by Lee Bradford
“Come on,” he shouted, holding the phone above his head in the hope that he might catch a signal.
He studied the cell display and saw there were no bars. The thing was now a four-ounce paperweight.
On TV came scenes of more American cities devastated by nuclear explosions.
“Authorities are advising people in areas along the coast to head inland.” The anchor glared at Paul through the screen. “For everyone else, if you have a safe place, we suggest you go there now.”
Numb with disbelief, Paul couldn’t help feeling strangely detached, as though he were standing outside of his body, observing a middle-aged man in wet overalls staring at someone else’s television screen.
For close to ten years his crazy father-in-law Buck had been on and on about hyperinflation and the imminent collapse of the American economy. Far from the gluttony of Wall Street fat cats doing them in, America had just been attacked. It was starting to look as though many of the major port cities in the country had just been destroyed in a spectacular coordinated attack. Untold millions were already dead with many more to follow.
Paul drew in a long wheezy breath, the fingers of each hand gripping phones that were now silent.
That was when the power went out.
Chapter 4
Paul was frantically searching for a flashlight when he caught the sound of a truck pulling into his driveway. If he had any doubts about who had just arrived, the tread of heavy army boots mixed with a plethora of colourful curse words clomping up to his front door made the situation clear. His father-in-law Buck had arrived.
The front door opened and closed with a bang. “All right, gang. Get your stuff together. It’s show time!” Buck’s booming voice echoed throughout their small house.
Susan’s father had a detailed bug-out plan not only for himself but for his extended family, which was to say Paul, Susan, and Autumn. Buck’s wife had left him nearly a decade ago, claiming irreconcilable differences, since both of them had taken to fighting like cats and dogs for years. Crusty, stubborn, and cantankerous, Buck had a special way of making the people around him feel insane. No, his wife hadn’t taken off to be with another man. She’d apparently run away to become a nun, locking herself away in a monastery somewhere in upstate New York only to contract breast cancer and pass away within a year.
Still without a flashlight, Paul came charging around the corner and directly into the beam cast by Buck’s Maglite. Buck was in full military fatigues and when he took a step forward the clink of metal accompanied him. His muscled and powerful arms stood out in stark contrast to his belly, which pushed against his camouflage shirt. But Buck’s most distinctive features were his bushy white hair and matching beard. Squat and powerful, he had “bad Santa” written all over him.
Buck raised a foghorn into the air and let off a blast. The blaring sound forced Paul’s hands over his ears in an almost involuntary reaction.
“We don’t have any time to waste,” Buck shouted. “I got the wagon out front with room for the three of you and a suitcase each. For the love of God, Paul. Tell me you’ve been watching the news. Tell me you’ve seen what those ragheads have done this time.”
“I was right before the power went out,” Paul told him, his ears still ringing. Things were happening so fast now, it was hard for Paul to know whether this was all some kind of strange dream.
But wasn’t this precisely the kind of nightmare he’d always dreaded? A natural disaster followed by Buck bursting through the door and trying to take control of the situation.
Buck planted an army boot on the bottom riser as though he were about to head upstairs. “I don’t understand what’s taking them so long.”
“Probably the fact that Susan and Autumn aren’t here, Buck.”
Buck’s entire body grew rigid. “Pardon me?”
“Susan flew down to Atlanta yesterday to help put the finishing touches on Autumn’s apartment.”
Buck was shaking his head in disbelief. “You sent your wife and daughter down there alone?”
“What you talking about?”
The old man’s voice was starting to rise. “It’s your job to protect them, Paul.”
“My job to… This isn’t the nineteen fifties anymore, Buck. I don’t tell my wife what she can and can’t do, nor does she need to be escorted everywhere she goes. Not only that, but Autumn’s an adult now.”
“Terrorists have attacked our country and killed millions of Americans and you sent my only daughter and only grandkid a thousand miles away because you couldn’t be bothered to do your manly duties?”
