NEVER AGAIN Book 2
NUCLEAR
HOLOCAUST
NEVER AGAIN
R.J. RUMMEL
Llumina Press
Copyright 2004 R.J. Rummel All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from both the copyright owner and the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of this work should be mailed to Permissions Department, Llumina Press, PO Box 772246, Coral Springs, FL 33077-2246
ISBN: 1-59526-308-X -- 1-59526-307-1 Printed in the United States of America by Llumina Press
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rummel, R. J. (Rudolph J.), 1932- Nuclear holocaust not again / R.J. Rummel. p. cm.
ISBN 1-59526-308-X (alk. paper) -- ISBN 1-59526-307-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Nuclear warfare--Fiction. I. Title. PS3568.U447N83 2004 813'.6--dc22
2003027676
Praise for books by Nobel Peace Prize finalist
R. J. Rummel
"26th in a Random House poll on the best nonfiction book of the 20th Century."
Random House (Modern Library)
". . . the most important .. . in the history of international relations."
John Norton Moore, Professor of Law and
Director, Center for National Security Law, former
Chairman of the Board of Directors of the U. S. Institute of Peace
". . . among the most exciting . . . in years."
Jim Powell
". . . most comprehensive . . . I have ever encountered . . . illuminating . . . ."
Storm Russell
"One more home run . . . ."
Bruce Russett, Professor of International Relations
". . . has profoundly affected my political and social views."
Lurner B. Williams
". . . truly brilliant . . . ought to be mandatory reading."
Robert F. Turner, Professor of Law, former President of U.S. Institute of Peace
". . . highly recommend . . . ."
Cutting Edge
"We all walk a little taller by climbing on the shoulders of Rummel's work."
Irving Louis Horowitz, Professor Of Sociology.
". . . everyone in leadership should read and understand . . . ."
DivinePrinciple.com
". . .exciting . . . pushes aside all the theories, propaganda, and wishful thinking . . . . " www.alphane.com
" . . . world's foremost authority on the phenomenon of 'democide.'"
American Opinion Publishing
". . . excellent . . . ."
Brian Carnell
". . . bound to be become a standard work . . . . "
James Lee Ray, Professor of Political Science
". . . major intellectual accomplishment . . .will be cited far into the next century"
Jack Vincent, Professor of Political Science."
". . . most important . . . required reading . . . . " thewizardofuz (Amazon.com)
". . . valuable perspective . . . . "
R.W. Rasband
". . . offers a desperately needed perspective . . . . "
Andrew Johnstone
". . . eloquent . . . very important . . . . "
Doug Vaughn
". . . should be required reading . . .shocking and sobering . . . . "
Sugi Sorensen
Relevant books by R.J. Rummel
Understanding Conflict and War (five volumes) Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917
China’s Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900
Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder Death By Government Statistics of Democide Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence Saving Lives, Enriching Life: Freedom as a Right and a Moral Good (online book)
To the unknown Joys and Johns of this universe that fight and die so that others may live in freedom
Acknowledgements
I owe many thanks to the thorough evaluation, many helpful suggestions, and careful editing of Marg Gilks. Whatever strengths this book has I owe to her. As with Book 1, I also am indebted to the many visitors to my website at www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ who commented on or questioned the material there. They often had an impact on this novel.
And as always and foremost, is my wife Grace. She made this novel and series possible. Without her, I could not have written it. Another kiss, sweetheart.
To be sure, this is a book of fiction. Although some characters may in name and position bear a striking resemblance to historical figures, they are fictional. Nonetheless, I must say that whatever errors of fictional facts exist are mine, and wholly mine.
Foreword
As I pointed out in the foreword to War and Democide, Never
Again, Book 1 in this Never Again series, love is one of our greatest mysteries and the greatest reward that we can receive and give others. Here I revisit the story of the love between a man and a woman, and their love for humanity, and continue my effort to uncover a subversive, insidious, and almost invisible force in human relations. This is the enemy of love and the struggle between the two pervades this book.
What is it? If you read Book 1, you will know. You can start here with your eyes open, unlike the lovers thrust by me, a merciless author, back in time again. But, this time, not alone.
