This Can’t Be Good – Prolog
It was August in Southeast Missouri. And it was hot. And humid. Steven was lying in the shade of the huge John Deere four-wheel-drive tractor, waiting for his boss to show up with some fuel. Herschel was supposed to have been there an hour previously. But Herschel, Steven knew, was a real windshield farmer. Probably still at the coffee shop discussing the weather and crop booking prices.
It was interesting to watch the patterns the highflying jets made with their contrails. As he watched he wondered if it was true that some of the jets were spraying boron or something into the atmosphere. It was funny, they all always looked the same on any given day. Either broad and spreading like on some days. Other days they were all straight and thin.
Suddenly, all four of the contrails toward the south being formed dead ended. Steven got a quizzical look on his face. He’d never seen that happen before. He could see the sunlight glinting off the planes, but it was like the engines had all just shut off at once.
“This can’t be good,” he said aloud, climbing to his feet. Because, if their engines had stopped, that meant the jet he’d seen coming from the other direction might have stopped, too.
Steven turned around to see where that aircraft was. Just in time to see the silent 737 close up and personal, before it plowed into him and the John Deere.
This Can’t Be Good – Chapter 1
“I remember that August day that year well,” Grandpa Joseph told his grandson and granddaughter. “It rained airplanes that day. All over the good old USA. All over the world. The Powers That Be have said that of the 672 commercial flights in the air over the US at the time, only 99 of them made safe landings. Don’t really know how many in the rest of the world. Probably thousands.”
“Wow!” said thirteen-year-old Joseph the third. “That’s not very many safe landings out of all those airplanes.”
“It must have been terrible,” added fourteen year old Jenny. “All those people killed. Tell us the story, Grandpa. Tell us again what really happened?”
“Well, kids, what happened was…”
Alexander Haskell didn’t think he was God. Of course not. Just godlike. He had the power, position, wealth, looks, and manners to prove it. There is a difference between being a god and being godlike. A small difference, but a difference.
And Alexander Haskell thought the world was going to Hades in a hand basket. He was just the man to do something about it. Time to get rid of the riffraff. Go back to simpler times. Force the species to improve itself. Survival of the fittest.
When you had money, most things were available and doable. Especially when you knew the rules didn’t really apply to you. It helped if you also had remote locations available in which to work. And transportation companies of several types. And many, many resource businesses, too. All around the world. And contacts that could be used to acquire skills and materials normally available only to governments. Large, powerful governments.
So Alexander decided to build a time machine, with a riffraff eliminator. It developed into a three-part device. The first part was in the form of sixty-seven three-megaton nuclear devices and high altitude delivery vehicles.
The second was the construction and deployment of a thousand medium sized remote piloted vehicles with aerosol spray tanks filled with VX.
The third part of the triad was another thousand of the RPV’s loaded with a biologically enhanced influenza virus.
All around the world the devices were sent and set up ready to execute his master plan. People had begun to notice the recent fire in Alexander’s eyes, but then, he’d always been something of a dreamer. His eyes often looked… different.
So it was one fine August day that Alexander pushed the little red button that set into motion the launches of the sixty-seven EMP devices, the thousand war gas sprayers, and the thousand virus dispersers.
A super computer had calculated the most effective detonation points for enhanced EMP devices to generate the maximum EMP over the maximum land area, plus some heavily traveled sea routes.
Likewise, the release points of the VX were calculated to ensure the maximum casualties. Ditto the virus. It was targeted to spread through populations as rapidly and widely as possible.
The attacks were magnificently successful. Not a missile or RPV malfunctioned or was destroyed. Each did its job admirably well. Alexander had demanded the best. He got the best.
Alexander lived just long enough to know the attacks had been carried out. He was rather astonished, that in the excitement of the occasion, his heart reacted in a most un-godlike manner. It decided to quit. But of course Alexander’s compound had all the most modern equipment, including a defibulater. There was even a doctor in house that could use it. Of course, it didn’t work any more. Houston had just gone back in time, in many ways, to the mid-eighteen hundreds. Back then, when you had massive heart failure, you pretty much just died. Like Alexander did. Of course he died knowing his plan was working. Tens of millions died around the world that August day.
The death toll was increased when nations realized they had little to loose and much to gain by trying to settle old scores, and a few new ones. The short wars were mostly regional in nature. Some were country versus country. Others were civil wars. Every type of known weapon was used. The nuclear powers expended many of their stocks of nuclear devices. Many nations and many peoples bore a grudge against the United States and decided that if their own country wasn’t going to survive, then neither was America.
Hundreds of millions died during the few days after Alexander’s initial action. Then billions more as the deadly influenza spread geometrically and a largely unprepared world suffered the consequences of widespread nuclear radiation. Nations with extensive civil defense programs that were prepared to deal with nuclear war carried the deadly virus into the shelters with them. Few came out alive.
The attacks and their aftermath killed over ninety percent of the world’s population. More in countries with areas of high population density. Slightly less in nations with small populations spread over large areas.
The one group of people that survived the outcome of Alexander’s in the best shape were one of the most reviled groups of modern society in the United States. Survivalists. But they lived up to the name. They survived in droves, for they had the preparations and mindset to do so. So did the more mild mannered preppers. Unlike the main stream media depiction of Survivalists, preppers had no agenda, other than to protect their families, and live through the worst that humans or nature could throw at them.
That’s not to say that every survivalist and prepper survived. Many did not. Some were at the ground zeros of the various events. Others, through happenstance or bad luck, didn’t make it. And the other side of that coin was true as well. There were people, not well prepared, that through intelligent actions or sheer good luck, managed to survive those horrible first weeks.
But right, wrong, or indifferent, Alexander’s plan had at least part of the effect he was seeking. Humanity was getting another chance to evolve. Only time would tell if it improved itself, worsened itself, or simply remained the same, only in smaller numbers.
This Can’t Be Good – Chapter 2
“Joe! What was that?” asked Mike Johnson.
Joe was looking up at the sky. “I… I don’t know. Thought I saw a flash or something. Probably the reflection from a plane.” Joe looked thoughtful, and up at the sky again. “Though it wouldn’t have been that bright.
“Wait a minute,” Mike said. “My computer just went blank.”
Joe looked down at his. It too, was showing nothing but a blank screen. He felt a chill go down his spine. “HEMP!” he said.
“Hemp what?” Mike asked. He was looking at Joe like Joe had just gone crazy.
“High altitude electromagnetic pulse!” Joe closed his computer calmly, put it in the case and stood up. “Check!”
The server at the little outdoor coffee shop came over. “Something is wrong with the power. It’ll have to be cash. Joe gave her enough money for both his and Mike’s lunch and walked over to his truck. He stopped with one hand on the door handle. “Mike, I suggest you go on down to the city hall right now. They have a big shelter. Wish I could bring you with me, but family takes precedence. Good luck.”
With that, Joe got into his truck, a highly customized Chevy 1-ton crew cab pickup, said a prayer, and turned the key. The truck started right up. Joe chirped the wheels when he pulled out, avoiding one of the many cars sitting without moving on the street.
Mike just looked blank. He never quite got Joe. But he was a sharp cookie, none the less. Mike headed for city hall at a brisk walk.
Joe continued to check the sky as he drove home as fast as he could, considering all the stopped vehicles in the way. Twice he used the heavy front bumper of the truck to push aside a vehicle to make way for the truck. One guy screamed at him and waved a fist, but Joe paid him no mind. Push come to shove, and he’d pull the .45 he was wearing under his jacket in a shoulder holster.
He added a prayer to the one he’d said when he saw the first of several airliners come crashing to the ground all around the airport in the distance. Again he closed off a section of his mind, the way he had with Mike. He couldn’t save everyone. His family came first. He lost sight of the airport when he turned onto the county road that led to his private road to his home. And family.
Making sure the gate was locked behind him, Joe went up the last stretch of driveway yearning for the sight of his wife and children. The house was in lockdown, with the security shutters on all the doors and windows closed and latched. Joe sighed in relief. There had been no real reason to doubt their safety, but seeing the house ready for whatever the worst might be was reassuring.
Before he tried to unlock the main door, Joe used the intercom, his fingers crossed. The EMP protective measures he used when building the house apparently were successful. Trish answered almost immediately.
“Oh, Joe! I’m so glad you got here. Come on in.”
Joe closed and locked the shutter after he went through, locking the heavy entry door, too. He made a beeline to the shelter entrance in the basement. Again he used the intercom, giving the all clear code word so Trisha would unlock the shelter door from inside.
Without the code word, even if she was sure it was Joe, she wouldn’t have opened the door. It would mean Joe was compromised and to go to one of the alternate plans to deal with such situations.
The shelter blast door locked up again, Joe hugged and kissed Trish, feeling the pistol she wore in a shoulder holster under the light jacket she invariably wore when in the shelter. It could be a bit cool for her.
Joe knelt and the children ran into his arms. “We did just like Mommy said, Daddy,” said the oldest one, Joseph Junior, aged seven. He avoided the kiss on his cheek and let Mandy in to get her hug and kiss. Mandy was six.
“Daddy, are we going to be okay? Mommy said this wasn’t a drill. That it was real. Something bad has happened.”
“Your mother is right, kids,” Joe said, still on one knee. He looked at his children in turn, and calmly explained what he knew about what had happened.
Both listened solemnly and nodded when he was finished. “Any questions?”
