The Pulse Effex Series: Box Set

by L. R. Burkard

  “You mean potassium iodide,” she said. “That wouldn’t help much if we’ve been exposed to gamma rays—they might protect the thyroid but that’s about it. Gamma rays are the worst kind; too powerful to be diffused by taking something.” She gave me a sad “chin up” sort of smile and turned and started locking up the house. I began carting stuff down the steps to the basement.

  After the first trip I said, “We’re going to be cold down there.”

  “I’ll load the stove in the basement,” she said, “which ought to help. If it’s really too cold we’ll just have to come out, is all.” The safe room had just about everything we could need for at least two weeks—except a means of independent heat. Guess we never thought it would be freezing when we might need the room. I tried to brush away worries about Dad as I gathered up things for the girls and the baby. Inside I felt a sinking hopelessness; it was likely too late. Definitely too late for me but maybe even for all of them. Before we shut ourselves in I grabbed the correct volume of the encyclopedia--P-Q-R—and brought it with me.

  I’d like to say what I read was reassuring, only it wasn’t. The first few hours following a blast are the deadliest for gamma rays. But one thing stood out to me: It talked about avoiding fallout and brushing it off clothing if you saw it. It said wash up, change clothes, leave contaminated objects outside of your shelter. In other words, it implied you could SEE it. Other than snow, I didn’t see any unusual dust cover or anything else out of the ordinary. Neither did we feel any sudden strong winds or heat; and we didn’t hear an explosion. I guess I’m saying I feel pretty certain we were not near the detonation site—IF there was a detonation—and so I’m less worried. I showed Mom what I read and she feels better too.

  The girls are whining to get out of this room and go to their bedroom but Mom says the prudent thing to do is at least stay the night.

  LATE NIGHT

  When the girls and Justin were asleep Mom told me that if Dad isn’t back by tomorrow morning, she’s going after him. She knows how to handle a firearm and a horse. Mom and I often practiced shooting or riding together.

  I just never dreamed we were practicing survival skills when we did it.

  LEXIE

  JANUARY 13

  DAY THREE

  Dad is back! He woke us up this morning, knocking on the door to the safe room. Mom and I seemed to wake up at the same instant. She scrambled up to let him in but when she opened the door and saw him, she froze.

  “Oh, my goodness!”

  When I looked at him, tears sprang to my eyes. Dad looked like he’d been through hell. My mother sort of lost it.

  “Do you have radiation sickness?” she cried, pulling him into the room to sit him down. She was instantly in a panic.

  “What? What? No, I’m okay,” he said, and he pulled her into a hug. Mom started crying.

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  I’d gotten up and so I went and hugged Dad. I was also crying. He put one arm around each of us. “I’m sorry,” he said, softly. “I’m okay, really.”

  The little ones had kept on sleeping. And then we were all trying to talk at once. Mom was asking what happened to him and he wanted to know why we were in the room and I tried to tell him about radiation exposure and then the twins woke up and shouted, “Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home!” as if no one knew it yet.

  “QUIET, EVERYONE!”

  My dad would make a good movie director. He knows how to call the shots.

  In the sudden silence, Laura asked, “Where WERE you, daddy?” She stumbled towards him, still wiping sleep from her eyes. Her question was exactly what we all wanted to know.

  “Mommy was worried about you,” added Lainie from her sleeping bag on the floor. But then she got up and scampered to Dad, hugging one of his legs.

  “I know; and I’m sorry, girls.” He released me and mom to bend down and give the twins a kiss atop their heads. Suddenly Justin made a sound. He’d not only woken up but had pulled himself to a standing position in his portable crib. He was rocking back and forth holding onto the side, gurgling happily at dad. It seemed to break the tension as we all chuckled and mom went to pick him up.

  “I want a better kiss, daddy,” Laura said, and so Lainie had to get a better kiss, too. But Laura had noticed that her daddy’s face was very red and rough, and his hair was a mess.

  “Did you fall off your horse, daddy?” she asked.

  He smiled, “No, honey, I didn’t fall. I had a very long walk, though.”

  Mom gasped. “Did you have to walk in this weather?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s enough, girls,” Mom said, “I want your father now. I want to hear every bit of what happened to him.”

  “What happened to Rhema, Dad?” I asked. My voice was tense. If dad had been walking, then something had happened to Rhema or he’d have been riding.

  Mom turned to me. “We’ll talk about your horse later. Right now I want to hear what happened to your father.” I didn’t like that, but there was no arguing. Not when mom talks in that tone of voice.

  “What about the radiation?” I asked.

  “What’s all this about radiation?”

  I told him what Mr. Buchanan had said about fallout and he cocked an eyebrow but said, “If we were in the worst of the fallout it would be evident by now. Lexie and I would be sick already, if not dead.”

  “You don’t exactly look wonderful,” Mom said.

  He gave a wry grin. “I’m not sick. Just weather-beaten.” He looked around. “Is that why you came down?”

  “Yes; Gerard told Lexie to get us down here. I tried the radiation detector but I don’t know how to use it,” she told him. “I thought we may as well be safe.”

  “Sure,” he said, nodding. “Where’s the detector? Just to be sure, I’ll go check.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mom said, wide-eyed. “You haven’t told us what happened to you!”

  He paused and a look of distaste passed over his face. “I’ll tell you everything when I get back.” He looked weary.

  I was glad to have him back in one piece.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” said Mom. “I’m going with you.”

  “Can I come?” I asked.

  “Stay with the little ones,” said Dad. “We’ll be right back.” Mom handed me the baby who started to fuss until I shoved a bottle of ready-to-feed formula into his mouth. Mom had breast-fed Justin for the first six months of his life and then tried to switch him to a cup. He didn’t want any part of a cup, so we still gave him bottles. I was glad we’d stocked the room.

  As my parents left, dad turned back to say, “Lock the door behind us.”

  “Really, Dad?” This seemed silly and unnecessary to me.

  “Really.”

  They left hand in hand. I locked the door, looked at the twins and shrugged. Dad was acting like an extremist prepper but so what? At least we had him back!

  When they returned Dad was shaking his head. “That was an expensive mistake,” he said to my mom.

  He looked in at us. “C’mon, we’re going upstairs. We’ll take our chances. I don’t see any evidence of fallout.”

  “What did the detector show?” I asked, as I hefted Justin more securely on my hip.

  “Nothing. It’s useless. It works with an electronic pulse, ironically enough.”

  “It uses a pulse?” I asked, incredulously.

  “Yeah. According to the instructions it has this Geiger tube which generates a pulse, an electric current, if radiation passes through the tube. The pulse (or current) is ‘electronically detected.’ Sheesh! You’d have thought they’d make a radiation detector to withstand an EMP.”

  “Maybe some do,” my mom said.

  Well, either I’m using it wrong or this one doesn’t,” Dad stated.

  As we got settled upstairs and Mom stoked the fire in the woodstove, Dad went to get cleaned up.

  “Did you find out what happened to Dad, yet?”

  Mom st
raightened up and removed her leather heat-resistant gloves. She pushed back a strand of hair. “Not yet. He’ll be ready to talk after he washes up.”

  “It looked like he was limping,” I said.

  She nodded. “He’s sore from so much walking.”

  When Dad returned, Mom placed a plate of flapjacks in front of him. She’d been making flapjacks whenever we went camping since I was a kid so it was no stretch for her to whip them up with a pan and the wood stove. I served the little ones, keeping my ears open. I was dying to know what had happened to Rhema. My theory was that he’d lent her to someone more in need than himself. I was hoping that was the case rather than something bad happening to my horse.

  “Okay,” he said. “This is what happened.” Everyone’s eyes were glued to Dad. Even Justin seemed to know that he could not vie for attention right now. I tried to ignore the redness and blistering on his face, a result, he said, of frostbite.

  “Roy is as helpless as a baby. I don’t know how that man made it to be a bus driver,” he said, shaking his head. “He insisted I help him get in the house—which took far too long because he didn’t want me to break a lock. Finally I was exasperated and ready to break a small window but he cried out not to and produced—what do you think? The keys.”

  Mom and I gasped. “What a creep!” I said. “He lied about not having his keys!”

  Dad continued, “So we had to freeze for that extra hour just because he was hoping I’d give up and bring him back home with me.” Again he shook his head. “Then he wanted me to walk him through accessing propane for a fire. After spending some time doing that I happened to see he had a kerosene heater! And kerosene. I made him use that. But he just kept peppering me with questions as if he’d never had to get by without electricity in his life. I tried to reassure him that as long as he could ration his food and keep warm he’d make it until spring.

  “Man, I don’t have enough food to last me three months,” Dad mimicked Roy’s voice, and Mom and I both cracked smiles.

  “I said, ‘Hey, you’ve wanted to lose some weight, right? Here’s your chance. You’re going to. But you’ll survive.”

  I recalled Roy’s wide middle and had to grin. But what dad said next wiped the smile from my face.

  “So then he says, ‘Okay, just help me get my flashlights ready for the night.’ He sent me to the basement to bring them up. I should have known no one would keep all their flashlights in a basement but I just wanted to get home and I went—and he locked me in.”

  Mom and I gasped. “He locked you in?”

  “Dad, why didn’t you make him get the flashlights?” I asked. “It was his house; he should have known where they were, not you.”

  “He said he’d climb up to the attic to get his extra batteries while I got the flashlights.”

  Mom sighed.

  Dad nodded, remembering. “So he locked me in and said he wouldn’t let me out until he was sure his heater could keep him warm and that he’d be able to survive.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Well, the basement was pretty dark and it was getting really dark as the sun went down, so I looked around for a way to get out. It wasn’t a walk-out basement. If I was going to get out, it would have to be through this little window by the washer and dryer. The dryer hose was in it so I had to pull that out and unscrew a few screws for the screen holding it in place. I didn’t have a screwdriver, so I used my pocketknife, but that took a while.”

  “At first I thought he wouldn’t possibly be serious about keeping me down there. I yelled out to him that it was mighty cold in that basement. He said, ‘I’ll let you out. Soon.’ Every time I called he said, ‘Soon.’”

  “Well, my hands were getting numb with cold, making it harder to use my knife to undo those screws but I finally did. Then, I had to remove snow from around the window so I could crawl out; and then I found out there was no way I was gonna fit through that little window. After all that work.”

  “So how’d you get out?” Mom asked.

  “There was a wooden frame around the window. I pried it off, top and bottom. That was enough for me to squeeze out, but it hurt like the blazes.” He rubbed his ribs, showing us where it hurt.

  “Anyway,” and he looked right at me. “I went to get Rhema and she wasn’t there! I figure Roy got rid of her to make sure I wouldn’t go anywhere. I think that man was just terrified of being alone. All because the lights went out.”

  “You don’t think he hurt her, do you?” My heart had flown into my throat.

  “No, I think he ran her off.”

  “How stupid of him to get rid of a horse now!” I cried.

  “So you walked all the way?” My mother asked, as though the idea was impossible.

  Dad nodded. “Had to. I kept hoping to find that animal along the route but I didn’t see her. I didn’t see anyone. I DID stop at Mrs. Preston’s.”

  “My gosh, I haven’t even thought of her!” Mom moaned.

  I felt a stab of concern for Mrs. Preston. I’d known her all my life. She lives about two miles from us and used to go to our church. When she started needing oxygen she didn’t want to drag the canister with her to church, so she stopped going and began listening to the messages via the internet. The church records our pastor each week and posts the link on a Facebook page. So Mrs. Preston had Blake set her up with a laptop and speakers and everything. Gotta respect an old lady who does that.

  Anyways, we usually bring her a meal on Saturday or Sunday since her meal service for the elderly doesn’t deliver on weekends. Sometimes we bring her here to have dinner with us. She always has chocolate for me and the girls.

