Doomsday

13. Havoc in A-Major

It had long been reasoned, by sane and reasonable men who assumed that the majority of their fellow humans were equally sane and reasonable, that no one in his or her right mind wanted nuclear war. Nukes were a deterrent. They kept tyrants from overstepping the accepted bounds of tyranny. They kept despots from spreading the borders of their despotism. They kept nations from waging all-out war on other nations.

To these sane and reasonable men, this had seemed a sane and reasonable system. It had worked for so long— admittedly, not perfectly—but reasonably well, enough that planet Earth had enjoyed an extended period of relative peace and global prosperity.

Toward the end, more and more countries had acquired more and more nukes. The superpowers, those who had had nukes first and hoarded them as they hoarded gold on the theory that an enemy who was afraid of one nuke would be terrified of ten thousand, built their stockpiles to a point where they were perfectly happy to sign treaties that forced them to dismantle a few each year, after which they would have 9,997 left.

But since envy holds true for nukes as much as it does for fancy cars and palatial homes, the little countries had seen how smug the big countries were behind their wall of nuclear deterrence, and they wanted deterrents of their own. So it wasn’t long before a dozen small countries had nukes. Only one country on the whole face of the planet had developed a nuclear program out of necessity. Israel’s survival depended on nukes its government denied having, but they didn’t mind one bit when word of the secret hoard was “accidentally” leaked and the country’s enemies found out about the weapons.

At the outset of Armageddon, no one had known the exact number of nukes in existence. Experts had said that this or that country possessed this or that many, but the experts had been doing what experts always did when they didn’t know, yet were being paid to pretend they did: they blew wind. The truth was that keeping complete and accurate track of the manufacture and development of all the components that went into the making of a nuclear bomb or missile, from the plutonium to the housing, was impossible. So the experts had given their best guesses, and those who paid them had been content. It didn’t help that the experts vehemently disagreed. One had said the total was 27,304. Another had said that that was preposterous, and there were only 10,563. Still another had claimed that surely the total tally of warheads must exceed 50,000.

Kurt Carpenter hadn’t trusted any of the assessments. All that mattered to him was there were a lot of nuclear weapons, and when the next world war came, odds were that a lot of them would be used. That wasn’t all.

Biological and chemical weapons had become all the political rage. Treaties had been signed to limit their production, usually with public fanfare so the politicians who signed the treaties would be perceived as great humanitarians. But those same politicians had required their militaries to secretly develop new and ever more lethal stockpiles. Just in case, had been their mantra.

There had also been reports of even more exotic weapons. Weapons spun from the pages of science fiction. Devices so terrible, they were spoken of in hushed whispers behind locked doors. Kurt Carpenter had done the math, and the conclusion he’d reached was that the next global war would result in horrors the likes of which had never been seen.

But Carpenter did his math a little differently from most.

The common consensus had been that if X number of nuclear bombs and missiles were set off, it would result in Y amount of destruction and Z amount of radiation.

The common consensus had been that if bio weapons were used, they would do what they were designed to do— induce disease, shrivel the brain so it resembled a fig, produce a quantifiable number of fatalities, and that would be that.

The same with chemical weapons. The victims would die, screaming in agony while their skin burned off or they broke out in cancerous boils or their lungs tried to claw out of their chests, and then the catalyzing agents would break down, and that would be that.

Carpenter didn’t see it that way. To him each type of weapon and the results it produced weren’t necessarily distinct and separate. Carpenter didn’t see them as one, two, and three. Oh, the effects produced by one, two, and three were well documented when each was tested alone. But what happened when one, two, and three interacted? What was the consequence when, say, a bio weapon or a chemical weapon was employed in a zone of high radioactivity from a nearby nuclear strike? What did mixing one and two add up to? What did mixing two and three? Or one and three? Or one, two, and three? No research had been done on the cumulative consequences. Did radiation alter the chemical components of chemical weapons? When a biological weapon and a chemical weapon were used on the same battlefield, did their combined effects bring about something more— and worse—than their horrific individual effects?

