She looks around the room and then back to Larry. ‘I’m sorry, but are you unhappy with our performance? Do you think we’ve been doing nothing down here, and don’t you think we haven’t already looked at every possible option available to the United States of America?’
He ignores her and walks closer to the large map, weaving through the various people and politely asking them to move. When he gets close enough he points to Iceland – that insignificant, little island that everyone wants to visit but where few chose to live. ‘Have they fared any better than us?’
He doesn’t get the response he was hoping for, as several gasps come from the crowd. People shake their heads and walk back to their stations, as a few of them look over at Larry, at the president, but none of them seem to want to give him an answer. That is everyone except Lopez: she glares at him as if she wants to burn her pure hatred into his brain so it stays there forever.
Larry isn’t sure how, but Phillips suddenly pushes him forward, forcing him in front of Lopez sooner than he would have liked. He sees the general raise a hand in the direction of Flinch, who nods in return, presumably that it’s okay to lead Larry the lamb to the slaughter.
When he is finally facing her, he wonders if perhaps he has hit a nerve and that perhaps they could have done more. At the start of the attacks they focused solely on understanding and defeating the enemy, but Larry does remember a short time where they spent more time trying to ensure the human race survived, until another change of president brought with it a different set of orders to follow.
Lopez shakes her head. ‘Here you stand, the president of the world’s most powerful country. You’re such a small man to be responsible for so much, don’t you think?’
He doesn’t answer her but it’s not because he wants to disagree. He looks at the map and then back to both of them, knowing it doesn’t take a genius to realise that the end of the world has arrived. He doesn’t want to know any more than that but he has no choice. It’s a simple fact; the hardest to accept yet the easiest to see. He really wants to be at home, with David, as they prepare for this end together but he knows that’s not going to happen.
‘Every president wants something different,’ she says, still looking him up and down. ‘First we had the big fight, followed by an even bigger fight, and then we had to try to reason with them. Then we got a president who wanted revenge, which you can’t blame him for, especially when they killed so many of us in one night. Somewhere in the midst of all this we had a quiet voice, a lone president, who wanted to think about the people, about how we ensured the continuing survival of our species.’ She steps closer to him and leans in to his ear. ‘Let me tell you that there is no survival. You will be the president who reigns over the biggest cloud of dust and debris ever created, as the human race is pulled into a chasm of judgement that is has created. The only solace you can take from any of this is that there will be no one left alive to remember what you do, or don’t do, on this very pathetic night.’
Larry thinks for a moment as he shakes his head, trying to deny the things he doesn’t yet know he is capable of.
She walks past him, towards the general, clearly having nothing else to add. ‘Get him ready, because you and I both know the time is fast approaching,’ she says, as she continue to walk away, the taps of her shoes echoing throughout the bunker and signalling an end to any further debate, or any of the endless questions Larry has on this particular subject.
When she is gone Phillips looks at the president, and Larry looks at the general.
‘What happened to Iceland?’ Larry asks.
‘Iceland?’ Phillips says and shakes his head. ‘Well, it’s not really there anymore.’
He looks up at the map and then back to the general. ‘What do you mean it’s not there anymore?’
The general only seems able to mumble something as he looks to the floor. It’s too quiet, too vague for Larry to understand. Whatever Phillips means by this is not enough of an answer, and he decides that he will keep asking the question. ‘Iceland?’
‘You don’t give in do you?’ Phillips says, smiling again. ‘We will need this attitude over the next few hours, I can promise you that.’
‘Iceland?’
‘Okay, I hear you!’ he says, as he leads Larry away from the group and towards his presidential chair. ‘So, Iceland’s not there anymore because we nuked ’em.’
‘We did what?’ Larry says, as he absently follows the general.
‘It sounds bad, doesn’t it?’
‘If you’re telling me that we used nuclear weapons on an entire country then it is bad.’
Phillips sways on the spot, his arms moving up and down, as he tries to mentally balance just a couple of the many controversial decisions made in the last few days. ‘Well, we weren’t looking at it as a country, more of an island.’
He shakes his head. ‘That doesn’t make it any better.’
The General shakes his head in return, playing a game of ping-pong in his head with what is wrong and perhaps not quite as wrong. ‘We needed to see what happens to the beasts when we deploy a tactical nuclear deterrent. We thought that if they saw what we were capable of they might withdraw their attack, so when we found they were attacking Reykjavik, President Harris made the only real decision available at the time.’
‘What about the snow and the people? Some of them might have made it to the mountains and survived.’
The general shakes his head. ‘We didn’t know about the white back then and besides, no one survived it, and we wanted to show what kind of damage we could do.’ He keeps pushing him forwards, leading him to the chair where he is likely to be chained to all the future decisions he is yet to make. ‘Anyway, it was technically the British who fired the missiles, although we would have done it if they hadn’t.’ He looks at Larry now as he straightens his tie and stands up straight, his right foot hitting the floor as he makes a bold salute to the map. ‘God rest those bastards, they put up one hell of a fight. Talk about that British stiff upper lip – they held the line for days without the public knowing just how close the enemy was to London. Rumour even has it that when the lurkers got to Calais the Royal Marines went down the tunnel to greet them. I bet that was one welcome party they weren’t expecting.’
Larry examines the General’s face; the greasy folds in his skin bring him to life as he talks about the good fight. It makes him feel proud and utterly humbled that there are people all over the world doing all that they can. Not like the coward, Larry Brown, who was happy to be discharged from his office so he could cower at home and wait for someone else to win the war – or, more likely, for the beasts to turn up at their door and rip them to pieces. He wonders if David could really have done what he promised, to break Larry’s neck as they forced their way into their home – and if he did have the guts to do it, would he still have had the time to finish himself off before those same horrors made it upstairs?