R.J. Rummel www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/
Chapter 1
New York October 7, 1994, New Universe
ehind Lora, a sudden, blazing-white light cast everything into stark black and white, like a photographic negative. “What the . . . ” Lora
Bblurted, just before a thunderous blast pushed her into the earth.
She shuddered, cringed from it. The sound hammered her for seconds, then diminished like thunder reverberating in distant mountains; it lessened further into a distant crackling, breaking, tearing, clanging. Finally it disappeared altogether, leaving a vacuum of sound, as though all noise had been sucked into the earth. All were stony silent—birds, insects, cars; no tree branch rustled, no voices called.
More seconds. She heard an approaching roar. Then, in a flurry of leaves, broken branches, shingles, and small rocks, a hot windstorm picked her up like a doll in a child’s hand and hurled her against a tree trunk. All around, a maelstrom of banging, thudding, shattering, falling things exploded in her ears. Stunned, the breath knocked out of her, Lora gasped for air, tried to focus her eyes, tried to stop the world from spinning.
A more profound stillness settled around her.
I’m dead.
No, Lora’s body screamed: that thudding was her heart; that salty iron taste her blood; that grit on her lips, that smell, was the dirt covering her face. As if proving further her survival, excruciating pain blasted her mind, and she let out an involuntary screech.
Her mind struggled against the shock and pain to gain control over her body. She had to discover what had just happened. The world steadied, her eyes focused, but nothing made any more sense than an abstract painting of complex and intertwined lines, patches of color, gray images, black holes. Then, as a strange image suddenly clicks into an obvious picture, she realized her head was upside down and, through the tangled branches of a shrub, she was watching an angry, roiling, red and black mushroom cloud climbing above Manhattan to blacken the morning sky.
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Sound gave up its paralysis in an eruption of distant screams, cries, howling dogs, the metallic crunch of shattered cars, and breaking things. Almost with regret, Lora recovered full consciousness. She was sprawled upside down in a twig dogwood shrub with one leg against an oak tree, her dress suit bunched around her chest, and her shoes gone.
Asteroid, it’s an asteroid. Its hit New York. It can’t be anything
else. After all, her mind spun out as if to defy the horror emerging in her mind and the pain and nausea of her body, Joy and John eliminated
major international wars—against all odds, they succeeded. Their peace has lasted for almost a century.
My God, this can’t be an attack. Lora tried to reorient herself. Mark and I had breakfast . . . about
9:15 we locked our apartment . . . headed for our Institute in Manhat- tan . . . garage being remodeled . . . car parked on Graham Street . . . walking toward the car . . . .
MARK! Where’s Mark?
She tried to right herself, and gasped from another rush of pain. Her right arm was twisted behind her. As she bent and turned to get at her arm, she screamed. Her eyes teared, and she bit her lip. It felt like somebody was cutting the muscles of her arm out with a dull, red-hot knife.
Gritting her teeth, Lora rotated her body to disentangle herself from the branches of the bush. Lying on her back, she pushed her body out of the bushes with her legs. Panting, nauseated, she sat up and stared at her right arm. It was broken near the elbow, the lower ulna and radius bones twisted backwards at a right angle. White bones streaked with blood protruded.
I can’t wait for help. A catastrophe has happened. I’ve got to find
Mark.
She jerked her eyes from street, to houses, to street, to trees. She finally located Mark leaning against a tree. Christ, his right arm can’t
bend at that angle.
“Mark. Mark! Can you hear me?”
He’s moving. He’s alive.
Lora gritted her teeth, gripped the broken segment of her arm, and twisted. Agony made her squeal through her teeth. She straightened her broken arm with her left hand. Dizzy, near vomiting, she held it gingerly as she struggled to her knees, then staggered to her feet. She stood swaying. Finally she checked her body for more injuries; saw scratches and punctures, but they weren’t bleeding much.
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Nuclear Holocaust Never Again
“Nothing serious,” she told herself, needing to hear a voice. “Just hold the arm out from your body.” She spit blood and probed with her tongue—she’d bitten the inside of her lower lip.
