Chapter 1

I’ll try not to bore you with too many details on how it all came about. Just let me run the general reasons by. Too much has been gone over whose fault it was and who started what. What we did learn, some years later, was that missiles were fired and more missiles were fired back. That was the start of the trial by fire. Yet that wasn’t the actual start of everything. It was after a long year of several flu types that affected most of us on the west coast. The next winter, it started all over again. I wasn’t ready for it, and it showed in my attitude toward life. My names Robert Johnson, a common name for sure, but I was living in uncommon times, so it evened out.

This time the flu bug hit everyone hard. Those that had escaped most of the sickness the year before, fared worse. They came down sick and never recovered. While others like myself that had suffered with what seemed like everything else, slowly regained some health. I wasn’t very steady on my feet, the flu having really sapped my strength. I had missed a lot of work, and was low on funds. I just didn’t have the money to buy the medicine I needed for full recovery. Being a blue collar worker, and not belonging to a union, I didn’t have medical coverage. Even with medical coverage, people were finding it hard to make ends meet.

Being young, at twenty-eight, it helped me recover when my older friends didn’t do so well. I lost so many that I quit attending services for them. Hell, I was too sick most of the time to even think about going to a funeral.

For some reason, I was craving oranges. I went through drawers and boxes, any where I might have tossed extra coins over the years. Finally I found enough to buy some cans of frozen juice. I was on my way to buy some from my local store, when the missiles and other bombs started going off. Like I said, we didn’t know much of anything, at the time. Just that the huge flashes of brilliant light coming from the direction of the bigger cities, clued us in that something bad was happening. Then the offshore nuclear blasts, sent an enveloping bank of fog over the land. The fog reached inland for almost a hundred miles. Anyone breathing the fog, got sick right away. Most died within a week. A few lasted maybe two weeks at the most. We learned later, that the fog was radioactive, with alpha beta partials. If we had been aware, we could have covered our faces with masks and breathed filtered air. Thus, we would have survived that death. But most didn’t realize what was happening, or didn’t know to cover their nose and mouth, so even more died.

Those of us that were left, waited in fear of what was going to happen next. It wasn’t long, before the ground began to shake. We were hit with earth quakes. The like I had never seen before. I had been through a few, but not on the scale that rocked the land. The quakes came on strong and kept happening for several months after.

When the skies cleared and the earth seemed to steady it’self, there wasn’t much left that was untouched. Houses and buildings of all sorts, were either flatten or showed signs of structure damage. It was a rare sight to find a building that didn’t have at least a large crack going up a wall. The section of the country where I was, didn’t suffer the chemical assault that was visited upon the larger population centers. How it was delivered, is still unclear. Some think, it was fired over to us by missiles, and others believe that there were those among us that took out secret stashes and released the agents at prescribed locations. I’m just not sure how it was done, or who did it. It just happened.

What was lucky for me, was that I was going to the store to purchase my Orange juice when all this other stuff started to happen. The blinding flashes of light and the long glow afterwards as a huge ball of fire rose into the sky, told me that I better hide quick. I had never paid much attention to where all those fallout shelters were suppose to be. Now I was frantically looking around for one. I was standing in the main street of my one-horse home town, looking for anything that might be capable of withstanding a nuclear blast or the fall out that was to follow. I was sure that I would be killed in the next blast that was sure to come, when I noticed several people running into the local Waller Ville bank. I had been banking there since it was built about ten years ago and was not aware of any shelter there. Then I realized the bank had a vault and was probably a good safe place to wait out an attack. It would be strong and secure. So I ran as best I could for the closing doors. The manager was about to lock up when he saw me coming. I could tell that he didn’t want to stop the locking up, but a quick glance up and down the street showed that no one else. He quickly opened the door and said something like he wasn’t suppose to do this, but for me get inside quick. I did, and he locked and secured the doors.

I saw several women, moving towards the rear portion of the building and followed after. Carl Mason, the bank manager was right behind me, urging me to speed up. I was moving as fast my weak legs would let me. My breathing wasn’t the best yet, as I could still cough up phlegm and spit a heavy lugger at will.

It first looked like everyone was heading out the back, but then I saw a section of wall that was moved to the side. Something like a sliding door, only this was a huge section of wall, complete with pictures and posters. I had never seen the wall in that state before. On the other side, was a large rectangle room, some thirty feet in length, and twenty feet wide. There were no other doors or windows in the room, and once the wall moved back in place, the only light came from some ceiling fixtures. There was about fifteen of us standing in that bare room. Nothing to sit on, just a tiled floor and no decorations.

