The After War

by Brandon Zenner

  “That may be true, Sultan. What are your thoughts, Mr. Rothstein?”

  “My thoughts?” Mark pointed to the papers. “No thoughts. We should have left already.”

  Karl remained quiet. Mark and Sultan knew better than to interrupt him when he was contemplating.

  “All right.” Karl spoke up. “Don’t talk to anybody about this without my authorization. Get that sergeant back here, the one who found these papers. He’s coming with us. And get the best engineers you can muster. Don’t tell Nick a thing, not yet. Understood? We leave at dawn. Dismissed.”

  Karl stood, rolling the papers back into the tube as Sultan and Mark Rothstein took their leave.

  Karl went upstairs, making his way to Nick’s wing of the house. He walked through the mahogany doors and down the hallway, where he noticed the entrance to the library open. Music could be heard inside. He knocked on the doorframe.

  “Come in,” Nick shouted.

  “General,” Karl said. “What’s that you’re listening to? Beethoven?”

  “No. Saint something or other. I don’t know anything about classical, but that’s all there is in this house.”

  Karl listened for a moment. “Ah, the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso. Camille Saint-Saëns. I should have known.”

  “Yeah. Great.” Nick was sitting deep in a plush leather couch, a tumbler of bourbon in his hand. He was wearing a clean uniform, his pants creased and his shirt pressed.

  “I’ll be stepping out in the morning,” Karl explained.

  Nick sat upright. “What? Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere important, I assure you. Just some business I must attend to. I should be back before evening, but if I’m not, make sure the foghorn is sounded during dinner when the townspeople are gathered together at the firehouse. Herd them like cattle.”

  “Are you sure our army is on schedule? I don’t want to keep my people locked up any longer than necessary.”

  Your people will never see the light of day again.

  Karl smiled and continued. “It’s for their own good, General. Dietrich and his men will be arriving at dawn in two days’ time. They will take the weapons from the park and march to Alice. We are to feed them proper, let them rest, and then … we will march to Zone Red, to its imminent demise. The people of Alice will thank you for keeping them safe, even if they grumble at first at being locked up in the gymnasium. They will forgive you and love you all the more for having their best of interests at heart. Soon, Nicholas, you will be the king of the East Coast—in charge of water, food, and fuel.”

  Nick’s eyes glazed over.

  “Check on the men while I’m gone,” Karl said. “Make sure the soldiers are well fed.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I will be back before you know it.”

  Nick slumped back down on the plush couch.

  Karl scanned the dark wood interior of the room and the gigantic marble fireplace blazing fire.

  “Have another drink; relax. I’ll have my men bring you more firewood. Tomorrow there is much to do, and the morning after, we ride to war. Get some rest.”

  Nick turned to respond, but Karl was already backing away from the door.

  ***

  Upstairs, Stephanie was watching the sky outside the wall-length windows and gazing at the river, twinkling in the moonlight. Lately, she was spending more of her days sleeping and her nights awake. It helped keep her migraines under control.

  She moved to the front window, gazing out over the lawn as the sun began to rise. The front lawn had been carved out like a maze, with trenches zigzagging back and forth and machine gun nests constructed in concrete bunkers.

  She blew back steam from her cup of tea and sipped gingerly.

  A Hummer and a pickup truck rolled down the driveway, past the checkpoints, and parked in front of the house. Karl Metzger, Mark Rothstein, Sultan, and a few men that Stephanie did not recognize walked out of the house and entered the waiting cars.

  She watched Karl and his officers drive off out of sight.

  Chapter 59

  Omphalotus Olearius

  Brian left for the kitchen before dawn.

  He was the first of the chefs to arrive, and soon, several line cooks came in. A young man with a lazy eye approached him.

  “Brian,” he said, “where’d you go last night? You never came back to clean and prep.”

  Actually, I was upstairs the whole time.

  “Fell asleep,” Brian told him. The boy shook his head and laughed.

  “You’re lucky nobody noticed.”

  Brian shrugged.