“When can we go back outside and play?” Mandy asked.
Joe smiled. Mandy was a real outdoor oriented child, taking to their camping trips and emergency preparedness bug-out drills like a Trojan. Junior was no less enthusiastic, but he liked his inside time, too, while Mandy was always wondering when she could get back outside.
“I don’t know, yet, Sweetheart,” Joe replied. “Maybe in just a few minutes. But you need to find something inside to do for a while until I can find out more about the situation.
“Okay, Daddy,” was the sighed answer. Feeling responsible for his sister, Junior took her hand and they went off to play. Junior even let her play with his favorite truck, a rough toy duplicate of Joe’s real truck.
Joe stood up and went over to Trish. He hugged her again, for a long time. When he released her, she asked, “Is this it? The big one?”
“I don’t know, Honey. It could be. You made the right choice to lock down and take shelter. I’m going to go up and see what I can find out. I don’t want to risk the shelter gear, so I’ll use gear in the study. I think my laptop is fried, but I want to check it out, too. I won’t be long. Emergency Operational Procedures are still in effect. Lock up behind me.”
Trish’s eyes searched Joe’s face. She finally nodded and followed him over to the shelter main door and let him out.
Joe took a good look around the basement. The finished section looked like the average basement family room, though it was a bit larger than most, with two exit windows on the south side. The windows were now covered with security shutters. If need be, he’d stack the bricks that made up a seat and acted as a step to get out the window, in the window to reduce fallout radiation.
A full bathroom served the play room, and there was another in the large unfinished section. That area was almost filled with shelves. And the shelves were filled with home canned foods, and large volumes of paper products, primarily toilet paper and paper towels. Additional shelves supported box after box of other items, all commercially produced.
Satisfied that everything was as it should be, Joe went upstairs and into the study, picking up the computer case he’d set down just inside the front door. Aware that another EMP could fry some of the equipment, Joe worked quickly. The computer was dead, for a fact. But the hard drive was fine, he decided, after pulling it and putting it in an external drive case and trying it with the laptop in the study.
That laptop had fared just fine, being kept in a faraday cage when he wasn’t using it. Joe activated one of the remote cameras and connected it to the computer. A quick scan of everything outside showed nothing of importance. He disconnected, grounded the camera cable, and put away the computer. The external drive he took with him to the shelter. Though it was mostly business information, he didn’t want to lose it, or the preparedness information stored on it as well. It was all duplicated times two in computers in the shelter, plus hard copies of much of it.
“Drive is okay,” Joe told Trish when she let him in the shelter. I looked around with one of the cameras. Everything is copacetic.”
“Did you try the shortwave up there?” Trish asked.
“No. Didn’t want to risk it. I’m sure of the one HEMP, that knocked out things. I’m worried about another one. Can’t risk too much too soon for too little benefit.”
“I understand. It’s coming up on supper time. You want me to fix something down here?”
“No. As long as there isn’t any radiation, or outside disturbances, I think we can go back upstairs. Keep all the shutters down except the kitchen and the one we can watch the children playing in the back yard.”
“You think that is safe?”
“I think so. For the moment. Let them get some of the energy out of their system. We’ll sleep in the shelter for sure, until we know more of what is going on.”
“Okay,” Trish replied. She rounded up the children, not as easy as it might sound, since the shelter was actually a small complex, with several interconnected rooms.
Joe put the hard drive in the faraday cabinet that housed the shelter electronic equipment. All the lines were protected and grounded, and being underground in the shelter, which had grounded wire mesh incorporated into it, there was little risk. But Joe and Trish considered the communications and data storage equipment extremely important and wanted the redundancy of protection.
A quick look at the battery status panel, to check the status of the charge, and Joe followed Trish and the children into the basement and then upstairs.
Once they had permission, Junior and Mandy headed for the patio and back yard, waiting while Joe lifted the shutter on the French doors. “Stay in sight,” Joe admonished, his parental voice obvious to the children. They’d had drills before, and knew that their father was very serious.
Joe helped Trish prepare a nice meal for the evening, using only fresh ingredients from the refrigerator and pantry bins. He lingered for a few moments, looking over the pantry, much as he had the basement, earlier.
The pantry was the size of a large walk-in closet found in luxury homes. Not only were there shelves, there were ventilated bins for root vegetables and the like. Two large chest type freezers and a large upright took up floor space, but the chest type freezers had shelves above them, just clearing the doors of the freezers when they were open.
Like the basement storage shells, the shelves in the pantry were loaded with home canned meats, fruits, and vegetables. There was enough food and other consumables to keep the family fed and provided for in excess of two months. There were some commercially canned and bottled foods in addition to the home canned items.
Joe went to get the children when the meal was almost ready and supervised their clean up for supper. The family was well into the meal when the above ground, earth sheltered house vibrated for a long minute.
“Another earthquake, Daddy?” Junior asked. The family had felt them before. But circumstances were different now and he wasn’t sure it was an earthquake. He’d been trained to understand the effects of a nuclear blast.
“I don’t think so, Junior,” Joe said, sitting very still and listening carefully. Another shock, this one larger rattled the glassware in the kitchen.
“Too big of a coincidence,” Joe said. “Let’s finish up supper and go back down to the basement for dessert.”
“Oh, boy!” Mandy said. “Root beer floats!”
Joe smiled and nodded. Both children hastily finished the food on their plates and cleared them while Joe and Trish finished up. Trish kept looking over at Joe as they worked side by side to get the kitchen cleaned up and the dirty dishes and pots in the dishwasher. Joe closed the shutters that he’d opened and followed Trish to the basement.
He hesitated on the stairs when the house shook again, this one the worst by far. Trish, Junior, and Mandy all looked at him, concerned, but not unduly frightened.
“I think we’d better consider that the “Big One” we’ve talked about before.”
“Which one, Daddy?” Mandy asked. “The Big Earthquake like on the Weather Channel?”
“Possibly,” Joe replied.
“I think it was nukes,” Junior said firmly.
“You could be right,” Joe replied. “And we’re going to assume that, for the sake of operating until we know for sure.”
“Shouldn’t we get in the shelter?” asked Trish. She was more concerned than the children, with her adult understanding of the ramifications of nuclear war.
“I think we have plenty of time,” Joe said easily, moving behind the custom bar along one finished wall of the basement. “Root beer floats all around?” he asked.
There were loud cries of “Yes” and “You bet!” from the children and a much quieter “Yes” from Trish. It took only minutes to prepare the floats with the professional class equipment the bar boasted.
Joe and Trish limited the family’s consumption of overly sweet and/or carbonated beverages. They were considered a real treat. Some of the supplies in the store room sections of the basement contained boxed syrups for their favorite drinks. The syrup would last far longer than the canned or bottled drinks. And Joe had the knowledge, research material, and ingredients to produce additional drinks when the syrups ran out.
“Can we watch a movie?” Mandy asked, taking a seat at one of the two booths near the bar.
“It’s a little late to start a movie, Hon,” Trish said. “How about some word games?”
Joe, and especially Trish, believed that home schooling went on all the time, not just during ‘classroom’ time. Every chance to teach something was used. Building vocabulary was one of those things they often did while relaxing.
“I’ll get the dictionary out,” Junior said, leaving the table across from Mandy to get the pocket reference from a shelf against another wall. There was a complete Oxford Dictionary of the English Language on the computer, but Trish and Joe kept the current vocabulary to what was contained in the pocket version.
It was a fun time. Joe and Trish had already instilled a love of learning in the children, and to them, learning was fun. And it lasted till well after they had finished their Root Beer floats.
“Can I go to bed now, Mommy?” Mandy asked. It was a later night than usual for the two children. Junior was having trouble keeping his head up and eyes open, too. Neither had wanted to miss anything.
“Yes, you may. We’ll be sleeping in the shelter. You two go get cleaned up and ready for bed. Your father and I will be in to tuck you in shortly,” Trish told the children. She moved to help Joe clean up the bar area.
There was a weather panel at one end of the bar, and Joe nodded toward it. Trish took a look. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then she looked at the set of instruments mounted below, and separate from, the weather center. She bit her lip and turned to look at Joe, more than a little fear in her eyes. One of the remote reading radiation meters was showing more than the normal background radiation of the area.
“We’re getting fallout,” Joe said quietly. “Nothing to worry about, even upstairs. Not here, either, and certainly not in the shelter. But we aren’t taking chances. We’ll be in the shelter for the duration.”
“What about… What about the rest of the family? What do we do?” Trish asked. Her sister and her sister’s husband were not preppers, though they knew that Joe and Trish were, to a limited extent.
And Joe’s brother Matthew also had a standing invitation to come to the house in case of trouble.
“Speak of the devil!” Joe said when the intercom buzzed and he heard Matthew’s voice. “Hey, man! Let us in! There’s fallout out here! Hey. Who are you? Ow! Jeez, man! Lay off the hitting!” The intercom went silent for a moment, and then came another voice that Joe and Trish knew. Their next door neighbor to the north by a good mile. Rick Sullivan.
“Let us in, Masters! Or I wring this guy’s neck and his friend’s.”
“Friend?” Trish mouthed the words to Joe.
Joe shrugged and then told Trish, “We go to security plan. You lock down in the shelter and I’ll go deal with this.”
“Oh, Joe! Be careful! You know how violent Rick is.”
