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.A competent mechanic could have bypassed the chips, but so few city-dwellers had those skills these days.A good mechanic in Ingalls would be worth his weight in gold.So much had changed…I left them and stumbled upstairs to my office.I hadn’t been in the office for weeks, but it felt like years.There was the plain unadorned desk, the map of Ingalls and the surrounding area, the list of emergency numbers, a useless laptop – damn EMP – and the bottle of whiskey I had stuck in the bottom drawer.It had been a present from Uncle Billy, back when I first took over the job, and I had been drinking from it very slowly.I poured myself a small glass and swallowed it in a gulp, faces rising up in front of my mind’s eye…My mother, my father, my friends, my relatives, Uncle Billy, the men of my former Company…where were they now? I would have bet on Dad and Uncle Billy against the world – and my mother was the toughest old lady on the block – but they’d been in New York.My family had been in New York.I hadn’t allowed myself to think of it before, but now I had a moment’s peace I found the barriers crumbling and images slipping out into my mind.I knew – I didn’t think, I knew – that New York would have been a Russian target.There were so many worthwhile targets near or in the city.The loss of Wall Street alone would be worthwhile.(It was probably pointless, under the circumstances, but I knew that Russian planners had had a particular mad-on for Wall Street ever since the Second World War and had included it as a priority target in most of their attack plans, ever since they developed the capability to hit the Continental United States.For some reason, they had kept that targeting priority as they updated their plans, even as their weapons became more sophisticated and flexible.)And what we’d heard of Charleston…was that a reflection of what had happened in New York? Had my city been torn apart by gang warfare as well, what was left of it after the bombs had detonated.Had Mayor Hundred and his administration been killed, wiped out in the blasts, or had they been lynched as Badgers after the dust had settled? Was my sister stumbling around as a Zombie, or was she still alive, slaving for a gang leader…there was no way to know.How could I know…?We had lost contact with everyone outside our walls.We might be alone, after all, the last outpost of civilisation.The radio watch had picked up nothing, but static, ever since the bombs had started to detonate.It was impossible, I thought, but had the human race somehow managed to fuck up long-range radio transmissions? Short range radios – those that had survived the EMP – still worked, but reception was shaky at best.Could we be all alone in the world?Somehow, I found I had poured myself a second glass.I drank it slowly, savouring the taste, knowing that I would never see any more after it had gone.Even if Scotland – and Uncle Billy, the butcher of the IRA – had remained intact, we would not be able to make contact for years.So much had been destroyed in the war.My country was a pitiful wreck, leaving survivors like us to hold the line against the final darkness, and the only consolation I had was that Russia had suffered worse.It was small consolation.I saw the faces of those I had ordered killed, or driven away, just to give the rest of us some chance at life, and shivered again.Had it been worth all those crimes, just to keep Ingalls alive?I felt moisture on my cheeks and shivered.It would be so easy to break down.And then Rose came to me, and understood, and the darkness receded back into the corners of my mind.Ingalls was my home now.Chapter FifteenTo travel hopefully is better than to arrive.-Robert Louis Stevenson“You know what this looks like?”I looked over at Mac and rolled my eyes.“No,” I said.“What does it look like?”“Road Trip,” Mac announced, triumphantly.I am ashamed to admit that I laughed at that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]