by Mick Farren
"For the last five minutes, communications have been lost with the entire continent of Europe. Satellite reports are still coming in but observers in the air report huge fountains of smoke and dust erupting not only from Germany but from France, Italy, Spain and the British Isles. Early estimates place the number of nuclear explosions somewhere in the region of two dozen."
Vickers found himself illogically wondering if it had been day or night over there. The lines of uniformed men and women kept on moving. It was as if everyone was in a trance. Fenton walked to where Vickers was standing.
"You think they'll seal the bunker now?"
Vickers blinked. Maybe he was the one in the trance.
"Say what?"
"You think they'll seal the bunker now?"
Vickers shook his head. "No, they'll wait a while yet. They'll get in as many bigwigs as possible. The Pope and the rest."
"And we'll wait too."
"That's always the way of it."
* * *
They waited for two hours and then for two hours more. The public address bulletins came fewer and further between. As a substitute someone began to pipe in music to the first level. Mainly it was more of the doom and gloom electronics that they'd been treated to on level four but at one point someone had slipped in Gene Kelly's "Singing in the Rain." It was yanked, however, after the first couple of verses and, for a full five minutes, sinister silence prevailed before the mood electronics returned. The flow of people and equipment coming down from the surface gradually diminished. In the fifth hour it came down to little more than a trickle. NCOs and officers started pulling out the uniformed guards but nobody made any attempt to relieve the security group. Also, nobody had bothered to send the clean-up crew for the man whom Debbie had shot. With nothing to do, the five gathered in a small, complaining group. Even in the face of global twilight it was still possible to complain. The body simply remained where it had fallen, covered by its makeshift shroud. By the end of the sixth hour, they were the only people left, apart from a couple of maintenance crews working on the parked vehicles.
"You think that we've been forgotten?"
An air of desolation was creeping across the hollow, echoing area. An elevator platform came to rest with a giant's cough. Its only passenger was a soldier in a jeep. Eggy beckoned and yelled at her.
"Hey you!"
The soldier spun the wheel and drove over to where they were standing.
"You want something?"
"What's going on on the surface?"
The woman pushed back her helmet and shrugged.
"Pretty much of nothing. There's only a skeleton missile crew out there. Everybody else is inside."
"And there's nothing happening? No explosions, no mushroom clouds or nothing?"
The soldier shook her head.
"Sun's going down peaceful as you like."
"You wouldn't see anything, Eggy. Not unless they'd nuked Las Vegas."
The soldier leaned on her steering wheel.
"You really think that this is it?"
The five all looked at her as though the question wasn't worth answering. She nodded, pulled down her helmet, put the jeep into gear and gunned it away to where the other vehicles were parked.
The music faded. The group looked at each other, the silent question "What now?" After a pause of some thirty seconds the speakers came to life again.
"A number of reports are coming in of further Soviet missle launches. The Trans-America space station has observed over eighty rockets lifting from sights to the south of the Zhigansk on the Arctic Circle in the Yakut region of Siberia. These firings are located too far to the east to be targeted on the European conflict. They can logically only be multi-warhead ICBMs targeted on North America."
"Jesus Christ."
Instinctively the group moved close together. The vehicle maintenance crews had stopped work. They were walking away from their vehicles out into the open, staring up at the speakers in the roof. There was a brief burst of music and then a new voice came on.
"This is Anthony Lloyd-Ransom and I'm talking to you directly because I see no way to minimize what I have to say. Unless we have been misinformed to a point that would scarcely seem possible, the world is advancing into global thermo-nuclear war and there is no way out. If we do not receive confirmation of some attempt at a cease-fire or strategic pullback in the next few minutes, I shall seal the bunker. I know it seems scarcely possible to believe but we now have to face the strong possibility that the future of mankind may, at any moment, be placed in our hands. If this is the case we are about to receive a truly awesome responsibility. We have to rise and accept it. I am well aware that it's impossible to divorce ourselves from the situation on the surface. I know that you are all afraid that, as I speak, we may be losing friends and loved ones, that cities we know and love are being consumed by firestorms."
Vickers sneezed. "I think there's tranquilizers being pumped into the air conditioning."
"Shut up, Vickers, don't you have no respect?"
Lloyd-Ransom's voice boomed on.
"The administration of this bunker expects, hard as it may be, that you set these considerations aside and rise to the monumental task thaf now confronts us. The thing that I ask will certainly tax us to the limits of our humanity. We are entering a valley of shadow the enormity of which no one has ever experienced. Our sole responsibility is to survive. The means to that survival will be our discipline and our sense of duty. The task will be long and arduous but I am confident that every one of you will find inside him or herself the strength to fight the sense of despair that will undoubtedly come upon us. We are going into a dark and terrible night and I pray that both God and our own strength will go with us."
"They all make the same speech."
"He didn't mention the flag."
The original voice came back over the speakers.
"Stand by for a message from the President of the United States."
Eggy scowled. "They're all in on the act."
There was the hiss and crackle of a long distance carrier wave. The voice, when it came on, was distorted and scratchy to the point of being hard to recognize.
"My fellow Americans. I am speaking to you from the Orbital Command module some five hundred kilometers above the earth . . ."
