[Short Story] Desperation in Desolation by Ryan Oberleitner

Desperation in desolation

The revolver in Jack’s hand felt out of place. It felt light enough to be a toy, certainly incapable of doing any real damage. This was the first time Jack would fire the revolver, given to him by his father on his 25th birthday. Well, he didn’t know if it would necessarily fire. Some part of Jack hoped it would, but most of him didn’t care if it did or not. Death is going to triumph in the end, that much was clear, and soon. If it wasn’t a speeding bullet through his brain, it would be starvation. The way he saw it was it’s either slow and painful or fast and quick.
Jack’s only resource keeping him alive were months-old cans of emergency food. Only two months of supplies were left. The thought of old age was a distant memory. He would never kiss his wife again. There were no hopes left; none that mattered. He wondered if it would be loud or kill him so fast that he wouldn’t hear a thing. At least he got to shoot a gun for the first time in months, that’s a plus. Jack enjoyed shooting guns, it made him feel empowered. As he loaded the revolver with one bullet his mind day dreamed of his time in the military. He remembered being caught off guard at the amount of guilt and regret he felt when he shot a human being for the first time. Strangely, he felt content at the current moment. “I die, or I don’t,” he’d say to himself thinking about this plan dozens of times in the past 3 months. But the burden of what he might actually accomplish lingered in his mind. He may be killing the only person that matters to him anymore. All memories, all experiences, everything that made him unique may not exist in 10 seconds.
He scratched an itch on the back of his head with the barrel of the revolver, then placed it in the middle of his temple. Okay, do this right, Jack. He thought of his wife, Margeaux. He remembered when he finally proposed to her on her birthday. Not even a bullet could have shoved that thought aside. Jack took a deep breath. “See you soon, my love,” he whispered under his breath. Jack wasn’t a religious man by any means, yet he knew that if there were any chance of seeing his wife again, it was this. He squeezed the trigger. The hammer clicked against an empty chamber. Jack frowned. He never liked anticlimactic situations. His mind forced the idea of filling every chamber of the revolver with bullets and trying again. Jack shook his head. It wasn’t the way he wanted to die. He thought out the best way to die a hundred times in the past 2 and a half months. He wanted to die from the one thing that has kept him alive since the flash. Chance.
Jack rubbed his eyes, yawned, and stretched the morning fatigue out of his muscles. He set the revolver under his pillow and walked out of his room. The bunker was getting dimmer everyday. Lit by 2 hanging industrial lamps that ran on a gasoline powered generator shedding inconsistent light on the concrete walls, the bunker looked more like a medieval torture chamber and less like a bunker everyday. Seated around a steel table in the middle of the room was the rest of his team. John, the medic, looked up from his can of heated beans and stared at Jack as if he knew what he had just tried to do. John was the oldest in the team of 4. Possibly the oldest man alive, at 44 years.
It was 4:30 in the morning when Jack got the call. The news made Margeaux worried but Jack kissed her forehead and assured her it was probably an empty threat. “I’ll be back soon,” were his last words to her. “I’m such an idiot,” he thought. “I could have thought this through. This is my fault we’re down here.” It wasn’t. The secret service ran things by the book 100% of the time, they had to insure the president’s safety. Protocol dictated action. At 4:55 he led his awaiting team to the bunker to wait for the president to arrive. It was a drill he had run a dozen times in the past, but the first time he’d have to go in for the commander in chief. They walked down 3 flights of stairs to a reinforced bunker 60 ft below the surface. The president was on target to arrive in 35 minutes by way of Airforce 1, from his vacation home in Connecticut. At the 20 minute mark the room shook for about 15 seconds. A deafening roar put Jack and his team on their backs squirming to get their hands on their ears. His team looked at him horrified. They all knew what had happened. The threats from the Chinese were true. They nuked us.