“That’s it, Buck, I’ve listened to just about enough of this,” Paul shot back. “Do you really think I would’ve sent them off if I’d known this was about to happen? Do I look like some psychic medium?”
“I’ve been telling you for years something like this was on the cusp.”
“Yes, you’ve been preaching for close to twenty years now that the sky was gonna fall down and by some coincidence it has, congratulations, but that doesn’t make you smarter than the rest of us. Now if you’ll get out of my way I’m gonna throw some things together so I can go get my wife and daughter.”
Buck poked a thumb over his shoulder. “In that Volkswagen larva of yours?”
“Volkswagen Beetle. It’s a hybrid.”
Buck laughed. “It can run off farts for all I care. The highways are gonna be clogged with folks trying to leave the cities. You ain’t gonna make it a hundred miles from here.”
“You bet I will.” Whatever hatred Paul had had for the old man was growing more and more pronounced by the second.
“I ain’t kidding, Paul, and I don’t mean no disrespect, but you aren’t equipped to get them back safe and sound. You and I have had our differences over the years, ain’t no denying it, but I think the one thing we agree on is how much we love Susan and Autumn.”
Paul’s arms fell to his sides. “So what are you trying to say?”
Buck’s chin dropped. “I’m saying that you’re not going there alone. And we’re definitely not taking that thing you pass off as a car.”
Chapter 5
What Buck liked to call his “Rumbler” was really a second-hand Hummer he’d found on Craigslist two years ago. The bright yellow vehicle might be an eyesore, but it was the grille on the front bumper which was the old man’s true pride and joy. He often complained that bumpers nowadays weren’t what they used to be. They were plastic with a high glossy finish. The slightest nick would send you to the body repair shop for an expensive fix and a hefty increase in your insurance premiums. Nah, a little fender-bender for Buck was only a problem for the other guy’s car.
True to its name, they rumbled down Church Road doing well over seventy miles an hour, Buck weaving through the growing congestion as the panic began to set in. With several American cities in ruins and the power grid apparently shut down, it wouldn’t be long before the rest of the country began to starve. Paul had spent enough time listening to Buck’s sermons on the end of the world to know that most big cities didn’t have much more than two to three days’ worth of food. The big surprise was how most of the food arrived on eighteen-wheelers and beyond that from the sea ports on either coast. Now, with an untold number of those entry points either blocked or destroyed, the chances of enough food imports getting through was next to nil. Before long the country would resemble those camps in Africa with folks forced to gather near designated drop-off points, scratching and pummeling each other for a bag of rice.
Perhaps the smartest thing for everyone was to leave the cities and head for the safety of the country. Urban areas contained the world’s greatest conveniences, but as soon as the power went out they could also become deathtraps.
Buck veered off Church onto 226th Street before hitting a dirt road.
“Where are we going?” Paul asked.
“You don’t expect us to head there as is, do you?” Buck asked, eyeing Paul with the leading edge of a grin. “This
ain’t gonna to be no daytrip. We’re gonna need supplies, food, water and most important, some weapons.”
“Weapons?”
Buck reset the ball cap on his head. Underneath his linen-white hair was matted down under a ring of sweat. “Damned right. You’re gonna have to be realistic with what’s out there. A SHTF-type scenario has a funny habit of bringing the worst out in people. If you got it, you can be sure someone else is gonna want it and I ain’t giving it up without a fight.”
“This isn’t some Dirty Harry movie,” Paul said, feeling the situation was quickly getting out of hand. “I won’t argue we need some form of protection, but I don’t want this to turn into an excuse to shoot everyone who comes up to us looking for help.”
Rows of corn flickered by. “You ever fired a gun, Paul?” Buck asked without taking his eyes off the road.
“Sure I have.”
“I’m not talking about plugging holes in paper targets. Have you ever shot a man?”
“Of course not. Have you?”
