by Lee Bradford
Buck opened a closet and handed Paul a yellow rubber hazmat suit.
Paul took it.
But Buck wasn’t done. “See, we don’t know exactly how many of our cities have been hit, but one thing is certain. Once that radiation begins to move, you’re gonna thank your lucky stars that you listened to old Buck. That we took the time to gather the supplies we needed. So if I tell you that we need stuff, you’re just gonna have to take the word of someone who knows, for once in your miserable life.”
Neither man said a word as Buck plucked out another containment suit from a chest in the living room. He then turned and led Paul through the kitchen and out the back sliding door.
His two Dobermans, Princess and Roscoe, were barking madly, as if they could sense their owner’s energy. They charged out, only to be yanked back when their chains drew short. They were both tied to a tree, a fact that Paul was thankful for.
“What’re you gonna do about the dogs when we’re gone?” Paul asked. They were heading toward the barn behind Buck’s house.
“I’ll get Sam Raferty to feed and give ’em water while we’re gone.”
“Doesn’t he run the Greenwood junkyard?”
Buck pulled open the barn doors, the dogs yelping less than twenty feet away. “He might not be up to your social standards, but he’s a good man and I trust him.”
That wasn’t what Paul was insinuating, but he didn’t bother to argue. Buck was the kind of man where if you took issue with every rude thing he said, you’d be fighting from dusk till dawn. No wonder Susan’s mother, Kay, had decided that enough was enough.
The barn was modest, the floor covered by a layer of straw. Backed against the far wall was an old tractor. Buck went to the left of the vehicle and began swiping the ground with his boot, clearing away a patch of straw. On a wall nearby was a Confederate flag. The thumbtack holding one corner had come loose and it hung limply waiting for gravity to pull it to the ground.
Buck grunted and kept shifting the dirty straw until a metallic trap door appeared. Gripping the stainless-steel ring by the end, Buck yanked it open and exposed a wooden staircase leading down into darkness.
“I’d say ladies first,” Buck snickered. “But I know you’re afraid of the dark.”
And with that Buck climbed down and disappeared from view. “You coming?” he called up when he reached the bottom.
Reluctantly, Paul followed him, the steps bowing and creaking under his weight. Buck probably outweighed him by thirty to forty pounds and yet the old guy seemed to have the agility, even at sixty-three, that Paul, a man in his early forties, couldn’t match. Maybe there was something in those soybeans he seemed to like so much.
Much to Paul’s surprise, the bunker under Buck’s house was far more impressive than he had imagined. Three bedrooms, a living room, fully functional kitchen and working bathroom. Everything a family would need to ride out the end of the world.
Buck explained that he’d built one room for himself, one for Paul and Susan, and the third bedroom for Autumn. For a moment Paul was touched that Buck had included him in his survival plans, until he saw the two single beds in the room he was supposed to share with Susan and the nearly six-foot distance between them. Even after twenty years of marriage, Buck still seemed to struggle with the idea that his daughter slept in the same bed as another man. Especially when that man was Paul.
Buck tossed a heavy pink knapsack at Paul, who scrambled to catch it.
“The hell is this thing?” Paul asked, setting it on the floor beside him.
“Your bug-out bag,” Buck shot back, throwing him another. “I made one for each of us in the event that the SHTF.”
“So everyone gets green camo pattern but me?”
Buck let out a wheezy laugh. “I thought you artist types liked pink.”
Funny man, Paul thought as he brought each of the backpacks over to the stairs and set them down along with the two hazmat suits.
Buck explained that each of the bags contained essential supplies, such as food in the form of MREs or meals ready to eat; needles, thread, and bandages for wounds; matches; two pairs of dry socks; water bottle and purification tablets. The list of course had gone on and Buck was happy to rattle through it at length before Paul cut him short, reminding him of the urgency of their mission.
The bunker itself was laid out in a rectangular pattern with a hallway that ran the length of the structure. Each of the rooms were set off to either the left or the right. At the end of the corridor was a locker that stretched from floor to ceiling. A combination padlock kept the locker’s contents safe and Buck entered the code before opening the door.
The sight that greeted Paul’s eyes wasn’t the least bit shocking. The locker was stacked with a number of rifles and pistols. Crammed at the back Paul even noticed the edge of a crossbow.
“I’d love to take it all,” Buck said, “but that just wouldn’t be feasible. We need to travel light and not be weighed down by too much firepower. Since you ain’t never fired a gun, I’m gonna give you a Ruger .22 bolt-action rifle and a pistol with the same caliber. You keep ’em on safety at all times and pointed at the ground until God forbid you need to draw. But if it comes to that, I need to know you’ll be willing to put a man down.”
Buck had a flair for the dramatic when it came to the loves of his life, his guns. But in this case Paul could see the old man meant business.
“If it comes to that, I’ll do what I need to,” Paul replied.
Nodding with rare approval, Buck stuffed the guns into a duffel bag along with a shotgun, Walther 9mm, his AR-15 and several boxes of ammo for each.
The amount of weapons seemed like overkill to Paul, but he knew better than to question it. If he was lucky the guns would sit in that duffel bag during the entire trip to Atlanta and back. It wasn’t that Paul disliked guns. He trusted himself enough to be cautious about their application, but that trust didn’t extend to everyone else, especially a guy like Buck, who seemed eager to plug holes in anyone who stood in his way.
As they were hauling gear up out of the bunker and stacking it beside the Hummer, the old man explained how he’d outfitted the bunker with filters to protect against radiation and biological warfare. In the past, Paul might’ve listened politely. But now, with the fear of nuclear fallout a reality—hard as that was to believe—the subject took on a new fascination.
As much as he hated to admit it, if Susan and Autumn had stayed in Greenwood instead of running off to Atlanta, they might have all spent time in the relative safety of Buck’s underground stronghold. At least to ride things out until the worst of it had passed. But at the same time, Paul had to remind himself of the reality of the situation. As much as he wanted to keep his family safe, the thought of spending days, weeks or even months locked underground with Buck was a different kind of radiation poisoning. So too was the prospect of travelling with the cranky old man halfway across the country.
That was how much Paul loved his wife and daughter. And in his own way, so too did Buck, even if he had one hell of a strange way of showing it.
Chapter 8
Another precious hour slipped by as the two men loaded supplies into Buck’s Hummer. Propane camping stoves, pots, and pans. A box of MREs that looked like they’d sat on some shelf for years waiting for the right day. Of all the kit, what nearly broke Paul’s back was the ten-gallon water cooler. Buck hadn’t given it more than a quick rinse before he began filling it with water and the sight had nearly made Paul’s stomach turn. It didn’t take more than a quick look around to see the squalor and filth that Buck had become accustomed to, a reality that was a universe away from how Paul lived his daily life.
In his world, the old adage about cleanliness being next to godliness wasn’t too far off. As they loaded the rusty pots and pans and the dirty water into the truck, all Paul could think about was the bigger picture—saving his wife and daughter. He just pictured their faces and blocked everything else from his mind.
Once the guns, bug-out bags, and food supplies were on board, Buck made a final trip down into the bunker to retrieve the last few remaining items. If it hadn’t felt real before, seeing these last few things nearly made the blood freeze in Paul’s veins. Looped through Buck’s arms were a number of gas masks. In his other hand was an object that Paul didn’t recognize at first: a box with a very distinct black handle. It was when Buck drew nearer that he saw exactly what it was.
A Geiger counter.
Seeing all of this made Paul’s mind go to the unimaginable conditions facing tens of millions living near the blast sites.
At last, Buck filled the jerry cans that were strung along the back end of the truck. This was by no means a guarantee that they wouldn’t need to refill at some point, but the idea was to get as far as possible on what fuel they already had. There was no telling the state that the country would be in between Nebraska and Georgia. It was a daunting thousand-mile stretch no matter how you cut it, but with a country reeling from a historically unparalleled attack, there was no way either man could be sure of what they would encounter.
Soon enough, the Hummer sped away from Buck’s one-story bungalow. He’d been careful to move his remaining guns and valuables down into the bunker before hiding the trap door under that litter of straw. “Hide in plain sight,” that was his motto. “Make them think you live in a junkyard and thieves will skip to the next sucker down the line. Every man for himself.”
Clearly that philosophy had guided Buck for many years. It was an attitude, as far as Paul was concerned, that had led to the dissolution of his thirty-year marriage and to his alienation from his neighbors.
Even out here in Nebraska, where your neighbor’s house might be separated from yours by more than a mile of barren fields, Buck still managed to piss people off. The old man had done such a good job of driving people out of his life that there was hardly anyone left to give him a dose of reality. In his mind, he was the only one seeing clearly. The entire US government was filled to the brim with corrupt politicians and bureaucrats all of them itching to stick it to the common man at every opportunity.
Paul poked a hand into his pocket and came out with his Blackberry. The reception bars on the top right were still flat, which meant that he didn’t have a signal. It’d been that way since he’d lost contact with Susan earlier in the day, which seemed now like days ago. Following 9/11 the cell and landline circuits had been so overloaded that it had been nearly impossible to place a call. Paul figured that the same thing was happening now.
With dwindling hope, he dialed Susan’s cellphone and hit the green call button. He waited several agonizing moments studying the screen as the Hummer bounced around over country roads. Not long after, he realized the futility of the exercise. He prayed silently for them to stay safe and stay put while he and Buck raced down to get them.
The only problem was, the more he tried not to think about it, the more those horrific scenes were playing out before his mind’s eye. Soon, Paul’s heart was hammering in his chest. His lungs began to tighten, making the act of pulling in each breath a gargantuan effort. He turned and began rummaging through the bags they’d stacked on the seats behind them.
“What you doing?” Buck asked crossly.
“Where’s my bag?” Paul demanded. His mouth was becoming dry, making it hard to speak.
“How the heck am I supposed to know? It should be back there somewhere. What you need it for anyhow? We haven’t been on the road five minutes and you already got the munchies?”
Buck was making a jab at Paul’s early days as a musician when the smoke from joints had been nearly as ubiquitous as oxygen. It didn’t matter that Paul hadn’t smoked in years. “I need my heart pills.”
