The System woke the Agent twenty-four hours before it woke the President. That was the protocol. Twenty-four hours would give the Agent time to secure the bunker and to become clear-headed enough to serve the President’s needs. The wake-up routine began with an alarm—a repetitive throbbing knell in the mid-range of hearing—that returned him to a time ages ago, before the long sleep, when the early warning system sent them scurrying to the bunker. And memory of that returned the Agent further back, to his days serving on the USS Chrysanthemum just before a dive. That was how he felt now and, indeed, there was a literal truth to it: he was underneath everything, in a bunker burrowed into the bedrock below Pennsylvania Avenue, floating there in the deep black.
When the hibernation tube receded into the wall, the Agent sat upright and swung around so his legs dangled over the edge. He pressed his feet to the concrete floor and tried to stand upright. Something smarted in his hips and he crumpled to the floor, not hard enough to injure himself but hard enough to call to mind the voice of his old drill sergeant who would have called him a pansy-assed piece of shit and would have ordered him to his feet. The Agent stood on his second try, but was unable to stand unassisted, leaning instead against the wall and gripping the edge of the table beside his bed.
The Agent found his suit folded where he left it: in a drawer underneath the hibernation bed. It was dusty and stiff, as you’d expect of fabric that has been stored for fifty or a hundred years. The Agent couldn’t say for certain how long they’d been asleep; he’d have a better idea once he sat down at the bunker command station and started fiddling with the knobs and shit. Reaching into the breast pocket of the suit jacket, the Agent found a pack of cigarettes, but all of the cigarettes were dry and crumbled to bits in his palms. Shit, he screamed. His voice rang from the concrete pillars and brushed metal walls. All he wanted was a fucking smoke.
After pulling on a pair of threadbare skivvies, the Agent edged around his hibernation bed to the President’s sleep station. It was his duty to make sure the commander-in-chief was okay. In his naked state, the President was not pleasant to look at. The orange toupée had slid to one side, and the midriff had been—what was a polite way to phrase it?—enhanced. The thighs were dimpled with cellulite. If the Agent blocked out the face, the form before him was reminiscent of his mother after she had passed and was laid out on the mortician’s table. These matters registered in his brain as facts only. Years of military training had taught him to obliterate all emotional response. Therefore, the sight of the President lying naked on a hibernation bed did not cause the Agent to feel revulsion, nor did it cause him to utter anything untoward, not even in the privacy of his own thoughts.
The Agent stared at the big slab of presidential stomach. Christ, he was famished. He hobbled off in search of the pantry. If he was lucky, he might find cigarettes there.
The Agent reconstituted some flash-frozen rations, which were surprisingly good considering they’d been stored for decades, then he hunkered down at the command station where he discovered a cache of video games. In theory, he was supposed to spend his time gathering intel about conditions above ground so he could brief the President when the great man awoke. But here’s the thing: in the days and months before they fled to the bunker, the President hadn’t given a flying fuck about briefings, and no amount of sleep in a hibernation bed was likely to spark interest where there was none before. With that in mind, the Agent loaded a role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia where zombies had overrun the world and would eat his brains if he didn’t bash theirs first with a baseball bat. One hour became two hours, and two became three, and so on. The Agent was so engrossed in his game that he didn’t hear the screams from the other room until there was a lull while his big-breasted sidekick wiped the gore from her bat.
When at last he heard the choked “Where the fuck am I?” he hit the pause button and ran to the President’s bedside.
The Agent reached to intercept the President, who was teetering on the edge of his bed, and an awkward moment followed as the Agent, dressed only in briefs, and the President, dressed in nothing at all, wrapped their arms around one another.
— Who the fuck are you?
The Agent was close enough to smell the President’s breath which reminded him of rotten hay.
— Secret Service, sir. Your security detail.
— Where’s the others?
— I’m the only one who made it to you when the alarm sounded.
— Are you some kind of a faggot?
The Agent released the President but left a steadying hand on his shoulder.
— No sir. It’s just that the floor’s made of concrete and I didn’t …
— Concrete, huh?
The President shimmied sideways so he could reach the floor with his left foot and he slapped his foot like it was a dead fish three times onto the floor.
— That’s nice. Wonder who poured it. Better not’ve been a union outfit. My feet would blister on a union floor. Maybe it was Gepetto’s boys.
— Sir, I think this bunker was built before you were elected.
— Christ, you tellin’ me this floor could’ve been poured by a Kenyan outfit?
— I wouldn’t know, sir.
— Pointy-headed bastards.
— I don’t know any Kenyans personally, sir.
— Well I do, and believe me, they couldn’t pour a floor if their lives depended on it. Only thing they’re good for is running races barefoot like a bunch of savages. Christ, I’m hungry. Anywhere I can get a burger?