He didn’t reply, but one of the old man’s eyebrows was cocked, implying he hadn’t only shot a gun, he was a lethal weapon. Maybe back in the day when he’d served as a ranger in ’Nam.
“If someone tries to take what we have or hurt the ones I love, mark my words, I will not hesitate to take them down.”
Paul shook his head, knowing where this conversation was headed. “I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t defend ourselves or our family if they’re facing some imminent threat. All I’m saying is that taking another man’s life shouldn’t be done lightly.”
“I’ve seen your type before,” Buck said. “During the war they came in all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed talking peace and restraint, and let me tell you, those poor saps were usually the most trigger-happy of all. This fancy talk of valuing life is nothing more than a smokescreen for polite society denying our true nature. If there’s a threat, I’ll take ’em out, no questions asked. No guilt. It’s just that simple.”
Paul studied his hands as the Hummer raced up the dirt road at high speed. “There’s a fine line between self-defense and murder. I just hope you can tell the difference if the time comes.”
Chapter 6
A few minutes later the yellow Hummer skidded off the road and stopped before a makeshift gate. On it were various warnings about guard dogs and trespassers being shot on sight. This was the beginning of the driveway which led to Buck’s house. A little further on they came to another sign, which gave Paul a chuckle every time he saw it, and might have today if his gut hadn’t been stitched into knots.
“What part of NO TRESPASSING don’t you understand?” the sign read.
At last they came to a final sign just as Buck’s house came into sight. This one laid things out in even starker terms.
“Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.”
As far as Paul was concerned, anyone who didn’t heed these warnings was either blind or crazy, or both.
Buck lived on a ten-acre farm, only a small portion of which grew soybeans. The rest of the land lay fallow and Paul could only imagine that Buck intended to make use of it at some later date. At the end of the driveway was Buck’s unimpressive house: a single-story lime-green bungalow with a detached two-car garage. It looked cheap and prefab. To the left of the house was a growing collection of used cars, rusted farming equipment, and bits and pieces of just about anything you could imagine. In another few years, Buck’s property would begin to look more like a junkyard than it did a home.
But Paul had been married into the Baker family long enough to know that appearances could be deceiving. Most of the money that Buck got now from his veteran’s pension went into building the bunker which sat somewhere on the property. In fact, the house itself was nothing more than a ruse designed to trick thieves and criminals into moving on to more lucrative prospects.
Paul had never seen the inside of Buck’s bunker. All he knew were stories that Susan had told him over the years. Buck had been prepping this place for the end of the world for the better half of the last decade.
After hopping out of the Hummer, Buck waved for Paul to join him. “Going to need your help loading the truck, Rock Star.”
Paul frowned. “Rock Star” was the derogatory nickname Buck had given him the first day the two men had met. It was never clear whether the source of the old man’s disapproval had come from the fact that Paul was originally from New York City or whether it was because Paul had been a musician in a rock band. Growing up with musical parents had predisposed Paul to an affinity for the arts. His father, a concert pianist, and his mother, an opera singer with the Metropolitan, had fostered a love of music in the boy from a young age. But the idea of following in their footsteps had never occurred to him.
From a very young age Paul liked to do things in his own way and in his own time. For that reason he’d taken up the electric guitar and taught himself how to sing. A group he’d started in high school called the Rubber Band had been nothing to write home about, but it had helped him refine his abilities as a young musician.
Following high school, after he’d drifted apart from the original group of friends who’d been part of the band, fate had come knocking. Well, truth be told, he had been the one to do the knocking. He’d responded to an ad on a university pin board for a local band that was looking for a singer. The group had been called The Wanderers and Paul’s style had fit with them seamlessly. Observers had said it was as though the four men had been together forever.
In a way this had been Paul’s first marriage, and like many marriages in the modern era, it would eventually dissolve in bitter disputes. But back then, finding an outlet for his musical passion had been a tremendous discovery and it wasn’t long before late-night gigs in seedy bars had led to a tentative record deal and before long a hit on the top one hundred. Take Me All the Way was the title of the breakout song which had whisked them all over the world. There was no way Paul could’ve known at that time that The Wanderers would be little more than a one-hit wonder, nor that their manager would do his utmost to steal as much of their money as he could.
