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He had stopped the Crown Vic at the top of a gentle rise, sloped in both directions and he walked the road a few yards to look back south. Look back in the direction he had come. On the very far horizon he thought he could see the palest glow in the night sky, that would be San Antonio. Brian had to remind himself that worldwide, the lights were still on. For awhile, at least. The atmospheric glow of this distant city wasn't an illusion. The infrastructure of the world was still intact. The Sinai Nuke had not killed anybody, or vaporized, let's say, Moscow, or London, or Paris, or New York, or Los Angeles.
But Brian considered that the Sinai Nuke might have done something stranger, and even worse than killing a city of millions, if such a thing were possible. The Sinai Nuke had destroyed an essential narrative of the world: that nuclear weapons were safe. That nuclear weapons would never be used. Could never be used. That the governments of the world could keep the nuclear genie in its bottle, forever. And that by implication the governments of the world could protect everyone, forever.
And that the systems and methods and institutions of man might not be perfect, but certain thresholds would never be crossed. It was as if that distant explosion had found a fracture line in the consciousness of the entire world. Brian knew that somehow the effect had been much larger than a fear of failing stock markets, abandoned currencies, feeble politicians, regional wars.
Somehow, everything was in doubt.
He wondered how fragile the world had been, that it had broken so fast...
He traced the lettering on his weapon with his thumb.
He could barely comprehend that he had already used this weapon once.
And would presumably, use it again.
"Remington Arms Co., Ilion N.Y."
"Made in U.S.A."
The edges of the stamped letters polished flat.
The steel blued the color of saphire.
An elegant weapon from a simpler time...
Now reduced to the equivalent of a nail studded bat.
He could still feel the ridges where he had hack-sawed the barrel.
The splintered grip where he had cut off the stock.
A sawed off 12 gauge reassured because it suggested that any episode of violence would be brief, and close; that he would be the aggressor, and that by and with his aggression he would surely prevail. The shotgun suggested simple solutions, to simple problems. Brian knew these were delusions approaching fantasy. He knew that in this bleakest of all futures he would need to use and understand every possible complexity of weapon, and that every possible complexity of weapon would be aimed at him.
He wondered how long he would live.
He wondered how he should count the days of his life.
In months.
Or weeks.
Or days...
He had a new thought, ever so brief, just the slightest breath of a new idea: in some strange way, perhaps the Sinai Nuke had also done the world a peculiar kind of favor. Brian was not religious. He believed in no spirits. He had always thought his version of prayer was a shout into darkness, a scream into an empty church. But for many years, he had felt like some kind of Old World, Biblical Devil was winning. Yes–That Devil. That Devil was winning. The popular lie increasingly obscured the unpopular truth. The world seemed to be evolving into a place made for, and by, liars. He saw no leader he could fully trust, and had not seen one for years. The Police State, of which he had so recently been a member, seemed to have no limits.
And if the lie was The Devil's first tool?
It seemed like The Devil's next tool might be rage.