"The bastard got himself safely out of it."
"You think the donuts are safe?"
"The space stations?" Parkwood shook his head. "No, there are too many hunter-killers up there. They'll go."
". . . this is one of the blackest moments in the history of our nation. Indeed, this is the gravest situation our planet has ever faced. Nuclear warheads have already been detonated over Lawrence, Kansas, Chicago, West Los Angeles, Oakland and New York City. More enemy missiles are right now in flight. In the last few minutes, I have, after consultation with the leaders of our major corporations, ordered a massive retaliation against the Soviet Union. Even as I speak, our front line of Peacemaker and Alamo missiles are being launched from their silos. This is not a simple matter of revenge or vindictiveness. The American people are neither vengeful nor vindictive. In launching our first string of intercontinental ballistic missiles, we are making it plain to the Soviet leaders that this country will not sit idly by in the face of this barbaric and unprovoked attack on our homeland, on our European allies . . ."
"I didn't think there were any Soviet leaders."
"Sssh. Let him finish."
"I hope the bastard dies."
". . . or on any other parts of the Free World. Although history will record this as our darkest hour and the name of Soviet communism will live forever in infamy, I am confident that there will be a history to recount the story. None of us can predict the immediate future. All we can do is pray for the strength, the courage and the fortitude to come through these terrible times, to face the awful sacrifices that will have to be made, and to undertake the mighty task of rebuilding that will face us when these days of testing are o
ver. My heart goes out to you and my thoughts are constantly with you. God bless you all."
The "Star Spangled Banner" boomed out, but halfway through the first verse it was abruptly cut. The voice of authority returned.
"The bunker is being sealed. I repeat, the bunker is being sealed.''
The first sound was the screech of metal that wasn't accustomed to being moved. Enormous steel doors were closing across the entrances to the freight elevators. After they closed with a dull boom, there was a brief silence, then a series of deep muffled explosions came from somewhere beyond. These were followed by what, at first, was just a pattering, then a metallic hiss like hail on a tin roof. Quickly it grew to an all encompassing echoing roar. The method of sealing the bunker was comparatively simple. Sections of wall on the outside of the elevator shafts had been blown out and thousands of tons of dirt and sand poured into the empty space. The roar went on for a full five minutes before it finally subsided in a series of coughs and booms as the displaced material settled. On the first level, the soldiers and the security group stood as though stunned. Even after all they'd been through and after all the lectures, the conditioning and the brainwashing, they couldn't quite believe that it was really happening. They looked from one to the other as though waiting for someone to tell them it was only a drill or an elaborate joke. Nothing happened except that there was another grumble of settling dirt and rock.
Vickers tried to think of New York or Chicago in flames. He couldn't quite accept the idea. He still pictured them the way he'd seen them last, dirty, busy and bustling. He couldn't imagine there were giant craters where Central Park and the Loop had been. It wasn't possible that places that had been so teemingly alive could be burned to nothing: a single, terrible death. He knew in the end that he'd come to terms with it but right at that moment all he could do was try and protect himself by blanking it out. To his horror, he saw that Fenton was grinning at him like a gargoyle.
"You know what?"
Fenton's grin was actually like a rigor twitch. Vickers resisted backing away from him with some difficulty.
"What?"
"The Pope never made it."
Vickers blinked. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Wasn't the Pope supposed to have a place down here when the war came?"
"Yeah, right. I heard that."
"So he didn't make it."
Vickers shook his head. On top of everything else, Fenton was the final straw. "You're a sick man." Fenton continued to grin. "Maybe, but I ain't out frying cities."
SEVEN
Eighteen months had passed.
The public address was playing "Frosty the Snowman" by the Ronettes. Fenton hacked at what was left of the Virginia ham with his hunting knife. Vickers poured himself a glass of port and wearily lowered himself into what had been Lloyd-Ransom's chair at the head of the long banquet table.
"They sure treat themselves well down here."
"We don't do so bad."
Fenton spoke through a mouthful of ham. Vickers scowled. The whole idea of Christmas in the bunker had put him in a particularly foul mood. The previous year had been bad enough, but this one was approaching obscene. All around them was the debris of the huge banquet that Lloyd-Ransom had thrown for his superpeople. The long main table had been set out on the piazza with the head of the table just in front of the black obelisk. The eternal flame hadn't worked in over a year. Five months in, something had gone wrong with the gas feed. The eternal flame was fueled with methane from the sewage plant, a feature that had proved far from successful. After it had flickered, abruptly died and stubbornly refused to be rekindled, there had been a few days of superstitious fear until the butcher squads had gone to work on the second level and replaced the unfocused fear with a very definite mortal dread.
"We're eating their fucking leftovers." Fenton was ladling dressing onto a plate. He covered it with cold gravy. Vickers picked up a bottle of Remy Martin that had been lying on its side. There was about three-quarters of an inch left in it. He rummaged for a clean glass.
"At least there's plenty of them."
"You're too much of a fucking pragmatist. Don't you ever get mad?"
"Now and again. I tell myself firmly that there's no percentage in it."
