tell you the date. It's December 25, in the year 2000. Wanted to make this here vid as a kinda record, I guess, of what's going on here right now.'
While Ryan and J.B. sat there, spellbound by this message from a dead man, Don Haggard went on to outline the political situation. The tensions between East and West, the problems in Libya, in South Africa, in the Philippines, in Cuba. In the northern cities of Great Britain and in Israel.
'Seems like the whole world is just waiting for someone to push the first button.'
He talked a little about his wife, Peggy, who worked locally in telephone sales, and their three sons, Johnny, Dwight and Merle.
'Guess you know from that what kind of music I'm into,' he guffawed. J.B. and Ryan looked at each other blankly.
The picture wobbled, and the gears of the vid-machine grated and whined as if they were about to give up. Ryan leaned in the chair and pressed the Fast Forward button, letting it go ahead for several seconds.
'Don't have time to watch all this, J.B.,' he said. 'Mebbe take it with us.'
'Stop it here.'
Don was back, looking rather less cool and in control than he had on Christmas Day. 'Things don't,' he began. 'Sorry. Start with date. It's January 15, 2001. Yeah. Government tells us not to worry. Motherfuckers. Not to worry. They don't live out in the open. They've got their bunkers and hideouts. Me an' Peggy'll be fine. What about them good old boys of ours? Where do they go? Can't come in here. Built for two. Jesus on the fucking cross, what a mess!'
'Can't have been a big magnetic pulse in the skies round here,' commented J.B. 'Would have cut off all the electrics.'
Haggard rambled on a while longer, cursing the politicians, both Russian and American, for letting things slide to the brink of war.
Ryan ran the tape farther forward, watching the dancing picture and halting it when there was an obvious change of time.
'January 24.' Looking'at his watch, Don went on. 'Late morning, I think. Watch stopped. Guess it's around ten-thirty. Peggy's worse, crying and throwing up and taking on so.'
Don looked terrible. His shirt was stained and dirty, and he was pale and unshaven. His eyes were sunken, and he had obviously been weeping. 'I'm real fine, folks. Whoever you are. Felt the bangs again a day back. Last night, maybe. Not sure. Bet I'm real fine and so's Peggy. Just a mite sickly. See my hand shaking some. Should have stocked up on liquor, Never thought 'bout that when I built this place. Saved our lives, I guess. Can't tell for sure. Haven't been up top. Won't yet.'
J.B, walked across the room and removed a knife from a neat mounting on the wall. 'Tekna.' He held it up, showing Ryan the five holes in the hilt and the distinctive double sawing edge. 'Surgical steel with a high chrome content. Haven't seen one in years. I'll take it.' Sheathing it, he hooked it on his belt.
Ryan pushed the Fast Forward control, stopping it when the man's head vanished in a blur of visual static. He glanced at his chron again, seeing they still had a little time. To watch this film was even more amazing than being in a vid-house or a Holiday Inn. Seeing this vid was to witness the beginning of the long winters, as it was happening. The neutron bombs had fallen, infecting everyone with a lethal burst of nuke energy.
'Twenty-fifth January. Air filter doesn't fucking work properly 'gainst what the Reds dosed us with. I can feel it rotting my fucking bones. Peggy's worse. I'm going up top to see one time. If anyone ever sees this, you'll know what it's like.'
The camera showed the walls of the tunnel and angled shots of the ladder as Haggard carried it up. He panted and sighed, stopping a couple of times to gather breath. Then there was a break, presumably while he cautiously opened the hatch and peered out. The next shot was in his garden, the man providing his own commentary on what they were seeing.
'Lotsa smoke all round. Looks like there's houses fired toward 'fayette. Our house is standing good.'
Wobbling and jerking as Haggard carried the camera with him, shooting as he went, the film showed a murky scene, poorly lit on account of the smoke drifting by. At first it didn't seem the holocaust that Ryan and J.B. knew it to have been.
Then it began.
The commentary began to stammer and fade, sinking to a spasmodic muttering that identified people here and there. It finally faded to silence, and the sound track only picked up a low keening, with a piercing scream intermittently shattering the quiet.
The land was a massive enamel house. A land that was filled only with the dead and the dying. A high wind whipped clouds across the sky, which seemed to be a dark purple, like braised flesh. Wherever the lens probed, there was death. Young and old, frail and hale, all felled by the same single swipe of the nuclear scythe. The nuking had been cunning and selective, hitting only creatures that breathed, sparing all the buildings.
'Tom Adey and his young kid... Beulah and her gran... little Melanie and her folks... Pop Maczyzk... new married couple moved into the Wainwright place last week.'
Dead and dying.
On porches and in the road. One body hung out of a burned car, the head, arms and upper torso untouched by the flames; the lower torso and the legs were charred and blackened; the mouth was open in a soundless scream of ultimate agony.
Dogs crawled along the sidewalk, snapping at their own hind paws, eyes rolling, tongues hanging from their jaws. A wheelchair was caught by the vid camera, tipped on one side, wheels slowly rotating in the wind, its occupant vanished.
The camera swung wildly through 180 degrees, pointing at the ground, its shots very jerky and fast.
'He's heading back here,' said Ryan. 'Had enough. Poor fucker can't take any more of what happened to his neighborhood.'
The picture went blank, and J.B. moved toward the television, thinking it was over. But it wasn't.
Not quite.
A face swam into approximate focus. The face of a mortally ill, dying man, still recognizable as Don Haggard, but drawn and yellow and thin. Dark seams furrowed his face from his hose to the corners of his mouth, and the eyes were veiled with a dreadful fatigue. He wore a plaid shirt that was moist with vomit and what looked like drying blood.
The voice was hoarse and labored. The tape ran on with long pauses as the man seemed to fight to remember how to speak.
'Donald Haggard here of West Lowellton. Don't know the date no more. Been six days since Peg passed away. Poor old dear been sleeping more and finally slipped from me while I slept. I got the sickness like everyone. Been shitting so much I can't keep me clean no more. Lost all my dignity. Puked blood today. Can't be soon 'fore I join my darling. Guess our boys are long dead. Hope they died quicker and easier than folks round here. Conceived in fucking liberty... We can't hallow or consecrate this ground...' He was overtaken by a coughing fit, his body shaking. 'Last full measure of devotion... It shall not perish from the earth. No, no, no.'
'Turn it off, J.B.,' said Ryan.
Don Haggard's voice was weakening. 'Heard knocking a whiles back, but I couldn't... wouldn't have... not going out again.' The man staggered to his feet, swaying to and fro, pointing a finger at the camera. 'Do you feel fucking lucky, punk?' he said, to the bewilderment of two people a century later.
That was the last he said.
Then there was the noise of someone being violently sick Ч a choking, tearing sound that went on and on until J.B. pushed the Fast Forward button again. Don Haggard never reappeared, though the tape ran right on through to its end and automatically rewound itself.
'Going to take it?' asked the Armorer.
'No. Like robbing a grave. Not right. Leave it here.'
They switched off everything, gently pulling the door shut and climbing out into the cool of the late evening. Ryan lowered the exit hatch, swinging the wheel-lock on it, making sure that no casual predator would disturb the last resting place of Don and Peggy Haggard of West Lowellton, Louisiana.
They returned to the Adelphi Cinema without incident and rejoined Jak Lauren in good time for the last fire-fight.