Buck grumbled in the front as Paul rummaged through a heap of duffel bags, all of which seemed to be black and featureless. It was only after switching on the light above that he spotted his blue Rocktile knapsack.
Trembling, he jerked open the zipper and fished around until his fingers found the reassuring edges of that little plastic bottle. He slid back into his seat, reconnected his seatbelt and popped open the lid.
“Xanax?” Buck said, sneering with disgust. “I knew you were a dope head.”
“I’m not a dope head, Buck. I’ve got a condition and this was what the doctor prescribed. I don’t take them often, but if ever I was justified in doing so, this would be the time. Not that I need to explain myself to you.”
Buck didn’t say a word, but it was clear enough what he was thinking.
Paul washed down the pill with a sip from a bottle of water he’d brought from home.
As his heart started to slow, Paul spotted a lone figure standing on the edge of his property. He asked Buck to slow down and the old man complied, cursing under his breath as he did so.
“I don’t want nothing to do with that man,” Buck spat. “He’s nothing but a damned liar and a cheat.”
“Just let me do the talking,” Paul told him.
The Hummer slowed to a stop next to Jarvis Taylor, a cattle farmer in his sixties who’d squabbled with Buck for years over a sliver of land between the two men’s properties. At one time, Jarvis had built a barbed wire fence around his property to keep his cattle from wandering off. But part of it had apparently been on Buck’s land and he’d knocked it right to the ground with the front end of a backhoe. A number of trips to small claims court had followed, in which Jarvis was forced to admit the strip of land wasn’t his, although Buck was remanded to pay for the length of fence he’d destroyed. Neither man had been satisfied with the result and the consequences had been a long-standing feud.
Even as the window was going down, Paul could see that Jarvis was greatly disturbed, no doubt by the events that had transpired only hours before.
“I guess you heard,” Paul said.
Jarvis stared blankly at him as he nodded, his hair skewed to one side, his chin bristling with unshaven hairs. “I’m worried we won’t be able to recover this time,” he said. “One city gone, that’s a blow that hurts, but this many, I just don’t….”
“Our country’s been against the ropes before,” Paul tried to tell them. “I’m sure those boys fighting in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor didn’t think it could get any worse. Would have been hard for them to imagine that only a handful of years later we’d be knocking on Japan’s doorstep.”
“And those Japs got exactly what they deserved,” Buck shouted over Paul’s shoulder.
Jarvis nodded at this as well, as though for a moment, a temporary armistice had been declared between the two men. Even though Paul was far too young to know what might’ve been going through the minds of those young Marines and sailors back during World War II, he knew enough of history to recognize that if America did anything well it was bounce back from adversity.
“Stores are closed,” Jarvis told them, glancing down the road in the direction they were headed.
“We’re not going on a shopping run,” Paul said. “Susan and Autumn are stuck in Atlanta and we’re trying to get down there as quickly as possible. Get them home safe and sound.”
Buck was surprisingly quiet at exactly the moment Paul had expected him to begin spewing about the coming social collapse and what America would look like once the rule of law was gone.
“Godspeed then,” Jarvis said, nodding a final time as the window went up and the Hummer tore away.
They hadn’t driven more than a dozen yards when Buck said: “Are you some kind of an idiot?”
“Excuse me?”
“Got wax buildup? I asked if there’s a problem with your brain.”
“Listen, Buck, your dispute with Jarvis has nothing to do with me.”
“This isn’t just about Jarvis. This is about you being in way over your head.”
Paul was suddenly sure Buck was having a psychotic episode. “What the hell are you talking about?”
The old man’s hand came off the steering wheel and chopped at the air above his head. “W
ay over and you just proved it. The minute I heard you let Susan and Autumn head to Atlanta on their own, I knew you had a screw loose. Then when you started flashing pills and blabbing to Jarvis I knew I was right. I should never have let you come.”
The Hummer was doing nearly seventy on a backcountry road with a speed limit of thirty. Buck’s hands were back gripping the steering wheel, his knuckles white with rage.
“Never have let me come?” Paul’s blood was starting to simmer. “You’ve got your head rammed so far up your backside you think the wind smells like a giant fart, don’t you? If there’s anyone in this equation who’s lucky it’s you, because whether you like it or not Susan is my wife and Autumn my daughter. When you sent that collection agency to the house on Susan’s birthday to retrieve the five hundred dollars you said she owed you, she swore she’d never speak to you again. And you know what, Buck, I was the one who told her to take a deep breath and think it over. Against my better judgment, I was the one who told her that blood was thicker than water.”
Buck kept his eyes on the road, his face a mask. “Maybe you did all that and maybe you didn’t. But the truth of the matter is, you don’t tell people that you’re leaving town. Might as well have nailed a sign to my front door. ‘Come in and take what you want.’ What do you think we’re gonna come home to if it really hits the fan? I can tell you right now. There won’t be a darn thing left. That’s why you keep your mouth shut.” Every word in that last bit Buck spoke as though it were its own sentence. “You’re too trusting, Paul, and too damned naïve. And that’s what got us into this mess in the first place.”