by Scott Todd
"The bottom line is no, we didn't," he finished saying. "You picked what turned out to be the perfect time to... To go to the bathroom..."
"You mean go to a tree," I remarked with a smirk. He smiled in a way that only Ben could. And it was so rare that I had to memorize that face, hoping to see it again one day.
But even as reassuring as their attention was, that sinking feeling was still not totally gone.
"They told us they were commandeering the island in the name of the US military, citing NSPD-51- a special presidential security directive for continuity of government in national emergency situations- and that we were being detained until further notice," Ben said.
"Yeah well I doubt if they can produce that document, or any document for that matter at this point," I mused. "Besides, what's a national security directive mean if there is no more nation?" I asked Ben, sort of kidding. But the point sank in, and he just stared at me.
"Hey!" said Terry loudly. "He's waking up..."
Chapter 34: A Crucial Perspective
Terry got him some painkillers and another drink of water as I told them about my ordeal and finding the sub. We all gathered around the SUV to talk to the man. He came to, grimacing and grabbing his shoulder.
"Here," Terry said. "These should help."
Not sure whether to thank her or not, he just took them and remained silent. But finally, he spoke.
"Thanks for the pills. And I'm real sorry about that," he said, looking at Jan. Jan's eyes didn't even flinch.
"That Joey, he was always kind of that way... Always one to push the limits, disobey some orders, make trouble, and generally, just always causing a scene," he continued.
"Yeah well he paid for it with his life," Jan said with a cold stare. "And you better damn well NOT make the same mistake. You hear me?"
"Yes, Ma'am," he quickly replied- and covering up his privates with his left hand. "I won't. But what could I do? And I wasn't going to... To assault you, Ma'am, if it's any consolation. Randy and I reluctantly agreed to wait, but we weren't happy about it. And Sam, that other guy... Well, he was going to...To..." He looked at Terry, but then went silent and looked away. Terry cringed.
"The deal was we were going to stay quiet about it, in exchange for... For... Well, it doesn't matter. It was wrong and yes I have to take part of the blame. I am sorry. But Randy and me... We'd never done anything like that. We were not going to do anything to you. You have to believe me, Ma'am."
"No, I don't," countered Jan- clearly unimpressed. "But ok, suppose I believe you... Go on."
"We were locked up on that sub for months before this, Ma'am. Please understand. Joey... He was just too excited to finally see a woman as pretty as... And well, he just couldn't contain himself. Not even his chest wound was enough to contain his sex drive. Plus, with all of this going down, he really thought we'd get away with it."
"All of WHAT going down?" Ben intervened.
"Well only now I am more certain of what 'all of this' is... Sir. But I still don't know. We were on duty way up in the... In the... I'm sorry Sir. That information is classified, and I cannot..."
"You talked to, or seen anyone else in the last four days, soldier?" Ben quickly asked. It was more of a command than a question.
"No Sir," he answered. "No one except... Ahh... I'm sorry Sir. That information is class..."
Ben shoved a gun barrel down his throat, shutting him up. "Let me tell you something, Son. We aren't playing games here anymore. You know anything about a certain area of the south Pacific that might go 'boom'?" Ben demanded. He pulled the gun barrel back out.
"Well, not really Sir," he gasped. Ben shoved the gun back down his throat and his finger went on the trigger. "I get one more wrong answer out of you and I'm going to have to clean your brains out from the rear of this nice car. You understand me?"
"Oh please... Let me, let me!" Jan chimed in, raising her rifle to his head. I was taking careful note of Jan's violent temper- but I supposed if I'd just been raped, I'd understand.
"By the way, hotshot, your buddy there back at the sub... Well, his brains are littering the floor, too. Where do you think I got these?" I remarked menacingly.
Pausing for minute, the soldier finally capitulated. "Ok, ok... I guess it doesn't matter anymore anyway," he gasped again as Ben removed the barrel.
"Well first of all, what I am about to tell you is classified information, and some of it is highly top secret," he blurted out. "And the only reason I am going to tell you anything at all is because... Because well, I don't know that... That anyone else in the US survived this... Except... Maybe... Maybe..."
"Maybe who?" Ben pressed him.
"The President of the United States, Sir. And possibly a few of his close SS team."
"Look man, you better start talking. And I mean NOW. Start from the top. What's that sub out there and where were you when all hell broke loose?" Ben asked, and pressured him with a vicious, unwavering stare.
"That sub is technically an Ohio class, SSBN nuclear submarine, Sir. It's armed to the teeth with nuclear warheads, but it's also been undergoing some... Some special modifications in secret to take on several attributes of the newer Virginia class subs for more specialized roles... There's enough firepower on that ship to take out a country, Sir. Or more. So our location is always top secret. Our mission here is ULTRA top secret. And it came about when we were on duty four days ago, Sir. We got an emergency transmission across a highly sensitive line that never EVER gets used unless... Unless there is a nuclear war, Sir. We all freaked out, thinking this was it. But then we got another, last-minute message not to fire at any targets, and instead to rendezvous at these coordinates for a mission to... To pick up the President and any of his team that we might find stranded here, Sir.
