The Final Day (After, #3)(110)

“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.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Having been escorted through the vast cavern labyrinth by the runner sent back by General Scales, John passed row after row of old-style barracks and Quonset huts. Most of them were empty, windows dust covered with no sign of habitation.

There was a grim triage logic to it. Designed back in the 1950s to house twenty-five thousand for how long? A month, six months, maybe a year? Two thousand could stay down here for years, a decade if need be. Also, moving twenty-five thousand in? Surely it would have drawn notice. Bob had been in the Pentagon on that day of days and was clueless as to what was going on at the moment everything hit. The number who were in the know and slipped away earlier that day or even before that? A hundred or two at most? Their families added in?

It was the sick mathematics of living versus dying. Who is the inner elite who cared no more for their duty and moral responsibility and thought only of themselves? Triage at its most sickeningly self-centered. It was time to confront it.

As they hiked to wherever Bob had gone, John could see scores of civilians lingering, watching. Some were even tanned. My God, did they even have tanning beds down here to get a dose of vitamin D and look good in the process?

He looked at his friends Forrest, Reverend Black, and Kevin, so clearly showing the ravages of two and a half years of survival, and he knew how he must look to them. Kevin was struggling to keep it together, an affirmation of what John suspected: that he and Grace had become close. Reverend Black was whispering to him, a supportive arm around his shoulders. He was barely keeping to his task, and John was tempted to relieve him and send him back to Grace’s body and see that it was tended to with loving respect, but at this moment, he needed him far more than sentiment could allow.