Half Past Midnight (11 page)

“Oh no, you don’t.” I laughed. “You’re not dragging me into a family argument.”

“It sorta sounds like it to me.” Megan volunteered from her hammock. When the rest of us turned to her, she seemed to regret having spoken, as if she feared being ridiculed. “Well, you gotta admit that the other morning looked like a lot of ’steel, fire, famine, and death’!”

None of us had a rebuttal to that.

“So then, where is Aquilon?” Ken’s mocking tone was aimed at his wife. “No town around here with that name.”

“That’s because he was from France, so most of his stuff related to France. Aquilon was an ancient city there, but with everything that’s going on, who’s to say what’s happening?”

We played various games. Ken played the guitar, and Cindy, who had the best voice, was a pleasure to listen to when she sang.

We took vitamins, drank Gatorade, ate lousy food cooked over Sterno cans, and did our business in a covered bucket around the corner. We made a man-powered recharging device for our car batteries by attaching a hand crank to an antique automobile generator that Ken had owned.

We all took potassium iodide tablets to prevent our bodies from taking in radioactive iodine, all of us except for Debra, who had a severe allergy to iodine. In general, we tried to remain optimistic. Usually it worked, but not always. There were bad days, dark, dismal, dreary, and depressing days full of anxious and paranoid musings about the type of world to which we would emerge.

Once a day at noon, whichever adult had accumulated the smallest dose would bundle up in rain gear, rubber gloves, boots, and gas mask, all sealed with duct tape, and go outside to dump the waste buckets and take a reading with the fallout meter. Fallout readings had reached their worst on the day after we went underground, reading twenty-four rems per hour. Cindy had gotten the job of taking that first reading. I had gone over all of the charts with everyone; she knew that anything over ten rems was too dangerous, so she came back in immediately after taking the reading. The next day at noon, Debra reported twenty-three rems, and the day after that I got twelve rems. The next day was Thursday, and Ken reported a reading of seven rems. Readings decreased rapidly after that.

Actually, we got off pretty easy. The fallout wasn’t nearly as intense as it could have been, and nowhere near fatal in such small doses. If anyone had been unsheltered through all of it, though, they would probably be dead within a month.

A long and excruciatingly painful month.

***

After nine days, our PDRs no longer glowed when we went outside. On the twelfth day, it took an hour to get a recognizable reading on the KFM, and even then, it was less than one rem per hour. Simple calculations showed we could stay outside for over seven weeks before things even got close to being dangerous. The next day, the reading was point-oh-three rems per hour… five months of “safe time.”

It was time to see what was left of the world outside.

Chapter 7
* * June 26 * *

Le deffaillant en habit de bourgeois,
Viendra le Roy tenter de son offense:
Quinze soldats la pluspart Vstagois,
Vie derniere & chef de sa cheuance.

The transgressor in bourgeois garb,
He will come to try the King with his offense:
Fifteen soldiers for the most part bandits,
Last of life and chief of his fortune.

Nostradamus –
Century 4, Quatrain 64

We already knew most of the chickens had made it through all right. Each day at noon when we had emerged to read the fallout meter, we had taken the five minutes necessary to scatter feed for them to ensure our long-term food supply. Several of the hens had even nested in the house, though none had laid eggs. They did seem to have a natural resistance to the radiation.

The goats didn’t fair quite as well. There had been forty-five head before we went into the shelter. We had managed to round up twenty-nine of them and force them into the house. Out of those twenty-nine, two were dead, and six were near death and had to be put out of their misery. We buried them all. Though fallout was no longer a major consideration, disease was.

We slaughtered one of the healthiest-looking males, discarded the organ meat and the meat closest to the bone, and cooked
cabrito
for dinner. It was the best meal we’d had in two weeks.

Now that we were out, a multitude of things needed to be done. The first order of business was locating the dead goats, not those from the house, but the unfortunate ones that hadn’t been found in time or had been too stubborn to go inside—sixteen goat carcasses hidden somewhere in twenty acres of brush. We couldn’t allow that.

