Larry Enright - 12|21|12

“Leave your message at the tone if you must.”

Michael hung up and then threw up, and then passed out on the floor.

When he awoke, it was getting dark outside. By his watch, days had passed. Michael packed his suitcase, filled his coat pockets with granola bars, the only thing he’d been able to stomach lately, and drove to the train station in the next town. The station was empty as was the train that arrived ten minutes later without a conductor. Its doors opened. He got on board and sat down. The bell rang. The doors closed, and the train accelerated toward the city.

An hour later, Michael got off at the platform below Seventeenth Street, and the train clattered off into the twilit tunnel. On the street, the light changed at the intersection, but the cars did not move. No one sat on his horn. No one ran the red light. There was no yelling, no pushing and shoving, nothing. He tried calling the man in the message again, but the skyscrapers blocked the signal. Logan Circle was the closest open space. He walked the one block there and had begun to dial Loeb’s number when he heard music coming from the Freedom Hotel. On any other day he wouldn’t have noticed, but on this day he did.

Michael entered the lobby through the glass doors and stopped at the elevators. The floor indicator above the middle elevator was moving from ten, to nine, to eight… It pinged softly when the “L” lit up. The doors opened and a man drew a gun and fired.

“For God’s sake, don’t shoot!” Michael dropped the suitcase, gripped his chest, and collapsed onto the cold marble floor.

He awoke under a blanket on a bed. The air was warm and heavy with men’s aftershave. He heard muffled voices from the next room. It was morning. The cold gray sky was thick with clouds. A man appeared at the door.

“You’re Dr. Philip Loeb.” Michael sat up. The pain had subsided. “I saw you on TV.”

“Loeb will do. And you are?”

“Michael. Michael Costa.”

“You’re a priest?”

“Minister. There was a man with a gun.”

“That’s Bowen. He was just leaving when you showed up. Your timing was rather fortuitous as it turns out. He’s decided to stay.”

“Are there others?”

“Just we three, but I am convinced there are more. How did you get here?”

“I live about an hour west of the city by train. The trains are running themselves.”

“Interesting, and possibly useful. How did you find us? I didn’t name the hotel in the message.”

“I was just trying to get my cell to work. I was going to call you.” Michael tested his legs. “I’ve haven’t felt this good in months.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. Bowen gave you a shot of morphine. There’s breakfast in the other room. We’ll be waiting.”

Michael joined them and ate while they studied a map. “What are you looking for?” he asked.

“There,” Bowen pointed. “In those mountains.”

Michael looked over his shoulder. “What’s there?”

“Camp David,” said Loeb. “Mr. Bowen has convinced me that our current situation is untenable. The logical alternative is the presidential retreat at Camp David. It’s self-sustaining and designed to be isolated for up to a year in case of extreme emergency. More importantly, there is a top-secret underground train there that can take us to the capital. With the main roads impassable, it may be the only way to get to Washington, and if anyone is still left who knows what happened, that’s where they’ll be.”

“How did you know about the tunnel if it’s top secret? Do you work for the government?”

“Hardly. There is very little that can be hidden from public scrutiny anymore if you know what you’re looking for. There’s a maze of secret tunnels and trains that connects every major installation in the capital. It has been under construction since the Civil War. I’ve seen old photographs of it. The Pentagon, the FBI, Andrews Air Force Base, Langley, even the presidential retreat here in these mountains are all connected to allow continued operation of the government in a case of extreme emergency.”

“It’s about 180 miles or so.” Bowen stroked his beard. “Holy boy here will never make it back to the Rover on foot. I say we try the same train he took and get west of the gridlock, grab a new set of wheels and as much gas as we can carry, and head west. We can take the turnpike if it’s clear. That’s the quickest way. We go south here,” he pointed. “With any luck, we can be there before dark.” He glared at Loeb, “You’d better be right about this.”

“Mr. Bowen, if I’m wrong, and I’m not, you may feel free to leave us there and continue on to wherever you wish to go.”

While Bowen and Michael packed provisions for the trip, Loeb logged into the Channel Three servers and switched tapes. He had recorded several messages in anticipation of all possibilities, in case he had to move locations. When the indicator showed the new message in place, he switched on the TV.

“…If you are watching this message, know that you are not alone…”

Before turning off the computer, he checked the video’s hit counter. It was still a “1,” but that “1” blinked hopefully. Now they were three, and there was at least one other human being who had gotten the message. That made four.

The men made their way to Seventeenth and the Boulevard and found the underground platform. The train, as yet oblivious to man’s disappearance, arrived right on schedule.

As they pulled into the last stop, Michael looked out on the snow-covered woods. “All my life I’d been taught to think that we were put here to be stewards of this world, but the truth is, the world doesn’t need us to take care of it. It was just fine before us and will be again long after we’re gone. We’re no more than parasites, insects sucking on its lifeblood, killing it a little every day.”

Bowen tossed him his bag. “It took the end of the world for you to figure that out? Maybe if we get lucky and survive this, you can preach that from your holy pulpit and somebody will listen next time.”

Bowen found a vehicle in the parking lot with the key still in the ignition. They filled up at a gas station, packed several more five-gallon gas cans in the back, and headed west. The turnpike turned out to be easy going. Traffic had been light through the sparsely populated mountains west of the city at 12:21:12 p.m. They turned south off the main highway and onto the snow-covered backcountry roads of the Maryland State Forest.

It was while winding around a mountain that they saw the creature — a mass of fur lumbering south. Loeb dismissed it as a bear. Bowen said it was no bear — too upright, too slow. It was something else. He stopped, and it crossed the road into the woods. When he eased forward, the creature spotted them and ran. Bowen stopped the truck and jumped out. “Hey!” he shouted and fired a single shot.

He kept to himself and liked it that way. He’d lived alone for as long as he could remember, and with his looks, it wasn’t hard to see why — flat nose, scraggily mustache and beard, and a face that could only be described as a ferret’s. Until 12:21:12 p.m. on 12|21|12, that’s what everyone in town called him — Ferret. He lived in a run-down trail cabin in the mountainous state forest and survived off the town’s garbage. In better weather you could find him there every week or so trash picking. He was harmless enough. In the past, he’d had a few run-ins with the law, but he never hurt anyone. He never bothered anyone. He just wanted to get by, just like everyone else. It got so people pretty much ignored him. Some even put food out for him in slings hung in the trees too high to attract curious bears. To many, he was the town mascot, just another oddity that they talked about around the pickle barrel in the general store.