Without Warning (45 page)

Jed had never known her to veg out in front of the tube for such a long stretch of time, unless it was in front of Fashion TV in the weeks before they
decamped to London and Paris each year. This last week, however, she’d camped in front of the box, channel-surfing between BBC World, CNN Hong Kong, Sky News, and whatever crisis-of-the-moment bulletins the local network affiliates were putting on air. Right now, she was seemingly mesmerized by an interview with some retired British admiral who wanted to blow up the Channel Tunnel and deploy the Royal Navy “to secure the approaches.” Distracted by his murmuring in the bedroom for only a moment, she had now sunk back into video torpor. Jed shook his head and let her be.

Of his children, there was no sign, for which he was happy. Melanie, the only positive reminder of his first marriage, had taken the loss of her world like a physical blow. She hadn’t wanted to come to Hawaii, and as soon as she realized that her mother and all of her friends back home were gone she’d spiraled into a black whirlpool of survivor guilt, crying in her bedroom for two days. Roger, three years younger, from one marriage down the line, dealt with the shock by putting on a brittle and entirely counterfeit stoicism as his game face. Jed had worried about it cracking open at some point.

“Have you seen Rog around?” he asked Marilyn, interrupting the Chun-nel bomber.

“He’s with Debbie,” she said, only half paying attention.

“Debbie?”

“A pretty little thing. Down on one of the lower floors. You know. With the Girls Choir from Iowa.”

As Marilyn spoke she seemed to emerge from a daze, sitting up and actually dragging her eyes off the screen.

“You met her mom, the air force lady,” said his wife. “Remember? At breakfast the other day? When they ran out of muffins and toast.”

He did remember now. All of the choir girls had at least one parent with them as a chaperone, and a few had come with all of their immediate family, dampening the shock a little. But Debbie’s mother, an air force reservist, had been called back to active duty two days ago, and had been forced to leave her daughter in the care of the tour leaders.

“Oh, yes, I remember her. And Debbie. She is a pretty thing, isn’t she?”

He was glad the kids had met, because like kids everywhere they were totally self-obsessed, and given the current circumstances that was a form of strength.

Marilyn stood up, brightening.

“Yes. And Jedi, the girls are doing a concert tonight, down in the restaurant. Do you think you could get back for that? It would be lovely, don’t you think, to do something nice? Everyone will be there, and the hotel manager
will be hosting drinks afterward. To keep up our morale. I could wear a new dress. If I went out to buy one.”

Another man might have brain-snapped at such vacuous babble, but Culver smiled indulgently. The curfew had been lifted somewhat in the islands, allowing people to get out for strictly rationed supplies, but he had no idea whether Marilyn would be able to find a clothing boutique that was still open, or that would accept her credit cards. Doubtless, knowing her, she would have a wonderful adventure trying, however.

“You knock yourself out, honey. And I will move heaven and earth to be at that concert.”

He kissed Marilyn on the top of her head and loitered briefly by the picture window, squinting into the morning glare in the hope of picking his kids out of the small, scattered crowds down on the beach. A large but orderly swell pushed regular sets of clean barreling waves up onto the sand, and he knew that they would be somewhere down there, his children, Debbie, a handful of choir girls, and at least one or two parental chaperones, all playing in the surf, trying to keep their minds away from dark places. They were doing well at it, too, all things considered, and he sent a quick, silent prayer of thanks up to the Lord for that small mercy, especially for his daughter, who had found in her new friends a salve for the loss of so many old ones.

On the television the blustering admiral was gone, replaced by a handsome but harried-looking middle-aged man in a white shirt and bright yellow tie. He stood on what looked like the trading floor of some bank or brokerage house, and his thick East London accent was difficult to follow, but certain words tolled like funeral bells. “Meltdown … crisis … credit shocks … market collapse …” A ticker line of breaking news items scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Massed rocket attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon. “Preemptive” Israeli air strikes on dozens of targets in Syria, Iran, and even Egypt. Another American destroyer, the USS
Hopper,
swarmed by hundreds of Hamas suicide bombers on Jet Skis. Food riots in Berlin. Street fighting between thousands of youths in Paris. More refugees pouring into Guantánamo Bay. A declaration of martial law in six Chinese provinces. A toxic supercell storm forming in the Bay of Biscay.

