by Ahern, Jerry
Annie dutifully grasped her brother's larger hand and walked beside him. As Sarah looked at the little girl's face, she could still see that the girl was on the verge of tears.
Sarah stopped at the closed basement door. The gas smelled stronger. She reached down to the doorknob, then stopped. "What if it makes a spark?" she asked herself, half aloud.
"What is it, Mama," Michael said. Then, "Here-I can open the door for you."
Suddenly, Michael was standing beside her, his hands already on the doorknob, pushing the door open.
"Michael!" Sarah screamed, grabbing the boy and his sister and drawing them against her. The door, the hinges creaking and sounding as though they needed oil, swung open. Nothing happened.
Cautiously, the boy and girl beside her, Sarah stepped into the house. The smell of gas was completely gone. As she looked up and down the hallway, she could see that, apparently, every window in the house had smashed inward. The rooms were littered with glass from broken dishes and vases, the overhead lights-everything was destroyed.
"What happened?" Michael said.
"Some very bad men dropped some big bombs on our country, Michael," Sarah said. "You've heard about the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb. Well, they have a lot more explosive force than ordinary bombs. All this mess is from bombs they dropped on Atlanta-and you know it takes us an hour and a half to drive there. So Atlanta was pretty far away." She shuddered as she heard herself use the past tense-"was." The zoo, the museums, the shops and restaurants-a flood of memories rushed over her. The people? Her throat started tightening, and, bending down to the children, she said, "I want us to get a few things and get out of the house. We'll stay in the barn tonight."
"Why would we stay in the barn, mom?"
"Yeah," Annie echoed, "why are we going to stay in the barn, Mommy. I don't like the barn very much."
"Well," she said patiently, "the gas that we all smelled down in the cellar. Gas could still build up and explode. We'll be safer in the barn. Now, come and help me." Automatically, she started toward the kitchen, but changed her mind. "We're going upstairs to get a few clothes and things just in case we don't get back to the house for a while. Michael, take some jeans, underpants, a couple of shirts, all your socks and two extra pairs of shoes and put them in your back pack. Then get Annie started. Take your sweaters, too."
"It's not very cold out, Mom," Michael started. She leaned down to the boy and put both hands on his shoulders. "Michael-you're very smart and sometimes you're very grown up. But sometimes I need you to do what I say-exactly what I say. Now hurry and do it. And don't forget to start getting Annie packed too."
She went up the stairs ahead of the children and glanced in their rooms to make sure everything was safe. Like the downstairs, the upstairs looked, she thought, as though a hurricane had struck.
Shouting, "Watch out for broken glass-Annie, stay with Michael," she walked to the end of the hall and the bedroom she shared with her husband-when he was home. She went into his dresser and found the only other gun besides the shotgun that he had forced her to keep in the house. She looked at it, reading the words on the side of it, "Colt's Government Model Mk IV/Series '70," then underneath that, "Caliber .45 ACP." As she held the gun, she wished she'd listened to her husband more attentively when he'd told her about it. She remembered his leaving it there several months earlier.
"Now, this is a Government Model .45," he'd said. "Just a pretty ordinary gun but a damned good one."
"You mean a .45 like the little guns you carry?"
"Yeah," Rourke had said. "Just bigger. Now I know you have trouble with slides on automatics, but I've left one round loaded in the chamber. After you shoot the gun-cock it first-leave the hammer up and just put up the safety. See?"
Sarah had gotten the discussion over with as quickly as possible. Now, she turned the gun over in her hand. It had rubber grips, black, with medallions of tiny horses on them. Shrugging her shoulders, she stuck the gun in the waistband of her blue jeans, shivering a little because the metal was cold against her skin. In the same drawer, she found two extra clips, which, her husband had always told her, were magazines. She took those and a box of ammunition and stuffed them into a large canvas purse, then went into her own dresser and got underwear, some T-shirts, and two sweaters. From her closet, she took two pairs of jeans, identical to the ones she wore. She put two pairs of track shoes into the huge canvas bag as well, then went back to her husband's dresser and took as many pairs of his white sweat socks as she could fit into the case. She snatched up their wedding picture, too, stripped it from the frame, and folded it in fourths, then put it into an inside pocket of the bag.
