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

by A. K. Meek

  Charles followed, but a little slower. He stopped and looked back. “Nate, you coming?”

  Nate gave a slight nod. “Yeah, I’m coming.” He followed the group to the large steel door.

  The others had already reached the door and grasped the handhold. Nate, too, reached for the bar.

  “I’m not sure you’re gonna be of much help, city slicker,” Bruce said, glaring at Nate. “You look pretty thin and weak.”

  Nate turned his back to Bruce and grabbed hold of the bar. Colton turned the spindle. It groaned as it spun. They all pushed. The door slowly swung inward, allowing the painful roar of the generator engine to escape.

  “I’ll be right back.” Colton ran into the generator room and within a couple minutes came out with several steel rods and bars in various shapes and sizes.

  After he left, the group pulled the door closed. It slammed shut with another loud bang and click. The sound diminished to the steady humming that permeated the shelter.

  They returned to the door and Colton handed Cable Guy the rods and bars. “Check this, Will.”

  “Thanks,” Cable Guy Will said. He had dismantled more of the faceplate by the time they had returned. He looked over the bars and grabbed one, then pushed it into the small hole where the plate once was, deep into the locking mechanism. The bar caught inside the door and he pushed and pulled it, using his weight as leverage. A snap, and the bar lost resistance and clanked to the floor. Something also clanked to the floor on the other side of the door. “I think I got it.”

  He straightened from his stooped position and stood back. With one solid kick it swung inward, slamming against the concrete wall.

  A desk of old, faded, gun-metal gray, with a simulated wood top, was positioned in the center of the room. Metal shelves lined the walls.

  They held books, cardboard boxes, and other items, but the thick dust that covered everything made it difficult to tell what the items were. The room had a closed-off, claustrophobic air, worse than even the shelter’s elongated room. That was a wide valley compared to this office.

  Stacks of papers covered the desk. A dirty metal box nestled on one corner. The wall opposite held another closed door.

  Nate went to the desk and brushed dust off the paper stacks, picking up a folded poster from on top of one stack. Across the top, in large, bold, fiery yellow text it read: How to Survive a Nuclear Attack.

  The rest of the poster showed a graphic of the United States. On the map, blots of black indicated the drift of nuclear fallout clouds, and red arrows marked wind patterns across the nation.

  Nate put his finger on a little star labeled Atlanta and dragged it about halfway between that city and the Georgia-Florida border. He guessed Haven was about there.

  An elongated smear of black cloud stretched from the northwest of Georgia to the southeast.

  Haven was somewhere underneath that cloud. Nate’s head throbbed as his stomach twitched with sickness.

  “Hey, I found the key to the office,” Charles said, holding up a key from the metal box on the desk.

  Nate turned back to the map. At the bottom left, a graphic of a man in a suit, fedora on head and pipe in hand, watched a mushroom cloud in the distance. Underneath the well-dressed man’s image, a boy and girl smiled at each other as they hunched under their desks, arms over their heads. The poster mentioned distance, covering, and time. Another graphic showed concentric blast radii and the awful effects of nuclear poisoning.

  Nausea swept from his head to his feet. The shelter swayed. He glanced one last time at the poster, and scrawled at the bottom of it was the copyright, printed in 1950 by a life insurance company. He threw the map on the desk.

  A young, pasty-white kid, with red hair and receding hairline, dug through the shelves. Red Hair pulled boxes off the, dug through the contents, tossing papers in a heap next to office supplies such as staplers and pens. “Hey, I found a radio.” He threw the rest of the papers to the floor. “Is there a plug around, or maybe batteries?” He clutched the radio and started searching along the wall between the shelves. Finding an outlet behind a box, he plugged in the radio. The room held its collective breath.

  After he flipped dials and switches, a hiss of static greeted the room. Nothing but static. Red Hair extended the telescopic antenna, then twisted the dial some more.

  Nate had believed that he would hear over the radio or through loudspeaker announcements that the military had everything under control, but that thought had faded with each twist of the knob.

