Chapter II- Into the Red

Captain Michael Andrews stared at the computer screen in front of him, incredulous. His heart was pounding, and his palms began to sweat as he read the codes playing out on the screen, and the coordinates that followed them. It was insane, it was impossible; but it was happening.

The order was coming from POTUS aboard Echo-Six-Mercury- Navy One at the moment- for a missile launch against the Russian Democratic Union. The 321st Missile Squadron, including this particular silo 11 miles East of Grover, Colorado, was to fire everything it had. And it could be safely assumed that if the 321st had received this order, so had the 320th and the 319th, the other two ICBM squadrons in the 90th Operations Group. And if that had happened, it wasn't too hard to guess what the rest of the Air Force's ICBM units had been told to do. Or what their counterparts in the RDU's Strategic Rocket Forces were doing on this fine day at the office.

Who had fired first didn't much matter anymore. What did was who could get theirs out of the ground faster.

Even as he worked as feverishly as all the others around him, an intense focus on his highly-technical work keeping him calm, Andrews felt strangely removed from the whole thing. Detached. Like this was all some God-awful dream, and he wasn't really here, so until he woke up with sweat coating his body, why not go on doing his job? It was as good an idea as any, and very few alternatives were asserting themselves anyway.

"Confidence is high," Captain John Peretz announced next to Andrews, for the benefit of the other officers and airmen in the control room. "I say again, confidence is high!"

"POTUS authorization codes incoming," Andrews announced. "I want this confirmed. This is not an exercise?"

Behind him, the commanding officer in the control room, Lieutenant Colonel Jack Summers, put down a phone he'd just been talking into. "Roger, copy; this is not an exercise," he said, raising his voice so everyone in the room could hear.

"300 Russian ICBM's inbound," Peretz announced, "as many impacting points!"

"POTUS authorizes full-scale launch against the RDU; say again, Presidential authorization codes are on-screen," Andrews announced, a bizarre sense of calm taking over as he read and recognized the numbers appearing on the screen in front of him. This was what he'd trained for four long years at Colorado Springs to do- to be an Air Force missile operations officer. You could keep your mind off the horror of what was happening- keep panic from seizing control of you and making you utterly useless- simply being following your training and doing your job. And remembering you were over a hundred feet underground in a hardened missile bunker,

"Confirmed," Summers said, standing behind the two officers and tensely monitoring the computer screens. Then he moved back to standing in the center of the room, and to all the personnel present he said, "Initiate launch sequence. Begin firing sequences for missile engines, confirm missile is ready to launch and ignite fuel mixture."

"Roger, beginning launch sequence." Andrews flipped open a plastic cover over a key-slot on his computer panel, taking out a key kept in his pocket while he was on-duty and surrendered the minute his shift ended, handed to the next man. He stuck the key in the slot- dear God, was this really happening?- and turned it to the right.

"Confirm missile launch!" Andrews said tersely, turning to Peretz beside him.

"Missile launch confirmed," Peretz announced, also speaking in that same detached, professional voice. "Initiating engine firing sequence."

It was amazing how distanced you could be from the reality of what was happening, as long as you concentrated on doing your job, playing your part in the great war machine. You had a special kind of freedom, then. You relinquished your normal freedoms- freedom as the civilian conceived it- and you were more than happy to see it go. At exactly 20:05 on August 16, 2016, Captain Michael Andrews began to live in a new world, enjoying a completely new and different kind of freedom. As the Minuteman-III standing in its silo at this particular site in Colorado fired its engines for the first time since its construction in 1990, Andrews thought of where this missile was going- St. Petersburg- and the millions who would inevitably die when it got there. He thought of the millions more who were going to die, also, when the equally inevitable Russian missile strike- which side had launched first didn't matter anymore- hit the first of many American cities.

But Andrews relinquished his old life that day, and he was more than happy to see it go. He would miss his wife, his newborn daughter and all his friends not in this missile silo… he would miss them all terribly. But as the silo shook- every inch of it trembled- as the Minuteman-III fired its engines and roared into the sky, living up to its name by being in the air in just over one minute, Andrews thought of what he would say when whoever survived in the American public came for him. He had a new kind of freedom today, and he would explain that to the judges or the angry, three-headed farmers or the goddamned fucking Canadians if they were the ones who broke open the silo's doors first a week or a year from now. The freedom to say "I just did what they told me to! They're the ones you want, not me." The freedom- God help them all- to say, "I was only following orders."

