The State (2 page)

“WAIT!” she yelled to Ming, and to the rest of the team.  Everyone in the bar and restaurant froze.  She had pushed the table off of her and stood back from him about 10 feet.

“Who are you?” Ming demanded.  His right hand fumbled for a small device hanging at the side of his pack.

“He’s reaching for something!” the voice told her what she could clearly see.

“Tell them to back away,” he demanded, with a nod over his shoulder to the ‘waiters’ that had given their position away.

June nodded, and heard the order given in her earpiece.

“I don’t understand,” he said, I have known you since…” his voice trailed off.

“Since you first got to campus,” she finished for him.

“How did you know?” his voice was one of defeat or disbelief.

“I…”

She didn’t get a chance to answer before he changed tactics.

“June, will you still come with me?” he asked, a tear streaked down his face.

June bit the inside of her mouth; this had gone south quickly.  She drew a pistol out of her clutch purse and pointed it at Ming.  The action was her answer and it seemed to take his breath away.

Harry Ming took a few steps back.  The restaurant was a circle, so he backed against the glass, giving him a wide view of everyone in the area.  Once he did, two waiters mimicked his move by inching closer to his position.  Ming glanced at the men; they both had pistols trained on him.

“All of the talk about your hatred of the State.  You lied.  You said you hate America, but you work for America!  You lied to me,” he accused.

“Harry, I had to,” she confessed, something that she would regret if she could do it over.

“But…but,” he looked at her and then out the window at the beautiful cityscape of Atlanta.  “Come with me, we can still leave,” he said, turning back to her.  “You don’t mean this, this is not you.  Their government is using you,” he accused.

“Like yours is using you,” she said quietly and with ration.  She had no intention of starting a shouting match with the man, but he was having a hard time recognizing the truth, and Harry Ming was probably the smartest person in the room.

“But, we were going to leave.  I don’t have to do this,” he shook his hand with the device connected to the backpack.  “We can go.”

She lowered the pistol far enough so that she could see him clearly and he could see her face.  “Harry, I can’t.  You know this is wrong.  You are right; you don’t have to do this.  Our people will protect you,” she offered.  This needed to end quickly.  She could not afford for it to escalate any further...he was irrational.

“But they can’t protect my family in China.  They can’t protect my mother, my father, my grandparents; they will all die.”

“You have 45 seconds, or we take him down,” the voice in her ear demanded.

This was escalating.

“They will be wiped out, taken by the State,” Ming continued to babble. “They will disappear, with no record of their existence; all because I abandoned them.”

“We have people there,” June offered.  “People that can get them out.”

“You have no guarantee.”

“I do.”

“No, you don’t, only I have a guarantee.”

She didn’t like the sound of that sentence.  “What do you mean?”  A wave of hot flashed across her entire body and she felt herself begin to sweat.

“June, you need to end this,” the voice in her ear demanded.  “25 seconds.”  The voice wasn’t whispering anymore.

  “You see, if I do this, they will be taken care of by the State for ever.  I will be a hero.”

“You will be dead, Harry,” she offered.  “This isn’t the way.  You can come with me.  We can help you.”

“I will be a hero,” he repeated.

  June felt the hot flash turn to an artic tremble like she was standing naked in the snow.  “Trust me, Harry, a mother would rather have a son that is alive than a dead hero.”

“15 seconds.”  Each member of the team took a step closer.

  “Come with me, we can help,” she pleaded.

Harry turned to look out over the city again.  The other two agents moved a step or two closer to him, with June holding her ground in the middle.  “They really aren’t evil people,” he said, somberly.  “They have lives, like I did.”

“That’s right,” she whispered. 

“Ten seconds.”

The two men took another step closer and then stopped as he turned his attention back around.

“But they’re enemies of my country, and that makes them enemies of mine,” he said, a dark presence falling across his soul.  The temperature in the room seemed to drop. 

“We don’t have to do this,” she said, and then calmly took her own step towards Harry.

