The Final Day

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was a very long trip down, a hike of well over half a mile. John and those with him and Scales fell silent except for occasional whispers and Bob explaining this entire facility was carved out of solid rock and was not a natural cave.

The road began to level out from its five-degree pitch, the air within warmer so that parkas were unzipped. Bob cautioned those with him to keep their Kevlar jackets buttoned up tight and weapons held up in a nonthreatening manner and to only return fire if fired upon first.

A babble of voices began to echo—shouts, cries, yells of confusion and fear. Bob ordered the main group to stop, and he sent several scouts ahead, again reminding them of orders not to shoot.

Long minutes passed. Bob squatted down on the hard tarmac, reaching into a pocket and pulling out some hard candies from an open MRE pack and passing them around.

As they waited, Bentley came up. There was a wordless exchange of glances, and it was an indicator to John that this officer and top NCO truly worked as a team, respected each other, and could work on instinct of mutual trust without a word being said.

Bentley unclipped a flashlight from his vest, snapped it on, and continued down the tunnel until finally he was only a pinpoint of light. Several more minutes passed and then all jumped with a start; a single shot, followed a second later by two more, echoed like a cannon in the cavernous hall, the flashlight snapping off.

“Son of a bitch,” Scales snapped. “Up, get ready to move, weapons on safety, but be ready to engage if fired on.”

The troopers with them began to move out, edging along either side of the tunnel. Bob gestured for John and those with him to hold back for a moment, passing a quiet order to the one medic who had come in with them to get against the wall and be ready to set up an aid station.

“I don’t want a bloodbath,” Scales announced. “If we find what I think we’re about to find, I don’t want a bloodbath.”

They started forward, crouching low. A flashlight came back on down at the end of the corridor, blinked twice, and then several seconds later blinked five more times. Bob, unclipping his flashlight, repeated the signal back, and came fully erect.

The flashlight at the end of the corridor grew brighter, moving up and down, obviously held by someone walking toward them, shifting the high-intensity beam up toward the ceiling so as not to blind them. The troopers advancing ahead of John and those around him stopped in place. There were some whispered exchanges, and then Bentley came into view, illuminated by the dim overhead fluorescent lights, left hand holding his .45. In the pale light, John could see blood soaking his arm. He had his right hand firmly gripped to the collar of a civilian dressed in what was the nearly ubiquitous uniform of government officials of chinos and a blue dress shirt. The man was short next to Bentley, nearly bald, features heavy, looking back and forth nervously at the troopers who were poised to either side of the tunnel.

Scales stood in place, not coming forward, John falling in by his side.

A few more steps and Bentley showed just enough restraint not to send the man he was hanging on to sprawling to the pavement, but he did shove him forward so he nearly lost his balance.

His dignity obviously insulted, the pudgy-featured man drew himself up, tucked his shirt back in—which had been disheveled by Bentley’s rough handling—looked down at his left sleeve, which was splattered with blood, and shot an angry glance at Bentley, who remained by his side.

The medic was already up by Bentley’s side.

“It can wait,” Bentley snapped. The medic looked over at the civilian.

“That’s my blood on him,” the sergeant said sharply.

“Just who the hell are you?” the civilian cried, voice a bit quivery, but Scales ignored him.

“Sergeant Major Bentley, are you hit?”

“I’ll be all right, sir; it can wait.”

Scales glanced to the medic.

“Don’t see anything arterial, sir; I guess it can wait a few minutes.”

“Fine, then.”

The civilian cleared his throat to try to interrupt, but Scales continued to ignore him.

“Report, Sergeant—what was that shooting about?”

“This man here had a bodyguard who decided to take issue with my presence. He fired first.”

There was a pause.

“So I killed him.”

He said so as if it were just a typical day’s work, and Scales nodded.

“A lot of others around—you’ll see in a minute. I had to aim for the center of his body. Didn’t want any stray shots to get someone else.”

“He murdered my man—”

Again Scales cut him off. “Let the medic tend to your wound, Sergeant, and thank God you are safe.” At last, he turned back to the civilian. “You are damn lucky my sergeant was able to walk back; otherwise, it would have gone very badly for you and a lot of others. Do you read me?”

That caught the man off guard.

“Now you can talk. Who are you, and what is your position?” As he spoke, he took a step forward, hands balled up and resting on his hips. John had seen this more than once when his friend wished to convey a very strong “don’t mess with me” attitude.

The civilian nervously cleared his throat. “I’m Richard Pelligrino, head administrator of this facility.”

“And this facility is…?”

“Site R.”

“I already know that,” Bob snapped. “What is it now?”

Pelligrino hesitated, looking around at all those who were gazing at him. “Who the hell are you to come barging in here like this, slaughtering my security team?”

“You are answering the questions, not I, and you’d better answer me now, Mr. Pelligrino. I’ve got over two hundred troopers outside who are very pissed off. I’ve got a full battalion airlifting here within the hour. I have the assets. Maybe you know who I am, my command, and what I can bring to bear. Do you realize that, Mr. Pelligrino?”

Pelligrino’s gaze drifted to Scales’s name tag. He hesitated and then looked back up at him. “Why are you here? This position is not part of your command.”

“It is part of my command now and you are answering the questions. Therefore, my question. Who are you, and why are you here?” His voice rose as he snapped out the last few words.

“Like I said—” he began.

“‘Like I said, sir,’” Sergeant Bentley interjected sharply, still standing by Pelligrino’s side while a medic was cutting open his sleeve to examine his wound.

Pelligrino cast a sidelong glance at the sergeant, who was still holding on to his .45 with his good hand and then back to Scales. “Like I said”—he paused for a few seconds—“sir. I am the head administrator for Site R.”

“And Site R is…?”

Pelligrino hesitated, which provoked Sergeant Bentley to pivot slightly. The .45 was still down at his side, but the threat was apparent.

“Answer General Scales completely,” Bentley directed, articulating each word slowly and clearly. “We already know this is Site R. What is this place for now, today, Mr. Pelligrino? And no more game playing.”

“It is a designated civilian emergency relocation center,” Pelligrino finally replied, his voice barely above a whisper as if conveying a great secret.

“Sir,” Bentley again interjected.

“Sir,” Pelligrino whispered, head slightly lowered.

