12|21|12

by Larry Enright

  The men made their way to Seventeenth and the Boulevard and found the underground platform. The train, as yet oblivious to man’s disappearance, arrived right on schedule.

  As they pulled into the last stop, Michael looked out on the snow-covered woods. “All my life I’d been taught to think that we were put here to be stewards of this world, but the truth is, the world doesn’t need us to take care of it. It was just fine before us and will be again long after we’re gone. We’re no more than parasites, insects sucking on its lifeblood, killing it a little every day.”

  Bowen tossed him his bag. “It took the end of the world for you to figure that out? Maybe if we get lucky and survive this, you can preach that from your holy pulpit and somebody will listen next time.”

  Bowen found a vehicle in the parking lot with the key still in the ignition. They filled up at a gas station, packed several more five-gallon gas cans in the back, and headed west. The turnpike turned out to be easy going. Traffic had been light through the sparsely populated mountains west of the city at 12:21:12 p.m. They turned south off the main highway and onto the snow-covered backcountry roads of the Maryland State Forest.

  It was while winding around a mountain that they saw the creature — a mass of fur lumbering south. Loeb dismissed it as a bear. Bowen said it was no bear — too upright, too slow. It was something else. He stopped, and it crossed the road into the woods. When he eased forward, the creature spotted them and ran. Bowen stopped the truck and jumped out. “Hey!” he shouted and fired a single shot.

  The Creature

  He kept to himself and liked it that way. He’d lived alone for as long as he could remember, and with his looks, it wasn’t hard to see why — flat nose, scraggily mustache and beard, and a face that could only be described as a ferret’s. Until 12:21:12 p.m. on 12|21|12, that’s what everyone in town called him — Ferret. He lived in a run-down trail cabin in the mountainous state forest and survived off the town’s garbage. In better weather you could find him there every week or so trash picking. He was harmless enough. In the past, he’d had a few run-ins with the law, but he never hurt anyone. He never bothered anyone. He just wanted to get by, just like everyone else. It got so people pretty much ignored him. Some even put food out for him in slings hung in the trees too high to attract curious bears. To many, he was the town mascot, just another oddity that they talked about around the pickle barrel in the general store.

  In winter, the mountains were difficult and carried a lot of snow, and Ferret made the trek to town less frequently, sometimes only once a month, sometimes less. He might not have known anything was wrong for months. He might not have realized the end had come until the next time he’d gone to town for supplies. But he didn’t have to go anywhere to find out. The end came to him as the sky and forest around him caught fire, and a ball of flame exploded against the side of his cabin. That damn Army must have been testing something in the woods. That had to be it. Who else could it be? Every once in a while they flew recon over his place. They were always up to something, snooping around like that, and now they’d screwed up big time and blew up his damn house.

  Ferret remembered little after that. Something in his addled brain told him to run, so he did. He wandered south in a daze, fleeing the inferno with nothing but his coat and hat. The numbing cold drove him to seek shelter in the nearby town. The dumpster behind the lumberyard would be good enough. He could stay in it until he figured out what to do next. And there was always enough scrap wood to make a fire if it got that cold. He would avoid the guard dogs and scrounge for food at night. Ferret was clever that way, but he was confused and lost. He walked for hours, maybe days. He didn’t know how many. He was cold, tired, and hungry. He wasn’t going to make it to town. He had no idea where town was anymore, and he didn’t much care.

  A black beast appeared out of the fog on the road behind him and growled. Ferret stopped, hoping it would go away, but it kept coming closer. He crossed the road, and the beast became them, the Army. What had happened was no accident. It was no test. They had blown up his house on purpose. They wanted him dead. They had missed, and now they’d come back to finish the job. Ferret took off for the woods. He heard a shout from behind, then a shot, then nothing.

