The Last Full Measure Read online

  —• I don’t know if anyone is receiving this transmission, or if there’s anyone left at any of our ABC affiliate studios to broadcast this report, but if we’re stranded over here, we’re going to keep filming. I’m James Novik, standing in Vilnius, Lithuania, watching a scene that is playing throughout many former Soviet states today. Several hours ago, Russian planes dropped leaflets welcoming people back to the Soviet Union, and radio and television broadcasts began communicating the same message. A short time later, Russian, or I suppose we can now say Soviet, tanks, trucks, and troop carriers, supported by their air force, deployed from occupied Ukraine. They quickly moved into Belarus, crushing the limited resistance they encountered. Now they’ve entered Lithuania in the same way. The Lithuanian military made some attempt to resist the invasion, but they were hopelessly outnumbered by Soviet forces.

  What you’re seeing behind me is a column of well-armed Soviet soldiers marching down a major street in Vilnius, singing the Soviet national anthem, with the lyrics now updated to mention “Putin our leader.” The civilian population is watching this display of military power, monitored closely by soldiers, who are handing out small red Soviet flags for the people to wave. I’m told this same footage is being shown on RT, well, on Soviet state television, where Vladimir Putin has proclaimed the people’s faces to be wet with tears of joy. Somehow, as these invaders raise their crimson flag with its golden hammer and sickle, I do not think the crying people are full of joy. Putin’s dreams of reestablishing the Soviet Union are apparently being realized now that NATO is no longer backed by the American military. This is James Novik, for ABC News, or … whoever is left to air this. •—

  —• MetLife has folded not only because its headquarters in New York has been destroyed, but because, quite simply, there is no way that any insurance company could pay out literally millions of separate insurance claims for the damage inflicted by the nuclear bombs. Look, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, produced insured losses of nearly forty billion dollars, but that is going to be insignificant compared to the insured losses in life and property, not just in New York and Washington, DC, but in the hundreds of cities that have been basically destroyed by radiation.

  It may seem petty to be talking about financial issues in the wake of such a terrible loss of life, but our national capital and primary financial center are now gone. The resulting economic catastrophe will have dire consequences for us all. It’s times like these that we need the federal government to step in and make decisions to try to provide some financial security and straighten a lot of this out. Unfortunately, we essentially have no federal government anymore. •—

  —• CNN’s Jenna Martin brings us a disturbing report on a sad new twist in America’s border crisis. Jenna?”

  “Thanks, Jerry. For decades, Americans have struggled with the problem of dealing with an influx of immigrants, both legal and undocumented. Now, however, after weeks of civil war in America and the nuclear detonations in New York and Washington, DC, the situation is reversed. Canadian Prime Minister Stewart Hadley announced today that Canada’s borders are closed to refugees. He did promise that Canadian relief supplies will be moved to refugee stations on the American side of the border. He was also quick to add that providing supplies for refugee stations in New England does not constitute the Canadian government’s official recognition of the so-called independent nation of New England.

  “To the south, the situation is much worse. Mexican President Emilio Nevarez has closed his country to all Americans and fortified the Mexican border with the US using Mexican military and law enforcement personnel. Some Americans, desperate to flee the civil war, have tried to cross the border anywhere they can, sometimes attempting to climb over or even break through the wall. Many have been shot by Mexican law enforcement, firing in response to what they insisted were armed American invaders. •—

  —• Shout Out founder and CEO Martin Zimmerman confirmed today that the state-of-the-art Shout Out server base in Connecticut has been destroyed by the EMP from the recent nuclear detonation. Worldwide users of Shout Out experienced significant lag and interruptions to service as the backup servers in California attempted to take over. That system overloaded and crashed a few hours later. Zimmerman says the company would try to rebuild, but because of the war, suitable parts are no longer being manufactured or are reserved for military use. He also spoke about the overwhelming expense of replacing the massive server stations. Shout Out facilities had been insured, but their insurance company collapsed shortly after the nuclear attack. In response to hundreds of thousands of requests for data recovery, Zimmerman offered his apologies, but forensic retrieval of important user messages, photographs, or videos will not be possible. You’re listening to ABC News. •—

  —• US nuclear experts disagree on the cause of the explosion in the number three reactor at the Indian Point nuclear power plant, about forty miles north of New York City. Some experts suggest that a surge in the power lines around the city, caused by the warhead’s powerful electromagnetic pulse, might have traveled to the plant and shorted out some of the fail-safe systems. Others have theorized that ground tremors might have been significant enough at the plant to cause something to go wrong.

