Chapter Six

Chapter 6

Kids and other Calamities

In the words of Captain Harmon Rabb Jr.

We woke up the next morning and we could feel the temperature change. Our heaters were compensating for the cold and we knew that there was no escaping the killing cold that was among us. We wondered if any survivors were still up there, but the fleet admiral, our CO, indicated that anybody still up there was contaminated with radiation and thus shouldn’t be brought in since they would contaminate the rest of the bunker. It was a cold, pragmatic decision, but the survival of our group was the utmost importance. You could tell that the decision ate at him, though. If there was one thing that I knew about my friend and superior officer, he agonized over decisions that put someone in danger of dying. And in this case, his decision spelled out a death sentence.

We would send Sadie (SD-001) out to measure temps, radiation levels and other things, as well as gain an idea of what sort of climate we were dealing with. Black soot in the air complicated matters since the radiation in the soot was deadly and it was settling all over the landscape and it would take hundreds of thousands of years before the radiation died down to background levels and was rendered harmless. And that made life much more risky on the surface. What if your property you chose to build your new house on was contaminated with black soot. You had a major problem there – and you would pay the price of that miscalculation with birth defects and eventual death by radiation poisoning.

It wasn’t long before Meg went into labor just about the time that Kimber started getting really lonely. She didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to me. She was too busy pining over the fleet admiral since he was all eyes for his girl, Meg...my former legal and investigation partner when I was with the Judge Advocate for the US Navy. We don’t know exactly what is going on...whether we are now still a part of the US Navy or whether since contact with Command and Control has ceased, we are stuck being as a militia group which is now on its own. Frankly. I don’t mind the fact that we are in a militia group since we all have some structure this way and our former ranks will be continued. It’s whether or not we can find others to help structure our group the way we want it. We would have to live with the situation and hope for the best.

No matter how much the Pentagon used to crack down on him, Animal, no matter what rank he was, led from the front. When his battle group was flying combat missions over Iraq, he’d end up flying the missions with them. The Pentagon used to say admirals lead from the flag bridge. Animal used to say that idea was absolute horseshit and he’d strap on a jet and fly the mission because he stated, “How can I send my men into battle if I can’t be bothered to lead by example?” The mission got done, the targets got obliterated...and the Pentagon grand poobahs frankly forgot about it all, that Animal had gone against their wishes to keep him safe and in a rearward quarters as he had accomplished the mission. So there!

By the time I'd gone back to the fleet, Animal had become the Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and very well could have become the next Chief of Naval Operations; well in actual fact he did just that; just before the balloon went up. So I knew we were in capable hands in terms of command of the bunker and in terms of our overall survival. Afterall we all wanted to survive despite the fact that our prospects looked bleak.

Artie and Sadie would take turns going out into the miasma of radiation and taking readings. We were hoping for a good sign but unfortunately we weren't getting any. They were not finding any at least as far as we could tell. The cloud cover was as thick as molasses. And snow started to cover the ground. There were thick flakes floating down and Sadie's Geiger counters in went bananas. So unfortunately, we were stuck in the bunker for the duration of the time that it would take for the radiation to deteriorate to the point where humans could come out of the bunker and actually start the process of construction. We had no choice but to start working on potions to prolong our longevity. In fact orders were now in place that each human living in the bunker would have to take Young Again potions every time they reached the age of eighty. And that we were to try to produce as many offspring as possible in order to have a work force that was large enough to restore Sunset Valley to what it used to be. Funny to have Americans and Canadians together in a little enclave living and working in Canada, but I wasn’t going to complain.

So when Meg started having contractions it startled the living heck out of me. And from what I could see it was painful contractions. It looked as though she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming in pain. However the baby eventually came out after some time.

He was a spitting image of of a young Animal with red hair. And if the war hadn't happened he probably would be bound for Naval Aviation or the JAG Corps the two designators his mom.and dad were in. Of course the war made it so that only foot-soldiers would be a part of the new military.

We had been blown back into the near stone-age. In fact, the weapons that we had would only suffice until such time as we ran out of ammunition; depending on how much our stockpiles were in terms of gunpowder and other necessary things that would allow us to be able to create primers and loads for our rounds, we would end up having to melt metal and refine it into swords so that we had weapons handy. As far as I could see, this was going to end up being a savage world that we were coming back into. We were now roving bands of savages that would throw rocks and spears made of wood. At least we had the capacity to be able to communicate with each other in a form other than grunts and screams.

How would we manage? Would we all make it? What primitive life-forms would we have to deal with? Were there new creatures that we didn’t know anything about? These were the surprises that awaited us in the treacherous gloom. For right now we would have our shelter and hope and pray that we are able to keep it secure from those who would try to gain entry and do us harm.

Not too long after I saw Meg conversing with Kimber, I saw a fellow, an adult with a mustache, wandering around the bunker looking lost and trying to come to grips with where he was. Without the mustache, he had an uncanny resemblance to our Dear Leader of the Bunker. Evidently someone had mastered the art of cloning; progressing the clone in age from infant to young adult in a matter of minutes. That in itself was a total mind-twist. And what ethically could that do to us as a species. If we needed an army, all we had to do was take our most capable fighters and clone them into hundreds of clones that could decimate any oncoming invasion force. But was that right for us to do? To clone ourselves into an army which would essentially do nothing but die for us. The ethics of cloning leapt back up to bite us in the face. Yet did we have a choice? If the Russians or the Chinese attacked us, we would be sitting ducks in this bunker. We needed to be able to get out of here and have the manpower to be able to protect our stronghold. And it wasn’t just Meg and Kimber either. There were others in the bunker who were sadly unpaired; a situation which sorely needed to be changed so as to increase the genetic diversity of this bunker.

