The flash woke me up.

I had been asleep and dreaming when suddenly a bright light seemed to penetrate even my sleeping subconsciousness - I remember opening my eyes, fortunately looking away from the window and wondering why the clock was off but the room lit from the outside. I was still wondering when the blast wave hit the house with a roar and the windows exploded behind the blinds and partially closed drapes.

I rolled off onto the floor and fumbled about in the now semi-darkened room that seemed suddenly on fire or thereabouts.

It took forever to find my glasses and then boots and crawling, find my GHB in the closet. Maybe a minute later I stumbled downstairs and looked out over the neighbor's burning home to the huge mushroom cloud that rose in the distance - a huge shape partially blocking the full moon.

"Hunter" the thought flashed into my mind and I quickly spun around, half expecting to see other fire balls on the horizon and cringing in expectation of the blast waves. But I saw nothing but ruin and smoldering houses. The heat wave had set only some of the homes ablaze. Others by chance or perhaps shadowed by other homes only smoldered.

Running back inside the house I dunked my head under the kitchen sink faucet and then, a bit more clear thinking rushed to the garage. It took what seemed an hour but was probably only a dozen minutes or so to stuff bins and tubs into the back of the Nissan Xterra...

Then I sat there...shaking like a leaf, afraid to roll out into the dark. My mind was spinning and I just didn't know what to do....

...

It was a Delta IV boat parked in the mid-atlantic about 1,000 miles off the coast from Norfolk. A large trawler had just motored by in the night hauling its nets in when the message came to the skipper to rise to launch depth and proceed with operation Iron Fist. Slightly after 1:40am EST as POTUS was being wined and dined at a large reception given in his honor in Moscow during the Peace Summit Talks, and while VPOTUS was AWOL on one of his 'outings' with what he supposed were some young co-eds but were really Russian sleeper agents, the first SLBMs broke the choppy surface of the ocean on a shallow trajectory towards their destinations.

The young Lt. on watch blinked several times and then re-checked the screen to make sure this wasn't a test. The watch officer was in the john. 3 minutes later, zipping up his pants and swearing profusely he stared at the monitors and checked the trajectories. Automated warning systems were blaring. Estimated first impacts were a mere 5 minutes away including their own station. These would be 150 kt warheads if the intel was correct. Actually, some were 1 MT city killers and others were micro nukes.

"We've got a minute to live, nothing more we can do folks" calmly intoned the watch officer. He looked at all the kids he was going to die with and wondered what would happen to his wife and children living just outside the base. Someone rushed out the room others started to cry silently. He was not a religious man, but he wondered what God would look like.

There were 5 carriers parked in Norfolk. The megaton bomb was set to detonate at 1,500 feet slightly to the center of their parking spot. Other, smaller MIRVs would sprinkle around the logistics parks and other critical nodes, landing slightly after the main burst. Washington DC's defense systems sprang to life like an impromptu July 4th display. Non-descript buildings shed false roofs as Israeli designed Iron Dome and Aegis directed SAM-3s erupted skyward towards the income swarm. Had anyone been looking they would catch a low atmosphere EMP blast followed by 'comets', smaller yield nukes landing on various critical targets just as the city killer arrived to its destiny and the great city of white marble simply ceased to exist.

Closer to shore a nondescript dry cargo hauler's dry vans opened revealing quad tubes of cruise missiles. It was a crazy gambit but it worked - those dry vans had sailed around the world several times, on different ships and eluded detection. Now the luck of the dice had 8 such ships within striking distance of CONUS. At precisely 1:49pm at a distance of no more than 150 nautical miles, a swarm of supersonic cruise missiles blossomed and then fanned out across the littoral space. None were nuclear but all carried serious munitions. Some were slated to destroy key bridges on I-95 or CSX rail bridges. Others cratered smaller airport runways, disabled power plants, refineries, or communications' depots.

At 1:50am early warning satellites spotted the first blooms of ICBMs rising from the Russian mainland and calculated their trajectories towards America's heartland. It was a first strike that aimed at leaving little left of the United States except for small to mid-size cities.

In Moscow the attache of the President was ignorant of the alarms - the local security liaison explained that they had walked into a particularly well shielded part of the Kremlin and that if he'd only walk to the window he might be able to access the signal that he was to be in constant contact with. He never made it to the window.

This presented a problem to the General designate. Neither POTUS nor VPOTUS was available - but with so many delegates in the capital of Russia, was he authorized to launch on it? Must he assume the worse? He had 13 minutes to make up his mind. A report came in of cruise missiles seen skimming across the Pacific towards targets on the West Coast. Guam and Hawaii had ceased to exist as American bases. He gave the order.

Just then the screens went blank. I stared dumbly at them and gave the order again....

...

Tears were rolling down my cheeks. I kept reliving my life and the idiotic childhood song of 'humpty dumpty' kept playing over in my head. The lights were out at the intersection so I slowed and checked all ways before blowing through and gunning it into the night. My vague sense was to avoid I-16 and take smaller roads towards Statesboro. That's when I hit the herd of deer.

When I opened my eyes a wave of euphoria flooded over me for a second -  I staring at a ceiling fan and my body relaxed...and then I felt the soreness of my right side and a sudden shock as the memory of the fire and smoke and panicked flight into the night came back. "Shhhhhh" - a calm, motherly voice soothed me and a firm but soft hand on my shoulder gently kept me from attempting to rise. "you've had a bit of a bad knock, son, so stay put 'n we'll get you right agin soon".

It took me about two weeks to recover. Marta said I had probably broken some ribs and my right side was one large bruise. Luckily I hadn't broken any other bones but the truck was totaled. Seems it tumbled over and over and ended upside down next to a tree. "We heard the crash and came out right quick. You was bleeding and groaning but we couldn't get you to talk. Sos we cut you out and took you inside. Jim got your stuff out and put it all in the shed out back." She missed her son who serves in the Navy on some carrier or other. Her husband was an old timer handyman, jack of all trades but was retired and walked with a limp. His old weather beaten face and leather like hands looked hard enough to drive nails. But other than being a man of few words, he seemed a decent sort.

"We been feeding ya your own rice and beans so it's not like yer owe us any". Marta was very practical. She explained what had happened while I was unconscious. Jim had an old HAM radio set but usually just sat listening to short wave from Europe where the still functioning BBC was praising their new Russian overlords and cautioning any recalcitrant Yank from doing anything hasty or unfortunate. It seems as though Moscow survived while many other cities and ports vanished and half the Russian fleet lay on the bottom of various seas and oceans. Unfortunately, so did most of our ships and our ports now had either sunken ships blocking the piers or had new roughly round shaped excavations where port facilities used to be.

"You was out for about 3 days. We had you up here the first day and then dragged you down to the storm cellar on a door to keep you underground as the fallout cloud came our way. Fortunately the winds shifted and the rains came and we were able to come on up in no time."

It was nice listening to Marta's half southern, half Latin American accent. She defied easy classification both of ethnicity and age. I'd guess Jim was about 70 or so but Marta could have been 50. Her son was about 30. Her only child. She didn't talk of him much, but her pride and worry painted her face during any silent spell.

The funny thing is how silent things were. No traffic. At all. Jim explained that the road wasn't very busy in peacetime as there were shorter cuts to the main roads. But now there was no sound of motor, plane, or engine. Just the wind. Not even barking dogs. Just a tomb-like quiet. No gun shots either. Jim said most of the farmers were probably still underground in their various bunkers. It's been less n a month. Old man O'Brien told me years ago his plan was to stay PUT for a month at least. 'sides, there's nothing to hunt. Them deer was clean spooked. I haven't seen the herd since you hit one."

I asked about my gear - thinking of the various firearms. "Yer guns ya mean? Yeah, all's in the shed. You won't be needing any of them just yet. I cleaned yer shotty. Barrel hadn't been cared for properly. The pistols I didn't touch other than to look at em. I approve of the .45 but you can keep the 9s. That other thingamabob, plastic toy looking thing, I can't say that I've ever seen a folding gun but it's still in the pack. I was looking for your ID or something to tell me who we was caring for. I found this" he held up my backup wallet with family photos and some ID cards. My boys faces peeked out from an old worn photo I kept in my wallet behind some plastic.

Perhaps that's what kept the peace between us. We were both aching the loss of boys.

It's funny how much we didn't talk about during those 4 weeks together. When I was finally mended enough to help out around the place and even lift some lumber, I talked about making my way to Statesboro where I had originally been headed before being cut off by the deer.

"Statesboro?" Marta's voice sounded strange as though she had something personal against the place. "Yeah, I know a few people who live there as was hoping they'd take me in until I could get things sorted out what with Savannah gone." For a long time she just sat there as though working something out. I was just about to ask her if I could purchase an old bike I saw in their garage when she quietly, almost in a whisper leveled with me. "Honey, Statesboro was blown up the day after you crashed here". Just then Jim came in and saw the look on my face and quickly heard what Marta was talking about. He agreed. "Yep, we saw the flash and heard the boom. I don't know what sort of target the place was...maybe the hospital or colleges had something strategic at them but who ever wanted it off the map got it off the map. I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a big crater."

I must have been crying because they both just up and moved to the kitchen and let me sit on the sofa alone for awhile. When it was dinner time no one spoke.

Tag

 

Naw, sounds good. Go for it.

I was writing up the Tsunami story when i hit writers block so tried to imagine Hunter field getting nuked (Hunter is about 3-4 miles from my position in Savannah.

Depending on the yield and wind/atmospheric conditions, I might "just" survive an atomic blast. Say it detonates inside a pop up thunder cloud that absorbs some of the flash and heat.... the way things are, something like that would cut off half the city, throw half the population into complete panic, kill perhaps 30,000 in the immediate area of the base, and up end most of our lives...

But the scenario intrigues me for the following reasons: if you survived the initial blast...do you hide or run? I'd run. But how fast can I pack and drive off with kids? The longer you wait, the less likely of being able to get away. But if you leave, you are not coming back....for a long time.

In some novels the hero has a ship worth of gear, tools, etc. I like the ones where the hero has only a few tools and has to MacGuyver the rest....without constant "just so" Deus Ex Machina saves like stumbling on hidden treasure, fully stocked fallout shelters, etc. I notice in the Hobbit there is two "oh come on now" deus ex machinas (both involving the timely arrival of giant eagles) but some chapters where Tolkien lets the poor dwarves and hobbit starve for weeks on end... it seems to me that anyone can expect 2-3 miracles in a disaster situation but not a constant barrage of miracles.