“June,” he smirked, “if that’s really your name.”

“It is,” she lied.

“Five seconds to take down.  We go on my mark.”

“Are you sure we can’t leave together like we planned?  Run away, where no government can find us?”  He asked for the last time.

“Four seconds.”

June felt a tear roll over her cheek.  “No, Harry, we can’t.”

“Two.”

He turned one last time to look at the city.  “Then, I will die a hero,” he said.

“One.  Mark.”

June squeezed the trigger on her pistol.

Harry pushed the button on the nuclear detonator.

The bullet never made it.

CHAPTER 2

13 Minutes Before the Attack on America

I-20, 35 Miles West of Atlanta, Georgia

Dr. Seth Cadet squinted at the setting sun pouring through the front windshield of his Mercedes.  The ball of fire looked as if it was using the interstate to align its decent beyond the horizon. In someway it resembled a giant sundrenched lollypop.  Traffic had responded in kind to the blinding sun and had all but slowed to a crawl.

“That’s really intense,” his wife said, from the passenger seat.  She had her visor down, sunglasses on and held her hand out in front of her face.  “I don’t know how you’re even still driving?”

“I just hope someone doesn’t hit us,” he answered.  He was squinting and trying to use the visor on the Benz as best as he could, but it was no use.  The phenomenon was well known to those that traveled west, between Atlanta and Birmingham during the spring or fall.  Which was precisely why they left the medical convention two hours early from downtown Atlanta in order to avoid the blinding drive.  But, their well-laid plans met up with traffic congestion leaving downtown, and ended up placing them squarely in the position they had tried to avoid.

“We should pull off and let it go down.  I’d love a coffee for the ride home,” Dr. Tabitha Cadet offered.  I also want to get my charger from the back; my phone is dead as a doornail.  I need to call Anna and tell her what time we’ll be home.

“You can use my phone.”

“No, I’ll use mine after we stop,” she said.

Three minutes later, Seth eased the blue Mercedes sedan off of the highway and into the parking lot of a highway Starbucks along the extreme outer suburbs of the greater Atlanta area. 

“I can’t believe that took us nearly three hours to go 35 miles,” Seth grumbled as he opened his diver’s side door. 

“Right!  I’m so glad we don’t live here anymore!”

“Tabby, can you grab my laptop bag from behind your seat? Seth asked, as he opened the trunk to fumble for the cell phone charger in her overnight bag.

“Sure.  Do you have my charger?”

“Got it,” he said, shutting the trunk and keying the lock as they turned to head inside.

A few minutes later they had their coffees and had taken over one of the café tables in the corner in the back of the store.  They each had a device plugged into the power outlet under the round table while utilizing the free Wi-Fi.

Tabby downloaded her mail and scrolled her finger across the smart phone, when she suddenly stopped.

“Take a look at this,” she said, her fingers manipulating a picture before she turned it around to show her husband.

Seth looked at the color image of a heart.  “Is that from the MCE?”

Tabby was awash with smiles.  “The Myocardial Contrast Echocardiography, damn right it is!  Dr. Berman got to use it first, but that’s okay.  Can you believe I get to use a machine like this?  That’s going to put Birmingham at the cutting edge of coronary medicine.”

“Correction, Hun, that’s going to put your program on the cutting edge of coronary medicine.”

“I’ve got to send this to Anna,” she said, attaching the image to a text.  Then she started pecking out a note about what she was sending.

“Do you think she’ll even care?” Seth asked, somberly.  “She’s really been pushing back about studying medicine in college.”

“Well, I’m not going to let that stop me, the girl has natural ability at science and biology, and she loves children.  I think she’ll make a great pediatrician.”

“That’s what she wanted to be when she was a kid,” Seth acknowledged, and then looked at his watch.  “5:34, we should really get going.  I just needed the coffee for the drive, I’ll be able to see now.”

Tabby looked up at him and smiled.  “Okay, let me just send this, and we can go.”  She hit the button, but the file was large and didn’t go through immediately.

