'Nobody?'
The Civilian gulped at neat vodka while he answered. He seemed almost desperate to get as much alcohol into his system as humanly possible. 'There have been wargame scenarios published, where Canada invades New York State, say, or France attacks with nuclear weapons. It's all Dungeons and Dragons shit and meanwhile Purslane Dunnstreet was toiling in solitude, waiting for the big day, making the right friends, playing the game. Bannerman, sometimes you have to drink the Kool-Aid. You've just heard what we have planned, and you're one of us. Listen, I gotta go piss away all the Red Bulls I drank this morning. Keep the girls warm for me, will you?'
The Civilian got up and pushed his way through the crowd. Clark ordered a scotch and soda from the bar and sipped it in morose quietude. He studied the crowd disinterestedly with his eyes'he'd never been in a strip club before and he was only mildly curious as to what sort of person patronized them. Studying the customers was less embarrassing than looking at the staff, though. The sight of so much naked flesh made Clark blush.
He was not the only uniformed officer in the club, nor was he the highest ranking, but the vast majority of the men wore the black suits of career civil servants. He recognized several, or thought he did'he couldn't see clearly more than a few dozen feet.
Clark managed somehow to be surprised when a young woman dressed like a Colonial era town cryer walked into the club ringing an enormous handbell. She had a clipboard under one arm and she read from it without much enthusiasm as she rang her bell. 'Hear ye, hear ye, good people, it's time to get your bets in. All bets must be placed by midnight tonight. Today's deadpool is for Cleveland, Ohio. Double your money if Cleveland is overrun before midnight tonight! Hear ye, hear ye!'
Clark had blushed before. Now he blanched. He put his drink down on the bar and shoved through the patrons, needing to get out into the clean air. A completely naked woman with a red star tattooed on either of her nipples grabbed him around the waist but he wriggled free.
As he bumped past the reveling wonks of Washington he finally looked a few of them in the eyes and he realized what was going on. These people weren't just jaded cynics willing to sacrifice the country for their own self-interest. They were suffering from threat fatigue, just as they had after September Eleventh. Too much horror that required your full attention, all of the time. Too much demand on one's sense of gravitas and it broke, snapped, fell to pieces.
That wasn't a good enough excuse, he decided. They needed to regain their composure and get back to work. But he wasn't the one to tell them as much.
Out in the evening air he breathed deeply and stared up at where the stars would be if they weren't obscured by the light haze of the Capital.
The Civilian spilled out of the door behind him, a dewy can of beer in his hand.
'There's so little time left'did you hear? Cleveland is about to fall,' Clark told him, his hands tight fists in his pockets. 'I have no doubt the Epidemic has already spread to Asia, across the Pacific. It will be in Europe soon enough and then it will have covered the entire globe.'
'A very wise man said something to me once. 'Laddy,' he said, 'time's only valuable to them that are counting it.' I guess that means the dead don't need watches. This is it, Bannerman, the big D, the big A maybe.'
Clark shook off the idea. 'There's a girl out there somewhere. In California, maybe, though I imagine she probably got out in time. She's dead, but she can talk.'
The Civilian popped open his can with a noise halfway between a fart and a gunshot.