2037
As she finished flipping through the pages of an old 1960s Fantastic Four paperback, Calliope Anderson dog-eared her page and came to the conclusion that it was time to end the world. She sat in a building that had been around for exactly two hundred and thirty-nine years. The walls were green, and a portrait of some Founding Father or something sat on the wall.
She felt for a moment that she probably cared too much for the works of Lee and Kirby, but honestly Lottie had sent it to her as a gift through a war zone, and she had to at least give it a shot before inevitably deciding to toss it. It was a masterwork, and even she could admit it.
Maybe the dumb kid from the miserable father had decent taste.
The phone rang. "Shit!" she exclaimed. She picked up her government phone that was drenched in obsolete tech and security paranoia. "President of the United States speaking," she said.
"Madame President, please report to an emergency briefing at the Senate hall," he said.
"Is this important?" Calliope asked. "I'm not in the Air Force anymore, I get to be late, now, right?"
"Madame President, we're in a bad spot, and we need you. Please."
"Sure," Calliope said, walking until she reached the great round table surrounded by Corinthian columns and Roman-style busts. She sat down, surrounded by brass and a few suits. "So, what's going on?" she asked.
The General of the Army who'd called her on that very secure line tilted his head. "Good news: Tommy's out of the game, Danny's on the ropes, and Al's dealing with an insurgency."
"What's the bad news?" Calliope asked.
"The extremists are gaining city after city. The Reds got Picano before the Christers in the South could, thanks to Cuba threatening them with war, but the Christers just won't go down. Most of our footholds in the Mid-Atlantic, South, and Midwest are Christer or Red, and Al and Danny have most of the rest. We're also not getting back Hawaii."
An idea leapt into Calliope Anderson's brain like a ballet dancer. "It sounds like we're backed up against a wall," she said. Already, she thought of the sad words she'd tell to justify what was to be done. Probably something about deeply regretting it, of there being no other choice.
"Pretty much," the General said.
An aide in a suit spoke. "I do think the war's potentially winnable. We'd need to build bridges with Denver and Sacramento, then crush the extremists in a vise grip now that we've finally got the whole Northeast secure and they have most of California and some of the rest."
Calliope didn't let it show, but this was a bullshit option. No way I'm letting White Obama and General Ross get to take some of my credit. They don't get to decide what I do after the dust settles. "I don't know if that's tactically savvy, Jameson. Give it some thought. If we work with Alvin, we're subordinated to NATO control, and then we come out of this tragedy having gained nothing but a yoke on our backs. If we work with Lowell, we get pegged as the woke coalition and then the Christers take the Inland Empire and the rest. That causes who knows how many deaths. If we do both, it'll be a shitshow. We need to do this unilaterally."
She already knew the only way to do that. When your soldiers were tired, your supply lines broken and stretched, and your famous air war tactics failing to get the job done, there was only one solution.
"You can't be suggesting the use of nuclear weapons," Jameson sputtered. "Those haven't been used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki!"
"I'm not suggesting anything," Calliope lied. "What I want is to know what our options are. We need to figure out what we have, and how we can use what we have to get what we want." She turned to the Air Force representative, in full uniform. "So how many nukes do we have secured?" she asked.
"Something like a hundred and thirty, maybe a hundred and fifty at most. Most of them would be air-dropped like the Fat Man, converted from warheads. We have air superiority across the West Coast, thanks to help from China. We're also lucky that the Reds and Christers are the main problem west of Louisiana now that the Reds decapitated the Miami Government. Plus, the Christers try not to use anything more complicated than a Spitfire when they can get away with it, and the Reds also are using their air power pretty heavily in strategic campaigns against Cali and such in Cascadia. We could level every major city from New Orleans west, and if we did that, we'd knock Denver and Sacramento out of the game. That brings us down to the Reds and the Christers, and a lot of the Reds live in the cities we'd be bombing."
Calliope smiled, just a bit. "...So with one big strike, we could bring it down to little more than us vs. the Christers?" she asked.