  Charles held up a handful of keys from the metal key box, squinting to read the tiny tags on each. “There’s keys for the other doors in here, so we don’t have to break anymore down.”

  “What else is there?” Will said.

  “Lavatory, which wasn’t locked. Kitchen, supply, and I can’t make this one out. Nate, your eyes are younger. What does it say?” Nate took the key and rubbed the tag to clean off the dust, and squinted.

  “Armory,” he said.

  The rabble in the room stopped sifting through the clutter.

  “There’s an armory?” Colton said.

  Will, his head to one side, slowly walked to the door at the rear of the office. He wiped the dust and age from the placard on the door. “Here, here’s the armory.”

  A black, middle-aged woman in oversized, gaudy gold jewelry and tight-fitting clothes stood just inside the office. “What’s an armory? Isn’t that guns?” she said in a raspy voice. She turned to the room. “Hey. They found some guns in here,” she yelled. “There’s guns over here.”

  A burly black guy, seemingly wider than he was tall, pushed past the woman with his huge square shoulders and scanned the room. “Where are the guns? If you’re passing out guns, I better not be left out.”

  Bruce had put himself between the burly guy and the armory, his own beefy arms extended. “Step back,” he said. “No one’s handing out guns. If we were, I’d get one before you.”

  The black man swiped at Bruce’s arm. “What do you mean you’d get one before me?” He paused as an instant of recognition swept across his face. “Hey, you’re that Jones boy. I’d expect that from you.” He stepped forward, his nostrils flaring. “Who the—”

  “Stop,” Charles said, moving surprisingly quickly, to grab the man’s shoulders. “Stop it. The guns are secure. No one can get to them.”

  Colton, with his leg propped against one of the shelves, laughed and clapped. “Personally, I’d like you to get them guns and fight it out.” He shot Bruce a smile. “You’d shoot ‘em dead, huh, Bruce?”

  A young man standing by the armory door also laughed, echoing Colton.

  Will stepped into the fray with his arms outstretched, separating the two. “We just found out about the armory.” He pointed to the closed and locked door. “We don’t even know if there’s anything in there.”

  Men crowded through the office door, pushing to get into the cramped space. A tall white man grabbed a skinny kid and shoved him out of the way.

  “Wait a minute, everyone!” Charles yelled. He threw the keys on the desk and moved to the doorway, to the crush of people. “We need to stay calm. This is getting out of hand.” He turned and appealed to Nate. “Help me out here.”

  Nate put the armory key in his pocket. He wasn’t sure what to say, except “Everyone calm down.”

  Even he wasn’t reassured by his own quivering voice.

  They still pushed and jostled into the small office. A scuffle broke out. One lady screamed. Voices rose.

  The room became a vortex of words, hot breath, and anxiety. The fights, the talking, consumed the oxygen in the room.

  “Hold it. Hold it.” An old, but strong, voice eventually won over the fighting. Efrem, the short, hunched, dried-up man with white thinning hair, dressed in slacks and a sports blazer, pushed through the throng. He pulled along his wife, and they moved to the desk. He struggled to climb on top of the desk by using the chair, with the old lady helping him.

  Once o
n top he attempted to straighten up as best he could and waved his fragile arms. “Everyone hold it. Stop for a minute.”

  But the crowd had already stopped, fixated on the old couple.

  “Look, Efrem has something to say,” a man’s voice in the crowd said.

  Efrem, the dried-up man, had the attention of the group. He lowered his arms and looked at his watch. “It’s three a.m. We’ve been locked in this shelter for eighteen hours. Most of us haven’t slept. We’re not thinking straight. We need to maintain control. We’re letting tiredness and fear get the better of us.”

  “So what do you say we do?” Bruce said.

  “Order,” Efrem said. “We need order.”

  Some in the group mumbled, others nodded. But the tension that had run through the group verged on panic. Nate’s hand was in his pocket, the edges of the key pressing deep into his soft flesh as he squeezed it. He loosened the grip.

