Iron Mike

by Patricia Rose

  Kasoniak laughed, his eyes once again skimming the crowd. He was looking for one person specifically, a tall, slim young brunette with chocolate eyes and her mother’s smile. Kari promised she would be there.

  Markus’ face turned serious for a moment. “I’m so sorry Carolyn didn’t get to see this day,” he said, his voice quiet and compassionate.

  Kasoniak steeled his face into a polite smile. “If Carolyn were still around, Mark, I’d die in that chair. You know she’d never let me retire.”

  Markus laughed politely, excusing himself to make the rounds with other officers, officers who would be remaining in the Army, and who would thus have some influence on his career climb. Kasoniak dismissed the cynical thought, glancing toward the doorway where a gaggle of women in civilian clothes chatted. He looked for Kari among them, feeling a stab of disappointment at not seeing her.

  The dress blues chafed, more emotionally than physically. At least he had opted for an informal lunch-time ceremony, rather than an evening affair, so he didn’t have to wear the damned bow tie.

  A young woman stepped into the Officers’ Club and Kasoniak turned toward her. It wasn’t Kari. At 1335 he sighed and looked over at the MC, giving a nod. They had waited long enough. He shouldn’t have been surprised Kari didn't show, but it still hurt.

  The MC, a young lieutenant, who had served under Kasoniak in Fallujah, stepped up to the microphone with a grin, tapping it once to be sure the sound system was working. “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Fort Knox Officers’ Club. We’re gathered to pay special tribute to Colonel Richard Kasoniak, who is today retiring after thirty-four years of distinguished service to the United States Army and our nation.”

  There was polite applause and a few good-natured cheers, which Kasoniak waved off.

  The MC hesitated for a dramatic moment, letting the crowd die down. Then, he collapsed onto the dais, blood running from his ears.

  Dick Kasoniak stood abruptly, combat reflexes kicking in. Around him, dozens of people fell, just like the young lieutenant. For a moment, he thought it was an elaborate retirement gag, and he glanced around for a camera – but there was no faking this shit. He ducked instinctively as he heard sonic booms – it sounded like dozens of them – going off over the base. There was a silent, but powerful thrum inside his chest – like that time he went into that goddamned rave to drag Kari out – except there was no sound to accompany the aching thrum. The bank of windows of the Officers’ Club shook, then rattled, then held. Kasoniak looked out, staring in disbelief.

  A formation of sophisticated jet-black aircraft was moving over Fort Knox. It looked like the spiral of a tornado, and the formation performed maneuvers that far exceeded anything even the F-22 Raptor could accomplish. The destruction wreaked on the post was catastrophic. Kasoniak watched, stunned, as soundless pulsars distorted the air, resulting in buildings exploding or disintegrating as far across the post as he could see.

  Below him, an entire platoon of soldiers in BDUs lay on the concrete under the eastern window of the Officers’ Club, bodies contorted in death. Kasoniak stared as the tornado-like formation passed over the Officers’ Club, and then was gone. As quickly as the attack started, it was over. The silence rang in his ears. Kasoniak knelt, the actions automatic, and touched the neck of the civilian woman who had fallen closest to him. He already knew she was dead, but confirming the lack of pulse was procedure, and he followed it from habit.

  “Wh-what the fuck?”

  Kasoniak turned sharply. A whey-faced soldier stared at him in shock. He looked around the club at all of the dead soldiers and civilians, and then swallowed and turned back to Kasoniak. “Orders, sir?” he asked, his voice barely a croak.

  Kasoniak took a breath. “Get this post on lockdown, Sergeant,” he said, his own voice gruff with shock. “Call out to the front gate and check the status of the security personnel. Get all of the gates secured. Get the hydraulic road barriers up. When that's done, report to General Fowler’s office for further instructions. I’m on my way there.”

  “Yes, sir!” the sergeant replied. He seemed relieved that somebody - anybody - was in charge. He saluted sharply and turned, heading out of the club at a run.