"More or less. It wouldn't be that simple, but it would simplify our aims," The Air Force representative said.
Jameson spoke up. "Madame President, you can't seriously be planning to kill more people than Hitler?"
"Well, in war you have to make the hard decisions," Calliope said, feigning sorrow. She slumped her shoulders like Sam used to do. "How much time do we have to decide?" she asked.
"In three days we'll lose Hoboken to the Reds," the General of the Army said.
"Well, everyone, if we can end this war quickly, that's what we have to do. The sooner this ends, the sooner people die. This action will be called cruel, but it would be more cruel to let the war and its torture and killing last for a decade or more." She turned to the Air Force representative. "I am giving you full authorization to begin this operation." She stood up and walked towards the door. "Make it quick, and I'll talk to PR about what we'll say."
Allison Cartwright walked the streets of Nashville with a rifle on her back. She wore a hat with a single white star on a black background. The stars were high. On her arm was a red armband, marking her as an agent of the revolution. The streets were being cleaned, the red flags were being hoisted, and she thought about where to go for dinner. Next to her was Lindsay Shale, who couldn't have been more aesthetically different.
Liza Oswald sipped her hot cocoa in her LA apartment, by the baby grand piano.
Allison wore tank tops and her hair in a frizzy mess, Lindsay had so much work done on her that she looked like a Barbie doll with the world's biggest bra inserts. Lindsay was short, and Allison was tall. Lindsay wore a full face of makeup, while Allison wore baggy shorts. Lindsay got on her toes to give her girlfriend a kiss. "So, babe, what're we doing to eat?" she asked.
Liza Oswald was lonely, thought about texting her husband back.
"I dunno," Allison said. "I dunno if I'm that hungry, but if you want to get something we can."
"I don't really feel like cooking, can you?" Lindsay asked, batting false lashes. Beauty, as with many things, was a way to feel in control of a chaotic world.
Liza Oswald was bored, she sat there in her recliner.
"Only if it's, like, grilling a steak in a little grill," Allison said, yawning.
"We could do that!" Lindsay said. "Oh, and I was gonna ask. My brother got deep into that Christer stuff. I know he's safe here, but what if he does something?"
Liza Oswald wanted to hug Kendra.
"Ever thought of open carry?" Allison asked. "It's good for safety."
Lindsay gave a small nod. "Maybe, but I don't think I could, you know, hold a gun. I'm just not that kind of person."
Allison chuckled. "Oh, you're scared? You're afraid of a gun, but not of all of the Christers in the suburbs that've sprung up out of Miami's corpse?"
Liza Oswald was hungry, and she started on a brownie she'd made earlier.
"I dunno, it's just less scary since I don't live in the burbs," she said. She noticed what used to be a steakhouse, and now was a house full of steak. "Hey, babe, let's get going!" Practically dragging her girlfriend towards the building, Lindsay Shale was vaporized in an atomic fireball.
Everyone in their half-mile radius were dead. They were erased from existence. Their bodies were now so much sandy fallout. Bones broke. Buildings collapsed or were burned to nothing. A city of artists, militiapeople, philosophers, dugouts, fortifications, and networked communes was now a graveyard underneath a second sun that burned red.
Rick Bowman, looking through a window of the International Space Station saw over a hundred little pinpricks of light erupt between the Mississippi and the Pacific like a wave.
Liza Oswald wasn't real anymore.
2049
With Rakhil in lingerie sleeping underneath her arm, Calliope sat on a firm couch with film of Operation Leading Light playing. She looked at the little mushroom on her phone, hearing Rakhil softly snore. She remembered what she'd told the people: that she'd regretted it, that it had to be done, that it was horrifying. Truthfully, that yellow light on the screen didn't seem too bad at all. She wouldn't want to tan there, but she'd learned how to say the right thing to whoever she had to—even if it was more fun sometimes to try and freak people out.
Honestly, the biggest reason she'd ordered Operation Leading Light was because she'd just never commanded a nuclear strike before.
She thought to herself. Never have I ever...
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