“Then let’s take a look at this emergency relocation center, shall we?”

“You can’t!” Pelligrino cried. “This facility has the highest level of security requirements, which I doubt you are qualified for. I am ordering you to turn around, leave now, and we can just call what happened a tragic mistake that I won’t report.”

Bob looked at him with absolute contempt. “My security clearances existed long before you most likely crawled out of your frat house at some Ivy League hole. I’ve put up with shits like you for over forty years, but not this day. If you want to debate it further, look around you. These men with me have as much security clearance as I do after the hell they’ve been through for the last two and a half years and every right to see what is down at the end of that road.”

Pelligrino started to bluster, and Bob, contempt obvious, stepped past him. “Someone drag this bastard along,” he snapped.

John, who had remained silent throughout the exchange, could not help but smile as Pelligrino was shoved to one side, a trooper grabbing hold of him by his collar and pushing him along. He had endured far too many like him during his brief stint at the Pentagon, some of them in uniform, who were just ticket-punching their way up the career ladder and to hell with what was actually right or how many got hurt or even died as a result of their actions.

The tunnel began to widen out. The troopers keeping pace with Bob along either side advanced with weapons raised but not positioned to fire, but could do so swiftly if need be. If there was danger around the corner, Bob did not seem to show the slightest concern, walking down the middle of the paved road that leveled out and then went into a curving turn to the left at the bottom. Half a dozen troopers ahead of him reached the corner where the road turned left and came to a stop, raising weapons and shouting at someone unseen to drop their weapon and keep their hands visible.

Bob motioned for the trooper pushing Pelligrino along to bring him forward.

“Now listen carefully, Mr. Pelligrino. Do you have more armed personnel around that bend?”

He hesitated, and again Sergeant Bentley was menacingly by his side.

He could only nod.

“Then you go forward and tell them to lay their weapons down and come out with their hands up, that the fight is over and no one gets hurt. But if one of my troopers gets shot, Sergeant Bentley or my friend John Matherson here will gladly put one into you. The fight is over, Pelligrino; let’s make sure no one else gets hurt.”

The thoroughly frightened administrator was shoved forward. He cautiously advanced the last few dozen yards, turned in the middle of the road illuminated by several floodlights, and squeaked out a command for those waiting on the far side to give up.

What sounded like an argument started until Pelligrino shrieked out that they were outnumbered and everyone would die if they didn’t surrender immediately.

Seconds later, the first men and women of what John hoped was a final line of defense emerged, hands over their heads. Bob’s troopers, weapons pointed high but still aimed in their direction, shouted out for them to move up the road on the double.

Several dozen emerged, and as they were moved up the road, John could see the looks of fear.

It was the medic who was trying to follow Bentley and work on him who helped defuse the tension, walking in among them, offering reassurances, announcing that if any were hurt they should fall out and she would take care of them; otherwise, they should just keep moving up the road toward the exit. To John’s amazement, one of them was actually smoking a cigarette, the scent of it wafting around him as they passed him.

A cigarette? Here? Just what kind of place is this really?

“Any more?” Bob shouted. A trooper at the very front of the ground turned, looked back, and replied with a hand gesture that all were cleared, but John could see there was a look of confusion from the other troopers who were standing at the bend in the road.

“Let’s see if all of this was worth it,” Bob said softly, starting out again.

Whatever they were about to see, John could not get out of his mind that his friend Lee was dead. Whatever they were to find, was it worth Lee’s death?

And then he turned the corner of the road dug half a mile down into a mountain and came to a stop in silent amazement.

The underground cavern, if it could be called that, was illuminated nearly as bright as day and seemed to stretch off into infinity. The road, which had broadened out into four lanes as it went through the curve, emptied into a vast, open underground chamber, the road just continuing straight on until it was actually lost to view. There was a turnoff to the right, an illuminated sign overhead announcing all entering had to first report for decontamination and security clearance. Bob ignored it and up at the front with his troopers just pressed straight on, Bentley dragging Pelligrino along.

The ceiling overhead arced more than thirty feet high. The spread of the cavern from his left to right was at least several hundred yards or more.

The broad street was actually lined with barracks. World War II–era wooden barracks, row after row, each two stories high, and strangely, even topped with shingled roofs, interspersed with curved aluminum Quonset huts. At regular intervals, natural stone pillars rose from the floor to the ceiling to support the vast mountain overhead so that the interior almost looked like some strange, surreal, military cathedral.

All stood in amazement—except for Bob, who looked around, hands on his hips.

“Like I told you, John,” he said softly, “I was here once, more than twenty-five years ago as part of a drill. This was designed in the 1950s to be the fallback position for the Pentagon in the event of nuclear war.

“The barracks you see laid out down this road—it’s actually called Main Street—were left over from World War II. After the place was hollowed out, it was felt that the cheapest and easiest thing to do was just build these; we still had hundreds of them as surplus, prefabricated and sitting in a warehouse a couple of hours away. No weather here, no termites, they’ll stand a hundred years or more.

“Off to the right, there used to be a motor pool, even used to have a couple of old Sherman tanks down here, rigged up as earthmovers if we had to dig our way out if a nuke hit close by. There even used to be old-style electric golf carts for driving around inside. I think that was Ike’s idea.”

A hundred yards or more down Main Street, a small crowd had gathered.

“How many are here now?” Bob asked, looking back at Pelligrino.

“Who?”

“Civilians, damn it.”

Again a hesitation. “About fifteen hundred, maybe two thousand. Some leave at times, and others are brought in.” A brief pause, and with Bentley glaring at him, he finally added, “Sir.”

The man’s features had gone to nearly purple, his knees were shaking, and with a moan, he slowly sank to the ground. The medic ran up to him, knelt down, felt for his pulse, and then looked up at the general.

“Might be his heart, sir.”

“Given what I think is here,” Bob said softly, “I have to ask: What heart?” He then announced, “Shoulder all weapons. These are civilians here. Unless he dies on us, drag him along.”

He gazed down coldly at Pelligrino. “Which way to the command center?” he snapped, and the ailing man pointed straight down Main Street.

He set off with a purposeful stride, right up the middle of the main street, troopers—with weapons shouldered as ordered—flanking to either side. John trailed along behind him; his friends Reverend Black, Maury, Forrest, Kevin, and Grace, who had disobeyed John’s orders to stay behind and had caught up with the group and was still obviously in shock over Lee’s death, followed behind Bob.