Genetic Diversity was the bugaboo; the fly in the ointment of this apocalypse. We could try to repopulate the earth but if we were inbred, that wouldn’t be a good thing. And with only seven women and 4 men, that made things even worse and the fifth was a clone of one. Somehow both Animal and Meg’s boy and River and Haruo’s boy ended up with a doll that was sufficiently kept out of the path of radioactive particles and thus was safe for the children to use. That was until Jen shouted Eureka, holding up a flask with a gold liquid in it. “Sir, I’ve found out a potion, but I have absolutely no idea what it does.” She said to Animal.

“Well, Chief, Let me know if you know how to duplicate the process and create a duplicate potion...so that we can make it over and over again.” the Fleet Admiral replied.

“Aye-aye, sir!” Jen grinned at Animal.

What I would have given to be a fly on the wall when Captain Kimber “Jugs” Benton went into the fleet admiral’s quarters to ask if he would consent to donating some DNA. Those conversations always go over well. However I figure that it went well since we now have Katsuo Nakamura – in order to keep everything in the family. I suppose. And we have one more breeding pair. And frankly, that is always a good thing, even if the genes are almost identical with some genetic manipulation to the contrary. I can hear Mrs. R. McIrish-Chikamori have a jaw-dropping moment when Bebe Hart, our soon-to-be medical officer, asks her if she might be able to get a DNA sample from Haruo. And I’m sure that the same conversation took place.

Things are rapidly going nuts around here.

In the words of Fleet Admiral Toshio “Animal” Nakamura

To be asked by Captain Benton if she could take a sample of my DNA was rather disconcerting to say the least; and I was speechless for a long moment trying to, in my mind, figure out what it was that was prompting her to try to get a sample. There were two other unattached males in the bunker that needed mates however none of the two invoked Captain Benton’s interest. Least of all Commander Philip Burrows.

“Sir, I know that this is going against the Uniform Code of Military Justice and blowing the fraternization rules to smithereens, but sir, you have to admit that this is extenuating circumstances, wouldn’t you agree?” Kimber had approached me in my quarters while I was not prepared to be meeting up with guests.

“I’m not sure, Captain, what your argument is here, but I’d have to agree that this has to be some form of extenuating circumstance in terms of what the regulations allow. Admittedly, we have a group that isn’t going to run afoul of the UCMJ in terms of anything other than perhaps insubordination or perhaps treason and I doubt that will be of any use, considering the fact that the atmosphere is poisoned – there really is no way to communicate with any other foreign parties.” I said in reply.

“Sir, we’ve served together for a long time.”

“That we have, Captain Benton.”

“I have to tell you something, sir.”

Oh no, here it comes. I thought to myself as I looked into her eyes. She had always been my wing-man protecting my six when we were in the air. We were a tight team, my RIO, her RIO, she and I. The group of four that crewed our two F-14 Tomcats...and my jaw dropped open when she told me that she loved me with every essence of her being, but that she couldn't take me away from Meg, the woman she knew that I loved, but that my team-mate through three wars, Desert Storm, Bosnia and the Second Iraqi War was going to settle for second best and create a clone of me to bed. I basically had absolutely no words for that. “Did you talk to Meg?” was my only question once I could trust myself to speak. I think I was too afraid that my brain was going to explode or something.

“I did...” was her answer – short and simple. Jugs was always a straight shooter, the same way she flew, no fancy stuff, by the book and deadly. So I knew that she was being straight with me. She wasn’t about to sneak around behind Meg’s back. So I gave her the DNA that resulted in Katsuo.

I don’t know if Commander Burrows will forgive me for that, but I’m the CO of the bunker and well, my job is to make sure that the bunker stays secure and if that means making certain people happy that have the power to make my life miserable, then so be it. And at least now we knew that cloning was a viable method of repopulating the town if it came to that so that there would be no genetic defects. Along with the cloning, we found out more about DNA and how to repair damaged genetic coding to ensure the continued health of the generations. Also we were able to adjust the genetic code to eliminate genetic mutations that were detrimental to the continued longevity of our species. This was something that wasn’t foreseeable but we were grateful to the medical breakthrough of our two medical staff, CMCPON Jennifer Coates and Lieutenant Bebe Hart.

I had no idea what we would do in terms of the two civilians left in the group so I discussed it with Meg. Meg came up with the idea that we could commission Haruo as the agricultural officer in charge of the food supplies and other items with the rank of Lieutenant and River as morale officer in charge of keeping the bunker supplied with things that would help keep morale up. All three ranks including the medical officer commissions would be to the rank of Lieutenant or O-3. Normally, one has to have a United States Citizenship to become an officer in the United States Military, but we had no more United States, no more Canada. This had become a blasted out global village and our military structure was within our bunker.

And Mac remained our sole US Marine though that would soon change as Mac had insisted that we have not only AI in our Marine Corps ranks but human bodies as well and thus most of the next generation were going to be trained as Marines with the exception of those who would be trained as medical staff keeping on the tradition of Navy corpsmen who took care of the wounded Marines. Filling out our ranks was something that we were looking forward to. It was one of the first ways that we would be able to establish some normalcy after the bombs. At least what normalcy could be salvaged from a situation where we were living out of a hole in the ground. But that’s the new normal that we had to contend with insofar as post-nuclear apocalyptic day-to-day living was concerned. Thankfully a lot of the group had managed to get used to the situation quite quickly.

Every day we would hope for a change in the conditions; a reduction of the overall radioactive soot in the atmosphere, a reading from the ground that showed that the saturation of radioactive particles was deteriorating, allowing safe passage from this area to perhaps yet another area where we could somehow survive until we were able to establish a foothold genetically – where we weren’t about to become extinct in one generation. From what Lieutenant Hart was able to tell us, that genetic variation was going to be the key to our survival. Which meant that we had to somehow survive until the generations were enough that we were able to escape this bunker when the radiation came down to acceptable levels where we could take the risk to leave our bunker and eventually, the area. My mind keeps going back to movies like The Roadand books like The Last Ship. This is the situation that we’re in now; where humanity’s last remnants are clinging to life in a desperate attempt to survive. The question mark is: will we bring ourselves back from the brink of extinction. That is a question to be answered by future generations, if there is a future.