Copyright 2009
It was August in Southeast Missouri. And it was hot. And humid. Steven was lying in the shade of the huge John Deere four-wheel-drive tractor, waiting for his boss to show up with some fuel. Herschel was supposed to have been there an hour previously. But Herschel, Steven knew, was a real windshield farmer. Probably still at the coffee shop discussing the weather and crop booking prices.
It was interesting to watch the patterns the highflying jets made with their contrails. As he watched he wondered if it was true that some of the jets were spraying boron or something into the atmosphere. It was funny, they all always looked the same on any given day. Either broad and spreading like on some days. Other days they were all straight and thin.
Suddenly, all four of the contrails toward the south being formed dead ended. Steven got a quizzical look on his face. He’d never seen that happen before. He could see the sunlight glinting off the planes, but it was like the engines had all just shut off at once.
“This can’t be good,” he said aloud, climbing to his feet. Because, if their engines had stopped, that meant the jet he’d seen coming from the other direction might have stopped, too.
Steven turned around to see where that aircraft was. Just in time to see the silent 737 close up and personal, before it plowed into him and the John Deere.
This Can’t Be Good – Chapter 1
“I remember that August day that year well,” Grandpa Joseph told his grandson and granddaughter. “It rained airplanes that day. All over the good old USA. All over the world. The Powers That Be have said that of the 672 commercial flights in the air over the US at the time, only 99 of them made safe landings. Don’t really know how many in the rest of the world. Probably thousands.”
“Wow!” said thirteen-year-old Joseph the third. “That’s not very many safe landings out of all those airplanes.”
“It must have been terrible,” added fourteen year old Jenny. “All those people killed. Tell us the story, Grandpa. Tell us again what really happened?”
“Well, kids, what happened was…”
Alexander Haskell didn’t think he was God. Of course not. Just godlike. He had the power, position, wealth, looks, and manners to prove it. There is a difference between being a god and being godlike. A small difference, but a difference.
And Alexander Haskell thought the world was going to Hades in a hand basket. He was just the man to do something about it. Time to get rid of the riffraff. Go back to simpler times. Force the species to improve itself. Survival of the fittest.
When you had money, most things were available and doable. Especially when you knew the rules didn’t really apply to you. It helped if you also had remote locations available in which to work. And transportation companies of several types. And many, many resource businesses, too. All around the world. And contacts that could be used to acquire skills and materials normally available only to governments. Large, powerful governments.
So Alexander decided to build a time machine, with a riffraff eliminator. It developed into a three-part device. The first part was in the form of sixty-seven three-megaton nuclear devices and high altitude delivery vehicles.
The second was the construction and deployment of a thousand medium sized remote piloted vehicles with aerosol spray tanks filled with VX.
The third part of the triad was another thousand of the RPV’s loaded with a biologically enhanced influenza virus.
All around the world the devices were sent and set up ready to execute his master plan. People had begun to notice the recent fire in Alexander’s eyes, but then, he’d always been something of a dreamer. His eyes often looked… different.
So it was one fine August day that Alexander pushed the little red button that set into motion the launches of the sixty-seven EMP devices, the thousand war gas sprayers, and the thousand virus dispersers.
A super computer had calculated the most effective detonation points for enhanced EMP devices to generate the maximum EMP over the maximum land area, plus some heavily traveled sea routes.
Likewise, the release points of the VX were calculated to ensure the maximum casualties. Ditto the virus. It was targeted to spread through populations as rapidly and widely as possible.
The attacks were magnificently successful. Not a missile or RPV malfunctioned or was destroyed. Each did its job admirably well. Alexander had demanded the best. He got the best.
Alexander lived just long enough to know the attacks had been carried out. He was rather astonished, that in the excitement of the occasion, his heart reacted in a most un-godlike manner. It decided to quit. But of course Alexander’s compound had all the most modern equipment, including a defibulater. There was even a doctor in house that could use it. Of course, it didn’t work any more. Houston had just gone back in time, in many ways, to the mid-eighteen hundreds. Back then, when you had massive heart failure, you pretty much just died. Like Alexander did. Of course he died knowing his plan was working. Tens of millions died around the world that August day.
The death toll was increased when nations realized they had little to loose and much to gain by trying to settle old scores, and a few new ones. The short wars were mostly regional in nature. Some were country versus country. Others were civil wars. Every type of known weapon was used. The nuclear powers expended many of their stocks of nuclear devices. Many nations and many peoples bore a grudge against the United States and decided that if their own country wasn’t going to survive, then neither was America.
Hundreds of millions died during the few days after Alexander’s initial action. Then billions more as the deadly influenza spread geometrically and a largely unprepared world suffered the consequences of widespread nuclear radiation. Nations with extensive civil defense programs that were prepared to deal with nuclear war carried the deadly virus into the shelters with them. Few came out alive.