They passed several of the wooden barracks, relics of what seemed another age. The paint was peeling from the wooden sides, but other than that, they seemed well tended. There were even nameplates tacked to doors.

John slowed as he passed a Quonset hut on his left. There was a single name tag tacked to the door. He recognized the name. The same as on the personal e-mails that Linda had snatched out of the ether and which had finally led them to this place. Surely it couldn’t be?

As he stared at the nameplate, similar to the types of nameplates set in front of an officer’s home on a military base, the door cracked open, an anxious young face looking out, a girl in her early teens at most, still gangly like a young colt.

He smiled at her, and a flicker of a smile creased her slender face as she nervously brushed back an errant wisp of reddish hair. John stopped, his friends staying with him.

“Are you here to arrest us or something?” she asked.

He shook his head and gestured toward the front porch as if requesting permission to approach. She hesitated, nodded, and opened the door wider.

He caught a glimpse of inside the barrack. Though the exterior was of World War II vintage, the interior looked something like a typical living room—a sofa, several chairs, and what appeared to be the back of an old-style television from thirty or more years ago.

“Don’t worry, young lady. There was a misunderstanding, but it’s been settled. You’re perfectly safe.”

He spared a quick glance back down Main Street. Bob had gone far ahead of him, surrounded by the troopers who had entered with him. John looked over his shoulder. His friends, however, had lingered behind, waiting for him out on the street.

Grace was still with him, and it was she who broke the tension.

“Hi. My name is Grace,” she announced in a warm, friendly voice, and she simply stepped past John, advanced up a step onto the porch, and extended her hand.

The nervous smile on the young girl’s face within the hut broadened slightly. She opened the door wider and took a step out, reached forward, and politely shook Grace’s hand.

“You sure everything is okay?” the girl asked. “We heard gunshots.”

“We?” John asked.

“I live here with my mother and two kid brothers. The emergency siren went off. Our teacher told us to go to the shelter, but I ran home to get Buster before going to the shelter area, because sometimes we’re in there for a day or two and I can’t sleep without Buster, and then I heard shooting.”

“Who is Buster?” John asked.

She hesitated, a bit embarrassed.

“It’s okay,” Grace said softly.

The girl reached behind her and then produced a stuffed bear, obviously well worn from constant loving attention, and her features turning red with embarrassment.

The gesture, the sight of her holding the stuffed bear, struck John like an electric shock, and he lowered his voice. “It’s okay, young lady. My daughter had a friend like him named Rabs.” He could barely get the words out.

Among his friends, there was no one who did not know about Rabs, his daughter’s beloved stuffed companion who sat on the windowsill in the sunroom and watched over her grave, and which John had gone back into his burning home to retrieve, more cherished to him than any other memory of the past.

Maury came up to John’s side.

“You’re about the same age as my son, who is eleven,” he said. “He won’t admit it, but he has a friend like yours—a panda named Pandi—that sits on his nightstand. It’s okay, young lady.”

“I’m twelve. My name is Laura.”

“We’re pleased to meet you, Laura,” John interjected. “Don’t be anxious; everything is okay now. Just a misunderstanding, and no one was hurt. We’re just visiting here.”

“That’s good,” Laura replied, still obviously a bit rattled. “When I heard the shooting and I wasn’t in the shelter area, I went to the far corner of the room and curled up behind the sofa with Buster as we were drilled to do and waited for the all clear. But I haven’t heard the all clear.”

“I think it might be broken,” Grace replied. “They should have sounded it by now.”

“Should I go to the shelter?” she asked.

“If you would feel more comfortable,” Grace said smoothly. “If you want, I’ll walk you there.”

“Okay.”

Grace took another step up, reached out, and put a reassuring hand on the girl’s shoulder and then looked down at Buster. “I have a bear almost just like him,” she said warmly, and there was genuine emotion in her voice. “Mine is named Winnie. How did Buster get his name?”

Laura instantly began to choke up, tears coming to her eyes. “They kept telling me that they would go back and get our dog, Buster, and bring him here, but they never did.”

She started to cry, and Grace gently embraced her.

“Come on, let me help you to where the shelter is, but you’ll have to show me the way.”

She nodded, sniffing back tears, clutching tight to Buster.

John struggled with his own emotions. The frightened girl was the same age as his Jennifer. At least the same age as Jennifer was when she was still alive… and dying.

Something she said forced the question he had to ask, sensing that if there were going to be straight answers, it would be here and now from this girl.

“How did you get here, Laura? You haven’t always lived here.”

“Some men came to our school and called out my name and those of a few other kids. And now I’m here.”

John knelt down in front of her, looking up at Grace, shaking his head slightly for her to wait. Grace picked up on the signal, stopping in place, a protective arm around Laura, holding her tightly to reassure her.

“Can I see Buster?” John asked. Laura reluctantly held him out, and John took him.

It was nearly impossible to keep his own emotions in check. The scent of the stuffed bear, the worn fabric, a bent ear that had obviously been stitched back into place. For a moment, in his heart, Buster was Rabs.

He kissed Buster and handed him back to Laura with a whispered, “Thank you.”

She snatched him back, but her eyes were on John. “Are you okay, mister?” she asked.

John could only nod.

“He misses his daughter,” Maury said, voice thick with emotion as well.

“Where is she?”

“She’s back home in North Carolina,” Maury quickly interjected, sparing John from giving a more honest answer.

John took a deep breath and forced a smile. “So you were in school, some men came in, called out your name, and you left with them. Is that it?”

Laura nodded.

“Where did you go to school, Laura?” Maury asked.

“Sidwell Friends in Washington.”

“And why did the men take you out of class?”

“It was all kind of scary. We all knew the men. They work for the Secret Service.”

“Secret Service?” John asked, startled but trying to not let it show.

“Yes, sir. They’re always there because the president’s kids go there too. The men are very nice to us, though it’s a bit scary at times since we all know they have guns on them. One of them would always sit in the back of the classroom where the president’s kids were in class. Out on the playground, they’d even bat some balls for us, so we all knew them.”

“So the Secret Service men took you out of your classes?”

“Did anyone else go with you?” Maury interjected.

