Percy's Mission (17 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Buddy didn’t waste any time. He wasn’t fearful someone else would buy the property. Buddy wanted to get to work on it. Every minute he wasn’t working, eating, or sleeping he spent on getting the place ready for whatever might come. The news seemed worse every day.
The plan was to build a nice place in the large clearing, to take advantage of the view, but he wanted something to live in while he was working there. So Buddy bought a thirty-foot fifth-wheel travel trailer. He thought about paying cash, but decided on the spur of the moment to finance it in order to conserve his cash. Besides, he got a zero-percent-interest loan on it.
He was a little worried about there being enough topsoil for an easy septic system, but it didn’t turn out to be a problem. Buddy went ahead put in the system so it could be used for the house when it was built.
For the things he was concerned with, living in the trailer as is would not be adequate. It was far too vulnerable to nature’s ravages and human kind’s efforts. He was going to need a garage and shop, anyway, so he built one to house the trailer and his truck.
Before he started work on the building, he contacted a well driller friend he’d worked with a few times on rural homes. He cut a deal with him to add a basement bathroom in the driller’s home to offset a portion of the cost of the well. The well was rather marginal at only five gallons per minute production, but the driller assured Buddy that, though low producing, the wells in the area were steady producers. He could pump five gallons a minute all day, every day, if he wanted.
“How is this going to work again?” Charlene asked when she got out of the truck and stood beside it.
“Okay. These arched pieces I brought up last week will be bolted together to form a Quonset type structure. I’ll build walls on each end, and then mound earth over the whole thing.”
“That’s a lot of dirt!” Charlene said. She followed him over to the stacked arch panels.
Buddy laughed. “I’ve got a lot of it! I just have to pull it from several spots on the property. It’s pretty thin in spots.” He’d had a loader delivered to the gate and roaded it to the site the previous week. It had taken a week of evenings to prepare an area the way he wanted.
The footings and floor were poured and cured enough to erect the structure. Getting the concrete truck up had not been difficult, though he did have to cut a few trees to widen the track. The cut up wood was stacked handy for the woodstove that would heat the building.
Like the loader, a small truck crane was rented and sitting ready for use. Buddy had used it and a trailer to tow a man lift up to the site as well. He gave Charlene a hard hat and showed her how to use the crane. It would all be simple work. Buddy was sure she could handle it.
Charlene wasn’t as sure as Buddy, but when he helped her lift the ends of the first two arch panels into place so he could bolt them together at the top, she realized she could, in fact, do it. And do it safely. She merely had to be careful and take her time.
They shifted the bases into place on the foundations and Buddy fastened a timber to it to act as a brace when they lifted it up. Charlene lifted the center of the arch into the air. Buddy spotted the brace, fastened it to the ground with a stake, then quickly added nuts to the bolts now projecting up through the base plates of the arches.
It took a while, but they had all the arches up by the time they finished that day. Buddy used the man lift each time they erected an arch panel to connect it to the previous one. When they were done they had a fifty-foot long, thirty-two foot wide, sixteen foot high tunnel.
Buddy drove the crane truck and towed the man lift back to the rental place while Charlene drove his pickup.
Over the next few days Buddy erected reinforced concrete block walls at each end of the tunnel, using scaffolding he had rented for that reason, and to do the high interior finish work. Charlene helped him when she could. She even took a few turns in the loader, when the task was simply moving dirt or gravel. When the end walls were done, Charlene helped him install the drain system consisting of perforated pipe laid in a gravel bed and covered with more gravel.
It took well over a week of loader work to do the mounding. Buddy didn’t want the berm too steep, so the berm was very wide. Though he lacked huge amounts of good dirt, he had plenty of rock available. There was one bench he had a powder monkey come up and blast. That provided more than enough fill rock.
The actual soil was only used next to the arches, on the roof section, and to fill in gaps between broken rock. The mounded structure then had sod laid on it. He’d built a four-foot wide tunnel with a right angle turn in it as a rear entrance and exit.
He did the same with the person-sized door on the front. The windows on each end of the garage he had heavy steel shutters made, and a shelf inside on which he could stack solid concrete blocks to provide radiation shielding. The garage door was different.
The trailer he simply parked inside before he put up the front wall. But he wanted to be able to bring the pickup inside, too. Buddy framed and built a heavy steel sliding door for the opening. Next he built a five-foot high concrete block wall, the width of the structure including the earth berming. It was out ten feet from the edge of the berm against the front wall. Then he built a thick berm in front of the wall.
