‘No outgoing phone calls without my express approval,’ she says, as she straightens her blouse and stares at him, clearly expecting an apology from him.
General Phillips appears from nowhere, as he walks towards her and coughs.
She looks at him and then back to Larry. ‘No outgoing calls, Mr. President.’
Larry nods back at her as she turns and walks away, telling everyone else to get back to work, which is all that is required to make everyone else focus back on their monitors and other various duties that he doesn’t yet understand. He thinks that maybe he should be the one who is issuing these orders, but since he hasn’t got himself up to speed he thinks it best to let her carry on.
Phillips soon takes her place, standing next to him but looking a lot more pleasant. Larry thinks he is a genuinely happy fellow, the sort of person who would be ruthless at work but then go home and entertain the grandkids with the best of them. He taps Larry on the arm and guides him towards one of the large screens. Against a background of America and Canada are many flashing lights, which seem to change between red crosses, green dots and black skulls. He notices that the black skulls are the most numerous, and since they don’t look very positive he wonders if it’s even worth asking the question as to what they signify.
Phillips points to the very top of the map, drawing an invisible circle. ‘Alaska think they can go it alone,’ he says. ‘They always think they know better, always want to play by their own rules. What do you think about that, Mr President?’
Larry thinks about this for a moment, wondering how any of what he sees here is even possible, not understanding how any form of order and organisation can still remain.
Phillips celebrates his absence from the moment by slapping him on the back again, which he has to admit is starting to annoy him. ‘Nothing to say yet? Well, I’m sure you’ll get the hang of this commander-in-chief business pretty quickly. Best you just listen to the advice you’re offered and let us worry about the finer details.’
Larry quickly shakes his head, entirely disagreeing with that abdication nonsense. He doesn’t really want to sit in the chair but he also knows that if he is given a task to do he will always follow it through as best as he can. He remembers an online personality profile he once did: according to his results, he was someone who always wanted to be perfect. To him, if a job was worth doing then it is worth doing right. He looks at the General and then touches him on the shoulder, focusing on the map. ‘Alaska wants to go it alone? Is it doing them any good?’
Phillips pauses for a moment, frowning and then smiling, seeming to take time to genuinely think about this. ‘Actually, they seem to be repelling the beasts to the point where they are withdrawing and moving back into Canada. But this is probably because of how much white stuff there is in Alaska, which is giving them a slight tactical advantage.’
Larry smiles. ‘Well it looks to me like we need some snow across the entire land.’
Phillips laughs, sending a deep and booming echo across the room. ‘In the middle of summer, I hardly think so.’ He looks at the screen and then back to Larry, before grabbing him and pulling him towards another screen. ‘Let me show you some more and see if our new president can make any other useful observations.’
Larry tags along, having no choice but to move with the general. He catches a quick glance at Flinch who gives him a purposeful nod in return. He smiles back at him and, for now, he completely forgets about home and David, and how they so meticulously planned to meet their end together.
Larry really needs to go to the restroom. There have been many times in his career where he has been in such vital meetings with the cabinet, the president and other very important people and he has desperately needed to go, but has had to hold it. Otherwise, he would risk missing out on crucial decisions, or looking like a weak, old man who can’t keep it together. But it’s getting really painful and since he’s the president now he wonders if anyone would be able to stop him, or if anyone would dare to make a bold decision in his absence. He looks around at the different doors, but he can’t see a restroom sign anywhere, which is perhaps because this place was built so hastily that they didn’t have time to put the signs up.
He’s thankful to be sitting down and even though he’s in the main chair, still the guy in charge, it is helping relieve some of the pressure on his ageing bladder. He looks around at all the coffee cups spread across the desks that surround his chair. He didn’t drink all of them – they’re his predecessors’, still stained around the rims with the marks of sipping lips, some with cold liquid still floating at the bottom. Where there isn’t a cup there is a folder, full of desperately important information for the commander-in-chief. Right now, Larry doesn’t think any of this ‘Highly Confidential’ information could be more desperate than his need to release bodily fluids, but people still keep coming up to him with yet more information. He wonders when they are going to run out of paper or ink and what they will do then.
He looks down at these folders that he has arranged like a hand of cards. He used to love playing poker, and every time a new folder is handed to him he reads the title that’s printed on the brown cover, before he sorts it into what he believes is the correct place in this rather complex hand. The problem is that they all seem so awfully important, all containing details of yet more terrifying events that are unfolding, which means that he doesn’t seem to have any that you would call a crap card. He has also noticed that he’s getting far more folders than he is giving back, yet no one seems to be bothered about this, either.
That’s it, Larry decides. He thinks enough is enough and he resolves to go to the restroom and then ask for everyone to come together to give the president an update. He’s especially intrigued by the increasing number of black skulls stretching up the west coast, which was the only untouched place until this morning. The east coast fell early, except for Washington DC, which one of the presidents, Blackmore, he believes, decided would be held at all costs as a strong symbol for the people – the city that houses the power of our country remaining intact. He doesn’t know whether he should be thankful to Blackmore or not, since on the one hand it is the reason why he and David have survived so long, with their house in a suburb on the outskirts of the city. However, had Washington fallen already then none of this would be a problem for them. He eventually decides that this is a moot point because what is done is done, and besides Blackmore isn’t around to hear his thoughts anyway: having chosen to ensure Washington remained heavily defended, he was then stupid enough to fly out to an aircraft carrier to rally the troops.
Larry and David had both sat at home in stunned silence when the press showed the carrier sinking off the coast. The president and the remaining members of his secret service detail had tried to escape to the shore before being pulled under. Thankfully, there were only a few images of the actual assault and the press were quickly silenced, as per the NATO agreement that the general public, as much as humanly possible, should not see what it was that was attacking humanity.
Of course most people knew about the lurkers, as they were eventually named. These attackers quickly became humanity’s newest and biggest threat. At first people thought it was some sort of virus but that turned out to be a distraction to keep the authorities busy, which worked rather well. What followed was an endless series of poor decisions by government agencies, and when the real attacks happened the planet simply wasn’t prepared enough.