There was no question in Jed’s mind what everyone was doing down on the beach below him. They were trying to ignore the end of the world.

“Bye-bye, honey,” he said to Marilyn as he picked up his briefcase and kissed her again, on the forehead this time.

“Okay. I’ll see you later, darlin’,” she replied, surprising him with a fierce hug that almost pulled the two-hundred-pound lawyer off his feet. When
they separated her eyes were puffy and haunted. “Everything’s gonna be cool, isn’t it, Jedi Master?”

It was one of those questions he wasn’t meant to answer truthfully.

“Sure, honey. Everything’s gonna be cool.”

And he wasn’t lying
exactly.
Things would probably be better for his family than most survivors, because Jed Culver had come flying out of the starter’s gate, throwing himself at an overwhelmed administration, impressing the hell out of them with his extensive background in disaster management and civil-military relations, two bits of fluff on his résumé that might best be described as completely fictitious. Didn’t matter. Nobody was going to be checking his bona fides for a long time, if ever, and the fact was, if you had to put a realistic description on his colorful employment history, you could do no better than saying that Jed Culver got things done and made sure they stayed done.

Indeed, he couldn’t think of anyone better qualified to stick his hands into the fire and haul everybody’s asses out with a minimum of singeing and whining. And if the price of that was his family getting looked after because he’d snuggled up tight to the surviving power structure, well then that was just a win-win situation, wasn’t it? As he squared his shoulders, still powerful from years of college wrestling, and headed out of the apartment, he was already thinking about that power structure, which was becoming one of his more difficult projects. In his briefcase he had letters from four ambassadors, each putting himself forward as interim president until a new Congress or election could be organized. It wasn’t a bad idea, stiff-arming a senior diplomat into the job for a strictly limited amount of time. There were decisions that needed to be made at a national executive level that simply weren’t getting made. But the four bozos in his briefcase were all political appointments—one of whom he’d actually played a very sly hand in getting set up—and Culver didn’t rate a single one of them much higher than a stale sack of shit. Frankly, anyone seeking power at the moment definitely couldn’t be trusted with it.

No, they were going to need someone who actually didn’t want the job. Someone who was available but who was nothing like him or any of his peers in the shark tank. They were going to need someone honest. As honest as George Washington, or at least a good enough actor that he, or she, could pull it off.

But who?

He was going to have to start doing some digging, finding out what was happening beyond the islands. With winter looming, the Alaskan state government was consumed with the job of making sure its people didn’t starve
and freeze to death. Seattle and those parts of Washington outside of the Wave’s effect seemed to be muddling through after some unpleasantness with riots and looting, although it was hard to tell with news coming out of there in a drip feed. Perhaps that might be the place to start looking.

He stalked through the hotel corridors toward the elevator at the end of the hall, brooding on a tangle of competing thoughts, among them how much emptier the Embassy Suites seemed than just a few days ago. Almost all of the foreign guests had checked out, but there seemed to be fewer Americans in residence, too. Operation Uplift hadn’t started yet, and he wondered where they might have gone, since most would have hailed from the mainland. That was less an issue, however, than the lack of maids. Every morning when he’d emerged from his rooms at least three housekeeping trolleys were parked somewhere on his family’s floor, but this morning nada. Of course, it might mean nothing, but he made a mental note to check with some of the staff about whether there were problems with their pay, whether some people had just stopped turning up to work, whether there might be any signs of order and organization starting to fall apart. Of the three surviving U.S. states, Hawaii was the least able to sustain itself. Without massive amounts of external assistance the islands would probably be ungovernable, even with a huge armed-forces presence. Both the civilian and military authorities were alive to the very real possibility of starvation and a rapid fraying of the social fabric. Given the shit going down in Europe nobody was sanguine about just muddling through anymore.

He walked into the elevator, which was empty, and punched in the button for the lobby. The elevator stopped only once during the descent, to pick up a German couple and their luggage.

“Howdy.” He smiled as they wrestled their bags in. “Heading home?”

