were. He wondered if there really were other worlds out there, places where intelligent beings sent spheres of death hurtling through the dark, cold nothingness of space to wipe out the human race. He wondered if those beings had counted on his survival. He couldn’t answer that question, or any of the others. And what was worse, he knew that he would forget all about them once his own star rose and its brightness overcame the tiny specks of light that were unimaginably far away.
“Damn!” he said and he smashed the cigar into the thick glass ash tray. He didn’t really like the smelly tobacco and the stale taste it left in his mouth. He was only smoking because Lana had suggested he would like it. Now he was doing it to help him remember her, as if the tangible feel of the cigar, the sight, taste, and smell of the smoke, could somehow bring her back to him. But he was tired of wishing and thinking about things that had no bearing on the real world. What happened in the outer reaches of space was of no concern to him. Not when he had a nation to save and a city to restore.
He grabbed his notebook and made notes for tomorrow before heading off to bed. He took a long shower in the Lincoln Bedroom. He had spent almost a week in the Queen’s Bedroom with Lana, but now that she was gone he had returned to his first room across the hall. He repeatedly filled his mouth with water, gurgled, and spat, trying to rinse the stale taste of tobacco from his mouth. But the taste lingered, just as the pain in his chest and the vision in his mind lingered no matter how hard he tried to push the thoughts away.
In bed he tossed and turned and finally fell asleep. It was hard to sleep alone, even though he had done it all his life before the last week. Now he thrashed his way through dreams where Lana rejected him. He woke up several times in the night, sitting up in the darkness, reaching out and pleading to an empty room. When the gray light of dawn began to brighten the sky, he got up and went to the little kitchen across from the president’s master bedroom.
Scott was already there, brewing coffee and burning toast. The business man liked his toast blackened and spread thick with butter and jelly. Daniel decided to accept the offering this morning, and they sat in relative silence until at last it was time to get the teams of people they had organized up and running.
“I’ll go down and get the work teams headed upstairs,” Scott said. “Are you going out with them?”
“No,” Daniel replied, sipping his coffee and grimacing when the cigar taste from the night before ruined the drink’s comforting taste. “Jason’s got people going out with all the teams, and I think he’s showing them where to dispose of the bodies. I’m going to get the admin teams working, then I’m leading a team over to the Pentagon to see if we can get some answers
.”
Scott nodded. “Alright, I’ll see you this afternoon.”
Daniel raised his coffee mug as Scott shuffled away. He sat thinking a few more moments and then made his way over to the Oval Office. He sat and waited for the administration team that would be arriving soon and made notes on his small pad. When his team arrived, he set them to work exploring and cataloging the West Wing of the White House and scheduled a debriefing for later that afternoon. When he came out onto the front lawn, there was a small group of people waiting for him.
“You guys ready to uncover the secrets of a nation?” Daniel asked.
The group smiled and a few laughed. There was a van waiting for them, already running, and they climbed in. Jason was behind the wheel.
“I thought you were working with the cleanup crews?” Daniel said as he sat down in the passenger seat.
“I’ve already shown them the burn site,” the soldier said. He looked very comfortable in his military fatigues and tall leather boots. “I thought I might be of more help with you in the Pentagon.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to get very far?”
“I doubt it. I figure the security measures are extensive. There’s really no telling what it will take to crack the codes and actually find the information we’re looking for.”
“You’re probably right, but I hope not,” Daniel said. He stared out the window as they passed a group of people moving cars off the streets. They would fill the parking lots and garages first, then find space outside of town for the abandoned vehicles. It took the group headed for the Pentagon quite a while to make their way around the constantly jammed streets. They drove on sidewalks and across city parks. Daniel tried not to think of how long it would take to actually make the city usable again.
“Looks like there’s plenty of work,” Jason said.
“Yeah, it almost makes you want to abandoned D.C. and just start fresh,” someone from the rear seats said.
“If only it were that easy,” Daniel said. He turned in his seat and faced the occupants sitting behind him. “I’m sure that there will be cities where people gather all across the country. And sooner or later we’ll get communications up and running so that we can find out what state our nation is really in.”
The New World Page 15