  A tone, similar to the Civil Defense siren outside, cut in, warbled, then cut out. All of those that had crammed into the office turned to Red Hair as he squatted over the radio in the corner. “It works. I got something!” he yelled.

  “How does the radio work? My cell phone doesn’t get a signal,” Bruce said, pulling his phone from his pocket.

  “It looks like an old shortwave radio,” Will said. Bruce gave a blank stare. “Made at a time before satellites,” Will continued, “during the Cold War. It doesn’t rely on satellites. Your phone and virtually everything else relies on satellites to communicate. I’m sure that’s one of the first things China, Russia, whoever started this, did. Took ‘em all out. The technology is great, but it’s too easy to beat. This radio is from another time.”

  Red Hair continued fiddling with the dials. He tuned in a scratchy squeal that eventually cleared into a steady tone. It lasted for long seconds, keeping the group captivated, silent. Someone in the outer room whispered something and more people tried to push into the hot office.

  The tone faded and a voice from the short wave filled the room.

  “Please stand by for a message from the President of the United States of America.”

  The steady tone came back for another few seconds, then ended abruptly.

  “This is President Walter Jeffries of the United States of America. We have been attacked by a multi-national enemy. Missiles and bombs have rained down on virtually every major American city. These enemies have also broken the Nuclear Pact and used the most devastating type of weaponry humanity has known against us.

  “Under provision of the War Power Resolution, I am declaring war against all foreign nations that have participated in this cowardly attack. I have ordered full activation of all reserve military forces. Defense of the land territory of our great country is of the utmost urgency.

  “Let me be frank. The nation is reeling from the unexpected attack. Nations we once thought allies have turned on us. Every citizen—every man, woman, and child—needs to understand this attack was meant not only to destroy America, but to erase our way of life. We need to realize this and resist all foreign invaders to the fullest of our ability with every resource at our disposal.

  “I will address the nation again with more information soon. May our nation and our people stand strong. God bless the United States of America.”

  The message ended, replaced by the Civil Defense tone.

  After a minute, the President’s message was repeated.

  Faces in the room looked down, sniffs breaking the silence. Efrem, still standing on the desk as the centerpiece, appeared to have lost the desire to continue. With great effort and the help of those surrounding the desk, he stepped off.

  The President, so sure, so confident in his voice. Yet he had just stated that the country was gone. Every man for himself.

  Nate’s stomach churned at the thought. The room became hot and constricting. He needed some air. The deep breath he took didn’t help.

  Charles cleared his throat. “I think Efrem’s right. We need order, especially now. But we’re not in any position to think clearly.”

  Efrem’s wife grasped the old man’s arm tight in her grip. “We need to sleep,” she said. “Tomorrow we can sort all this out. Come on, Efrem.” She led him from the office into the main hall.

  “What about the guns?” a man in the crowd said.

  “I’ve got the key,” Nate said, swallowing deeply, feeling a sudden sense of importance with the responsibility he carried in his pocket. “The door is locked.”

  “Who are you? I don’t know you.”

  “He has the key,” Will said. “You don’t need to know him. Come check the door. It’s locked. No one is going to open it without everyone here getting involved.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know him.”

  Will raised his hands to stop the man’s objection. “He’ll sleep in the main shelter, outside of the office. Several of us will watch the door. There are enough people crammed in this hole that we can keep each other accountable.”

  Nate nodded at the thought. It sounded reasonable. His body slumped at the sudden mention of sleep and his tired mind wandered. If he closed his eyes would he dream of darkness, bombs, and faces hidden in the darkness?

  People left the office. Most went back into the main hall, mumbling.

  Bruce took the seat behind the desk and propped his feet on top. “I’m staying here. I don’t trust any of you. I’m not gonna have some idiot mess with a gun he don’t know about and shoot me in the back. I’m not gonna die like that.”