Excerpt from “The Threat of Extinction; Humanity’s Survival After the Nuclear Holocaust” by Fleet Admiral Toshio Nakamura, (MOH recipient) and Terry O’Callaghan

It cannot be stressed enough that nuclear weapons were nearly the downfall of human existence on this planet. The nuclear genie in a bottle could not be contained and the misguided idea that three nuclear superpowers wielding such weapons of mass destruction in a Mexican stand-off would lead to deterrence against annihilation was sheer hubris on the part of those who dreamed up that strategy. In my years at the top of the Navy pecking order, there was never any doubt that once the keys were turned at the command centers in the missile silos and in the launch centers of the ballistic missile submarines, there was no turning back; that humanity was on a course to wipe themselves off the face of the earth. How we managed to sleep at night knowing that we held the power of life or death over seven billion people on this planet was a miracle; that we could conduct our nuclear launch drills without cracking mentally was nothing short of incredible. Such was the discipline drilled into those who we entrust with our safety and our freedom.

Note by Terry O’Callaghan – It is interesting that the Fleet Admiral still utilizes the old sawhorse of “freedom” to engender rationale for the actions taken by US military high-command in the spring of 2019. Even five hundred years later, it is interesting that the illusory ideals of freedom and safety are still bandied around like the hundreds of thousands of nationalistic flags that are woven into the jingoistic fabric of resurgent Earth society.

80 years later
In the voice of Vice-Admiral Meg Austin-Nakamura

Our first steps into the daylight brought a cascade of new scents and visions that made us step back in amazement. In one hundred years, nature had slowly managed to heal some of the grievous wounds that had been inflicted on it. We saw young trees; green and full that had pushed up in between the cracks of the concrete pushing aside the remnants of human habitation. There were still scorch marks here and there, but the lush greenery was starting to erase those signs. And we would be one with nature – a vast difference from what it was before where we were more than likely not aware of our effects to the earth. Here we would have a chance to rebirth our society...with much more of an emphasis on living with our actions being a benefit to the earth instead of a detriment. The earth was our survival pod and we needed to start taking care of it instead of taking from it.

Artie and Sadie had measured the radioactive effects of what was left of the soot and the videos taken showed a clearing of the skies and the return of blue skies to our world. Our group had grown in numbers. My three sons were strapping young men of chronological years of seventy, seventy six and eighty exactly, each of who had taken their first young again potions and had reverted back to biological bodies in their twenties.

My husband Tosh was always by my side...and frankly, we were planning to take our dose of young-again potions which would put us biologically younger than our sons which has been a source of endless amusement of our children and of our fellow bunker-mates. We have yet to know what the new ultraviolet radiation levels are after the nuclear war and whether it will affect us now that we are at the surface rather than back in our bunker.

Katsuo and Kimber have had five children and have been married together now for over seventy five years. We are now going to have to figure out new anniversary names. Pretty soon we’ll have regular one hundred and sixtieth anniversaries which will make for interesting parties. How many candles can you put on one cake before it becomes a conflagration. Or do we have to start doing 1 candle for every twenty-five years. Happy one-hundredth anniversary with four candles. That ought to be loads of fun.

Phil somehow managed to get Kimber to allow him to donate some of her DNA to clone her as he was desperately lonely. After enough times, Kimber finally allowed him to with the express understanding that the clone was NO relation of hers and that she would disavow any relationship to him. So Katarina Ellison Burrows was created and a completely fake history was given. And Katarina and Phil went on to create six children of their own.

Mac finally said yes to Harm and they were now a couple. With treatments from Captain Bebe Hart, Mac was now able to conceive a child and they had two children. One male, one female.

Mac dissolved into hysterical laughter when Jen came over and asked her if it was possible to clone Harm, but Mac ultimately gave her permission since Jen needed to reproduce too.

Lia ultimately went and got DNA from Tosh after asking me of course and ended up marrying the clone she created. They had four children. Three boys; one girl.

So eventually, every single one of us was matched up and ready to contribute to the furthering of our species.

Lia with Clone Tadashi (Tosh)
Mac with Harm
Jen with Clone Harold (Harm)
Kimber with Clone Katsuo (Tosh)
River with Haruo
Bebe with Clone Tatsuo (Haruo)
Phil with Clone Katarina (Kimber)
Meg (me) with Tosh

I don’t really know what to say about seeing two clones of my husband running around the bunker even if they do look a bit different (one wears a moustache, the other a much longer hairstyle), but well I console myself with the fact that at least I have the original.

We don’t have much options open to us at the moment.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five - Part One

Coming to Grips with Reality

In the Words of Captain Harmon Rabb Jr.

For me, it’s hard to think of Animal and Meg together. When I look at Vice-Admiral Meg Austin, I still see the young fiery Lieutenant JG that I used to work with. But she’s now a vice-admiral; three ranks ahead of me and now I have to refer to her as Ma’am when carrying on a conversation with her. And Animal would be one to have me stand at attention while doing so; the sadistic bastard. What I do see when I look at her is the mental vision of her and Animal doing it, which in turn makes me want to douse my brain in industrial strength bleach.

I know that these are weird things to be thinking about when our very survival is at stake. But our minds cling on to things to normalize the situation or we’d all go crazy. Evidently for me, there is now two options in the bunker outside of Mac (who I find that we can’t seem to find common ground, even though she tries to talk to me. There’s been too much that has happened between the both of us to ever find common ground ever again. I don’t know where I’ll find happiness, but I have been talking with Bebe Hart and with Kimber. Captain Kimber Benton is the same rank as I am so we find commonality there. However she is still reeling emotionally from the fact that she had a crush on her former commanding officer and that Meg having taken him...has done a number on her as well as myself. Lia would be an option too, if she wasn't four ranks ahead of me as an admiral. So my options for a relationship are pretty limited.

