Flash in the Pan

General Kane sat at the head of the table under the flickering fluorescent bulbs. Time wore out their components, but replacements were blown out of existence decades ago. The other generals sat around the table with maps of the old world taped to the concrete walls — the only form of decoration the bunker had.

“How long until our distinguished guest arrives?” General Lewis asked. It was an old joke, but that didn’t stop him from snickering.

Like fine cheese in a cellar, they were aging. The world above couldn’t handle them, so they waited down here until it was hospitable again. General Kane sometimes wondered if they were more like milk souring. Their dingy halls did little to add flavor. But it was still better than being a mutant on the surface.

A lieutenant knocked on the lead door and cracked it to peek in. “She’s here, sirs.”

“Bring her in,” General Kane said with a wave.

The lieutenant opened the door and helped the woman limp inside. He pulled out the chair at the foot of the table, and she took a seat, wincing. She was young and might have been beautiful if her skin wasn’t malformed by the sores and tumors. Her left hand stayed in her pocket, maybe lame from a birth defect or injury. General Kane worked to put on a pleasant enough smile considering the risk welcoming her down here was.

She likely gave off enough radiation that Kane would be unlucky enough to grow a tumor or two himself, which was why only the generals of the bunkers met with this woman. They left the muties above to do what they wanted, as long as the battle plans they made down here were executed. He’d resigned himself years ago to live out his days down here but didn’t want the muties above getting any ideas of joining him.  

“Can we get you anything?” the lieutenant offered politely. Not that they had much more than algae bars and thin vegetable soup, but it still might be more than she had on the surface.

“Just some water,” she said in a hoarse voice.

“What news do you have from above?” General Lewis said, always one to cut to the chase. “Those commie bastards give up yet?”

She shook her head weakly.

“What about the assault on Beijing bay?” General Ethan McDuncan asked.

She slipped some papers out from her purse using her good hand. It was a slow process, so Kane figured it was a recent injury.

Eventually, she slid tattered images and torn sheets of paper across the table to the generals. When the photos got to General Kane at the head of the table, he frowned.

The images were devastating. Beijing was obliterated like the set of a cheap Godzilla movie. He thought he saw a coffee mug in the background. Asians were always building ridiculous-shaped buildings like that. The casualty reports on the tattered paper were far grimmer.

“They lost at least as many as us,” General Lewis said as if that counted this as a victory. “We’ll just enlist more muties to fight.”

Each mission they planned, every raid by the mutie soldiers, was fruitless, even with their best intelligence reports. The casualties were always comparable, never giving one side a leg up over the other. As promising as they seemed, each one went off like a flash in the pan. 

“We’ve been at this war for twenty years,” she said, voice hoarse but full of longing. “Can’t we call a truce with the enemy and work to rebuild?”

“We’re not giving up before they do,” Lewis said.

“I’ll eat algae bars till my skin turns green,” McDuncan tacked on. 

General Kane looked at his advisors. They’d all been young men when they retreated into these bunkers with the rest of those who could get here in time. Mostly well-connected people that could fly there before the first bombs went off. Now they were older than their former commanders, with a dwindling population due to poor nutrition.

 “We’re committed to ending the war,” General Kane recited, “we will repair what’s broken when we can rebuild the whole world in our image.” It was the company line, the motto of the generals that led these bunkers before him. He hoped it’d be the motto of those who survived him.

“If you’re still committed to staying down here then is there anything you need from us?” she asked, strength returning to her voice now that she’d finished the water. It was probably the finest cup of water she’d ever had, even if it had been run through the recycling process a few dozen times this month.

“A mutie, offering us help,” General McDuncan scoffed.

Kane cut him off with a hand wave before he said anything worse. Times were hard on everyone. At least they had lead shielding to block out the worst of the radiation. “We appreciate your support and efforts on the air, ground, and sea. We will be sending up a fresh supply of algae bars for you and the troops. It’s not as much as normal. Times are tough.” Looking at her disfigured face, he didn’t think he needed to remind her.

The generals questioned her about a few more operations, and she reported on them diligently. She was as knowledgeable as any of them but polite enough to remind McDuncan and Lewis about specific details of the operations they’d “misremembered.” She would have made a great general if she had made it to the bunker in time. But now she gave off radiation like a socialist gave out food stamps. It was too much a risk to keep her down here. He had to use everyone as best he could in times like these.

After planning a few more strikes on their enemies, they sent her away with almost a dozen crates of algae bars from their hydroponic systems. The lieutenant led her to the elevator shaft that connected their bunker to the harsh irradiated world.