“Yes, sir. About twenty or so. They said we were going on a special trip.” She clutched Buster a bit tighter. “They let me bring my backpack, and I had Buster in there, so he came with me.”

“And then what happened, Laura?”

“We went out to the ball field behind the school, and there were two helicopters there, and they had me get on board.”

“Just you?”

“Oh, no, sir. About twenty kids or so.”

“The president’s kids as well?”

“No, sir. We thought it strange, but they were left behind.”

“And then?”

“We flew here. It was a fun ride. The Secret Service men told us to buckle in tight, that it was going to be like a roller-coaster ride, and it sure was. My friend Becky threw up all over the place.” She smiled at the memory.

“Where did you go on this ride?”

“Here. We landed outside, and they had us run in here. It was a bit scary; there were some men with guns outside. They had us get into the backs of a couple of trucks and brought us down inside here.”

“Laura, when did you take this helicopter ride, and how long have you been here?”

She looked around, suddenly a bit nervous. “We were told we’re not supposed to talk about it, sir.”

“Laura.” It was Grace now, bending over to face the girl at eye level. “It’s okay, sweetie. You can share it with us. Mr. Matherson trusts you, and I do too.”

Laura was silent for a moment, and tears began to well up. “It was a scary day. We were taken to what they call the shelter here. All day long, more kids were coming in, parents, some old people. I had to put on a large name tag that hung from my neck with my parents’ names on it.

“Finally, I saw my mom with my two little brothers. She had one suitcase for all of us”—she paused, welling up—“but Buster, our dog, wasn’t with her. She was crying and told me that Daddy was safe but in another place. Then they told us they had to shut off all the electricity for a day, except for emergency lights, and we all slept in the shelter area.”

“What day was this?” John asked, and now his voice was insistent, growing impatient.

She just stared at him.

“Laura, sweetheart. What day did this happen?” Grace asked softly.

“The day the war started,” she whispered.

“When on that day?” John pressed, trying not to sound insistent and frighten the girl. “What time of day did the helicopters take you away from your school?”

Again silence.

“When?” This time, he nearly shouted the question so that she blanched and began to cry again. Grace shot a look of admonishment at him, and she moved between the girl and John.

John felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked back, and it was Forrest, who shook his head and pulled him back.

“I’m sorry, Laura,” John said softly, standing up and backing away.

“We’re all sorry if we scared you, Laura,” Grace pressed. “It is just we want to learn the truth, and we trust you to tell us that. Okay?”

“It was in the morning,” she whispered. “I don’t know. Classes started at 8:15. About an hour later, we heard the helicopters landing outside, and some of us were told to leave with the Secret Service men.”

“My God,” Maury whispered. “Before ten in the morning?”

John could only nod as he struggled to absorb all that what she said implied.

“What about the other children in the school who didn’t go with you?” Grace asked.

“I don’t know. We were told they were safe, but we never saw any of them again.” There was a pause. “You’re from the outside?” she asked plaintively. “My best friend, Halle, didn’t go with us. Are they safe? I wanted to send an e-mail to my friends that didn’t go, but I was told only official things can go out on e-mail, but someday soon I can see them again.”

With that, John turned away, unable to hide his pain, his rage. It was not the girl’s fault. The kid was terrified by this encounter. It was not her fault, but as he looked back at her, he could see his Jennifer standing there.

Forrest, with a firm hand on John’s shoulder, led him back out into the middle of the street that went the entire length of the deep underground cavern.

“Do you know what this means?” John snarled. “Do you know what this means?”

Forrest, features emotionless, could only nod.

“They knew. At least some of the damn bastards knew. They got theirs out at ten in the morning of that day and hid them here before the shit hit the fan. They knew!”

He shouted out the last words. Several of Bob’s troopers who had lingered behind to secure the entryway tunnel were standing close by, and he could see in their eyes, their features, that the truth was dawning on them as well. One of them was crying, cursing foully about his own wife and newborn son, an unrelenting stream of obscenities, a comrade holding him tightly, telling him to let it go.

John was feeling the same rage.

On the Day, it had been like any other day but for one great difference: it was Jennifer’s twelfth birthday. After teaching his early afternoon class on such a beautiful warm spring day with half of his students dreamily looking out the window, he had gone down to the village and at a favorite store purchased twelve Beanie Babies for his daughter and raced home to be there before she arrived. Jen, dear now-gone Jen, his first wife’s mother and such a beloved grandmother to Jennifer, had arrived as well to greet their birthday girl.

The rest of that final afternoon of peace had unfolded without incident. Jennifer and a friend had gone up into the neighbor’s orchard to play with the family’s two golden retrievers while he grilled up some burgers and hot dogs for dinner. Then Bob Scales, the same Bob Scales who just an hour ago had led the assault on this facility, had called from the Pentagon to wish Jennifer a happy birthday.

They had then chatted. There was no warning, no Bob sending some sort of coded message that the shit was about to hit the fan and to get ready. Just a friendly chat until suddenly it was obvious even Bob was being caught off guard. Some shouts of panic in the background from Bob’s end, his suddenly saying, “Something’s up. Got a problem here. I gotta…” and then the line went dead.

The war, the Day, had begun for John and the rest of the nation as all power just went off, the sound of traffic on the interstate drifting into silence, a few minutes later a puff of smoke rising from a distant ridgetop, to be learned later it was a commercial jet that had gone in, killing all aboard, one of a couple of thousand jets going down across America.

All of it coming to a stop… at just after four in the afternoon… hours after young Laura said that she had been evacuated to safety.

And yet now, at this moment, after two and a half years of struggling to survive, to reluctantly rising to being essentially an emergency dictator of his town, of having to personally execute a thieving drug addict only days after it started, to carrying his dying father-in-law out of a dying nursing home where the dead were literally decaying on the beds where they had been left to die because no one could help them… to all the starving, the death, the fending off lone marauders that devolved into wandering gangs of hundreds who would actually kill someone so they could feast upon them… and then to hold his twelve-year-old daughter as she died for want of a single vial of insulin, while down here, a select few were hidden away before it had even started and had lived comfortably since?

“Laura!”

He turned to look up Main Street. A woman who appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties, well dressed in a clean white blouse and jeans, figure healthy and definitely not starving, was running toward them.

“Mommy!”

