“A little island in the Great Lakes, it’s a safe haven of sorts,” Malcolm replied. “The CIA has always been good at having plans in place for every kind of situation. The one for the collapse of civilization happens to include meeting up north on the island.”
“And they call this plan Omega.” The pieces were starting to fall into place. “What do you do once you make it to the island?”
“Try to put things back to rights.” He shrugged as if it was a simple task. Maybe to him it did seem a simple task. After all, he’d obviously been trained for this.
“So it’s the undisclosed location that they whisked the President off to?”
“No. If the President or any of his successors are alive, they’ll be in the NORAD bunker in Colorado. What’s left of the military leadership will be there too. They’ll be focusing their time and energy on mounting some sort of control on a national level. I don’t know if that’s possible if the Omega Protocol was initiated.”
“What is it exactly?”
“Omega was designed as a final Hail Mary. Those who were told about it were handpicked by Samuel Sheppard, the Director of the CIA. He assembled a group that would have the best chance of accomplishing what he intended: starting civilization over again.”
“It’s not meant for just when the government loses control. It’s meant for when civilization itself collapses. We used to call it the End of Days Protocol as a joke. Guess it doesn’t seem so funny now.”
She looked at him, the heavy set of his shoulders, the crease of his brow and his sad eyes told her he was speaking the truth.
“I was going to tell everyone in the morning. Give them the option to come with us. It’s going to be a long trip so we’ll need to stock up on supplies before we head out. There’s a CIA safe house in Shenandoah. We’ll hold up there for a while before we head north.”
“So that’s about it. I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you want to do. You can come with us as far as you want or strike out on your own. It’s up to you.”
Well, he’d painted quite a grim picture but it wasn’t any worse than what she saw tonight.
She walked over to the edge of the platform and the only light she could make out came from the highway winding like a snake in the distance. The line of asphalt glowed red, like a trail of lava, the cars burning hunks of metal that consumed the bodies inside them. It really wasn’t that far of a stretch to believe this was the beginning of the end of the world.
“I have a son and protecting him is all that matters.” She turned back around to face Malcolm. “You believe this island will be safe?”
He nodded. “For me, protecting my sister and her kids is all that matters. I wouldn’t be taking them there if I wasn’t sure that it’s safe.”
The confidence he exuded was not just for show or an act he put on to get others to listen to him. She could see in his eyes that he truly believed in what he was saying, that he would bet his family’s life on it. He was a rock in a raging sea, one that was big enough and strong enough for all of them to cling to through the storm.
“Then yes, Trey and I are with you for the long haul,” she replied, “And we will do whatever we can to help. We aren’t strangers to hard work.”
“It won’t just be hard work. You have to be prepared to let go of the rules we’ve lived by before this.”
“Well I did just commit grand theft auto tonight so I suppose I’m willing to adapt.”
He smiled at that and she was hit once again with that awareness of him as a man. Though she had noticed that he was well built when she had first seen him on the highway, now she actually took in the full breadth of his wide shoulders, noticing the way his t-shirt strained over his sculpted chest and clung to his flat stomach. His jeans hung slightly loose on his narrow hips before becoming tight across his muscular thighs. He really was quite a male specimen. She felt a flush rise over her chest and up her neck as she darted her eyes away from him, feeling slightly embarrassed at where her thoughts had wandered.
Thankfully Janet was there to fill the silence and give her time to recover.
“So, the safe house in Shenandoah, what is it like?” she asked, as she began to eat.
“I’m not sure. I never had to use it,” he replied. “I never worked a domestic operation. My work was mostly overseas.”
“What did you do over there?” Kim asked before she caught herself. “Or can you not talk about it?”
“Used to be I couldn’t but the concept of classified information is meaningless now, ain’t it?” He turned back around, leaning on the railing as he looked out over the edge. “I spent a lot of years hunting the bad guys so not many of my stories are happy. Probably not the best thing to be talking about tonight.”
She knew he was right but that didn’t stop her from wanting to know more. She wanted to know not out of some morbid fascination but because those experiences had clearly shaped the man who stood next to her and she wanted to know him.
“Anyway, the safe house is probably the same as the ones overseas. There will be some supplies there.”
“How long do you think it will take us to get to the island?”
“Under normal circumstances it would take two days but we’re going the scenic route on the back roads so probably a week, give or take a day. We’ll want to have at least two weeks worth of supplies with us, just in case. We never know when we might get waylaid.”
It sounded like a sensible plan, as far as end of the world survival plans came. Not that she’d ever thought to plan for something like this.
“Now it’s just a matter of convincing the others,” Janet said. “Jose and Ana will be easy but the Wakefields are going to be a problem.”
“Maybe the hit on the head knocked the asshole out of Alan,” Kim offered and they laughed.
“We aren’t that lucky,” Malcolm said, winking at her and Kim honest-to-God giggled.
Get yourself right, girl!
What was she, a pre-teen girl with a crush? There were people dying out there and she was mooning over a man. She needed to pull herself together and the best thing for that was probably to put some distance between her and Malcolm.
“Well, I better get back to Trey. I won’t say anything to the others. I’ll leave it to you to talk to them about tomorrow.”
They bid her goodnight and she walked back to the parking lot, unable to stop thinking about what Malcolm had said.
End of Days
.
Sure it wasn’t the hellfire and demons scouring the earth she had heard about in Sunday school but maybe those were just metaphors. Maybe they were meant to symbolize the collapse of human morality. The Bible had promised that the sinners would suffer here on earth and what could the carnage on the highway be but suffering?