  The Speechwriter

  Cameron was twenty-three, and if asked about his graduation from Georgetown less than a year ago, he would say it was due only to the vagaries of rounding. It wasn’t that he was stupid or lazy. He was a student of great potential, but he put little or no effort into anything that didn’t interest him, and for Cameron, anything was nearly everything, including getting passing grades. The one exception was his writing, and into that he put all his energies.

  He had been out celebrating with friends one night after graduation, and on a trip to the restroom he found himself standing in a stall next to none other than the President of the United States. With two Secret Service agents standing guard outside and another watching from over by the sink, Cameron and the president went about their business, staring at the wall, never looking at each other until Cameron finally said, “I thought your speech last night on proliferation was a little heavy-handed, like General Patton had written it. You’ll never get anywhere with rhetoric like that, Mr. President.”

  “And I suppose you could do better?”

  “I could do better using words of three syllables or less.”

  Few can claim that their first successful job interview was held in a men’s room stall, fewer still that in less than five minutes they matriculated from unemployed college graduate to the youngest speechwriter for the most powerful leader on Earth, but that’s what Cameron did. And now, when the president spoke in the name of freedom and dignity, it was Cameron speaking, maybe not entirely his thoughts, but certainly his words. And whenever the president talked about democracy and the rights of all people to live in peace, that was Cameron, too.

  The president was spending Christmas at home that year. That meant the White House staff could observe the holiday with their families or accept his generous offer of a week’s stay at the Camp David retreat. The barracks and all facilities would be kept open and available for their use, and they could indulge themselves in amenities normally reserved for guests and foreign dignitaries. Of course, the Marine detachment would remain on duty to make sure it didn’t become too merry a Christmas.

  Cameron had chosen to spend his holiday at Camp David, but not for the parties. He loved the presidential retreat, loved his walks in the woods, loved the quiet and the atmosphere, but, above all, he loved the time it gave him to write about important things, things he thought the president might want to hear when they took up business again.

  On 12|21|12 at 12:21:12 p.m. he was alone with his thoughts as usual and looking out the window. Cameron had always been a loner. Every time he went home his parents asked him if he was seeing anyone, but he never was. Whenever his friends asked him to go out, he almost never did. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the opportunity for a relationship. He’d had plenty of opportunities, just never the inclination.

  A blinding flash filled the sky, and the room jolted as if tossed into the air, throwing Cameron against the wall. Lights flickered, then came back on. The backup generators kicked in. It could be but one thing — a nuclear attack — and that was the initial shock wave emanating from Washington. Only one country had the capability of delivering such a strike on the capital, but why now after such successful disarmament talks? And why no warning? Was it a dirty bomb —a nuclear weapon brought into the country in pieces and assembled by terrorists at ground zero? They had been briefed on that. The yield would have to be enormous to reach into the mountains seventy miles away. Could a terrorist build such a large bomb? The shelter was on the other side of the Camp David compound under the barracks. Cameron stopped thinking and ran.

  Into the cold afternoon and through the compound, past quiet buildings and across the main road where a black SUV sat with its door open, he ran. Panic urged him on f
aster. Everyone else was already in the shelter. If they followed procedures, and they always did, they would close and lock the blast doors. They wouldn’t wait for stragglers. They wouldn’t wait for him. Camp David was a beautiful rustic retreat nestled in the pristine forests of Maryland, the perfect place to think and write, but in minutes it would all be gone in a nuclear firestorm and him with it if he didn’t get inside.

  Into the barracks, down the stairs, into the red dusk of the steel and concrete shelter — Cameron closed and locked the doors behind him. He was inside. He was safe. He was alone. There were no orders being issued by cooler heads, no panicked cries, no despair, no footsteps running on the metal walkway to the elevator, and no one pounding frantically on the doors to get in. He switched on the outside monitor. The barracks were empty.

  The thought of going back for the others who hadn’t the sense to run for cover crossed Cameron’s mind, as did the futility of adding another glowing dead body to the radioactive pile. Instead, he broke the rules. He unlocked the steel-reinforced doors before descending into the safety of the solid rock of the Appalachian Mountains.

