The President of the United States of America could not remember what he had done with his coffee. This worried him and he let it go on worrying him.
“General LeMay says that because we lost so many aircraft in the first strike, and because initial tracking telemetry indicates that several of our ICBMs veered off course,” Bundy went on, now nearly at the end of his latest briefing, “he is not one hundred percent confident that all high priority targets have been ‘suppressed’ at this time.”
Jack Kennedy did not want to ask the question that, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America he had to ask next.
“What is the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?”
“The Joint Chiefs recommend the immediate execution of War Plan Alpha Two-Zero, Mister President.”
A second strike mounted with all available ‘assets’.
The President of the United States of America summoned his courage.
“Inform the Joint Chiefs that I will take their recommendation under advisement, Mac.”
Jack Kennedy’s National Security Advisor raised an eyebrow.
“This is not a thing we can put off, Mister President.”
“I know that.”
“I wasn’t suggesting…”
The President shook his head. The enormity of the tragedy would be his epitaph and he did not begin to know how he was going to live with the knowledge of what he had done.
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds…
Jack Kennedy sighed and looked his national Security Advisor in the eye.
“Forget it, Mac. I mean,” he shrugged helplessly, “do we even know for sure if there is anything left in Russia to bomb?”
Chapter 18
“You should come inside,” Gretchen Betancourt declared firmly. However, no amount of ‘firmness’ was penetrating Dan Brenckmann’s hardening carapace of fear, loss and despair. His parents and his kid sister were most likely dead in Boston and Buffalo, his big brother was probably at sea in the middle of World War III, and his not so ‘little’ sibling Sam, well, nobody ever knew where he was. For all Dan knew his whole immediate family was gone.
A while ago Mrs Nordstrom had come out onto the cold, damp porch and spread a blanket around his shoulders. Periodically, the rain blew under the overhanging roof when the wind gusted around to the east. With every breath he took Dan Brenckmann half-expected to taste burning.
“You should come inside!” Gretchen snapped, growing testy.
“Why?” He asked numbly.
“Fallout, you idiot!”
Dan shrugged. Through his roiling angst it all seemed so unreal. He had personally seen nothing whatsoever untoward in the last few hours and yet the sirens had sounded and he had hunkered down in that cramped basement in New Haven with the others, and later run for the country — figuratively for ‘the hills’ — with Gretchen. For all he knew the radio reports might be a monumental hoax; Orson Wells and the War of the Worlds repeated on a grander, crueller, unimaginably more horrific scale. He had not personally witnessed mushroom clouds rising over the cities of the Republic; he had seen no traumatised refugees fleeing from the devastation, no troops on the street. Out here in the rolling forested hills of New England nothing seemed to have changed.
And now he was spending the last night of his life with Gretchen Betancourt; the one girl he had ever ‘dated’ who was never, ever going to come across for him just because it was the end of the World.
The woman patted his shoulder.
This drew no response so Gretchen punched his shoulder.
As hard as she could.
“Ouch!”
“You can’t just sit there!”
The funny thing was that if Gretchen had been the sort of girl who would have jumped into bed with him just because it was the end of the World, Dan would have been mortally disappointed…
“I know this is horrible for you,” Gretchen was saying. “But giving up isn’t the answer to anything, Dan!”
“What’s it to you?” He retaliated, stung badly without knowing why. “You don’t even like me!”
The woman recoiled as if he had struck her. Folding her arms across her breasts she stood up, turned away and unaccountably, instantly thought better of it. She swung around.
“That’s not true,” she protested with untypical equivocation. “It is just that we don’t have any,” she seemed suddenly aware of the chill in the air, “future together, that’s all.”
Dan could not help but laugh, albeit sourly at this.
What future did any of them have?
“It isn’t funny!” Gretchen snapped in a foot stamping put down. “Something very bad happened tonight. It may still be going on but look around you, Dan. If this bit of America is still in one piece other pieces will be okay, too. Tonight isn’t the end of everything it may just be a new beginning.”
If he had been sitting in the parlour at home in Cambridge that’s exactly the sort of thing his Pa would have said. Except he might have framed it in more specific terms. For example: ‘That’s exactly what you’d expect a Republican to say!’
It was then that something truly weird happened.
Gretchen, with a theatrical flounce, deposited herself on the top step of the porch beside him; and her right had sought out his left hand, which she proceeded to squeeze ever so gently.
In a moment she had requisitioned her half of the blanket around his shoulders and was resting, ever so lightly, against him.
And there they sat, silently thinking their thoughts waiting for the breaking of twilight’s first dawning on the day after the apocalypse.
Chapter 19
The cops were in a hurry. Miranda had been crying, she was emotional and upset and she stank of weed and vomit, so the cops had bundled her in the back of the San Francisco Police Department cruiser and dumped her at the nearest lockup.
Miranda suddenly had time on her hands to piece together exactly how her life had taken its latest, downward turn.
In hindsight seducing — well, throwing herself at — the big black guy and goading him to ‘fuck me stupid’ on Johnny Seiffert’s circular love altar had not been the best way to stay best friends with the little shit. Johnny was not the forgiving type. Now as she looked around the holding cell at the other women; a hooker with a bloody nose, a middle-aged Hispanic woman curled up on the floor snoring and a teenage black girl with resentment-filled angry eyes, Miranda was forced to contemplate the ramifications of her downfall. A small voice in her head said she ought to be more worried about World War III but nobody had dropped a bomb on San Francisco yet — so far as she knew, fuck it she had been off her head most of the last week — and she had other stuff deal with.