William Forstchen - The Final Day

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.”

She glared up at him, struggling for control. “Matherson, you are cruel beyond any words to describe.”

“Madam, it was men like your husband who turned this world into a place of such cruelty,” John said coldly.

She lowered her head but then looked up at a trooper standing in the doorway.

“Ma’am, your daughter is going to make it. The medic stabilized her; some folks are helping us to take her to the hospital.”

She nodded, tears continuing to well. “Thank you,” she whispered.