by James Kiehle
Electromagnetic pulses from multiple atomic bombs detonated at various heights over Washington and New York and were of a magnitude that rendered the entire Atlantic electrical grid inoperable. The refugee governmental brain trust found themselves in the dark, the elevator abruptly halted.
They all knew this much: If anyone was alive to rescue them, they’d better come soon. If at the very least, these elite were unable to somehow climb on top of the elevator and get down the shaft, they would absolutely starve to death or run out of air.
No one came.
No one was alive to save them.
•
On approach to an airport somewhere in Idaho, Peter Grant tried to reach the president one last time, but knew the ugly truth: The White House and Washington were relegated to a dim history. Out of the loop for several hours, Peter and chief of staff Deborah Lansing, along with secretary of defense Herman Locke, were to link up with soldiers stationed at a top secret post in northern Idaho. They had flown more than halfway across the country en route to the simply named Compound, a clandestine military complex built deep within a mountain in Idaho, when the first wave of ICBM’s fell on Honolulu, Denver, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Houston, Seattle, Philadelphia…
Soon after, China’s orbiting satellites detonated one by one.
And the full arsenal of DF-51’s exploded close to their targets; one at just the right point to cause the electromagnetic pulse to block out worldwide communications in a flash.
The power went out.
Though on approach and close to the ground, Grant and Lansing’s chartered Gulfstream G650, like all the other planes in the sky, suddenly had no juice, ceased to function, and angled towards Earth.
Grant held Lansing’s hand. Her lovely eyes shielded her fear.
Calmly, she said, “Kiss me.”
•
Russ saw that not everyone’s vehicle had been affected the same way by the EMP, depending on make and model year—older vehicles had less electronics to fry— so some people were trying to restart their cars while others continued to move with even greater speed and urgency. Russ turned his van around and joined a small swarm of others heading south, passing stalled vehicles in the right lane and along the shoulder.
Russell had only a vague destination, decided upon both for its remoteness and distance from the possible flooding, and because he knew he’d soon be heading against traffic once he turned off the highway, heading west, assuming other cars still worked.
Surprisingly, many did.
Perry aimed his van towards the high peaks between Mount Hood and Mount Jefferson, an area he only knew slightly, but still far away from the towering clouds and potential flood. He knew of a small ski lodge about fifty miles from his location on the southern slope of Temple Mountain, which was probably more than six thousand feet at its summit, but to get there, Russ needed to intercept route 217, still quite a ways from where he was.
Russ clenched the steering wheel as if trying to choke it. Annoyed by the sluggish pace on the primary road—stalled cars making a nightmare for those who could still drive working ones—he found himself darting off the highway and onto a bumpy old logging road with big rocks in the roadway and potholes the size of abandoned quarries. The minivan lurched along until Russ caught a route between Portland and Bend that skirted the eastern face of Mt. Temple.
The lodge was several miles behind the ridge, and night engulfed it. Temple Mountain sat between two other peaks, each separated by a huge gully of thick firs. The meandering road was rough and winding, though Russ was startled to find that he was alone on it. After a long and bumpy drive, he finally reached the 217 junction, facing the southeast side of the mountain.
Traffic whizzed by him at remarkable speeds, using both lanes. He waited until a semi came up the highway on his side and then roared out behind it, using the rig as cover. Vehicles on the other side of the highway were going as fast as possible, though several of them tried to pass slower vehicles using his lane, and the semi was held to under forty. Russ was able to hide behind the butt of the Peterbilt semi.
Perry felt badly for the drivers heading down the slopes towards the high but comparatively flat terrain of central-eastern Oregon. He assumed many of them would die if the flood wave was unleashed but there was nothing he could do.
He kept driving towards Temple Mountain, fingers crossed.
•
Cemetery still in the dark night with a clear view of the constellations, scientific eyes scanned the distant lights of New Mexico’s largest city, then shifted towards the second.
Time passed. Not much laughter now; the loudest sounds became their racing heartbeats.
“How close do you think the blasts will come?” Pinkie wondered.