"But that was the last we heard from anyone, except for the one other Trident sub that was on duty at the time, Sir," he continued. "The rest happened to be in port, so it was a very rare occasion. We almost always had at least five subs fully operational and on duty, hidden somewhere in the world's oceans. Mutually Assured Destruction, Sir.
"Anyways, that sub transmitted a message to us of a massive explosion detected in the Pacific. But the parameters of that explosion were much, much bigger than any known nuclear device, Sir. Orders of magnitude larger. The parameters did not fit a nuclear explosion, and caused a lot of confusion. We could only figure that the earth was struck by a large asteroid at first, but that made less and less sense as we kept reviewing the parameters.
"And just as the last part of the message was coming through, we lost contact with the other sub. We knew he was in the northern Pacific at the time, near the Bering Strait. But he just vanished. Gone. That never happens. We tried all kinds of ways to contact him, but got nothing.
"So that's when the Captain called an emergency meeting onboard, and told us what he knew of a potential geologic problem that had developed and was recently discovered in the South Pacific. Something about a humungous area of molten rock accumulating deep in the earth, and some recent uplift of the ocean floor that had many scientists concerned. He said there was a possibility that it had exploded from accumulated gas and/or magma over millions- or even billions- of years, but that most scientists had scoffed at that possibility."
"Yeah, and he was one of them," Terry had to interject- pointing at Ben.
Ben looked away briefly in shameful disgust. "Hey!" he exclaimed, "I, along with many other scientists had legitimate scientific reasons why we didn't believe it was going to explode. It has to do with the suspected magma composition, ascent rates and their associated degassing regimes, permeability of the cap, degrees of chemical imprint scrubbing, and all sorts of other technical things. Care to discuss it with me?"
Terry just rolled her eyes. "No. You know I don't know any of that stuff. But whatever you thought, it was wrong."
Ben beamed a new look of extreme impatience with a slight twinge of frustrated anger at Terry that I had never seen him display
before. I could tell he desperately needed to speak with another scientist that could speak his lingo. But that quickly subsided, and he focused back on the sailor. I interrupted his stare.
"But weren't the moment tensors quite a bit abnormal, showing divergence and implying that the faults had ruptured very uncharacteristically in those big quakes in Mexico and the west coast?" I daringly asked Ben. "I mean they were completely abnormal from any of the previous, historic moment tensors. I checked."
Ben looked at me in surprise, then he looked down at the ground. "Well... Yes, they were abnormal," he admitted. "And many of us were trying to theorize how that might be possible. Marty even called me about that. He swore that was impossible unless... Unless the Pacific plate edges were being pulled inwards from the extreme uplift in the middle. He even said to expect more massive quakes, but I told him he was... Nuts," he concluded somberly.
Terry just looked at him with a "Yeah well, you should have listened" kind of stare.
"Well? What more could I do?" Ben countered. "Hell, there was even a special emergency meeting held by concerned, notable scientists at their own expense about this. They concluded that they needed more information, and recommended directly to the White House that a special research vessel outfitted with all the latest technology be sent immediately for an emergency mission to the area. But they were denied the funding in favor of grossly obtuse military budgets hell bent on securing foreign oil resources."
"Yeah well, what else is new..." I sarcastically remarked, and looked accusingly at the soldier.
The sailor was silent in contemplation a minute, but then he continued.
"...Anyways, we put our best people on it, Sir, and most didn't believe it.. Kind of like you... But no sooner than we had the information and were trying to understand it, we were caught in a bizarre current underwater that carried us away. It nearly tore the sub to pieces and slammed us into some rocks. That collision killed most of our crew, and us five only survived because we happened to be sleeping a bit late at the time. The rest of our gold team had just gotten up for their watch. We were hurt badly, but not near as bad as the others. No one else made it.
"Thank God Randy survived, cause he was a master at underwater repairs and knew nearly every last screw of that ship. We took in a lot of water from the damage, but we repaired the leaks and Randy managed to get us out of it. We barely got out alive, Sir. It's a miracle we made it here at all. There were only five of us left. And now... Only... Me."
He looked down and went quiet another minute.
Then he looked up. "But the most terrifying part of all, Sir," he continued solemnly, "... Is that we have not been able to get anyone... No one at ALL, to respond to any transmissions across all bands, from anywhere in the US, the UK, or Canada since that explosion," he continued. "It's as if it affected the whole world. We tried Australia, Japan, Hawaii, Guam... You pretty much name it. We even tried secret emergency military channels we had set up with the Chinese and Russians too, and all we got was static. The satellite relays... They must all be down, Sir."
"Well it's possible that some satellites themselves may have been hit too, from what we witnessed," interjected Ben. "But go on..."
