by Jack Ziebell
“Well how are we going to get out of here?” said Brian, “With the doors closed this place is like Fort Knox, we’ll never get past the guards.”
“The General will double the guards now he knows about this, but there are several ways out of here. The problem is, if we leave without a vehicle, we’ll never make it; you said all the cars outside were fried right?”
Brian thought hard. He’d seen the heavy main door next to the vehicle bay; it closed quickly but took two minutes to open, complete with warning sirens to ensure nobody was caught behind it. The vehicle bay was swarming with personnel, the only way they could get out was by faking some errand that required them to leave the base, though he thought the General would see through that in a second.
“There’s always the bike.” Marius still had his annoying habit of reading his thoughts and being one step ahead.
“You think you could get three on that thing?” said Zakorski.
“Sure, we might have to stop at a couple of repair shops on the way but if we’re lucky she might make it. Will we be able to get it out one of the back doors?”
“Yes,” said Zakorski, “There’s a tunnel that leads all the way through the mountain and comes out near to town, if we go at night we should make it out of the populated areas by morning. We would still need to get past the guards, even going that way.”
They arranged to meet Marius behind their living quarters once he had got the bike from where they’d left it, parked to one side of the vehicle bay. Brian followed Zakorski to get a couple of jerry cans of fuel and some food.
The storeroom was immense, filled with every kind of canned food and lots of coded military rations in otherwise anonymous silver packets. At the back of the warehouse was a fenced-off area where the fuel was kept. It was guarded by a young looking military policeman.
The MP stood up and saluted as they approached. “Captain, as of seventeen hundred hours all requests for vehicle fuel must be authorised by the General.”
Zakorski thought quickly. “It’s OK private, it isn’t for a vehicle, we just need a couple of jerry cans to power a generator; the General says the holding pens need to be secure so we are electrifying the fences.”
The soldier seemed unconvinced.
Zakorski changed tack slightly. “You know I’ve been put in charge of the pens? Well maybe I’ll be in charge of access to the pens, right?”
The MP looked uncomfortable but then let them through. “Just a couple of cans, right?”
Brian was impressed; Zakorski was the kind of girl he’d always wanted to meet but thought never really existed. They walked out with the jerry cans and stopped on their way back to load a cardboard box with as many dried ration packs as they could carry. Brian strained under the weight of the box, trying to prevent the bottom from falling out. “How the hell are we going to get all this on the bike plus the three of us?”
Zakorski picked up the cans and they set off again. “Well, what we don’t need we’ll be leaving behind.”
They were nearing the living quarters when they noticed soldiers running towards the vehicle bay. Zakorski grabbed one of them. “What’s going on?”
The soldier stopped and adjusted his cap. “Ain’t ya heard Captain? The General’s making a speech, orders are we all gotta go, he’s starting in two minutes.”
After dropping the supplies in Brian’s room, they followed the congregating soldiers into the cavernous vehicle bay. The General, flanked by the Brigadier and two MPs in white helmets, was standing on top of a tank, a US flag hanging from its barrel. A sea of green was gathered in front of him and somewhere at the back Brian could just make out the top of Marius’ head. He hoped he had the bike.
The General cleared his throat and raised his hands. “Men and women of the US armed forces. When you enlisted you took an oath to serve and protect. And that’s what I’m here to ask of you; to keep your oath and fight for your country. I know some of you may have heard rumours about a US submarine and others of you have heard that our Australian cousins may have come out of this unscathed. Well I’m here to tell you; yes there was a sub. Various parts of our military machine are still operational and it’s up to all of us to do our duty, no matter how hard that might be.
When the pilgrim fathers landed on these shores, do you think they had it easy? No. Hell no. They had it hard. But did they jump on the first ship to take them back to Europe? No they stayed on and forged a great nation. When Jim Bowie and Davie Crocket looked out from the Alamo and saw the thousands of troops Santa Anna had at his disposal, did they run for the hills?”
“Hell no!” yelled the crowd.
