Nuclear Winter Series | Book 2 | Nuclear Winter Armageddon Page 7

  Like any shopper, he located a plastic basket with handles to make his selections. His first stop was the section offering mineral supplements. After a moment, he located a 240-count bottle potassium iodide with a strength of 32.5 milligrams. He tried to read the dosage label. He had no idea how many to take to stave off the effects of radiation poisoning. Peter opened the bottle and swallowed four of them. This would give him a sixty-day supply.

  He was about to move on to other supplements when he stopped himself. The EMP had destroyed the power grid, at least in the Mid-Atlantic states. That meant no hospitals. No doctors. No diagnostic equipment. And certainly no pharmacies dispensing potassium iodide.

  “This shit’s worth its weight in gold,” he said aloud as he cleared the remaining bottles off the shelf.

  He then began to add vitamins and minerals that gave him a four-month supply of everything. He’d calculated it would take him at least three months to get to the Keys if he had to walk the whole way. However, he had a plan for that, too.

  Before he left, he’d consumed two bottles of electrolyte water and half a dozen energy bars. He now had two baskets full of nutritional supplements, energy bars, and protein powders. He transferred his haul into three tote bags offered for sale by the store. This concealed what he’d procured and hopefully wouldn’t encourage anyone to try to steal it from him.

  After an hour in the Vitamin Shoppe perusing every item offered, he casually rolled up the grated door and slid underneath. Nobody noticed as he nonchalantly walked through the mall as if he’d been shopping on any other Saturday.

  Chapter Ten

  Saturday, October 26

  Driftwood Key

  The Albrights and the Frees had spent the day before trying to gather information via the DirecTV satellite television network and a crank NOAA weather radio made by Eton. The radio was a staple of every resident in the Florida Keys. Hurricanes were a regular occurrence, as were power outages, which was why Hank had spent an inordinate amount of time and money preparing for a sustained power outage.

  The group had remained glued to the television and CNN International, the only cable news network that was broadcasting. All other programming was off the air, a direct result of their network locations in California and New York.

  It had been more than twenty-four hours since the U.S. and North Korea had exchanged nuclear volleys. From all reports, North Korea no longer existed. Its government, major cities, and military installations had been reduced to rubble. The nations they’d attacked initially, Japan and South Korea, were trying to pick up the pieces.

  The situation, as the CNN news anchors called it, was more dire in the U.S. and confusing. Americans were faced with millions of people who had been killed instantly at the detonation sites, as well as widespread power outages. Just as the network was about to explain the grid failure in detail, power to Driftwood Key was lost.

  They were no longer able to receive any signals from local AM or FM stations. The emergency broadcast system was working, but it hadn’t been updated since the initial warnings to shelter in place due to the nuclear attack. For nine hours from Friday night into the early morning hours of Saturday, they’d lost all contact with the outside world.

  Hank was physically and emotionally exhausted when he’d tried to go to bed the night before. After an hour of tossing and turning, his mind full of concern for the safety of his kids, Hank got up to walk on the beach. He heard voices and made his way to the water’s edge. The grayish, cloudy skies blocked the moonlight as well as the sun, so it was extraordinarily dark on the gulf side of Driftwood Key. He recognized the voices as being Mike and Jessica. The three of them stayed up for hours, passing a fifth of Jack Daniel’s around until Hank found his way into a hammock to pass out.

  That day, he woke up because his biological clock summoned him, not because the beautiful Florida sunshine made its daily appearance. At first the dark, cloudy canopy made him think rain was on the way, but his mind and body told him otherwise.

  As a lifelong resident of the Keys, Hank had the innate ability to feel weather. Years spent on the water and in a tropical environment taught him how to sense changes in atmospheric pressure, winds, and moisture in the air.

  This was different. It was as if the Florida Keys were on fire and covered in a blanket of soot. The gray skies had turned to a mixture of black smoke and ashy white. The air had become thick with the toxic mix, causing Hank to begin coughing.

  Without any sense of modesty, he took his morning pee at the water’s edge. It was a crude thing to do but one that made sense under the circumstances. With the power outage, water would be a precious commodity that shouldn’t be wasted on flushing toilets.

  Hank found his way up the stairs toward the porch. He cocked his head to listen for the generator, surprised that it wasn’t running. Then the ceiling fans on the veranda caught his eye. They were turning like always. He shrugged, thrilled that the power was back on.

  “Phoebe! Sonny! You guys around?”

  “Back here!” Phoebe shouted back. He glanced into the other rooms and noticed they’d closed all the windows. Late October was usually a great time to open the main house to let the ocean breezes flow through.

  “Good morning, Mr. Hank,” greeted Sonny, startling Hank somewhat. It was the first time the proprietor of the Driftwood Key Inn realized he was hungover. He rubbed his temples and cursed the Tennessee whiskey as if it were Gentleman Jack’s fault he’d consumed so much the evening before.

  “Hi, Sonny. What’re you up to?” He pointed at his caretaker’s hands, which held rags and a bottle of Windex.