I looked around at everyone and counted about ten women, and five men, not including myself. Everyone but me seemed to except the fact that they were to just stand there and do nothing. It was as if they were waiting for something else to happen. I heard one of the tellers that I’d done business with before, ask Carl if the rest would be coming. He shook his head, saying he didn’t know who might have survived the last bout of flu.

“We will wait for a few minutes more before continuing.” He said, a cold sweat was beading on his brow.

“Carl, You locked the doors.” Miss Collins reminded him. “ They can’t get inside the building. They won’t be coming.”

“Oh, God.” Carl shook his head, disparagingly at himself for being so confused. “I can’t go back and open the doors again.”

The Teller, Miss Collins shook her head in agreement. “No, you can’t. It’s time to continue the process.” She confirmed what he knew he had to do next. Carl, nodded his head, and moved to the wall behind them. I saw him open a small panel that I hardly noticed and he reached inside. I could see a section with numbers. Carl punched in several numerals and a low hum could be heard. Then with a gentle ease, the floor began sinking. I looked around at everyone else, surprised that they were excepting the sinking floor as standard procedure. To me it was something I couldn’t believe was happening. I mean, I remember when they were building the bank. I never heard anything like this being included.

Miss Collins, a woman of about fifty was looking very serious, but when she saw the concern on my face, she smiled and assured me, that everything was going as it was suppose too. I just nodded that I understood, but was still bewildered that in my one horse town, we had a room that could sink into the ground, and I didn’t know anything about it.

As the floor kept lowering, the walls changed from fine plaster to rough looking concrete. There was nothing on the walls but just the bare concrete. The next thing I noticed was that the temperature was dropping as we descended. Then about what looked like about sixty feet down, the floor stopped. This time there was small black metal box on the side of the wall. I could see lines on the wall, where the pouring of the concrete was stopped an restarted. Carl went to the metal box, opened it and punched in another series of numbers on the pad inside. The door began moving back. We stood there watching as it receded something like twenty feet. To the left, there was another opening, and Carl told everyone to proceed.

This time the room turned out to be a long tunnel. We all herded into it and then they all stopped after about forty feet. Carl then found something against the wall and handed several out to the Men, I didn’t get one. Then He threw a switch and the open wall began sliding back into place. I could see just as the wall closed, that the floor in the room we came down in, was moving back up to where it started.

Some lights came on over our heads, and we could see. I notice that the three other men in the group had something that looked GPS’s. The objects were what Carl had handed out. The three men were examining them closely and operating the power buttons. I didn’t notice anything changing, and wanted to ask what they were for, but managed to keep my mouth shut. I figured it was the better thing to do, until I got a handle on that was going on.

Carl stood before us as we waited for some word of what we were supposed to do next. I could see that the tunnel was long, and disappeared into the blackness. The only light was from some fixtures right above us. I didn’t relish walking along that tunnel in the dark. I had explored some lava tubes in the past, and didn’t enjoy that very much either. Course at the end of the lava tubes, there was nothing but the journey back were we came from. Not very exciting. This might be different I thought, as there had to be something for us to exist on, and a bare tunnel didn’t have much else to offer. As it was, I couldn’t even see a light at the end of it.

“We could wait for the shuttle to come back, or we could start out walking. It’s three miles, but it’s all level walking.”

“Why isn’t the shuttle here?” Miss Collins asked, obviously not looking forward to a long trek in her high heels.

“It took a load ahead. Kids from the school.” The last he added to head off the next question that was sure to come. “I think there was about twenty.”

“Only twenty?” One of the other men, spoke up. I didn’t know the man, but found out later that he was the son of someone that lived in the gated community just outside of my one horse town. I can’t say that I was ever in side that gated community, but I heard that it was pretty ritzy.

“That’s all that was available. That last round of flu, took out a lot. There might be some at home, but there wasn’t time to gather them in.”

“But only twenty?” he muttered, I learned that his name was Jim Christian. Over time I would grow to hate the son of a bitch, but for now, I excepted him as a good guy.

“I know what the specks call for, but we will just have to make do with those we have.” Carl was more at ease now. The doors were all closed and there was no going back, at least for the time being. “Besides, we don’t know for sure that this is the big one that we’ve prepared for. In two weeks or less we may be going back out.”

I saw a concerned look come over Miss Collins. From what they’d said, it was clear that she was not aware of all the plans for the shelter. “What do you mean, Make do with?” she directed her question at Carl, but it was also directed at Jim Christian.