But she couldn’t believe it. There had been children there and she could not--she
would
not--believe that God could see them as sinners. No, what was happening now was out of God’s hands and solely in their own. Humanity had turned on itself down on that highway tonight and it was up to those who survived it to right that wrong.
Malcolm had said that this island haven was meant to be where society rebuilt itself. It seemed only fitting that those who had escaped the worst side of humanity would rebuild it. They had witnessed the mistakes first hand and they wouldn’t let it happen again.
Subject File # 742
Administrator - It must have been difficult to make it as far as you did with such a large group.
Subject - It was. We lost some good people along the way.
Administrator - So why did you do it? Why take on strangers when it would have been easier to keep it to your sister and her children?
Subject - Because when you help people they help you.
It had been quiet on the outlook as they watched the first on the highway go out. Malcolm and Janet had spent the shift sitting in a comfortable silence, neither one of them feeling the need to reassure the other with meaningless words. They simply took comfort in each other’s presence.
The hours ticked by and soon he heard footsteps approaching the outlook. He had expected to see Travis and Alan coming to relieve them so he was surprised to see Jose emerge from the shadows alone. Malcolm had always liked the old man. Of course, he and his wife’s willingness to help his sister went a long way towards that. Malcolm knew that anytime he was out of town for work, the Garcias would be there for Janet in his absence. They were good people.
“I wanted to talk to both of you, away from the others,” Jose said when he joined them on the outlook. “I know you have a plan for what happens next. What is it?”
Malcolm looked to Janet and she nodded, letting him know it was time to start with the convincing. He related the plan much as he had to Kim, laying out the reality of the situation they were in and the only sensible way to deal with it. Jose lapsed into silence afterwards, taking his time to consider it all.
“I’ll have to talk to Ana before I give you an answer,” he said finally, “But I know, after what happened down there, we can’t go home and we can’t stay here. Going with you, it is as sound a plan as I can think of.”
Raised voices carried down from the parking lot and they were soon followed by Alan storming down the path with Travis on his heels.
“Alan, just leave it--” Travis tried to put a hand on Alan’s shoulder he pushed him away. “No, Travis! He knows something and I’m going to fucking talk to him!”
Malcolm knew he was the
him
that Alan was looking for and so he stepped forward to meet them, Janet and Jose coming to stand behind him. It was a subtle move and maybe not one they even consciously realized they were making but Malcolm appreciated the support nonetheless.
“You,
Mister CIA
, I’ve been thinking and I realized there is something off about what happened down on the highway. It seems pretty coincidental that you show up to warn us minutes before a blood bath started. Who tipped you off that they were going to do that down there?” Alan asked, pointing an accusing finger at Malcolm’s chest.
“No one tipped me off.”
“Bullshit. How else would you have known?”
“I knew because the writing was on the wall. That many civilians, that many soldiers worried about quarantine, it’s a pressure cooker. It was bound to go off. The timing was just pure luck, probably the last I’m going to see for a while.”
“I don’t believe you,” Alan spat back, face twisted up in anger, his handsome features turning ugly. “You know something.”
Malcolm could feel his temper rise and he had a vision of laying Alan out with a right hook to the jaw. Then maybe a couple jabs to his nose to top it off. Except as satisfying as it would be, it would do nothing to help the situation. So he clenched his fists and ground his teeth together as he reined in his temper.
“You know, I’m getting real sick of your shit. I saved your ass and I haven’t seen an ounce of gratitude from you for it.”
“I don’t owe you shit!”
Alan took a step forward but Travis was there with an arm across his chest, holding him back.
“Alan, stop acting like an asshole! We owe him and you know it. Stop letting your fucking ego get in the way.”
Alan turned an icy glare on Travis and the two brothers stared at one another, something unsaid passing between the two of them. After a few moments of stony silence, Alan shoved Travis’ arm off of him, but he didn’t advance and his mouth stayed shut.
“I think it is best you tell them your plan, give them the night to decide,” Jose advised. The old man was right. Better to get it over with now, like ripping off a bandage.
“We plan to pack up and head out at first light for a safe house in Shenandoah,” he said. “From there we’re going to gather up enough supplies to head north.”
“Where to exactly?” Travis asked, his voice lacking his brother’s hostility.
“I was told about a safe place,” Malcolm began, “It’s on an island in the Great Lakes.”
“You want us to go hundreds of miles away from here? You’re fucking insane,” Alan said, ending the very short reprieve they had from his mouth. “If it’s safe enough here for us to stay the night, it’s safe enough for us to stay until things go back to normal.”
“What the hell are you not understanding? It’s not going to go back to normal!” He wanted to shake Alan until some sense started rattling around in that tiny brain of his but he knew that would just earn him a punch in the jaw. “You saw what happened down there. The government, the military, the police…they’re gone. They couldn’t control any of this. There’s no quarantines, no evacuations, no disaster relief coming to save you. All of us are on our own now and that means the worst us humans have to offer will be coming to light. No more laws, no more morals, nothing but survival.”
“You don’t know that, not for sure,” Alan argued. “For all you know, the government is operating out of some bunker somewhere.”
“I do know. All levels of government have set up protocols for these scenarios and the CIA isn’t any different. Each one of them has its own name and the one that was put into effect yesterday is called the Omega Protocol. Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet. That name was chosen because it was meant as an absolute last resort to maintain some semblance of organization if the government collapsed.”