by James Philip
Aftermath
By James Philip
Copyright © James P. Coldham writing as James Philip 2015. All rights reserved.
Cover Artwork concept by James Philip
Graphic Design by Beastleigh Web Design
Author’s Note
‘Aftermath’ is Book 1 of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62 – USA.
The Cuban Missiles Crisis went wrong and now the American people are about to start living with the consequences of the catastrophe.
From New England to the Pacific North West, from Washington DC to San Francisco Americans confront to their worst nightmare. Nobody wins a nuclear war.
‘Aftermath’ is about the first twenty-four hours of the new age, a novella length introduction to the new Timeline 10/27/62 – USA Series.
It is set in America and tells the Timeline 10/27/62 story through American eyes. At points in the narrative the books of this series will 'touch base' with, and offer alternative perspectives on the events in other books set in the Timeline 10/27/62 World but each book in the USA series will stand alone. Some of the characters who feature in ‘Aftermath’ will have appeared in earlier books set in the Timeline 10/27/62 ‘verse but many – most in fact - make their first bow in the opening book of the new series.
‘Aftermath’ is the first verse of the American story of Armageddon; the first twenty-four hours of the new era.
Welcome to the Timeline 10/27/62 – USA Series.
Book 1: Aftermath
Book 2: California Dreaming
Book 3: The Great Society
Book 4: Ask Not of Your Country (Available 31st December 2016)
Book 5: The American Dream (Available in 2017)
The Timeline 10/27/62 Main Series is:
Book 1: Operation Anadyr
Book 2: Love is Strange
Book 3: The Pillars of Hercules
Book 4: Red Dawn
Book 5: The Burning Time
Book 6: Tales of Brave Ulysses
Book 7: A Line in the Sand
Book 8: The Mountains of the Moon
Book 9: All Along the Watchtower (Available in 2017)
* * *
To the reader: firstly, thank you for reading this book; and secondly, please remember that this is a work of fiction. I made it up in my own head. None of the fictional characters in ‘Aftermath – Book 1 of the ‘Timeline 10/27/62 - USA Series’ - is based on real people I know of, or have ever met. Nor do the specific events described in Aftermath – Book 1 of the ‘Timeline 10/27/62 - USA Series’ - have, to my knowledge, any basis in real events I know to have taken place. Any resemblance to real life people or events is, therefore, unintended and entirely coincidental.
The ‘Timeline 10/27/62 - USA Series’ is an alternative history of the modern world and because of this real historical characters are referenced and in some cases their words and actions form significant parts of the narrative. I have no way of knowing if these real, historical figures, would have spoken thus, or acted in the ways I depict them acting. Any word I place in the mouth of a real historical figure, and any action which I attribute to them on or after 27th October 1962 never actually happened. As I always say in my Author’s Notes to my readers, I made it up in my own head.
Timeline 10/27/62 – USA is set in the same alternative world as the books of the ‘Main’ series but it tells different stories of different people from very different perspectives. Where it touches base with events in the ‘Main’ series this is to maintain the coherence of the background narrative and to place events in the USA storyline in the context of the Timeline 10/27/62 World.
The books of the Timeline 10/27/62 - USA Series are written as episodes; they are instalments in a contiguous narrative arc. The individual ‘episodes’ each explore a number of plot branches, and develop themes continuously from book to book. Inevitably, in any series some exposition and extemporization is unavoidable but I try – honestly, I do – to keep this to a minimum as it tends to slow down the flow of the stories I am telling.
In writing each successive addition to the Timeline 10/27/62 ‘verse’ it is my implicit assumption that my readers will have read the previous books in the series, and that my readers do not want their reading experience to be overly impacted by excessive re-hashing of the events in those previous books.
Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Author’s Endnote
Other Books by James Philip
Aftermath
[Book 1 of Timeline 10/27/62 - USA]
“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. Men no longer debate whether armaments are a symptom or a cause of tension. The mere existence of modern weapons - ten million times more powerful than any that the world has ever seen, and only minutes away from any target on earth - is a source of horror, and discord and distrust. Men no longer maintain that disarmament must await the settlement of all disputes - for disarmament must be a part of any permanent settlement. And men may no longer pretend that the quest for disarmament is a sign of weakness - for in a spiralling arms race, a nation's security may well be shrinking even as its arms increase.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States of America.