  Cameron hated elevators. He hated confined spaces, but he hated the alternative more. The elevator let him off at its only stop — the nuclear strike-hardened shelter three hundred feet below the surface. Built to be self-sustaining for up to a year, it had its own power and underground water source, and there was enough food for a hundred people for a year or, in his case, one person for a hundred years. No one else had made it. No one.

  The command center was a square concrete room where dozens of computers registered information about the compound and all in-house systems. He waited there for that inevitable moment when the screens would flash with a light so bright it would blind him, but that moment never came.

  Hours passed. The external monitors showed no radiation, no anomalies, nothing. All security systems and cameras throughout the compound and on the perimeter seemed to be working. The only odd thing was the one thing they weren’t registering — everyone else.

  He tried to contact the Marine captain of the guard, the Secret Service, the FBI, the Pentagon, the CIA, the president. He tried his parents and even his old college roommate. Camp David was connected to every major capital in the world. The lines were open, but no one was answering. This was no surprise nuclear attack. Cameron’s life was his words, but he had no words for this.

  Days passed before Cameron ventured above ground. It was Christmas. He walked to the edge of the compound. Snow was falling on the quiet woods. He held a short note he had written while underground:

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  I’m so sorry I didn’t come home this Christmas. I wish now I had. I tried to call, but there was no answer. I miss you all very much. Merry Christmas.

  Love,

  Don

  Cameron read the note one last time and dropped it into the snow.

  He was near the gatehouse on his way to the lodge when he heard a car. A black vehicle crested the hill and crashed through the gate, turning right at the crossroad. It passed the camp commander’s quarters and pulled up at the dispensary. The driver and a passenger got out of the front and pulled someone from the backseat, helping him up the steps and into the building. When Cameron got to the car, he found a man in the back unconscious, a minister. He had started for the dispensary door when the man on the seat awoke.

  “Don’t,” Michael said. “Bowen will shoot you. Hit the horn, then put your hands over your head and wait with me.”

  Cameron turned to run. The shelter wasn’t that far. He would escape these backwoods lunatics and lock himself in. They would go away.

  “For God’s sake don’t, please. He’ll kill you.” Michael leaned forward and fell on the horn.

  Bowen heard the sound and left Loeb with the man named Ferret. He drew his gun and went outside. When Cameron saw him, he put his hands over his head.

  Bowen aimed his weapon. “Stop right there. Who are you?”

  “Don’t shoot. My name is Cameron. I’m not armed.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I work for the president.”

  “Is there anybody else?”

  Cameron shook his head. “Just me.”

  Camp David

  The four men sat on easy chairs in front of the gas fireplace in the lodge’s great room. Ferret, his head wrapped in a bandage, was asleep on a sofa.

  “And that’s how we three met.” The wineglass hummed as Loeb ran his finger around its rim. “We encountered Ferret quite by accident on the way here. Apparently, he’s a vagrant who lives off the trash from a town in the vicinity. I’m not a medical doctor, but I believe he’ll be fine. Fortunately for Mr. Ferret, Bowen is not a very good shot.”

  “If I was trying to hit him, he’d be dead.”

  “So,” Loeb set his glass on the table. “Now we know each other’s stories.”

  “Where is everyone, Dr. Loeb?” Cameron asked. “What happened?”

  “Uncertain, but it’s like this everywhere.”

  “You tell us. You’re the president’s boy.” Bowen downed his scotch and crushed the ice cube between his teeth.

  “Do you mind?” Loeb said.

  “Mind what?”

  “Chewing your ice. It’s very annoying, like scraping your fingernails on a chalkboard.”

  “Just my luck: the end of the world, and I get stuck with my mother.” Bowen got up and poured himself another drink.

