The End of America & the rest of the world

by Brian Smith

  The Survivor

  Chuck was not your average guy. There was nothing unusual in his appearance, he was of middle height, stout with dirty blond hair and pale eyes, and he invariably wore jeans and a T-shirt or camouflage wear. He wasn't particularly wealthy or educated. He liked his guns and was a member of the local militia, but in the part of rural America where he lived that was nothing unusual either. What really set him apart from other folks was his will to Live. He was a Survivor. If there was any danger or emergency anyone could think of he would prepare for it. Foreign invasion? He was in the militia. Alien attack? He had explosives and weapons ready for a guerrilla war. Feds confiscating guns? He had some buried in steel drums. Global warming and rising sea levels? He moved to the mountains. Doomsday bug wiping out humanity? His house could be sealed and was well stocked with supplies. Nuclear war or asteroid impact? He was the proud owner of a bunker, twenty feet under his garden with a solid steel hatch and supplies and air to last for a fortnight.

  He never went anywhere, not for fun anyway. The folks next door might go to Florida and enjoy themselves at the beach, but not Chuck. If he went anywhere it was for survival training or maybe a gun show. That's where he met his wife Lara. She was a survivor of a different sort. She was into guns and the Bible and where Chuck prepared for worldly disasters she prepared to meet the Wrath of the Lord as she liked to put it. She was sure the End of Times was nigh, and that only those who believed and at the same time prepared for Armageddon would survive. Chuck merely paid lip service to her religious convictions. He wasn't really interested but decided that an additional insurance policy could do no harm, in particular if it kept his wife happy at the same time. And as for Lara, she was delighted to have met someone so dedicated to survival and the coming battles that she was so sure of. They pitied the people and relatives they knew who wasted their time going abroad or having fun at weekends. Yet at the same time they were also proud in the knowledge that they, Chuck and Lara, were destined to survive and that their progeny would people the Earth when all others had perished and long been forgotten.

  One Saturday morning Chuck was busying himself as usual on that day of the week. After their eco breakfast that his wife insisted on for reasons of health and to protect the environment - though he did at times wonder what the point was of protecting the environment if she expected the end of the world soon - they set about their different chores to prepare for the worst. For Lara that meant reading scripture and praying which she interrupted at certain times to tend her ecological garden and to feed the hens they kept. For Chuck growing vegetables and keeping livestock was only important for reasons of autarchy. He wanted to be as independent as possible from outside food supplies in case the economic system collapsed and the nation was faced with starvation. His family at least, he had decided, would not go hungry. The first thing he did every day at dawn was to go to their little byre where their only cow had spent the night. He milked her. Having his own milk every morning gave him the satisfaction of knowing that a large corporation had not profited from him at least. After breakfast he let the cow out on the meadow and began to inspect their supplies of food, arms and all other necessities they had in store. He had seen all the things, he knew everything by heart, even the best before dates on packets of food, but he still insisted on checking everything again the following Saturday. The high point of his inspection was the opening of their underground shelter. He opened the steel hatch by hand though there was a hydraulic system that was strong enough to push several tons of material aside if the exit was blocked in a nuclear attack. The hatch opened onto a narrow staircase that led down to several large rooms that functioned both as shelter and as their main storage. Copious quantities of food and drinks aside, the shelter boasted a generator and air tanks that could not only supply anyone taking shelter with fresh air for a fortnight but that could also keep the generator running for the same amount of time. There was also a large sofa-bed in the main room and sundry communications equipment. Chuck tested each item of equipment one by one to ensure everything was in good working order.

  When he had finished checking everything he sat down in an armchair feeling both reassured and satisfied that everything was in order. He let his mind wander. It was one of the things he liked to do, imagine a catastrophic scenario and how he managed to bring his family through alive against all odds till in the end they were amongst the happy few who had survived to build a new world. He sat engrossed in his reverie. The phone rang. It was his son Jack.

  "Hey, Jack. What's up?"

  "I'm on my way to you, Dad. The Chinese have launched a nuclear attack. I'll be there in five minutes."

  Chuck was electrified. The moment he'd prepared for had come at last. All the years of hard work had finally paid off.

  "Drive like hell, then. We'll be expecting you."

  He got Lara into the bomb shelter and waited for Jack at the entrance, all the while scouring the sky for any sign of a missile hurtling towards Earth. A cloud of dust heralded Jack who pulled up moments later. They hurried down into the safety of the shelter and closed the hatch just in the nick of time. Less than a minute later an enormous nuclear warhead exploded just five miles away. Chuck breathed a sigh of relief. His family was safe! He had done it.

  The phone rang. Chuck snapped out of his reverie. This time the phone was really ringing. He recognized the number immediately. It belonged to his son Jack.

  He picked up the receiver with thoughts of doomsday still on his mind. Some people said there was a special bond between parents and their children that made telepathy possible under grave circumstances. Could his reverie have been more than just imagination? Was doomsday just around the corner? Was the end nigh?