XX

Airman First Class Kevin Morgan watched, mouth agape, as the ground shook and a missile roared out of its silo. Nearby, looking around the open Colorado fields where these ten missiles waited patiently for years and were now going airborne at last, Morgan could see every other one of the nine missiles in this Missile Alert Facility taking off. White smoke billowed out beneath them as the bright orange flames from their tails sent them climbing into the sky. Morgan almost thought he could read USAF on them.

"Well, shit," somebody said, and lit up a cigarette as the Air Force Security Forces- Air Force MP's- stood around near the front gate. "That's that."

Morgan spun around and saw himself looking at Airman Jason McCallister. "You gotta be kidding me, motherfucker!" Morgan yelled, amazed in spite of himself at how scared and angry he was. He pointed at the white clouds of smoke beneath the white missiles, climbing into the black night sky. "You think that's some kind of a fuckin' test? You think this is just something we can stand here and expect to walk away from?"

"I think there's nothin' we can do about it," McCallister said with forced calm. "It's over. The fuckin' things are in the air. Nothing's gonna change that."

There was not much Morgan could say to contradict that; after all, it was true. But that didn't mean he had to admit McCallister was at least partly right. "You realize what's happening?" Morgan half-screamed, turning to the half-dozen other men standing at the front gate to the silo's perimeter with him. "You realize the fucking Russians have a hundred nukes exactly like the ten we just fired? You think they might be able to spare even one of those to pay us a little visit?"

"Well," McCallister said as he stared after the missiles, "either we fired first and they're gonna try to hit whatever's left on the ground, or they fired first, and we just got ours out of the ground on time. Either way we're gonna get hit."

"What do you suggest we do, then?"

That was Staff Sergeant Barnes, the even-tempered, cool-headed NCO in charge of the front gate right now. He'd gone to Afghanistan in 2014, did his one-year-tour there, and was a respected SF soldier.

Turning to Barnes but addressing all the other men present, Morgan spoke rapidly, his hazel-brown eyes alive and his voice gripped with fearful excitement. "I say we go!" Morgan cried, already gripped with a maddening panic about his family. God help him, they lived in Grover…! That was half the reason he'd been so happy when they'd giving him his posting. Eleven miles to work in the morning, eleven miles back- his folks and his girl all in the same town, a chance to give Mom a hug and fuck Julie all on the same night- it had been a job made in Heaven. Now it felt like an arrangement made in a much warmer place, whose name Morgan heard rhymed with 'bell'.

"We should just get the fuck outta here!" Morgan cried, his voice cracking a little- God help him, he was only nineteen- and his eyes wide with fear. "Look," he said, calming down a little, "We've done our jobs! We've guarded the damn gate and the missile boys have done their job- McCallister said it himself, what matters now? This silo is as important as an empty cigar box. There's nothing here to guard?"

"Hey," Airman Henry Baker said hesitantly, "M-maybe Morgan's right. I mean, maybe we should-"

"We're staying on station," Barnes said flatly, gripping his M-4 and glaring around, his stare challenging any of the other airmen present to make a move or speak a word against him. Looking straight at Morgan, Barnes said, "Morgan, you're a fuckin' Airman. You got your orders the same as I do. You volunteered for this the same as the rest of us. The Air Force expects us to-"

"The Air Force don't expect us to do shit, Sarge!" Morgan yelled, so out of control he didn't care that he was backtalking an NCO- and one he respected greatly- for the first time in his life. "The Air Force expects us to die!"

Pointing at the missile silo a hundred or two hundred yards off- and then at the emergency hatch entrance in the grass, much closer- Morgan continued, "Do you think those fellas are worried? We're standing up here with our dicks in our hands, Sarge! All dressed up and nowhere to go! But while we're up here, what do you think they're doin' down there? Kickin' back, sipping on a cold beer and playing some fuckin' Austin Mahone!"

"That's about enough," Barnes said flatly. "You're a fucking Airman, understand? You signed up just the same as the rest of us, Morgan. Don't you fuckin' talk to me about desertion now. Even if I let you go, this is wartime. If the Air Force catches you, they will shoot you. You understand that, Morgan? Is that what you want?"

Morgan stared in fascinated horror. This was too unreal, just too fucking crazy to possibly be true. This had to be a goddamn dream.