Laura broke free from Grace’s protective embrace, leaped down the steps of the Quonset porch, and ran toward the woman, who slowed, grabbed the frightened girl by the shoulders, and pushed Laura protectively behind her. She looked toward Grace, who had been following behind Laura.

“Back off and leave my child alone,” the woman snapped, and then she half-turned to look at Laura. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

Laura was sobbing too hard to answer.

The woman turned back to face Grace.

“She’s all right. No, we didn’t harm her, ma’am.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Grace Freeman.”

“Listen, damn you, you keep your hands off my child. You’re armed; you are dangerous. You stop where you are and get the hell out of here now!”

Grace looked over at John, obviously confused. John stepped toward the woman. “Miss Freeman is with me,” he announced. “She is no threat to your child.”

She glared at John with an icy, dismissive gaze. “And who the hell are you?”

Her sanctimonious, superior tone was to John like sandpaper grating on an open wound, reminiscent of so many like her going back to childhood, the rich kids who lived up in Short Hills, the wealthy community that adjoined where he lived for several years in a working-class neighborhood. Their parents were the power brokers of firms in New York while his father was putting his ass on the line in the skies over Vietnam. The wives and daughters of haughty generals, unlike men like Bob Scales who truly came from the salt of the earth himself. To college professors one had to bow to in order to have any hope of getting a passing grade with their all-so-superior attitude, cramming their political views down his throat. She was of that ilk, and that attitude would not have survived a week if she had been trapped in the world up on the surface.

He took a deep breath and tried to control his own rage. “I am Colonel John Matherson, State of Carolina, and this young lady is a lieutenant under my command and will be treated with respect.”

“I don’t give a damn where you’re from. I’m ordering you to clear out now and stay away from my children, or you will face charges, Mr. Mather.”

“That is Colonel John Matherson,” Forrest retorted.

“Do you even know who I am?” she shouted.

John tried to extend his hands in a calming gesture, but she overreacted, as if he were drawing a weapon.

“Security! I need security here now!” she screamed.

John looked past her. Wherever Bob had gone with most of his command, he was long lost to view. A crowd was beginning to mill about out along Main Street. All of them looked to be civilians. Well-clothed, well-fed civilians, from mothers holding infants to several elderly, one of them in a motorized wheelchair.

Some were looking their way, and as if this woman was indeed some sort of leader, they started to head in their direction to witness the confrontation.

John looked back at the nameplate on the barrack’s door.

“Your husband is…”

“Yes!” There was a definite superior gaze as if with that question being asked she could now play her trump card and he would wilt away. “He was a senator and is now acting secretary of state.”

“At Bluemont?” He said the two words slowly.

“Yes, you idiot, at Bluemont.”

“If I were him and married to you,” Forrest growled sotto voce, “I’d stay there.”

“How dare you!” she cried.

“I dare because I have a right to dare,” Forrest replied.

“And you were evacuated here hours before our country was taken down by an EMP?” John snapped, voice filled with bitterness.

“I don’t have to answer that question,” she replied, but there was a slight loss of confidence in her voice. She turned away from John, looking back over her shoulder. “Someone get security here now and throw these bastards out!”

“We killed most of them,” Forrest replied. “If you’d care to, go up outside, take a look at their bodies. And then take a look at the entire damn world out there while you were hidden away down here.”

He was about to say more, but John could see that Laura was behind her mother, terrified, clutching Buster and sobbing uncontrollably.

It took all he could do next to try to control his voice. “Ma’am, I suggest that someone take your daughter to what she said is a shelter area, but you stay here. I have a few questions I’d like to ask you.”

“I want security now!” she screamed. “They’re assaulting me!”

The crowd was drawing closer. John looked past her. They numbered in the hundreds while Bob had brought less than a hundred with him when they stormed this place. More than a quarter were dead, wounded, or still deployed outside in a defensive perimeter protecting their precious airlift assets or dealing with the prisoners and wounded. He realized he should have stayed with Bob, who had forged ahead to find the communications center. All who was with him at this moment were the three guards that had been detailed to hold the entry to the tunnel and those left of what could be called his command—Grace, Reverend Black, who was gazing about, obviously in shock, Kevin Malady, Maury, and Forrest.

He could sense it was unraveling.

He glared at the woman, who was obviously trying to provoke a reaction.

“Ma’am, this can go one of two ways,” John announced, struggling to control his voice, his emotions still overwhelmed by all that he had learned in the last few minutes. “We’re going to back up to the tunnel entrance. I ask you to tell those folks behind you to get back in the other direction and we wait to let this sort out. We don’t want this to go out of control, so please help me.”

“Get your filthy asses out of here now!” she screamed. “Security, they’re trying to assault me!”

John saw several men pushing their way through the crowd, M4s up and aimed toward him, the crowd parting to let them pass but following in their wake, some shouting obscenities and threats.

“My people, get back!” John shouted even as he unslung the M4 over his shoulder.

“He’s going to shoot me!” the woman screamed. Her scream was picked up by the approaching crowd, most of them scattering or dropping to the hard tarmac floor of Main Street.

It was happening too fast for him now to hope to control. He began to draw back. Forrest was already crouching low, weapon aimed. Grace was out front, crouched low and moving forward, and John could see that she was trying to snatch Laura and knock her down while the girl’s mother remained upright, screaming.

A shot rang out, another, and then another.

Grace tumbled over onto her side, blood spraying out. Forrest, weapon leveled, opened up, aimed shot after aimed shot, dropping those who were firing on them. The crowd behind the action started screaming and running in panic. John stopped his retreat, crouching low, crawling the dozen feet to Grace, and flinging himself over her to protect her with Kevin at his side. Maury had his weapon leveled, shooting as well, while the three troopers who had been guarding the tunnel entry came running forward, weapons at the shoulder, one of them firing several times at a man in civilian clothing who had a short-barrel automatic, catching Maury in the leg.

A well-aimed shot from Forrest dropped that man as well as he tried to dodge behind a barrack.

The firing from down Main Street stopped; John, still prone over Grace, looked up. The street, so crowded but a minute earlier, was empty, the smell of cordite heavy in the air, wisps of smoke being sucked up by a noisy ventilation fan set in the ceiling over the street.