  "Hey, Jack," he said apprehensively. "What's up?"

  "Hi Dad, I'm just calling to let you know I'll be spelunking with some friends, so don't expect to hear from me for a few days."

  Chuck breathed a sigh of relief. "Where are you?"

  "We're right outside the Silvermine Valley cave. We're planning to go down to the great lake, camp for a night and then make our way back via the Glenhill caves. Shouldn't take more than five days so if you don't hear from me by coming Friday you'll know where to look."

  Chuck nodded and thought back to the time when he had first taken Jack spelunking there. "All right then, kiddo. Have fun and take care."

  The following day, it was Sunday night to be precise, Chuck was sitting in the living room watching the late night show. Lara had already gone to bed and he was sitting alone with his third beer wondering how Jack was getting on in the caves. Despite the cozy armchair his beer and the telly he felt a pang of envy at not being part of Jack's little adventure. And besides he had a weapon's cache and a store of milk powder and food hidden away in one of the caves that he wanted to check again. It was one of the few things he had never told Jack about so he couldn't ask him to do the checking as with some of the other caches that his son helped him with. "You never know, after all," he used to say to himself. "You never know what could happen next."

  What exactly might happen next he didn't elaborate on but the risk of having one person in possession of all his secrets, even if that person was his own trusted son, seemed too much of a risk to Chuck.

  All the while the host of the late night show was rambling on interrupted only by the sporadic laughter of the audience. Suddenly the show was cut off and a new picture appeared: EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM

  Chuck sat bolt upright. "It's the Chinese," he said. "It's them goddamn Chinese. I knew it. I just knew it," he said to no one in particular with the reverie from the previous day still fresh on his mind.

  "This is the Emergency Broadcast System," the speaker announced. "A massive solar flare has been detected. There is a high probability that Earth will suffer a direct hit. All satellite systems are expected to be lost and it is possible that there will be severe damage even on ground level. You are advised to seek shelter if possible. Gather as many supplie
s as you can. Go to a safe place such as the basement of your building or a tornado shelter. Take a battery powered radio and listen for further announcements."

  For a second Chuck was too surprised to do anything. Then he sprang up and ran up the stairs yelling for Lara. "What the fuck do they mean by solar flare?" he thought. Falling asteroids and evil aliens aside he had never given outer space much thought. He pulled his wife out of bed and tried to explain things to her on the way back down even though he didn't really understand himself what was going on.

  "Is the end nigh?" she asked him when they reached the bottom of the stairs.

  "It could be, well I don't know, the TV guy just said seek shelter and there could be lots of damage."

  "It is Judgement Day," she said with confidence. "We must have faith, Chuck."

  "Of course, honey. But let's empty the fridge quickly and get down in the shelter. We can pray there," he said hastily seeing her reach for a Bible on a shelf.

  She nodded and then hurriedly emptied the contents of the fridge onto the tablecloth and then carried the whole lot out of the house and down into the bomb shelter. Chuck sealed the steel hatch and breathed a sigh of relief. "We made it," he said and congratulated himself at his foresight in building an advanced shelter with an independent life support system.

  "Trust not in steel and concrete, Chuck," Lara said. "Is Pride not the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins? Let us kneel and repent and pray to the Lord for His forgiveness!" She grabbed his arm and pulled him down to his knees with a determination that would brook no contradiction.

  Two hours later Chuck's knees were in agony.

  A fortnight later the shelter's oxygen supply was almost exhausted. In spite of all his efforts Chuck had been unable to establish any contact with the outside world. His communications equipment registered nothing but static and even the external camera didn't work.

  "Now what the heck is wrong with all this stuff?" he muttered to himself. "Solar flare my ass. I bet it was the Chinese. We just got nuked and the feds were trying to cover up."

  Lara shook her head disapprovingly. "It's judgement day, dear. The world we knew has gone to make way for a better place. Rejoice, Chuck! Rejoice for salvation is near!"

  He sighed. Well, I hope you're right, but whatever it is, one thing's for sure. We can't just stay here and wait any longer. I'll have to go outside myself and see what there is."

  He walked up to the hatch and grabbed the handle. It was cold and very stiff. It moved a little and then got stuck. Chuck considered whether to engage the hydraulics system but decided that saving energy was important so he gave the handle one more try. He took hold of it with both his hands and strained against it. Suddenly the handle moved all the way. The hatch popped out like the cork of a champagne bottle after shaking the bottle. It flung open with such unexpected force that the startled Chuck was pulled out with it. The air from the shelter rushed out with such force that Chuck was thrown up into the air several feet. The solar superflare had burned up planet Earth and blown its atmosphere into space leaving behind a ball of rock. A billion stars shone through space onto the dark desolate landscape around Chuck. He gasped and suffocated and fell to the ground dead.

  It was the one thing he hadn't prepared for.

  Zeus