“Here and beyond,” Dutch replied.
Five minutes.
“Why hasn’t it happened yet?” Edwin wanted to know. “This doesn’t make sense. Explanations? Anyone?”
Cass said, “I once saw a nuclear blast in Nevada. I was nine, or eight. I don’t remember. The last one they ever did. Shook the ground like it was pudding.”
“I like pudding,” Pinkie said.
Six minutes.
“I thought I had it calibrated,” Edwin said. “Infallible. Dutch, you checked them? You know the sequence. Infallible, right?”
“What are you, the Pope?” Pinkie asked. Ben thought she looked funny ha-ha in those goggles. “Infallible is pretty fucking improbable unless you are exalted. Are you exalted?”
“Apparently not,” Edwin replied.
Nine minutes.
“Maybe we missed something?” Dark wondered.
Ten.
Eleven.
“For Christ’s sake, put on your goggles, Dr. Puffy,” Pinkie said. “You’ll be Stevie Wonder before too very long.”
Eleven and a half. Game over.
Pinkie: “Fuck, you won.”
Dutch: “How’d you know, Cage?”
Ben looked towards Santa Fe, lowered his filtered lenses over his eyes and rubbed his scalp.
“I’m a genius,” Ben said.
The others grunted.
Ben counted down…Five…Four…Three…Two…One…
Nothing.
The lights still sparkled in the distant city. To the south, the same thing.
“Well, genius,” Dark said. “Looks like you were wron—”
A flash as a tiny white light stung their eyes even behind the goggles. Ben saw the atomic flash as a polarized bright spot, the outer glow as a radiating light bulb captured in slow motion. The city lights exploded and vanished.
The sky roared impossibly loud.
Davis Cass fell over on his side, holding his chest.
Ben Cage ripped off his tinted glasses.
He watched, and listened, and waited.
•
Nate Ballentine, former driver to generous billionaire Leo Tabor, high now on artificial substitutes for life, held his wife Sallie’s hand as they rocked on the Pacific sands of Seaside, Oregon, watching waves crash on shore while their son Davey played can’t-touch-me games with the incoming surf. The sky was the most incredible blend of steel and copper, as roiling banks of soupy clouds crackled with electricity above them, while an opaque fog formed in front. At the far horizon, sea and sky merged into a single metallic sheet that made Nate feel almost weightless.
Though that might have been the heroin running through his veins.
Sallie, fanning her face with a stack of money with her free hand, intermittently laughed uncontrollably.
“Your friend Leo was a real saint,” she said. “Bad timing—I mean, shit, our rent was due last week, but a saint anyway. If we had any booze, I’d drink to the son-of-a-gun.”
“Amen, sister,” Nate mumbled. “To Leo…” and fell backwards onto the wet sand.
Unlike her husband, Sallie had chosen not to spend her last moments on Earth stoned like a junkie but wanted to be fully aware of her existence until the last possible se
cond. Their son, only six and uninformed about the events taking place, just accepted when Sallie packed up, abandoned their home in St. Helens, and drove an hour-and-a-half west to the Oregon coast.
Camille, her mother, ever the optimist, said Seaside was the best location for their final resting place; she had seen it in their horoscopes, had a gut feeling besides, so Sallie paid attention—her mother’s instincts had served her well.
In the beach house, three hundred yards back, Camille made sandwiches, tuna on whole wheat with all kinds of veggie toppings, then grabbed some diet sodas and joined them at the water’s edge.
“I expect a tsunami,” Camille said, doling out their last meals. Nate stared at his food open-mouthed as if he had never seen a sandwich before. Camille pointed to the sea. “It would seem to me that with all those bombs and the meteors, eventually that water is going to rise up and wash us away.”
Little Davey, not touching the ocean, ran away from a persistent, wet, white-foam monster, laughing fake fear, then raced up the sand and landed on his grandma’s lap, still giggling.
Sallie said, “I have never seen a sky like this. It’s majestic, but so damn eerie.”