The walls in the bunker slowly closed in. He rubbed his eyes. The flashbacks started a week after Jack ran out of his medicine. His mind no longer worked the way it should. The crippling loneliness and depression forced his mind to wander. As if Jack’s mind longed for a happy thought so bad that it created it’s own reality inside Jack’s head. Unfortunately, his mind rarely thought happy thoughts, which made the flashbacks come more often. Jack wondered if his subconscious wanted to die as much as he did.
“You hungry, Jack?” John asked. Jack hadn’t eaten in 2 days and the team took notice.
“What’s on the menu today?” Jack knew. They’ve gotten to the last half of their 4 month supply of food. All that was left was baked beans in a can and a couple loaves of bread.
“Beans ‘n bread, what else,” uttered the rookie, Daniel, sitting at the end of the table glancing at an advanced physics textbook. At 27, Daniel was the youngest member of the Secret Service. He proudly dawned a bushy beard, which he grew in the bunker. He was the only person who displayed any amount of happiness since the flash. When asked about his chipper attitude while being buried alive, he would just shrug, go into his room, and study his physics textbook as if it held all of the solace he needed. Daniel had helped build the bunker, recruited as an engineer to design it and watch over construction. After completion he applied to be the full time technician and got the job as soon as he applied for it. Watching him smile, Jack couldn’t help but hate him. He held the technician responsible for being trapped. Jack lived the memory of learning he was trapped again and again in his mind every time he looked at the young engineer.
“What are we supposed to do, Recruit!?” Daniel got off the floor, cautious to take his hands off his ears and experience the roar of the nuke unprotected. Jack knew the only thing that could go horribly wrong. The bunker was in the basement of the White House. The two floors above the basement were reinforced with concrete. The problem was, Daniel explained to Jack, the ceilings of the two stories above them were 14 feet high. The reinforced concrete walls and ceilings are extremely heavy. If the White house did collapse from a blast, the 14 foot falls of concrete would gather enough force from the long fall to break through the next floor. Bringing those pieces coming down at 14 feet they’d break into the basement. The basement was where the hatch to the bunker was. Jack was holding back the urge to yell at his rookie like a drill sergeant. As calmly as he could, he tried to figure out why the technician wouldn’t inform anyone about the obvious dangers of his bunker. Daniel had a perfect explanation. He figured eventually if it ever did happen, we’d get dug out by others. Time stopped. Jack’s blood boiled. He saw red. “AND IF THERE ARE NO PEOPLE LEFT, RECRUIT?!”
“Well, Jack?,” John asked, holding a can of beans, staring Jack down.
“Maybe later.” The room was spinning. Jack started to feel sick.
“Eat Jack, you need it.” This request was made by Desmond. Desmond had joined the secret service around the time Jack did and has been the closest friend he’s had since he left the military. Desmond was an Australian born citizen who served in the Chinese war in Jack’s protection task force to protect their General. It was Desmond who saw Jack’s desperation first.
Jack had one picture of his wife that he never left out of his uniform pocket. He remembered her voice, but when he tried to listen to words of solace that she may say, her voice never sounded exactly right. He wanted nothing more than for her to tell him it was okay. The picture was a wedding picture, showing Jack and his new bride walking down the aisle out of the church with it’s cheering audience of loved ones. He held the picture to his heart and closed his eyes, remembering every second that his brain let him. Desmond walked in and saw the tears on Jack’s face. “You’re a strong man, Jack. You need to hold on”, he pleaded. But Jack had nothing to hold on to. No one did.
“Fine,” Jack said to the worried team, looking at him with sad eyes. He was going to be sick. He took the can from John and went back into his small six by six bedroom and closed the door. Eating at this stage was a waste of time. He wanted to die, he was done delaying the inevitable, like a rabbit fighting to get loose from a hunter’s trap. His fate was decided, and he wanted it to be over with.