"What?" Morgan said, as if he hadn't heard. "What are you talkin' about? We're standing up here with death from above about to come down on our heads and you're talking about desertion? Who the hell cares, Sarge?"

"I do."

Briefly, Morgan's temper rose higher and he almost exploded- almost got into a shouting match- maybe then a shooting match- with his squad leader and most respected NCO. Then he saw the fear in Barnes' eyes, in the eyes of Senior Airman Dodge and all the others around them. The eyes of the other airmen were flicking back and forth between Barnes and Morgan in fascination, between the rebellious teenager- though skilled and professional Airman- and the not-much-older NCO.

When Morgan paused just a moment to take in a breath and looked Barnes in the eyes, the peak of his anger went out of him. His voice might have hidden it, his face might have hidden it- that mask of professional calm was something Barnes was remarkably good at. But his green eyes… Staff Sergeant Barnes was scared shitless. You couldn't see it- not unless you locked eyes with him and looked for a moment or two- but Barnes was so scared he was probably one step from insanity. This mask, this act- guarding the base- was how Barnes was remaining sane. He was… protecting the silo. Waiting for orders. Like a good soldier.

But Airman First Class Kevin Morgan was done with that. He was through being "a good soldier". He'd been in the Security Forces for a year since he'd graduated high school, and for a while he'd really been happy with it. Going to community college on the side, getting some promotion points added up- he had been feeling pretty good about life. And then this goddamn war had come along and fucked everything up. Wars did that- it was what they were all about. But that didn't mean Morgan had to like it! Nor did it mean he had to agree with Staff Sergeant Jason Barnes, however much he sympathized with him.

Suddenly Morgan put his M-4 rifle in one hand and thrust it into a surprised Barnes' arms. "Don't tell 'em I gave it to you," Morgan said with remarkable calm. "Tell 'em I said I was gonna desert, and you took it by force."

Then he pointed at the red emergency hatch- unlocked in case an SF needed to make a hasty entrance or exit from the silo in an attack on the complex- and looked around at Barnes and the others.

"There's a way underground through there," Morgan said, speaking hurriedly. "You got a key, they'll let you in. There's enough food down there for six months, we all know that. You don't wanna leave, fine! But fucking go down there and live instead of standing up here waiting to die!"

The idea was sound; even Barnes looked like he agreed. Though he looked questioningly at Morgan, Staff Sergeant Barnes turned to the other airmen and issued a few terse orders. They would move underground into the silo.

The men calmed somewhat at the idea; they had orders now and knew how to act, what to do. And they were going to go underground, where the beer and Austin Mahone music was. They were gonna live.

Only when the men had reached the hatch and begun to climb in did Barnes notice Morgan was still standing above them, staring down tensely under his ABU patrol cap and short-cut auburn-brown hair.

"Come on," Barnes said finally, after a second-long staring contest. "This was your idea."

"So it turns out I had a good one after all!" Morgan snapped, and reached into his pocket, whipping out the keys to his 1985 Chevy Blazer. It was Army surplus, ironically, a stripped down, olive-drab diesel that was often mistaken for being official Air Force hardware. And it was the only chance Morgan had of seeing Mom, Dad, his twelve-year-old brother Neal or Julie before the missiles hit. That truck was everything he had in the world.

Seeing the keys, Barnes set down Morgan's M-4 and raised his own. "You're really gonna go for it, aren't you?"

"And you're as crazy as a priest in a fuckin' whorehouse!" Morgan yelled, far beyond caring by now. "I'm deserting! Fuck it! The Air Force can kiss my ass, man! If there's anybody left after Ivan's nukes hit, maybe they'll come looking for me and maybe they won't! But either way I'm goin' home to my fuckin' family!" Gripping the keys to his Blazer tightly in his right hand, Morgan shouted right in Barnes' face, "So what does the book say now, asshole?"

Morgan sprinted for his truck, never once looking back. As Morgan threw open the driver's side door, turned the engine over and threw the manual gearshift into drive, he saw the red hatch had closed. Turning the truck and stomping the gas pedal, Morgan's Blazer roared for the front gate. Smashing the heavy chain-link gate out of the way, Kevin Morgan only distantly realised that he really had just deserted the United States Air Force. Abandoned his post in wartime while serving on active duty. That was as textbook as desertion ever got. Right on the heels of this first realization came another- Staff Sergeant Barnes had known perfectly well what Morgan was doing, and let him go anyway. Just like that.