Seth packed away his laptop and slung a courier bag over his shoulder.  “I’m going to hit the head before we go,” he said, standing and taking the few steps to the men’s room. 

Tabby dropped her cellphone into her hip pocket and opted to do the same thing as she entered the lady’s restroom.

<  >

The flash from the nuclear explosion blinded anyone that was looking directly towards Atlanta within a fifty-mile radius.  The concrete, glass and steel that made up the bones and frames of one of America’s premier cities evaporated as the temperature spiked several thousand degrees within four seconds. 

The pressure wave struggled to expand from its epicenter in a spherical direction.  For a fleeting second the city’s buildings acted as a containment field, blocking the expansion as the last obstacles to total destruction.  But, the buildings lost the struggle, and those that were not immediately vaporized, collapsed under the stress of the pressure wave.

Within 15 seconds, the pressure wave had blown every car on I-285, the 64 mile Perimeter highway that circles Atlanta, off of the 12-lane track of concrete.  Within another 12 seconds, the shockwave had traveled another twenty-five miles, and rolled over Exit 24 on Interstate 20 West, headed towards Birmingham.

Since the sound of the explosion was traveling at the same rate of speed as that of the pressure wave, the only clue to the people at Exit 24 that the wave was coming would have been the searing burns that the people outside would have sustained being in close proximity to the epicenter.  In the first few seconds after the explosion, leaves on trees began to smoke and curdle.  Anything that was paper, within the first 15-20 miles, ignited in flame.

Seth and Tabby, both in separate restrooms of the cement block and metal frame Starbucks, heard the sounds of agonizing screams coming from the main store.  The two doctors, both alumni of emergency room rounds at Grady Memorial Hospital in downtown Atlanta, knew the sounds of pain.  But recognizing the sounds of pain did little to prepare them for their next sensation; feeling the destruction of the pressure wave.  Both doctors made motions to finish up with an internal desire to rush to the aid of the people in pain, but the power went out, trapping them in their respective restrooms…and saving their lives.

As the wave chewed across the land, spreading out in a circle, it resembled a glazed doughnut from the vantage point of space.  But, the comparison to something so sweet and nice ended there.  For every foot of expansion, there was death and destruction.  The wave would travel about 20 miles before its force of destruction was cut in half; with the same halving result happening every five miles subsequently.

Exit 24 off of I-20 is approximately 35 miles west from downtown Atlanta, and was about to experience a pressure wave that was 15% of what was felt in the first 20 miles. For those that had exited off of I-20, traveling from Atlanta, the exit ramp ascends off of the interstate and onto the side of a hill.  Turn right and the road flows down into a natural valley.  Turn left, and the road climbs the hill, towards most of the gas stations and fast food joints.  Thanks to Seth’s craving for quality caffeine, he had turned right, followed the road a quarter mile and into the low lying Starbucks.  A decision that saved their lives.

Neither doctor said a word once the screams started and the lights went out.  They were both in the confines of their own protective bathroom cocoons when the screams were drowned out by the sound of the earth rumbling.  

The shockwave rolled over the Georgia landscape, carrying trees, cars, bodies, roofs, dirt, and anything else it could push or pull through the air and along the ground.  The debris field slowly ebbed as the wave lost ferociousness with each passing mile, leaving more and more lines of destruction along the earth.  At 30 miles in diameter, the wave had dropped most of the heavy objects, but still pushed dirt, glass, paper and wood.  At 35 miles, the pressure wave was the equivalent of an F-1 tornado on the ground.  Still very destructive.  Still very deadly.

The Starbucks store was a blessing and a curse for the people inside.  For the patrons in the store, still sitting around their chic tables, or gawking in confusion at what was happening outside, they died almost instantly.  The entire front glass structure of the environmentally conscientious designed building exploded inward, sending chards of glass, like flying guillotines, through the air and slicing through anyone that stood in their trajectory. 