  “Whatever the cause, the immediate crisis is clear. The protective dome built around the reactor is severely cracked. This image comes to you via camera drone, and those spots you see are the result of radiation eating away at the drone’s electronics. Radiation levels in the plume of smoke and other fumes are over three thousand rads. That’s several times the lethal dose, far worse than the level of radiation in the fallout zones around New York and Washington, DC. If this reactor cannot be sealed, it will continue to spew an even larger cloud of radioactive fallout, contaminating the ground, air, and water, and rendering an even larger portion of North America uninhabitable. Moreover, because the Indian Point nuclear power plant is located on the bank of the Hudson River, a great deal of nuclear contamination could be carried out to the Atlantic Ocean.

  “Before the nuclear attack, about seventeen million people lived within fifty miles of the plant, and despite a massive number of fatalities and a significant evacuation effort, hundreds of thousands still reside around Indian Point. Now their hopes rest on the 247th Army Engineer Battalion. The mission of the engineers is to fill the remnants of the breached dome with lead, which will absorb some of the radiation from the extraordinarily hot fire inside. Afterward, they will seal the cracked dome inside a second dome of cement, and then they will encase the entire structure in a massive steel-and-concrete sarcophagus. Since radiation degrades silicon chips, robots and drones cannot complete this work. The Army Corps of Engineers is forced to send in human beings, and many of them will be exposed to very harmful and even lethal levels of radiation. Because of this, NBC will be broadcasting videos the soldiers have filmed for their loved ones through the next several days. Here’s the first of those.”

  “I’m First Lieutenant Winnie McBride. I want to tell my family back home that I love them, and that I’m doing this for them. We’re going into the radiation zone to seal that reactor breach, and we’re not coming out. To my daughter, Kristina, I need you to remember that Mommy loves you very much. As you grow up without your mother, please try to understand that someone had to go in there and do this. Try to remember that your mother did her duty. I love you, baby. Goodbye. •—

  It should have taken about four hours for us to drive from Boise to Grangeville, but our armored Humvee wasn’t the fastest ride going, and a few sections of road had been bombed out. We often had to drive on the shoulder or at least go really slowly to pass over rubble. Once, we got ourselves stuck in a bomb crater so deep that we had to hitch the winch cable to a thick-ass tree so we could pull ourselves out. All that slow going had me worried about Sweeney. He kept up a good tough-guy-who-never-feels-nothing-type act, but I knew that sweat on his forehead and upper lip wasn’t just ’cause it was hot. We needed to get hi
m some pain meds.

  When Highway 95 came out of the mountains a little bit, we saw the aftermath of the Battle of White Bird. The highway was interrupted by a little pond formed by a bridge that had collapsed and dammed up White Bird Creek below. We had to drive down off the ridge into the town itself.

  Or what used to be a town. Way down in southern Idaho, there was Craters of the Moon national park, a place where volcanoes had shot up a bunch of lava a million years ago or something. It was an empty, dead area torn up in parts by ancient lava flows and rock stuff. That place was as lush as springtime in my mom’s old flower garden compared to White Bird. It had never been much, maybe sixty houses, a hundred to a couple hundred people. Now not one house was left in livable condition. Only four or five were still standing, and those were just burned-out shells. Even the mountains themselves didn’t look, well, mountainy. They used to be sort of smooth-looking and covered in dry scrub brush, not all craggy like some of the higher ranges. Now parts of them had been blasted away, leaving them jagged and cruel, like a giant’s teeth that got busted out in a fight.

  “Oh no.” JoBell pointed out our window.

  I looked at what she was pointing to and wished I hadn’t. “Nobody could get in here and recover the bodies?” I asked.