But that didn't matter. Only one thing mattered now- getting back to Grover, Colorado. Making that eleven-mile drive five minutes ago and seeing his family, his girl again- and maybe getting them underground somewhere, or far out away from any of the missiles' targets. There had to be something he could do. There had to be.

As he tore down the dirt road to his assigned silo, fishtailed wildly onto the first paved road he reached and took off, far above the speed limit as he headed for his home city, Morgan realised he really had no idea if the Russians' missiles would take half an hour to reach their targets or not. He had no way of knowing if he even had enough time to get back to town, let alone find anyone he knew. No idea if he or anyone else he'd ever known would be alive tomorrow. Or if he could do anything about it.

But as he took the Blazer as fast as he dared and then faster still, the engine roaring louder than the wind blasting around his ears, Kevin Morgan was sure of one thing. Just the one, and that was all he needed. He didn't know if he'd make it to Grover, didn't know if he'd see his girl or his family before the Russian missiles hit their targets. But his thoughts focused in on one word, one phrase. One prayer.

I will try.

XX

"They've stopped the shelling for now," Captain Michael L. Merridew said quietly, turning to the two boys behind him. "Come on."

Neither of the children- one thirteen years old and the other no more than eight- said anything, their eyes wide and their mouths held tightly closed with intense, all-consuming fear. But when Captain Merridew emerged from behind the garden hedge they'd been hiding behind during the brief artillery barrage in the area, the boys followed, keeping their movements low and quick. They had been caught out in the open a few minutes ago, making an effort to escape the suburban Northern Virginia neighborhood and make it to an evacuation site- or anywhere, really, that could be called friendly lines.

Michael Merridew was an officer in the United States Air Force, an F-22 Raptor pilot with the 27th Fighter Squadron out of Langley Field in Virginia. His unit- the whole base, actually- had been taken completely by surprise when the Russians began their attack. The heavy booms of exploding aircraft and fuel tanks on the base was what had woken Merridew up; then, rushing outside with the other off-duty pilots and looking up to see what the hell was going on, they saw dozens- no, hundreds- of foreign aircraft, fighters and transports mostly, roaring overhead, supported by a swarm of vicious-looking attack helicopters.

The only logical answer as to who it could be came to Michael's mind, and he had said "That must be the Russians," as calmly as he could manage.

That pause hadn't lasted long, though; the brief halting at the barracks door ended when a Russian bomber- a "Backfire", that's what its NATO reporting name was- streaked low over the flight line. Moments later a whole line of parked KC-135 Stratotankers exploded, a chain of fireballs that expanded and incinerated anything and anyone nearby.

Sprinting outside to the tune of screaming air raid sirens and the heavy crump of falling bombs, Michael and the other pilots in his squadron had raced to their parked aircraft. Michael was one of the lucky ones- his aircraft had been among those on standby, fueled, armed and ready for tomorrow's planned live-fire exercises. Others had taken off with only their 30mm cannons, and too many- thanks in no small part to MiGs and Mi-28 Havocs strafing the runway- hadn't taken off at all.

Michael remembered vividly how his squadron had fled Langley in a big hurry, not even trying to contest the air superiority the Russians held there. Instead, finding the radio traffic of American forces a complete mess for miles in every direction, the fighter pilots of the 27th had chosen to fly west to Washington, D.C. in the hopes of doing some good there. They had climbed high- thousands of feet- to avoid heavy Russian AA fire, but had been forced to dive like birds of prey on the big, fat transport birds dropping Russian paratroops by the hundreds down below, in order to engage them. Michael still remembered with grim satisfaction how his squadron had swept in, over a dozen F-22's taking at least that many Russian transport planes down in their initial attack.

The fighter escort had not been long in coming, however, and a fierce air duel erupted as a group of MiG-29's came streaking in to defend their charges. Michael's luck had run out there; he'd been hit and forced to eject, but not before four of the five Fulcrums that engaged him also went down in flames. With those kills- and at five to one odds no less- and the single Russian transport he'd shot down, Michael could content himself with five kills. Ace status.

Then he'd wound up drifting down over this neighborhood, somewhere in- from what he could tell in his brief descent from the air- either D.C. or Northern Virginia. Either way, naturally his chute had managed to snag on the one tree in somebody's backyard, and he'd wound up hanging there, a gun to his head, as he held his hands up and said frantically "Don't shoot! Don't shoot! I am not a Russian soldier!"