No one really knew. The few scientists who had given the scenario any attention admitted that the variables were beyond them. They could theorize. They could create computer models. But those models were only as good as the information fed into the computers, and that was woefully sparse. Yes, nuclear weapons had been used before. Yes, bio weapons and chemical weapons had been used before. But the three had never been used at the same time.

Carpenter had taken all the precautions he could. The site he had chosen was located far enough from military and civilian targets that fallout should be minimal. Internal air circulation and filtration systems minimized the risk of bio and chemical weapons. Hazard suits and other gear would protect them when they had to venture outdoors.

Was it enough? That was the question eating at Kurt Carpenter when he imposed lockdown. The three missing members still hadn’t shown up, and the SEAL still hadn’t been delivered. That troubled him greatly. He’d invested millions in the special vehicle’s development and manufacture. It had been designed to operate in a post-apocalyptic environment. Solar powered, it could navigate any terrain and even cruise on water if it had to. With enough firepower to take out a regiment, the SEAL

was his way of insuring that the Family would survive the brave new world in which it found itself. But he couldn’t wait any longer for it to arrive.

Events in the outside world had reached the point where it was time for those he had gathered together to retreat into their concrete shells.

On a cloudy, chilly afternoon, Carpenter called the Family together and announced that he was imposing lock-down. They were to stay in their assigned bunkers until he gave the all-clear to return to the surface.

“I can’t say how long that will be,” he solemnly informed them. “There are too many variables involved. But remember, we can withstand anything short of a direct nuclear strike. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

“Until we come back up,” someone said.

At a command from Slayne, everyone dispersed. Within minutes the bunker doors were sealed, the compound empty of human life.

Beyond the walls, World War Three raged in all of its global fury.

Carpenter spent every moment he could in the Communications Center. At considerable expense he had installed state-of-the-art receiving units covering the complete broadcast spectrum, everything from satellite to citizens band. He’d also had his tech people set up a powerful transmitter and a backup. At first it was fairly easy to follow the unfolding conflict. Hostilities were confined to the Middle East as long-held animosities spilled over. The spark came when Israel invaded Lebanon and stayed. Iran, Iraq, and Egypt, with China’s backing, retaliated. The Russians entered the fray, taking advantage of the confusion to clamp down on neighboring countries. One thing led to another and the United States sent in a task force, only to have the ships and personnel obliterated by a nuke. After that, the pace of death-dealing quickened. China, Russia, the United States, the Koreas, England, France, Japan, even Australia were all drawn in.

It truly was a world war.

Tel Aviv, Tehran, and Cairo were nuked. The Vatican went up in a radioactive cloud. The Turks and the Greeks went at it yet again. They didn’t have nukes, but they did have chemical weapons. Crete, or rather the people on it, ceased to exist. India and Pakistan lobbed missiles at each other, and when the dust settled, it settled on heaps of dead.

In the United States, San Diego was hit. Conflicting reports said the same about Seattle and San Francisco.

There was no doubt about New York City. Slayne, Kapur, and Richardson had seen it with their own eyes.

The U.S. government held off using its own arsenal until New York was turned into a Roman candle. Why they waited so long, Carpenter couldn’t say, unless they were marshaling for a counterstrike on multiple fronts. But when Manhattan was blasted into oblivion, the American military juggernaut was given the command to kill, and kill they did. In an hour, newscasts carried accounts of U.S. nuclear strikes on targets in the Middle East, China, and North Korea. The latter was especially hard hit; every major North Korean city was now rubble.

Reports on Russia were mixed. Some claimed the Russians were fighting with American forces against the Chinese and their Arabian satraps. Other reports claimed the Russians were in Canada and had also landed in Philadelphia.

Carpenter couldn’t begin to fathom why the Russians would attack the U.S. homeland, or why they would choose the City of Brotherly Love—unless some general high in the Kremlin loved irony. In America, chaos spread like a Kansas prairie fire. Riots broke out in dozens of cities and towns. The National Guard was mobilized, but with so many Guard units overseas they were stretched too thin. There was little they could do to stem the rising tidal wave of civil unrest. It was like plugging a hole in a dyke with a finger while cracks radiated outward, growing larger and larger until finally the dyke burst. The president’s call for calm fell on deaf ears. Declaring martial law likewise did little to stem the panic. The dogs of war had been unleashed and the hounds were in full bray.