Outside of relationships, I‘ve been doing my best to try to learn robotics. This is mind-twisting for me as I’ve never found myself to be interested in cybernetics or robotics – but Artie is special to me as he’s the first robot that I’ve ever constructed in my entire existence and successfully too, I might add. And he’s been a crucial part of our bunker staff since he’s the only one that is allowed to go out and reconnoitre the area. And he’s the one that brings back the crucial intel that allows us to determine just how much radiation levels have dropped in the last six months. We have yet to go through the majority of our rations, but we are at a crux. We need to make sure that we are able to last in the bunker through the rest of the year so that radiation levels are low enough that it won’t be much of an elevated risk to live on the surface.

The sounds though that Meg describes as chilling are also what worries me. Will the weapons that we have work to protect us from these new creatures? And how many of these new creatures are now a permanent part of the environment that will be what will meet us when we live at the surface of this new Earth? What percentage of humans still survive on the surface who weren’t so lucky as to have a bunker to take cover in when the warheads started going off? Do we dare take ourselves from our secure bunker and try to live at the surface again like before the war or do we just resign ourselves to living in the bunker for the rest of our existence and only come out in packs to form hunting parties for rations? Our bunker is our security but it can also be our crypt if we aren’t careful. There is only one exit and that’s directly into the maelstrom of the surface and we could be trapped if there is a concerted effort to attack our only refuge.

These are all questions that serve to keep me up at night. Though I know that the bunker command staff is actively looking at these questions, I have to think of these as well. It could very well mean our survival as a whole.

So what do we do to survive. All I know is that in the meetings that we’ve had we have been actively looking at increasing the numbers of our group. Of course that will take more rations and over time will start to seriously deplete what we have. In that regards we will have to look at moving to the surface and forming hunting parties to make sure that we don’t run out of food. But are the creatures that now populate the surface edible...and which are now venomous or poisonous? We don’t even know what the radiation has done to the living creatures that we’ve known in the past. Will we run across nightmare deer with horns and dripping fangs and bears that have grown ten times the size of what they were? How will we managed to survive if we’re looking over our shoulder trying not to get eaten.

These questions keep me awake at night and confound me during the day where I’m trying to figure out what I have to do to bolster our plumbots so that they can easily overcome what is out there waiting for us when the outside radiation count lowers itself to the point where we can emerge from our bunker and start the process of rebuilding our civilization. Hopefully we will never have to deal with nuclear weapons again. We have made that mistake and have trod down the road to utter annihilation. Hopefully we won’t be stupid enough to set foot down that road again. Albert Einstein did say one prophetic statement, “I know not with what weapons WWIII will be fought, but WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones.” We certainly have become more philosophical in our captivity within the bunker confines. Perhaps thinking will do us some good in any case. It appears that prior to the devastation, we were more apt to do things without thinking of the consequences. Now with the fact that we nearly bombed ourselves into oblivion, we pretty much have to consider the fact that we need to think before we do.

There are two women pregnant within the bunker confines and I try not to think about it, since one of them is Meg. Evidently, her and Animal’s bedroom exercises have resulted in the creation of a new life. It’s hard for me to grasp the fact that Meg is now pregnant – she was in her late forties but now as a result of taking the young-again potion, she is now back at twenty years old physically...though her chronological age is still late forties. All of us having taken the young-again potions, we’re all twenty years old which makes for some very interesting physiological changes within us. We have the opportunity to do our life over again, as many times as is necessary, until we get the earth back to its pre-war condition again.

A few of us thought to bring a few pieces of entertainment. We have a TV and a stereo. We had the opportunity to take a few special belongings with us. Animal had delivered a nice library of baroque and classical music that he was able to listen to – stuff that would forever be lost to us with the nuclear holocaust that we’d endured. A cry from the past centuries of a civilization that has managed great things, yet also was unable to manage itself in a way that would secure its longevity. We would never see the likes of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Handel or their like ever again. Violins and other instruments were ash...with the exception of the few that we had in our bunker; what seeds of trees that could rebirth the craft to build these instruments of inexplicable beauty and tonal quality would take centuries – with the advent of the young-again potion, we would be able to rebuild, but the mastery of such instruments was gone. There were no teachers left. Pianos were also limited to the one or two that we had within the bunker as well – two concert grands. We could plink to our hearts content, but the instruction that would get us to the level of mastery was gone. What was left to us was a life of mundane practicality where every step that we took, every activity that we engaged in...had to benefit the practical nature of what was left to us – the chore of rebuilding the planet into a state where human civilization could once again flourish. But the question remains; will the fates allow us to get back what was lost. All we had was our bunker and the hope that we could somehow salvage the remains of a civilization top-side. If not, we were doomed to starvation and death. What gave us hope was that the merchants were somehow managing to survive the onslaught of fallout and radiation...and eventually we would evolve to take into account the greater need for UV protection from genetics. Eventually we would overcome the problems that we would have to face.

Who would even think that there was something to help those who would suffer. Lia learning more and more about alchemy, an mystical art that absolutely boggles the mind since it has never been anything more than the realm of fantasy nerds and people who play Magic the Gathering and they have ended up turning into reality. Lia and River would spend hours upon hours in front of a desk upon which sat a medieval bound book that contained all manner of esoteric concoctions and spells. They would call out each ingredient as they tossed them into the mixing cauldron, such as one metalmark butterfly, one lavender leaf, one gold; one peppermint. Was there an eye of the newt in there somewhere? Who knew? All I knew was that the world had changed in a fundamental way. Things that weren’t possible before were now...in the realm of possibility.