The three troopers pressed forward past where John was, and throughout it all, amazingly, the woman who had provoked it had remained standing, most likely so startled by the frightful onset of violence she had not yet even grasped how to react. Grace was lying prone over Laura, who was gasping for air and trying to crawl out from under her protection. Horrified, John saw that Laura was bleeding, blood leaking out of a wound in her back.

John drew back from his covering of Grace with his body. Her eyes were glazing, going out of focus. She had been hit in the head.

“Laura okay?” she whispered.

Crying, he could only nod. It would be like her to sacrifice all for a child she barely knew.

“She’s okay, sweetie,” John lied.

“Good. Tell my daddy…”

And then she was still.

It was near to painless and all so quick, unlike so many deaths he had witnessed, so many he had held while they were dying. All he could do was gather her into his arms and cry while Forrest knelt by his side, weapon protectively raised, and screamed for a medic. Kevin Malady went forward with the three troopers, reaching the security troops they had just engaged, all of them apparently down. One of them started to rise up, swinging his weapon around and cursing with rage, and Kevin put three more rounds into him.

Only now did the woman who had triggered all of this realize that her daughter was hit as well.

The medic came running up, still crouched low, knelt down by Grace’s side, put a finger to her carotid artery, snapped on a flashlight, and shined it into her eyes.

“I’m sorry, sir, she’s gone.” Without delaying even a second, the medic crawled over to Laura, felt the wound on her back, gently ran a hand underneath her, drawing it back to reveal she had an exit wound in her upper chest, and then frantically went to work. Even as she did so, she looked over at Maury.

“Where you hit?”

“Leg.”

“Where? Upper?”

“No, calf; might have broken my leg, though.”

She glanced at him as if evaluating his injury. “You’ll have to wait!” she cried and then focused her attention back on Laura.

Laura’s mother now started to react, sobbing, squatting down by her daughter, screaming, “All of you murdered her!”

John, still in shock, was still holding Grace, brushing her long, dark hair back from her battered face.

“Sir! Sir!”

He looked up. It was the medic.

“You got to get control of this. Start by getting this damn woman out of here.”

The young medic’s orders snapped him back. John forced himself to focus, to let go of the moment, try to think a minute, five minutes ahead as he was once trained to do, no matter how horrific the situation.

He looked forward. Kevin and the three troopers had pushed forward by fifty yards, Kevin shouting with his booming voice for everyone to stay calm, keep back, to get inside shelter and no one would be hurt. But then he looked back anxiously toward Grace, obviously wanting to go to her side.

One of the troopers was checking the four dead, kicking their weapons aside, picking up the light automatic carried by the one in civilian garb who had been killed and slinging that weapon over his shoulder.

Laura’s mother, hysterical, was trying to push the medic aside, but Forrest was already reacting, roughly grabbing her by the shoulder and shoving her back, half dragging her away.

John stood up, went to Forrest’s side, and pulled the woman to her feet. She was continuing to scream, an almost sure provocation for more chaos to ensue. He held on to her, pushing her toward her barrack house. The last thing needed now was for her to run off screaming that those with him had been responsible for the shooting of her child and not the other way around.

“You were the one that triggered her getting shot!” John shouted. “Now let my medic try to save her!”

Laura had left the Quonset hut door open, and John shoved the woman up the steps and inside. What he saw startled him. The quarters were spartan and yet comfortable—a bit of a strange mix of retro furniture that was obviously from the ’60s and looked like it had come off the set of The Brady Bunch, complete with the ubiquitous olive-green color so favored back then. A twenty-five-inch console television, once considered an indicator of the height of affluence, was in the room along with the usual recliner lounge chair, mixed in with standard government-issue gray desks, straight-back chairs, and a bookshelf that was half-empty.

The woman was beginning to sob. John looked at her without pity and glanced at Forrest.

“If she starts getting loud or tries to leave, you have my permission to punch her out,” John snapped.

She looked at him with open hatred but then fell silent.

M4 at the ready, John opened the door into the rear of the Quonset hut. There was a small kitchenette to his right, a sink, a two-burner range and fridge, and an unopened pack of MREs on the counter. To his left, a door half-open. Looking in, he saw there were twin bunk beds against one wall and a single standard military-issue bed against the other wall. A few toys were on the floor, a wooden-track train set, several dolls, and a model of a spaceship, obviously the children’s room.

Next to the kitchenette, there was a small but nevertheless complete bathroom with a shower, wash sink, and toilet. Curious, he turned on the hot water for the sink, and after about a minute of running cold, warm, hot water finally poured out, and the toilet most definitely flushed; there was even a roll of toilet paper beside it.

All of this filled him with a mix of rage but then strangely nostalgia as well for such simple comforts of a lost age that a few had managed to preserve down here.

He now noticed for the first time that it was all climate controlled. There was no heat running. It was cool, perhaps in the midsixties, but not uncomfortable. The entire cavern was at the same temperature and humidity as well from what must be a vast climate control system and sanitation support for the entire cavern. The energy demands must be prodigious, at least by the standards of the world after the Day.

At the far end of the room, there was one more door. There was perhaps a one-in-a-thousand risk, but still, after all the tragedy of the last few hours, he was not sure what to expect, so he flipped off the safety on his weapon, leveled it, and then popped the door open.

It was the master bedroom. She was indeed high-ranking. It was no two cots pushed together; there was actually a queen-size bed that took up more than half the floor space of the room but nevertheless looked damned comfortable when compared to the freezing cold nights with Makala when they would revert to zipping two heavy down sleeping bags together in order to be close and then snuggle together on their double bed. Jen’s room did have a king-size bed, but that had been her room and, in his heart, taboo to ever move into even though she had been dead for close to half a year. All of that gone in the fire just a week ago.

He glanced around the room. It was typical military construction from the ’40s and ’50s—particle walls, flimsy doors of half-inch plywood, standard government-issue fixtures, from toilet to light sockets… and all of it looked at that moment to be luxury all but undreamed of.

There was a flash memory from Orwell’s 1984 when the author had written that in a world of desperate scarcity, possession of a kilo of coffee or a few grams of real chocolate could define the ruling elite from the rest of the world and be worth fighting for and many willing to die for in order to possess.

