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"You think that we've been forgotten?"
An air of desolation was creeping across the hollow, echoing area. An elevator platform came to rest with a giant's cough. Its only passenger was a soldier in a jeep. Eggy beckoned and yelled at her.
"Hey you!"
The soldier spun the wheel and drove over to where they were standing.
"You want something?"
"What's going on on the surface?"
The woman pushed back her helmet and shrugged.
"Pretty much of nothing. There's only a skeleton missile crew out there. Everybody else is inside."
"And there's nothing happening? No explosions, no mushroom clouds or nothing?"
The soldier shook her head.
"Sun's going down peaceful as you like."
"You wouldn't see anything, Eggy. Not unless they'd nuked Las Vegas."
The soldier leaned on her steering wheel.
"You really think that this is it?"
The five all looked at her as though the question wasn't worth answering. She nodded, pulled down her helmet, put the jeep into gear and gu
The music faded. The group looked at each other, the silent question "What now?" After a pause of some thirty seconds the speakers came to life again.
"A number of reports are coming in of further Soviet missle launches. The Trans-America space station has observed over eighty rockets lifting from sights to the south of the Zhigansk on the Arctic Circle in the Yakut region of Siberia. These firings are located too far to the east to be targeted on the European conflict. They can logically only be multi-warhead ICBMs targeted on North America."
"Jesus Christ."
Instinctively the group moved close together. The vehicle maintenance crews had stopped work. They were walking away from their vehicles out into the open, staring up at the speakers in the roof. There was a brief burst of music and then a new voice came on.
"This is Anthony Lloyd-Ransom and I'm talking to you directly because I see no way to minimize what I have to say. Unless we have been misinformed to a point that would scarcely seem possible, the world is advancing into global thermo-nuclear war and there is no way out. If we do not receive confirmation of some attempt at a cease-fire or strategic pullback in the next few minutes, I shall seal the bunker. I know it seems scarcely possible to believe but we now have to face the strong possibility that the future of mankind may, at any moment, be placed in our hands. If this is the case we are about to receive a truly awesome responsibility. We have to rise and accept it. I am well aware that it's impossible to divorce ourselves from the situation on the surface. I know that you are all afraid that, as I speak, we may be losing friends and loved ones, that cities we know and love are being consumed by firestorms."
Vickers sneezed. "I think there's tranquilizers being pumped into the air conditioning."
"Shut up, Vickers, don't you have no respect?"
Lloyd-Ransom's voice boomed on.
"The administration of this bunker expects, hard as it may be, that you set these considerations aside and rise to the monumental task thaf now confronts us. The thing that I ask will certainly tax us to the limits of our humanity. We are entering a valley of shadow the enormity of which no one has ever experienced. Our sole responsibility is to survive. The means to that survival will be our discipline and our sense of duty. The task will be long and arduous but I am confident that every one of you will find inside him or herself the strength to fight the sense of despair that will undoubtedly come upon us. We are going into a dark and terrible night and I pray that both God and our own strength will go with us."
"They all make the same speech."
"He didn't mention the flag."
The original voice came back over the speakers.
"Stand by for a message from the President of the United States."
Eggy scowled. "They're all in on the act."
There was the hiss and crackle of a long distance carrier wave. The voice, when it came on, was distorted and scratchy to the point of being hard to recognize.
"My fellow Americans. I am speaking to you from the Orbital Command module some five hundred kilometers above the earth…"
"The bastard got himself safely out of it."
"You think the donuts are safe?"
"The space stations?" Parkwood shook his head. "No, there are too many hunter-killers up there. They'll go."
"… this is one of the blackest moments in the history of our nation. Indeed, this is the gravest situation our planet has ever faced. Nuclear warheads have already been detonated over Lawrence, Kansas, Chicago, West Los Angeles, Oakland and New York City. More enemy missiles are right now in flight. In the last few minutes, I have, after consultation with the leaders of our major corporations, ordered a massive retaliation against the Soviet Union. Even as I speak, our front line of Peacemaker and Alamo missiles are being launched from their silos. This is not a simple matter of revenge or vindictiveness. The American people are neither vengeful nor vindictive. In launching our first string of intercontinental ballistic missiles, we are making it plain to the Soviet leaders that this country will not sit idly by in the face of this barbaric and unprovoked attack on our homeland, on our European allies…"
"I didn't think there were any Soviet leaders."
"Sssh. Let him finish."
"I hope the bastard dies."
"… or on any other parts of the Free World. Although history will record this as our darkest hour and the name of Soviet communism will live forever in infamy, I am confident that there will be a history to recount the story. None of us can predict the immediate future. All we can do is pray for the strength, the courage and the fortitude to come through these terrible times, to face the awful sacrifices that will have to be made, and to undertake the mighty task of rebuilding that will face us when these days of testing are over. My heart goes out to you and my thoughts are constantly with you. God bless you all."
The "Star Spangled Ba
"The bunker is being sealed. I repeat, the bunker is being sealed.''
The first sound was the screech of metal that wasn't accustomed to being moved. Enormous steel doors were closing across the entrances to the freight elevators. After they closed with a dull boom, there was a brief silence, then a series of deep muffled explosions came from somewhere beyond. These were followed by what, at first, was just a pattering, then a metallic hiss like hail on a tin roof. Quickly it grew to an all encompassing echoing roar. The method of sealing the bunker was comparatively simple. Sections of wall on the outside of the elevator shafts had been blown out and thousands of tons of dirt and sand poured into the empty space. The roar went on for a full five minutes before it finally subsided in a series of coughs and booms as the displaced material settled. On the first level, the soldiers and the security group stood as though stu
Vickers tried to think of New York or Chicago in flames. He couldn't quite accept the idea. He still pictured them the way he'd seen them last, dirty, busy and bustling. He couldn't imagine there were giant craters where Central Park and the Loop had been. It wasn't possible that places that had been so teemingly alive could be burned to nothing: a single, terrible death. He knew in the end that he'd come to terms with it but right at that moment all he could do was try and protect himself by blanking it out. To his horror, he saw that Fenton was gri