  Colton shook his head and left the office. Will grabbed a pamphlet from a stack on a shelf and leaned against the wall. Red Hair continued to fidget with the radio. A middle-aged man and a young, athletic lady sat next to him on the floor.

  Charles also left the room, and Nate followed. He had followed Charles to safety into the courthouse, into the shelter. Why should he stop following him now?

  The big-mouth lady that told everyone of the guns ran up to Charles and grabbed his shoulder. Even in the dim, dingy light the jewels in her nail polish sparkled.

  “Charles, I’m glad you’re here,” she said, embracing him.

  He patted her back and rested his head on her shoulder. “Thanks, Feleysa. I’m glad you’re safe. James?”

  “I’m not sure.” She stepped back, as if examining Charles for any damage. She took in a breath and it quivered. “He was at home waiting for me to come back from the store. I’m not sure…” She sniffed and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Charles, I’m scared.”

  “I know. We all are,” he said, rubbing her back like a father would his upset child. “But it’ll be okay. We made it through the worst.”

  “Did we?” She started to say more but someone caught her eye. She took off toward a cluster of people, waving to get their attention.

  With a deep sigh, Charles leaned on one of the tables.

  “The worst of it?” Nate said, waving his arms, just in case Charles didn’t realize where they were. How can he remain so calm? “How do you know? As bad as it is, it’s going to get worse. We were attacked by who knows how many nations. The Chinese alone can overrun us like ants. They’re going to kill us all.”

  Charles shook his head and gave a grim smile. “How do you know it’s going to get worse? It could get better. You said you’re an analyst. In your professional opinion, wouldn’t you say we’re at worst fifty-fifty?”

  Nate ignored his logic and pointed with his head to the lady with the sparkly fingernails. “So how do you know her?”

  Charles looked down at his postal uniform and straightened his sweat-stained shirt collar. “I’ve been Haven’s Postmaster General for the past fifteen years. Feleysa’s husband, James, travels as part of his job and sends her presents every few days he’s gone. She’s been a regular for the past six, oh, seven years. I know a few people in here.”

  “What a crappy day.” Nate nodded at his own words.

  “Well,” Charles said, his eyes and focus back in the conversation, �
�I think as long as you have that key in your pocket everyone in here will be interested in you, especially because no one knows who you are. But for now we need to listen to Efrem and get some rest.” Charles grabbed a folded metal chair from a stack and unfolded it at one of the picnic tables. With a slight groan he sat, clutching his knee. He stretched out and rested his head on his arm, which glistened with sweat.

  Nate used his backpack as a pillow, wedging it between himself and the cinder block wall. He twisted and shifted his weight as the cold floor chilled him to the bone.

  “By the way, thanks,” Nate said, shifting from one side to the other, to spread the cool on his body.

  Charles lifted his head. “Thanks? For what?”

  “For leading me to the shelter, saving my life.”

  “You’re welcome. You looked lost. By the way...”

  Nate sat back up. “Yeah?”

  “I think this is the beginning of many crappy days ahead.”

  01.03

  GOVERNANCE

  Nate wanted to sleep some more but knew he would just toss and turn.

  And have more of those dreams.

  He checked his watch. It was five in the morning, but time meant nothing here. Day, night, sitting in a chair, leaning against a wall, listening to an occasional explosion and rumble above. Nothing. He shook his arm for the count of thirty seconds to wind his watch.

  If he had to spend a hundred more nights on the hard, cold floor, he’d scream. A buckle from his makeshift pillow—his backpack—had drilled into his temple during the night. Now his head throbbed with each heartbeat. He rubbed his temples.

  Several others slept, strewn about the hall, propped on walls, spread out on pallets of military jackets and pants, like a jail cell full of winos. Others stood around, carrying on with their private discussions, eyes wary for any unwanted listeners to whatever secrets they shared. Nate picked up his backpack, never leaving it alone after a guy was already caught stealing, and slung it over his shoulder and walked through the shelter.