Vickers tried the brandy and was pleased to find that no one had flicked cigar ash into it. Sure he could get mad at the superpeople's psychotic consumption; sure it could make him crazy living in and off their garbage. On the other hand, he was drinking good brandy while most of the rest up on the other levels were numbing their minds on the bunker's rotgut gin.
"You'll get mad one day."
"Maybe."
"I'm going to be in the front row for that."
After this Christmas celebration, garbage was everywhere. The superpeople routinely partied like pigs but on this particular occassion they'd really excelled themselves. Crap was spread over half the piazza. There were cups and cartons, empty bottles and beer cans, forgotten plates and spilled food, there were even discarded pieces of clothing. A torn ballgown was draped over the statue titled Fidelity. When the drinking had reached a peak a few hours earlier, some of the celebrants had become extremely physical. A few were still scattered around, asleep, unconscious or maybe even dead. You never could tell and Vickers didn't particularly care. One of the fountains that was still working was making an unhappy, strained gurgle. It was undoubtedly clogged with party garbage. Vickers wondered if anyone would bother to fix it before it totally broke down. Water was already starting to spill out of its lower basin and run across the grimy black and white marble in a dirty brown river. In the middle of the mess was the incongruous, twelve-feet-high, silver fibreglass Christmas tree, lavishly garnished with red and green mirror balls. There was something a little disgusting about the tree. It was an insult to the real trees that had died so quickly after the sealing of the bunker but whose dead trunks still stood like black reminders. The peacocks and the other birds had also failed to survive the first year. Some said that the peacocks had been eaten at some superperson's banquet.
The music had changed. The PA was playing Roddy Reegan's "Christmas on Mars." There had to be a psycho loose in the booth. When the song was finished, the psycho identified himself. A deep, throaty voice purred through every level of the bunker like a combination of gravel and honey.
"Christmas night in the bunker, friends and babies, Christmas Two in the big hole. I guess there aren't too many of us asleep tonight. Maybe a lot of thinking going on, just laying there in your bunk and thinking. Thinking about the snow, the silent snow falling on white fields that go on and on, all the way to where the horizon meets the black starlit sky. Now isn't that a hell of a thing to think about on a night like this?" He let the thought sink in. "This is Bing Crosby with 'White Christmas.' If that don't get to you, nothing will."
"Wolfjohn is going to wake up one morning with an icepick in the back of his skull. He's pushing a whole lot too hard."
Vickers was looking at a bottle of Mouton Cadet. There was something unidentifiable floating in the wine.
"He's real popular with the women."
"Sure he's popular. He gets more pussy than Eggy but that won't save him if Lloyd-Ransom takes it into his head that he's dangerous. Disc jocks are infinitely expendable."
Vickers leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the table.
"He's just pleasing the customers. Shit, everybody dreams about outside. You'd be crazy if you didn't."
"There are days when he don't do nothing but Wantout propaganda. He's out to stir up trouble."
"Everybody's talking Wantout. Christ, you want to get out yourself."
"But I don't go around shouting about it."
Vickers was getting bored with the whole subject. That was all anyone talked about these days, what was going on outside.
"So Wolfjohn finds a butcher squad turned on him. That's his lookout, not mine."
Fenton tossed his hunting knife. It stuck in
the table six feet in front of him, vibrating from side to side.
"I'll tell you one thing, if Lloyd-Ransom decides to grease Wolfjohn, it won't be a regular butcher squad, it'll be one of us."
"That won't do anything for our popularity level on Level Two."
"Maybe he'll get Debbie to do it. She won't mind. All she wants to do these days is snuff men."
The two men shook their heads in unison. In the year and a half since the bunker had been sealed, the position of the security execs had become stranger and stranger. As Vickers had always predicted, Lloyd-Ransom's regime had run on a combination of brutality and fear. The main problem that had to be tackled was that, beyond feeding and keeping themselves clean, there was really very little for the population of the bunker to do except sit and wait until the outside world was ready for them to emerge from their self-made caves. It was like Lutesinger had told them, they were seeds waiting for the moment to sprout, they were in a dormant period. Unfortunately the population wasn't dormant. They were alive and kicking, claustrophobic and subject to a stress-loaded sexual imbalance. They had plenty of time on their hands to become neurotic and hysterical, to gossip and complain, to plot and intrigue. There had been riots, and bizarre rumors had sparked equally bizarre days of panic. Crowd madness recurred like a cyclical epidemic, while other behavior defied all categorizing. There had been the weird secret society called the Convocation of Witches and their seemingly random stoning ceremonies. There had been the spontaneous blindness and the hunger sacrifices. An obscure group of women had sat in front of the doors on the first level, doused themselves with gasoline and burned to death. While the bunker waited, it also became an emotional powderkeg.
Lloyd-Ransom was neither a psychologist nor blessed with the common touch. He approached trouble like a surgeon. If, in his opinion, a cell or group of cells ceased to conform and so endangered the total being, the only answer was to cut it out. As soon as the bunker was sealed, he had started organizing the hard cases among his now largely idle military into viciously efficient execution groups, the "butcher squads" as they were dubbed. They became his first resort, his instrument of terror.