From there things had gotten only somewhat better. The gun to his head was withdrawn after a few moments of silence, and Michael had turned his head to see a kid- no more than thirteen years old- perched in the tree behind him, clutching a .45 calibre pistol and looking quite grim for his age. Michael had shivered a little at the sight; this kid looked like he was plenty ready to kill a Russian pilot if the need- or maybe even the chance- were to come. The American pilot wondered if this boy hadn't killed someone already, and fervently hoped the answer was no. This was a warzone, no place for little boys. This kid looked like he was a pretty nice one most of the time- a fairly nice guy himself, Michael liked to think he could sense that in others even at a time like this- but this war was gonna screw him up in the head if he saw too much of it. Michael could take it, or at least had a better chance- he was a fighter pilot, one of the elite chosen to fly the Raptor. He was trained to deal with things like this. This kid wasn't.

Kid or not, though, the boy had proven quite helpful. Upon realizing Michael didn't want to unclasp his chute immediately for fear of breaking his leg(s) in the ten foot fall from the tree, the boy had quickly scrambled down from the tree and found a small trampoline in the backyard. Knowing he couldn't hang here like this for long- there was a chance the Russians nearby had mistaken him for one of their own, either a downed pilot or another paratrooper, but there was an equally good chance they knew he was an American pilot- Michael had taken the chance and unhooked himself from his chute. The trampoline had never been meant to take well over 200 pounds of sudden, direct impact, but it held just a little before giving way, and Michael made it down intact.

That had been hours ago. Now it was dark, and only flames and sparks in the smoke rising from many fires rising into the sky lit the city anymore. Nearly all the street lights were gone, and most people had turned off their homes and businesses' lights to avoid attracting the Russians, who many times had shown up anyway. Michael, against his better judgment, had taken these boys with him in an attempt to find safer ground. The one- Kevin, the older boy- had found the other, Matthew, in the basement of the house Michael had landed in the backyard of. It was his home. His parents, it seemed, had hidden him there in the basement and not come back. Michael didn't like to think too much about what that could mean, but he found no bodies in a quick search of the upstairs region of the house, so that had to count for something.

The boys had been overjoyed at the arrival of the American pilot, and Matthew had briefly forgotten where he was and begun asking Michael all sorts of questions, like what kind of aircraft he flew- F-22 Raptor, which caused a gasp of awe from both boys- and how many Russians he'd shot down before losing his plane- five, which awed the boys again, realizing they were meeting a real American ace. Michael had been forced to quiet them down, though, telling them seriously that this was a war, and they could be hurt or even killed if they weren't careful. This wasn't anything like it was on TV. Kevin had sobered up quickly, and Matthew had gone back to looking quietly terrified, a change Michael regretted causing, but knew he could hardly avoid. He had to tell these kids the truth, at least some of it. That was the only way he was gonna keep these two alive.

So now they were sneaking back through the darkened streets of the Northern Virginia neighborhood- the street sign at the edge of the neighborhood had been the site of a direct hit by a 155mm artillery round, so Michael had no idea of the street's name- and past the wreckage of a still-burning T-80 tank, ripped open like a sardine can by an A-10 "Hog" and its 30mm "weed-eater" Gatling cannon. The sight cheered all three of them a little; it was good to have a sight like that, reminding them that the good guys were still carrying on the fight. Michael hoped he could get these boys to an evacuation site and get back in the fight soon- being cut out of things like this didn't suit him. He needed to get back in the fighting.

Michael crept slowly across one lawn and over to another, keeping low and stopping now and then to look around. He gripped his M9 pistol tightly; part of the gear strapped tightly to his flight suit, the M9 had maybe four magazines total and was the only weapon he had. Behind him Kevin still clutched that .45- Michael hadn't even bothered trying to take it. He needed a second gun in the group and in any case, what was the point? They were in a war. You needed everyone you could get.

As they neared the house they were looking for, the three ducked as a group of helicopters, friendly or enemy Michael couldn't tell, flew low overhead. Both sides were still battling for control of the city, and Michael really didn't know who was winning. He hoped it was the good guys.

Abruptly his radio spat static, and Michael snatched it off his vest, meaning to turn its volume knob all the way down and silence it. He almost did, but what he heard made him stop. His blood ran cold.

It was an Air Force message, the speaker still using some military jargon but broadcasting on an open channel. This was something they wanted civilians to hear. Then Michael realised why; they were announcing inbound Russian missiles.