“What’d you expect? The end is nigh,” Camille said. “Dark skies are a given. If you look hard enough, you’ll see Satan’s face in the clouds.”
Her daughter smirked. “I suspect you had an inkling of this beforehand, didn’t you, mother? You and your feelings,” she said, finger-quoting the last word.
Camille smiled beatifically. “Would you like to read my most recent poem?”
“Poem?”
Sallie had never seen her mom’s poetry, was blithely unaware that mother had even tried to write. She semi-blushed at the unexpected news and didn’t reply, just held out her hand as Camille fished three folded pages from inside her jacket and presented them.
“These are the most recent,” Camille told her.
The mist became thicker, the clouds edged closer and lightning danced at sea. The waves played the soundtrack—the thunder, percussion.
Unfolding the sheets carefully, Sallie read the first two slowly, trying to figure out what was being said. She came to the third with moist eyes and a hand to her mouth. A tear streamed. When she’d finished, her arms fell and the sheets dropped in her lap. Sallie looked up at her serene mother and said, “These are so beautiful, Mom. Really weird good stuff. True poetry. Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this? When did you know all this?”
“I’ve felt it for awhile,” Camille shrugged, looking out to sea, playing with sand. “Just the musings of an aging lady. Sometimes words just come to me and I have to write them down.” The horizon began to loom higher, the clouds and tide receding.
“Just beautiful, and so prophetic, is that the word?” Sallie said, realizing how impressed she was by her mother’s efforts. “I especially like this line where you wrote ‘…and I, as a real thing, say goodbye…’ I love that line. I don’t know why.”
The horizon wall was even higher. A miracle of water power over gravity.
“It’s time,” Camille nodded.
On his belly, Nate, mouth muffled by Kosher salt-sized beach rocks, said, “The oceans will wash us clean…”
Sallie asked, “But where the hell did you come up with the name ‘Amaria’?”
Camille thought, Ahhh, the mist, the spray. Wind in my face. That aroma, no, a smell, the smell of death and rebirth. Pity I can’t write this down, but answered, “A dream.”
“You mean while you slept?” Sallie asked.
Camille replied, “Presents from heaven, now taken back. My gift will be passed on, another will receive its curse and blessing.”
“Aren’t you afraid, Mom?” Sallie asked, eyes pooling.
Just an instant before they all disappeared forever beneath the high and deadly surf, Camille held her daughter’s hands and said. “Death is not your punishment, death is your reward.”
26. The Wild
“Okay, I’m blonde, that much we know,” the lost blonde girl said aloud, hearing her own voice for the first time. It was vaguely Southern. “As for identity, I’m in the dark.”
Outside, the sky was tinted an odd color, the clouds like fine threads of brass filaments, a patch of sky that was a coppery teal. She held up a hand to block a blinding sun, falling behind some big mountain that loomed above and in front of her, towering into the sky.
Where was this place? Alaska? Canada? Russia?
Surrounding her, hundreds, thousands, millions of trees. Most rose high above her, while the others were scattered like fresh logs all around what had probably once been a clearing. She sat on one of them and tried to collect her thoughts, what few she had. It was as if her mind had been cleaned from the inside, her brain scrubbed down with Lysol.
No one else was anywhere near her, so she called out, “Hello! Can anybody hear me? Anybody?” but heard nothing except her light echo and a gentle wind in the high firs. Looking around, she saw that three trucks and two cars were smashed against trees at the edge of the clearing. From two of them, arms and legs dangled out the driver’s side door. She didn’t feel solid enough to check on them right then.
Beyond them, three bodies, charred black.
There was also what appeared to be a Jeep that was laying on its side, leaning against some kind of burned out shed. She walked over to it, though there was nothing really to see. The Jeep was reduced now to a blackened sheet of the metal body, engine block and chassis. In the passenger seat, she noticed what may have been a purse, but when she reached for it, it crumbled into ashes.
Except for one part.
It was the corner of a plastic document, maybe a license.
It read:
—ecca (then a ripped part) Cha—(another rip).
–Daria Lane.