— There’s a food locker full of flash-frozen rations but I haven’t—
— And cheese, and strips of bacon and tomatoes, and katsup, and mustard, and onions. No relish. Not unless you can find me some of that spicy shit from that vendor—Joe’s his name—in Queens back in the 80’s. Sweet and hot all at the same time, know what I’m sayin’? Oh yeah, lettuce. Don’t forget the lettuce.
— Sir.
— You’re still standing there.
— Sir. There’s no fresh produce for a hamburger. Or fresh baking for a bun.
— What’re you sayin’?
— It’s impossible.
— I’m the fuckin’ President of the United States of America, son. Anything’s possible.
The Agent held his tongue, staring at the President and doing his best to keep thoughts from disrupting the pure silence that was the natural state inside his head.
— What about a hooker?
— A hooker, sir?
— Yeah, I thought the protocol—it was supposed to—this bunker—outfitted with a hooker. Otherwise, you know, what the fuck would we do with ourselves if we didn’t have a hooker?
— I wasn’t aware of that protocol, sir.
— Oh yeah. That was one of my first executive orders. Bunker Hooker. I’m good at thinking ahead. Strategic-like. A regular chess-champion, only with hookers.
— A stable genius, sir.
— Exactly.
— I see that now, sir.
— Good. So get me a fucking hamburger and a hooker.
The Agent didn’t need to rummage through the pantry to know he could never satisfy the President’s demands. However, the situation was not hopeless. The President struck the Agent as a man with a short attention span. If the Agent distracted the President with something more interesting than a hamburger, the President might forget that he was hungry, and that would give the Agent time to concoct something else from whatever ingredients he could find in the pantry. It took little effort to find something more interesting than a hamburger; in an alcove beyond the pantry, the Agent discovered the fruits of the President’s Bunker Hooker Executive Order. Judging by a label on the foot of the hibernation bed, the woman’s working name had been Candy. The Agent estimated she had been dead at least fifty years thanks to a broken seal on the hibernation tube. The corpse was a desiccated skin sac draped over the bones like a loose blanket.
When the President saw the remains, he said:
— Holy fuck! Reminds me of that movie. You know the one. Where Moses fights the Apes. And there’s the lady astronaut at the beginning. Totally fucked by an air leak. Such a shame. I was hoping … you know.
The President ran a finger along the glass of the hibernation tube in a gesture that almost spoke of tenderness.
— We could skull-fuck her.
— Sir?
— You take the right socket. I’ll do the left.
— I’m … ah … uncomfortable with that, sir.
— You really are a faggot, aren’t you?
— I’ve whipped up some beef stroganoff if you’re still hungry, sir.
— Christ, I was hoping I’d get some pussy … or whatever.
The men stood on either side of the hibernation tube, each gazing across the intervening corpse while trying to avoid the other’s eyes.
— You’re Secret Service, right?
— Yes, sir.
— So, like, if a guy came up to me with a gun out …
— As far as I can tell, sir, we’re the only people left on the planet.
— But supposing …
— Okay, a hypothetical gunman.
— Pulls the trigger.
— I’d try to get in the way.
— It’s part of your job description, right?
— To take a bullet for you?
— Right.
— It’s my sworn duty, sir.
— You’re sworn to take a bullet?
— Yes, sir.
— Well, son I need you to do your duty.
— Sir?
— On your knees in front of me.
— Sir?
— If I can’t skull-fuck Candy, I need you to take a bullet for me.
— But, sir, there’s beef stroganoff.
As time passed, the Agent became concerned that maybe the President didn’t grasp the gravity of their situation. At first, he had assumed it was an emotional matter: the President was in a state of denial as a way of coping with a harsh reality. But as day followed day, and the President drifted from porn videos to games of beer pong to tricycle races through the hydroponics hall, the Agent decided it had nothing to do with denial. The President knew full well that something horrible had happened on the surface; he simply didn’t care, or wasn’t interested enough to care. Nevertheless, the Agent felt it was his duty to make the President aware of a few basic facts, like the fact, for example, that the world had been overrun by an environmental holocaust. But briefing the President proved more difficult than the Agent had anticipated. Once the President heard the word holocaust, he heard nothing more.
— What the fuck have the Jews got to do with any of this?
— The Jews, sir?
— You’re the one who said there was a holocaust, so the Jews have to be involved here one way or another.
— It’s not that kind of a holocaust, sir.
— Then why’d you bring it up? Christ, how’d they let someone as dumb as you into the Secret Service?