“No,” the man replied in perfect, clipped English. “We have relatives in Australia we are to visit. Winemakers in the Barossa Valley. Do you know it?”

“No,” he admitted. “Not much of a wine drinker, though.”

The Germans both nodded as though he’d said something profound.

“So, you think you’ll be going home any time soon?” Jed asked when the silence began to stretch out.

“No,” the man replied just as quickly as they reached the ground floor. He bowed his head brusquely and said, “My sympathies for your loss,” as they squeezed out past Jed with their suitcases.

The foyer would normally have been crowded at this time with guests checking out and conferencegoers arriving for seminars and meetings, but apart from the Germans and half a dozen cabin crew members from some
Asian airline, the lobby was mostly deserted. A couple of wet tourists wandered in from the beach with towels thrown over their shoulders, and the glassy, frozen grins of people desperately trying to avoid looking at the yawning abyss that had lately opened in front of them. It was a look Jed was becoming used to. His eyes scanned the floor and he found his driver standing just outside, sneaking in a last-minute cigarette. He’d given the cancer sticks up himself twenty years ago, after successfully representing British American Tobacco in a suit against one of their many former customers. Or victims, as one executive called them in private.

Bobby Kua, his driver, was a native Hawaiian, a surfer, and Jed shook his head ruefully as he saw the boy suck extra hard on the Marlboro to drag in a few more precious carcinogenic lungfuls as soon as he saw the lawyer approaching.

“I’m telling you, Bobby, you’d be a much better surfer if you gave those things away.”

“No way, boss,” smiled Kua. “I’m already a weapon. Couldn’t get any better.”

He drew one last, long puff before stubbing out the butt and flicking it into a nearby can. Privately, Jed wondered how long it would be before the young man was pinching off his half-smoked butts to finish them later.

He made a mental note to lay in a few cartons. Within a week or two, some people would sell their souls for nicotine, he was sure.

“So where to, boss?”

“Pearl today,” said Culver. “We’ll be there all day, too. Then out to the capitol about three-thirty for a meeting. You could probably get away for an hour or so if you needed to. But I’m on a promise to get back here for drinks. Say, seven.”

“Got it,” said Bobby, leading him over to the nondescript white Chevy Aveo from the government fleet. Gas rationing meant that only the smallest, most fuel-efficient cars could be signed out of the pool for official business, while civilian motorists were restricted to just a few gallons a week, which could only be purchased on alternate days. Rationing had quickly become an unpleasant reality that
everyone
had to deal with. Armed troopers posted at supermarkets and gas stations made sure of that. Appeals to fairness and civic-mindedness shortly after the Disappearance had achieved nothing but the rapid emptying of grocery-store shelves and at least a dozen incidents of serious violence, including one macadamia-caramel-popcorn– related multiple homicide at a supermarket on Kalakaua Avenue.

Culver was grateful that he had no responsibility for the rationing system. It had quickly come to challenge the Disappearance as
the
open wound on
talk radio. The first time an American was told by a heavily armed man in combat gear that they couldn’t buy
all
the Twinkies they wanted tended to come as a deep existential shock every bit as unnerving as the still unexplained cataclysm back on the mainland. Culver himself had quickly emptied the small bar fridge back at the hotel of liquor and filled it with emergency food supplies, as soon as he noticed that the breakfast buffet in the restaurant was looking a bit spare. Frankly, he’d have been much happier if he could have relocated Marilyn and the kids to Pearl Harbor, just in case things got totally out of hand. But they all insisted on staying at the Embassy Suites, and he was reasonably confident of making himself important enough to grab a safe berth in the event of any European-style uprising.

To that end he strapped himself into the backseat of the car, with room to spread out his documents, and got to work while Bobby drove him through Honolulu. More shops were closed every day now. In fact, apart from bars and heavily guarded food outlets there was very little open, and there were very few people on the streets. Marilyn was probably going to be disappointed in her search for a new cocktail dress. Soldiers and cops comprised most of the foot traffic, in contrast to the first few days, when huge unruly crowds had gathered and surged back and forth, almost like people running without real purpose on the deck of a sinking ship. Together the rationing and curfew systems tended to keep people at home most of the time.