Nuclear Spring

by Td Barnes

  Witnessing the anger and desperation of the refugees somehow transformed the grief to relief for their rescue. However, the sense of pain and sorrow returned to many of them by the time the convoy reached Lathrop Wells with some women sobbing and scared children bawling.

  During the evacuation, the sense of their rescue returned, and any trepidation vanished when they witnessed from a distance the horror that awaited those left behind in Beatty. Desperate refugees from southern Nevada taken over the small community, overrunning the deli, service station, brothel, and the few residential dwellings.

  Raiders streamed in and out structures along Highway 95 that split the town only to lose their booty to other marauders waiting in ambush along the highway’s frontage roads.

  Men, women, and children alike acted like scavengers in frenzied efforts to take what they could. Gunshots rang out every few minutes and bodies lay scattered everywhere.

  , the convoy exited Highway 95 north at the town’s edge and escaped this savagery. The convoy eluded any indication of it being an evacuation by it being military trucks.

  The convoy roared through a deserted check station formerly manned by Wackenhut guards on the Lathrop Wells Road and entered the Nevada Research and Development Area and Yucca Mountain at Jackass Flats. In a time span of less than hour, the realization of what they escaped erased much of the grief felt for those they left behind and embedded in them a hardened will to survive.

  Bradley’s selection criteria required the deployment of only married National Guard personnel and allowed for their single dependents, the chosen VIPs, and families from Beatty and the Amargosa Valley.

  Single men and women each shared eight to a room while couples, married or single, shared two sets to an alcove with partitions providing them visual privacy.

  Families with two or more children shared the larger nooks. Teenagers below the age 14 obtained privacy by partitioning them from the rest of the household.

  Young adults housed together with the same arrangement afforded the single VIPs. A family area towards the tunnel’s center housed the families with children.

  The mountain’s residents played no role in supplying the mountain and stayed out of the way, spending their time moving in and helping organize the massive amount of arriving supplies, collecting the wooden forms used for concreting the tunnel floor, and otherwise cleaning up debris to make for more comfortable walking. The around the clock activities prevented them being bored or having time to contemplate their fate.

  Two semi truckloads of military camouflage utility uniforms arriving on their second day inside the mountain provided something new to bolster spirits and became one of the most popular items among the civilians who, upon hearing about the uniforms, lined up at the entrance to the supply alcove to receive their issue.

  Oddly, the civilians perceived the uniforms a prized possession that they could call their own, making it an essential topic after their leaving everything they owned behind during the evacuation. To distinguish the civilians from the military, the quartermaster provided them with different style Kevlar helmets and no symbols of rank. Instead of displaying position or status, some teenage girls adorned their uniforms and helmets with little things that spoke of their gender, independence, and interests.

  The nuclear winter started on the 6th day after the EMP attack. World War III did not start with the typical prewar threats and accusations between national leaders. No one assassinated any high-level government officials, nor did anyone mass significant concentrations of troops along any borders, preventing many a strategist and media political talking heads having nightmares predicting the war. The arriving bombs put the inhabitants in many more significant populations of the world, both people, and animals alike, out of their misery from the previous EMP attack.

  The nuclear winter started with three days of waterspouts, squalls, and tornadoes spawned from the boiling, violent atomic atmosphere above the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean. Huge fires caused by nuclear explosions upon urban areas lifted massive amounts of dense smoke from the fires into the upper troposphere where the absorption of sunlight, further heated the smoke, raising it higher and into the stratosphere where the smoke would persist for years with no rain to wash it out.

  An aerosol of particles blocked out much of the sun’s light from reaching the surface on the planet’s sunny side, causing surface temperatures to drop over each significant populated center like an advancing cold front. Five million tons of released soot added to the catastrophic event by absorbing the solar radiation to heat surrounding gasses, setting in motion a series of chemical reactions that broke down the stratospheric ozone layer protecting Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Combined, this provided the genesis of a global nuclear winter that few would survive.

  Torrential rains turned to blackened snow. Massive bolts of lightning added to the weather phenomenon where huge chunks of black ice bounced off the ground and banged on the steel doors to the portal while a few black snowflakes showed up in the lighting covered by the cameras.

  Watching Dawson working the radio reminded him how at first, they maintained the net at a low volume in the Command Center, keeping the war communications in the background during this global emergency while the residents went about their business. Bradley ordered the paging and announcements ceased and the most active radio network patched to the base intercom system to inform the residents about the occurring global events.

  One by one during the next 37 hours, the radios went silent when bombs took out those on the other end. Some shut down for the operator to take refuge; others went silent because of annihilation. Throughout the United States, government officials and those deemed essential taken leave to retreat to safe sanctuaries not much different from that at the mountain.

  The data system remained active to the end when NORAD advised anyone still listening of NORAD locking the door and entering a countdown to a bomb arriving in two minutes.

  Bradley and the others sat after that watching the silenced radios in numbed shock—praying to hear one more voice from the outside. This did not happen.

  The nuclear fallout spreading over the planet, took away the mountain’s occasional contact with ham radio operators as they, one by one, ceased transmissions as the jet stream moved the radiation moved into that area.