“Hell no!” The General was just getting started, he knew his boys and he knew how to push all the right buttons. “When our boys were fighting, liberating Europe, and they found themselves in the Ardennes, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of battle hardened Nazis, did they beg for mercy? Hell no, the 101st Airborne dug in and held back the worst of humanity until help arrived. When General Anthony McAuliffe, was defending the town of Bastogne, he was told by the Nazi’s to surrender; what’d he say?"
The crowd laughed, "Nuts!"
“Nuts, that’s right.” The General smiled, he was a real Patton. “When the Twin Towers fell, did the spirit of our country fall with them?”
“Hell No!”
“Hell No! We pledged to track those fuckers down to the ends of the earth to bring them to justice, and we didn’t stop until justice had been delivered. Oorah!”
“Oorah!” the marines in the crowd shouted back.
“Today ain’t no different folks. We will do what the US military always does; get the job done. Do you think a hundred of those crazies out there are worse than a hundred Indian braves? Do you think they compare to a thousand Mexican mercenaries, or a hundred thousand Nazi storm troopers? Hell no! They may be many, but they sure are weak, they’re stupid and they are out there ruining what’s left of our God-given country.
Now, I know some of you may have known some good people in that town, some of you even had families; but let me tell you those people are not the wife you kissed goodnight, they are not the buddy you sat in the bar and had a beer with, they are not the girl that you fucked on your last day of college. They are nothing more than animals.
Now we tried to help them right? We tried. We lost sixteen good men today, trying to help those animals out there. You knew these men.” The General took a piece of paper from the Brigadier, “Williams, McNeil, Ibrevanich, Phillips, Davis, Hillard, Stanley, Goldberg, Brown, Michaels and Michaelson, Tang, DeChambeau, Torrell, Garcia, Martinez.” The General handed the paper back to the Brigadier and bowed his head. “Let us take a moment to remember the dead.”
After a minute of silence the General spoke. “When I read those names, those names of good men who died in the line of duty, I don’t see a Korean name, or a Spanish name, or black or white; I see what I see when I look at you; honour, courage, discipline. These are the qualities that bind us together, the living and the dead.” Brian noticed that some in the crowd had tear tracks down their faces.
“Our plan was to rescue as many as we could, to teach them to be part of our community, but the price we paid in blood has been great. However men, we are not running away to the South Pacific. The Navy might be scared to get their hands dirty, hell they might get something on those pretty white uniforms of theirs, but the Army, the Air Force and the Marines, we know how to fight. Our plan was to clear the zone around the Mountain of civilians so we have a clear foundation from which to be reborn. After today, I realised that using conventional means to create a safe haven for our people requires too much risk.
In the year of nineteen-forty five, President Harry Truman faced a hard choice. We had defeated Nazi Germany, but the Japanese Empire fought on. Truman knew that if he had to invade the Japanese mainland, we would lose half-a-million men in the fight, maybe more, cut to pieces on the beaches and every step of the way until they reached Tokyo. When he dropped th
ose bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he knew - he knew he wasn’t taking lives; he was saving them. Earlier today I was faced with a similar choice. Do I send you out there to do your duty, just as those US marines in August nineteen-forty five stood ready to do theirs, even if it meant dying in the dirt of Kyūshū to defend the country they loved? Hell no, I did what Truman did, I took the hard choice and I have spared you from that nightmare. As we speak, those who howled in the night, those who killed even their own families and the friends with whom we served, those poor corrupted souls are being laid to rest in an eternal sleep that will bring both them and us peace. They will have died so that we may live, so that we may rebuild.
Unbeknown to many of you, this facility has always contained some of our weapons of last resort. It is common knowledge that we have long held the responsibility for co-ordinating a nuclear response to any attack on our country, but in addition to that we have also been a secure vault for other weapons; weapons too lethal to be stored anywhere else. After our convoy returned earlier today, I ordered that VX nerve gas dispersal units be placed in the foothills around the city. The gas from these dispersal units is heavier than air and it will flow down into the valleys, washing them clean like the clear waters of the mighty Colorado. Death by VX is quick and painless. The Mountain is now sealed and this operation is already underway: moments before I began speaking to you I was informed by the Brigadier, who also heads the NORAD Chemical Warfare Unit, that the canisters have been opened. The gas will take up to two weeks to clear fully before it can be deemed safe to enter the surrounding areas to begin the clean up operation.
