the nearby cities, the fields, the college quads, the markets, the base, or even what remains of the foundations that seem so prominent in the field below, if that moment had a measure, what must they have thought, those doomed to witness the fireball, within the space of it?
And in the next, a volcano of melting rock in almost the same instant, as all that split-atom energy was released and all those watchers were gone.
What must they have thought?
“I’m here,” said the Old Man into his mic.
A moment later.
Moments.
I am down to just moments now.
It’s all I have left.
Her smile.
Her laugh.
“Weapon released,” said Natalie.
You take everything with you.
“We have eight minutes until re-entry. You are less than two miles from the target. If you will look at your compass, I need you to turn the tank until it reads two-eight-five.”
The Old Man gassed the engine. He pivoted the tank, pulling forward, hearing the right tread clank awfully.
If it goes out now, I’ll have to run through all of them.
All of them.
Where does one start?
All of them.
There are camps on the outermost edge, near the ruins of the city that once was. Between the Old Man and the Work in the crater. Ragged tent cities and smoking bonfires. The Old Man smells meat. But it is not the smell of good meat. It reminds him of the bodies he has found, long buried beneath the melting plastic of the dashboard inside the flame-blackened cars that crashed on that last, long-ago day.
After the tent city, the Old Man sees an army of ashen-faced warriors, almost as black as the scorched earth except for their white chalk stripes that run across their chests and rim their eyes. They stand in groups near the rim of the crater as lines, long lines of chained slaves enter and exit.
Inside the crater there are towers and great cables of rope. Thick bands of chains anchored to massive pylons rim the crater and disappear into its bottom. Smoke rises from the hidden floor deep inside the crater and the Old Man thinks of ants as he watches the long lines of slaves shifting buckets along their line. He sees at any given moment whips wielded, arching gracefully, falling suddenly. He sees slaves withering, some collapsing under the lash, others for no reason at all. Gangs of the frail swing and dig and claw at too many places. As if they are digging their way underneath the bunker where Natalie waits. As if they will pop up through the floors of Natalie’s children’s home.
Ashen-faced men drag corpses out from the crater.
There is a pile.
A small mountain of corpses already burning even as more corpses are thrown onto its smoking slopes.
When the compass arrives at two-eight-five, the Old Man is pointing west of the Work. The crater. The front entrance.
“Stay on this course until I tell you to stop.”
I’m leaving the road now. If the road is like a river, then it has brought me to my ocean. To the end of life on the river. To my end.
Goodbye road.
Farewell river.
“Okay.”
A minute later as the Old Man plows through piled ash, crushing buried foundations to powdery chalk, Natalie speaks.
“The weapon is in free fall. Boosters powering up.”
The Old Man drives the tank into a small ditch and loses sight of the camps and the army and the Work. The tank struggles out of the ditch, the right tread making a threatening clanking noise and finally an awful rattle before it re-engages as the Old Man forces the tank up the next hill.
To his right, those ashen-faced men are racing away from the crater.
They are coming for me now.
The fuel gauge is on empty.
I worried about fuel the whole way here. Now what little is left must hold for less than a mile. You too, tank.
The ashen-faced men are screaming, waving machetes as they surge across the baked apocalypse, sucking in lungfuls of the hot, ancient, radioactive ash.
Who is this King Charlie?
And…
Why is he so cruel?
From the camps, horsemen are coming too. Charging up the hill across the melted highway. Among them the Old Man sees the Fool. Smaller than the other mounted warriors.
Even from here I can tell he is deranged with anger.
Nuncle!
“Almost there, another thousand meters,” says Natalie.
The tank is climbing up a steep hill and it feels to the Old Man as if he is pointing straight toward the swollen and bruised sky. Lightning races straight across the mountain, almost in front of him. Instantly the hiss and electric crackle end in a deafening sonic tear and sudden boom.
“Almost there,” says Natalie calmly.
The gears of the tank grind forward.
At any moment the engine will die.
“Another two hundred meters. Boosters to full for thirty-second burn,” says Natalie.
“What does this weapon do, Natalie?” The Old Man is straining to keep the tank moving forward through the ash, up the side of the mountain. “What is Project Einstein?”
“Albert Einstein was a physicist who was instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb, the ancestor of the weapons that destroyed our world. He stated, ‘I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.’ The U.S. government developed a project that reflected that statement and their willingness to fight World War IV, if need be. Project Einstein is a simplistic weapon system in which a ‘rock,’ if you will, can be dropped on an enemy from a very great height, high Earth orbit in fact. The ‘rock’ in this case is a tungsten rod the size of a bridge pylon moving at several kilometers per second. The weapon was constructed at the LaGrange Point between the moon and Earth. It was built by an automated satellite using materials harvested from the moon and long-chain crystal growth technology. Using WaveRider scram jets, the rod can be boosted to an incredible speed. Once the rockets have achieved maximum velocity the weapon will again return to free fall, although now following a glide slope aimed at a particular target. It will strike the earth with the force of several high-yield nuclear weapons, though there is no radiological contamination with this weapon due to its noncomplex nature. Using the beacon I should be able to target a fissure along the emergency escape tunnel, the exit to which collapsed during the nuclear strike when part of the mountain slid down on top of it. My intent is to create a crack in the mountain with this weapon that will allow us to exit this facility safely.”
The Old Man turned to see the quickest of the lunatic horsemen hurl a thick spear that glanced off the turret. Beyond the rider, the Fool’s face was like the snarl of a mad dog.
“The weapon has now entered free fall. Guidance tracking on your location.”
The Old Man ducked down into the turret and slammed the hatch shut.
“How much farther?” he said, searching the optics for any clue as to where he was going.
“Twenty meters.”
