He felt the weight of responsibility already and it made him aware of things they lacked. He kept thinking they needed rope for some reason. Terri had raided the Evian machine and had made each of them take as many bottles of water as they could carry. It was already apparent that they might not have enough.
There were three handguns and six boxes of ammunition in his backpack; Snog figured that if the others knew about them, they'd freak. Especially the professors. But it was the one thing John had insisted on. "Whatever else you take with you," he'd said, "be sure and have a weapon. 'Cause if you meet up with someone who has one and you don't, you're dead meat."
Better safe than sorry, Snog had figured. His family had always owned guns, so he saw them as tools and not icons of evil like the rest of his college friends seemed to.
Of course, it is a shame that they're available to nuts and criminals as though they were lollipops. But in this situation he was glad to have them. He'd have been even gladder to have some explosives and maybe an antitank launcher.
Finally they came to a place where they could stand up; three drainage tunnels met in a round concrete silo-type arrangement.
The floor was dirt over concrete; deep, sticky black mud, in fact.
He tried not to think what had crawled in and died in it, because he could plainly smell something had—fairly recently, if the molecules were getting through his shock-stunned sinuses.
Carl, Yam, and Brad hoisted him up to where he could look around, wobbling as he stood on their linked hands. He pried the heavy cover up, wincing as the rusty edges cut into his sore palms, and looked out the crack.
"We're out of the city," he said. "It looks like an old suburban development—big yards."
There was a general sigh of relief.
"I'm not seeing any vehicles from here," he said. There were chuckles of pleasure at that. "Just trees, roads, and the odd roof."
"Can you see where we are?" Dr. Clark asked.
"No, sir. I'll have to get out and take a look around."
It was not going to be easy. The manhole cover must weigh seventy pounds or more. Necessary, he supposed: how else were they going to keep enterprising young men, such as himself, from messing around with them otherwise?
With his friends propping him up, he braced his feet and hands against the sides of the hole and lifted with his back, straining upward as hard as he could. Just as he was about to give up, he felt it move, grating in its groove, a small shower of sand and gravel poured over his helpers, causing them to splutter and curse. Finally he managed to work it over to one side, and it fell with a dull clunk.
As he stood on his friends' shoulders, panting, he braced his hands on the rim and looked around.
Uh-oh. It hit him like a pail of ice water. I've forgotten the machines.
Any number of them could have crept up on him while he was struggling. His knees went weak for a moment.
"Hey!" Carl protested as Snog's weight shifted. "You okay?"
"Yeah. I'm gonna take a look around." Snog hoisted himself out of the manhole and scurried toward some bushes in front of a house. There was a dog lying in the driveway; dead, but not run over, just limp, with its eyes dry and its tongue lying on the pavement in a puddle of vomit.
"Lemme up," Brad said. "I'll go with him."
When they'd hoisted him up, Carl muttered, "We should have let him go first; he doesn't weigh anything."
Yam grunted in agreement.
"It looks clear," Snog said quietly. "Why don't we try to walk for a bit? If things get hairy we can always drop back into the drains."
The others agreed enthusiastically, and within a few minutes everyone was stretching and looking around.
"We're not that far from the city," Dr. Chu said, looking back toward Boston, where the midtown towers were small with distance, but quite visible.
"Maybe Newton," Terri agreed.
"Still," Snog protested, "considering how we got here, it's quite an accomplishment. We came miles underground."
"But where are we going?" someone asked. "If you're right about the bombs, we've got to get out of Massachusetts. Hell, right out of New England."
"My family has a place just over the border in Quebec," Snog said. "It's wilderness. We should be safe there. It's got all sorts of supplies—stocked for the winter. Sort of a hunting lodge thing."
For a wonder, nobody sneered at him for coming from a family that killed Bambi, rather than buying pieces of mysteriously deceased cow at the supermarket.
"You're right," Dr. Clark said, slapping Snog on the shoulder.
"But what we really need now is some form of transportation."
The others looked at one another uneasily. Cars are out, that's certain, Snog thought. He was glad nobody suggested it: maybe he'd lucked out, and everyone here would be a survivor type.
"Yeah," Yam said thoughtfully. "Something we can take off-road, like a dirt bike."
"Or a mountain bike," someone else said.
"Yeah, that'd be perfect," Terri agreed. "Then we wouldn't have to worry about gas."
Snog nodded. "So we'll keep our eyes open. Meanwhile, we'd better get moving." He checked his compass. "North is that way.
Everyone keep as far back from the road as possible. We'll go through backyards as much as we can, okay?"
Everyone nodded and they started off. It was eerily silent; except for the occasional, distant sound of an automobile engine, even the birds were quiet.
"Where is everybody?" Dr. Chu asked.
No one answered, no one even wanted to think about answers.
NATIONAL COMMAND CENTER, WESTERN
MARYLAND
"Air Force One has been lost," the general said, his heavy face grave. "We're forced to conclude that there are no survivors…
Mr. President."
The vice president said nothing for a long moment. He'd wanted to be president; for that matter, he'd planned to run in the next election when the current idiotic incumbent was out of the way. But not like this. He looked at the general, noting the slight sheen of sweat on the man's face. "There's more," he said.
"Yes, sir," the general agreed; something flickered over his features, a faint air of I told you so. "We've lost communications.
We're cut off."
" We're cut off," the new president said in disbelief. "I was led to believe that was impossible."
"So was I, sir. It was impossible until we routed all our communications through—"
"I believe you called it a 'point failure source' during the discussions, General. Yes, go on."
The general paused, then looked the president in the eye.
"We've also lost life support. We've reconnected the supply of canned oxygen, but the recirculation systems are all down."
The president raised an eyebrow.
"We have about twelve hours' worth of air, sir."
"Then why don't we leave?" the new president asked in exasperation. What kind of a Mickey Mouse setup is this anyway?
"The elevators aren't running, sir. The ventilation ducts and blast baffles have all closed down, and we can't get the hatchway motors to respond—those baffles are twenty-four-inch armor plate, sir, originally from scrapped battleships. The chemicals for the scrubbing system have been vented to the outside by the computers that controlled life support. And the stairway was sabotaged."
"Sabotaged, how?" the president bit off.
"Explosive charges were set at several levels, sir. Essentially the stairs are gone. Buried under tons of rubble and twisted steel. We have engineering parties working on it, but excavation would take weeks with the tools available. Even if there weren't unused explosive charges still set, which there are, and more blast doors at every level, which there are."