Jack put the can of beans on a table near the bed and sat down. Nausea was followed by hyperventilation. Breathe, Jack, his mind warned. “I can’t do this anymore,” he thought. “There is nothing left. There is no reason to stay alive.” His chest started to hurt as the muscles near his lungs started to tire. Jack grabbed his pillow and whipped it at the opposite wall. The gun was sitting there, taunting him. There is still a bullet in it, right? He thought so. The hammer fell back as Jack put the device to his head. Breathing was a chore. What a perfect time, Jack thought, to stop breathing all together. Jack didn’t think about his wife this time. He didn’t think about his friends or his life. The only thing happening in Jack’s mind was a calming thought that his damaged mind threw at him. Whether it be blackness, Hell, Heaven, or anything else that will meet him when he dies, it wasn’t here and now. That’s the only thing that mattered to Jack. He squeezed the trigger.
The revolver let out a deafening bang, the sound bouncing off concrete walls and returning amplified. There was no blackness; no light at the end of the tunnel. One second passed. “Oh God, oh God,” his mind panicked. The pain was unbearable, worse than anything he had ever experienced. Instinctively, he rushed his hand to the wound in an effort evaluate the damage. Another second passed. There was no response from his hand. It was that moment when Jack noticed the rest of his body was falling limp. Dead weight crashed to the floor. “No!” Another second passed. “There was never hope, Jack.” His mind demanded he know how unfair his life was. “All virtue in the world is dead, yet you still breathe.” He tried. He tried to hold on, and once he couldn’t anymore he tried to let go. Jack couldn’t do either. “I just wanted to die, I have a God damned right to die!” He couldn’t feel the concrete floor, he couldn’t feel anything. Half open eyes allowed him to see straight ahead, but he couldn’t move his eyes to look to the left or right. “Am I being punished?” The intense pain was the only reason he stayed conscious.
John was the first one into the room. He stood at the door for a couple of seconds, taking in the horror, then bent down to check Jack’s pulse.
“Get a stretcher in here, he’s still alive,” he yelled to the team. John left the room, most likely to get supplies from the infirmary. For the first time since the flash, Jack felt a need to be with other people. He didn’t want to die slowly alone. After what seemed like hours, but was probably more like seconds, John came back and gave Jack a shot of unknown fluid. Jack tried to talk, but nothing happened. With a slight dulling of the intense pain, Jack assumed the fluid was morphine. He was never so thankful to receive anything in his life.
Desmond and Daniel came in with the stretcher. Jack wished he could see Desmond’s face but at the same time he knew it would only make him feel worse. His suffering was supposed to end. His life was supposed to be over. But something had to have the last laugh. Everything that has ever happened caused this to happen, he reasoned. A chain of events to lead him to this specific moment. The years he’s served in the military, decision after decision allowing him to be promoted higher and higher, led him to the job that ensured his torture. At any time he could have made a mistake, or failed a mission. At any time he could have been shot. At any time someone could have taken the job from him. But he didn’t fail, an no one got in his way. He thought about the friends he saw die by his side in the war, and how it could have just as easily been him. You should be dead by now. His head throbbed with pain. He didn’t think that. Or did he? Jacks mind was declaring what it wanted to say. His autonomic nervous system has been running in the background for so long it’s message of resentment and disappointment of what his life has become had to get out. A siren song of the biological marvel that was his mind. He tried to clear his head as Daniel and Desmond lifted him onto the stretcher. Margeaux. He had to think about Margeaux.
He met Margeaux between his 2nd and 3rd tour of duty. Jack had never believed in soul mates after his parents got a divorce when he was 16. When he met her, though, his beliefs immediately changed. She was beautiful, almost angelic. Jack knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her after spending only an hour with her. He vowed to do anything to get her, and everything he could to keep her. Margeaux was the only good thing that happened to him, and he would never see her again.