In the words of Fleet Admiral Toshio M. “Animal” Nakamura

I had read many of the reports from the National Academy of Science pertaining to ballistic missile defense and the various strategies combined to stop intermediate and long-range missiles from penetrating our rocket defenses. The main strategy for the Pentagon was to stop as many of the missiles as possible from reaching their targets; our primary defense was our own ballistic missiles so that we could effectively engage a second strike should one be necessary and in order to do that our own missiles had to be protected. Which in essence meant that some of our cities had to be sacrificed in order to ensure adequate coverage to protect our second-strike capability. This was cold, hard calculation designed to calculate how much damage we could do to the Russians or any other nuclear adversary and still be able to exert control over the Western and Eastern Hemispheres.

I had sat in on many of these conversations – high level meetings so I was very well aware that when the missiles flew, our response would have been such that Russia would have ceased to exist. With four 800kt nuclear missiles targeted right on the Moscow’s central dome, the seat of power of the Russian Politburo would have been vaporized. Likewise, I was certain that similar high-level meetings were held on the opposite ends which would have targeted the Pentagon in such a way that nothing would be left of our edifice of National Defense but a mile deep smoking hole. And I was quite certain that the Chinese would have targeted three DF5 intercontinental ballistic missiles directly on the garden just to prove their point that their missiles with their gigantic five megaton warheads would be accurate enough to nail the center of the Pentagon in a highly destructive game of darts and vaporize it to nothing but radioactive dust.

We were well aware that some of their warheads were primed for surface detonation, which meant that some would potentially bury themselves three hundred feet into the ground at terminal velocity before detonating which would kick up a lot of dust that would be radioactive from the fission process and then send it downwind on the jetstream in the form of fallout potentially killing thousands more than who were vaporized by the initial blast. This was the end-game for which we had signed up for when we had signed on the dotted line of our enlistment and subsequent commissioning as officers in the United States Navy. Meg had worked in weapons, developing newer and better ways for us humans to ultimately wipe ourselves off the face of the planet. But what else could we do when everyone else was doing the same thing? And this arms race began over fifty thousand years ago when the first biped decided to pick up a rock and hurl it at the next biped, then came sharpened sticks...and so on and so on.

...and what we saw on Artie’s video camera eyes, were the chilling conclusions of what we saw on the monitors as Artie walked out and surveyed the destruction. This wasn’t what astronaut Buzz Aldrin called the moon: magnificent desolation but a terrifying wasteland, deathly surroundings which had once been alive. Yet somehow deer still wandered here and there munching on what had been once alive, but was now dead and not the slightest bit of nutrition...yet the deer were still standing. This was an anomaly that we were not expecting in the slightest.

We were still gauging when it was that we were going to emerge from the bunker to start life anew, but the signs were not encouraging in the slightest. Artie’s reconnoitre videos were pored over and scrutinized for every single detail that we could glean.

There is an understanding of history in caution. We’ve all seen cartoons of the Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote. Wile E always walking out gleefully into the middle of the road with no sense of caution and then getting hit by a truck or chasing after the Roadrunner off a cliff, the Roadrunner always managing to come to a stop just before the edge, while Wile E despite his efforts ended up comically suspended in mid-air while his comprehension of his situation caught up to him. It was always good for a laugh as he silently waved good-bye, subdued as to his fate...knowing that he was going to inevitably have a lot of pain inflicted on him. Plummeting hundreds of feet down and impacting with a dust cloud and a rather Coyote shaped hole out of which he would crawl battered and bruised and if he was doubly unlucky an enormous boulder would have followed him down carefully timed to impact right after he had straightened himself up. Then we would all laugh as the boulder would lift balanced on his head as poor Wile E ended up walking away...folded like an accordion with accompanying dissonant accordion sounds. However the lesson learned even in that cartoon was that we should all be cautious in everything that we do.

...and it was that lesson that we were taking into account when we were being cautious about emerging from our bunker too soon. We did not have the benefit of plot armor which would protect us from the radiation or from the various potentially mutated predators that now were roaming the wastelands as in fiction. We were susceptible to anything: infections, radiation sickness, predation, and the weather. Yes, the weather had been thrown into turmoil after the nuclear exchange.

Artie’s reconnoitres told us one thing: that the situation was bad. And I mean, real bad. The radiation half-lives of the dust were such that it was lethal to brush up against a plant that was lightly dusted with the fall-out from the nuclear exchange. The optimistic viewpoint was that the half-life of a million years for the fallout from those weapons would go down exponentially as each day passed. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the case. Going up to the surface would involve protective gear and precautions that would resemble the preps for a space-walk Hence the reason why Artie and whoever else we built would end up being our terranauts who would venture out into a hostile world and be able to ascertain when it was safe for us to emerge like a butterfly from a chrysalis – our protective bunker. How similar our situation was to those up in space however we still had the benefit of a planet with oxygen however unbreathable it was.

Those astronauts that were in space on the ISS (International Space Station) at the time of the nuclear exchange now realized that they were stranded for good; no resupply missions ever. Their choice was clear, either starve to death or do the unthinkable (cannibalize their station-mates for a few more days of survival for themselves) or their final choice; venting the station to the void of space insuring a quick demise for all onboard.

Meg’s and my relationship continued to grow and flourish, in direct inverse relation to the outdoors. She was now pregnant with our child and she bloomed; as beautiful as ever. Of course I wasn’t oblivious to Harm’s watching her as well. However, he knew in harsh black and white finality that Meg was my girl-in-port. I had been a single man, too wrapped up in my career to truly care about relationships until I met Meg. As Harm did Mac, both of us pairs circled each other like moths to twin flames unable to commit. Harm and Mac were too caught up in their careers and each wondering if the other was toying with them. For Meg and me, it was the fact that her Naval Weapons Research was highly classified and did not give her an option for getting married and having children. It was only the end of the world that brought Meg and me together finally.

“Hey, beautiful...” I said to her. “How’s your morning so far?”

“Well...your kid is trying to kick my bladder.” Meg informed me playfully as I took her into my arms.

