The Final Day

by William R. Forstchen

  “Laura!”

  He turned to look up Main Street. A woman who appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties, well dressed in a clean white blouse and jeans, figure healthy and definitely not starving, was running toward them.

  “Mommy!”

  Laura broke free from Grace’s protective embrace, leaped down the steps of the Quonset porch, and ran toward the woman, who slowed, grabbed the frightened girl by the shoulders, and pushed Laura protectively behind her. She looked toward Grace, who had been following behind Laura.

  “Back off and leave my child alone,” the woman snapped, and then she half-turned to look at Laura. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

  Laura was sobbing too hard to answer.

  The woman turned back to face Grace.

  “She’s all right. No, we didn’t harm her, ma’am.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Grace Freeman.”

  “Listen, damn you, you keep your hands off my child. You’re armed; you are dangerous. You stop where you are and get the hell out of here now!”

  Grace looked over at John, obviously confused. John stepped toward the woman. “Miss Freeman is with me,” he announced. “She is no threat to your child.”

  She glared at John with an icy, dismissive gaze. “And who the hell are you?”

  Her sanctimonious, superior tone was to John like sandpaper grating on an open wound, reminiscent of so many like her going back to childhood, the rich kids who lived up in Short Hills, the wealthy community that adjoined where he lived for several years in a working-class neighborhood. Their parents were the power brokers of firms in New York while his father was putting his ass on the line in the skies over Vietnam. The wives and daughters of haughty generals, unlike men like Bob Scales who truly came from the salt of the earth himself. To college professors one had to bow to in order to have any hope of getting a passing grade with their all-so-superior attitude, cramming their political views down his throat. She was of that ilk, and that attitude would not have survived a week if she had been trapped in the world up on the surface.

  He took a deep breath and tried to control his own rage. “I am Colonel John Matherson, State of Carolina, and this young lady is a lieutenant under my command and will be treated with respect.”

  “I don’t give a damn where you’re from. I’m ordering you to clear out now and stay away from my children, or you will face charges, Mr. Mather.”

  “That is Colonel John Matherson,” Forrest retorted.

  “Do you even know who I am?” she shouted.

  John tried to extend his hands in a calming gesture, but she overreacted, as if he were drawing a weapon.

  “Security! I need security here now!” she screamed.

  John looked past her. Wherever Bob had gone with most of his command, he was long lost to view. A crowd was beginning to mill about out along Main Street. All of them looked to be civilians. Well-clothed, well-fed civilians, from mothers holding infants to several elderly, one of them in a motorized wheelchair.

  Some were looking their way, and as if this woman was indeed some sort of leader, they started to head in their direction to witness the confrontation.

  John looked back at the nameplate on the barrack’s door.

  “Your husband is…”

  “Yes!” There was a definite superior gaze as if with that question being asked she could now play her trump card and he would wilt away. “He was a senator and is now acting secretary of state.”

  “At Bluemont?” He said the two words slowly.

  “Yes, you idiot, at Bluemont.”

  “If I were him and married to you,” Forrest growled sotto voce, “I’d stay there.”

  “How dare you!” she cried.

  “I dare because I have a right to dare,” Forrest replied.

  “And you were evacuated here hours before our country was taken down by an EMP?” John snapped, voice filled with bitterness.

  “I don’t have to answer that question,” she replied, but there was a slight loss of confidence in her voice. She turned away from John, looking back over her shoulder. “Someone get security here now and throw these bastards out!”

  “We killed most of them,” Forrest replied. “If you’d care to, go up outside, take a look at their bodies. And then take a look at the entire damn world out there while you were hidden away down here.”

  He was about to say more, but John could see that Laura was behind her mother, terrified, clutching Buster and sobbing uncontrollably.

  It took all he could do next to try to control his voice. “Ma’am, I suggest that someone take your daughter to what she said is a shelter area, but you stay here. I have a few questions I’d like to ask you.”

  “I want security now!” she screamed. “They’re assaulting me!”

  The crowd was drawing closer. John looked past her. They numbered in the hundreds while Bob had brought less than a hundred with him when they stormed this place. More than a quarter were dead, wounded, or still deployed outside in a defensive perimeter protecting their precious airlift assets or dealing with the prisoners and wounded. He realized he should have stayed with Bob, who had forged ahead to find the communications center. All who was with him at this moment were the three guards that had been detailed to hold the entry to the tunnel and those left of what could be called his command—Grace, Reverend Black, who was gazing about, obviously in shock, Kevin Malady, Maury, and Forrest.

  He could sense it was unraveling.

  He glared at the woman, who was obviously trying to provoke a reaction.

  “Ma’am, this can go one of two ways,” John announced, struggling to control his voice, his emotions still overwhelmed by all that he had learned in the last few minutes. “We’re going to back up to the tunnel entrance. I ask you to tell those folks behind you to get back in the other direction and we wait to let this sort out. We don’t want this to go out of control, so please help me.”

  “Get your filthy asses out of here now!” she screamed. “Security, they’re trying to assault me!”

