Hail to the Chief [Jan2014]

Well, things got cold, quickly. Then, they became much, much worse. There’s a lot in between the great freeze and the almost complete extinction of man-kind, but the President had oodles of time to think about that, the last one alive in the Greenbrier bunker. It is the year 2049, New Year’s Eve.

“You’re a sweet-heart too.” He toasted to his imaginary wife. She was dead. So was everyone else. When a man is alone for years at a time, certain things can happen to his mind. Madness was one such potential hazard. But he was drunk, and thought it a lesser of two evils. Lesser men might commit suicide when faced with the truth of the matter. He had retreated into delusion.

“Pour me out another drink, would you, honey?” He got up, made himself a drink, and thanked her. She had been a good wife to him these last few years, even if the years had been hard on her. Her hair had more gray in it than usual. She was getting a little old. Still, he wasn’t getting any younger himself. He stared into the polished reflection behind the bar and saw a man with rapidly greying hair. He also saw himself. He looked good. The other fellow had the pallor of a corpse.

“Oh, goddamn it, go away. You lost the election. It’s not my fault you died. Maybe if you ran a better campaign, buddy, you’d be in here instead of me! I’ve already discussed this with you a hundred times. ” The grey haired man kept staring at him.

“What-ever, pal. You’re a popsicle! You’ve got no right to accuse me of election fraud. Don’t expect survivor guilt from me.” The grey haired candidate had no response to the President’s tirade. Down somewhere inside himself, the President knew that there had been no true election for over five years. Hell, he could hardly remember the last election season. He knew he had voted for himself, symbolically. There were no other voters left. The grey haired man had ran against him that year. This paired with the simple matter than no sane man would vote against himself meant the incumbent President would remain ahead in the polls. The Candidate remained irrelevant in the face of American politics.

The President turned on some music to drown out the Candidate’s droning voice. “Blue moon… Now I’m no longer alone…” The sound system belted out an old classic, and the Chief Executive let out a garbled shout of approval.

“Kids these days, they listen to garbage. You can’t make a political ad with any of it. There’s one reason your campaign failed. Really, you lost because you came across as out of touch with reality.” He spoke towards where he had seen the Candidate, but all of a sudden, his opponent was gone. The bunker was empty.

The President felt like barking out inquiries about where the figments of his imagination had ran off to, but his gut told him to save his breath. The voice of reason reminded him that he was the last one left. The others had opted out, or fled. The people he spoke to in the bunker were not real.

“What’s the point anymore? I’m the president.. President of what?” He poured himself another drink, contemplated his surroundings. It was filthy inside the bunker. He thought about cracking a joke, something about firing the maid, but his sense of humor had abandoned him. All he had were empty wrappers of food designed for shelf life, not palatability. Were these his friends?

He knew how cold it was outside. He wondered about how many had died, and considered the weight of one death in the grand scheme of things. He wouldn’t have to deal with the cold any more. He approached the exit to the bunker.

He opened the door, and stepped out in front of a cheering crowd.