Bebe from what I could tell was studying child-birth in the medical textbook that was constantly with her, even at the dinner table. I could see her studying even between bites of her meal. She was doing her very best to get to the point where she could be of use as a medical officer. I was figuring that she would probably be commissioned as such. The other two civilians were a toss up. Haruo was a good fisherman, but was he military material? It was unlikely as he was too independent a spirit to serve in the military, yet I knew that if it came down to it, he would pick up a rifle with the rest of the crew and fight to defend us. Mrs. Chikamori was also another question mark. She was highly artistic, but artists had no place in the hard-bitten, task-oriented world of the military. They served to keep our spirits up. If we needed a morale officer, perhaps she could be it, but unfortunately at this stage of survival, Haruo’s and River’s only task was by procreating and swelling our group’s numbers.

I pulled my Meg into an embrace...and a passionate kiss.

“Honey, How are you doing?” Meg asked me meaningfully. She was always aware of my moods and we’d grown much closer over the last few months and she could read me like a book, hell we were sleeping in the same bed and she could feel my every toss and turn in my sleep. “You haven’t been sleeping well this past week...I know you’re thinking about something.”

“Yeah, Artie’s recon data. It’s not looking good, is it.”

“No, it isn’t, but you know we just have to make do.”

“What if we run out of food?” I asked her; my voice sounded plaintive. It sounds weak for me as the ranking officer in the bunker to ask a three-star for her opinion, but to hell with it, she was my beloved and I was needing her counsel as a lover and not as a commanding officer.

She paused for a long moment. “I don’t think it’ll come to that. Sweetheart, We have bags of soil that we were provisioned with, which means that we can make a garden in the upper level near the pond. Remember that we also have cows. They’ve been calving too so we have an endless supply of milk that we can turn into cheese provided that they are kept fed from our garden. We have enough chickens that we get eggs from every morning. What provisions we have are not an end sum situation, my love.” How my heart swelled when she called me that. She was mine and I was plainly hers. “As long as we play it smart and replenish the soil’s nutrients with the remnants of our food and organic waste, we’ll have a supply of food to draw from. We just have to make the garden big enough.”

We had enough of a high-tech recycling plant that disinfected and deodorized our urine that we could create clean drinkable water from our liquid waste; drinking our recycled pee if you want to be crude about it. We cooked with it and it was connected to our faucets...so essentially it was a closed-circuit plumbing system which drained our gray-water to the water recapture plant and disinfecting station which deodorized and disinfected (removing bacteria including e coli) the water into pure drinking and cooking water. There was more than eleven million gallons located in a reservoir underground that was sealed to radiation and chemical leaching and that recycled through our closed system generated enough water to make drinkable, use for cooking and water our plants. Even the cow’s pee was collected too through filter grates in the floor...so that we were able to recapture that as well and send it through the water filtration and recycling plant.

All of which meant to reassure me that if we had to we could stick it out down here for years if necessary. But hopefully Artie and his fellow plumbots (when we made them) would give us some reassurance that retaking the surface would be possible sooner than that. But for right now, we’d consider that the timetable as it stood was to forecast the worst possible outcome. That way we were prepared. We were getting plenty of footage that the Faraday caged servers and hard-drives were collecting and that would go towards making sure that we could ascertain what our next moves were. This was our planet and we needed to reclaim it.

I was unsure of how many other shelters may have survived this nuclear exchange. Most home-built shelters would have a survival ratio of about 0.0001%. At most out of a now-world population of six million people, there may be about sixty shelters left intact and most of them would be military provisioned much as we were and judging for the fact that Cheyenne Mountain was well known and targeted by at least ten DongFengs 5s as well as several multi-megatonnage of Soviet warheads, the likelihood that it was a molten rock and a monument to those entombed inside would be high. As most would have had to vacate by two weeks. That was the estimate by US Civil Defense Corps which in essence was absolute bullshit – walking into certain death judging by the fact that we could see pictorial and video evidence to the complete contrary that two weeks was not enough to protect oneself against lethal amounts of radiation encountered on the outside.

Upon discussing with Mrs. McIrish-Chikamori about the fact that she was feeling something; an eerie feeling went over me as she stated, “Something has awakened. This thing that we could define as magic...is something that the world hasn’t seen. It’s been talked about in fables and in stories but never has something like this ever come to pass in the real world. But now it’s here. I can feel it through my bones and my nerves. There is magic all around us now and we must control it or we will suffer.” I stared at the alchemy table with a look of suspicion and I felt like one of the Catholic inquisitors of old wondering if she was a witch. We didn’t burn people at the stake now but a chill went through my body at her revelation. “Those who can control the power will rule.” she had said with a flat stare. Yeah, thanks lady for that bit of terror-inducing revelation. Let me go to the washroom before I piss my pants here.

I wasn’t sure what to make of this; whether she was joking or not. But there was something there that wasn’t and it felt like a tingle to most of us. You could almost liken it to a feeling that one gets in that movie about space wizards and light swords where you can precognition an event happening and throw things around with a flick of your hand. What was it? Star Wars? This thing about Jedis and Sith...and how one can sense the other. That’s the sort of feeling we were getting and frankly, what forms we could sense were hostile. Darwin was right. Evolution is a savage game; and those who aren’t good at predation or hiding from predators were the first to get eaten.

We have heard scratching on the doors and believe me, it is unnerving to know that something with sharp-teeth and claws may be out there ready to rend us into little tiny meaty chunks. That was a deep terrorizing fear that we would end up being food for whatever was out there waiting for us. Needless to say, it was not a comforting feeling so we trained.