  John saw several men pushing their way through the crowd, M4s up and aimed toward him, the crowd parting to let them pass but following in their wake, some shouting obscenities and threats.

  “My people, get back!” John shouted even as he unslung the M4 over his shoulder.

  “He’s going to shoot me!” the woman screamed. Her scream was picked up by the approaching crowd, most of them scattering or dropping to the hard tarmac floor of Main Street.

  It was happening too fast for him now to hope to control. He began to draw back. Forrest was already crouching low, weapon aimed. Grace was out front, crouched low and moving forward, and John could see that she was trying to snatch Laura and knock her down while the girl’s mother remained upright, screaming.

  A shot rang out, another, and then another.

  Grace tumbled over onto her side, blood spraying out. Forrest, weapon leveled, opened up, aimed shot after aimed shot, dropping those who were firing on them. The crowd behind the action started screaming and running in panic. John stopped his retreat, crouching low, crawling the dozen feet to Grace, and flinging himself over her to protect her with Kevin at his side. Maury had his weapon leveled, shooting as well, while the three troopers who had been guarding the tunnel entry came running forward, weapons at the shoulder, one of them firing several times at a man in civilian clothing who had a short-barrel automatic, catching Maury in the leg.

  A well-aimed shot from Forrest dropped that man as well as he tried to dodge behind a barrack.

  The firing from down Main Street stopped; John, still prone over Grace, looked up. The street, so crowded but a minute earlier, was empty, the smell of cordite heavy in the air, wisps of smoke being sucked up by a noisy ventilation fan set in the ceiling over the street.

  The three troopers pressed forward past where John was, and throughout it all, amazingly, the woman who had provoked it had remained standing, most
likely so startled by the frightful onset of violence she had not yet even grasped how to react. Grace was lying prone over Laura, who was gasping for air and trying to crawl out from under her protection. Horrified, John saw that Laura was bleeding, blood leaking out of a wound in her back.

  John drew back from his covering of Grace with his body. Her eyes were glazing, going out of focus. She had been hit in the head.

  “Laura okay?” she whispered.

  Crying, he could only nod. It would be like her to sacrifice all for a child she barely knew.

  “She’s okay, sweetie,” John lied.

  “Good. Tell my daddy…”

  And then she was still.

  It was near to painless and all so quick, unlike so many deaths he had witnessed, so many he had held while they were dying. All he could do was gather her into his arms and cry while Forrest knelt by his side, weapon protectively raised, and screamed for a medic. Kevin Malady went forward with the three troopers, reaching the security troops they had just engaged, all of them apparently down. One of them started to rise up, swinging his weapon around and cursing with rage, and Kevin put three more rounds into him.

  Only now did the woman who had triggered all of this realize that her daughter was hit as well.

  The medic came running up, still crouched low, knelt down by Grace’s side, put a finger to her carotid artery, snapped on a flashlight, and shined it into her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, sir, she’s gone.” Without delaying even a second, the medic crawled over to Laura, felt the wound on her back, gently ran a hand underneath her, drawing it back to reveal she had an exit wound in her upper chest, and then frantically went to work. Even as she did so, she looked over at Maury.

  “Where you hit?”

  “Leg.”

  “Where? Upper?”

  “No, calf; might have broken my leg, though.”

  She glanced at him as if evaluating his injury. “You’ll have to wait!” she cried and then focused her attention back on Laura.

  Laura’s mother now started to react, sobbing, squatting down by her daughter, screaming, “All of you murdered her!”

  John, still in shock, was still holding Grace, brushing her long, dark hair back from her battered face.

  “Sir! Sir!”

  He looked up. It was the medic.

  “You got to get control of this. Start by getting this damn woman out of here.”

  The young medic’s orders snapped him back. John forced himself to focus, to let go of the moment, try to think a minute, five minutes ahead as he was once trained to do, no matter how horrific the situation.

  He looked forward. Kevin and the three troopers had pushed forward by fifty yards, Kevin shouting with his booming voice for everyone to stay calm, keep back, to get inside shelter and no one would be hurt. But then he looked back anxiously toward Grace, obviously wanting to go to her side.

  One of the troopers was checking the four dead, kicking their weapons aside, picking up the light automatic carried by the one in civilian garb who had been killed and slinging that weapon over his shoulder.

  Laura’s mother, hysterical, was trying to push the medic aside, but Forrest was already reacting, roughly grabbing her by the shoulder and shoving her back, half dragging her away.

  John stood up, went to Forrest’s side, and pulled the woman to her feet. She was continuing to scream, an almost sure provocation for more chaos to ensue. He held on to her, pushing her toward her barrack house. The last thing needed now was for her to run off screaming that those with him had been responsible for the shooting of her child and not the other way around.

  “You were the one that triggered her getting shot!” John shouted. “Now let my medic try to save her!”