  “Mama isn’t too happy with all the soot in the house. Look.” He showed Hank the black-streaked towels. “As soon as the power came back on, she had me scramble around to close the windows and wipe everything down. She’s running loads of laundry while the power is up and running.”

  “When did it come on?” asked Hank.

  “About an hour ago when Mike and Jessica left.”

  “Left?” asked Hank as he looked around the house. “To where?”

  “Mike said both of their radios began to squawk as soon as the electricity was back. They’ve been called in to work.”

  Hank managed a laugh and shrugged. A cop is never off duty.

  “Mr. Hank! Come get your breakfast before it gets cold!”

  Hank pointed toward the kitchen. “How’s she holding up?”

  “Believe it or not, pretty good,” replied Sonny. “It helps her to stay busy. Maybe she’s hiding it, I don’t know. One thing is for certain, she has a million things on her mental to-do list while the power is on. She seems to think we could lose it again.”

  Hank grimaced. If Erin Bergman was correct, they could count on it.

  The rest of that day was a busy one. Information was still spotty, and mostly what they gathered was a repeat of the reporting the night before. The electricity situation was beginning to be a concern for Hank.

  Without a doubt, the regions around the blast zones were experiencing massive blackouts, large-scale power outages that might go on for many months, if not longer. In the Florida Keys, the brownouts were an indication of the utility company’s inability to keep up with demand. To prevent blackouts in more populated areas, they reduce delivery of electricity to rural areas or places like the Keys.

  As the brownouts began to occur more frequently as that Saturday wore on, everyone on Driftwood Key began to prioritize their chores to take advantage of a precious commodity they’d all taken for granted in their everyday lives—electricity.

  Sonny and Jimmy focused on the greenhouses and hydroponics, the two sustainable food-growing processes that were an integral part of the inn’s operations. Phoebe worked to prepare meals and shuffle stored foods from one refrigerator to another. Those items that required freezing were prepared first because the inn’s portable generators weren’t strong enough to maintain them for the length of time necessary to keep the food frozen. Not to mention
the fact that gasoline for the generators was also in short supply.

  Hank took this opportunity to check on Driftwood Key’s Sol-Ark solar array. It was first installed seven years ago, and he’d upgraded and expanded the array every year since. Florida ranked third in the country for solar potential, with the Keys being the most viable candidate for solar energy. Between tax credits and other government incentives, he’d managed to power their sustainable gardening buildings, several of the inn’s bungalows located near it, and Phoebe’s supply storage building, including the refrigerators.

  However, as the skies continued to darken from the effects of nuclear winter, Hank was becoming concerned that the stackable lithium-ion batteries attached to the array might not hold their charges as the sunlight was blocked.

  The batteries cycled daily, meaning they charged, drained and then recharged. Over time, the battery’s ability to hold a charge gradually decreased, eventually requiring replacement. The original batteries from seven years ago were now operating at seventy to eighty percent of their original capacity. The newer ones performed better. Like many things around the key, he wished he had more of everything Sol-Ark offered.

  It was getting late, and he was becoming concerned about his brother. He made a mental note to have Mike secure a sheriff’s department radio for them. If not, he’d have the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department frequencies on their Bearcat scanners, another staple of boaters in the keys.

  Hank was beginning to see why Phoebe had been in a frenzy throughout the day. They had to prepare for every possible contingency, including a permanent blackout. It helped Hank put his worries in the back of his mind. He tried to convince himself that he was preparing for the day Peter, Lacey and her family walked across the bridge leading to Driftwood Key. It was a vision he’d hold onto until that day arrived.

  Chapter Eleven

  Saturday, October 26

  Placer High School Fallout Shelter

  Auburn, California

  By day two in the fallout shelter, many of the occupants were beginning to notice that something seemed to be wrong with the ventilation system. First, the temperature, although not measured with any device, had risen dramatically. Everyone had stripped off unnecessary clothes and were still sweating. Those who were overweight suffered the most, coupling excessive perspiration with heavy breathing. This only served to make it warmer in the cramped space.

  One of the benefits of placing a shelter deep into the ground was that dry earth was a reasonably good thermal insulator. The Placer High shelter was approximately thirty feet below ground. The walls were cool to the touch, although moisture had taken a toll in the past, and the paint was peeling off in many spots.

  Large air ducts traversed the ceiling and then led upward through the ground or parts of the gymnasium. Round commercial air vents were located equidistant throughout the space, with one in each storage room and four in the main room. If you could reach these vents located twelve feet off the floor, you’d be unable to feel any air blowing through them.

  There were no operable fans because the power grid was down. The only transfer of air was through the vents and provided via a Kearny air pump. Developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee when nuclear bunkers were first designed, the air pump system was designed to be operated by hand.

  A filter was installed into an opening above the shelter on a swinging hinge. The design allowed the user to pull a rope to begin the swinging process. Air is sucked in from the outdoors and filtered of contaminants. It would then swing freely back, essentially creating a one-way valve that operated to force air to flow in only one direction.

  When constructed, the fallout shelter at Placer functioned perfectly. Four nylon twenty-eight-foot-long pull cords were affixed to the Kearny air vents at the end of each duct. Minimal effort was needed to pull the cord and operate the pump, supplying a more than sufficient supply of fresh air to the shelter.