She needed all her strength to lurch toward Mark. “Sweetheart,” she called, “can you move? We’ve got to get to a hospital.”
Blood dripped from a cut on his cheek. Mark grimaced and grunted as he struggled to his feet. He stood rocking back and forth like a drunken sailor. With his good left hand he felt around his ribs, and yelped. “Besides my arm,” he moaned, “I think some ribs broke.”
Letting his broken arm hang, he shuffled over to her and put out his good hand to help support her. His eyes opened wide when he saw her broken arm. “Jesus, “ he exclaimed, “your arm. I’ve got to get you to a hospital.”
Lora leaned against him, happy that they both had survived whatever had happened. She rested her head on his shoulder for a moment to calm herself, then lifted it and looked around for other survivors. No one had been nearby, this late in the morning, and there had been little traffic on their narrow road.
“Our Lux looks okay,” Mark said. The whirlwind had blown it backwards into a telephone pole, but
Lora could see no serious damage. As they helped each other toward it, she realized that snow-like grit and ash was falling from the towering black and gray mushroom cloud that now loomed over them. Already it coated everything. What had been a clear, sunny day was now dim and hazy, blanketed in a gray fog. They pulled several broken branches off the car, and Mark managed to brush the debris and fallout from the windshield with his good hand.
Lora suddenly exclaimed, “My purse. What happened to my purse?”
Letting her broken arm hang around the protruding bone and trying to ignore the pain, she limped in her torn stockings toward the tree she had been thrown against, and saw her purse and shoes had been flung nearby. She quickly shoved her feet into her shoes and as she returned to the car with her purse, she heard frantic whining. She spied a small terrier, its tail between its legs and ears flat against its head, running into one object after another. Each time it fell, got up, and tried a new direction. It was bleeding from the mouth.
Lora pointed at the terrier with her good hand. “The poor thing can’t see,” she said in a voice that reflected the dog’s anguish.
The terrier heard her voice. It headed toward her, but after another crash and tumble, she pleaded, “Here. Come, boy.” The terrier stopped
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about four feet away, trembling, and turned its gaze blindly in her direction. She opened the car door with her good hand, limped over to the terrier, and picked him up by the scruff. She put him on the floor of the car and commanded, “Stay.”
Lora laboriously climbed into the car, then rested her broken arm on her lap and her head on the dash. She took deep breaths to steady herself. She heard Mark cry out a couple of times and looked up with fear. He was trying to get his keys from his right pants pocket.
“I’ll help you, “ Lora yelled. Mark shook his head. He couldn’t get the fingers of his left hand deeply enough into his right pocket. Gritting his teeth against the pain from his ribs, he bent over and with his left hand pushed up on the pocket under the keys, jiggling them upwards within reach. He raised his right leg to jam the keys against his pants, balanced himself by putting his right foot on the car, then pulled the keys out with a grunt.
Mark carefully maneuvered into the driver’s seat, but his broken ribs kept him from sitting straight. “Okay, here,” he rasped, trying to angle his body toward her so he could hand her the keys. “I can’t start the car.”
She inserted the ignition key, started the car, and turned on the windshield wipers. “Can you steer?”
“Yes. But you’ve got to change gears.” Lora gripped the gearshift with her left hand. “I can. Just yell
‘shift,’ and I will. This is one time I’m sorry we didn’t get a car with an automatic transmission.”
Mark headed for Saint Catherine’s Hospital in Brooklyn, a few miles away. The terrier remained huddled at her feet, shaking. It moved its head, trying to look around with its sightless eyes. Blood caked around its muzzle.
How sad, Lora thought. It doesn’t know what’s going on. Then it struck her—Neither do we.
Aside from her first confused thought about an asteroid, she had not thought beyond her concern for Mark, the terrier, and her throbbing pain. Now it hit her like a punch in the face. Almost incoherently, she yelled, “My God, Mark. Jesus. It wasn’t an asteroid. It was a nuclear
bomb. We’ve been attacked with a nuclear bomb.”