A few pictures were pinned to the wall, apparently taken out of wallets. The woman out in the living room, perhaps five or six years back in a maternity ward bed, proudly holding newborn twins with a six- or seven-year-old girl horning in at the edge of the photograph at least appearing to look happy. From what had just transpired, he wondered if she truly had been happy at that moment.

There was a photo, framed, over what he could only assume was her husband’s small dresser. He recognized the face.

So this is our acting secretary of state, standing next to the person who was once the president of the United States and died on the Day when Air Force One, insufficiently hardened, had gone down.

He read the autograph from the president written across the bottom, a person who, if he had met him while in the military, he would have been forced to salute but nevertheless held in contempt, an autograph expressing friendship to the couple, naming both of them, and the memory struck with such force as he read the names of whom the president was addressing the autograph to that he actually spoke out loud.

“So you are the idiot who was using the unsecured e-mail not to your wife but to a girlfriend that finally brought us here?”

He did not know whether to laugh or scream in rage as he tore the framed photograph off the wall, turned, and headed back to the living room.

Forrest was sitting by her side, but his attitude had shifted as she at least appeared to have calmed down.

“Done prowling around my home?” she asked, looking up at him coldly, cheeks streaked from spoiled makeup.

“Is your name Alicia?” John snapped.

“No, Janice.”

He could not help but smile, an almost cruel smile after all the tragedy she had created. “You want to know how we found out about this place?”

She looked up at him and tried not to show a reaction. “Go on, enlighten me.”

“Your idiot husband was sending out a few e-mails to this place that we did not even have to crack. It was a correspondence with some woman named Alicia.”

He hesitated. Was this even too cruel for him? “He certainly had a thing for her and was looking forward to—how shall I say it?—a romantic interlude with her next time he was here.”

Her eyes widened with shock and then growing rage. “You’re a damn liar!” she shrieked. “He said he gave her up a year ago!”

“That’s how we tracked this place down, your husband sending unsecured sexting to Alicia who apparently he stashed here as well,” John replied sharply. “Sure, he protected his family”—a pause—“and his mistress as well.”

She glared up at him, struggling for control. “Matherson, you are cruel beyond any words to describe.”

“Madam, it was men like your husband who turned this world into a place of such cruelty,” John said coldly.

She lowered her head but then looked up at a trooper standing in the doorway.

“Ma’am, your daughter is going to make it. The medic stabilized her; some folks are helping us to take her to the hospital.”

She nodded, tears continuing to well. “Thank you,” she whispered.

John looked out the front window. Someone, a civilian, was bringing up a stretcher. Another was holding up an IV bag while the young medic was hunched over Laura, still working on her, but the girl was obviously conscious.

But next to her, Grace lay as she fell, Reverend Black and Kevin kneeling by her side and crying.

“Get a blanket, something over Grace,” John whispered. “When we leave here, she goes back with us.”

“Understood, sir.” A pause. “I’m sorry; she seemed like a good kid. I saw it happen. She was trying to knock the little girl down to protect her when she got hit. She gave her life trying to save someone else.”

“That was Grace,” John whispered.

“I’ll see she’s taken care of, sir.”

John could only nod.

The woman looked at John. “Who was she?”

He stared straight at her. “In a way, you could say she was a daughter as well.”

The woman lowered her head. “I want to go with my girl. Let me leave.”

“In a few minutes. She’s in the best of hands until then. The way you behave, your being around her might upset things again, maybe trigger another incident.”

The woman was obviously in shock, and she just seemed to sag, the fight out of her.

“Your husband is the acting secretary of state,” he asked.

She nodded.

“And he is at Bluemont?”

Again a nod.

“How did all of you get here and when?” John pressed.

She looked over at him.

“Answer my questions and in five minutes I’ll see someone gets you safely to your daughter. Again, how did you get here, and when?”

“I was flown in along with my twin boys.”

“When?” John tried to keep the tension out of his voice.

“On the Day.”

“When?”

She seemed to recoil backward, and he realized it was again becoming difficult to contain his anger.

“When?”

“The morning of the Day,” she whispered.

“The morning of?” He paused for a moment. “It was before five in the afternoon in North Carolina when we were hit and everything went down. And you are telling me you were flown in here that morning?”

She could only nod.

“How can that be? Part of me just doesn’t want to get it, to believe it. Are you telling me that some in Washington knew we were going to get hit and got their families out?”

There was a long, drawn-out silence.

“You see your daughter after you answer me.”

“All right. Yes. Some knew. I don’t know all the details; even my husband wouldn’t tell me. He just would say there are some questions never to ask, and you are now asking one.” She looked back over at John. “I want to see those e-mails you claim he was sending to that Alicia bitch.”

“General Scales has them.”

“Of course he’d get her out too, the bastard. I knew about it even then.” She sighed and looked at John out of the corners of her eyes. “I need a cigarette.”

“Don’t look at me; I quit.”

She motioned to a side table. He started to indicate she could go herself, thought better of it, and without taking his eyes off her reached over, opened the side table, and sure enough, there was a pack of cigarettes—British imports—and a lighter. He tossed them over to her, and with hands shaking, she lit one up, and he looked at it hungrily.

“You want one?” she asked.

After two years and a half years, he finally broke, nodded, took one out of the pack, and, whispering an apology to Jennifer, he lit it, taking it in deep, the nicotine hitting hard so he felt a bit light-headed for a moment. He felt deeply ashamed about breaking his vow to Jennifer and hoped she would understand at this moment.

“I don’t know who, whether it was NSA, CIA, or some other agency, picked up the warning we were going to be hit later in the day. Only a few knew. Apparently not even the president, who was flying back to Washington when it hit.”

“Who are these few?” John asked, head swimming from the nicotine and all that he was now learning.

“I don’t know for sure.” She hesitated, leaning forward to look out the door where her daughter was being loaded onto a stretcher, the child whimpering.

“You can go with her as soon as we’re done talking,” John said, and she looked back at him. “Who are these few that you said knew?”

“I’m not sure. You can guess, can’t you? Not the ones in power up front. Just those behind them that few ever really see. Not many I recognized, but my husband was one of them.” She paused and took another deep drag on her cigarette. “He got drunk one night and said that the country was going to hell anyhow. Some whispered that a reset button was needed to put them in control. Some operatives got a warning that North Korea and Iran were about to hit us by handing nukes and launch systems to terrorists who actually did the attack. They thought it would be a standard nuclear bomb strike, most likely against Washington and New York.”

