The Hatching: A Novel (6 page)

Stephanie glanced up at Manny, and he knew she’d already said as much as she was going to say about the matter. It was his time to speak. That was one of the reasons they worked so well together. As much as it was bullshit, they both knew the truth, which was that a woman, even if she was the president of the United States of America, was judged differently. Perception was reality, and she couldn’t be perceived as a complainer. Of course, Manny didn’t have the same worries.

“Come on, Ben,” Manny said. “This simulation does seem a little outdated. Might it not make a little more sense to be running this in response to a mock terrorist attack, or a conflagration in a place that is more of a hot zone? Obviously there have been some serious tensions with China, but we all know we aren’t even close to exchanging shots with them. Not like we are with a country like—”

“Somalia.” The secretary of defense, Billy Cannon, never had a problem with interrupting Manny. Usually because he was right. “We should be running exercises with Somalia, because we’re going to have to do the real thing there soon enough. The chances
of us actually engaging in open warfare with China seem remote at best. It’s about as useful as running a simulation of a zombie attack.”

The intern returned with a tray and put it down on the sideboard behind the president. He’d brought both a bowl of popcorn and bowls of tortilla chips and salsa, and he took them off the tray to place them on the table in front of the president. Manny watched how discreet the young man was, the way he waited until all the attention was focused on Billy before sliding the snacks in front of the president, the fact that he remembered that Steph liked her soda in a can, despite the White House staff’s determination to serve it to her in cut crystal. There was a particular skill in that, Manny thought, in knowing how to keep the people around you happy while still blending into the background. The intern’s name was Tim or Thomas or something like that, and Manny made a note to himself to see about keeping the kid on after his internship was over.

Manny put a hand on Steph’s shoulder, a familiarity he was afforded by both his position and the length of their relationship, and leaned over her to snag a handful of popcorn.

Billy Cannon and Ben Broussard were at it now, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff still arguing that this China simulation was useful, and Billy not backing down. Manny knew he should cap things, either move them past the exercise and get them out of the room, or go ahead and force Steph to go through the motions, but he enjoyed watching Billy Cannon argue. Billy Cannon came from money, but he looked as though he belonged in uniform. Unlike some of the generals who let themselves go once they’d gotten to the point where they could give orders instead of taking them, Billy was still trim, coiled, handsome, and dangerous-looking, with salt-and-pepper hair and a scar on his temple from hand-to-hand
fighting when he was in combat. Billy’s wife had died four or five years ago, of breast cancer, and he’d only recently started dating. Manny could understand why the women in DC were dying to be on his arm. There was even talk that
People
magazine was considering him for the sexiest man thing. Sooner or later, Billy would decide to retire and then he’d run for some sort of office and he’d be a shoo-in.

“Enjoying the show?” The national security advisor, Alexandra Harris, rose partially off her seat and snagged a few tortilla chips. She didn’t bother with the salsa. Manny liked Alex, and even though they were often at odds on what to do with the information she brought to the president, he thought she’d been one of the best appointments Steph made. Alex was smart, fierce, and loyal, and whatever her opinion was going into a fight, as soon as the president made a decision, she was completely on board. You didn’t get to these heights without an acute sense of political survival and the kind of driving ambition you could see from outer space, but as far as Manny could tell, Alex was exactly where she wanted to be. She never tried to subvert the president. Besides, Alex was seventy-three. Too late for a presidential run of her own. Assuming Steph was reelected, Alex would serve out the first year of Steph’s second term and then retire to the countryside.

Steph finally spoke up, and there was a bit of an edge to her voice. Manny and Alex might both be amused by watching the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs arguing over whether or not the simulation was even worth doing, but clearly the president was full up.

“Gentlemen,” she said to Ben and Billy, “I assure you I understand the importance of these exercises. You’re going to have to trust me when I tell you that in a time of crisis I will treat things more seriously. The next time we run one of these simulations I
will have a better attitude, especially if the exercise is more pertinent, but today is not a time of crisis.” She rose from her chair, and everyone in the room who was sitting snapped to their feet.

He’d made the transition from lover to friend and then back to lover without difficulty, and he’d handled moving from the campaign trail to the White House with equanimity, but getting used to the ceremony that attended having one of his oldest friends go from “Steph, down the hall in my dorm,” to Stephanie Pilgrim, the first female president, had been hard. He’d never been one to stand on formality, but more often than not, since the election, he found himself having to actually stand as part of the formality.

“Madam President?” It was one of the uniformed officers at the bank of computers and monitors on the side of the room. There was a large set of monitors and screens on one wall so that the president and the other advisors could track details, but this officer was looking at something else. His voice was loud enough to cut through the room and bring the president to a stop. Normally an officer of his rank wouldn’t address the president directly unless asked a specific question.

“Madam President,” the man said again, and this time he pulled the headphones off his ears. “The Chinese.”

Steph let out a sigh and Manny stepped forward. “I think we’re done for the day,” he said. “Call off the simulation.”

“No,” the officer said, and there was something urgent and harsh in his voice that stilled the small movement that had started up in the room, something that kept the president’s attention, that left Manny waiting for more. “This isn’t part of the exercise,” he said. “They, uh, it’s going to be on the screen in a few seconds. Ma’am?”

“Well, spit it out.” Stephanie had stopped, but she looked bored. Most of the other men and women in the room had already started
packing up again, and Manny realized nobody else seemed to see the look of fear on the officer’s face. He also realized that Alex was still sitting, a look of alarm on her face as a uniform whispered urgently in her ear.

Manny glanced up at the big bank of television screens and computer monitors that lined the wall. Most of the information was related to the simulation, but on the end, there were two large screens showing close to real-time satellite images of China, the information coming in with only a thirty- or forty-second delay. The country was split almost in half on the screens, with one showing the more densely populated portions of eastern China, Beijing a web of roads, the other screen displaying the western half of the country, a line indicating the upper borders, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.

