The Final Two Minutes

Now available in print in Apocalyptales: The End is Nigh, a collection of stories of the apocalypse.

***

Combat Commander Lou Dowds sat at his station, leafing through the pages of a worn paperback of On the Road. His love for Kerouac’s subversiveness had always drawn suspicious gazes from his superiors in the straight-laced and stiff-backed United States Military.

Probably the reason I ended up in this dead-end assignment, he thought, staring at the white walls broken up only by mainframes and data servers. No windows in sight.

The irony that the Air Force had decided to assign someone they feared might be a subversive to command one of the most secret and heavily guarded facilities in the Continental U.S. was not lost on him.

Though, I suppose, there are plenty of fail safes built into this operation to prevent any of us from going rogue.

To the right of the Main Launch Console with its buttons and indicators, the radio speaker crackled to life. Several urgent beeps followed, jarring both Dowds and Deputy Combat Commander Nelson Jarret out of their respective dazes.

Dowds couldn’t help but notice Jarret’s snort as they each reached for their notebooks. The feeling was mutual: command had really been loving their drills recently.

Pencil in hand, each Air Force officer waited for the metallic voice that followed.

“Georgia, Delta, 1, 4, Hotel, Victor.”

At the sixth word, the room seemed to darken.

No Zulu. The test authentication always ends in Zulu.

At the Alternate Launch Console, Jarret had also picked up on the discrepancy as he slowly spun in his desk chair, holding up the copied message in his hand for Dowds to read. Standard operating procedure was for them to exchange notebooks, but neither felt like correcting the other as Dowds held up his own writing.

Each looked at the other's handwriting for a moment that seemed to span lifetimes. Neither shook his head or gave any other indication they disagreed with their copying of the broadcast.

Valid message.

The first fail safe cleared.

Then, running on thousands of hours of drills, Dowds rose from his chair and walked with stiff legs to the Authenticator Safe. He started to spin the padlock combination to his memorized code, only then noticing Jarret hadn’t joined him to undo the second lock.

Instead, the Deputy Combat Commander had remained at the Alternate Launch Console, staring at the six words written in graphite. Feeling Dowds’ eyes on him, he finally stood and made his own stiff walk to the safe.

In admirable time, Jarret had his padlock removed, almost beating Dowds despite the Combat Commander’s head start.

Commander and deputy commander combinations entered.

The second fail safe cleared.

The safe door swung open, and Dowds removed the authenticator cards, flipping through them as he returned to the Main Launch Console. Jarret watched with glassy eyes as Dowds located the envelope with “GD” in block letters.

Georgia, Delta.

The third fail safe cleared.

Dowds reflected that you never could know how someone would stand up under the strain of the “big one,” the time when you no longer had the comforting veil of training to hide behind. Jarret appeared to be on the verge of cracking. Had this all been a drill, Dowds would have recommended the man be relieved of his post.

The gray envelope contained a single red square of paper. On that paper was printed the required sequence: G, D, 1, 4, H, V.

The final fail safe cleared. This was real.

After a second to exhale, Dowds turned to Jarret’s desperate eyes beneath a forehead beaded with sweat. Dowds nodded once.

Jarret’s eyes fell. Dowds could imagine what must be going through his subordinate’s mind. Jarret had two sons and a daughter, with his first grandchild on the way.

Still, the man had not forgotten his duty. He removed the key from the special lining sewn to the inside of his uniform shirt.

Dowds removed his own key. The cold metal in his fingers and all it represented ate at the corners of his consciousness, but instinct had already guided it into the slot in the Main Launch Console. Dowds met Jarret’s now listless stare, finding himself at a loss for words when the time came for the final command. Instead, he held up three fingers.

Two fingers.

One finger.

Closed fist.

Each turned their key, holding it in place for the required five seconds. Dowds heart seemed to slow, slamming against his chest wall as each moment ticked by.

Then a green indicator lit up on the console: LAUNCH ENABLE

A heartbeat later: BATTERIES ACTIVATED

Within seconds, the batteries had charged, and the system switched to internal power: APS POWER

The bell rang above their heads, signaling the bay door had finished its long slide backward. Eyes drawn from the console, Dowds found Jarret had not collapsed into his desk chair as he had halfway expected.

Instead, the man stood at full attention, eyes trained on a horizon neither man could see.

Dowds turned back to the console. They had now reached the final series of events.

GUIDANCE GO

MAIN ENGINE START

FIRE IN ENGINE

The launch room quivered beneath their feet despite the reinforcement. Looking up toward where the missile would be rising from the sands of the Arizonan desert at that moment, Dowds turned his eyes back to the now inert Main Launch Console, forever frozen in its final stage.

LIFT OFF

Neck buzzing, he turned his head to find Jarret looking at him once more. The thousand-yard stare had retreated, replaced by a face that seemed equal parts terrified and ashamed.

Guilt, Dowds realized.

As the tremors subsided, Dowds watched a single tear trace down Jarret’s cheekbone.

No longer able to look his subordinate in the eye, Dowds sunk to his chair and retrieved his Kerouac with fingers that were now trembling. The entire operation had taken two minutes, slightly slower than the prescribed time, but that didn’t seem important anymore.

Words blurred in Dowds’ vision. No matter. He knew them all by heart. With eyes moister than before, he looked up to find Jarret hadn’t moved.

The man seemed to be waiting. Waiting for Dowds to speak, to wave the flag and state that they had done their duty, that they had defended their country.

Waiting for his commander to absolve them of the horror they had just unleashed.

In response, Dowds only shook his head and turned back to On the Road, ignoring the couple of water spots that had now appeared in one corner.

The end of the world had started in the silence between these two men.

So why speak now?

***

The story continues in "The November Network" as the perspective shifts to the opposing side and their response to the opening salvo of the war: