When A Plan Comes Together

by Jerry D. Young

  Kathy hesitated after cleaning the small family room, spare bedroom, and bath. All were in the finished portion of the basement and part of her responsibility. The unfinished section was Jay’s to do with as he wished.

  She opened the door and went into the second section of the basement. She tried to remember when she’d last been in this section. It was before Jay had finished it. Not quite to the expert level her part of the basement was, but very nice. It was a bit hard to see some of the finish work, as there were boxes stacked chest high along the wall in heavy duty shelving.

  There were more shelves suspended from the full height basement ceiling, creating a floor to ceiling shelving system. He’d told her he was putting in shelving, in case she needed the room, but she had all she needed in the big closets every room had, plus the one dedicated storeroom Jay had insisted the house had when they approved the plans, a few weeks before their marriage.

  She’d been finishing up her schooling at the time the house was built and had only been there a few times to look things over. Jay had handled most of the construction, with her input, and she’d decorated it, buying quality items as time passed and both began to make better salaries.

  Kathy noticed one of the shelving units was lightly loaded, where all the others were fully loaded, but didn’t think too much about it. She went upstairs thoughtfully. She knew in her heart that Jay had never lied to her or misled her about his preps. She’d simply shown no interest in them in all the years they’d been married. She was disappointed in herself. Even if she hadn’t been an enthusiastic participant, she should have given Jay more support in his activities.

  Her thoughts turned to the children. They both spent time with their father when Kathy was at work and doing her hobbies. When she would ask about what they’d done when she got back, she got the normal answers for children their ages. “Aw, nothing. Just hanging around with Dad.”

  Both pretty much gave Jay the same answer when they spent time with her when Jay was occupied. She and Jay had even laughed about it a couple of times. They didn’t get away with those answers when they were asked about hanging out with friends at and after school. They both made a point to know what their children were doing, and with whom. But neither gave a second thought to question about what they did when they were with the other parent, especially Kathy.

  After warming up her tea, Kathy went into the living room and turned on the television to check the weather. Rex had football practice and Roxie was staying at school to help set up for school sponsored activity. She’d go get them if the weather looked bad.

  She never really checked the weather. Instead, she got involved in watching one program after another about many of the things the world was going through now and had gone through in the past. Kathy suddenly wondered what the kids’ Dr. Thompson would say was likely to become ‘Future History.’

  Roxie and Rex showed up at the same time and startled Kathy. She was engrossed in another program that was just finishing up.

  “Hi, Mom,” Rex said, setting his backpack out of the way. “What’s for supper?”

  “I’m starving,” Roxie said, dropping her pack on top of Rex’s. “Something good, I hope.”

  “Aw! Mom’s stuff is always good,” Rex said.

  “Suck up,” replied Roxie good naturedly.

  “I didn’t realize it was this late!” Kathy said, lifting her arm to look at her watch.

  “What were you watching?” Roxie asked. “I know you don’t watch the soap operas.”

  “No. It was… The Learning Channel and the History Channel. Let me check and see what I can whip up in a hurry.”

  “How about we go out for pizza?” Rex asked. Then he looked a bit chagrinned. “Oh. Never mind, Mom. I forgot for a minute you’re not working. Cereal is okay for me.”

  “Me, too, Mom,” Roxie quickly added.

  Kathy almost cried. When she could speak, she said, firmly, “We can still afford a pizza from time to time. Let me get my purse and jacket.”

  Rather than eating the pizza at the restaurant, as they usually did, Rex asked if they could take it home. He wanted to watch the news. He was doing an extra credit report, he told his mother, about China. “I want to see what’s happened today.”

  To Kathy’s surprise, Roxie said almost the same thing. “I want some more ammunition for tomorrow, too. Some of the other kids are giving Dr. Thompson a hard time over his views. I’m only one of three people that agree with him.”

  Halfway through one of the special reports on a news channel, Rex said. “I wish Dad was coming back sooner.”

  “Yeah. Me, too,” whispered Roxie.

  Kathy, already having seen some of the reports, was sort of wishing the same thing. She couldn’t quite see it the way the children, and apparently Dr. Thompson did. Things were tense, but she just couldn’t picture a war breaking out. Even if it did, certainly it would not happen soon. Surely not.

  Rex and Roxie went to their rooms to do their homework after watching the early news. Kathy stayed where she was and found another program going over the world situation. She watched late into the night, long after the children had gone to bed. When she went to bed herself, she felt shivers go up and down her back when her eyes went to Jay’s prep manuals.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Kathy had the news on while she was preparing breakfast three days later. Her hand stilled, the pancake batter forgotten as the kitchen TV screen showing a commercial cut back to the newsroom before the commercial was over. The ashen looking news anchor’s hand were shaking the piece of paper he held in one hand. Kathy could hear the crackle of the paper he was shaking so hard.