  The head chef came into the kitchen while breakfast was being put in chafing dishes, tying an apron over his chef’s whites.

  “Okay, listen up,” he called out. “We’ve been issued commands for a big meal tonight. Half of the livestock is to be butchered, and over half of the produce is going to be needed. We’re going to make a simple stew with some fresh bread. The food is to be delivered along the entire line, and all of the Red Hands and Dragoons are being issued double rations, so let’s get to work. We have plenty to do.”

  They’re sucking Alice dry. Brian looked down at his cutting board. They’re getting ready for a fight.

  The butchers left for the slaughter field outside and came back later with grim expressions on their faces and aprons stained in gore. They smoked cigarettes by the back door, and were numbly silent.

  Karl Metzger’s and Nick Byrnes’s men no longer ate with the rest of Alice’s residents, but rather had their meals put in large vats and storage containers to be picked up on the backs of Jeeps and served on the lawn of Nick’s mansion, and various spots along the front line.

  Brian began removing the crates of fresh mushrooms and onions, prepping only the food headed out for transport.

  Another chef across the way walked over to him. “You take all the mushrooms?” he asked.

  Brian didn’t look up from his station. “Here, take the buttons.”

  “What you got there?” The chef leaned over the station, picking up a light brown, broad-headed mushroom with long strips of gills on the bottom. He put the mushroom to his nose, sniffed, and then popped it into his mouth. “They’re good,” he said.

  Brian swallowed.

  “Chanterelles,” he answered, and then added, “Heard Karl asked for them himself. He’s keen on them.”

  Brian waited, cutting through the mushrooms with his heart pounding, afraid the chef might know that chanterelles are hard to cultivate in growing rooms and are rarely domesticated.

  But the chef just took the crate of button mushrooms and left.

  Brian let out a silent sigh and continued dicing.

  When he got to the bottom of the crate, he removed the bags of fresh herbs and began dicing them up. By the time he got through the sage, his wrist was growing tired, but he kept at it.

  He looked around the room at the other chefs, all bent over their stations, and slipped on a pair of latex gloves, which was not an uncommon practice in the kitchen. He rolled the leaves of basil in tubes before slicing them in strips and tried to keep his head down as he cut through the remaining poison ivy that was tucked in the bag. Sweat stung at his eyes when he looked up at the guards, but they all looked bored, smoking cigarettes, and playing cards.

  The meat was brought in by the slab and chopped down into smaller pieces. The pieces were seared in the pots, and then the vegetables were added along with the herbs, water, and even some red wine. Then the tops of the pots were sealed so the stew could simmer.

  Brian helped the staff load the food containers as lunch was served. The Red Hands arrived with their flatbed trucks and loaded the large containers of stew to be delivered to all points along the line. They did not thank the kitchen staff, but grumbled at having to carry the heavy buckets.

  “They should be doing this,” a rotten-toothed soldier muttered.

  “Soon ’nuf,” the other man replied.

  There was muc
h debate as to why such a large meal had been prepared, and some speculated that it was because the Red Hands were leaving and wanted to take with them as much food as possible. At least, that was what everyone hoped for, but in the back of their minds, everyone knew that the soldiers were being well fed because war was on the horizon.

  Brian walked back into the kitchen with a huge weight off his chest.

  I did it. I got away with it.

  Nobody in the kitchen had noticed, but Hightown had never in the past supplied chanterelle mushrooms to Zone Blue. Chanterelles were difficult to propagate, and the men who worked in the growing room had never bothered to try. The mushrooms that Brian diced up in the stew were called omphalotus olearius, commonly referred to as jack-o’-lantern mushrooms due to the fact that the mushrooms glowed a bioluminescent bluish-green color in low-light conditions. In daylight, the mushrooms resembled chanterelles to the point that they smelled and tasted appealing—much like chanterelles.