“Shit. Shit.” Mark almost drove into a three-car pileup in an intersection. “Jesus Christ, a nuclear bomb! Who could do this?”
Lora moaned, “Goddam, I’m too messed up to even guess who did it. It has to be the worst monster that ever lived.”
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Nuclear Holocaust Never Again
Mark scowled and his mouth compressed into a thin, tight line. She immediately regretted distracting him, and pointed to the road. As calmly as she could, she said, “First, to the hospital.” She saw him try to compose himself and refocus on getting them there.
Mark threaded their car around numerous stalled vehicles, accidents, and downed trees that blocked the streets, several times detouring through gas stations, parking lots, and front yards. They made it to St. Catherine’s before the flood of injured reached it, although the ambulances, police vehicles, and walking injured crammed the emergency entrance. Mark parked on the grass in a remote corner of the grounds so that vehicles converging on the hospital would not block their car.
The terrier no longer trembled, and Lora thought it best to leave him in the car. She petted and stroked him with her good hand and told him, “You be a good boy, now. We’ll be back.”
The hospital was on the fringe of the mushroom cloud, which was dissipating in the light wind. In its place grew an uglier cloud of solidlooking black and gray smoke from the thousands of fires ignited by the nuclear blast. As Lora limped with Mark toward the hospital, she saw virtually no fallout on the ground and parked cars. In contrast to what she knew must have occurred in Manhattan, the hospital building stood untouched. The imposing structure was a mishmash of architecture, the result of years of added extensions. The old, central three-story brownstone building remained, though, and looking toward it with her back to Manhattan, Lora thought it looked like a church in calm repose against a cloudless blue sky. The air here smelled fresh and felt crisp.
To handle the emergency load, the hospital had augmented its staff with every available doctor and nurse, but fortunately, the deluge of human misery had yet to arrive. Frightened doctors and nurses gave Mark and Lora emergency medical treatment within a half hour. Doctors set their broken arms, put them in casts, and tightly taped Mark’s ribs. Because of her protruding bones, a doctor wanted to give Lora a general anesthetic before working on it, but she refused.
“Give me a local and do what you can to get me through the next couple of weeks,” she told him. “I’ll have surgery later, if need be.”
Both required many stitches, and afterward they filled prescriptions for pain and antibacterial drugs at the hospital pharmacy.
Worried, their fear showing, all the medical personnel wanted to know what had happened. Mark and Lora could do no more than tell them that the explosion was probably a nuclear bomb, and that they soon would be overwhelmed with patients injured in every conceivable way.
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An officious nurse came around with a clipboard and asked them to fill out an information sheet. She seemed oblivious to the horror around her.
“Sorry,” Mark said, “neither of us can write.” He indicated their broken arms. “What do you want to know?”
“Names?” Lora answered, “Lora Joy Reeves and Mark John Docker.” “Work?” She responded, “I’m president and owner of the Joy Phim Democratic Peace Institute, and Mark is my assistant and translator. And my husband.”
The nurse continued to ask for personal, medical, and insurance information until Lora put a stop to it. “We have to leave. I’m sorry, but we’re running out of time.”
“But—” Mark interrupted. “You have our telephone number. Give us a call if you need more information.”
The nurse nodded, clasped her clipboard to her chest, and said over her shoulder as she walked off, “Have a good day.”
Before leaving, Lora used the toilet. She emerged from the bathroom shaking and chilled with shock. She had dared peek at herself in the bathroom mirror. Proud of a beauty that in her late forties had only turned elegant, she now resembled an old woman. Her normally dark brown hair was matted and dirty, with grayish clumps and strands curling outward at odd angles. The cheek she had bitten was swollen, her lips puffy, her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. A witch out of a horror
movie looks good by comparison, she thought ruefully, regarding the
patches of antibacterial ointment and a large bandage that seemed to accentuate the lines in her face.