Our plan is then two-fold: first secure Peterson Air Force Base and create a secure perimeter around a thirty square mile zone adjacent to the runways. This zone will be under military jurisdiction and, along with the Mountain, we will defend it.
With those who would have hampered us sufficiently depleted, any remaining civilian threats should be minimal and well within our power to control. If possible we will re-establish order among the remaining population, putting them to work if their labour can be harnessed, in the fields at first or if they can prove themselves worthy, they may eventually join our ranks. But let us be clear, in this new America, we are the masters - your needs will come first. We cannot defend this country by hiding in a mountain. We cannot defend this country from some foreign shore. We are at our strongest now, and therefore, it is now that we must go on the offensive. We are the hope, we are the future, we are the vanguard and we are all that is left ladies and gentlemen. The past few weeks have been a long, dark night for our nation; we have all suffered and we have all lost - but tomorrow a new glorious chapter in our history begins.”
The General smiled with all the charm of a grandfather telling his grandchildren a bedtime story, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s morning in America.”
A pre-positioned soldier in the audience saluted and began to sing the Star Spangled Banner; the rest joined in. Some were crying with genuine sorrow, but most for more patriotic reasons.
Brian looked at Zakorski, she was mouthing the words. Even he felt emotional despite disagreeing with everything the General was doing. Then the realisation hit him; two-weeks for the gas to clear, they would not make it to San Francisco.
Marius had made his way behind the crowd and put his hand on Brian’s shoulder.
Zakorski wiped a tear from her cheek. “So we’ve missed the boat.”
“Tabula rasa,” said Marius.
Brian nodded. “Blank slate.”
Chapter 28
It wasn’t long before the cook was banging on the door again. “You can’t just take whatever you want you know. Those supplies belong to the embassy, we have to divide everything. I know you can hear me Tim.”
Tim sat silently facing the door. He knew they wouldn’t be able to stay here with this man. Something was going to happen; either the cook would bring the town down upon them or kill them himself. Tim bit his nails down to where they joined the skin. Could he do it? Could he make the embassy a refuge for just him and Sarah? He’d just shot three people, but this would be different.
The cook’s voice slurred through the steel door, he’d been drinking. “Tim all I’m saying is that we share. OK? We share everything.”
He didn’t like the emphasis the cook put on ‘everything’. Sarah was in the corner stacking cans into a pyramid and knocking them down again. He would die, no he would kill before he let the cook near her.
There was another loud bang at the door. “Tim, open the door you fuck! You can’t stay in there forever and I’ll get in there if I want to.”
Tim wondered how strong the door was, pretty strong but strong enough to withstand gunfire? He waited. After half an hour the cook seemed to lose interest and the banging stopped. He must have got hungry, Tim thought. He took a handgun and two clips from the filing cabinet. He looked at the gun. He had never fired a handgun before but thought he could figure out the basics; load a round in the chamber and take the safety off, just like Asefa had showed him with the rifle. The safety was on the side, but should the red dot be showing or not for it to be off? He took the clip out and experimented until he heard the firing pin click; if there had already been a round in the chamber he wouldn’t have known how to take it out. He replaced the clip and cocked the gun. He looked at his wife, knowing it might be for the last time. “I love you Sarah.” She smiled at him and returned to her game. He didn’t know why but the thought came to him that if she could be like this, calm and happy, then others could be too, given the right support and attention. No wonder they acted wild given the world they’d woken up in. If he survived, he told himself he would make a concerted effort to teach her to talk; and if that was possible, perhaps there was hope for them all.
He had hoped to unlock and open the door in a single fluid motion but the bolts felt more cumbersome than usual and it seemed to take minutes rather than seconds. The cook was not silently in wait on the other side as he’d half expected and Tim lowered his weapon. Cautiously he stuck his head out of the door and looked in both directions. The hallway was clear and he could hear nothing from the adjoining offices. He spun around, closing the door and locking it behind him. Where was he?