  Since then, they not contacted anyone outside the mountain other than a rogue army of Las Vegas survivors holding the mountain siege and brief contact with dying survivors from Area 51 holed up in atomic bomb testing tunnels at the Area 12 base camp within the former Nevada Test Site.

  Bradley’s thoughts returned to the present when Dawson said, “Sir, I’ll continue monitoring and let you know if we get another transmission. With the plane landed, all of you are wasting time waiting for another transmission on the radio that might not happen.”

  ####

  Fifty-two days later

  Fifty-two days passed since the brief flurry of radio communications when the Muslim Brotherhood landed to take control of the air base in Arizona. The silence of the airways was almost maddening to those inside the mountain seeking to know more of what was happening outside the mountain. They knew they were not alone.

  The jet stream drifted north of the mountain, and the radiation dropped low enough that the residents of the mountain could venture outside for a few hours each day.

  Cpl. David Bremmer entered the mountain four years ago as a refugee from the nearby town of Beatty. Now 18 years old, pimpled, and skinny, he served in the mountain’s military force.

  Bremmer often thought of his parents, local ranchers who chose to stay at the ranch rather than evacuate to the mountain. He wondered if they survived and if not, what happened to them.

  His mare heard it first, perked her ears and looked to the right. The sentry followed the gaze of his horse and the direction of its ears as it strained to hear. With almost all desert dwellers now near extinction, what could the horse be hearing? Could it be human
?

  After spending four years inside the mountain following the EMP attack and the atomic bombs that followed, the colony ventured out a week ago not knowing what to expect from others now known to have survived. Having seen no other forms of life since the patrol started, hearing something alarmed the sentry.

  He twisted in the saddle to scan the barren ridge with binoculars. Nothing stirred except a little whirlwind skimming along the mountain’s base.

  He adjusted his body in the saddle to the movement of his horse while continuing his scan over Jackass Flats. The portal to his home in Yucca Mountain came into view. He scanned the buildings outside the mountain, the helicopter on the helipad, and noted with satisfaction the blending of camouflage over the massive door at the north portal against the mountain’s vertical face. He scanned back to the south entrance and noted the same satisfaction. Take away the feedlot smell venting from the mountain; no one would ever guess it housed over 400 humans and a wide-ranging menagerie of domestic animals.

  He stroked the horse’s mane, which lost interest in whatever attracted her attention. He made a clicking sound to resume the patrol, holding his straw hat while the whirlwind passed close by and headed towards the dry lakebed.

  He always wore his Kevlar helmet inside the mountain. However, he and everyone else wore high UAV rated sunglasses when outside along with improvised hats with wide brims for protection from the weak ozone no longer protecting them from the sun. He glanced at his watch and then the dosimeter hanging around his neck. “Damn,” he muttered. Even with the tolerable rad count, he saw his accumulated total dosage approaching his allowed limit. This meant confinement to the tunnel for ninety days—more if another bout of radioactive fallout decided to park over the region again.

  He headed the mare up the slope to peek over the ridge before resuming his patrol route along the perimeter. He scanned the barren rocks looking for a lizard, pack rat, even a rattlesnake; anything to show that life still existed after the nuclear winter. At least the temperature risen since the last dirty black snowstorm sprinkled the valley with a radioactive coating. The snow melted when the wind current moved north, making it safe enough to venture outside the mountain for a few hours each day.

  “Whoa, Ginger, he said to the horse when her walk sped to a trot up the slope towards the ridge crest. It took a moment for him to realize her attention being on something to cause the increase in speed. Her ears pointed forward, indicating her hearing something again.

  There! He picked up the sound—a sound so weak that he could not identify it at first. He stopped the horse and dismounted, tying the reins to a basketball-sized rock. He crept towards the crest with his weapon in hand.

  At the peak, he stopped beside a jagged rock outcrop to check out the sound’s source. He heard it, an audible weak droning sound of a propeller-driven plane. Looking beyond the sound, he caught a brief reflection from the aircraft.

  ####

  Col. Thomas J. Bradley—was he still military, an intelligence spook, or was he some brilliant electronics engineer? The answer depended upon who inside the mountain one asked. Today, four years after his taking command of the mountain, the question remained.

  The military survivors confined inside the mountain considered him being military. Some of those secrecy types who never spoke about anything suspected him being an agency, a spook, or a company man. The scientists and academia survivors suspected him being one of them but wearing a uniform.

  One might say that all of them were right. The circumstances of Bradley taking command deprived the others of knowing him. None of them knew he was some electronics engineer who happened to be wearing a uniform before the EMP. No one knew of him commanding a Defense Intelligence Agency think-tank performing electronic R&D on ways to screw with the enemy.

  Bradley more resembled his Special Forces image than that of commanding a colony of Ph.D.’s. Battle scars and a thousand-yard stare told of horrors experienced. These did not count the injuries on his leg from hot shrapnel and the damage to his throat from the sniper bullet that accounted for the long, diagonal scar extending from his left jaw and down his neck.

  After suffering near-fatal wounds in the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Bradley focused his career on the solitary, rarefied world of signals intelligence, becoming indispensable in the black projects of DIA and its sister agencies, NSA and CIA as well as the Homeland Security Agency.

  He proved to be a competent administrator, engineer, and commander, carrying out assignments and adapting to the changing high tech environment. Along the way, he picked up master’s degrees in electronic warfare, physics, national security strategy, and business administration. Thus, he ascended the military intelligence ranks, where expertise in advanced technology rated him a premium soldier.

  All of this occurred before the EMP; however, it took until now, four years later, for those in his command to learn that when the EMP happened, he headed covert intelligence ops for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Missile and Space Intelligence Center at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama. This knowledge fed the question, “Who is, or what is Colonel Bradley?”

  Colonel Bradley and his executive officer, Lt. Col. Jane Barlow each glanced up from their respective desk when they saw the company commander, Captain Callahan walk into the Command Center alcove.

  At the time of the EMP, Captain Callahan was commander of the 92nd Civil Support Team for weapons of mass destruction, a joint force unit of soldiers and airmen headquartered in Las Vegas in the case of a domestic chemical, biological, or nuclear event occurrence.

  Callahan, 5’ 11,” 190 pounds, and 32 years old was one of those military officers who led by never raising his voice, a leader with the composed mannerism of a student counselor. After four years of living underground, his fair skin sunburned and his reddish colored hair bleached from the last few days spending a few hours outside the mountain.

  He pitched his Kevlar helmet and laid his weapon on an empty chair, and out of habit glanced at the outdoor monitor’s screen and then the radiation indicator before sitting down. Even the decreased radiation level failed to erase the concerned expression on his face.

  Sarge, Bradley’s adopted poodle, rushed from his doggie bed to greet Callahan who petted the dog a couple of times but failed to pay his usual attention to him.

  Both Bradley and Barlow saw that something was stressing the captain, but could only sit waiting for him to tell them about it.

  “Our mounted guard just reported hearing a plane headed southwest of us along Highway 95. Something spooking his horse alerted him, and then he heard the drone of the aircraft’s engines. The sound extended up towards Beatty.”

  No one spoke for a moment while digesting the report’s implications.

  Puzzled, Callahan said, “Sir, I think that if the flight been one of our guys, they would have checked on us. This sounds like a scouting trip. Do you suppose it is the Arabs that we heard on the radio at Tucson?”

  “Yo, Sparks,” Bradley called to the radio room annexing off one side of the Command Center alcove. “You haven’t heard anything on the radios, have you?”

  SP5 Dawson stepped into the entrance to the Command Center and leaned on the rock entry. “No, sir.” Not even a squelch break. If anyone is talking, it is not happening on one of our military or civilian bands. We haven’t heard a peep from anyone since that one day. Someone pulled the plug on radio transmissions. It is as though they think the NSA is still snooping on anything said on the airwaves.”

  “Sir,” the XO said to Bradley. “I suggest we set up EMSO, an electromagnetic spectrum operation. Some of our communications people received trained in FISINT, Foreign instrumentation signals intelligence. It is a subcategory of SIGINT.”

  “I know what EMSO is, XO,” Bradley said, his irritation showing even in his quiet, laryngitic voice.

  “Sir, we have data from Homeland Security, including defense data that provides the frequencies most used by our potential enemy nation
s. We can scan the band for both conventional and sideband emitters.”

  Bradley nodded to Captain Callahan. “I believe that our people are already scanning these frequencies. Am I correct, Dawson?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After the EMP attack, and taking command of the mountain, Bradley inherited Captain Callahan to command a selected company of Nevada National Guard soldiers to protect the essential civilians chosen for protection inside the mountain. Callahan commanded the 92nd Civil Support Team for weapons of mass destruction should there occur a domestic chemical, biological, or nuclear event. Inside the mountain, he remained frozen in his rank, not because of any faults, but because he, like Bradley, stayed indispensable in his position.

  Having delivered his message, Callahan looked weary as he reached for his Kevlar and stood up to leave.

  “Stay for a moment, Captain,” Bradley ordered. Bradley stood up and paced around the Command Center, a habit that indicated his engaging in deep thought. Whenever this occurred, no one ever spoke until he thought through whatever concerned him.

  While he paced, Callahan glanced around the alcove at the technical equipment humming its electronic magic. The monitoring system in the Command Center alcove came from the Nellis AFB Battle Staff Briefing Room—three 12 x 12 feet etched and fogged glass rear projection screens for monitoring the mountain’s activities inside and out. Each screen displayed single or double Viewgraph or 35mm slide, or single, dual or quad computer or video display, enabling zoom monitoring of 12 different key areas within the tunnel, or any combination of such with enough memory to provide a 3-D CAD capability to view details of an emergency. Monitors, Alarms, and radiation readouts displayed information from cameras, motion detectors, and radiation sensors located outside the mountain. Except for the rock walls and ceilings, and lack of windows, most workplaces buried deep here in Yucca Mountain came equipped the same as the survivor’s regular workplace before the EMP.