25 Bombs Fell: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Series, 25BF Season 1

by A. K. Meek

  25 Bombs Fell

  25 Bombs Fell, Season One (Book 1)

  Copyright © 2015 A.K. Meek

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover illustration © 2016 A.K. Meek

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Episode 01: Twenty-Five Bombs Fell

  01.01 Haven, Georgia

  01.02 Fallout Shelter 1710

  01.03 Governance

  01.04 Composition in #2

  01.05 Life Underground

  Episode 02: Away Your Forfeit Life

  02.01 Goodbye Blue Sky

  02.02 Haven No More

  02.03 Highway 127

  02.04 Bartel

  02.05 The Plink of Metal

  02.06 Wishbone

  Episode 03: Salvation Approaches

  03.01 Camp Magnolia

  03.02 The Sky Burials

  03.03 Salvation

  03.04 Routines

  03.05 The Machine

  Episode 04: The World’s New Reality

  04.01 Arney

  04.02 A Steady Rain

  04.03 Old Friends

  04.04 The Devil’s Herd

  04.05 Miriamville

  04.06 Desolation and Deceit

  04.07 The House of Smoke and Shadow

  Episode 05: Edge of All Creation

  05.01 Barn Dance

  05.02 The Supermoon

  05.03 Hunters

  05.04 The Miracle Strip

  05.05 Southland

  05.06 Swamp

  05.07 Edge of All Creation

  Town on Fire: 25BF Book 2 Excerpt

  About the Author

  01.01

  HAVEN, GEORGIA

  The siren’s warble pierced the moist spring air, signaling the end of Nathaniel Bowen’s perfect, safe life.

  He pressed his hands against his ears to dampen the painful tone.

  The massive siren perched on top of a rotting telephone pole, a puff of dust drifting from it in the windless air.

  That old thing probably hadn’t worked since the ‘50s.

  Nate started to get in his car, to put some distance between the siren and himself, but paused when he saw the others.

  Pedestrians on the sidewalk had stopped in mid-action. Families once strolling underneath arching cherry blossom trees stood silent. A couple paused in the middle of the street. An impatient driver honked for them to move, but they had all frozen, paused, looking up at the siren.

  A couple children could be heard in the distance, their own wailing matching that of the fluctuating sound.

  Something wasn’t right.

  He took one hand from his ear and pulled his cell phone from his pocket and clicked buttons. The GPS still didn’t work. That’s how he’d ended up in Haven, Georgia, in the first place.

  Road construction detoured him off I-75 moments before his GPS signal disappeared. After that, he was a blind bat on the back roads of middle Georgia.

  He shoved the phone back in his pocket and clutched his ears again.

  An old couple had started running up the courthouse steps, as well as their old legs could carry them.

  The courthouse sat in the center of Haven’s downtown, essentially one city block surrounded by a handful of storefronts.

  Now a burly man herded a group of children away from the awful siren, hands cupped to their ears, screaming.

  Nate’s temples ached, the beginning of a headache from the siren. He jumped into his car—he had parked in front of an ice cream shop squished between a clothing boutique and a donut shop—and depressed the console switch to close his convertible canopy. Maybe it would cut off some of the noise.

  Across the street, two high-school-aged girls dressed in matching school uniforms were motionless, staring upward with mouths open. One of the girls lifted her arm and pointed to the sky, but not toward the siren.

  Nate released the switch and the canopy stopped, halfway open, halfway closed. He followed her outstretched arm.

  A stray feather of a cloud hung in the otherwise clear blue sky. From the horizon, a contrail cut the sky in half. The head of the contrail glinted, metallic, caught in the morning sun.

  It didn’t look—feel—like an airplane.

  The piercing siren continued. The back of his eyes began to throb.

  Now that the object cruised high in the sky directly overhead, it appeared longer than an airplane, and it had no wings. But from the ground, it was hard to tell.

  Several other glints now raced through the sky, each going in odd directions.

  They streaked across the background of blue, seven small glints in all. Against the clear sky, depth took on an illusory meaning as the first glint appeared to be slowing, or descending.

  The warbling siren cut through any attempt at reasoning.

  Nate looked for the girls that had first noticed the peculiar objects, but they were gone.

  A catastrophic flash lit the horizon, even though it was day. For a moment in time, nature held its breath. Life, moving, thinking, warbling, suspended in a frozen moment.

  Then the earth breathed again.

  Nate knew he just witnessed a devastating moment.

  Fear and panic billowed along the streets and sidewalks of Haven. People screamed and ran, running from one place to another, no one safe place. They disappeared in buildings, scurrying like rats.

  A black man in a faded blue postman’s uniform grabbed the courthouse stair railing as he tried to hurry up the steps. He grabbed one knee as if he was trying to make it cooperate, move faster.