Feeling as if she was about to vomit, she stood at the entrance to the bathroom and tried to soothe her emotions. For the first time since the catastrophe, she took a real look at Mark. He appeared much worse than she did. She had always admired his good looks and strong body, and his prematurely gray hair had only added to his attractiveness. Now he couldn’t stand straight, his shoulders were rounded, and his face reflected all his suffering. Somehow he had lost a patch of hair, and one eyelid drooped in a face gray and haggard. There was a large patch bandage on his cheek. With his disheveled appearance and torn and dirty clothes, he looked like an unwashed, homeless druggie. That his one arm hung in a sling didn’t help.
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Nuclear Holocaust Never Again
Seeing her distraught look, Mark put his good arm around her shoulder in spite of his painful ribs, kissed her on the forehead, and brushed her cheeks with his lips. “We survived, precious. We’re alive. I couldn’t bear losing you. I love you.”
Lora took his hand, kissed it, and looked up into his eyes. “I love you too, honey,” she tried to purr. It sounded like a moan.
Outside the hospital, they saw ambulances and police cars backed up to the emergency entrance, and dozens of stretchers deposited on the asphalt holding bloody and mortally injured people. An occasional cry punctuated the hubbub as triage doctors and nurses scurried from one stretcher to another, dividing the injured into those beyond help, those in need of immediate treatment, and those able to wait. A large crowd of injured people stumbled or limped into the hospital, some crying, some moaning, and some appearing stoic or dazed. Some were blinded and helped along by others. Two nurses organized them all, so that the most badly injured who might survive could receive care first.
Fortunately, Mark’s foresight paid off; their Lux was not blocked.
When they got in, the terrier remained where Lora had left him. He still held his tail tight against his stomach, but he sat up and looked in her direction with clouded, dead eyes. He sniffed her, then licked her hand as she tucked him in between her lap and her sling. She stroked his stomach. Her eyes grew moist. “You poor little guy. You may be permanently blinded.”
Mark drove back to their apartment, steering with his left hand while she jockeyed the gearshift. Traffic was now stop and go on a few main roads, unmoving on all the others. Mark had to take a circuitous route along back roads, and detour through parking lots and alleys.
Lora’s right arm now only ached and, freed from the pain that had dulled her mind, she gave full thought to the nuclear attack. Its full meaning hit her with the force of a violent slap in the face. My God, our
Institute must have been destroyed—all our people were killed.
Tears flowed, and sobs wrenched her body and jarred her broken arm. Physical pain again tried to flood her mind, but could not compete with her anguish. “The bomb exploded about 9:30,” she pushed the sounds out. “Almost everyone would have been at work—all our department heads and our staff . . . dead. Janice, Bob, Shirley, Ed, Tony— Tony, whose parents are among our best friends. We’ve known him since birth! And brilliant Betty. And more. So many more . . . dead. Oh, Mark.”
The little terrier sensed her grief. In spite of his own misery, he tried to push himself up on her lap and lick her face. Lora held him to
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her with her sling and cried so hard that she couldn’t shift the car. Mark almost stalled when he had to slow down, and finally stopped the car. Freed from having to think of shifting, she mentally collapsed into mourning.
She pounded her fist on the dash, scaring the terrier. “So many good people, so many promising futures,” she sobbed, “wiped out. So many families and loved ones devastated. And they were our people. Our people. All those in the middle and top positions within the Institute that we personally hired and nurtured . . . .” She shuddered, then screamed, “Killed! All of them!”
Mark’s grunt of pain and his touch penetrated her misery. Lora looked up though her tears to see that he had tried to put his arm around her shoulders and pull her close, but his sling had prevented him. He turned sideways and grunted again as he put his left hand on her shoulder and squeezed it.
Her sobs soon diminished to tearful shudders. She put her good hand on top of his and whimpered, “They were our family.”
Mark shook his head, and Lora saw his own tears. “We were lucky.
Had we not slept late, we would have been at the Institute at 7:30, and dead now, too. Those calls we made late last night to Southeast Asia saved us, made us oversleep. I can’t believe our luck.”
She felt him squeeze her shoulder again, as though trying to assure himself that she was alive. She tilted her head and kissed his hand. She wept for a few more minutes, then willed her misery to silence. She mourned for her dead no less, but now there was the future to think about. One thought now filled her mind: We have a transcendent duty,
