After a few false starts the president managed to ask: "So how do we get out of here?"
"Even if we could get out of the bunker complex, Mr.
President, we have every reason to believe that within half an hour the entire East Coast will be a nuclear furnace. There's nowhere to go, sir."
President of Cinderland for twelve hours. I guess I can stop feeling guilty about surviving. "I don't suppose I'm dreaming this?" he asked.
"No, sir."
"What should we do?"
"Sir, I intend to visit the chaplain. It's been a long while since I went to confession."
ALASKA
John hissed in frustration. He'd finished his list of contacts early and Sarah had put him to breaking into Skynet's communications, but the damn thing was so fast he just couldn't seem to get through. Snog or Carl or any of those guys could do this in their sleep, he thought bitterly.
There was plenty of equipment; they'd installed the best.
Unfortunately their experts were running for their lives from homicidal hedge cutters and ice cream trucks, and so were unavailable. Suddenly it occurred to him that what he needed was a computer to do this for him. Which meant creating a program. He sighed and leaned back. It wasn't that he couldn't do it, he could. But his attention was so divided that he didn't think he could do it now.
"Mom," he said.
She looked up, her brow furrowed with concentration.
"We should probably send out that message."
They'd prerecorded and loaded a general warning intended to go out over radio and TV via satellite, but hadn't sent it yet.
Sarah considered his suggestion and flashed a look at Dieter, who paused, then nodded. "Go," she said to John, then went back to work.
John keyed up the program, tapped in the code, and hit enter.
His lips tightened. Every time he did that it reminded him of his fatal mistake. "I feel guilty," he said to no one in particular.
'"Bout what?" Sarah asked, not looking up from her station.
He made a helpless gesture. "Here I am sitting and typing while the world's about to go up in flames. Doesn't seem right that I should be so comfortable."
His mother gave him a narrow-eyed look. "Poor baby. You're not dodging killer cars and berserk bulldozers to escape a soon-to-be-blasted-to-hell city. Don't worry, son. We're all going to see a bellyful of blood and murder before this thing is over.
Enjoy this respite while you can."
"Maybe enjoy isn't quite the right word," Dieter admonished gently. "We are waiting for the end of the world as we know it.
But perhaps we can utilize this time. I've finished my list. Let's brain-storm some contingency plans. Then we'll put our minds to breaking into Skynet's communications system."
"Yes," Sarah agreed, still looking distracted. Then her face changed as if something had occurred to her. She looked at John. "Sorry," she said. "I was a little rough there."
"Not a problem, Mom. I know what you're like when you're working."
Sarah looked puzzled. "What does that mean?"
Dieter laughed.
She glared at him indignantly. "What? What?"
MASSACHUSETTS
Snog, Brad, and Carl hunched down beside a Dumpster and checked the road that curved away before them. They'd left the others resting behind the high stone wall of an apparently empty house. They'd seen an occasional battered body lying in the road or on a sidewalk, but no one looking out a window or creeping through a backyard as they had been.
"I think they've been gassed, all these suburbs," Brad said.
"The animals we saw, you know, the dogs and cats, with the convulsions and vomit…"
"Shouldn't it have gotten us, even down in the drainage tunnels?" Carl asked.
Brad shook his head. "Not if it dissipated before we got here.
Remember, it took us hours to get this far. If these areas were gassed in the early morning, before the commuters were up and around, then this area would have been safe since about eight o'clock."
Snog frowned, considering what Brad had said. "One thing bothers me about that, though."
"What?" Carl asked.
"If this area was pacified by gas attack, I don't see how it could have been done by Skynet. I just can't see a bunch of bombers happening to be loaded with gas canisters, y'know. Not over the U.S. anyway. So who would have done it?"
" Pacified?" Carl muttered.
"Well," Brad said, apparently figuring it out as he spoke, "I don't know what the government had stored ready to turn over to the friggin' computer. So it could have been canisters dropped from an airplane. But I think it's unlikely. For one thing, we haven't run across any empties."
"Sooo, you're suggesting that maybe, if there was a gas attack, that someone, like, hid them and then set them off by remote, or by a timer?" Carl asked.
Brad nodded. "It's a possibility."
Snog looked around the Dumpster, then back at his friends, frowning. "Unfortunately, that indicates a human element."
Brad nodded.
"Well, who the fuck would want to do something like that?"
Carl exploded. "You'd have to be crazy!"
"Some extremist group," Snog said. "Those bastards are crazy. Apparently they aren't technically crazy, they're self-deluded, but that's a distinction that only the shrinks care about. For our purposes, they're loons."
"Which loons, though?" Carl asked.
"Luddites," Brad said, and nodded, as though agreeing with some inner voice.
Snog had always taken Brad's silent conversations with himself for granted. But it occurred to him now that they were all a bit weird. Maybe it's a bit arrogant for us to call anybody else a loon, but if Brad's right, then hell, why not?
"I was reading this article in Time magazine about them,"
Brad said. "Apparently they have an extreme fringe group that thinks humanity should be sterilized in order for the planet to survive."
"That's crazy all right," Carl muttered.
"We could go and look in one of the houses," Brad suggested; they all looked at one another, and the consensus was obvious without anyone speaking; they'd seen enough for a lifetime already this day.
Snog listened to the silence and in the far distance he thought he heard the sound of an ice cream truck making its rounds. It must be one of those coin-operated, automatic types that had come out last summer. It was early for an ice cream truck, only March. His stomach rumbled and a sudden desire for an orange Creamsicle hit him.
What am I thinking? he asked himself. Millions are dying and you want a Creamsicle? "Let's go," he said. There was a strip mall across the street that he wanted to check out.
They approached it from the back because there was more cover there. A man's body lay against the wall, the middle of his body crushed down to about an inch, an uneaten ice cream cone melting on the pavement beside his left hand. Bits and pieces were—
Carl turned and heaved into the bushes. After a moment, Brad joined him. Snog moved away from them, determined not to give in to the urge to make it three.
He heard the merry tinkle of the ice cream truck coming closer and the sound made the hair on the back of his neck crawl erect with a prickling sensation. He went to the body and felt in the man's pockets for keys, only to notice there was a bunch in the man's right hand. That meant putting his hand into the pool of what had… leaked… from the body.