We decided to get physically prepared and for me, that was something in itself as I hadn’t been as diligent with my training as I had been in the past since I was no longer flying fast jets. I did go to the gym to keep up the physique before but that was only to make sure that I looked good enough for the media. Being overweight and out of shape could be a career-killer in a career that was mean to be such where you had to remain physically fit. It was sad knowing that my F-14A Tomcat that I’d flown since I was an O-2 to 0-6 grade was now a molten hunk of no-longer air-grade aluminum torched in nuclear hell-fire. Fast Eagle 104, 101 (the CO’s Bird) and 100 (the CAG Bird) were no more. Unless someone had the foresight to bury my F-14 so far underground in a repository meant to keep those items of significance from being destroyed; the aircraft I flew for most of my career were vaporized. In fact most aircraft would have been vaporized. Now warfare was going to be a ground-pounders game once again.

I had flown combat missions over Iraq during Desert Storm, I’d flown missions over Bosnia-Herzegovina; my last were over Afghanistan as Commander Air Wing 12 (CAG) ordering missions that my former VF-41 Black Aces and VF-14 Tophatters would fly air-ground carrying a pair of 2000lb Mk 84s.

In the Words of Colonel Sarah Mackenzie, USMC

I'd often wondered if Harm would talk to me. It seemed strange that he has always been that way towards me. I've seen him with a contemplative and wistful yet sad look when he looks at me that makes me wonder if he's thinking about Diane Schonke, his dead girlfriend then again there are times that I know that he's looking at me and thinking about me. And frankly I just wish he would say something directly to me about it.

And lo and behold. Mr. Hot-shot Naval Aviator does get up the courage to approach me and of course my traitorous heart skips a beat. After the Allegiance incident, we went our separate ways and I told him.that our last chapter hadn't been written yet, Harm has been behaving like a kicked puppy, wary of approaching me, feeling me out. And well, considering the way we left off it's certain that he's uncertain about the whole thing. I'm still open to giving it a go. But he has to be all-in too or it will never work.

Then of course Meg is in the picture and according to Harm, Miss Weapons Expert Lawyer Extraordinaire is head over heels for the Fleet Admiral. She also has a bun in the oven courtesy of the Fleet Admiral that makes it hard for Harm to reconcile that she, his former legal partner, has absolutely no interest in rekindling their platonic relationship. She's also a three-star too. And out-ranks him considerably. That's got to rankle Harm quite a bit since he out-ranked her at one point.

But we all have better things to worry about than who is jealous of her though I feel the jealousy vibes coming right off Captain Kimberly Benton. I remember her as the Fleet Admiral's wingman when she was a Commander and he was Captain and CO of the Air Wing.

I definitively know who are the triumvirate in charge in this bunker. Fleet Admiral Nakamura and Vice-Admiral Austin as well as our JAG, Admiral Liandra Gracen. And last but not least is Command Master Chief of the Navy Jennifer Coates with her anchors and stars. The CMCPON is the highest rank in the US Navy and frankly, there once was a time that Coates was about to get booted from the Navy rather than be considered for the highest enlisted position. It's a testament to just how far she has truly come.

The radioactive fallout has caused a lot of worried looks amongst the bunker command staff and that has me worried. Humans aren’t equipped to go years underground with no supplies. There’s a lot of research being done by CMCPON Coates and by Bebe Hart (should we call her Doctor Hart now since she’s been studying medicine and trying to become a doctor so that we have medical staff on hand). And I can see the looks on their faces. When I ask them what’s going on Coates always tells me that they’re trying gene manipulation to make the plants hardier under adverse conditions. I’m not sure how that goes but we’ll see. At least we have a garden that will keep us fed that’s sealed off from the surrounding contamination.

I never learned much about post-nuclear survival. The modern day Marine Corps didn’t delve too much into that. Chances were that as the tip of the spear (the Marines usually being sent in first as shock troops), we’d end up being the target focus of tactical nuclear weapons that would severely cut down our numbers. I thought we were going to be annihilated into sub-atoms in any nuclear scenario. So this was a crash course from which there was no alternative but to graduate or die. Not really a comforting prospect if you consider it. The part about this that hits me worst is that Uncle Matt was sixteen days from getting out of Ft. Leavenworth Military Prison for his role in the Constitution heist. His lif-sentence had been commuted to time served and probation after our appeal through the federal court system. I’m trying to reconcile that Uncle Matt had lived a full life and that he would want me to survive, but I can’t help but feel survivor’s guilt. I don’t know how the others manage to get through this and not feel some sort of wonder about why they were the ones that survived and others didn’t. Yet there’s still a selfish part of me that says better me than anyone else. I know it’s self-serving but what can you do. I can’t bring them back. And I tell Harm so.

He tells me that feeling guilty is normal, but we have to push through it because our future is what is at stake. I’ve always learned in the Marines that we have to be tough; not break down, stand tall against adversity but Harm tells me that it’s normal to feel this way. Of course, he’d tell me that, He’s Navy. They’re a bunch of wusses. Funny how a little inter-service rivalry can perk me up. Meanwhile, I’m the sole United States Marine in a bunker full of Navy. No Chair Force or Space Cadets hanging out here nor a bunch of Ground Pounders. Of course, I’d be happy if we had a bunch of Army grunts hanging around, since they would be our first line of defense. However maybe with Harm’s forays into plumbot building, they’ll be our ground troops while we condition a whole new generation of leaders.

I’ve spoke to Dr. Hart about my endometriosis and she’s mentioned that there’s a lot of fine tuning that they can do with the medical and science equipment and they could potentially reverse the effects of the ovarian cysts causing the problem of infertility. Just the fact that she is willing to try to help cure me makes me appreciate the fact that the Fleet Admiral brought her and her companions in to the bunker. If I can contribute in any way shape or form regarding the re-establishment of humanity, I’m certainly going to try. And of course we have a limited gene-pool until we can make contact with other survivors...and I’m certain they’re out there somewhere. I really don’t want to be seen as taking up a spot that another potential breeding female could have been. The simple fact is that those who are infertile would have been passed over for spots in the bunker. The continuation of the species is the primary goal here. And we all have a desire to survive which makes it hard to stomach the idea of being excluded from living because we cannot produce progeny. Our genes will be meant to carry over to the next generation and beyond so that we can all manage to bring our society back to life.

