[SHORT STORY] The Cult of Personality - Part One

Deep beneath the lonely desert sands of New Mexico, a 4 star general was weeping. His body shuddered as he kept whimpers from escaping and with each spasm of sobs, his thoughts turned to his daughter and wife, who were now surely dead. His cabin door at the base was closed but he knew that they were on high alert and his presence was required at the Ops Room so an officer was likely to come in and interrupt his moment of weakness as nuclear war vaporised everything and everyone he loved.

General Adrian T. Banks looked into the small round mirror above his sink and took a deep breath. A sleep deprived fifty five year old man with cold blue eyes and grey-speckled hair looked back. Pull yourself together man, he whispered to himself as he wiped his bloodshot eyes.

The tannoy system crackled and spat out a tinny voice which the General recognised as First Lieutenant Yorke - ‘General Banks to Operations, Banks to Ops, stat.’. The General composed himself, cleaned his face, opened his cabin door and faced the madness.

Silent alarms were flashing red along the corridors of the bunker and staff and officers walked purposefully with expressions of quiet fear to and from their respective duties.The drills had never been able to truly instill the terror of the situation at hand, no matter how realistic the army psychologists made them. General Banks returned salutes from passing officers who, despite the circumstances, still showed their respect. He had always found the salute as a strange custom. Nobody really knows where it came from or what it’s true purpose was although at the officers club, there was always an amateur military historian ready to impart his theory. The best he had heard compared the salute to the handshake where, centuries ago, it had been customary to display that you weren’t holding a weapon by showing an empty hand to a new acquaintance. The salute had evolved into a display of respect and was peppered with the trademark military rules and regulations, as stringent and unforgiving as life in the military.

The General kept his eyes forward and walked with the pace of a man in authority. He reached the elevator and allowed the scanner to map his retina. The green light blinked and Banks pressed Lvl -22, the Operations Room floor. He had made this elevator journey more times than he could remember and knew he had around three minutes until the doors would open onto a cavern of uniformed soldiers, fear tinted sweat and world ending computer equipment. He closed his eyes and thought of his wife and daughter again, How had it come to this? Why didn’t anybody see the attack coming? Where had the missile defense system failed? The General's face screwed up like he had smelled putridity as he tried to console himself - they would have gone quickly, they wouldn’t have suffered. He realised he was speaking this out loud as the elevator shunted still from it’s decent and the doors jarred open. Here he was, in the safest place on Earth with full authority to finish off what remained of the human race.