  However, like everything else in this shelter, maintenance had been lax or nonexistent since the 1980s, and the rope cords had disintegrated over time. There was no fresh air flowing into the space. As a result, the carbon dioxide expelled from the occupants’ lungs remained mostly within the shelter, and the lack of oxygen resulted in their breathing becoming more labored.

  After twenty-four hours, the effects were noticeable, and many became concerned. Especially when a heavyset man collapsed while sitting on the latrine with the door pulled down. He’d been inside the latrine for an inordinate amount of time. He’d entered the shelter alone, so there was no one familiar with the man or his health conditions.

  At the time, there wasn’t anybody waiting their turn to use the latrine, so his presence in there for nearly fifteen minutes went unnoticed. Then a loud crash followed by a thud was heard by those sitting on the floor nearby.

  A man jumped to his feet and began to pound on the corrugated steel door. This woke up everyone in the shelter, and soon the group was chattering excitedly. When there was no answer, he tried to pull up on the brass handle to open the door, but he was unsuccessful.

  “Help me open this door!” he shouted to two men who stood nearby. They brusquely shoved their way past a woman and her three children, knocking them to the side. “It’s stuck.”

  They slid their fingers into the groove of the door and, after a count of three, lifted it up until it rolled into itself. The man sitting on the latrine had passed out. He’d collapsed onto the floor with his pants around his ankles and his hefty body rolled up against the door. The latrine barrel he’d been sitting on had toppled over and spilled excrement on top of him.

  It was a very undignified way to die, if dying could ever be considered dignified.

  The police officer rushed to cover his dead body with a blanket. He used another towel to throw over the top of the urine and feces that covered the floor around the man.

  People closest to the latrine immediately complained of the stench while others began to sob at the sight of the dead man. Some surmised the lack of fresh air must’ve triggered a heart or lung ailment. Regardless, the increasingly hot and stuffy shelter now smelled of sewerage and death.

  People started to grumble again. Arguments broke out between one know-it-all and another. The coach was being pressured to let some people out who wanted to leave, but several people objected to that, as they were certain enough radiation would enter through the open doorway to kill them all or turn them into zombies.

  Yes, zombies. A handful of people were firmly convinced that death by nuclear radiation would result in zombie-like creatures roaming the earth. When others countered that it was physically impossible for the dead to walk, the pro-zombie contingent countered that the planet had never been through nuclear Armageddon either, so nobody really knew for sure.

  Oddly, the McDowells found the interaction between the other occupants of the shelter to be humorous. They made a game of labeling the most vocal among the group with nicknames from cartoon characters. With the zombie discussion, Walking Dead character names were being used to identify the other refugees.

  The death of the man cast many in the shelter into a solemn yet sober mood. People had died in the nuclear blasts. For all they knew, the people locked out of the shelter the day before were lying dead in the stairwell. Suddenly, the cramped quarters and uncomfortable concrete floor didn’t seem so bad.

  The conversations quieted down, and the man’s body was moved to one end of the latrine. It was surrounded by several empty meal boxes and water barrels to segregate it from those who had to do their business. However, several people made it known that his body would start to rot within twenty-four to seventy-two hours. As his internal organs began to decompose, his body would begin to leak fluids from all its orifices. It would stink and become a health hazard for everyone in the cramped space with no outside ventilation.

  The coach and the police officer gathered in the corner of the storage room nearest the McDowells. They talked in hushed tones in an effor
t to prevent their discussion from being heard by the refugees.

  “Are you sure about forty-eight hours?” asked the coach.

  “Yeah, I think so. Listen, between us, we weren’t trained on this stuff. I made it up so these folks would believe me. I really have no idea, but I think I saw it on a news report last week. Anyway, with the dead guy, we’re gonna have to do something in the next day or so.”

  Lacey, who was closest to the two men, rolled her eyes. She almost interrupted them to give them a piece of her mind, but she held herself back. The coach continued.

  “You realize the air isn’t working, right?” he asked the officer.

  “I figured that out already. It was the first thing I thought about when the power went out. We just need to figure out a way to hang on for another day.”

  The coach caught Lacey eavesdropping, and he quickly turned his head away from her. She did the same out of embarrassment, so she didn’t hear what he said next.

  “We’ve got another problem, one that you can only smell near this vent,” he said, pointing over his head.

  The officer shrugged and asked, “What?”

  “I smell smoke.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Saturday, October 26

  Placer High School Fallout Shelter

  Auburn, California

  “Owen, wake up.” Lacey hesitated to bring her husband out of his restful sleep. She’d debated for several minutes because she wasn’t certain her senses weren’t betraying her under this pressure-filled environment. She’d stood to stretch her legs and moseyed into the storage room next to the corner where they’d remained since their arrival.

  At first, she thought she was simply smelling the clothing of someone who might’ve been smoking a cigarette before they entered the shelter. Or maybe they’d taken a few puffs while in the latrine because they were addicted to nicotine, and withdrawal forced them to light up.