The End Is Now

Just then, a keycard beeps and the airtight door hisses open. General Howard Macun charges in. He’s the head of Space Defense, and the highest ranking official at Offutt who isn’t in Nine by now. There’s this gash over his forehead. It’s a straight line from temple to temple, as if made by a factory machine.

Macun comes straight for me. I realize that my coat is wet with brain spatter. So is everyone else’s. We must look like a collection of butchers.

He seems about to grab and shake me. Then, somehow remembering himself, he stops short and salutes. I’m civilian SCS, but from the looks of things, he’s lost his wits. He’s not the first. I play along, saluting back.

“Status, Captain?” he asks as he swipes the blood from his eyes. It’s falling fast enough to soak his clothes and pool by his feet, leaving a trail from the door.

I click my Keds for him. “Sir! We’re close. But I wonder, how are the other cybernetics teams progressing? I’d like to suggest we move our work and our families to Shelter Nine and join forces with the cybernetics team over there. This is no time for proprietary research.”

Macun scratches his scalp and comes back with a glistening red finger. He seems surprised by it. Then he looks down at the blood trail, and seems surprised by that, too.

“What happened to you, sir?” I ask. “Is there rioting out there?”

“Are these human brains?” Macun asks.

“They are. General Camper signed the warrants to open cryo-freeze.”

Macun grits his teeth in disgust.

“Sir,” I say, as calmly as I know how. I’m channeling my husband, on whose tongue butter doesn’t melt. “You must see—the shelters need aboveground caretakers. Satellites won’t work after impact—there won’t be any kind of remote control drones. It’s got to be something that can engage independently from us. How else will the human race survive?”

“We’re going back to AI as soon as we have more time,” Marc chimes in. “Long term versus short term, you know?”

“What happened to you, sir?” I ask.

“It was just a dream,” Macun mumbles.

“Is Nine compromised, or did that injury happen up here? Did you do it to yourself, sir?” I ask.

Macun finally notices that I’m talking. He notices the blood again, the brains again, and his eyes go wide.

“Who cut your head?” I ask.

Macun’s feet go pigeon-toed. His knees begin to bounce. “Shelter Nine! Why, we had to bomb Shelter Nine!” he says in giggling sing-song.

“You must be confused, General. Shelter Nine is the only shelter within five hundred miles. It would be a senseless place to bomb. You’d be obliterating the population of the entire Midwest,” I say. “Can I pour you a shot of bourbon and we can talk about all this?”

“They didn’t listen. The President didn’t listen. Korea didn’t listen. Shelter Nine didn’t listen. Do you know how to listen?” Macun asks.

I don’t have time to answer. Macun’s arms and legs twitch in a hysterical scarecrow’s dance. He grabs me by the bloody coat, shoving me back over a swivel chair. My ankle hits something metal with a crack!

Macun keeps going. He finds Troy’s forceps and chucks them. They land upright in Kris’ dead left leg.

“Hey!” I cry.

He flips a steel gurney, on which we’ve set three good brains. Splat! they go. He flips the next table—four more brains. Gentle Jim Landers gets him by the waist. Crazed, strong, and military trained, Macun lifts Jim up, knees him in the groin, breaks free, and flips the third table.

The last viable brains go splat. Formaldehyde sprays. All is lost.

General Howard Macun grins.

“I should kill you,” I mumble, and I don’t even realize I’ve said it.

Panting, smiling, blood dripping from his crown and down his brow into his eyes like sweat, he scuttles his compact, muscular body across the brain-riddled floor. Slides around. Does a gory kind of victory dance. The brains turn to pulp.

“Please hand me your AFB-Connect, General,” I say.

Panting, Macun peers out from the corners of his bloody eyes.

“General Macun? I’d like you to leave now,” I say. “We’ll be informing Shelter Nine and the US government of your treasonous actions.”

Macun’s wide-eyed, lunatic expression glazes. I get the feeling his crazy’s not gone, just resting.

“Get the hell out,” I say.

“Of course,” he says at last. His voice is normal. This could be a year ago, his Christmas invocation at the Chapel, where he told us that courage would see us through these trying times.

“Good. See you at Nine for your court-martial,” I say.

“No. I don’t think you will.” Macun opens his AFB-Connect, and starts typing as he follows his blood trail toward the door. Then he looks back, his expression oddly somber. “They’re all dead. Don’t take it too hard. It’s for the best.”

I don’t know it, but I’m chasing him down the hall. The air raid sirens sound again. A newly downed plane, or a nuke, or another all-out war.

Aaaaroooaaah! Aaaaroooaaah! Aaaaroooaaah!

“General, I demand an explanation!”