The pressure wave also catapulted a pickup truck from the parking lot and through the windows of the decimated store.  The heap of Detroit metal smashed the support pillars of the front of the building, causing the brick and beam structure to collapse.  The truck came to rest in the bakery area, pushing the pastry cooler to the back wall, and pinning one of the workers against the coffee machines.

Seth, now in total darkness, could hear the crash coming from outside of the men’s room door and only had time enough to cover his head as the right side of the stall buckled.  The floor mounts of the wall exploded from the tile floor, releasing the wall, and pressing him up against the other side of the stall like he was the stuffing in a cookie. He had no idea that the metal wall, designed for privacy and hygiene, had just saved his life from the collapse of the bakery wall and the tail end of an F-150.

“
TABBY!  TABBY
,” Seth yelled, his voice muffled and his mouth filling with dust.  He coughed and pulled the sleeve of his shirt across his mouth in an attempt to clear his mouth from the dust.  Once he had spit a time or two, he tried being very still and listening for anything; but the implosion of the building had muting his sense of hearing and sight.  He moved his body to slide out of his metallic ‘cookie’ and onto the cool tile of the bathroom floor.  The floor was covered in debris and water.  The water pipes in the wall had severed, and water spilled onto the floor running past his hands and knees.

There was a crack of light shining through what he thought was the top of the wall, and it gave him a sliver of hope.  He focused on the light and took a second to physically assess his own body for injuries.  He sensed the sting of a few small cuts, but for the most part felt that he had not sustained major damage. 
What the hell just happened?
He thought to himself.  He needed to get out of the collapsed stall.   He needed to find his wife.

“TABBY!”
he yelled, again. 

There was silence, and then…

“I’m hurt,” Seth heard a woman’s voice from somewhere inside of the rubble. 

“Tabby, is that you?  Are you hurt?”

“Help me,” the voice answered.

Seth knew it was a woman’s voice, but he was pretty sure it was not Tabby’s voice.  He assessed how he was trapped, and what he could do to free himself. He needed more light than the small crack at the ceiling was providing. With gentleness, he reached into his pants pocket and found his keys.  Attached to his key chain hung a small pocket knife and a very small crank LED flashlight that Anna’s friend, Grace, had given him as a thank you gift for taking her to the beach last summer.  He turned the small plastic crank and was rewarded with a glowing white LED light which illuminating his cramped space.

On the other side of the bathroom wall Dr. Tabitha Cadet was in a slightly better position.  The door to the women’s restroom had been ripped from its hinges by the impact of the pickup truck, giving her a rectangular beam of light to see her surroundings. 

When the screaming started, she had moved to the sink to wash her hands, but the lights went out and the pressure wave hit before she was finished. The initial impact of the wave tossed her away from the sink and against a back wall, knocking her out cold.

Tabby awoke to the sensation of water falling on her.  Her first impression was that she was outside, and it was raining on her.  She blinked a few times and rubbed the back of her head.

“Where?  What?” she muttered, unsure of what had happened to get her to this position?  She felt around her body, looking for her cellphone.  It was in her hip pocket.  She hoped that the screen was not cracked.  She pulled it out, but was unsure why it was not on.  Like a computer going through a reboot process, her physician’s mind had not fully restarted.

“Tabby!” she heard Seth calling her name, but in her mind, she could not figure out why Seth would be calling her name during a rainstorm.

Her head really hurt.

She rubbed the back of her head and looked at her hand; there was blood.  The sight of human blood seemed to center her.  She had seen so much blood as a doctor.  Blood was just a necessary byproduct of her profession.  Some people get queasy at the sight of blood, but for Tabitha, the sight of blood excited her.  Blood meant that someone was hurt, and she could help fix them.

“Seth!” she yelled.  All of her senses seemed to activate at the same instant.  She smeared the blood on her jeans and then looked up at why she was getting wet.

The fire sprinkler piping had cracked, sending pressurized water down on her like needles of rain.

There must have been an explosion
, she thought. 
In Starbucks?  That doesn’t make sense.  People must be hurt.  I need to help!