  “This was kind of no-man’s-land during the occupation,” said Major Leonard. “Idaho dug into the mountains and forced the Fed back every time they tried to enter through here. Kind of appropriate, I guess. Right around here, back in 1877, the US Army was defeated by the Nez Perce Indians at the Battle of White Bird Canyon. About seventy of them fought about a hundred US soldiers. Thirty-four soldiers were killed, and only three Indians were wounded. It was the beginning of what we now call the Nez Perce War.” The major must have noticed our curious looks. He shrugged. “I worked for the National Park Service before the war. Used to do guided tours and talks and things for tourists and student groups.”

  The sergeant drove us through the rubble of the town, our tires crunching over chunks of torn-up pavement and the remains of people’s lives. “That’s awesome,” he said. “We beat the US Army here just like last time.”

  “Well, I don’t know how many parallels we should draw,” said the major. “The Nez Perce did lose the war. After they surrendered, Chief Joseph supposedly said, ‘From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.’”

  The ghost wound in my left hand flared again, and I looked down at my rifle. I wished I could stop fighting, or better yet, go back in time and never start fighting in the first place. I remember once in Sunday school, Chaplain Carmichael talked about how God existed outside of time, how God was presently with us right now and in every moment in the future and back on the cross, all at the same time. I prayed for the millionth time that God might send me back to that horrible night in Boise and not let me fire that one shot that had started all this. Sure, I’d prayed this before to save myself or my mother, but it wasn’t a selfish prayer anymore. It was a prayer for millions of lost lives, for so many more losses that would come before this war ended.

  That dirty, cold truth ate away at me in every quiet moment. Before the Battle of Boise — before the first Battle of Boise, I guess — I used to dream about buying out Schmidty and taking over the auto shop that him and my dad had started. I’d fix the place up, modernize it, and expand the business, maybe get into cool auto detailing. JoBell and me would get married, buy a little house, or maybe build a place in the woods where I could hunt and fish. We’d have some kids.

  My nine mil was digging into my hip, and I shifted position. Now all those dreams were echoes from the old world, one I’d helped to destroy. I had no right to be sad about what I’d lost when millions had been robbed of so much more.

  I placed my hand on JoBell’s shoulder, closing my eyes and feeling her warmth through my fingers. She kissed my hand. I pushed my grief aside and thanked God for her.

  “I just wish …” I whispered to JoBell, and she looked up at me. I couldn’t finish my sentence. I didn’t know how. She squeezed my hand to tell me she was here for me. With that, I could keep going.

  I barely did shit back in high school, but I paid attention in Mr. Shiratori’s American History class, and I remember there was a lot more to what Chief Joseph was supposed to have said. He had talked about a bunch of the Indian friends he’d lost, and there was a lot of language about suffering children. I think our history book had been trying to set up “I will fight no more forever” as some kind of noble declaration for peace, but I wondered if maybe it was more about his exhaustion and heartbreak. I could understand that feeling, only I’d brought all this misery on myself. On everyone.

  Sergeant Martonick off-roaded up from the dead town to the crumbling highway, and we continued on in silence toward Freedom Lake. Progress was slow. I nodded off during the bumpy ride, but I snapped awake when I felt the Humvee slow down.

  “Shit,” Martonick said.

  I made sure my rifle was ready. “What’s going on?”

  “Out of fuel.” The sergeant sighed. “And our reserve fuel cans were shot to hell.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s a gas station around.” I looked out the window at an entire ruined city. Burned-out foundations of houses. Bricks and steel girders scattered from where downtown used to be. Shell craters all over. But here and there, especially closer to the river, new little shanties had been built out of the junk. Some people were still alive in this town. “Where are we?”

  “If the roads weren’t so messed up, I’d say we’re about two and a half hours from Freedom Lake,” said the major. “This used to be the city of Lewiston. Our people held out here for a long time, even when the city was surrounded by the US military during the occupation. Finally the US Navy brought four Littoral Combat Ships up the river and destroyed this place.” The Humvee rolled to a stop. “Okay, everybody but Specialist Valentine and Private Sweeney, get out. Set up a security perimeter around the vehicle.”