“Why me?”, Jack thought. The morphine was now finally distracting his central nervous system from the pain brought on by a bullet lodged in his cerebral cortex. He felt as if his life was no more than a bad joke. What were the chances? He defied all odds not 3 months ago, being spared when all of Washington D.C. (and most likely many more) met a random and untimely death. Yet irony prevailed when he was trapped in a bunker with limited supplies. He had no choice in the matter. “I was trapped,” his mind yelled, “I had to!” Though life doesn’t always offer an exit. An astounding feat of chance now left Jack trapped in the mind of a man trapped forever. A twist of fate for the sake of probability. This is Hell. He wondered if it were.
“Unacceptable,” he thought. “I lived my life as well as I could. This isn’t Hell, not just yet. This is nothing but a sick joke.” He has had enough of being the victim of circumstance. Wrath and fury was all he knew while he was lying in the infirmary. If rage were light, Jack would be a brilliant beacon of hate. Life was a bully who picked on the wrong nerd, Jack would do everything in his power to eliminate his enemy. “Death is merely a setback to the revenge I’ll exact upon this world. Anything I have to do to get revenge is possible with the fury I feel. I will fight from Hell’s gates, slit Satan’s throat, and resurrect as a vessel of raw power to find who is responsible for this torture. I am famine. I am disease. Men will tremble as I pass for they will know that I am the end of their world.”
“It’s okay, Jack,” he heard “I’m with you.” It was Margeaux’s voice. His mind was slowly deteriorating and with it came the solace in the form of his wife’s voice. His mood turned from bitter vehemence to sorrow in a heartbeat. He missed her. If there was an afterlife of eternity but she wasn’t there, he didn’t want it. She was the only thing that made his life worth while.
“Well, God,” he was dictating in his mind, “I don’t know if you can hear this. This is how I’ve always prayed, when I did pray. I hope you can forgive me of everything wrong that I’ve done in my life. Sometimes I think you gave me too many hardships to deal with. Sometimes it felt unfair. I just want you to know that I’m glad that you gave me life. And if you do exist, and feel I’m worthy, let me spend eternity with Margeaux.” He felt guilty. He was a dying man making a last ditch effort to get into an afterlife that he didn’t believe in.
The team was still busying themselves with setting up heart monitors and putting IVs into Jack’s paralyzed body. The heart monitor’s beeps were rushed and inconsistent. Jack didn’t know how long he had left to live, but it couldn’t be long.
He craved to hear Margeaux’s voice again, but all attempts to will the voice into his head were in vain. “I should have spent more time with her,” he thought dismally. All the hours of overtime he accepted, the hours he could have spent with her. Hours and hours of wasted life. “I will never get any more time with her.” This thought upset him more than the thought of death. “She’s gone and I will be gone soon, too.”
The heart monitor started to sound worse and worse. The hurried scurries of his team were growing frantic.
“Jack,” Margeaux’s voice called to him once again. “I’m waiting for you Jack. Are you going to ask me?”
“Ask you what, my love,” he asked the voice. He silenced his mind to hear the response. But none came. What should I ask her? His mind was no longer his to control. It wandered to the happiest moment he knew.
It was November 28th, Margeaux’s birthday, when Jack proposed to her. They had talked about getting engaged in the past but they both agreed it should be when the income was stable. A surprise party was waiting for her to get home from work. She was so excited to see the party. He walked up to Margeaux who was talking to her numerous guests. “I have something to ask you darling.”
His eyes were forced open. He saw Desmond holding his P229 to Jack’s forehead. “I know you would do the same for me, brother.”
“Jack,” called the soothing voice of Jack’s lost love.
“I want you to know that I don’t blame you for what you did,” Desmond expressed calmly, cocking the chamber of the gun.
“I’m waiting for you, Jack,” Margeaux said forcing his mind back to the party, “Are you going to ask me?”
“Goodbye my friend,” Desmond uttered while trying to hide his sorrow.
Jack knelt down, the room became hushed and the guests looked in their direction, smiling and tearing up. “Will you marry me, Margeaux?”
Desmond fired. Jack didn’t hear the gunshot this time.
“Of course I’ll marry you, Jack.”