He ran quietly down the hall and slid with his back to the wall just before it turned down into the stairwell. Again he cautiously looked around the corner, half expecting a bullet to zing off the wall next to his face. But the stairs were empty. He moved onto the first step and looked down the centre of the stairwell; it was clear all the way. He began making his way slowly down the steps, holding the pistol in front of him, pointing it wherever he looked, like he had seen in a hundred cop shows. But would he be able to pull the trigger? He didn’t doubt it now. The cook had gone too far and before the day was out only one of them would be left alive, that he knew for sure.
He reached the landing of the ground floor and turned three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. The lobby was empty. He could just make out a weak scraping sound coming from the canteen but figured it was one of the last survivors clawing at the door. He was about to check to make sure when he heard a noise above him, a rattling of keys. He felt like he had been punched in the stomach, the feeling you get when you wake up knowing you left the gas on, just as you switch on the light. Consumed with a blind panic he ran at full speed up the stairs, grasping at the railing and spinning around each corner. The cook could have been waiting anywhere on the stairwell or second floor landing and Tim would have run straight into him but he now knew exactly where the man was. He got to the third floor just in time to hear the strong room door close and the locks inside click shut. He ran to the door and pounded on it. “Open the door Jed, this isn’t funny, open the door!”
He heard a sadistic laugh from inside. “Oh, that’s right Tim, you forgot about the master set. So did I until I remembered I’d seen them hanging from the janitor’s belt, just before I slit his throat.”
“If you touch her, if you do anything to harm he
r in anyway, I’ll make you regret it.”
“Tim, you just came out to kill me. I saw you with the gun. That’s no way for a guest to behave. Your wife on the other hands seems much more, friendly. She’ll have a drink with me.”
He wished he’d never opened the gate and let the cook in, if only he’d known then. He should have been more cautious after he knocked him down out by the car, but his pity and hope for an ally clouded his judgement. The cook had clearly gone insane, maybe he’d been partially exposed to whatever had caused this, or maybe what he had done had destroyed what was left of his rationality with guilt. It didn’t matter anymore, what mattered was getting through the door and putting an end to him. “OK I’m putting my gun down,” he lied, “just open the door.”
Another laugh. “You can do what you like out there professor, and so can I.”
Tim started beating on the door and charging it with his shoulder, but it was useless. He stood back and fired the handgun at the door handle. The bullets did nothing but scratch it and ricochet dangerously back at him. He wished he had brought the rifle. How could he have been so stupid? He should have checked all of the offices upstairs or waited longer, until nightfall. His mind was racing over all the things the cook could be doing on the other side of the door. He had to get in there. Suddenly he heard his wife scream and shout his name. He could hear a struggle. His knuckles were now bloody but the door held firm. “Don’t touch her, don’t fucking touch her.” The struggle came to an abrupt halt and he heard nothing more. “Sarah.” He cried and fell to his knees, pounding pathetically on the steel with the butt of the gun. “Sarah.”
He had failed again. If she was taken from him he would do all he could to end the cook’s life before ending his own.
Ten minutes passed with no sound from the room. Then, from the other side, came the rattle of locks. He flung himself backwards so he was sitting against the opposite wall, his gun pointed at the door. But the door did not open. He crawled slowly towards it, gun raised, but still it did not open. He grabbed at the handle, turned it and still sitting kicked the door ajar. The door hit against something heavy and he flung himself through the crack. The cook lay face down on the floor, motionless and Sarah was standing over him, holding a bent and bloodied can, her clothes torn but intact. Immediately he wanted to hug her, but he had to make sure the cook was down for good and was ready to put a bullet in him if necessary. He tried to feel for a pulse but couldn’t. Blood was pouring from a wound somewhere on the front of the man’s head. He turned him over but as he did so the cook’s hands came from nowhere, crushing his throat and the wrist holding the gun. The gun went off, lodging a bullet in the skylight, creating a mosaic of cracked glass. Time seemed to slow as he grappled with the man, whose bloodied face was more terrifying than anything he had seen amongst the affected. He was so strong and already had Tim on his back. “Too much time counting chocolate teapots,” Asefa’s words rang through his head. He tried to raise the gun but the cook pushed it back to the floor, he could feel the other hand pressing down harder and harder on his windpipe. The room started to dim and he thought he could hear Asefa’s voice calling him. He was dying.