I was certain any hospitals in the area were already deluged with more cases of radiation sickness than they could handle. Besides which, everyone was going to be low on food, clean water, and all of the modern little conveniences that kept us all healthy. That meant our immune systems would not be at peak performance, which in turn meant we had to be very careful about health risks, like those involving bloated animal carcasses.

We spread out in a straight line, with about thirty feet separating each of us, a grim search party to find the remaining goats. Within the first thirty minutes, we had found eleven of the sixteen. I also found I was beginning to get sunburned. Only then did I recall some of the speculated effects of nuclear weapons on the ozone layer.

“Hey, Amber!” I shouted. “You have any sunscreen?”

“Back at the house. You getting burned, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too,” Debra chimed in from further down the line.

Everyone else admitted to light burns, as well, everyone but Ken and Cindy, whose darker pigmentations had protected them… so far.

Mentally, I kicked myself. I was supposed to be the expert, and I had forgotten one of the most controversial issues concerning the after-effects of nuclear war. Many scientists claimed that nuclear explosions would deplete the earth’s ozone layer, allowing excess ultraviolet radiation to filter through the atmosphere. They claimed that even if you survived a nuclear war, the damage to the atmosphere would be so severe that the resultant UV increase would likely destroy the earth’s delicate ecological balance. Vegetation would shrivel and die. Animals dependent on that vegetation for sustenance would starve. The food chain would be interrupted, causing widespread starvation and disease. Large areas on all of the continents, deprived of their bonding vegetation, would erode and turn into giant deserts. In short, claimed these scientists, life on the earth would become a living hell.

Then, there was the other side, the scientists who claimed the others were basing their projections upon faulty computer models. Though they conceded the existence of slight evidence that there could be some damage to the ozone layer, they claimed the extent of the damage would not be nearly as severe as the others feared. According to them, the measurements taken from early nuclear testing indicated less ozone depletion than resulted from industrial pollution, and that the ozone would quickly replenish itself. As for the delicate ecology, they replied that the earth wasn’t nearly as delicate as the opposition claimed. The niche occupied by humanity may be delicate, but Nature had repeatedly demonstrated its resiliency. In short, though mankind might destroy itself, Mother Nature could easily carry on without us.

Plenty of facts and figures backed up both arguments. I just hoped I had picked the right side.

“All right,” I yelled to get everyone’s attention. “Everybody back to the house!”

As we trudged back, I explained, “The ozone layer’s evidently been shot to hell by the bombs, and we’re taking on too much ultraviolet. We’re going to have to go back to the house and take a few precautions. We’ll need to wear long pants, long-sleeve shirts, hats, and sunglasses. Anywhere our skin is exposed, we’ll need sunscreen. I don’t know how long this will last, but we might have to live with it for a long time.”

We all retreated to the house and geared up before returning to finish our search. By sundown, all of the goats had been found and buried with the help of Ken’s back hoe, and though everyone complained about having to wear so much clothing in the humid southern heat, it wasn’t a major problem.

* * June 29 * *

Three days after we emerged from our shelter, Amber, Ken, and I decided to head into town to see how it was holding together. I also wanted to report our encounter with Larry and company to the local authorities, assuming any authorities were left.

At the edge of town, we were stopped at a roadblock—two diesel pickup trucks manned by two rather tired-looking Rejas police officers. One came around the blockade to talk to us. I noticed the other kept his rifle pointed in our direction. Not a good sign.

The first officer never gave us a chance to open our mouths. “Sorry, folks, but Rejas can’t take in any more refugees. You’ll have to turn around.”

“But we’re not refugees, Officer—” Amber began.

The policeman cut her off. “I’m sure you aren’t, ma’am.” His tone said otherwise. It said he’d heard all the excuses and was tired of hearing them. “Whatever you call yourselves, you’ll have to turn around right now. Otherwise, my orders are real specific.”

Ken shifted in his seat and reached for his back pocket. “Listen officer, we—”

“HOLD IT!”

Ken looked up to see the business end of a 9mm Glock aimed at his head. Eyes wide, he froze and swallowed, “I’m just going for my driver’s license, Officer. No need to be alarmed.” Then slowly, very slowly, he pulled out his wallet and shakily withdrew the driver’s license. “But you see, we live in Rejas.”