  Rex and Roxie came into the kitchen and saw Kathy motionless, staring at the TV.

  “Mom?” asked Rex.

  “Something is wrong, children. Come here.”

  Both moved around to stand beside her as she put down the bowl and wooden spoon. She put an arm around each of them and the three watched the news anchor finally start reading the statement.

  This just came in from the White House. ‘Communist China has declared war on Australia and warned the United States and the United Nations to not interfere in any way. They will retaliate with nuclear HEMP… that is high altitude electromagnetic pulse… weapons if any attempt is made to interfere with the invasion. They will be detonated high up over the United States shortly after any indication that the US intends to aid Australia.’

  The anchor looked up, still ashen faced, and then looked back down at the paper. The statement continues: ‘All American’s should…’ The screen went blank.

  “Uh-oh,” Rex said. “They really did it.”

  “Did what, Rex?” Kathy was trying the on off switch on the TV. The picture tube stayed blank.

  “A HEMP attack. Electromagnetic devices that blows out electrical and electronic stuff. I’m surprised the power is still on.”

  “You jinxed us,” Roxie said as the overhead light in the kitchen flared brightly and then the light faded away to darkness.

  Rex reached for the light switch panel and flipped the switch for the overhead light a couple of times. Nothing. “I don’t think we should activate the PV system until danger of more EMP is over. At least less.”

  “The PV system?” Kathy asked.

  “Photo voltaic panels? That you and Dad had put on the roof when you reshingled a couple years ago. Dad said we’d only use it if things got bad. He wanted to save the battery life for something important.”

  “Yes… Of course,” Kathy said. She was trying to remember but her mind was an utter blank.

  Suddenly there were tears in her eyes. “Children? Do you know what to do? I’m sorry! I don’t know what to do!”

  “Dad said he wrote a manual for if he wasn’t home. But I don’t know where it is,” Rex said. “I don’t think we need to shelter if it’s just the high altitude stuff.”

  “I don’t know where it is, either. It’s got plans for all sorts of disasters,” Roxie said. Roxie w
as still holding one of her mother’s hands when she spoke.

  “The bedroom!” Kathy almost shouted. She pulled her hand from Roxie’s and ran toward the master bedroom. The children followed.

  “That’s them!” Rex yelled when he saw Kathy reaching for the large blue binders he’d once shown the children, several years previously.

  Kathy had one open and was turning page after page. Rex and Roxie each grabbed one of the binders and began to do the same thing. None of the three stopped to look for the Table of Contents each of the binders contained.

  But Roxie stumbled onto the instructions for EMP in the fourth binder after having gone through the third.

  “Here! Here it is! EMP!” She handed the binder to Kathy.

  Kathy was reading quickly, her eyes darting back and forth across the pages. “It says to take shelter in case there is a nuclear attack with the EMP attack.” Kathy’s face was as ashen as the newscaster’s had been. Where in the world could they shelter from a nuclear war? Jay had said the basement wasn’t adequate if they hit the base thirty miles upwind of the house.

  “I think we’re okay,” Rex said. “But let’s take the books down to the basement shelter and figure out what to do.”

  Kathy looked at Rex with incredulous eyes. He was hugging two of the binders to his chest. Roxie was doing the same. “Your father said the basement wasn’t good enough shelter!”

  “The shelter, Mom! Don’t you know about the fallout shelter?” Roxie asked.

  All Kathy could do was shake her head and follow the children. Rex was taking the time to check all the doors, making sure they were locked. Roxie led the way down to the basement, and then into Jay’s section.

  She went directly to the shelving unit Kathy had noticed before, the one that was lightly loaded. Kathy watched, in somewhat of a daze, as Roxie set the binders she was carrying on one of the shelves, and then did something to one of the rear uprights and swung the unit away from the wall. It exposed a vault style door.

  Rex handed Roxie the binders he was carrying, worked the combination lock and then spun the locking wheel. He leaned against the door and it slowly opened inward. When it was open, Roxie handed back two of the binders, picked up her two, and followed Rex inside.

  Kathy followed, awe struck. Rex had already put down the binders he carried and was closing the heavy door. He spun the locking wheel on the inside of the door and then turned around to face his sister and mother.

  Kathy’s mouth was hanging open. “When did… How did… You knew about this?” she finally asked.

  “Didn’t you, Mom?” Roxie asked. “Rex and I just assumed you knew about it and didn’t say anything the way Dad taught us to keep quiet about our preps.”

  “You didn’t know, did you?” Rex asked. “So you probably don’t know the combination to get in. It’s your birthday month, Roxie’s birthday day, and my birth year. Right, Left, Right.”

  Kathy could only nod. She was staring around, taking in the features of the fallout shelter. She’d helped design the house but had not been there during much of the construction. Obviously Jay had made a few additions he hadn’t mentioned.