"So it appears to be a global event of unprecedented proportions, Sir," the soldier continued. "And yet none of us left alive really believed it, right up to the last minute when we arrived here and... And well... You know the rest of the story. We were in denial, and out of our minds, Sir. But now seeing this mountain with the water all the way up this high, and combined with everything else... I have no more doubts," he concluded.
Silence ensued as we all contemplated deeply the implications of what was said. Ben retreated back a minute, facing the ground, while Terry turned away, and Jan let out a gasp. I had my own reservations about our potential for further survival, and the further survival of the human race.
"So there really is no hope then," Terry said, turning back around to face us with a frightened look on her face.
"There's ALWAYS hope as long as we're alive," Ben tried to counter. But it was weak. His voice was trembling when he said it. He was pretty badly shaken by this news- and it seriously affected the rest of us, too.
"That is true, Sir," the soldier finally said, albeit quietly. "But as far as our survival is concerned, I have enough food onboard that sub to last us months or even a year, with this few people to consume it. We could put many of the perishables into deep freeze. With some training, we could go pretty much anywhere there is ocean water in the world to look for other survivors. Also, I happen to be the only one with the codes to those missiles, Sir, seeing as I am the weapons officer. So we wouldn't have to worry about protection much... I think..."
Ben looked puzzled. "But I thought you had to match and verify authorization codes to launch any of those missiles..." he mumbled.
The soldier went silent again, but then raised his head. "Publicly they say that it takes at least two separate sets of codes to launch those warheads, but that is just to give the public a false sense of reassurance that no accidents or sabotage will happen. The real truth is, Sir, that in extreme emergencies I do have the ability to override that and launch them myself. Not even the Captain knew that, Sir."
"Ha. Yeah, more sneaky compartmentalization," I mocked. The soldier nodded.
"Screw the missiles. You mean we could finally get off this hell rock?" Terry interrupted, looking up in surprise, and yanking the conversation in a more practical direction.
"Oh yes, Ma'am," the soldier continued, a bit more spirited. "And not only that, we have nearly all the modern conveniences you could wish for onboard that ship... And enough fuel to last... Let's see... Oh, about another fifteen years or more. It's a bit cramped, but... Not that bad for a mere five people. Plus we do have the communications equipment that we can keep trying. Sometime in the next weeks or months, we are bound to get somebody somewhere, as communications networks are reinstated."
Ben just stared at him, but I could tell he was seriously thinking about it. Jan looked reluctant. I didn't know what to think, but the thought was intriguing. It seemed that would certainly be better than stuck there on the mountain, totally isolated.
"And now that we are in shallow water, I have enough manuals and tools onboard that I could effect many more repairs, making her more seaworthy. It would take some time, but... Yeah," he said, and he then grimaced in pain again.
"You learn a lot about a ship when that is all you do for fifteen years, and Randy taught me a lot about that. I know almost as much as he did about it, but no one knew more," he concluded.
"Meeting," Ben said, motioning us all to follow him. We walked away from the SUV, but Jan and Ben held their guns closely on it, despite the increasing distance. Once away, Ben let out a huge sigh.
"Well, so there you have it, my friends. What are we going to do now? Do we stay or go with this guy?" he said, keeping an eye on the SUV.
"I just don't trust him," Jan blurted out. "No telling what he'd do if... If..."
"If what?" Ben remarked. "He's pretty much in the same boat we are now." Jan went silent.
My mind raced for an answer. "Well, from the sounds of it, it may be the only hope we have to get off this island for the foreseeable future," I offered up, but my voice gave away my uncertainty. "As for trusting him though, he'll have no choice but to trust us, too. After all, we are the only people he knows now."
Jan still was visibly uneasy with the idea, while Terry looked more hopeful than I had ever seen her before. "I vote we go," she said rather quickly. "Anywhere would be better than here getting eaten alive by beasts and struggling just to get water. And the long term food problem is still an issue if we stay."
Jan seemed to slowly warm up to the idea, realizing Terry had some valid points. Finally she had to confess. "Yeah, I guess we should probably go, despite the fact that he makes me real uncomfortable. I mean we just killed all his friends," she said with a sigh. "He ever going to forgive us for that?"
"He's going to have to, considering the circumstances," Ben countered. "I mean this isn't exactly business as usual. The world nearly just ended as we knew it, and obviously billions of people have perished in this tragedy, not just millions. We have no choice but to pull together, and try to find a place where we can carve out a life. And even in that damaged sub, we are still facing tremendous problems with the fallout and another potential explosion looming. But still, I have to agree that overall, our chances are better long term in that sub than staying here."
Ben looked up at me, hoping for a response. But I was still undecided. Despite all its shortcomings, I was just getting used to our little island. I wrestled one last time with the idea of staying, but the thought of warm food, good water, showers, beds, toilets, and all the rest was just too much to turn down. Couple that with the possibility of finding other people, and I had to capitulate. I just had to. Surely there were other stranded people, desperate for help too. And who knows, we might just save humanity, if that's what it came down to. We damn sure weren't going to do much of anything stranded on a rock fighting mountain lions for water.