The cop read the address on the license, then holstered his pistol. “Sorry ’bout that.” He didn’t sound very sincere. “We really do have a problem with refugees. I guess I should have given y’all a chance to explain, but we got so many people trying to talk their way through here that you just get tired of hearing all the excuses. Can I see the rest of y’all’s licenses?”

We handed them over. He examined Amber’s and handed it back. Then, he looked at mine.

“You don’t live here.” Either he was bored silly from this guard duty, or he was just having a really bad day, because the look he directed at me virtually oozed malice. I thought there was going to be trouble, but Amber piped up.

“He’s family… my son-in-law. My daughter and grandchildren are back at the house. If it wasn’t for Leeland, we would all be dying a slow death right now.”

“How’s that?”

“He’s a survivalist. Knows how to build shelters, filters, everything we needed to make it through the last couple of weeks.”

He eyed me for a moment longer, then turned back to Amber. “Long as you vouch for him, I’ll let him through.” Clearly he didn’t like the idea of letting an “outsider” into his town. Nevertheless, he returned my license.

Since he was the first representative of the local police department I had seen, I figured he would be the one to ask about the problem we’d had on the way out here. “Who do I need to see to report an attempted hijacking?”

“What?” He appeared startled.

“My family and I were attacked on the way out here.”

“When did that happen?”

“D-day.” It was what we had all taken to calling June thirteenth while in the shelter. It was shorter than saying, “The day all the bombs started falling.”

He knew immediately what I meant and obviously didn’t give a damn that my family and I had been attacked. “Ain’t nothin’ nobody can do about that now. Hell, that was a couple of weeks ago.” He barked out a laugh. “What the hell do you expect us to do now?”

“Well, you might start by sending someone to bury the bodies,” I said facetiously. It gave me great satisfaction to see him sober so quickly.

“Bodies? You mean y’all killed ’em?”

“Only two of them,” I replied innocently. I saw an opportunity to pay him back for some of the crap he had just dished out.

He finally appeared to be taking me seriously. “How many of ‘em was there?”

“Five.”

“So there’s still three of ‘em on the loose?”

“Unless some of the others died from their wounds.”

“Wounds?”

This was getting fun. “Yeah. One had a broken knee and a hole in his left shoulder. Another one had a pretty nasty bump and cut on the front of his head.”

“How ’bout the last one?” He took the bait.

“Oh, he gave up before we hurt him.” I smiled innocently.

“How many of you was there?”

“Me, my wife, my sixteen-year-old daughter, and my nine-year-old son.” I saw the disbelief in his eyes. “Look, Officer, it’s a long story, and I don’t feel like telling it twice. So if you could just tell me who I need to report to, I’ll be on my way.”

But he wasn’t about to be put off after my last comment. “You expect me to believe that you, your wife, daughter, and son killed two bandits, wounded two more, and another one just gave up so you wouldn’t hurt him? That sounds like bullshit to me, boy!”

“Call it whatever you want,” I replied calmly. “Just tell me who to see in town, and I’ll take myself and my bullshit story out of here.”

He paused, evidently trying to decide whether the importance of my story outweighed the importance of his teaching me a lesson in manners. “You best get a grip on that attitude of yours, boy, or I’ll have to adjust it for you.”

I was tired, scared, and didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. “I don’t think you could adjust your ass with both hands, you stupid—”

Amber grabbed my arm. “That’s enough, Leeland!” She turned to the cop. “I’m sorry, Officer. He was hurt in the fight with the hijackers.” She indicated the scabbed-over slice on my throat. It still looked worse than it felt, but for once I was glad of it.

“Shee-it,” he drawled. “Hunh. Maybe it wasn’t all bullshit, after all.” He decided to ignore me completely and addressed Amber. “Okay, first thing y’all need to do is go to City Hall. The police station’s in the same building. You can make your report to the deputy on duty. Next, go to the titles and notary department and register your vehicle. They’ll give you a sticker to put on your windshield. You’ll also have to fill out a questionnaire. It’ll have a lot of questions about where you’re stayin’ and how many of you there are. What kind of skills you have. Stuff like that.”