25th September 1961
Chapter 1
19:45 Hours Mountain Standard Time (21:45 in Washington DC)
Saturday 27th October 1962
Bellingham, Washington State
If things had gone to plan Sam Brenckmann would have been back in San Francisco sometime early next week. If things had gone to plan, by then he would have been paid the balance of his tour ‘fee’. If things had gone according to plan in a day or two he would have been on his way back south, looking forward to meeting up again with friends, smoking a little dope, and basically chilling. He had planned to stop over a few days in the Bay Area before he returned to Los Angeles, and hopefully paper things over with Miranda Sullivan. Okay, they had had a fight, she had got him hooked up with a bunch of talentless no-hopers and he had not got the joke at the time. That was past history, he was not the sort of guy who brooded about that shit; if Miranda wanted to bury the hatchet that was fine by him. If not; well, it was not like they were ever going to get married or anything. Se la vie, and all that. He did not plan to hang out more than a week, tops, in San Francisco however the reunion with Miranda went because he had people he needed to touch base with in LA. The way he saw it hanging out in Laurel Canyon, catching up with what was happening on the Sunset Strip, busking around the clubs along Santa Monica Boulevard was the best possible way of washing the bitterly sour taste of ‘touring’ the great American North West out of his system.
The last time he was in
LA he had met a club owner called Doug Weston. Doug ran a club called The Troubadour at 9081 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood; he was a funny guy, six foot six inches tall, intensely energized with a forthright quirky take on the music business that set most old-time agents teeth on edge. Doug had put three fingers of bourbon on the table in front of Sam and they had talked about the scene; who was on the up and who was on the way down, and who had already slipped out of sight. After a while Sam had got out his guitar, sung a couple of other people’s songs before playing the club owner a bluesy version of Brothers Across the River. Everybody thought Brothers Across the River was some kind of epic ballad but actually, it recollected the overcast day he had driven down to Norfolk with Ma to welcome his big brother Walter back from his first cruise on the USS Scorpion. He had headed West shortly after that so it had, in hindsight, marked a minor personal rite of passage, bookending a stage in his life when he was coming to terms with the knowledge that his future no longer lay in attempting to be something he was never going to be – a regular guy like his Pa and his two elder brothers – and that he had had to get away from New England before it sucked the life out of him. That night in The Troubadour Sam had got the impression Doug would have offered him a gig, or even a residency at a club – which would have been a huge break because The Troubadour was a three or four hundred seat venue - if he had not already been signed up to Johnny Seiffert’s blood-sucking agency in San Francisco. Notwithstanding, he had sent a demo disc to the club owner before he went on the road with the Limonville Brothers Family Strummers.
PLANS!
Truth be told, things had not been ‘going to plan’ for Mr and Mrs Brenckmann’s twenty-four year old – going on twenty-five in less than a month - contrary third son for a while and the fact that he had ended up messily divorced from his latest band, the aforementioned Limonville Brothers Family Strummers broke, broke as in down to his last five bucks in change, in a town so far out in the boondocks that it was pretty well as far out as a guy could go in the good old United States of America without actually being in a foreign country, was probably God’s unsubtle way of telling him to man up and get a proper job. Not that he believed for a single millisecond that he would hold down anything like a ‘proper job’ for more than ten minutes; because that just was not who or what he was.
“I’ve seen you hanging around town the last few days?”
The woman’s accent was Canadian, sing song to an East Coast ear only latterly corrupted by the more laid back drawl of Southern California. Sam Brenckmann was a sucker for a woman with music or with any hint of the melodic in her voice.
Until that moment Sam had been gazing morosely out of the window of the bar at the brightly lit sign – MOUNT BAKER THEATRE – across the darkened street for some minutes idly replaying the week old debacle of his final appearance with the Limonville Brothers Family Strummers. The ‘brothers’ were a bunch of rednecks who struggled to play half-a-dozen chords between them, and never ever in the right order or time signature with instruments they spent so much time tuning and retuning – on account of the fact that they were all virtually tone deaf – it was a wonder that they were not completely exhausted before they got on stage. The brothers had badly needed somebody who could play the key riffs and add a little soul and grunt to the vocal lines. Ideally, they had needed and wanted somebody who looked like them – somebody with a fair chance of passing Edgar J. Hoover’s haircut and dress standards test – who went to church on Sundays, who worshipped in the same Southern Democrat segregated church that they worshipped, and who thought that William Tecumseh Sherman had actually been the Devil’s right hand man. Well, that was never going to be Boston-born, Massachusetts-raised wishy washy Kennedy faction liberal Samuel Brenckmann!
Things had been boiling up nicely in the four weeks after Sam and the Limonvilles hit the road. In retrospect he was amazed it had not come to fisticuffs sooner. The ‘brothers’ had taken an instant dislike to the ‘beatnik weirdo’ Johnny Seiffert had parachuted into in their tight-knit, xenophobic little family band. When Sam had confessed to having ‘good’ black and Hispanic ‘friends’ back in LA the ‘brothers’ had looked at him as if he had just admitted to having had sexual congress with a goat. Which, of course, was probably more their bag than his but he had held out nearly three weeks on the road with the assholes before he had said as much...