–097.
—6, 2020
–in the state of Florida.
Daria Lane.
She liked the sound of it. Pretty, and it made her feel warm. Maybe it was her name?
Daria Lane. Hmmmm. Go with that. She decided Daria would be her name.
Daria walked back to the cars and trucks and looked inside them. In the first, a man and a woman many years his senior were dead. The woman’s arms were up; apparently she’d covered her eyes and froze that way.
What the hell killed them?
The other vehicles unveiled similar stories. Daria had no clue how long they’d been dead or why. Then, as gruesome as the prospect was, she began rummaging through their things. She found little of use to her, aside from a jacket and a pair of boots that were too big. But she picked up cosmetics and toilet paper and some food, though surprisingly little. In the last truck, a sleeping bag and some cigarettes. Daria took what she could back to a spot on the clearing and set things up.
The idea of burying the victims didn’t even cross her mind.
But getting a fire going certainly had. It was already chilling off, and the jacket was nice but not terribly warm. However, there was one form of salvation for her: The nearby shed was still burning in places. At least she would have fire.
Daria found a stick and lit one end and stuck it in the ground a number of feet away, then gathered all forms of wood, not knowing what would burn and what wouldn’t, and leisurely attended to the flames as the sun vanished.
She sat by the fire and smoked some cigarettes she’d found in the truck. Guessing, she’d have to assume she had been a smoker before this little setback of amnesia or whatever it was, because smoking came naturally to her and Daria went through five Marlboros while she thought about things.
First, why was she even in the forest? She didn’t strike herself as a woodsy type. Her clothes for one thing: Pink shorts, a sleeveless tee-shirt, and yellow tennis shoes. Who goes camping in that get up? So why was she here? Did she have friends with her? Was the older couple in the car her parents?
But more: Why were all these people dead, the trees knocked down, and cars tossed about?
What the hell happened?
As for herself, she had zero recollection of a life. Name, occupation, hometown, none of it clicked. She kept expecting one thing to enter her mind and the pieces would begin to fall into place and everything would be revealed in a brilliant flash.
Daria Lane. The only thing familiar.
Then, as she zoned out while staring at the fire, a face popped into view. A young man with a good tan and rosy cheeks. He looked embarrassed and handed her money, said something about praying to her.
That was it. Her lone, bewildering memory so far. But still, she no idea who the boy was or why she was being paid. And prayer? That’s wacky.
Still, it was almost a memory.
•
The weight and balance of Judy’s choice was unequal. Priority one was survival, keeping her daughter safe, away from danger, somehow get Iris home. The other side, more prurient than prudent, was shaded in uneven tones.
Though not a virgin before Russ, after sixteen years together, Judy pretty much was one now. Their love life, fireworks hot at first, had sputtered; even recalling the last time they made passionate love was kind of hard. The desire was there, it just didn’t loom as important as simply running her life had become. Businesswoman, mother, wife— pretty routine stuff.
Affair-wise, Judy was still in league with the Catholic church. She’d had chances and declined, but one time, midway in their marriage and under the influence of mushrooms, Judy actually made out with a stranger at a camping party her husband didn’t attend—the man’s name and face a hallucinogenic blur.
Judy felt cheap, even while she was doing it, kissing him, groping in his pants. She felt like a slut, a whore who didn’t charge.
But what Judy hated most was that she loved the sultry, seductive, teasing side of her coming out after years of hibernation. Judy could almost see herself then—wet, stringy hair falling across her eyes, crawling towards prey, an animal sneer, a ravenous grin, as she left the nameless man’s face a mess of chapped lips and bite marks—hickeys like measles.
Even then, there was Russ lingering in her mind, standing in the imagination’s corner, arms crossed, the semi-cuckold whose true boy scout ethos had no known opposite side but matched her public Ms. Perfect face feature for feature; Bend’s version of Katie Holmes and Christian Bale—an ideal couple. The sex-hungry vixen Judy ached to be had been chastised, caged under her own wardenship and by the hum-drum of every day life.