  Kasoniak looked around at the faces and bodies of the dead, his head spinning as he evaluated the staggering act of terrorism on home soil and the potential repercussions of the attack.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” he muttered aloud. “Carolyn, if you didn’t want me to retire, you could have simply said so, dear. I’d have listened.”

  January 2.

  Mike

  Mike pulled into the gravel driveway, his hands suddenly shaking as he cut the ignition. He hadn’t realized how scared he actually was until he and Jenn arrived safely at the old white farmhouse in Shepherdsville. Mike was more relieved than he would ever admit that he and Jenn made it to Gran's in one piece. Gran and Poppa were the adults – they would take care of things now. Looking at the house, Mike suddenly felt silly for all of the supplies he’d packed, as though he and Jennifer were going on an extended camping trip rather than just to Gran’s house. Nothing was different here – the old farmhouse was the same as always. They were safe, and his precautions had been unnecessary.

  He left everything in the SUV, crisply ordering Jenn to get out and follow him in to see Gran. He was surprised when she complied. She hadn’t said a word the entire trip, and he hadn’t been able to get a radio station. When the silence finally got to be too much, he'd turned on Mom’s CD player and listened to Neil Diamond croon about being a solitary man. Jesus.

  “Gran! Poppa!” Mike called, as he and Jennifer stepped into the house by the kitchen door. He hesitated, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stiffen. Something was wrong. Instinctively, he pulled Jenn closer and behind him, ignoring her scowl.

  “Ryan?”

  He released his sister, relief flooding through him as he heard his grandmother’s call from the living room. He moved through the kitchen and dining room, and then stopped in the doorway, his mouth suddenly dry.

  Gran had somehow gotten herself out of her wheelchair. She sat on the floor, her face streaked with tears, and Poppa’s bald head cradled on her lap. Mike saw the trickle of blood trailing from one of Poppa’s ears, and he knew already his grandfather was dead.

  “Oh, Gran, I’m sorry,” Mike said, his eyes burning again. He moved over quickly and knelt beside his grandmother, putting a hand on her shoulder. She blinked, then reached up and held his hand, to give or receive comfort, possibly both. Behind her, the same news footage Mike saw earlier played and re-played on the television, and the same words scrolled across the screen in large captions. Poppa was hard of hearing, so he liked the closed-captioning for times when he missed a word or two.

  “Where’s your mother, Ryan?” Gran asked. Gran was the only person who ever called him Ryan.

  Mike shook his head and looked away. Gran nodded, her bright blue eyes clouded with pain. “And your father?”

  “He was at work,” Mike said, his voice shaky. “The phone lines were down, so … I don’t know, Gran.”

  Gran nodded again, her lips set in a thin line. “At least you two are here,” she said, the no-nonsense tone back in her voice. “It’s the end of days, boy. There’s work to be done.”

  Mike nodded, uncertainly. Gran had talk about the end of days before, and Mike had always dismissed her words as the religious fire of an old woman, something he needed to tolerate respectfully, but which had no bearing on his life. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Still, the main thing was, he had gotten Jenn and himself here safely, so Gran was in charge now.

  “What do you need me to do?” he asked quietly.

  Gran looked down at the dead man in her lap, her husband of forty-six years, and gently stroked his thin face. She smiled sadly at her grandson. “Poppa fell right here about an hour or so ago,” she said, her voice becoming businesslike again as she finished her sentence, “so I’ve had my grievin’ time with him. Ryan, you
need to put him to rest for me, son.”

  “Gran … shouldn’t we call someone?” Mike asked softly. He could tell Gran wasn’t thinking quite right – there were authorities who needed to be notified, forms to be filled out. The police and coroner would have questions, he knew, even though the cause of death was self-evident. And they would have to call a funeral home, right?

  She shook her head grimly and spoke with quiet intensity. “You ain’t thinking, boy. You saw all those people dyin’ on the television. If there is anyone left to call, they won’t have time for one old man out in Bullitt County.” Gran waited a long moment and watched the boy’s blue eyes – a mirror of her own – as the sharp brain behind them struggled to process the information. In front of her, he put childhood behind him and stepped up to the adult role she held out to him.