  The warbling tone ended, replaced by a monotone, lifeless voice recorded from another time.

  “This is the Emergency Broadcast System. Seek shelter immediately. We are under attack. This is not a test. Seek shelter immediately.”

  Nate jumped in his car but didn’t start it right away. He wasn’t sure what the panic was, but felt it as real as the rest did. He knew he needed to leave this town. Not sure where to go, like the others that ran aimlessly on the street, still he needed to leave.

  The postman on the steps. He waved to Nate, beckoning him.

  A lady in a jogging outfit who had been pushing a baby stroller banged against a door in a row of businesses, pleading for someone to let her and her baby in. The man locking the door shook his head and dropped the window blinds. She hurried to the next business door. More banging.

  A middle-aged Hispanic man, dressed in khakis, grass clippings covering his sweat-soaked shirt, slammed into the bumper of Nate’s convertible, startling him. He scurried away from the car, wide eyes fixed on the sky, darting between cars that had stopped in the middle of the street.

  A loud voice cut through the panic.

  “No time. Come on. There’s shelter here.” It was the postman on the steps, giving Nate one last wave.

  Nate left his car behind and started for the stairs. He continued up the steps and disappeared inside the courthouse. A man and a teenage girl followed him, clearing two, three steps at a time. The panic grew in him as it grew in the rest.

  “M
y backpack.” He stopped and turned back.

  He ran back to his car with the partly closed convertible canopy and reached over the closed passenger door, careful not to rub his new dress shirt against the dusty outer panel. He grabbed the backpack that slouched on the floorboard.

  A loud boom shattered the air, momentarily quieting the shrill warbling siren.

  A concussion rippled through his chest in a sickening wave and he fell against his car, road grime smearing his pristine shirt and pants. He cursed at the explosion.

  Ground rumbled and glass windows shook in their frames. Many shattered, raining shards in a melodic tinkle onto concrete sidewalks. Screams carried through the confusion.

  The explosion was near, not like the one that lit up the horizon seconds ago. That one in the distance was different, some place far away.

  The wailing stopped, replaced by the archaic civil defense message repeating its warning to seek shelter.

  That was what he was trying to do, trying to find shelter.

  He ran for the stairs that led up the front of the courthouse. A woman’s shriek to his left made him pause.

  The jogging mother who’d banged on the storefronts moments ago now fought with her stroller, one wheel wedged in a drainage grate. She frantically pulled and tugged on the straps that bound her child. The baby cried, squirmed, and kicked, making her job of freeing him more difficult.

  She looked in his direction, meeting his eyes. She mouthed something but the siren’s repeated warning drowned her voice. But he didn’t need to hear her voice to know what she said. She said it through her eyes.

  Help me!

  Another explosion.

  More trembling and rattling glass. More citizens screaming and running. The siren overhead continued its warning. A boy across the street yelled for his brother Timmy through sobs and sniffing. Car alarms went off.

  It was all so noisy, so much to take in. The world was ending.

  Nate’s eyes dropped from the mother as she continued to try and pull her son from the twisted stroller.

  A flash of the morning sun from his polished black shoes made him squint.

  He turned away, making it easier for him to forget the lady and the baby and to continue up the stairs into the building, flying past the old couple as they struggled to make their way up the same steps into the courthouse.

  The building’s large, oaken, intricately-carved double doors burst open and five or six young girls poured through them, screaming as they left. They scurried down the stairway, then off in different directions. Nate watched them for a moment, wondering where they were headed, then went into the courthouse.

  Inside the building, a wide hallway stretched to the left and right. Shards of shattered glass twinkled on the polished marble flooring. Hard-soled shoes clacked and echoed as courthouse employees and visitors clamored up and down the hallway, dodging into doorways that interrupted long walls.

  Nate paused to catch his breath.

  To the right, near a bend in the hallway, the postman ran, sliding his hand along a brass handrail. Nate hefted his backpack over his shoulder and followed after him.

  A man stumbled from around an intersecting hallway and grunted as he hit the polished floor hard. He scrambled to his feet and followed Nate for several feet.

  An explosion rocked the building.

  A blast wave of heat and stinging powdered brick knocked Nate off his feet.

  He slammed to the smooth floor and slid into the opposite wall. A sharp shock rolled through his arm. Glass and timber flew as a large section of wall twenty feet from him crumbled and collapsed in another wave of concrete dust.

  His arm went numb and dust coated his mouth. He spat, and more grit coated his tongue and grated between his teeth. He clenched his burning eyes and mouth tight.

  After seconds the sounds of falling brick tapered off. He blinked to clear his watering eyes, then wiped them with his hands.

  Large, silver, pendant lights dangling, swinging from the ceiling flickered, then shut off. The siren outside the courthouse squelched for a second, then went silent, leaving only the painful buzzing in his head. Terrified screams replaced the siren and the abrupt silence.

