Branch lived, but only because he was laid up with a recurring malarial fever. While his troops forged deeper below the surface, he lay in an infirmary, packed in ice bags and hallucinating. He thought it was his delirium speaking as CNN broke the terrible news.
Half raving, Branch watched his President address the nation in prime time on December 2. No makeup tonight. He had been weeping. 'My fellow Americans,' he announced. 'It is my painful duty...' In somber tones the patriarch enunciated the American military losses incurred over the past week: in all, 29,543 missing. The worst was feared. In the course of three terrible days, the United States had just suffered half as many American dead as the entire Vietnam War total. He avoided all mention of the global military toll, an unbelievable quarter of a million soldiers. He paused. He cleared his throat uncomfortably, shuffled papers, then pushed them aside.
'Hell exists.' He lifted his chin. 'It is real. A geological, historical place beneath our very feet. And it is inhabited. Savagely.' His lips thinned. 'Savagely,' he repeated, and for a moment you could see his great anger.
'For the last year, in consultation and alliance with other nations, the United States has initiated a systematic reconnaisance of the edges of this vast subterranean territory. At my command, 43,000 American military personnel were committed to searching this place. Our probe into this frontier revealed that it is inhabited by unknown life-forms. There is nothing supernatural about it. Over the next days and weeks you will probably be asking how it is that if there are beings down there, we have never seen them before now. The answer is this: we have seen them. From the beginning of human time, we have suspected their presence among us. We have feared them, written poems about them, built religions against them. Until very recently, we did not know how much we really knew. Now we are learning how much we don't know. Until several days ago, it was assumed these creatures were either extinct or had retreated from our military advance. We know differently now.'
The President stopped talking. The cameraman started back for the fade-out. Suddenly he began again. 'Make no mistake,' he said. 'We will seize this dark empire.
We will beat this ancient enemy. We will loose our terrible swift sword upon the forces of darkness. And we will prevail. In the name of God and freedom, we will.'
The picture immediately switched to the Press Room downstairs. The White House spokesman and a Pentagon bull stood before the roomful of stunned journalists. Even in his fever, Branch recognized General Sandwell, four stars and a barrel chest. Son of a bitch, he muttered at the TV.
A woman from the LA Times stood, shaken. 'We're at war?'
'There has been no declaration of war,' the spokesman said.
'War with hell?' the Miami Herald asked.
'Not war.'
'But hell?'
'An upper lithospheric environment. An abyssal region riddled with holes.'
General Sandwell shouldered the spokesman aside. 'Forget what you think you know,' he told them. 'It's just a place. But without light. Without a sky. Without a moon. Time is different down there.' Sandy always had been a showboat, thought Branch.
'Have you sent reinforcements down?'
'For now, we are in a wait-and-see mode. No one goes down.'
'Are we about to be invaded, General?'
'Negative.' He was firm. 'Every entrance is secured.'
'But creatures, General?' The New York Times reporter seemed affronted. 'Are we talking about devils with pitchforks and pincers? Do the enemy have hooves and horns on their heads and tails, and fly on wings? How would you describe these monsters, sir?'
'That's classified,' Sandwell spoke into the mike. But he was pleased with the
'monsters' remark. Already the media was demonizing the enemy. 'Last question?'
'Do you believe in Satan, General?'
'I believe in winning.' The general pushed the mike away. He strode from the room. Branch slid in and out of fever dreams. A kid with a broken leg in the next bed channel-surfed endlessly. All night, every time Branch opened his eyes, the TV showed a different state of surreality. Day came. Local news anchors had been prepped. They knew to keep the hysteria out of their voices, to stick with the script. We have very little information at this time. Please stay tuned for further information. Please remain calm. An unbroken stream of text played across the bottom of the TV screen listing churches and synagogues open to the public. A government Web page was set up to advise families of the missing soldiers. The stock market plunged. There was an unholy mix of grief and terror and grim exuberance. Survivors began trickling upward. Suddenly the military hospitals were taking in bloodied soldiers raving childishly about beasts, vampires, ghouls, gargoyles. Lacking a vocabulary for the dark monstrosity below, they tapped into the Bible legends, horror novels, and childhood fantasies. Chinese soldiers saw dragons and Buddhist demons. Kids from Arkansas saw Beelzebub and Alien.
Gravity won out over human ritual. In the days following the great decimation, there was simply no way to transport all the bodies up to the surface just so they could be lowered six feet back into the ground. There wasn't even time to dig mass graves in the cave floors. Instead, bodies were piled into side tunnels and sealed away with plastic explosives and the armies retreated. The few funeral services with an actual body featured closed caskets, screwed shut beneath the Stars and Stripes: NOT TO BE VIEWED.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency was put in charge of civil defense education. Lacking any real information about the threat, FEMA dusted off its antiquated literature from the seventies about what to do in case of nuclear attack, and handed it out to governors, mayors, and town councils. Turn on your radio. Lay in
a supply of food. Stock up on water. Keep away from windows. Stay in your basement. Pray.
Foreboding emptied grocery stores and gun shops. As the sun went down on the second night, TV crews tracked national guardsmen taking up lines along highways and ringing ghettos. Detours led to roadblocks where motorists were searched and relieved of their weapons and liquor. Dusk closed in. Police and military helicopters prowled the skies, spotlighting potential trouble spots.
South Central Los Angeles went up first, no surprise there. Atlanta was next. Fire and looting. Shootings. Rape. Mob violence. The works. Detroit and Houston. Miami. Baltimore. The national guard watched with orders to contain the mobs inside their own neighborhoods, and not to interfere.
Then the suburbs lit up, and no one was prepared for that. From Silicon Valley to Highlands Ranch to Silver Spring, bedroom commuters went rampaging. Out came the guns, the repressed envy, the hate. The middle class blew wide open. It started with phone calls from house to house, shocked disbelief twisting into realization that death lurked beneath their sprinkler systems. Strangely, suddenly, they had a lot to get out. They put the ghettos to shame with their fires and violence. In the aftermath, the national guard commanders could only say that they had not expected such savagery from people with lawns to call their own.
On Branch's TV, it looked like the last night on earth. For many people it was. When the sun rose, it illuminated a landscape America had been fearing since the Bomb. Six-lane highways were choked with mangled, burned cars and trucks that had tried to flee. Pitched battles had ensued. Gangs had swept through the traffic jams, shooting and knifing whole families. Survivors meandered in shock, crying for water. Dirty smoke poured into the urban skies. It was a day of sirens. Weather copters and roving news vans cruised the fringes of destroyed cities. Every channel showed havoc.
From the floor of the US Senate, the majority leader, C.C. Cooper, a self-made billionaire with his eye on the White House, clamored for martial law. He wanted ninety days, a cooling-off period. He was opposed by a lone black woman, the formidable Cordelia January. Branch listened to her rich Texas vowels cow Cooper's notion.
'Just ninety days?' she thundered from the podium. 'No, sir. Not on my watch. Martial law is a serpent, Senator. The seed of tyranny. I urge my distinguished colleagues to oppose this measure.' The vote was ninety-nine in favor, one opposed. The President, haggard and sleepless, snatched at the