  She exhaled the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. God knows, she couldn’t have blamed the boy for wanting to remain a child, but it made things much easier knowing he was mature enough to face the hardships that would come. He would be able to protect his sister, as much as any man could, while the apocalypse was born. She gave him a smile of pride when he looked up at her again.

  “Where do you want me to put him, Gran? The ground is frozen.”

  “You can’t put him in the ground!” Jenn’s angry, tearful accusation was so unexpected, Mike actually jumped. She came in from the doorway, her fists clenched at her sides. Her eyes flicked quickly to Poppa’s corpse, and then back to Mike, fury in her gaze. “You have to get him to a hospital, Mike! You can’t put him in the ground, like he’s a dog! Why are you even thinking something so stupid? I hate you, Mike Sanderlin, I hate you!!”

  Mike continued to kneel beside Gran, but he looked up at his little sister. To Gran’s surprise – and relief – there was no return anger in his eyes, just an expression of understanding and shared misery. “I’m sorry, Jenn,” he said gently. “Right now, I hate me, too.”

  Jenn had no reply. She wanted to fight, and Mike’s admission left her with nothing to yell about. She simply turned, tears streaming down her face, and stomped off into her old bedroom where her toys and extra clothes were kept, slamming the door as hard as she could behind her.

  Gran’s eyes met Mike’s. “You have to make her mind you now, Ryan, whether she wants or not. It’s the end of days, boy, and you will be responsible for her safety. For her life, Ryan.”

  Mike nodded absently. “Extinction event,” he corrected softly, not even realizing he’d spoken the words aloud.

  Gran scowled. “Tomayto, Tomahto!” she snapped irritably. “Now, I need you to get a quilt from the cedar chest and wrap your grandfather in that. Then …” she hesitated, thinking a moment. “Then, take him out back, under the rose trellis. You can cover him with snow, and see to a proper burial come spring.”

  Mike nodded, moving into Gran’s bedroom as he’d been instructed. Helen Garrett watched her grandson thoughtfully, her eyes moving to the closed door of nine-year-old Jennifer’s room. She sighed heavily. The boy would have enough responsibility with the little one to be accountable for. The last thing he needed was a wheelchair-bound old woman weighing him down.

  Kari

  Kari was a ghoul, feeding on the dead. She pushed the thought away, but it came back to her with persistence as she rolled over the fourth body, along with unwelcome images from every late-night horror movie she’d ever watched and every Stephen King novel she’d ever read. She was scavenging the bodies of the dead partiers, people who used to be her friends, and her self-loathing and disgust were almost enough to make her stop.

  Almost.

  Despite their strained relationship, Kari Kasoniak was her father’s daughter, an Army brat and a survivor. So, she continued digging through the pockets of each corpse in the trashed living room, even though her mind recoiled from the gruesome task. It took a minute – okay, closer to an hour – for her to completely lose her shit when she first realized she was the only survivor among the twenty-eight people Malik invited to stay over and party the night before.

  She spent several minutes in hyperventilating hysteria, then several more trying cell phones, then a few more staring blankly into space. But she finally got her head back on.

  Malik’s 65-inch ultra high definition television showed the same horrifying coverage since she’d turned it on, and Kari’s mind reeled with the implications. This was not a drill. She wondered who had developed the warhead and, more, had had the effrontery to launch it against the United States? North Korea? China? Daddy told her more than once he would expect endgame attacks from those nations even more than from the Middle East. But this weapon wasn't nuclear, as she would have expected. It was an anti-personnel weapon, and it was unlike anything her father ever even hinted about.

  Kari pulled the cash from Randy Blumenson’s wallet, counting it quickly. There was more than two hundred dollars, which surprised her, since he was always begging for cigarettes or hits. She put his wallet back into his vest pocket, her fingertips touching a small plastic baggie. She pulled it out, looking down at the little blue pills in dull surprise. She didn't know Randy did X. The pills were cut, obviously – not anything close to the sweet purity of the powder Malik gave her last night – but … there were eight 120s in the baggie. It usually took only two pills for Kari to go flying off to her happy place.