The woman touched his elbow as if she was afraid he had not heard her the first time.
“I’ve seen you hanging around town the last few days?”
Sam half-turned and instantly blinked out of the melancholy circle of his brooding thoughts. The woman was in her thirties, frowsy almost blond. She was wearing a waitressing uniform under her coat. Not over tall she had a housewifely, kindly intelligence in her green grey eyes that momentarily distracted him from his brooding in a way the woman’s mostly hidden figure did not. He guessed her coat hid a comely, perhaps moderately plump figure. There was no shame in briefly contemplating her unclothed; he was a red blooded twenty-four year old unattached male with an entirely natural and very healthy curiosity about these things, except tonight he was oddly distracted and in the wake of recent events his libido was unaccountably subdued.
He smiled crookedly and nodded down at his battered guitar case on the floor at his feet under the lip of the bar. Otherwise, he was silent, as if that nod said everything as he raised his glass towards his lips. He was not drunk yet but he meant to be before he ran out of money. In the morning he hoped to hitch a ride south. It was completely the wrong time of year up in the North West but he would try busking in Seattle, make a few calls while he was in the big city. Maybe he would get a gig or two in some club. Jazz, blues, folk, Hell he would even get a haircut and pretend to be a younger version of Jim Reeves if that was what it took to earn a few greenbacks! He ought to have moved on days ago but he had not run out of money then. Such was the romantic life of a wandering minstrel. The self-deprecatory thought burrowed deep into his head like a weevil. Ma and Pa had been right all along; if you wanted something you had to work for it. But oh, no, he had known better!
All things considered the life of a wandering minstrel had not worked out that well so far.
“A musician, yeah?” The woman mirrored his smile. She joined him at the bar, clambering awkwardly onto the stool next to him, initially waving away the bartender. “I’m okay, Tyler,” she said. The man behind the bar was old and grey, and had the look of an Indian two or three generations removed from his native roots. She returned her whole attention to the shaggy haired, unshaven younger man beside her. “I hear you boys had a falling out after last week’s show?”
She sounded sympathetic and Sam’s life had been distinctly short on sympathy lately. He looked at his new companion again. Yes, she was thirty maybe. The memory of freckles lingered on her cheeks. She was no beauty but pretty and she looked vaguely familiar. He had eaten a couple of times in the diner down the street before he started running out of money. The service was quick, the food wholesome and nobody hassled a guy back onto the street when it was raining or a cold wind was blowing, which was most of the time in the fall in Washington State. Mercer’s? Mercer’s Diner? Was that where he had seen her before?
Sam Brenckmann put down his glass and fingered his right eye socket. The swelling and the bruising had mostly gone away; the last discoloured flesh would take another few days to clear. Whereas, his father and brothers were sparsely built, compact and shorter, naturally dapper, as if they had been born to wear natty suits and crisp Navy uniforms with their hair cropped and their chins freshly shaved, he took after the men on his mother’s side of the family. They tended to be raw boned, taller, broader types, like light-heavy weights a couple of months out of the ring rather than natural lightweights in training like his two older brothers. Not that he could ever imagine a situation in which either of his brothers, or his Pa, would be dumb enough to get into a bar room brawl with three angry rednecks...
“Arti
stic differences,” Sam explained, grinning ruefully.
“What sort of artistic differences?” The woman very nearly giggled.
Sam suspected she had a really sexy, infectious giggle.
“I’m an artiste, and they’re three good old boys from Texas,” he explained. He might have said it with a dash of genuine rancour and a calculated sneer of contempt but he was no good at holding grudges and the Limonville Brothers had had a point. He had been high on stage and he had made them look bad once too often – well, bad as in worse than they usually looked – and if he had been in their place he would have been royally ticked off too. In retrospect he probably ought not to have called them what he had called them either. Just because they were ‘tone deaf talentless rednecks’ that was no reason to actually say it to their faces. “And I was smashed,” he confessed ruefully. “Were you there in the hall?”
The woman shook her head.
“I work most Saturday nights.”
“Oh, right. The diner down the street?” Sam remembered his manners. “Let me buy you a drink?”
The woman shook her head.
“I’m Judy,” she declared.
“Sam Brenckmann.”
The man stuck out his hand and the woman, after hesitating, shook it timidly and retrieved her fingers shyly.
“I used to sing in choirs and suchlike,” Judy explained, losing her confidence in a moment. “There’s a club two blocks away from here where they do floor spots all night on Saturdays.”
Much as Sam Brenckmann was tickled by the notion of being saved from an evening of solitary drinking by the intervention of a pretty woman, he honestly could not think of anything intrinsically less appealing to him than choir singing in ‘a club’ in the back end of nowhere. Coincidentally, that was when he noticed the wedding ring on Judy’s finger.