And suddenly there was a glow of light. A burning dot on the upper-left-hand side of the western screen.

“Holy Jesus,” somebody said, and then a moment later Manny realized he was the one who said it.

“What the fuck was that?” The president was looking at the screen as well.

Everybody in the room was now staring at the map of China, looking at the bloom and fade of light near the northwest corner of the country. That is, everybody but the national security advisor. She was staring at the uniform who had been whispering in her ear. “Was that it?” Alex asked. She turned to look at the officer by the console. “Was it a missile? Whose was it? Are there any others in the air? Was it just the one?”

The officer, who had one of the earpieces on his headphones pressed back against his head, held his hand up to Alex, looked at the screen, and then nodded. “That’s it,” he said. “It wasn’t a missile.”

Manny realized he’d been drifting between watching Alex and the officer and looking at the burst of light fading back to darkness. “If it wasn’t a missile, what the fuck was it?”

The room had gone weirdly quiet, a sudden vacuum of sound in the wake of Manny’s question, and he knew he wasn’t the only person who jumped when the phone behind them rang. It was not just
a
phone that rang. It was
the
phone. He remembered as a kid when they showed the president picking up the hotline to the Russians in movies, how it was usually a red phone, sinister and there as the last resort before nuclear winter, but it wasn’t until he’d actually spent some time in the White House that he realized the phone was real. And the phone was ringing. There was no question that the person on the other end was going to be the Chinese general secretary, and it took only two rings before Steph stepped over to it, her hand on the receiver.

“Can somebody,” she said, barking out the words to the room as she prepared to pick up the phone, “tell me just what the fuck that was on the screen?”

“That,” said Manny, looking at the screen again, where the flare of light had already started to dissipate, “was a nuke.”

F
or a moment he thought he was going to throw up, but he didn’t slow down. The truck had barely made it through the barricades, and even then he’d had to drive over two soldiers. The thought of the thump and the screams was enough to make him gag again, but no matter what happened, he wasn’t going to stop driving. He’d wanted to get to his sister and her family.

He’d been too late for that.

No, he wasn’t going to stop for soldiers and he wasn’t going to stop to vomit. He wasn’t going to stop until he ran out of gas, until he’d put as many kilometers between the area and himself as possible. The officials claimed the situation was under control, but the area in which they claimed it was contained seemed to grow every day. That, plus the original broadcasts, which featured local newscasters and party officials he recognized, had been replaced by people he didn’t know, people from outside the province. There had been rumors at the factory, rumors at the market. He knew of at least two men who had been working in the mines who had not yet been allowed home. Worse than any of that, and what had finally prompted him to steal a set of keys for the truck and stow a water bottle and a little food in the pockets of his jacket—the
most he could manage without calling attention to himself—was that three days ago all communications with the outside world had been cut off. No landlines, no cell phones, no Internet. Nothing in or out. Just the official television and radio broadcasts.

It had been only five days since the first incident at the mine. He had assumed it was just another accident, but it didn’t take long for the whispers to start spreading. A virus. The army experimenting with chemical or biological weapons. The old woman who brought him his soup at the restaurant around the corner from his apartment insisted that it was ghosts, that the miners had disturbed some sort of supernatural force. The sister of one of his friends, a girl who spent most of her free time reading pirated copies of American novels for teenagers, claimed it was either vampires or zombies, and that was why the army arrived so quickly.

At first, he didn’t think too much of any of it. People died in the mines. That’s the way it was. At least he didn’t have to work there. While he didn’t love his job in the factory, at nineteen he made more money in a month than his parents were willing to believe. They kept insisting he was exaggerating when he told them his salary. He had a small apartment to himself. He had his own television, a cell phone, a computer, and he even had the occasional night alone with that sister of his friend. His own sister and her two children were only a short walk away from his apartment, and she had him over for dinner a few nights each week. So if he did not see his parents as often as he would have liked, the five-hour bus trip something of a hardship, it was hard to complain.

Five nights ago, when most people thought it was just an accident, he’d had dinner with his sister, and while he bounced his nephew on his knee, his sister’s blowhard husband went on and on about safety lapses at the mine, about how this sort of thing was bound to happen with all the steps they skipped. Four nights ago, he’d
been aware that there was talk, but it was one of those nights when his girlfriend—or whatever she was to him—had come over, and the two of them didn’t do much talking.

But it was three nights ago that he really took notice. He’d cooked himself dinner and then tried to go online. His computer was having none of it. He wasn’t concerned, because even though the village had a relatively fast Internet connection, it was sporadic. Then he pulled out his cell phone to call his parents and realized he didn’t have a signal. And on the television, every channel was blank except for the official local channel, which was on a one-hour loop. He sighed, read for a while, and then went to sleep.

It wasn’t until the next morning, on his way to the factory, that he noticed just how many soldiers had come to the area. Then he saw the coils of wire going up and realized that the boys in uniform, boys his own age, were clutching their rifles a little too tightly. He normally kept to himself at work, but during his lunch break he sat with a group of older men. He was shocked when he heard that the mine had been sealed off, that none of the men who’d been working when the incident occurred had been allowed to go home. Then, later, near the end of his shift, the foreman came on over the loudspeakers and announced that they were expected to continue on, that nothing was wrong, and they should keep coming in for their shifts.

His cell phone still wasn’t working, and nobody else could get a signal either, but he was smart enough to know that when soldiers started flooding in and razor wire started going up, when the people in charge tried to reassure him that nothing was out of the ordinary even though, clearly, things were out of the ordinary, it was time to worry.