  “Mom,” Rex said, touching her shoulder, “We need to check out what to do about the EMP. The binder you have…”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course, the binders.” Kathy handed it to Rex and he opened it to the page number Roxie told him. Roxie read over Rex’s shoulder as he quickly read Jay’s basic plan to deal with EMP.

  “Okay,” Rex said after what seemed an interminable time to Kathy, “We need to check the electrical panel. It says here there is an EMP protection device on the power line coming into the house. It should have protected the house wiring against the EMP, since all the wiring is in grounded metal conduit.”

  “I remember something about that,” Kathy said suddenly, her eyes finally focusing on Rex. “It was more expensive to use metal conduit instead of plastic, where it was required. Jay insisted on all the wiring be in metal conduit, even if it didn’t have to be in plastic.”

  “I’ll go check…” Rex was saying, but Kathy cut him off.

  “No. Let me read a little more. Wait a bit to see if anything else goes wrong,” Kathy said. She went over to the small table in the kitchen area of the shelter and sat down. With the binder on the table in front of her, she began to read, asking for the other binders when she ran into a cross reference to another section of the manual.

  While their mother was far from being a moody person, there were times when the children knew not to bother her. This was one of them. “Let’s check the shelter systems,” Rex whispered to his sister.

  She nodded and the two began to check the various systems their father had shown them over the last couple of years. “The outside radiation meter isn’t showing anything, but we should probably put on dosimeters,” Rex told Roxie.

  Again Roxie nodded and opened a drawer in what, if Kathy had been looking, would have identified as the communications desk. Both children knew how to zero the dosimeters and did so. Roxie zeroed a third dosimeter for Kathy, though she just set it aside for later. Rex and Roxie clipped theirs to their clothing the way Jay had taught them.

  It took only a few more moments to check and see that everything in the shelter was as it should be. They talked quietly after finishing the short tour, waiting for Kathy to look up from the binders.

  “You think Dad is okay?” Rex asked Roxie.

  Roxie had a worried look on her face that she was trying to hide. But her fourteen year old brother knew her like a book.

  “I hope so. I think he probably is. You know, if anyone can cope with this, he can.”

  “But he’s so far away. What if he can’t get back?”

  Roxie sighed. “I don’t know, Rex. But he taught us some stuff, and we have the binders, and Mom.”

  “I’m kind of worried about her, too,” Rex told his sister.

  “Yeah.” Roxie spoke softly as she looked at her mother’s furrowed brow. “I can’t believe she didn’t know about the shelter. I knew she didn’t help Dad with much of the stuff, but I thought she knew about it.”

  Before Rex could reply to Roxie’s words, Kathy spoke and the two looked over at her. “Children. We have several things we should be doing. I don’t know how much you know. We’ll follow the plan your father has left us, plus what you know. I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about how to handle this situation. I’ll need your help.”

  “That’s okay, Mom,” Roxie said quickly. “Dad taught us a lot, and with the instructions in the Preparedness Manual, we’ll be all right.”

  “Yeah, Mom,” Rex said. “So far, if it’s just EMP, even HEMP, we’re okay.”

  “I hope so,” Kathy said, and then more softly, “I really hope so.”

  “You want me to check the electrical supply panel?” Rex asked, taking a step toward the shelter entrance.

  “I need to know, too. I’ll go with you,” Kathy replied. She looked over at Roxie.

  “I’m a big girl, Mom,” Roxie assured Kathy. She wasn’t going to be left out of the operation. The thought crossed her mind that she should be able to get a really good paper out of what was happening for school. “I should go with you, and here. Clip this dosimeter to your blouse. Just in case.

  Kathy hesitated. She wished she knew what to do the way the children did. Perhaps she did need both of them to help her. “Okay. But you both come right back down here if something else happens.”

  Between what Rex and Roxie already knew, and Kathy had gleaned from her hasty reading of a few sections of Jay’s manual, the trio began checking several things in and around the house.

  First they took a quick look in every room of the house, and then the outside, looking for fires that the EMP might have started. There were none. They tried the telephone and TV. Both were dead. Next was the electrical panel in the garage. Everything looked okay, including the EMP protective device fastened to the panel. Rex gingerly threw the main breaker from on to off, separating th
e house from the power grid.

  “We won’t know if it fried any of the stuff in the house until we try the PV system. There weren’t any fires or electronics that popped so we might be okay. Keep your fingers crossed.” Rex stepped to the end of one of the large shelving units along one outside wall of the garage.

  “Can I see the binder, Mom?” Rex asked, after opening another electrical cabinet and taking a look inside. “The one with the stuff about the off-grid power system.”

  Roxie had it and opened it up to the right page for Rex and held it up for him to read as he looked from binder to the interior of the electrical box. “The meters show okay. I’m going to put battery power to the house circuit through the transfer switch.”