The Agent sat the president in front of the bunker command station and cycled through video feeds from the surface. First was video of the White House, part of the West Wing reduced to rubble, sand dunes instead of green lawns, vultures picking at the remains of an old dog. It flipped to a second feed, a long view down The Mall, which was similarly desolate: a headless Lincoln gazing over a slime-covered pool, past the toppled monument to the ruins of the Capitol. The third feed came from inside the rotunda, or the remains of the rotunda which lay open to the northern sky. Pigeons nested there and years of their accumulated shit lay heaped in a ring around the broken floor.
The President pushed his chair back from the command station.
— Fake news.
— And the sensors?
— What sensors?
— The ones that tell us the average temperature is ten degress higher, there are dangerous levels of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere, and the air is full of pathogens.
— That’s what they want us to believe. Keep us scared. Keep us hiding down here while they turn America into one big theme park for Kenyans and faggots. Well, let me tell you: we don’t scare so easy. We don’t fool so easy either. That’s why you’re gonna go up there and tell those shit-skinned cocksuckers we won’t …
— Me?
— You don’t expect me to go up there, do you? I’m the President of the United States of America.
If the Agent was going to emerge from the bunker into the world above, he was determined that it would be as a member of the Secret Service, with black shoes polished to a metallic sheen, crisp white shirt, black suit and matching sunglasses, and (of course) a discreetly concealed sidearm. They had agreed that while the Agent was doing his recon work on the surface, the President would stay at the command station and monitor his progress. The Agent gave a casual salute, then turned and headed up the long sloping tunnel that emerged on the West Lawn beside the remains of an old tree stump. By the time the Agent had stepped into the sunlight, the President was no longer watching; he’d grown bored of the whole business and turned instead to old episodes of Gilligan’s Island. He especially liked the character of Thurston Howell, III but thought the man had lousy taste in women. He was terrified that “Lovey Dovey” might appear on the beach in a bikini. After three episodes, the crew and passengers of the “Minnow” were still trapped on the island, which was so boring it made the president want to smash the screen. He restrained himself and, instead, shouted that they were all a bunch of fucktards.
Holding a bottle of Scotch in the crook of his arm, the President drifted from room to room. He was particularly mesmerized by an anteroom off the sleeping quarters—a closet, really—that held nothing but mannikin busts ranged in a long row, each sporting an orange toupée. The hair of each toupée was a little longer than the last, so if you swapped toupées each day in succession, it simulated natural hair growth. After the last (slightly unkempt) toupée, you could go back to the beginning as if you’d been to the barber’s for a trim. Putting on the final toupée, the one that made him look a little wild, he stood naked in front of a full length mirror and played Rock Star. After the final chord of Dirty Deed, Done Dirt Cheap, he threw the bottle of Scotch at the mirror, but the glass didn’t shatter the way he’d hoped. Instead, the bottle bounced off the mirror and landed on his big toe. He winced as single malt pooled around his feet. He passed some time at the garbage incinerator, tossing in things that bothered him, like the chair at the command station and the Agent’s clothes.
The President was tearing pages from the Gideon Bible and folding them into paper airplanes when the Agent returned. The man swung the hatch door wide and stumbled into the bunker. His clothes were filthy and caked with sweat-salt and blood. There was a gash in his left hand that, already, had turned pussy and was gangrenous. But more disconcerting was the mixture of puss and blood oozing from his eyes and dribbling down his cheeks. He screamed for water while the President, who was still naked, stared immobile, mouth gaping.
— What the fuck happened to you?
— Water.
— You look like a pack of rabid dogs—here, have some Scotch.
— No dogs.
— Zombies. I bet it was zombies.
— No animals.
The Agent knelt on all fours and coughed ribbons of blood onto the concrete floor.
— Jesus. You nearly got my feet.
— No zombies. Nothing at all. Probably bacteria. Airborne. Aggressive little pathogens.
— We’ll fight them.
— Too late for that, sir.
— Well … fuck the little foreign bacterial bastards. We’ll beat ‘em. You look a little off, but let me tell you, I’m tough. I have a great immune system. All my doctors say so. They don’t even need to do tests. They can tell just by looking at me, the color of my skin, how fast I get an erection, that sort of thing. The last doctor I saw, he said to me: Your immune system is so great, it’s off the charts. In fact, you’re probably the most immune person on the planet.
— Mr. President, you’re the only person on the planet.
— What about you?
— I’m pretty much toast, sir.
— That’s a tough break, kid. Maybe we’ll put up a plaque when you’re gone.
The Agent looked up from the floor, one eye crusted shut, and he smiled. The President shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He felt an itch but didn’t want to spoil the moment by scratching.
— So I guess you’re leaving me here alone.
— Sorry, sir.
— Don’t be. I like being alone. Most people are assholes anyways. Besides, if I’m alone, I don’t have to share it with anyone.
— Share what, sir?
— It. Everything. The whole fucking world. Every last bit of it belongs to me now. Don’t you see? I won.
