12/21/2012
Granite Mountains Complex
Stunned, Press Secretary Pat Michaels sat in the back of the large, crowded room that was embedded under a dank maze of tunnels. Half a mile beneath a secret military base, the compound was now being overrun with terrified citizens demanding the protection they knew the Essex could (but would not) provide.
The limestone command center was thick with smoke and people, some of them in on the original testing of these weapons. Pat hoped his own punishment would not be as harsh as theirs. After all, they had known firsthand what a horrible thing had been created. It was so powerful, so unstoppable, that the America above them was about to be destroyed and a new, hostile world would take its place.
The slyest of presidential defenders since Nixon's well-used man - Pat Michaels, former Press Secretary - was useless, forgotten in the chaos, and not even sure he should be here. His family had been in New Jersey... Someone had been with him when he got the news, had brought him along when they had evacuated from the Las Vegas convention-hall, although he wasn't sure who it had been. Amanda, the kids! How would he go on? How would anyone?
Panic was rampant. Voices barked orders, people scrambled to get information, papers floated through the humid air, and satellite phones rang continuously, annoyingly. Thanks to an EMP and a lucky shot from a disgruntled citizen with a grenade launcher, the Vice President was dead. The Speaker of the House was now the legal recipient of the highest seat in the land, but she wasn't here and neither was the new Secretary of State. No one had discovered where they had been evacuated to, or even if they were still alive. Those jobs were no longer in demand, and the result was chaos, fear in control. Maybe that would change later… if they survived the missile headed for Montana.
Deep and sturdy, this complex had been built secretly during the 1990's and was not only untested, it was less than one hundred miles from what was about to be a direct hit. Pat shuddered. They would probably feel it.
Lurking near the back wall of air vents and panels, the Press Secretary broke out into a light sweat as one of the remaining clocks on the cold, sterile walls around him neared, and then passed, the five minute mark.
Washington, New York, and most of the East Coast had already been destroyed. Of the seven warheads that the long-denied Star Wars program hadn't been able to shoot down, three were definitely going to find more U.S. targets and maybe two others that they had lost radar on as well. Their own warheads had decimated countries around the globe. Now, America would pay the price.