As she passed the bathroom, she took a canvas bag from under the sink-an old U.S. mail bag-and began stuffing it with soap, tampons, toothpaste, Band-Aids, and disinfectant spray.
Michael was ready and waiting in the hallway and she checked his pack, sending him back for his sweaters and telling him to grab as many rolls of toilet paper as he could and stuff them in his pack.
As fast as she could, she helped Annie pack, stuffing extra clothes for both children in Annie's back pack. She walked the children downstairs, the water jugs still down at the foot of the stairs where she'd left them, and carried everything into the kitchen. Her husband had insisted on her keeping a supply of freeze-dried foods from Mountain House and similar items, these all in a large duffel bag in the pantry. She grabbed this up, opened the bag, and stuffed a few cans of soup and beans and a can opener inside it as well. "Now," she said, "I want both of you to drink as much as you can of the milk in the refrigerator. I have to get everyone's vitamins and some blankets."
She left the children and ran back into the hallway and up the stairs, getting vitamins from the bathroom vanity and blankets from the spare bedroom. She wished now she'd let her husband buy them the sleeping bags he'd wanted to.
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she stopped and caught her breath.
"Come on, children," she shouted, then started back toward the kitchen for them.
"I'll put the milk in the refrigerator," Michael said.
"You don't have to darling," Sarah began. "There isn't any electricity."
With Michael carrying more than she'd thought he could, and Ann dragging Sarah's big canvas purse, Sarah started everyone from the kitchen, then thought of one other thing. She reached into the top drawer beside the sink and took the very sharp, Henkels boning knife, wrapped it in a kitchen towel, and slipped it into the duffel bag. She could barely move the bag.
As they reached the end of the hallway, she stopped and turned into the living room. "Wait a minute."
She went over to the mantle, grabbed the pictures of the children, and stripped them from their frames. Then she took the double-barreled shotgun from over the hearth and grabbed the box of shotgun shells from the drawer in the small end table.
"Okay," she said, trying to make her voice sound cheerful. "This is going to be quite an adventure." As they stepped onto the front porch, coats on, arms loaded with belongings, she could hear the horses in the barn, whinnying, frightened. And she realized why. In the darkness-although the late-night sky in the direction of Atlanta was bright like a sunset-she could hear the wild dog packs howling. The sound frightened her, too. "Come on, children-let's get to the barn," she whispered.
Chapter Twenty-two
"I have those figures now, Mr. President," Thurston Potter began.
"How accurate are they?" the president asked, sitting back down in the couch.
"Computer estimates based on intelligence data-close."
"All right," the president said, his voice low, "tell me."
Potter began. "Less than twenty percent of continental land-based missiles were able to get airborne. Of the ground bombers, approximately eighty-five percent made it out. Our nuclear submarine fleet and bombers holding at the Fail-Safe point came out okay in terms of doing their job. I have a ratio of ninety-percent effectiveness for the submarine fle
et. The bombers got to target, but, apparently, that Soviet particle beam system knocked most of them out."
"I want to know about casualties-us and them," the president interrupted.
"We estimate sixty percent of the U.S. population dead or dying-about 145 million people-"
"Oh, sweet Jesus."
Potter went on, sifting through the papers in his hands, "By morning there should be at least seventy-five times more third-degree burn patients than all pre-war burn centers and fully equipped hospitals could handle. The anticipated deaths as a consequence make up part of that 145 million casualty figure. Add another twenty percent for residual deaths from radiation poisoning. So we get slightly less than 175 million dead within the next few weeks, and that should be the maximum figure. I can go into greater depth, Mr. President. We have a preliminary statistical breakdown."
The president glanced up at Potter, staring into his eyes. "Later Thurston. How did the Russians do?"