  “I don’t know anything, Mr. Bowen. I just write speeches. It doesn’t make any sense. They’re gone… just gone. I’ve tried everyone: the White House, D.C. police, CIA, other countries, even the president’s private number. There’s no one there.”

  Bowen adjusted his holster and sat down again. “We’re here. You’re here. Explain that.”

  “Do I even remotely look like I have a clue? I’m not a scientist. I’m a speechwriter. Dr. Loeb, what happened?”

  Loeb’s gaze wandered out the window. “Camp David is quite beautiful in a rustic way. It has a wonderful history dating back to the late 1930s. Did you know that President Eisenhower renamed it ‘Camp David’ in honor of both his father and grandson?”

  “Dr. Loeb?”

  “Yes, of course. You would like to know what happened, wouldn’t you? At precisely 12:21:12 p.m. on 12|21|12, the world as we know it ceased to exist. The exact day the Mayan calendar ended — incredible coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you? That’s the same as people in 1999 saying 2000 was going to be the end of the world because PCs stored the year as a two-digit number. Don’t you think it’s more likely the Mayan carver just ran out of space on his calendar wheel?”

  “What do you mean?” Michael asked.

  “I mean, maybe the Mayans should have had Macs. They’re good till the year 3000, right? I don’t know. I’m just saying that nobody predicts the end of the world with a calendar. It’s like saying Hallmark controls our destiny.”

  “How does someone predict the end of days, then?”

  “With fire and brimstone like they do in the Bible, or maybe they tweet it, or put it on their Facebook page. I have no idea. Come on, Dr. Loeb. Tell us. You were the Enquirer’s poster boy. That was you on the cover a few months back with your arm around that three-headed alien, wasn’t it? What’s going on?”

  Loeb winced. “It’s amazing how little it takes to turn scientific inquiry into a three-ring circus.”

  “So was it Mayans, or aliens, or what? Because I, for one, would really like to know.”

  Michael put his hand on Cameron’s shoulder: “Take it easy, son. We’re all doing the best we can under the circumstances.”

  “Circumstances? What circumstances? Didn’t you say just a little while ago in our meet-and-greet that hell has come to us? That’s what you said, right? What’s there to understand about that? They burn you on one side and flip you over to do the other.”

  “Cameron,” Loe
b said. “Get a hold of yourself. I’ve never believed in doomsayers, Mayan or otherwise, and I refuse to believe that we have been visited by a supreme entity holding the Bible in one hand and eternal damnation in the other. There has to be some logical explanation for this.”

  “But you said yourself it was an incredible coincidence. So what is it, really?”

  “Face it, kid,” Bowen said. “Loeb is just as clueless as the rest of us. It’s the end of the world. Just deal with it.” He emptied his glass. “Damn, that’s fine scotch.”

  “If you can explain to me how we are discussing the end of the world after it has ended, I will certainly entertain the notion,” Loeb said. “But Bowen is right about one thing — the president does know how to stock a bar.”

  The Christmas tree twinkled in red, yellow, and green. A pile of brown dried-up spruce needles covered the carpet underneath. Cameron unplugged the lights. “Do you think there are any others like us out there?”

  “I’ve thought so from the beginning, and we are the living proof of that. There must be other pockets of civilization gathering just as we have. We need to find them. We have to join forces if mankind is to survive. It’s our only hope.”

  Bowen crunched another ice cube between his teeth. “What for? They could all turn out to be like whack-job over there. Why bother with the rest when we can live here like kings for a hundred years?”

  Ferret stirred, mumbled something incoherent, and went back to his fitful snoring sleep.

  “God is punishing us,” Michael whispered.

  Loeb poured himself another glass of champagne. “Don’t be ridiculous. God does not punish people with fifty-year old single malt scotch and Dom Perignon. Cameron, is there caviar by any chance? I read somewhere that the president fancied it.”

  Michael drew on his bottle of water, suppressing a cough. “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise. Proverbs 20:1.”