“I mean, that if this is what we’ve been expecting, we will have to start over with what we have. The fall out and conditions may not last as long as some think. When the time comes to leave the shelter, we may find things are not as rough as we expect. But then, we could be down here for a very long extended period of time.” He was speaking with his calming voice. Soothing away the concerns of Miss Collins and the other women with her. Now was not the time for them to lose control.

I could tell from the way, she eyed him, that she suspected there was more to it. For the time being, she would drop it. Looking down at the tunnel floor, she could see that it was smooth and free of rocks and other debris. Reaching down to her raised foot, she removed her shoes one at a time. The shoes she wore were not the best for walking. “Well, if that shuttle is not coming back for a while, I guess we should get started.”

Not much else was said, everyone started moving along the tunnel at a comfortable pace. As the group moved, the lights above them came on, lighting the way. I didn’t understand it at first but then they told me it was those hand held gizmo’s that turned on the lights as they got close enough. Looking back behind us, I could see the lights turning off. The tunnel to the rear seemed even darker than what lay before us. Carl cautioned the women to stay close to the men holding the Gizmos, so they could see where they were stepping.

I took the time as we walked to look everyone over. All the women except for Miss Collins and another woman were very young. They all looked to be younger than Twenty. I couldn’t be sure, but that was the way it looked to me. The four other men besides myself and Carl Mason looked to be about forty years or so. Carl was probably late fifties, making him the oldest person here. I wondered if any were married, but didn’t feel like poking my nose into their affairs. I couldn’t gain any information by listening to the muted conversations around me, except that most of the women were bank employees. I heard a couple of the ladies saying that they had gotten a call earlier in the day, requesting them to come to the bank immediately. I wondered how early the phone call was made. I did see that Anna Kerlee, the nurse at the towns clinic, was among us. The other women, some I recognized as working at the bank but there was several that I didn’t know or remember seeing before.

That phone call some of the women mentioned, continued to weigh on my mind. The whole time before I left my house and was going to buy some orange juice, I never heard any alarms. Not even when the first blinding flash of light turned everything white around me. No siren, or other warning device, nor when the huge fire balls rose into the sky. At first I just considered myself lucky, and then later I began to ask myself why. Why wasn’t there a warning. How did Mason know, and how did they come to call in the school kids? If they knew in advance, why wasn’t there an alarm given for the rest of us.

With all those questions and manymore going on in my head, I realized that I really wasn’t suppose to be with this group of people. I had just lucked out by arriving at the bank when I did. Carl knowing that a number of those he was expecting or should have been there, were not going to show up. He had opened the doors for me. I was really lucky.

We had been walking about twenty minutes, when I noticed a faint glow ahead. I was aware that Miss Collins was not the only one walking without shoes. Several others were saving their feet from those awkward high heels and walking along with Miss Collins. I wondered at how the ladies in their stocking feet with stood the cold temperatures. Our breath was visible, and a faint haze hung in the air behind us.

As we got closer, I noticed a rig of some sort, I assumed to be the shuttle. It reminded me of something I had seen in Air Ports, that transported baggage and passengers along the carpeted concourses to and from the gates. This one however was much larger, probably seating fifty or more people at a time. I also noted that there was no one attempting to return to the other end of the tunnel and pick us up. It was a good thing we didn’t wait. Looking around, I couldn’t see anyone. There was a platform, small but large enough for our group. Looking at the far wall on the platform I could see lined groves in the wall, where a large heavy door sat waiting to be open.

Carl gave out a groan when he saw that the door was closed. I could sense an edge of fear in him as he hurried across the platform and opened another small metal cabinet after fumbling with the latch several times. Quickly he punched in his code, and expressed a sigh of relief when the large concrete slab began to slide back and slowly turn to the right. I figured Carl was worried the code might not work. When it did, he and Miss Collins both breathed a sigh of relief. I found out later, that any one inside could lock the doors, barring anyone no matter if they used the correct code or not.

Inside, and down another very short tunnel was another set of doors. These were not the strong bulky blast doors that the last ones were, but more like large shop doors. These were easy to open and on the other side was a room the size of a basketball court. The air was warmer here, but still it wasn’t comfortable. Here we saw the others that came ahead of us. They were seated in chairs facing the door we had just entered. To the right a grinning man was standing at a podium, he turned his smiled at Carl.

“I was just about to come back for you. I’ve been trying to put them at ease.” The grin was still there as he motioned towards the girls, emphasizing his words. “I told them, you would explain everything.”

Before Carl could speak, Miss Collins Groaned and headed for an empty row of chairs just behind the girls already setting. “You do the talking, I need to get off my feet. I think frost bite might be in my future.” With that she plumped herself down in an empty seat. Carl looking somewhat indecisive, motioned for the rest of us to take a seat too.