A map of the United States covered one wall of the Com Center. Carpenter had his staff stick pins in it. Red pins for cities hit by nukes, orange pins for cites and towns where rioting and looting was known to have occurred, green pins for cities where the authorities had things pretty much in hand. There were precious few green pins.

The staff soon added more colors. Yellow for areas where chemical weapons had been used. Brown pins for bio weapons. There were few of those because it was largely based on guesswork that stemmed from news accounts of people breaking out in sores or shuffling like the living dead. At one point Becca Levy bowed her head, closed her eyes, and groaned. “How can we do this to ourselves?”

Diana overheard. “I could go into the finer points of the psychology of destruction. Or the alleged human need for misery. But I won’t. The plain and simple truth is that men and women have been killing one another since the dawn of recorded time.”

“But why?’ Becca persisted. “What is it that brings out the animal in us?”

“The animal in us,” Diana said. “With apologies to animals everywhere.”

“What? Oh, I get it. You’re saying it’s innate. Like our need to breathe and to reproduce.” Becca shook her head. “Sorry, Professor. But I’m not buying it. There’s more to us than claws and teeth. We feel. We think. We reason.”

Diana nodded at a speaker on the wall. A radio announcer was reciting a list of cities that no longer existed. “We slaughter one another on an unprecedented scale.”

“Shhhhh, you two.” Carpenter had caught a mention of the Twin Cities. He motioned for the technician to boost the gain.

“…surprisingly quiet. Some looting was reported, but the authorities have it under control. There hasn’t been any of the mass mayhem reported from other urban centers.”

Carpenter nodded in satisfaction. One of the first areas they would visit, once it was safe, was Minneapolis and St. Paul.

“Los Angeles is reported to be in meltdown, not from a nuke but from the complete collapse of law and order. There is word that street gangs now control whole sections of the city.”

“Switch to military frequencies,” Carpenter directed. He still hoped, feebly, that U.S. military might would prevail and the war would end with a decisive U.S. victory. But given the nature and scope of the hostilities, it was more than likely that no one would win, that the war would devolve into a stalemate, or, worse, that it would bring about the complete and utter collapse of every nation on the globe, plunging the world into a new and terrifying Dark Age.

The speaker crackled with static. It hummed. It squawked. Suddenly a shrill voice blared.

“Mayday! Mayday! Air Force One is going down! Repeat: Air Force One is going down! We are fifty air miles out of Colorado Springs. I can see a mushroom cloud. Our exact—”

The transmission died.

Carpenter turned to the tech. “Can you get that back?”

“I’m trying. Hold on, sir.”

“Call me Kurt, Miriem. No one is to call me sir. We’re a Family, not the army or navy.”

“There’s nothing, si—Kurt.”

“On that channel?”

“On any of the channels.”

“Switch back to the civilian bands, then. Radio will do. AM or FM, it doesn’t matter.”

“You don’t understand. There’s nothing at all. Anywhere. No AM. No FM. No military. No satellite. It’s all gone.”

“I was afraid of this.”

Miriem tweaked knobs, flipped switches and pressed buttons. “There should be something. All I get is silence. Everywhere. As if the whole world has been wiped out.”

“You can stop trying,” Carpenter advised. “Saturation has occurred.”

“What?” Diana asked.

“You’re familiar with the EMP effect? Yes. Well, most studies dealt with the effect of a single strategic nuclear blast. Few delved into the repercussions of ten warheads going off at about the same time. Or fifty. Or a hundred. But one study I saw did just that. The scientist who wrote it hypothesized a saturation effect, where so many nukes go off that nothing gets through.”

“How long will it last?”

“No telling. It could be months or even years.” Carpenter sat back. “We’re completely cut off from the outside world.”

“God help us,” Becca Levy said.