Missiles! It had finally happened! Someone had finally turned the key!

Oh, Christ.

Michael saw the beginnings of a flash as he looked North- somewhere towards Philadelphia, a bright sun began to light up the dark. The pilot ducked and looked away just in time. Then he realised there was another potential target- Richmond, to the south, another city the Russians likely had no hold in yet and had nothing stopping them from targeting it in a missile attack.

Turning his head, Michael realised the older of the two boys- both of them, actually- was standing up, staring south as the boom of the distant explosion hit them, as if he wanted to see if another would follow as well.

"Get down! Look away!" Michael roared, tackling both of them just as another sun lit up the sky to the south. Matthew wisely shut his eyes, shaking with fear so real Michael could feel it as they crashed to the ground. Kevin, however, had to look. He kept his eyes on the sky and looked for just a second too long, drawn by some morbid fascination for which he could find no words. Then another sun exploded into life to the south, and Kevin screamed as abrupt pain seared into him. He saw night turn to day, and it was so powerful, so beautiful- then blackness took Kevin's vision and that terrible sight was no more. He lay still on the grass, tilting his head slightly as he heard a powerful, growling roar of wind coming in the distance. It sounded like the two biggest freight trains in the world were on their way.

The shockwaves hit moments later, and a sudden wind kicked up, roaring up and down the street and threatening to pull them all away. Forcing himself to his feet, knowing just what was happening, Michael tucked his M9 in his flight suit and bodily lifted both boys in his arms. "I got you, guys," the pilot shouted over the wind, "I got you! You're gonna be all right!"

Not even bothering to open the door now but instead just kicking it in, Michael hurried inside, racing down the stairs as the first of many aircraft and helicopters began crashing from the sky. He made it into the basement as a MiG-29 plummeted into the street outside.

XX

Over the Blue Ridge Mountains, fleeing the besieged city of Richmond, a C-130 Hercules of the West Virginia Air National Guard was hit by the shockwave, its electronics and controls shutting down as a result of the EMP. The aircraft, filled beyond capacity with refugees bound for Charleston, West Virginia, where refugee-carrying planes had been landing for the past day, went into a dive as its tail was kicked higher by the shockwave. It went into a dive which, without power to the controls, there was no hope for it to recover. It impacted a mountainside at 2100, coming down to earth at well over 300 miles an hour. There were no survivors.

XX

In Moscow, a 12-year-old boy fleeing the city on foot looked up and saw the start of the American warhead's detonation. By then he was close to the city limits. Realising what was about to happen, he dropped the bag he was carrying, loaded with a few provisions and a flashlight. Yelling at his four-year-old brother to close his eyes, the boy hugged his brother fiercely, shielding him from the awful sight until they were both incinerated seconds later.

XX

Over Kansas City, a high-yield Russian nuclear warhead detonated a thousand feet into the sky. The fireball expanded, soon becoming the iconic and dreaded mushroom cloud, guaranteeing the deaths of millions. Consumed in the powerful, high-yield blast, Kansas City abruptly ceased to exist. There was no chance to escape, no way to avoid it. Miles-long lines of cars still packed with people trying to flee the coming explosion were incinerated along with those still inside the city, and the difference in location meant little, because there was no Kansas City. It just wasn't there anymore.

XX

Moscow was one of the first cities to begin evacuation, many citizens escaping early when the rumors of a nuclear exchange began. Determined efforts by the Moscow City Police Department and other civil and military services able to help meant that a significant amount of the population was well outside city limits when the American warheads detonated overhead. Some estimates on the MCPD Commissioner's desk said it was almost half.

St. Petersburg (just in the process of being renamed to Leningrad again) and Volgograd weren't so lucky.

XX

Had you watched the exchange from a satellite or a space station in orbit- as those in the ISS actually did- you would have seen dozens of second suns exploding into life, flashing brighter than the sun for just a moment before burning and then fading out. The explosions, even at that distance, would have carried such fierce brightness that the sun-spots they gave you would have lasted for days. The crew of the International Space Station counted the explosions and then stopped just as suddenly. They didn't want to know just how many impacts were occurring over America, over Russia. They didn't want to know how many would be killed in the blasts, only that the world would be very different when they were over. The impacts finally stopped- it took perhaps two or three minutes- and the territory of the United States and Russia was much darker.

