Ahern, Jerry - Total War

Sarah stopped at the closed basement door. The gas smelled stronger. She reached down to the doorknob, then stopped. "What if it makes a spark?" she asked herself, half aloud.

"What is it, Mama," Michael said. Then, "Here-I can open the door for you."

Suddenly, Michael was standing beside her, his hands already on the doorknob, pushing the door open.

"Michael!" Sarah screamed, grabbing the boy and his sister and drawing them against her. The door, the hinges creaking and sounding as though they needed oil, swung open. Nothing happened.

Cautiously, the boy and girl beside her, Sarah stepped into the house. The smell of gas was completely gone. As she looked up and down the hallway, she could see that, apparently, every window in the house had smashed inward. The rooms were littered with glass from broken dishes and vases, the overhead lights-everything was destroyed.

"What happened?" Michael said.

"Some very bad men dropped some big bombs on our country, Michael," Sarah said. "You've heard about the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb. Well, they have a lot more explosive force than ordinary bombs. All this mess is from bombs they dropped on Atlanta-and you know it takes us an hour and a half to drive there. So Atlanta was pretty far away." She shuddered as she heard herself use the past tense-"was." The zoo, the museums, the shops and restaurants-a flood of memories rushed over her. The people? Her throat started tightening, and, bending down to the children, she said, "I want us to get a few things and get out of the house. We'll stay in the barn tonight."

"Why would we stay in the barn, mom?"

"Yeah," Annie echoed, "why are we going to stay in the barn, Mommy. I don't like the barn very much."

"Well," she said patiently, "the gas that we all smelled down in the cellar. Gas could still build up and explode. We'll be safer in the barn. Now, come and help me." Automatically, she started toward the kitchen, but changed her mind. "We're going upstairs to get a few clothes and things just in case we don't get back to the house for a while. Michael, take some jeans, underpants, a couple of shirts, all your socks and two extra pairs of shoes and put them in your back pack. Then get Annie started. Take your sweaters, too."

"It's not very cold out, Mom," Michael started. She leaned down to the boy and put both hands on his shoulders. "Michael-you're very smart and sometimes you're very grown up. But sometimes I need you to do what I say-exactly what I say. Now hurry and do it. And don't forget to start getting Annie packed too."

She went up the stairs ahead of the children and glanced in their rooms to make sure everything was safe. Like the downstairs, the upstairs looked, she thought, as though a hurricane had struck.

Shouting, "Watch out for broken glass-Annie, stay with Michael," she walked to the end of the hall and the bedroom she shared with her husband-when he was home. She went into his dresser and found the only other gun besides the shotgun that he had forced her to keep in the house. She looked at it, reading the words on the side of it, "Colt's Government Model Mk IV/Series '70," then underneath that, "Caliber .45 ACP." As she held the gun, she wished she'd listened to her husband more attentively when he'd told her about it. She remembered his leaving it there several months earlier.

"Now, this is a Government Model .45," he'd said. "Just a pretty ordinary gun but a damned good one."

"You mean a .45 like the little guns you carry?"

"Yeah," Rourke had said. "Just bigger. Now I know you have trouble with slides on automatics, but I've left one round loaded in the chamber. After you shoot the gun-cock it first-leave the hammer up and just put up the safety. See?"

Sarah had gotten the discussion over with as quickly as possible. Now, she turned the gun over in her hand. It had rubber grips, black, with medallions of tiny horses on them. Shrugging her shoulders, she stuck the gun in the waistband of her blue jeans, shivering a little because the metal was cold against her skin. In the same drawer, she found two extra clips, which, her husband had always told her, were magazines. She took those and a box of ammunition and stuffed them into a large canvas purse, then went into her own dresser and got underwear, some T-shirts, and two sweaters. From her closet, she took two pairs of jeans, identical to the ones she wore. She put two pairs of track shoes into the huge canvas bag as well, then went back to her husband's dresser and took as many pairs of his white sweat socks as she could fit into the case. She snatched up their wedding picture, too, stripped it from the frame, and folded it in fourths, then put it into an inside pocket of the bag.

As she passed the bathroom, she took a canvas bag from under the sink-an old U.S. mail bag-and began stuffing it with soap, tampons, toothpaste, Band-Aids, and disinfectant spray.

Michael was ready and waiting in the hallway and she checked his pack, sending him back for his sweaters and telling him to grab as many rolls of toilet paper as he could and stuff them in his pack.

As fast as she could, she helped Annie pack, stuffing extra clothes for both children in Annie's back pack. She walked the children downstairs, the water jugs still down at the foot of the stairs where she'd left them, and carried everything into the kitchen. Her husband had insisted on her keeping a supply of freeze-dried foods from Mountain House and similar items, these all in a large duffel bag in the pantry. She grabbed this up, opened the bag, and stuffed a few cans of soup and beans and a can opener inside it as well. "Now," she said, "I want both of you to drink as much as you can of the milk in the refrigerator. I have to get everyone's vitamins and some blankets."

She left the children and ran back into the hallway and up the stairs, getting vitamins from the bathroom vanity and blankets from the spare bedroom. She wished now she'd let her husband buy them the sleeping bags he'd wanted to.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she stopped and caught her breath.

"Come on, children," she shouted, then started back toward the kitchen for them.

"I'll put the milk in the refrigerator," Michael said.

"You don't have to darling," Sarah began. "There isn't any electricity."

With Michael carrying more than she'd thought he could, and Ann dragging Sarah's big canvas purse, Sarah started everyone from the kitchen, then thought of one other thing. She reached into the top drawer beside the sink and took the very sharp, Henkels boning knife, wrapped it in a kitchen towel, and slipped it into the duffel bag. She could barely move the bag.

As they reached the end of the hallway, she stopped and turned into the living room. "Wait a minute."

She went over to the mantle, grabbed the pictures of the children, and stripped them from their frames. Then she took the double-barreled shotgun from over the hearth and grabbed the box of shotgun shells from the drawer in the small end table.

"Okay," she said, trying to make her voice sound cheerful. "This is going to be quite an adventure." As they stepped onto the front porch, coats on, arms loaded with belongings, she could hear the horses in the barn, whinnying, frightened. And she realized why. In the darkness-although the late-night sky in the direction of Atlanta was bright like a sunset-she could hear the wild dog packs howling. The sound frightened her, too. "Come on, children-let's get to the barn," she whispered.

Chapter Twenty-two

"I have those figures now, Mr. President," Thurston Potter began.

"How accurate are they?" the president asked, sitting back down in the couch.

"Computer estimates based on intelligence data-close."

"All right," the president said, his voice low, "tell me."