The attacks and their aftermath killed over ninety percent of the world’s population. More in countries with areas of high population density. Slightly less in nations with small populations spread over large areas.
The one group of people that survived the outcome of Alexander’s in the best shape were one of the most reviled groups of modern society in the United States. Survivalists. But they lived up to the name. They survived in droves, for they had the preparations and mindset to do so. So did the more mild mannered preppers. Unlike the main stream media depiction of Survivalists, preppers had no agenda, other than to protect their families, and live through the worst that humans or nature could throw at them.
That’s not to say that every survivalist and prepper survived. Many did not. Some were at the ground zeros of the various events. Others, through happenstance or bad luck, didn’t make it. And the other side of that coin was true as well. There were people, not well prepared, that through intelligent actions or sheer good luck, managed to survive those horrible first weeks.
But right, wrong, or indifferent, Alexander’s plan had at least part of the effect he was seeking. Humanity was getting another chance to evolve. Only time would tell if it improved itself, worsened itself, or simply remained the same, only in smaller numbers.
This Can’t Be Good – Chapter 2
“Joe! What was that?” asked Mike Johnson.
Joe was looking up at the sky. “I… I don’t know. Thought I saw a flash or something. Probably the reflection from a plane.” Joe looked thoughtful, and up at the sky again. “Though it wouldn’t have been that bright.
“Wait a minute,” Mike said. “My computer just went blank.”
Joe looked down at his. It too, was showing nothing but a blank screen. He felt a chill go down his spine. “HEMP!” he said.
“Hemp what?” Mike asked. He was looking at Joe like Joe had just gone crazy.
“High altitude electromagnetic pulse!” Joe closed his computer calmly, put it in the case and stood up. “Check!”
The server at the little outdoor coffee shop came over. “Something is wrong with the power. It’ll have to be cash. Joe gave her enough money for both his and Mike’s lunch and walked over to his truck. He stopped with one hand on the door handle. “Mike, I suggest you go on down to the city hall right now. They have a big shelter. Wish I could bring you with me, but family takes precedence. Good luck.”
With that, Joe got into his truck, a highly customized Chevy 1-ton crew cab pickup, said a prayer, and turned the key. The truck started right up. Joe chirped the wheels when he pulled out, avoiding one of the many cars sitting without moving on the street.
Mike just looked blank. He never quite got Joe. But he was a sharp cookie, none the less. Mike headed for city hall at a brisk walk.
Joe continued to check the sky as he drove home as fast as he could, considering all the stopped vehicles in the way. Twice he used the heavy front bumper of the truck to push aside a vehicle to make way for the truck. One guy screamed at him and waved a fist, but Joe paid him no mind. Push come to shove, and he’d pull the .45 he was wearing under his jacket in a shoulder holster.
He added a prayer to the one he’d said when he saw the first of several airliners come crashing to the ground all around the airport in the distance. Again he closed off a section of his mind, the way he had with Mike. He couldn’t save everyone. His family came first. He lost sight of the airport when he turned onto the county road that led to his private road to his home. And family.
Making sure the gate was locked behind him, Joe went up the last stretch of driveway yearning for the sight of his wife and children. The house was in lockdown, with the security shutters on all the doors and windows closed and latched. Joe sighed in relief. There had been no real reason to doubt their safety, but seeing the house ready for whatever the worst might be was reassuring.
Before he tried to unlock the main door, Joe used the intercom, his fingers crossed. The EMP protective measures he used when building the house apparently were successful. Trish answered almost immediately.
“Oh, Joe! I’m so glad you got here. Come on in.”
Joe closed and locked the shutter after he went through, locking the heavy entry door, too. He made a beeline to the shelter entrance in the basement. Again he used the intercom, giving the all clear code word so Trisha would unlock the shelter door from inside.
Without the code word, even if she was sure it was Joe, she wouldn’t have opened the door. It would mean Joe was compromised and to go to one of the alternate plans to deal with such situations.
The shelter blast door locked up again, Joe hugged and kissed Trish, feeling the pistol she wore in a shoulder holster under the light jacket she invariably wore when in the shelter. It could be a bit cool for her.
Joe knelt and the children ran into his arms. “We did just like Mommy said, Daddy,” said the oldest one, Joseph Junior, aged seven. He avoided the kiss on his cheek and let Mandy in to get her hug and kiss. Mandy was six.
“Daddy, are we going to be okay? Mommy said this wasn’t a drill. That it was real. Something bad has happened.”
“Your mother is right, kids,” Joe said, still on one knee. He looked at his children in turn, and calmly explained what he knew about what had happened.
Both listened solemnly and nodded when he was finished. “Any questions?”