Not many lights were on, and in any case there weren't many who needed them in many places. Philadelphia, Richmond, Orlando, Kansas City- Moscow, St. Petersburg, Odessa, Vladivostok. No one might ever be able to add up the numbers, especially since there literally would not be bodies to find. Before a couple of high-altitude detonations brought down the ISS, its crew watched in horror as the world turned to fire; the Russians and Americans had gotten through fifty years of the Cold War and turned the key on each other anyway. No further historical record would ever show exactly what happened, and what the statistics were. But for the ones that lived, all over the world, "millions died" was an accurate sum-up. Knowing that was bad enough.

XX

The explosions and crashing aircraft finally stopped after a few minutes, as did the powerful winds from the twin shockwaves. Michael felt like he'd been struck dumb, made mute by the horror of what he'd just seen. There was no way this had finally happened. How could the nightmare of nuclear war, something that had been a worry of Michael's parents and grandparents, revisit them now? How was it that after two-thousand-and-sixteen years- more, actually- of recorded history, mankind had still not managed to stop killing each other?

They'd probably be stopping now. Michael realised that after a moment, hugging the two boys close and shielding them with his body down in the basement. It was a foolish, useless gesture- had the blasts gotten down here, or had a jet or helicopter crashed down on their heads, Michael, strong and fit as he was, would have been as inconsequential as if he'd been a child himself. But the horrible roar of noise finally ended, and the world above once again fell silent. Michael found himself thankful this basement was so solidly below ground, with reinforced concrete for its ceiling. They were gonna need that.

Finally, he got up, taking out one of the emergency candles he'd found earlier and tucked away in a leg pocket of his flight suit along with some matches. He lit the candle, looking down in its flickering light at the two boys.

"Wh-what's happening?" Matthew whispered, tears of absolute terror running down his face. "What did we do?"

"We'll be all right," Michael said softly, patting the boy on his shoulder and wishing he didn't feel like he was lying.

Then he turned to Kevin, that brave, wonderful boy who had so fiercely protected the other child all this time. His black hair seemed darker still in the basement's dim light, and he stared blankly up at Michael in a way the young officer really didn't like.

Finally he cleared his throat, forcing himself to speak.

"I'm going to go up top," he said, and abruptly Matthew clung to him in a panic. "No! You can't go up there, they'll get you! Don't leave, please!"

Michael gently pried the boy off him, a task that proved surprisingly difficult. Matthew really did not want to let go. "I'll be okay," he said, again feeling like a liar. "Whatever happened, it's over. I won't be gone long, I'm just gonna go up there and look around."

Matthew finally sat up and began to sob quietly, but he didn't object. "You're gonna get hurt," he said with a small boy's total conviction.

"I'll be fine," Michael said. "Promise."

He turned to leave when Kevin's voice called him back. "You'll need this."

The Air Force fighter pilot turned back to see the thirteen-year-old boy staring in that wide-eyed, bizarre way with an eerie expression of calm on his face. His eyes were staring and blank, taking in everything yet seeing nothing. He was holding out the black, .45-calibre pistol in one hand, butt first.

Michael shook his head. "You're gonna need that, Kevin. I need you to stay strong for me. Guard Matt while I go up."

But the boy just smiled vaguely and shrugged, continuing to hold out the pistol. "Oh, that's all right, sir. I can't see anymore."

What froze Michael Merridew the most, what gave him a feeling of fear and horror too deep for words to describe, was the calm way Kevin Dunn said it. Matter-of-fact, like he was just out in the park on a sunny day and was letting his big brother know he was gonna go feed the ducks by the lake.

"I'll take it," Matthew said, and over the sudden objections of Kevin suddenly wrestled the weapon from the older boy's grip. His chest still hitched and his eyes still ran with tears- a very different kind ran from Kevin Dunn's seared eyes- but Matthew looked at the Air Force captain with surprising courage and strength.

This thirteen year-old boy, his newest and best friend in the world, had been strong for Matt in the past two days. He had protected Matt, kept him safe- even climbed up in that tree to make sure that downed pilot wasn't a Russian, and perhaps even kill him if he was. Matt didn't know what had happened to Kevin, why he had looked at that huge bomb that went off and now could not see. But he was going to protect Kevin now. No matter what.

"You come back, sir," Matthew ordered, sounding surprisingly fierce for so small a boy. "We need you."