  Jack-o’-lantern mushrooms are toxic to humans and easily harvested throughout the Northeast, growing in large clusters on trees and their roots—both living and dead. Although they don’t cause death, they do cause severe cramping, diarrhea, and vomiting. Adding to this effect were the dozens of psychoactive mushrooms that were mixed in with Brian’s crate, handpicked from Zone Red’s own small cattle farm. The poison ivy, if digested, can cause serious swelling in the mouth and throat, along with moderate to severe respiratory problems.

  These ingredients were simmered in the great vats of stew and passed out to the Red Hands and Dragoons all along the front line.

  Chapter 60

  Head of the Serpent

  “Are we gonna blow ’em all up?” Mark Rothstein leaned over the wide space between the two backseats in the Hummer, trying to glance at the papers in Karl’s lap. He envisioned the enormous cloud that such an explosion would produce. The thought gave him chills of excitement.

  “Oh, Mr. Rothstein, no. We’re not going to blow them up. We are, after all, here to claim the gasoline, not blow it all to smithereens. Not to mention what the radiation would do to the water supply here in Alice.”

  “Right.”

  Karl spoke over his shoulder to the two engineers hunched over in the cargo area, clutching their canvas toolboxes.

  “What we have here,” Karl explained, “are plans for an operation called Blue Rapture. The plans originated back when the Zones were first established as a failsafe for General Driscoll and his band of loathsome cretins. We are under the impression that the operation was recently put into effect by several of Alice’s men who failed and died before they could reach their directive. Their failure has given us a strong advantage, as the plans include instructions for arming and handling a one-point-two megaton nuclear explosive package from a B-eighty-three nuclear bomb. The operations manual and technical schematics are now in our possession.”

  Karl passed the papers to an engineer in the back named Tyson, who had once worked in a nuclear plant and had some knowledge of how to handle a nuclear device.

  Karl continued. “The weapon itself is three and a half feet long with an eighteen-inch diameter. It has been removed from its bomb casing and made operational by either a trigger or time delay. It’s all there in the manual and blueprints. The bomb is being kept in a steel drum in the basement of a house down the road. Operation Blue Rapture calls for the total obliteration of Alice as a last resort.”

  “Jesus,” Tyson muttered, looking over the papers. “This is no joke.”

  Karl smirked. “No, sir. It is no joke at all.”

  The Hummer and pickup truck stopped before a house on Ridgeline Road and turned down the long driveway only a few blocks away from Nick’s mansion, not far from the front line. It was quiet in this part of town, uninhabited.

  “All right,” Karl said, opening his door. “Let’s get to work.”

  The men jumped out of the car and walked toward the back of the house. The two drivers went inside the entrance to make a sweep, and after several minutes, they unlocked the glass door to the greenhouse in the rear of the home.

  “All clear, sir.”

  Karl walked past his men, to a cinderblock toolshed built against the house.

  “This is it,” Karl said, studying the blueprints. He opened the shed door and looked at the pavers under his feet. He knelt, feeling along the crevices between the slabs, then went to a rack of tools and removed a pry bar. The concrete paver came up easily, revealing a door underneath.

  “Have at it, boys.”

  Karl smiled, tossing the stone paver to the side.

  The men cleared the room and removed the floor under their feet. When they finished, they circled a metal trap door in the center of the small toolshed.

  “Open it,” Karl said.

  Tyson put his toolbox on the ground, removed a pair of bolt cutters, and cut through the padlock with ease. He swung the doors open, and the men looked upon a staircase descending into darkness. Tyson removed a flashlight from his bag and went down first, followed by the other engineer.

  “Go with them, Sultan,” Karl commanded.

  Sultan nodded, and walked down the steps.

  After a moment Karl yelled, “What do you see, Sultan?”

  “There’s a whole mess of supplies down here.”

  “The steel drum, Sultan. Do you see a steel drum?”

  “Yeah, we got a steel drum all right. Smack in the center of the room.”

  The two engineers pulled away a thick canvas sheet from a cylindrical, thirty-gallon steel drum, with a radiation warning symbol painted on the side. The metal was pure black, and a cap was fastened to the top. There were two openings on the lid, secured with rubber stoppers. One was used for filling and dispersing of fluid and a smaller one for ventilation. The larger lid was open a crack.

