Oblivion (29 page)

Pain.

And intense fear as she tried to save her child.

Finally, as the flames engulfed her, she had gone down on her knees in the street. A passerby and the news broadcaster had tried to beat out the flames with coats, and as they had, the woman had offered them her child in a burning blanket.

The newscaster badly burned his hands taking it.

Neither the woman nor the child survived.

The unrest had lasted for days, then slowly faded.

But the memory of that woman and child would never fade for Mickelson.

Bernstein crossed the room and stopped in front of Mickelson. She touched the loosened knot of his tie. “You know, you should really commit. Either tighten it or take it off.”

“If I take it off, I fail to show respect for my commander and chief” Mickelson said only partly sarcastically, “and if I tighten it, I swear I’ll choke to death.”

“Oh, you have room,” she said, and started to tighten the knot.

He stopped her by placing his hand over hers. Her skin was softer and warmer than he’d expected. “It’s not the room,” he said. “It’s the idea.”

She smiled a little. Then she moved her hand and dropped her gaze. “I suppose you think I’m an alarmist.”

He could have lied, but he didn’t see the point. “Yeah.”

“I was wrong about the reaction to the speech. I thought people would take to the streets. I’m not wrong about the unrest.”

“We’re at war,” he said to her. “We’ve been attacked as a world. We respond as a world.”

She shrugged and turned away.

O’Grady had heard part of that. “If she knew her history, she’d know that people rally after their homes have been violated,” he said.

“I know my history,” she said, turning back to face O’Grady. “Who was this room named for?”

“Gosh,” O’Grady said. “I have a fifty-fifty shot here, and the West Wing was finished in the 1920s, so I’m guessing the namesake of the teddy bear, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, our twenty-sixth president.”

“And what did his cousin, our thirty-second president, call this room?”

“Hell,” Mickelson said, “if it was decorated like this.” O’Grady looked blank. “How the hell should I know that?” he asked.

“The Fish Room,” she said. “He called it the Fish Room because he felt stupid calling it the Roosevelt Room.”

“That’s not history,” O’Grady said, “that’s interior decoration.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I know my history,” she said. “I probably know it better than you. I know that the United States rallied when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. I know that England, when it was bombed in the very same war, came together as a nation. I know that Afghanistan rebels, in their determination to drive the Soviets off their soil, helped destroy an empire. I know all of that. It’s basic stuff.”

She leaned in closer. “But I also know the history of extremism, and I know that when it’s unchecked, especially in times of war, we’re in trouble.”

“So what are you suggesting?” O’Grady asked. “Taking all the UFO nuts who appeared over all the years and putting them in internment camps?”

There was a silence in the room at that moment, and O’Grady’s last comment sounded louder than O’Grady had clearly intended. Over O’Grady’s shoulder, Mickelson saw Franklin in the doorway, his face dark.

“Internment camps aren’t anything to joke about, Sha-mus,” he said.

O’Grady flushed a deep red and turned. “I didn’t mean offense, sir.”

“Yes, you did. You meant to offend Director Bernstein, and I won’t have it. We’re under too much pressure for your normal wry humor.”

O’Grady nodded. Mickelson wished he could blend into the orange wall. Tempers were short, patience was frayed. These conversations never used to happen with Franklin’s advisers.

“I take it you’re talking about the lack of dissent,” Franklin said as he approached the head of the table. The others did as well. Mickelson put his hand on the leather upholstered chair, with the brass buttons holding the fabric in place. By the time the meeting was half over, he knew, those buttons would be creating welts in his back.

“Actually, Mr. President,” Bernstein said, “what prompted Shamus’s remark was my observation that extremism in times of war should not go unchecked.”

Franklin shot her a withering glance. “Director, you’ve warned me of riots and dissent, which are simply not happening. Except for those small bombs which were, I grant you, distressing, we’ve seen nothing since I made my speech ” “That worries me,” Bernstein said. “The hate mongering has grown, sir, and so has the discontent. I’m afraid that things are actually being planned.”

“And I am not going to worry about a threat that may or may not be real,” Franklin said, effectively closing the door on that conversation. “What are you seeing in Europe, Doug?”

Mickelson resisted the urge to bring his hand to his tie knot and tighten it. “It’s about the same, sir,” he said. “No great dissent, a lot of cooperation. There’s been some moaning that the United States has taken the lead, but in Europe at least, no one seems to mind.”

“In Europe, at least,” O’Grady repeated. “Which means that people mind elsewhere.”

“Asia mostly,” Mickelson said. “China in particular. But right now they don’t see any way around it. My sense is, from the heads of state I’ve spoken to, that most countries are relieved that we’re taking the front position.”

“So that if we fail, they can blame us,” Franklin said.

“But we won’t fail.” Lopez was in the room. She had pulled the door closed. Mickelson fought a surge of irritation at her comment. Since the speech, she had become Franklin’s greatest cheerleader. Mickelson had never really thought that that had been the position the chief of staff should take.

Franklin, too, apparently found the comment a tad too obsequious. “We might,” he said. “Nothing is guaranteed until those nukes blow that planet out of the sky.”

His metaphor was mixed, but that was the only problem with his statement. Mickelson agreed heartily with it, and he’d never considered himself a hawk—that is, not before the tenth planet arrived.

“What about our borders, Shamus?” Franklin asked. “Axe we having any problems?”

O’Grady shook his head. “Even the illegals have slowed. Right now, people are sticking close to home. It’s my sense that no one is looking at their own problems. We’re all looking at the heavens, waiting for those nukes to go off.”

“Yeah,” Lopez said. “I saw in one of the vid chats a kid say that he hoped you could see the explosions with the naked eye.”