She took another drag. “So to play it safe, they set up some sort of practice drill. You know, he said like it was a war game or something. Practice evacuating certain key personnel, leaders to Bluemont, while families and a select few higher-ups were sent up here and stashed away.

“Then, as you all say, the shit hit the fan for real. Not a mushroom cloud over Washington but far worse, he said. The kids and I were already here. Others were brought in secretly in the weeks afterward. We were told to wait.”

She sighed after taking another long drag on her cigarette. “Wait. I’ve been in this shit hole for two and a half years, and now you tell me my husband’s slut mistress was here all along as well?

“That’s all I know about what everyone calls the Day.”

“Why aren’t you in Bluemont?” John asked.

“My husband said the place was too small to take care of us all. Also, after it was all over, with representatives from other countries going there, even that damn pesky BBC could be there at times. If families were seen by them…” She paused again and looked at him coldly, and he realized that regardless of the enormity of what she was revealing, it was the news about the mistress that was driving her to now talk.

“Family and other people of special interest,” she continued, “if we were there, outsiders might start asking why. Those in Bluemont, which is half the distance from Washington as this place, could claim a lot of excuses for getting to that place, even that they were part of a training exercise. But nearly two thousand of us? Some of them with very deep pockets who in reality controlled most of the political machines, at least before everything went down?”

“Two thousand?” John asked in surprise.

“Yeah, something like that.” She took another drag on her cigarette, which burned clear down to the filter. She didn’t bother with the ashtray, just let it fall to the shag-carpeted floor and ground it out. She got out another cigarette and lit it, continuing to smoke.

“More would come in after everything hit. Those with the real deep pockets—you know what I mean—people who shoveled out the cash before the war to buy what they wanted in Washington and could pay even more to survive here in safety. The ones that came afterward said it was beyond hell up above.”

She stopped looking at him, head lowered as if waiting for an angry response or even a physical blow.

“It is indeed hell,” was all he could say, and she took another drag on the cigarette. “So all of you have been here for over two years?”

“Yeah. Hell of an existence, isn’t it?” She looked around at the sparsely furnished Quonset hut. “Water rationed to one shower per person every third day, one load of laundry a week in a communal laundry area. A communal laundry area with everyone else. Can you believe that?” She actually had rage in her voice over that indignity. “Meals are usually MREs, some of them twenty years old. Television is a library of old videotapes. I’ve watched every episode of Three’s Company and Sesame Street maybe twenty times each until I’m ready to scream. The cigarettes he brings to me he gets through some trade deals—bet he gives most of them though to that bitch of his.”

John looked around at her quarters, her slightly frayed but clean clothes, the electric lights outside illuminating Main Street, the subdued rumble of the ventilators lining the street that kept the temperature in the midsixties year round.

“Yeah, one hell of an existence,” John whispered.

She could not even catch his bitter irony, she was so consumed with her own self-pity and rage at this moment.

“You ever go outside?”

“During the day, no. They say we can’t be seen by anyone that might be watching. On special occasions, they’ll let the kids out at night to run around and play for an hour or two.”

“And your husband coming here?”

“Him? Every week, they bring a big helicopter in from Bluemont for what they call ‘family visit weekend.’ He gets to come once every six weeks for what he claims is one night, but I have the answer now.” She glared at him, features bitter. “He got that bimbo who was his administrative assistant out as well, stashed her in the highly secured area at the far end of this damn cave, and spends the other night with her.”

Her early attempt at sounding upper class, arrogant, and used to power had all but disintegrated. Her tone was now that of a bitter shrew.

“I can’t wait to see him again,” she announced coldly as she simply let her cigarette fall to the carpet, watched as it burned a hole into the worn green shag, finally crushed it out with the heel of her shoe, and lit yet another one.

“I’ll loan you my gun when you see him again if you want,” John said softly, and she looked at him, and he could see a dark glimmer in her eyes.

“Who else is here?”

“I don’t know. Those in charge keep us kind of separated. My neighbor Gal, her husband was a senator as well; Pamela across the street, her husband was with the CIA. There’s a section in the back, some nice modern trailers back there, that’s cordoned off separately. Some say that’s where the bigwigs, the elite, are stashed. You can smell their cooking at time, real food, not the shit they give to us.”

“I would think acting secretary of state would be a high rank.”

She sniffed derisively.

“Yeah, right. He’s a puppet. I mean the real high rankers.”

“The president’s family, maybe?”

“You mean that fool in office when it hit? They never got them out—at least that’s what my husband said. But the acting president now, yeah, that family is back there somewhere.”

John looked down at his cigarette, which had burned out. He let it fall to the carpet.

She looked over at him, and he could see tears. “Maybe it was as I heard someone whisper, it was to reset things, others like my husband would take over, figuring just D.C. would be hit. I don’t know. I asked my husband more than once what happened and why. He gets drunk a lot now, and all he says is that it’s ‘better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.’ He says that a lot.”

He looked at her, no longer with contempt but almost a sense of pity. He looked back out the window. The stretcher with her daughter was up, being moved, medic still by the girl’s side, a civilian walking along the other side of the stretcher holding the plasma bag high. Maury was sitting across the street while a trooper was cutting his pant leg back and wrapping a bandage around the wound. Maury was crying, but not for himself; he was looking down at Grace, whom someone had thankfully covered with a poncho.

“They’re moving your daughter. Go with her,” John whispered.

She stood up without comment and started for the door, paused, and looked back. “You want any more cigarettes, go ahead and take them. That bastard of a husband brings me a new carton every time he comes here.”

“I hope your daughter is okay,” John said in reply, but her back was already turned to him, and she disappeared from view, suddenly shouting melodramatically that she needed to be by her baby.

John could see that Forrest was leaning against the wall, just outside the open door. Their eyes met, and Forrest, scarred and wounded veteran of Afghanistan, came into the room and sat down by John’s side.

“I heard most of it,” Forrest said softly.

John could not reply.

“Scales sent a runner back; he wants you with him.”

“In a minute.”

Forrest reached over to the carton of cigarettes. There were still several packs inside. He opened one, lit it with his battered 101st Airborne Zippo, and looked over at John, offering him a puff, which John gladly took.