When he’d met Susan backstage at one of their concerts in Omaha, her dazzling green eyes had stopped him dead in his tracks. It was only later that he’d learned of her young husband’s recent death, the two of them not much older than twenty-two or twenty-three. Paul was himself twenty-four at the time and in many ways felt like he was going on forty-four.
Susan’s first husband, a young Marine named Kevin Thorpe, had been the apple of Buck’s eye and after his untimely death, there was little hope that a guy like Paul would ever measure up.
To say that Paul and Buck had never gotten along was something of an understatement. The two men just didn’t operate in the same universe, couldn’t see the world through the other’s eyes. Needless to say, for Susan and Autumn’s sake, they kept things civil, but the tension between them had been there from the beginning and pressed down like a weight whenever the two men were in the same room. In Buck’s eyes, Paul was an East Coast hippie liberal while to Paul, Buck represented the personification of “shoot first and ask questions later.”
The booming sound of Buck’s palm slamming against the hood of the car jerked Paul from his reverie. “Snap out of it, Rock Star, we ain’t got time to lose.”
As much as Paul hated to admit it, Buck was right. They needed to load the Hummer with supplies and head out as soon as possible. If Susan and Autumn weren’t already in danger, with the breakdown of law and order, they soon would be.
The very thought was terrifying. So terrifying that Paul didn’t completely understand why the two men weren’t already on the road. Why did they need supplies and weapons and ammunition when time was such a vital factor? The drive that lay ahead of them was close to a thousand miles, but wasn’t that all the more reason to head out ASAP? Surely anything they needed they could pick up along the way from somewhere.
Paul jumped out of the car and for a second
an image flashed before his eyes—Susan and Autumn cowering in a corner of her new apartment while a man with a giant hunting knife inched toward them. It was his imagination acting up, he knew that, but it made every second that they delayed feel like hours.
Chapter 7
“You just don’t get it, do you, Paul?” Buck was saying as they entered the front door of his house. “If we run off half-cocked, we won’t make it two hundred miles.”
Paul ran a hand through his thick, wavy hair. “Gas for the truck, maybe a pistol and a bit of food. That’s all we need, Buck. I’m starting to feel like letting you talk me into this was a mistake. I should never have agreed to come here.”
“A mistake? Really?” Buck was staring at him dead on, the old man’s brown eyes faded like the baseball cap he seemed to never take off his head. “What do you know about radiation?”
Paul didn’t answer. Like so many of Buck’s questions, it had a rhetorical quality.
“Well, let me tell you, Mr. College-Educated New York City Boy, because I think you’re failing to see the magnitude of the situation. We’ve got less than ninety-six hours to find Susan and Autumn in the chaos that’ll be raging down there in Atlanta and bring them back home.”
“Ninety-six?”
“That’s how long it’ll take for the prevailing winds to push the radiation from those nuclear bombs inland. Fact, it may even take less than that. It’s a nasty way to die, let me tell you,” Buck said, rubbing his lips. “It’s something you can’t see, can’t smell. Only sign it’s starting to kill you is a nausea worse than any food sickness you’ve ever had.
“First you throw up a few dozen times. Then you start bleeding from the gums, nose, mouth, and backside. I can assure you, that’s not the kinda sight you wanna see looking down at your business in the toilet. Ain’t no Imodium on earth that can help you with that problem. Before long, clumps of your hair start falling out. You got a nice crop on your head for a man your age, Paul.” Buck motioned. “Would be a real shame to see that fine coif fall out overnight. But by that point, if you’re not already dead, then the flu-like symptoms induced by radiation sickness should finish you off. Believe me when I tell you, if you make it that far, you’ll be begging for someone to put a bullet in your brain.”