  Kari frowned, sticking the plastic bag into the pocket of her little black dress. It was time to grow the fuck up. After she looted the rest of the bodies for items Malik’s friends would never need again, she intended to flush the pills down the toilet. Her party days were over. She needed to get to Fort Knox and find her father, or at least figure out where the Army would be sending him now. She smiled, a bit sadly. It seemed Dad wouldn’t get to retire after all.

  By the time Kari searched each body, she had over a thousand dollars in cash and five times that value in pot, heroin and cocaine, the baggies shoved into the pocket with the ecstasy. She also had three handguns – a Glock G22, a Smith & Wesson .357 and a Sig Sauer. She unloaded the Glock and .357, checking the chambers of each, and then set them on an end table. She tucked the Sig into the pocket of her little black dress opposite the cache of drugs.

  The sun was high overhead when she moved into the kitchen to fix herself something to eat. She chewed the tasteless bologna sandwich, her mind processing options in an analytical way that would make Dad proud. She was about forty minutes from the front gates of Knox. She would take Malik’s jeep, since he had picked her up for the party, and her hybrid was still sitting in her driveway twenty miles from here. She would gather survival supplies, because Dad would be pissed if she didn’t, and she would change into jeans and her hiking boots. She glanced back at the television, running the same coverage on a seemingly-infinite loop. She needed to make time for a shower, at the very least. Kari glanced across the kitchen, seeing her reflection in the patio glass doors. Yeah, she looked like shit and smelled like she’d been crawling among dead people – a shower was definitely on top of her list.

  Kari moved back into Malik’s bedroom, keeping her eyes off the bed where his body lay and stepping over Delronda’s body to get to the large master bathroom. Her makeup and perfume were stored in the linen closet, as were several changes of clothing. Her jeans and t-shirt were in Malik's bedroom, and she knew her heavy coat was somewhere in the living room.

  Kari emptied her pockets, setting the Sig on the toilet tank, just a hand’s reach from the shower stall, and she set the packets of drugs onto the counter top. She opened them, dumping their contents one-by-one into the toilet. The last baggie was the one with the eight blue tablets. Kari stared at it a long moment. Malik, along with most of his friends and connections, was dead. Thousands of people in Louisville, hundreds of thousands in America, were dead. It was overwhelmingly probable that her father was dead – he was healthy, overall, but still in his mid-sixties.

  Kari glanced at the Sig and looked away immediately, horrified at her own sp
lit second of cowardice. Oh, hell no! No way would she take the easy way out by eating a gun! She would find her father, and he would tell her how bad the situation was. He would give her some good suggestions, as he always did, and she would probably ignore them, as she always did. Still, she would find her own path and make her way through this just the same as she did everything else.

  Kari’s hand tipped, and she watched the little blue pills roll from the bag and plop into the toilet water. One … three … five. She suddenly gripped the bag tightly, not allowing the last three pills to fall. One last time, she thought, dropping the three pills into her hand and tossing the baggie in the trash. Just one last time of feeling good … just for a few hours.

  She swallowed the pills with a handful of water, and then stepped into the shower as she waited for them to kick in.

  Hershey

  At first, his human didn’t know anything was wrong. She lived alone, except for him, and she thought it peculiar so many jets broke the sound barrier at the same time. She was used to jet noise, though. She remembered the three days after 9/11 when none of the jets flew, and how frightening it was to all of the people who complained about the jet noise. She even had a bumper sticker, faded now, that said, “I heart jet noise!” Hershey couldn’t read the bumper sticker, of course, and he wasn’t quite sure what a jet was, but his human talked to him constantly, and he always listened to what she said. He loved the sound of her voice. She always spoke to him with kindness and affection, even when she used words he didn’t understand.

  He knew something terrible happened before his human even had the first suspicion. He understood, down in the marrow of his bones, the loud noises were not jets. They were something Bad, as in, 'Bad dog!' bad. Hershey’s tail stayed tucked beneath his legs as he followed his human from room to room while she did her morning things. He followed her so closely she bumped into him a few times, and once she even scolded him, although her voice wasn’t angry.