  His mouth sprang open for air and he took in more dust. Choking on it, he sat upright, coughing and spitting.

  Shattered brick, splintered lumber, concrete and glass littered the hallway inches from him. A hole gaped wide, showing a smoke-and-dust-obscured view of the outside lawn.

  Behind him the man who was following him rolled in the rubble clutching his side, grimacing. A large timber pinned his right leg, bending it in an impossible direction.

  Nate brushed dust from his once white shirt, inspecting his own torso for any wounds. Not finding any, he jumped up with his backpack, gave one more look through the open wall to the outside, then stumbled forward, following where he last saw the postman.

  Around the hallway corner the windows disappeared, replaced by solid wall on both sides, giving the sensation of burrowing deeper into the heart of the building. His arm started getting feeling back as he headed into the hallway, where daylight gave way to darkness.

  A woman appeared from the dark and slammed into him. They both staggered and she bounced into the wall and gave a small whimper. Nate huffed as the wind got knocked out of him.

  She sprang off the wall and looked wildly about. “Have you seen him? Have you seen William?” she said, pulling her hem to straighten her burgundy dress.

  But she didn’t speak to him; her eyes were too far away. She spoke as if finding William wasn’t possible, but she had a duty to look for him.

  She rubbed her leg. Her dress had a long tear, exposing a blood-covered thigh with a large piece of flesh dangling from a jagged rip. She absently lifted the piece of flesh and held it in place with her hand. Her feet were shoeless, colored gray from dust.

  “I don’t know William,” he said, pointing to her leg. “You’re hurt.”

  “I must find him. He’s here. I must find William.”

  She used Nate as a springboard, pushing him out of the way with both her arms as she continued in the direction he had just come, disappearing around a corner.

  At first slowly, Nate continued down the hallway in the opposite direction, reading door placards to see if anything stood out. Darkness increased as the screams he left behind decreased. In the dim hallway he had to hold out his arms before his body to make sure he didn’t have any more surprises.

  The postman rounded another corner, yards ahead of him.

  “Hey,” Nate shouted. Renewed vigor coursed through his tired, aching, scared body as he broke into a full sprint to catch up to the limping man. “What’s going on outside?”

  The postman stopped and then took in a deep breath. “I told her to follow me,” he said between gasps, “but she said she needed to find William. She wouldn’t listen.” His chest rattled and he had to swallow to catch his breath. “We need to get to shelter. We’re almost there. Look at the door at the end of this hall.” He started hobbling again, pointing at the doorway.

  Nate sprinted to where the hallway terminated. Faded by age a placard on the door read: Fallout Shelter 1710.

  The postman swung the door open wide, and it led into a narrow closet of a room. An emergency light centered in the ceiling cast an anemic light.

  A vault door mounted in the floor was closing. He leaped to the floor and grabbed hold of the spinner handle. “Wait, wait for us,” he yelled.

  The door stopped before slamming shut. Scuffling and muttering rose from the darkened hole underneath. After seconds of muffled conversation, the door opened just an inch. A gruff voice called out, “Come on, hurry up.”

  The postman pulled and several arms pushed and the vault door swung open, then he gave Nate one last motion to follow and disappeared into the shelter.

  Nate bent down and stepped one foot into the shelter but then paused. The dark, the arms reaching for him, for a moment reminded him of arms clawing fro
m a grave.

  “Hurry up!” the voice repeated.

  A strong hand grasped his pant leg and pulled. He went off-balance and fell into the dark pit.

  The door closed and the locking mechanisms secured with a loud mechanical clank.

  01.02

  FALLOUT SHELTER 1710

  Hands from the darkness pawed at Nate’s arms and legs, grabbing his pant legs and shirt sleeves, pulling him down concrete steps, deeper into the shelter. His feet tapped frantically, searching for hidden steps, as he fought to keep his arms extended forward, feeling for something solid. When he hit bottom unexpectedly, he stumbled onto hands and knees to a cold floor.

  He crawled a couple feet until he ran headlong into a wall then dropped to his elbows, rubbing his scalp which burned from the collision.

  Blinking, he rolled over and silhouettes formed before him as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The outlines shuffled and moved, whispering in hushed, mournful tones, as if speaking aloud would tell the bombs outside they were there, hiding.

  At least that was the reason Nate didn’t want to speak.

  Mildew, decay, and stagnant air made his nose itch and clung to the back of his throat.

  Another explosion on the surface shook through the ceiling, through the walls and floors, through his body. Chips of cement and dirt rained down. Screams responded to the bomb, men and women both. Nate bit his tongue to keep from joining the chorus, but couldn’t keep his mouth closed for long because the air grew thin and warm.