"We knocked out sixty percent of their heavy industry, approximately forty percent of their population. And they've still got the Chinese to contend with. Other global casualty figures aren't too complete, yet, but much of the British Isles have been destroyed, some major cities in Canada. Most of France is intact. Nothing nuclear except for a lot of tactical stuff used in West Germany, and Soviet divisions are swamping Europe. But that won't last. The Chinese are really giving the Russians hell on the Sino-Soviet border."
"How about our forces?" the president asked.
"That's not so good, Mr. President. Our European land forces have been pretty much wiped out. But a lot of small units are still fighting independently, and the Pentagon people indicate they'll go on doing that until you tell them otherwise. Most military bases in the continental United States were knocked out, since they were A-Class targets because of their missiles. The really bad news is an unconfirmed report that when the missiles struck on the West Coast, they ruptured the San Andreas fault line and caused massive earthquakes and tidal waves. We've confirmed that New York City was swamped by an Atlantic tidal wave. Estimated casualty figures don't include the San Andreas quakes, but do include the New York disaster."
"Are the Russians coming?" the president asked, his voice emotionless.
"As best as we can tell, they'll make landings in certain safe cities where they used neutron bombs. About twenty-four hours. It's more symbolic than military. They can hold those areas, but just frankly don't have the manpower to do anything else with the Chinese on their rear ends. And they won't have sufficient heavy industry for years to get up enough muscle to actually occupy our entire country. We've got some small independent military units that are ready to go and make the Soviet occupation here miserable. Should be able to keep up fighting almost indefinitely."
"I suppose I should be thankful," the president muttered. "The whole planet could have been blown out of its orbit and plunged into the sun-like some of the scientists have been warning."
"Well, sir, no one got to use all their stuff. The Russians have pretty much stopped targeting us now. May have been a slight axis shift, could result in some radical climatic changes. Can't tell yet. Pretty scary business. Mind if I sit down, Mr. President?"
"Oh, I'm sorry Thurston," the president said, looking at the young man. "Yeah, go ahead and sit."
"Mr. President, what are you going to do?"
The president smiled, saying, "I was afraid somebody was going to ask me that. Well, I have no precedent to guide me. The country, more or less, has ceased to exist as a country. I don't know. What about fallout-any guesses there?"
"Well, sir, we had a lot of scenarios worked out for war, and this comes closest to scenario," and Potter studied his notes. "Eighteen-A. I doubt you'd remember it by that number, but, basically, it looks as though the fallout should stay in bands across the country, and when it settles to the ground, stay that way. Some areas will become nuclear deserts and are estimated to remain that way for perhaps hundreds of years-depending on the exact nature of the warheads the Soviets dropped. Some few areas will have very little danger from fallout. But then of course, almost the whole Mississippi basin was destroyed with direct hits, so the entire midsection of the country is going to be a vast no-man's land for a century or more."
"The planet isn't dead, though," the president said.
"Not as far as we can tell. I don't know if I should tell you what Rear Admiral Corbin said."
"Tell me," the president asked.
"Well-he called it instant urban renewal. Said someday future generations may actually thank us for this. Only the really fit will survive, the weaker types will be naturally cropped out. The land will eventually restore itself."
"He's full of crap," the president said quietly.
***
The Soviet premier signed the necessary papers for the token airborne invasion of several neutron-bombed cities. Most important would be Chicago, or what was left of Chicago after the seiche in Lake Michigan had produced a tidal wave effect and destroyed much of the city proper. Chicago was the largest of the cities they would occupy; Atlanta, St. Louis, Washington, and other eastern cities had been destroyed by conventional nuclear weapons and would be uninhabitable for-he checked the figures on the radioactive half-life of the nuclear material-204 years. Los Angeles and other western cities were not to be considered. Los Angeles. San Francisco, and most of central California had fallen into the Pacific when the San Andreas fault line had slipped. This distressed the premier. Tidal wave effects had swamped a portion of western Canada; parts of Alaska and were expected to slide toward the coastal areas of Siberia and, eventually, Japan.