  Laura had left the Quonset hut door open, and John shoved the woman up the steps and inside. What he saw startled him. The quarters were spartan and yet comfortable—a bit of a strange mix of retro furniture that was obviously from the ’60s and looked like it had come off the set of The Brady Bunch, complete with the ubiquitous olive-green color so favored back then. A twenty-five-inch console television, once considered an indicator of the height of affluence, was in the room along with the usual recliner lounge chair, mixed in with standard government-issue gray desks, straight-back chairs, and a bookshelf that was half-empty.

  The woman was beginning to sob. John looked at her without pity and glanced at Forrest.

  “If she starts getting loud or tries to leave, you have my permission to punch her out,” John snapped.

  She looked at him with open hatred but then fell silent.

  M4 at the ready, John opened the door into the rear of the Quonset hut. There was a small kitchenette to his right, a sink, a two-burner range and fridge, and an unopened pack of MREs on the counter. To his left, a door half-open. Looking in, he saw there were twin bunk beds against one wall and a single standard military-issue bed against the other wall. A few toys were on the floor, a wooden-track train set, several dolls, and a model of a spaceship, obviously the children’s room.

  Next to the kitchenette, there was a small but nevertheless complete bathroom with a shower, wash sink, and toilet. Curious, he turned on the hot water for the sink, and after about a minute of running cold, warm, hot water finally poured out, and the toilet most definitely flushed; there was even a roll of toilet paper beside it.

  All of this filled him with a mix of rage but then strangely nostalgia as well for such simple comforts of a lost age that a few had managed to preserve down here.

  He now noticed for the first time that it was all climate controlled. There was no heat running. It was cool, perhaps in the midsixties, but not uncomfortable. The entire cavern was at the same temperature and humidity as well from what must be a vast climate control system and sanitation support for the entire cavern. The energy demands must be prodigious, at least by the standards of the world after the Day.

  At the far end of the room, there was one more door. There was perhaps a one-in-a-thousand risk, but still, after all the tragedy of the last few hours, he was not sure what to expect, so he flipped off the safety on his weapon, leveled it, and then popped the door open.

  It was the master bedroom. She was indeed high-ranking. It was no two cots pushed together; there was actually a queen-size bed that took up more than half the floor space of the room but nevertheless looked damned comfortable when compared to the freezing cold nights with Makala when they would revert to zipping two heavy down sleeping bags together in order to be close and then snuggle together on their double bed. Jen’s room did have a king-size bed, but that had been her room and, in his heart, taboo to ever move into even though she had been dead for close to half a year. All of that gone in the fire just a week ago.

  He glanced around the room. It was typical military construction from the ’40s and ’50s—particle walls, flimsy doors of half-inch plywood, standard government-issue fixtures, from toilet to light sockets … and all of it looked at that moment to be luxury all but undreamed of.

  There was a flash memory from Orwell’s 1984 when the author had written that in a world of desperate scarcity, possession of a kilo of coffee or a few grams of real chocolate could define the ruling elite from the rest of the world and be worth fighting for and many willing to die for in order to possess.

  A few pictures were pinned to the wall, apparently taken out of wallets. The woman out in the living room, perhaps five or six years back in a maternity ward bed, proudly holding newborn twins with a six- or seven-year-old girl horning in at the edge of the photograph at least appearing to look happy. From what had just transpired, he wondered if she truly had been happy at that moment.

  There was a photo, framed, over what he could only assume was her husband’s small dresser. He recognized the face.

  So this is our acting secretary of state, standing next to the person who was once the president of the United States and died on the Day when Air Force One, insufficiently hardened, had gone down.


  He read the autograph from the president written across the bottom, a person who, if he had met him while in the military, he would have been forced to salute but nevertheless held in contempt, an autograph expressing friendship to the couple, naming both of them, and the memory struck with such force as he read the names of whom the president was addressing the autograph to that he actually spoke out loud.

  “So you are the idiot who was using the unsecured e-mail not to your wife but to a girlfriend that finally brought us here?”

  He did not know whether to laugh or scream in rage as he tore the framed photograph off the wall, turned, and headed back to the living room.

  Forrest was sitting by her side, but his attitude had shifted as she at least appeared to have calmed down.

  “Done prowling around my home?” she asked, looking up at him coldly, cheeks streaked from spoiled makeup.

  “Is your name Alicia?” John snapped.

  “No, Janice.”

  He could not help but smile, an almost cruel smile after all the tragedy she had created. “You want to know how we found out about this place?”

  She looked up at him and tried not to show a reaction. “Go on, enlighten me.”

  “Your idiot husband was sending out a few e-mails to this place that we did not even have to crack. It was a correspondence with some woman named Alicia.”

  He hesitated. Was this even too cruel for him? “He certainly had a thing for her and was looking forward to—how shall I say it?—a romantic interlude with her next time he was here.”

  Her eyes widened with shock and then growing rage. “You’re a damn liar!” she shrieked. “He said he gave her up a year ago!”

  “That’s how we tracked this place down, your husband sending unsecured sexting to Alicia who apparently he stashed here as well,” John replied sharply. “Sure, he protected his family”—a pause—“and his mistress as well.”