  Mark Rothstein began walking down the stairs with Karl following behind.

  Karl turned to the two drivers and the sergeant standing behind him. “Stay here. Keep your eyes open.”

  Just then, Tyson pulled at the two-inch diameter rubber stopper to get a look inside. If he had been properly trained in explosives and not a former engineer from a nuclear plant, he would have inspected the barrel thoroughly before touching it.

  But Tyson was not trained in explosive ordinance disposal.

  Sultan said, “Smells like gasoline down here.”

  Karl called down from the top step, “Don’t touch a thing.”

  Tyson grasped the plug.

  The plug snagged a cord, setting off the small bundle of C4 secured to the underside of the lid hanging above the full tank of gasoline. It also traveled to the secondary small bundle of C4 overhead, fastened to a dummy battery operated electrical box and lightbulb, with a pull-down wire switch. That switch, too, would have detonated the bomb.

  The room seemed to contract and then exhale a sudden large and violent breath. Tyson, Sultan, and the second engineer vanished. The floor exploded to the greenhouse ceiling, rocketing the two drivers and the sergeant into the air, where they were lost in a blazing sea of fire. Smoke, rocks, and debris burst up the stairway, shooting Mark Rothstein and Karl Metzger backward like corks whacked out of champagne bottles.

  The glass walls of the room exploded outward all at once, releasing a plume of fire and smoke in the air. Then the room breathed in, and everything came crashing down. Half the floor disappeared into the open cavity of the hidden basement, and a downpour of glass shards clattered to the ground.

  Karl Metzger saw none of this. The gust of hot smoke and rocks shot him backward like a bullet, and all went black before he hit the ground.

  ***

  Smoke was visible high in the air, but much of the sound of the explosion was contained, muffled by the ground. Officers from the front line sent two men to investigate, and their Jeep came to a halt beside Karl Metzger’s Hummer.

  As they were opening their car doors, a person came stumbling from the side of the house.

  “Lieut
enant Rothstein, is that you?” one of them asked, running to the man.

  Mark collapsed in their arms. He was bleeding from his mouth and from a serious wound to his chest. Both of his legs were injured, his face had numerous lacerations and twinkled with glass shards, and one eye was swollen shut.

  “They’re all dead,” he said, his body limp and trembling.

  “What? Who?”

  “Karl … Sultan …” Mark coughed, spitting blood over his lips. “They’re all dead. Get me outta here.”

  “Karl’s dead?” The stunned guards looked at each other. “Who’s in charge?”

  “I-I am. Now, get me out of here. We’re under a-attack.”

  The two guards remained motionless.

  “They killed Karl?”

  Mark spat. “I told you, h-he’s dead; now get—”

  The men dropped him in the grass and ran to the Jeep.

  “Wait … wait!” Mark screamed back. “We haven’t lost—you fools! You fucking—” His words were cut short in a fit of wet coughs.

  The men got in their Jeep and drove toward the front line, where they told the officer in charge that an old gas boiler has exploded in one of the houses and it was of no concern. The men gathered as much food and water as they could and left Alice under the pretense of a patrol. They did not return.

  Deep in the brush of the neighboring lawn, Simon Kalispell and Frank Morrow secured their binoculars and began backtracking toward the firehouse. A terrible weight had lifted from their chests as they witnessed the explosions. They knew that Frank’s rushed work setting up the bomb and detonator, as Simon secured the remainder of his family’s photo albums, painted the radiation symbol, and removed his father’s two shotguns, had been successful.

  Chapter 61

  It Begins

  When the foghorn blared during lunch service, a force of Dragoons and Red Hands surrounded the townspeople, informing them to leave their food trays on the tables and file into the large gymnasium at Alice Elementary. A credible threat was received, they said, a bombing was possible. The doors were locked behind them, the handles strung with thick chains, and boards were nailed across the frames. The only windows in the gymnasium were high, near the ceiling, and steel bars had been welded vertically just in the case the townspeople became crafty.