“When can we go back outside and play?” Mandy asked.
Joe smiled. Mandy was a real outdoor oriented child, taking to their camping trips and emergency preparedness bug-out drills like a Trojan. Junior was no less enthusiastic, but he liked his inside time, too, while Mandy was always wondering when she could get back outside.
“I don’t know, yet, Sweetheart,” Joe replied. “Maybe in just a few minutes. But you need to find something inside to do for a while until I can find out more about the situation.
“Okay, Daddy,” was the sighed answer. Feeling responsible for his sister, Junior took her hand and they went off to play. Junior even let her play with his favorite truck, a rough toy duplicate of Joe’s real truck.
Joe stood up and went over to Trish. He hugged her again, for a long time. When he released her, she asked, “Is this it? The big one?”
“I don’t know, Honey. It could be. You made the right choice to lock down and take shelter. I’m going to go up and see what I can find out. I don’t want to risk the shelter gear, so I’ll use gear in the study. I think my laptop is fried, but I want to check it out, too. I won’t be long. Emergency Operational Procedures are still in effect. Lock up behind me.”
Trish’s eyes searched Joe’s face. She finally nodded and followed him over to the shelter main door and let him out.
Joe took a good look around the basement. The finished section looked like the average basement family room, though it was a bit larger than most, with two exit windows on the south side. The windows were now covered with security shutters. If need be, he’d stack the bricks that made up a seat and acted as a step to get out the window, in the window to reduce fallout radiation.
A full bathroom served the play room, and there was another in the large unfinished section. That area was almost filled with shelves. And the shelves were filled with home canned foods, and large volumes of paper products, primarily toilet paper and paper towels. Additional shelves supported box after box of other items, all commercially produced.
Satisfied that everything was as it should be, Joe went upstairs and into the study, picking up the computer case he’d set down just inside the front door. Aware that another EMP could fry some of the equipment, Joe worked quickly. The computer was dead, for a fact. But the hard drive was fine, he decided, after pulling it and putting it in an external drive case and trying it with the laptop in the study.
That laptop had fared just fine, being kept in a faraday cage when he wasn’t using it. Joe activated one of the remote cameras and connected it to the computer. A quick scan of everything outside showed nothing of importance. He disconnected, grounded the camera cable, and put away the computer. The external drive he took with him to the shelter. Though it was mostly business information, he didn’t want to lose it, or the preparedness information stored on it as well. It was all duplicated times two in computers in the shelter, plus hard copies of much of it.
“Drive is okay,” Joe told Trish when she let him in the shelter. I looked around with one of the cameras. Everything is copacetic.”
“Did you try the shortwave up there?” Trish asked.
“No. Didn’t want to risk it. I’m sure of the one HEMP, that knocked out things. I’m worried about another one. Can’t risk too much too soon for too little benefit.”
“I understand. It’s coming up on supper time. You want me to fix something down here?”
“No. As long as there isn’t any radiation, or outside disturbances, I think we can go back upstairs. Keep all the shutters down except the kitchen and the one we can watch the children playing in the back yard.”
“You think that is safe?”
“I think so. For the moment. Let them get some of the energy out of their system. We’ll sleep in the shelter for sure, until we know more of what is going on.”
“Okay,” Trish replied. She rounded up the children, not as easy as it might sound, since the shelter was actually a small complex, with several interconnected rooms.
Joe put the hard drive in the faraday cabinet that housed the shelter electronic equipment. All the lines were protected and grounded, and being underground in the shelter, which had grounded wire mesh incorporated into it, there was little risk. But Joe and Trish considered the communications and data storage equipment extremely important and wanted the redundancy of protection.
A quick look at the battery status panel, to check the status of the charge, and Joe followed Trish and the children into the basement and then upstairs.
Once they had permission, Junior and Mandy headed for the patio and back yard, waiting while Joe lifted the shutter on the French doors. “Stay in sight,” Joe admonished, his parental voice obvious to the children. They’d had drills before, and knew that their father was very serious.
Joe helped Trish prepare a nice meal for the evening, using only fresh ingredients from the refrigerator and pantry bins. He lingered for a few moments, looking over the pantry, much as he had the basement, earlier.
The pantry was the size of a large walk-in closet found in luxury homes. Not only were there shelves, there were ventilated bins for root vegetables and the like. Two large chest type freezers and a large upright took up floor space, but the chest type freezers had shelves above them, just clearing the doors of the freezers when they were open.
Like the basement storage shells, the shelves in the pantry were loaded with home canned meats, fruits, and vegetables. There was enough food and other consumables to keep the family fed and provided for in excess of two months. There were some commercially canned and bottled foods in addition to the home canned items.