“I doubt we’ll be able to see them with the large telescopes,” Mickelson said. “From what I hear, the only information we’re getting is from the probes.”

“And it’s good enough,” Franklin said. “Right now, everything is a go. No problems so far. And that’s all that matters.”

“We’re in the calm before the storm,” Bernstein said. Her pessimism was beginning to grate on Mickelson’s nerves.

“Maybe,” O’Grady said. “Or maybe we’re catching a break.”

“I think those aliens have thought of us as easy targets for so long, we’ll whup them with sheer surprise alone,” Lopez said.

Mickelson let the conversation drift around him. That’s how these meetings had been ending up. Endless discussions of the possibilities of success. It seemed like Franklin needed almost nightly reassurance that he had taken the right course of action. Mickelson thought it was interesting that in all of these meetings he’d attended, Maddox or other members of the Joint Chiefs hadn’t been here, nor had the science advisers. The people who were still working on ways of defeating the tenth planet when it got closer to Earth hadn’t stopped their work, nor did they debate the success of the missiles.

They went on as if they had a deadline, an important one. Mickelson wondered if they knew something he didn’t. “You’re quiet, Doug,” Franklin said.

“Yeah,” Mickelson said. “One too many diplomatic dinners, I guess.”

Franklin raised his eyebrows slightly. “Is it that, or something more profound?”

Bernstein was staring at him. O’Grady was studying his hands. Lopez was watching Franklin.

“We keep acting as if we expect the other shoe to drop,” Mickelson said. “I guess I’m wondering when it will.” O’Grady shook his head. “I think we’re not used to the time between action and result.”

“Huh?” Lopez said.

Franklin also looked confused, but Mickelson got it. “Yeah,” he said. “I suppose we’d always assumed if we’d launched nuclear missiles, we’d know what got hit and when within the hour. We’d know if we’d wiped out our enemy, or if we had simply made things worse. But this time, we’re waiting weeks.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Lopez said softly.

“It’s turning Bernstein into a Cassandra,” O’Grady said. “And—”

“Watch it,” Bernstein said. “Cassandra was right.”

“Tavi,” the president warned.

“I’ll stop,” she said. “Although I shouldn’t.”

Franklin sighed. “We are spinning our wheels. It doesn’t feel right to work on domestic problems, and there seems to be little foreign work we can do. I guess you’re right, Shamus. We’re waiting, and none of us are very good at that.”

“I’d like the wait to be over,” Mickelson said.

“Me, too,” Lopez said.

Franklin looked at both of them. “I only want the wait to end if we get the result we want,” he said.

“You think there’s a realistic chance we won’t?” O’Grady asked, sounding a bit surprised.

“I’d be a fool if I counted on anything,” Franklin said. “As bizarre as this is, we’re fighting a war here ”

Mickelson’s heart was pounding. He hadn’t heard Franklin this pessimistic since the initial attack.

“I trust you have backup plans,” Bernstein said.

Mickelson knew of some of them. He was surprised she didn’t. Then he realized that, with her dire and incorrect warnings, and the domestic focus of her job, she probably had no need to know.

“Oh, we have plans,” Franklin said. “But if this is the first volley in a protracted struggle, we’re in trouble.”

Then, as if realizing that he was being too pessimistic, he stood, and put his hands on the table. “I’m glad you all came,” he said. “We’re ending now so that Doug can finish taking off his tie.”

This time, Mickelson’s hand flew to the knot. Franklin gave him a wicked grin and walked out of the room. The others stood too.

“You think he’s scared?” Bernstein asked.

Mickelson thought for a moment. He assumed everyone was scared. They’d be fools not to be.

“I don’t think that’s an issue,” he said. “He’s doing his job, and that’s all that matters.”

“I guess.” She looked at the open door, the one Franklin had disappeared through. “For the record, the reason I’m focusing on the domestic problem is I believe this nuke thing is going to work.”

Mickelson gave her a sharp glance.

She shrugged. “I’ve been studying nuclear scenarios my entire career,” she said. “No planet can comfortably survive three hundred nuclear explosions on its surface. No planet.”

Her words buoyed his mood. It surprised him, that she wasn’t as pessimistic as he had thought. He smiled, really smiled, for the first time in weeks.

“You know,” he said, “I’d never thought of it that way. You’re exactly right.”

And he left, knowing that, for the first time since the destruction of the California coast, he was going to get a good night’s sleep.

August 12, 2018
12:51 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

94 Days Until Second Harvest

Vivian Hartlein fixed the strap on her vest where it bit into her side. The vest weighed almost thirty pounds and made it hard for her to breathe. And climbing the steps up into the Capitol Building had been slow. With the extra weight she felt like an old woman.

Over the vest she wore a long raincoat, even though there had been no rain forecast. She knew no one would pay her no mind. With the raincoat and the slow walk, she looked like a crazy old lady, not the leader of a group doing its best to bring down a godless government.

The warm afternoon sun beat on her, the vest heavy, as she climbed the long set of stairs toward the Capitol Building. The images of her daughter kept her going. Cheryl and them grandbabies, turned to black dust.

One foot at a time, one step at a time, she climbed until she was close to the security checkpoint. She didn’t plan to try to get past them deluded guards. With so much explosive strapped to her, she knew she had no chance of getting through, no matter how she looked.

She stopped and rested, pretending to stare at the view behind her. The day was almost cool for August, and she was thankful the humidity was low. She wasn’t sure she could have climbed those stairs on a really hot summer day. Not with this much weight on her.

Since the president had declared war on them made-up aliens, she’d lost more and more of her people. No matter how much proof she had, no matter how much talking she did, they slowly stopped listening to her. The government poisoned their minds. They saw all the media stuff as proof. Slowly they started to believe that the aliens was real, that they was coming back.