Devon Ford - The Fall

The program started way back in the eighties and was intended for short range use as tank busters, but the project was subsequently cancelled. It was quietly reinvented in the windowless meeting rooms of government buildings, using specialists in different fields like solid-fuel propulsion and electronic guidance systems all working in information silos and never getting together until the prototypes were ready.

“Target analysis,” Gilbert called out. “Intercept percentage.”

“Missile trajectory indicates Florida, Nashville, D.C., Boston, or New York. Last missile is a slow-mover and indicates…” The analyst paused, trying to search the digital map along the projected line of the missile’s path for a target. Gilbert didn’t snap at the woman, didn’t allow his fear and nerves to dictate how he treated his team. He permitted her a few seconds.

“Sir, based on trajectory I believe it could be heading for Pittsburgh,” she said finally.

“Could be?” Gilbert asked, his need for certainty greater than ever.

“Sir, trajectory is off for direct line, but no other major population center is in the path,” she answered. Before Gilbert could ruminate on that another analyst called out with panic in their voice.

“ Impact! Detonation over Florida,” he squealed in panic. Gilbert fully expected that this would happen. He couldn’t do the complex calculations in his head with other things happening in quick time, but he knew that their missiles couldn’t cover the short distance that the first missile had covered in a matter of seconds.

“Understood,” he said coolly, swallowing. “Intercept percentage,” he said again.

“Sir,” the female analyst again, “slower moving missile at one hundred per cent, D.C. thirty-eight percent.”

“And the others?” Gilbert asked, the note of his voice changing slightly as he absorbed the majority likelihood that their capital would be annihilated in minutes.

“Looks like Boston, sir.” A pause. “Negative outcome. Twenty-one per cent intercept chance. Incoming missiles are accelerating faster than we anticipated.”

“ Impact! ” shouted the analyst. “It’s… it’s D.C. sir…”

“Understood,” Gilbert said again in a deadpan voice, staring at the screen resolutely.

“ Impact! ” shouted the excitable analyst again. “North of Fayetteville,” he said, scanning a map for the target.

“Fort Bragg,” Gilbert said, not needing a map to know what was just to the north west of the city. Gilbert waited, his hands clasped together and his breathing rapid as he watched the illuminated legends creep across the screen. The missile heading for Boston blinked out, and was followed by another impact report. Gilbert barely heard it, but acknowledged it all the same. He was reminded of the serenity prayer; he had to accept the things he could not change, he had used courage to change, or at least try to change, the things he could, and now he was learning the wisdom to tell the difference.

“Intercept!” screamed the analyst. “Remaining missile taken down near Atlanta.”

The control room cheered as one, not realizing the devastation they had just suffered, or simply not fully understanding it yet. Inside of a few tense minutes they had lost one of their biggest military bases, two cities with millions of casualties, and their capital. Gilbert stayed in the position he was stood in, rooted to the spot and fighting to keep himself calm.

And the attack would go, for now at least, unanswered. Because there was nobody left alive with the authority to launch a counterstrike.

The Movement, the treasonous fools, had ensured that, unwittingly, by securing the president and making him the perfect sitting duck.

Just as Jake was trying to emulate the easy manner of command that he had seen in others, a flash like lightening seared across the windows. It was like lightening, but at the same time it couldn’t be because the flash lingered instead of plunging the sky back into darkness. As the flash began to wane, a rumbling of something far away hit them as though they were on the very edge on a small earthquake.

Some people didn’t notice it, others did and began to ask questions. Jake, Cal, and Sebastian all exchanged looks.

“Sir,” Jake asked Sebastian. “Do you have roof access here?”

“Yes,” he replied as he unclipped his own swipe card, “service elevator to the top.”

Jake said nothing but glanced to Cal. His eyes said, You coming? and Cal nodded. He looked to Sebastian, then to Louise, and the concierge nodded back. Inside of a second, the three men had communicated a great deal without saying a word.

Cal limped alongside Jake who swiped the card over the elevator controls. The doors opened straight away and the two men entered the small space, both unbeknownst to the other saying a silent prayer that the generator power held up. Riding upwards fast in the undecorated space in stark contrast to the decadence of the guest’s elevator, neither said a word. It creaked to a stop and the two walked out, still in silence. They scanned the horizon until Jake’s sharp intake of breath made Cal spin around.

There, in the very furthest reaches of his vision to their north east, was a glowing orb. Neither man could see it clearly, and neither knew what it was with any certainty.

But both knew that it wasn’t good.

Moments after the cop had got into the elevator with Cal, Sebastian was leading Louise through to the comfortable seats further inside the lobby. As he was doing so, a shout from the lounge made him divert.

“I got something,” shouted an excited voice, as the volume of a TV screen grew louder. “Oh, Jesus…”

On the screen, on some obscure news channel nobody had heard of, was the obvious devastation and recognizable profile of a nuclear detonation.

“Where is that?” shouted a guest. “Is that the west coast?”

“That’s LA,” responded a voice full of dreadful certainty.

“Everybody quiet!” snapped Sebastian as he sat the shocked Louise down in a chair. “Please, turn that up.”

“…confirmed reports of between six and ten nuclear explosions in the United States,” said the anchor’s strained voice. Sebastian didn’t hear any more as the gathering of guests who had refused to go back to their rooms erupted with gasps and shouted curses and questions.

Just then Jake and Cal returned to the ground floor and followed the source of the noise. As they rounded the corner into the lounge, both saw the iconic and unmistakable profile of a mushroom cloud, only this one was hanging over the earth instead of rising up from it. Both then knew, with absolute and utter horrified certainty, what the glow they had seen from the roof was.

“Boston,” Jake said quietly, making Cal’s mouth open. Between the report on TV and the information he had gathered with his own eyes, he put together the information in the only way it could logically go. East and west coast alike, the USA was being bombed by nukes.

“It’s the Russians, it has to be,” shouted an old man in a tuxedo, angrily shaking off the restraining arm of his wife and personally reliving the cold war.

“What the hell are you doing about this?” screamed a woman with tear-streaked makeup running down her face. She directed this at Jake, as though his membership of the NYPD had made him the keeper of international relations and that he was somehow solely responsible for this. He knew it was fear transference; people when they panic look for the nearest uniform, the nearest authority figure, and either plead for help or blame them personally.

“Okay everyone, let’s all just calm down for a minute,” he said, holding up both hands to try and restore order to the small group. This only had the desired effect of making people shout louder and advance on him like a pack of hungry animals. The mob fragmented between the majority going after Jake and demanding he do something, and a smaller group who had singled out an Arab businessman in a perfectly cut shiny suit.