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.”
John looked around at her quarters, her slightly frayed but clean clothes, the electric lights outside illuminating Main Street, the subdued rumble of the ventilators lining the street that kept the temperature in the midsixties year round.
“Yeah, one hell of an existence,” John whispered.
She could not even catch his bitter irony, she was so consumed with her own self-pity and rage at this moment.
“You ever go outside?”
“During the day, no. They say we can’t be seen by anyone that might be watching. On special occasions, they’ll let the kids out at night to run around and play for an hour or two.”
“And your husband coming here?”
“Him? Every week, they bring a big helicopter in from Bluemont for what they call ‘family visit weekend.’ He gets to come once every six weeks for what he claims is one night, but I have the answer now.” She glared at him, features bitter. “He got that bimbo who was his administrative assistant out as well, stashed her in the highly secured area at the far end of this damn cave, and spends the other night with her.”
Her early attempt at sounding upper class, arrogant, and used to power had all but disintegrated. Her tone was now that of a bitter shrew.
“I can’t wait to see him again,” she announced coldly as she simply let her cigarette fall to the carpet, watched as it burned a hole into the worn green shag, finally crushed it out with the heel of her shoe, and lit yet another one.
“I’ll loan you my gun when you see him again if you want,” John said softly, and she looked at him, and he could see a dark glimmer in her eyes.
“Who else is here?”
“I don’t know. Those in charge keep us kind of separated. My neighbor Gal, her husband was a senator as well; Pamela across the street, her husband was with the CIA. There’s a section in the back, some nice modern trailers back there, that’s cordoned off separately. Some say that’s where the bigwigs, the elite, are stashed. You can smell their cooking at time, real food, not the shit they give to us.”
“I would think acting secretary of state would be a high rank.”
She sniffed derisively.
“Yeah, right. He’s a puppet. I mean the real high rankers.”
“The president’s family, maybe?”
“You mean that fool in office when it hit? They never got them out—at least that’s what my husband said. But the acting president now, yeah, that family is back there somewhere.”
John looked down at his cigarette, which had burned out. He let it fall to the carpet.
She looked over at him, and he could see tears. “Maybe it was as I heard someone whisper, it was to reset things, others like my husband would take over, figuring just D.C. would be hit. I don’t know. I asked my husband more than once what happened and why. He gets drunk a lot now, and all he says is that it’s ‘better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.’ He says that a lot.”
He looked at her, no longer with contempt but almost a sense of pity. He looked back out the window. The stretcher with her daughter was up, being moved, medic still by the girl’s side, a civilian walking along the other side of the stretcher holding the plasma bag high. Maury was sitting across the street while a trooper was cutting his pant leg back and wrapping a bandage around the wound. Maury was crying, but not for himself; he was looking down at Grace, whom someone had thankfully covered with a poncho.
“They’re moving your daughter. Go with her,” John whispered.
She stood up without comment and started for the door, paused, and looked back. “You want any more cigarettes, go ahead and take them. That bastard of a husband brings me a new carton every time he comes here.”
“I hope your daughter is okay,” John said in reply, but her back was already turned to him, and she disappeared from view, suddenly shouting melodramatically that she needed to be by her baby.
John could see that Forrest was leaning against the wall, just outside the open door. Their eyes met, and Forrest, scarred and wounded veteran of Afghanistan, came into the room and sat down by John’s side.
“I heard most of it,” Forrest said softly.
John could not reply.
“Scales sent a runner back; he wants you with him.”
“In a minute.”
Forrest reached over to the carton of cigarettes. There were still several packs inside. He opened one, lit it with his battered 101st Airborne Zippo, and looked over at John, offering him a puff, which John gladly took.