William Forstchen - The Final Day

John looked out the front window. Someone, a civilian, was bringing up a stretcher. Another was holding up an IV bag while the young medic was hunched over Laura, still working on her, but the girl was obviously conscious.

But next to her, Grace lay as she fell, Reverend Black and Kevin kneeling by her side and crying.

“Get a blanket, something over Grace,” John whispered. “When we leave here, she goes back with us.”

“Understood, sir.” A pause. “I’m sorry; she seemed like a good kid. I saw it happen. She was trying to knock the little girl down to protect her when she got hit. She gave her life trying to save someone else.”

“That was Grace,” John whispered.

“I’ll see she’s taken care of, sir.”

John could only nod.

The woman looked at John. “Who was she?”

He stared straight at her. “In a way, you could say she was a daughter as well.”

The woman lowered her head. “I want to go with my girl. Let me leave.”

“In a few minutes. She’s in the best of hands until then. The way you behave, your being around her might upset things again, maybe trigger another incident.”

The woman was obviously in shock, and she just seemed to sag, the fight out of her.

“Your husband is the acting secretary of state,” he asked.

She nodded.

“And he is at Bluemont?”

Again a nod.

“How did all of you get here and when?” John pressed.

She looked over at him.

“Answer my questions and in five minutes I’ll see someone gets you safely to your daughter. Again, how did you get here, and when?”

“I was flown in along with my twin boys.”

“When?” John tried to keep the tension out of his voice.

“On the Day.”

“When?”

She seemed to recoil backward, and he realized it was again becoming difficult to contain his anger.

“When?”

“The morning of the Day,” she whispered.

“The morning of?” He paused for a moment. “It was before five in the afternoon in North Carolina when we were hit and everything went down. And you are telling me you were flown in here that morning?”

She could only nod.

“How can that be? Part of me just doesn’t want to get it, to believe it. Are you telling me that some in Washington knew we were going to get hit and got their families out?”

There was a long, drawn-out silence.

“You see your daughter after you answer me.”

“All right. Yes. Some knew. I don’t know all the details; even my husband wouldn’t tell me. He just would say there are some questions never to ask, and you are now asking one.” She looked back over at John. “I want to see those e-mails you claim he was sending to that Alicia bitch.”

“General Scales has them.”

“Of course he’d get her out too, the bastard. I knew about it even then.” She sighed and looked at John out of the corners of her eyes. “I need a cigarette.”

“Don’t look at me; I quit.”

She motioned to a side table. He started to indicate she could go herself, thought better of it, and without taking his eyes off her reached over, opened the side table, and sure enough, there was a pack of cigarettes—British imports—and a lighter. He tossed them over to her, and with hands shaking, she lit one up, and he looked at it hungrily.

“You want one?” she asked.

After two years and a half years, he finally broke, nodded, took one out of the pack, and, whispering an apology to Jennifer, he lit it, taking it in deep, the nicotine hitting hard so he felt a bit light-headed for a moment. He felt deeply ashamed about breaking his vow to Jennifer and hoped she would understand at this moment.

“I don’t know who, whether it was NSA, CIA, or some other agency, picked up the warning we were going to be hit later in the day. Only a few knew. Apparently not even the president, who was flying back to Washington when it hit.”

“Who are these few?” John asked, head swimming from the nicotine and all that he was now learning.

“I don’t know for sure.” She hesitated, leaning forward to look out the door where her daughter was being loaded onto a stretcher, the child whimpering.

“You can go with her as soon as we’re done talking,” John said, and she looked back at him. “Who are these few that you said knew?”

“I’m not sure. You can guess, can’t you? Not the ones in power up front. Just those behind them that few ever really see. Not many I recognized, but my husband was one of them.” She paused and took another deep drag on her cigarette. “He got drunk one night and said that the country was going to hell anyhow. Some whispered that a reset button was needed to put them in control. Some operatives got a warning that North Korea and Iran were about to hit us by handing nukes and launch systems to terrorists who actually did the attack. They thought it would be a standard nuclear bomb strike, most likely against Washington and New York.”

She took another drag. “So to play it safe, they set up some sort of practice drill. You know, he said like it was a war game or something. Practice evacuating certain key personnel, leaders to Bluemont, while families and a select few higher-ups were sent up here and stashed away.

“Then, as you all say, the shit hit the fan for real. Not a mushroom cloud over Washington but far worse, he said. The kids and I were already here. Others were brought in secretly in the weeks afterward. We were told to wait.”

She sighed after taking another long drag on her cigarette. “Wait. I’ve been in this shit hole for two and a half years, and now you tell me my husband’s slut mistress was here all along as well?

“That’s all I know about what everyone calls the Day.”

“Why aren’t you in Bluemont?” John asked.

“My husband said the place was too small to take care of us all. Also, after it was all over, with representatives from other countries going there, even that damn pesky BBC could be there at times. If families were seen by them…” She paused again and looked at him coldly, and he realized that regardless of the enormity of what she was revealing, it was the news about the mistress that was driving her to now talk.

“Family and other people of special interest,” she continued, “if we were there, outsiders might start asking why. Those in Bluemont, which is half the distance from Washington as this place, could claim a lot of excuses for getting to that place, even that they were part of a training exercise. But nearly two thousand of us? Some of them with very deep pockets who in reality controlled most of the political machines, at least before everything went down?”

“Two thousand?” John asked in surprise.

“Yeah, something like that.” She took another drag on her cigarette, which burned clear down to the filter. She didn’t bother with the ashtray, just let it fall to the shag-carpeted floor and ground it out. She got out another cigarette and lit it, continuing to smoke.

“More would come in after everything hit. Those with the real deep pockets—you know what I mean—people who shoveled out the cash before the war to buy what they wanted in Washington and could pay even more to survive here in safety. The ones that came afterward said it was beyond hell up above.”

She stopped looking at him, head lowered as if waiting for an angry response or even a physical blow.

“It is indeed hell,” was all he could say, and she took another drag on the cigarette. “So all of you have been here for over two years?”

“Yeah. Hell of an existence, isn’t it?” She looked around at the sparsely furnished Quonset hut. “Water rationed to one shower per person every third day, one load of laundry a week in a communal laundry area. A communal laundry area with everyone else. Can you believe that?” She actually had rage in her voice over that indignity. “Meals are usually MREs, some of them twenty years old. Television is a library of old videotapes. I’ve watched every episode of Three’s Company and Sesame Street maybe twenty times each until I’m ready to scream. The cigarettes he brings to me he gets through some trade deals—bet he gives most of them though to that bitch of his.”