---

Jonah stepped off the elevator shaft and into the fresh air of the bunker’s upstairs lobby. She scratched the tumor on her neck. The dingy recycled air of the bunkers always made her feel like she was drowning. The bunker’s lobby was full of miniature models of each major city the generals had launched a strike against. It was cheaper than sending out actual bombs.

“How’d it go?” Li-An asked. She was seated in her wheelchair near a model of Rio De Janeiro using her mobile hand to play with the Christ the Redeemer figurine.

“Same as always,” Jonah sighed, stepping off the lift and pulling the neck tumor off, “these prosthetics get more uncomfortable every time.”

“What should we do with these crates?” an aide asked.

“Put them in storage with the rest. I think we’re turning them into fertilizer these days,” Jonah said with a wave of her left hand. A sore fell off it and landed on the ground with a wet whap. She was worried about that one and tried to keep it in her pocket the whole meeting. “How did things go with your chairmen?” she asked Li An, a best friend she’d never have if the bunker-heads had their way.

“Requested pictures of the attack on Las Vegas,” she said, words cruising smoothly out of her half-paralyzed mouth. “I showed them some doctored pictures of babies with congenital disabilities, and they encouraged us to breed it out of our systems.”

“I’m extremely confident that’s not how that works,” Jonah said with a chuckle. She took a seat in the makeup room and pulled the rest of the prosthetics off.

“It’d also mean I wouldn’t have gotten to meet Fred and other fellow patients in my physical therapy group. And I don’t know what I’d do without them,” Li An added. 

“Fred’s great! It would be terrible if we didn’t know him,” Jonah lamented. “Hey, did they care that the cars in Las Vegas had the same license plates as the cars we used in the New York model?”

“No,” Li-An said, unconcerned. “I think they were just happy to see the Las Vegas sign stabbed into the sphinx.”

“The modelers do have their fun with it. I think there was a coffee mug in the background of mine. They didn’t say anything.”

The pair left the office, the crates of algae bars gone as well. They took a high-speed monorail down the east coast to meet Fundiswa for lunch. They’d picked a barbecue place in Montgomery to meet at, and it was a bit of a commute to get there. But the pair filled the thirty minutes discussing the exciting Mars landing New Delhi had just completed.

“You ever feel bad for not telling them?” Li-An asked as they made their way through the line, picking out which smoked slaughter-free meats they wanted for lunch.

“I offered to help them,” Jonah said. “It’s not like we locked them down there. There was that one guy who came up years ago.”

“Yeah, that’s right. He didn’t believe his eyes,” Li-An said after taking a moment to remember the past years.

“He kept trying to figure out what we were hiding. Eventually, we built a set and hired actors so he could expose our lies and return underground.”

Jonah carried their trays past the unattended cash register, a decorative relic that matched the restaurant’s old-timey aesthetic, and found their friend Fundiswa halfway done with their meal.

After short greetings and cutting the brisket into bite-size pieces for her friend, Jonah asked the question that had been on her mind since they decided to meet for lunch. “How’s Noxolo doing?” Unfortunately, some tumors were real up here.

Fundiswa sighed. “She’s getting better. The doctors are hopeful that she will recover soon.”

“Is she tired often?” Li-An asked.

“Here and there, but the new medicine they’re using isn’t as bad as it used to be.”

“I don’t know how I would have made it through my stroke without them,” Li-An said after finishing her bite. Jonah still didn’t know how Li An did it with the new medical tech; she’d pulled off more than Jonah could imagine.

“How much longer are you going to be in this hemisphere?” Jonah eventually asked.

“I’m flying back after this. Her parents are cooking us dinner, and I’ve got to be in town to meet with the ministers tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah,” Jonah said, pulling a portfolio out of her bag. “Here are the images of London they’ll want.”

Fundiswa cracked the file open. “This is awful.”

“Did they leave something in the background?” Jonah asked, concerned.

“No, just the destruction they want to see.” Fundiswa seemed as if the faux bombs had landed at their feet. “If they weren’t already locked down, I’d want them imprisoned.”

“I’m just glad we loaded blanks before they put in the launch codes,” Li-An said with her joyful and meandering smile.

Jonah was glad someone made that call every day. She enjoyed their lunch at the wooden picnic table under the sunset tint of the LED lights. Over the speakers, a new country artist sang about seeing their hometown twinkle from orbit. She hoped to take another vacation to the stars soon and see the full-sized cities intact. The planet’s dark side looked like light caught in a diamond on her last trip. She hoped her blue world would continue to shine for a long time to come.