The Premier turned off the desk lamp. Unlike the one in his Kremlin office, the light was strong, and it hurt his eyes. Sitting in the darkness, secure in his bomb shelter, he recalled the preliminary casualty estimates for the Soviet Union-some forty percent of the overall population. He closed his eyes-120 million men and women and children had died. And there was still the war with China. In the darkness, where no one could see him, he brushed tears from his great dark eyes.
Chapter Twenty-three
Rourke stood up and turned toward Mrs. Richards who was kneeling on the cockpit floor beside the captain. "You were right." Mrs. Richards looked at him. Rourke went on. "The captain is dead." He glanced across to the other side of the narrow cockpit-the copilot had died twenty minutes earlier. "Looks like it's up to us now," Rourke said quietly.
Mandy Richards bit her lip and nodded.
Rourke patted her on the shoulder. "From what I've been able to tell, we've got about two hours of flying time left-less, since we'll need some fuel to get her down, and we'll have to get down to a lower altitude before we can do that."
Suddenly, Rourke held his fingers to his lips, signaling silence. The speaker for the radio was the focus of his attention. He heard a voice coming from it. Ever since he had gone forward to the cockpit and begun trying to decipher the controls, the radio-on every band he'd tried-had been nothing but static. Ionization, he'd believed was the cause. But now there was a voice.
"Excuse me, Mrs. Richards," Rourke said, moving forward and dropping into the captain's chair, then putting the headset on and working the radio controls. "This is Canamerican 747 Flight 601-reading you with some heavy static. Do you read me? Over."
He waited a moment, then the static broke and the voice came back. "This is Buck Anderson-ham operator out of Tombstone, Arizona, Captain. Over."
Rourke smiled. "I'm no captain kid-just a fella flyin' the plane. Captain and copilot bought it with flash burns. Is it possible for you to relay our signal and get us some professional help-maybe from Tucson?"
"There is no Tucson," the voice came back. Then there was a long pause.
"Buck," Rourke said, "you still reading me? Over."
"I'm still reading you. But there is no-no Tucson. Everything to the west has either gone into the sea like California did or been flooded. We're on an island out here now."
"Yea
h," Rourke cut in, "yeah, I knew your area-was there for Helidorado Days."
"But the water," the boy's voice went on, "it may be rising-not sure if it's stopped. Everyone is dead-I'm sick-the bombs that hit Tucson and Phoenix just wiped them out. As far down as Bensen." There was a little restaurant in Benson that Rourke had liked. It had made the best pizza he'd found in Arizona. "What's your source for the West Coast thing?" Rourke asked. "Over."
"Ham operator-a girl I knew. We were on when the bombs started failing and she kept on. Somehow I was still getting her. Then she started describing it-horrible."
"Tell me," Rourke said, his voice low. "Over."
"Oh. Mother of God-the buildings started shaking, the ground-from where she was she could see the ground starting to open, and then she went off. After that, I picked up another commercial flight. Told me they were watching from the air-huge cracks in the ground-lava coming up, and then suddenly it all slipped away and there was a giant wall of water. I lost the transmission after that. The pilot said the turbulence was getting bad and cut off, kind of funny."
"Any word on Flagstaff, Buck?" Rourke asked. "Over."
"No-nothing since a Civil Defense broadcast over an hour ago-the whole area around Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon had an eight-or nine-point earthquake, and there were bombs still failing."
Rourke just shook his head. "Kid," he said, "you gonna make it?"
"I don't think so-I'm starting to throw up blood-vision is already blurry. I think its radiation sickness."
"It is, Buck," Rourke said.
"That's what I thought."
"I'm sorry," Rourke said.
"I wish I could help you get your plane down. But I can't. Maybe you're better off just crashing-it's hell down here. The air is bad, the water's rising now-I can tell, and-" The voice cut off.
"Buck?" Rourke said.
The boy's voice cut back in. "My generator handle pulled out-sorry."
"Anything on New Mexico? Over."