"I'll be back, I promise," Michael Merridew said, and turned to go upstairs, leaving the candle at the base of the stairs so the boys- well, Matt- had something to see by. As he ascended the stairs with his M9 in hand, Michael realised one or both of the boys was probably going to ask him when he came back- and he would come back- of Kevin would ever be able to see again.

Briefly, Michael Merridew, Captain, USAF, wondered if he'd end up having to lie about that in order to give the boys hope. Then he grimly realised that if he started down that road, it wasn't gonna be the last lie he ended up having to tell.

Like when they asked him what the world was gonna be like tomorrow.

Notes: I got the idea for this story while watching the 1983 movie "The Day After", hence the title. I won't say what happens in that movie, but it's a close basis for what happens in this story. There were a lot of interesting things about the "Modern Warfare 2" and "Modern Warfare 3" depiction of a full-scale war finally erupting between the United States and Russia, but I found some of it to be short on details, and other parts to be contrived and unrealistic. MW3's repeated assertion that President Boris Vorshevsky is somehow a "good man" who only wants to do what's right in spite of voluntarily becoming the Ultranationalist Party's candidate for President of Russia makes no sense.

Thus here I mention him as a somewhat hesitant man, not truly dedicated to the Ultranationalists' policies- but one who is still a volunteer for his position and who is not so stupid as to think he can defy Ultranationalist policy without being immediately replaced. I do not mention him making any peace overtures to the United States, because that would not EVER have happened the way MW3 portrays it. Think about it. What would have happened had Vorshevsky even made it to that meeting the game mentions? What did he plan to do? Say "Oh, yeah, sorry about that" when the NATO delegation brought up "the skulls of a million children" as Exhibit A for opening negotiations?

The chance that nuclear war could have erupted between the USA and the RDU as I call Ultranationalist Russia was actually, I think, very high. US forces worldwide would have been on their highest DEFCON level possible, and nuclear arsenals everywhere in America and Russia would have been put on five-minutes-or-less standby 24 hours a day. All it would have taken is for NATO or the Russians to grow desperate enough, starting the exchange with tactical weapons. From there the situation would have escalated just as "The Day After" depicts. Once tactical nuclear weapons entered the picture the war would have been extremely hard to control, and individuals like Shepherd and Makarov would not have mattered much anymore.

Keep in mind that I have altered or removed several canon details from the events of World War III in this story. Europe gets invaded two days after the US East Coast does, instead of sitting on their arses for two months as the CoD storyline says they did. Right. I also changed details of President Vorshevsky as I said, and altered events in Moscow so Vladimir Makarov remained a member of the Ultranationalist inner circle and thus was there to make sure that the Russian government kept up the war once it started- and perhaps ensure that Vorshevsky turned the key, as well. I also changed aspects of the fighting in Europe, basing the Russian Army's advance to the Rhine River off of the way that happened in "The Day After". I also altered the course of the Battle of Washington, D.C.- the city's defenders fail to retake the key points in the city before the airstrike impacts, and thus Hammerdown is not aborted as it is in MW2's canon events.

This story also draws on a few details from another MW2 fanfic, "When the War Came" by Eagle2. Namely, the name of Mark Bennett as the President of the United States and the characters of Kevin Dunn and Matthew Pierce. I borrowed the characters, but the events that happen to them are original to my story. There is no nuclear war in "When the War Came".

The flash-blinding of Kevin Dunn is based off the flash-blinding of Danny Dahlberg in "The Day After". Both boys stare directly at a nuclear explosion at the moment it happens, and the resulting flash of light burns their eyes, blinding them permanently. Flash-blindness as a phenomenon can happen and be temporary, but in the case of nuclear weapons it is always permanent. Danny- and Kevin- would be blind for life in their respective works of fiction. Any 21st century solutions to this, any possible means of using technology to restore their vision, would have been unavailable in a post-nuclear-war America. The hospitals would have been overwhelmed with the injured and sick, and as an otherwise healthy child- mostly- Kevin Dunn would not have been high on the casualty list.

Had a war like this occurred it would have meant the death of civilization as we know it. Entire cities would have been destroyed, and with the loss of America and Russia as political and economic powers the world economy would have been severely damaged to say the least. Millions would have died. Rebuilding from the damage that a mass nuclear exchange between Russia and America would have done would've taken 50 years at least, probably more like 100- if true recovery ever happened at all.

"I do not know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

-Albert Einstein