The other interesting thing about the young again potion is that it’s like I’ve received a reset in my body’s cells. Old aches and pains from training and just getting old...are gone just like that. I have no doubt that my body’s cells are physiologically the same age as they were when I was chronologically twenty. I can honestly say I feel like the last thirty-four years hadn’t happened, yet my mind still feels as if I am fifty-four. The knowledge I have gained in fifty four years of existence hasn’t gone poof because I took the potion. And my body feels the age that I was thirty-four years ago. It’s a dissasociative feeling as if I am still Sarah Mackenzie, but I’m not...I’m physically Sarah Mackenzie thirty-four years ago. And I’m reminded of that now every time I look in the mirror.

In the words of Vice Admiral Meg Austin

Just knowing that Tosh is by my side makes living through this apocalypse much more tenable. He’s always asking the bunker-mates just how they’re feeling, always reading the mood of the bunker to see if there are any improvements that he can make to the overall rules concerning the infrastructure, so that small problems don’t get out of hand and the big ones are dealt with in a manner that will keep the morale high. I know he can’t do everything, but at least he tries to do what he can. And he’s not afraid to put his foot down either. The mark of a good leader is knowing how to play the different currents within a sea of subordinates; knowing when to give them slack and knowing when to rein them in. And in forty years of naval service, he has learned a deft touch in dealing with them. That’s the one thing I love about him with this exception of the attention he gives me when we’re in bed, that is. But that’s a whole nother story and one that I’m not inclined to tell here. I’m not writing a tell-all novella.

Harm, on the other hand, I’ve noticed, levels these pining looks in my direction. I’m certain that he’s thinking about the times we had working together on cases, but that was then, this is now. I’m three ranks ahead of him and as such my options are limited and now that I’m in a relationship with a child on the way, there is no way that I am looking at anyone else...ever. Tosh is my one and only.

On the topic of Tosh, however, I did get one jarring request from Captain Kimber Benton. She stated that she understood that Tosh was mine...however since there were only four adult guys to seven adult women in the bunker that she had a problem with not having someone to, well put it indelicately, scratch that itch with. She was wondering if it would be alright for her to clone my man.

I wasn’t sure at first, but realized that hogging a man to myself was probably not the right way to go. I knew that Commander Burrows was sweet on Captain Benton, but that was a violation of the regs and could potentially get him in deep trouble. His only other option was to hope that someone came along and cloned a female for him. Clones were civilians at least until they decided to go into the military. Matchups were going to be extremely interesting in the future. I noted later that Bebe Hart was doing the same thing. And frankly as she was the medical officer in the group, it was fine, as far as I was concerned. If she could train her kids to become medical staff in turn, then so much the better for us. My only concern was a shallow gene pool to choose from. There was this gold-colored potion that was supposed to turn the doll that Andrew got into a real life human being. That kind of freaked me out since dolls coming to life usually meant one thing: a not so good situation for the human being, y’know. Chucky?

Surviving this apocalypse was a matter of staying where the radiation couldn’t reach us and in that regards life went on as normal; it just meant not going outside and trying to stay away from the front door where the radiation seepage was the highest, not that it was very high to begin with, but it still was a rad or two higher than it was a floor down. Haruo, the gardener would try to make sure that he didn’t stay up there too long; sometimes we had to utilize Artie to go deal with the vegetables and fruits...we would seriously consider moving the garden farther downstairs, however it was necessary to get as many vegetables and other items as we could to make sure that our stockpiles outlasted the radiation. But other than that, it was life as usual...SNAFU; Status Nominal...all fouled up.

I could hear River go: “Bebe? Let me get this straight, you want to clone my husband?”

I couldn’t hear Bebe’s response, but I’m sure it was somewhat similar to the request I got from Kimber. River took a long moment to answer her, but I suspect that her mental cogitations were somewhat similar to mine.

“You know...that’s a strange request.” River informed her. I thought Kimber was out of her mind when she asked me too. “But I know that you’d treat a clone of Haruo the same way that you’d treat my husband...with respect and the understanding that I’m doing you a big favor. But I’d suggest that you go ask him and see what he says. If he’s fine with it, then I’m fine with it too.”

“Thanks, River...I appreciate this and I won’t forget this.” Bebe replied. I’d never held Kimber’s feet over the coals, but it had crossed my mind. I just wanted to be magnanimous. And most of them were lonely to boot so it made sense that they would be wanting to allay some of their loneliness in the arms of someone who could make the problems of survival go away for them for a short while, lose themselves in the other’s arms at least until the wakeup call (reveille) woke them up in the morning. 0500hrs was the usual wakeup. And the civilians were slowly getting used to the idea of military time. But I was starting to feel that for the military members, this thing of lounging around in civvies all the time was starting to get a bit on the lazy side and discipline was starting to waver – some discipline needed to be reinstituted. During daylight hours we military staff should be in fatigues as per military protocol.

Tosh agreed. Instituting regimentation would go a long way to making certain that rules were followed and that even the civilians knew that they were under jurisdiction of the military as long as they were a part of the bunker. Essentially, Mr and Mrs. Chikamori and Bebe Hart were Canadian subcontractors under the US Department of Defense – an unusual situation, but that was par for the course after a nuclear holocaust.

Phil had actually come up at one point to ask me if Bunker Command had heard any word from either the Pentagon or from Cheyenne Mountain. “Granite Sentry, Maple Station, Come in, Granite Sentry.” There hadn’t been a reply. We knew there wouldn’t be. Chances were that there had been at least ten DF5s targeted with maximum size warheads of 5MTs and it was clear that Cheyenne Mountain’s entrance way was probably turned to molten rock and slag. And with that, the chances of Command and Control having survived the nuclear war had gone down significantly. We realized to a man, it's just the way personnel are referred to in the service, in this bunker that we were on our own.