  “It’s a good thing I stopped there,” Dad was saying. “She was asleep in a chair covered with a blanket, but her house wasn’t much warmer than outdoors. I got a fire going in her little stove. It looked as though she’d tried to start one herself but couldn’t do it. I’m thinking she would have just frozen in her sleep if I hadn’t come by.”

  “So she’s okay?” Mom said.

  “She is for now. So are the cats. But we have to bring her here. She’ll never be able to keep up that wood stove on her own.”

  “Wow,” I breathed. “Thank God Mrs. Preston’s house was on the way!”

  Dad nodded. “You’re not kidding. I was getting worried about frostbite, but I got all warmed up there and I changed my socks and found a different pair of gloves, dry ones. It made all the difference.”

  “Not for your face,” I said, feeling sad. Dad’s nose was so red he looked like a caricature of a drunk. Mom must have thought the same thing. She reached over and touched the tip of his nose. “You’ve got a little frostbite there on your nose.”

  Dad rubbed it. “Nah. I can feel it.”

  “I’ll bet she was happy to see you,” Mom said, and we all smiled. Mrs. Preston loves company.

  But Dad was yawning. “I’ve been up all night. I need to take a nap.”

  “Would Roy try to come back here?” I asked, as he rose from the table. Dad thought for a moment but almost smiled, like it was an absurd idea.

  “He’s not in shape to make that walk, let me tell you. And there are plenty of closer folks he’d probably pester before us. So the answer is, no, I don’t think so. Not while the weather’s cold like this.” He gave me a sideways look. “You still have my Glock, don’t you?”

  I’d actually forgotten about it. It was still in my coat pocket so I went and got it and handed it over. He examined it briefly. Looking at me he said, “So you rode all the way to the Buchanans and back?” He looked tired but I could see a glint of something in his eyes. Was it anger? I braced myself for having to defend my actions.

  “Yes, I did.”

  He nodded. “That’s my girl,” he said. Then, “Maybe you’d best rest up too before we go get Mrs. Preston.”

  Later I found out Rhema slid on a patch of ice when she was carrying Dad and Roy. It was a small miracle she hadn’t broken anything or that neither man
took a fall. And the irony of the situation is that Dad had just about decided to spend the night and let the horse rest. He’d taken a few handfuls of hay from the cart, stuffing them into his coat and saddle bag, so he even had food for Rhema. But Roy blew it. By trying to force my father to stay with him, he lost an ally. We might have felt badly for him and tried to check on him now and then—but not now!

  I’m still wondering if there’s radiation out there and we just don’t know it. There’s no way to find out unless we start getting sick. Dad says he’ll go talk to Gerard (that’s Mr. Buchanan) as soon as he can, but today we need to get Mrs. Preston. He’s afraid to wait until tomorrow because of this freezing weather. Our outdoor thermometer reads 12 degrees right now.

  I wish I could talk to Andrea. We should have devised some way to keep in touch if electricity ever failed—but how? It feels like so many things have happened since the power went out. I wonder if she feels the same way.

  AFTERNOON

  I’m ready to go but Dad’s still sleeping. I meandered out to the barn—probably to mourn over Rhema’s empty stall—and suddenly remembered. The rabbits! I’d left them together in one cage! A nasty doe could castrate a buck if she got tired of his pestering. With a terrible feeling of foreboding I rushed to the cages. If I’d let that happen, it would mean a whole lot less meat for the family as well as other people who might have traded with us.

  When I got there the animals were in two separate corners and my heart sank. I saw the buck move. I took the doe out and looked her over—no blood anywhere. I could breathe again. I hurried her back to her own cage and then went to check out the buck. He growled at me a little as my hand approached, but I sweet-talked him for a minute and then suddenly I had him. I turned him over with my heart in my throat. He was okay! Whew! Dad would have been so disappointed with me if anything happened to him.

  We’ll put aside a buck from the first litter and maybe a doe from the next one to have more breeders. We’ve butchered rabbits before, so I know better than to get attached to them despite how pretty they are, but I was feeling awfully fond of that buck right then.