Joe went to get the children when the meal was almost ready and supervised their clean up for supper. The family was well into the meal when the above ground, earth sheltered house vibrated for a long minute.
“Another earthquake, Daddy?” Junior asked. The family had felt them before. But circumstances were different now and he wasn’t sure it was an earthquake. He’d been trained to understand the effects of a nuclear blast.
“I don’t think so, Junior,” Joe said, sitting very still and listening carefully. Another shock, this one larger rattled the glassware in the kitchen.
“Too big of a coincidence,” Joe said. “Let’s finish up supper and go back down to the basement for dessert.”
“Oh, boy!” Mandy said. “Root beer floats!”
Joe smiled and nodded. Both children hastily finished the food on their plates and cleared them while Joe and Trish finished up. Trish kept looking over at Joe as they worked side by side to get the kitchen cleaned up and the dirty dishes and pots in the dishwasher. Joe closed the shutters that he’d opened and followed Trish to the basement.
He hesitated on the stairs when the house shook again, this one the worst by far. Trish, Junior, and Mandy all looked at him, concerned, but not unduly frightened.
“I think we’d better consider that the “Big One” we’ve talked about before.”
“Which one, Daddy?” Mandy asked. “The Big Earthquake like on the Weather Channel?”
“Possibly,” Joe replied.
“I think it was nukes,” Junior said firmly.
“You could be right,” Joe replied. “And we’re going to assume that, for the sake of operating until we know for sure.”
“Shouldn’t we get in the shelter?” asked Trish. She was more concerned than the children, with her adult understanding of the ramifications of nuclear war.
“I think we have plenty of time,” Joe said easily, moving behind the custom bar along one finished wall of the basement. “Root beer floats all around?” he asked.
There were loud cries of “Yes” and “You bet!” from the children and a much quieter “Yes” from Trish. It took only minutes to prepare the floats with the professional class equipment the bar boasted.
Joe and Trish limited the family’s consumption of overly sweet and/or carbonated beverages. They were considered a real treat. Some of the supplies in the store room sections of the basement contained boxed syrups for their favorite drinks. The syrup would last far longer than the canned or bottled drinks. And Joe had the knowledge, research material, and ingredients to produce additional drinks when the syrups ran out.
“Can we watch a movie?” Mandy asked, taking a seat at one of the two booths near the bar.
“It’s a little late to start a movie, Hon,” Trish said. “How about some word games?”
Joe, and especially Trish, believed that home schooling went on all the time, not just during ‘classroom’ time. Every chance to teach something was used. Building vocabulary was one of those things they often did while relaxing.
“I’ll get the dictionary out,” Junior said, leaving the table across from Mandy to get the pocket reference from a shelf against another wall. There was a complete Oxford Dictionary of the English Language on the computer, but Trish and Joe kept the current vocabulary to what was contained in the pocket version.
It was a fun time. Joe and Trish had already instilled a love of learning in the children, and to them, learning was fun. And it lasted till well after they had finished their Root Beer floats.
“Can I go to bed now, Mommy?” Mandy asked. It was a later night than usual for the two children. Junior was having trouble keeping his head up and eyes open, too. Neither had wanted to miss anything.
“Yes, you may. We’ll be sleeping in the shelter. You two go get cleaned up and ready for bed. Your father and I will be in to tuck you in shortly,” Trish told the children. She moved to help Joe clean up the bar area.
There was a weather panel at one end of the bar, and Joe nodded toward it. Trish took a look. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then she looked at the set of instruments mounted below, and separate from, the weather center. She bit her lip and turned to look at Joe, more than a little fear in her eyes. One of the remote reading radiation meters was showing more than the normal background radiation of the area.
“We’re getting fallout,” Joe said quietly. “Nothing to worry about, even upstairs. Not here, either, and certainly not in the shelter. But we aren’t taking chances. We’ll be in the shelter for the duration.”
“What about… What about the rest of the family? What do we do?” Trish asked. Her sister and her sister’s husband were not preppers, though they knew that Joe and Trish were, to a limited extent.
And Joe’s brother Matthew also had a standing invitation to come to the house in case of trouble.
“Speak of the devil!” Joe said when the intercom buzzed and he heard Matthew’s voice. “Hey, man! Let us in! There’s fallout out here! Hey. Who are you? Ow! Jeez, man! Lay off the hitting!” The intercom went silent for a moment, and then came another voice that Joe and Trish knew. Their next door neighbor to the north by a good mile. Rick Sullivan.
“Let us in, Masters! Or I wring this guy’s neck and his friend’s.”
“Friend?” Trish mouthed the words to Joe.
Joe shrugged and then told Trish, “We go to security plan. You lock down in the shelter and I’ll go deal with this.”
“Oh, Joe! Be careful! You know how violent Rick is.”
Copyright 2009