Suzie was in the lounge room, watching Toy Story with her friend Emma, when Kip heard the news. Emma’s mom had a transit pass and a voucher for the food bank in Bellevue and the chief engineer had spent the morning on the phone to Fort Lewis – another ‘privilege’ of his newly elevated status – making sure that this time all of the security that should have been in place was in place. He was just running through a checklist of the local aid centres with a Lieutenant Somebody-or-other when he heard Barbara cry out from across the kitchen.

‘Just hang on… I’ll call you back,’ he said.

She had the radio on, listening to a news bulletin – which Kipper never put much stock in because of the army’s control of the airwaves. Yesterday’s shootings at Costco, for instance, had been reported as a ‘serious disturbance’, possibly ‘Resistance related’, that had halted food distribution for the day. Nothing more.

Whatever Barb had just heard, though, had to be something more than the anodyne pap and propaganda that Blackstone’s people let out. She was pale-skinned by nature, but at that very moment she looked almost translucent, as though every drop of blood had rushed away from her face. Her hands shook visibly as she raised them to her mouth.

‘What is it, Mommy?’

Suzie and Emma had appeared at the door, drawn by the cry of an adult. Both of them wore very grown-up frowns. Kip hustled them back into the lounge room with a promise of ‘emergency chocolate’ from the camping rations, before hurrying back to his wife.

‘What’s up?’ he asked. Her eyes were wide with fear.

‘A war,’ she said. ‘A nuclear war has started.’

Kipper’s stomach flipped over. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘It’s on the radio,’ she said in a quavering voice.

He cast a quick look over his shoulder but the kids were back watching the movie. He stood next to Barb, who grabbed on and held him tightly. She seemed even more scared than she’d been after the Disappearance.

‘… of sixty million dead in the Nile Delta. Israel remains on the highest state of alert, and the Israeli Cabinet is meeting in secret. Full-scale fighting continues in the Gaza Strip, on the West Bank and in southern Lebanon, but hostilities elsewhere in the region have ceased…’

The report was short, sourced from somewhere in England, to judge by the accent; and frustrating in the brief details it gave of American forces, which were reported to be unaffected, for the moment.

‘What if they bomb here, Kip? What will happen?’

‘Shh. That’s not gonna happen. This is a local thing, over there. It’s been coming for over a week now. It won’t affect us.’

‘But the Chinese or the Russians…’

‘Barb, we didn’t do it. They weren’t our bombs. It’s not our issue, and even if it was, all of the navy’s missile boats are still at sea. I think. Most of them, anyway. Nobody is going to bomb us.’

She was shivering violently, and kept looking over his shoulder to the lounge room, where Kip could now hear Buzz Lightyear hamming it up. ‘To infinity… and beyond!’

‘You’re seeing Blackstone today, right?’ said Barbara, almost accusingly.

‘Right,’ he replied, with some care.

‘Well, if you get one thing out of that useless cocksucker today, make sure it’s a good idea about whether we’re on a target list. Because I mean it, Kip, we’re so gone. We are out of here if he even hints that Seattle might get hit.’

‘Okay,’ he said, still holding her. ‘I can do that. It’s the sort of thing I would ask anyway. But you need to stay calm, all right? Don’t go losing it in front of the kids. Do you still have everyone coming around for the home-school thing today?’

Barb shook her head, but didn’t look up. ‘I don’t know now.’

Kip pushed her away gently. ‘You should. Suzie needs it. That rain’s cleared out and people will be looking for you. They’ll be looking to you. You need to hang tough, Bub,’ he said, invoking a pet name he used only in the rarest of circumstances. ‘I’m not going to sit here for the sake of it. If we had to leave, we would. Straight away. But if people panic, this place will unravel so quickly that nobody will get out. Do you understand?’

His wife looked up and wiped away a few tears. Her eyes were swollen and red and she had to sniff to clear her nose. But she nodded. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just… on top of everything, you know?’

‘I know. Be strong, okay? I do have to go. I have to get to Fort Lewis this morning and pick up a bunch of guys coming up from Olympia.’

‘You’re not driving down there, are you?’ she asked, suddenly fearful again. ‘Olympia’s much closer to the Wave.’

‘No,’ he assured her. ‘They stayed in town overnight. They’re just coming out to coordinate the relief effort through the rest of the state. What there is of it, anyway.’

Kipper kept his misgivings to himself, but he really didn’t know how much use they’d be. The state government had lost about a third of its people and was still reeling around in shock. He couldn’t blame them. The city would be exactly the same in their position. He just didn’t want to get sucked into their death spiral.

‘I’ll be late, but I will be back. Don’t worry. And don’t spend the day hovering over the radio while we have power. That stuff means nothing to us now. It’s somebody else’s problem.’

He saw Barbara gather her forces and quell her fears. She was so much smaller than him, but stronger in many ways. He wished he could have taken her to sort out General Blackstone. One of Barb’s patented maulings and the old prick would run up the white flag for certain.

He kissed her on both eyelids and went through to say goodbye to Suzie and Emma, knowing it would probably be the last pleasant moment of the day.

FORT LEWIS, I CORPS HO, WASHINGTON STATE

‘Release them now!’

‘Now is not the right time.’

‘Now is completely the right fucking time, or I walk. My people walk. Every fucking city council employee walks and you can deal with the consequences,’ said Kipper, stabbing at the tabletop for emphasis.

General Blackstone, half hidden in shadow under the shaded light, folded his arms and leaned back, disappearing further into the darkness. ‘The consequences will be that you go down in history as the man who destroyed America,’ he replied, just as implacably.

Kipper snorted. There were at least twice as many military personnel as there were civilians in the underground conference room at Fort Lewis. Blackstone had obviously insisted on scheduling the meeting here to keep them off balance, but Kip was determined it wasn’t going to work. He wished he had Barney with him, though. Two axe handles across the shoulders, and dangerously impatient with bullshitters and idiots, he’d have made a great shotgun rider for this mission.