  Martonick had taken us off the road into the parking lot of an abandoned motel. The main office was in a separate building from the row of rooms, and it had been torched long ago, along with its barely readable HAPPY TRAILS MOTEL sign. The rooms themselves had busted windows and doors. Empty square holes showed where the wall air-conditioning units used to be.

  JoBell held her Springfield M1A rifle at the ready. “I was going to say at least we’ll have beds tonight, but I think this place has been pretty picked over.”

  Major Leonard tugged on some wires at the ruined radio antenna mount. “So there goes radio with any friendly units in the area. Before the war, I might have been able to contact command via satellite.” He held up his comm. “Now I can’t even get this thing to connect to the network. Anyone else?”

  “Use mine,” Sweeney yelled. He sat with his legs hanging out the door of the Humvee. “It’s the best.”

  I laughed. Sweeney might have nearly been killed in the last battle to force the US out of Idaho. He had limited motion in his right shoulder, a nasty limp that might be permanent, and disfigured skin on the right side of his body and face that would probably earn him weird looks for the rest of his life. But whatever else happened, he was never far from his comm.

  The major grabbed the comm and tapped the screen. I winced, bracing myself for another half-pornographic visit from Sweeney’s digi-assistant.

  “Hello, Eric. How may … I help you?” A calm, male voice came on instead.

  JoBell gave Sweeney a curious look. “What happened to Digi-Trixie?”

  He rested his head back against his seat. “Trixie was stupid. I named this one John Smith.”

  “Damn.” The major held Sweeney’s comm under his arm while he tried to tap his own. “I can’t get my comm online at all. Can’t access my contact list.”

  “Cover this section?” I said to Sergeant Martonick. He nodded, and I went to the major, holding up my hands for Sweeney’s comm. “Sir?”

  He tossed it to me and then turned away, survey
ing the area around us.

  “John?” Nothing happened.

  “John Smith,” Sweeney said.

  “John Smith, please get me a voice call with Becca Wells.”

  The comm did nothing for a long time. “I’m … sorry. Network difficulties … for voice calls … again later.”

  “John Smith, send a text message to Becca Wells and Cal Riccon.” Usually the digi-assistant would ask me to go ahead with the message. This time, the text screen came up. I’d actually have to type. stuck in lewiston, I typed. help.

  “Text message.” Had the message gone through? I couldn’t tell. This was a Sony SatComm Six Superdrive. A six-hundred-dollar COMMPAD. But with the Internet and satellite network jacked up, it was worthless.

  “John Smith, send Cal Riccon and Becca Wells my location.” I held the comm up, hoping it could connect with something.

  “To assist,” was all it said. Whatever that meant.

  “I don’t know if anyone is getting the message or not,” I said to the group as I handed Sweeney’s comm back to him.

  “It’s getting late,” said Major Leonard. “We’ll see what MREs we have left in the Humvee that weren’t shot to pieces. At first light, we’ll send a team deeper into Lewiston to search for diesel.”

  “Sir, maybe we should look for food and water too,” said Sergeant Martonick. “If we can’t find fuel, we could be here a long time, until someone starts to wonder why we haven’t showed up in Freedom Lake.”

  “If CentCom is still there to miss us,” JoBell said.

  Pushing up the mangled back hatch of the Humvee felt like the heaviest military press I’d ever lifted. Finally, JoBell helped me get the thing open, and we dug out what could be salvaged of our food and bottled water. A couple days’ worth, at best.

  Since a fire would give away our position to US Special Ops or anyone else in the area who would want to mess us up, we decided to run straight-up tactical. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t use some blankets and maybe a mattress or two out of the motel, if we could find any that were in okay shape. Shortly before dark, me and JoBell started clearing the rooms. Raccoons had made a mess of the first one, judging from the scratch marks and shit all over everything. In the second, the little tactical flashlight I’d borrowed from Martonick fell on a bed with the remnants of ropes on either side of the headboard and a nasty but dry red-brown bloodstain in the middle of the mattress.