The section between the wall and structure berm was a concrete slab with a shed type metal roof covering the section in front of the garage door. Between the wall, the half-inch metal door, additional solid concrete blocks to stack inside the door, and the sloped roof, which could be sprayed to keep fallout away from the door area, Buddy was sure he had made the structure as radiation resistant as was practical.
There was still plenty of room to get the truck in and out. Though he didn’t attempt it, Buddy was pretty sure he could actually get the trailer out, if he wanted. He wasn’t sure about getting it back in.
Buddy breathed a sigh of relief when he put the finishing touches on the building. There was time to get some shelving built to hold the extensive supplies he’d ordered earlier.
“Holy cow, Buddy!” Charlene exclaimed when she saw the rental cargo trailer hooked up to Buddy’s pickup. “You say that thing is full of food?” The trailer was a sixteen-foot tandem-wheel box trailer normally used for moving.
“Well, almost. There’s some water barrels and some other bulky stuff, too.” Buddy looked over at her as they belted themselves in for the trip up to the property. “You sure you want to help with this? We’ll be getting back late.”
“I’ll help. But you’re sure going to owe me a major dinner at Red Lobster.
Buddy smiled. “Sure thing. I’ll be getting a bargain.”
“Don’t be so sure. You know I love lobster.”
They talked companionably after that on the way up to the property. Buddy had picked up the load at the trucking terminal that morning. He wanted to get it into the shelter as soon as possible. The bed of the truck was filled with additional material he wanted to get up there as well.
There was plenty of room on the shelves for everything, with plenty of room left over. They stacked case after case of long-term storage food. Food grade fifty-five-gallon barrels were lined up on the wooden deck Buddy had made when he built the shelves. He’d bring up the generator and fill the barrels with water the next time he came up.
Charlene had brought a picnic lunch up and they had it sitting on the wall berm, watching the city. But it was a light lunch and they more than made up for it at the restaurant that evening.
The next morning Buddy was on the way to the driller’s home when the first news report came on the radio about Pakistan and India. A few minutes later Charlene called. She was obviously frightened at the implications. He was able to talk to her for a few minutes and she was calm by the time they hung up.
The driller kept a radio on all day as they worked. The driller was acting as Buddy’s helper on the job. When the report came in that India had retaliated, Buddy called Charlene.
“Charlene. Yeah, it’s me. You know that bug out bag I helped you put together? Yeah. I want you to go get it and keep it with you all the time now. Okay?”
Sure now that if something worse happened, Charlene had the means to get to the shelter. Buddy had insisted on giving her a set of keys to the locks that secured the place. If need be, she could get there and into the safety of the shelter on her own.
That evening he went over to her house and helped her select things to go ahead and take up the first chance they had. He added a few things to her bug out bag and went over a few procedures in case she did have to go up by herself.
Buddy sweated out the next couple of days. He’d ordered a windmill generator and a solar photovoltaic system. With the things going the way they were, he wasn’t sure if he’d get them before something else happened.
People were postponing jobs on him right and left, though there were a couple of rush jobs. Buddy had the time to do a little more shopping himself. Stores were running out of many things, but he was able to pick up most of what he wanted. Most of it was things that he would wind up using anyway, even if nothing more serious happened.
Charlene wasn’t getting much business so she took the day off when Buddy was ready to take another load of things up.
On the way home that evening Buddy was explaining the whys and wherefores of some of the items that Charlene had helped him shelve that afternoon when the radio station they had on, low, announced a special bulletin. Buddy quickly pulled over to the side of the road when the first announcement came of the tremendous earthquakes in California and Missouri and Illinois. Buddy turned up the volume and they listened to the report.
Charlene gasped when the reporter stated that terrorists had used nuclear weapons to create the earthquakes and destroy the United Nations building. She looked over at Buddy, her alarm obvious in her face. “Buddy…” she asked tentatively.
“It’s okay. Doesn’t sound like it’s a general attack. Just terrorists.” Buddy shook his head. “Did I just say that? Just terrorists? I want to get home and see what the news networks are reporting. I’ll drop you off so you can…”
Charlene cut him off. “Buddy, I don’t want to be by myself. What if there are more attacks?”
“Okay. You can stay at the house tonight. I’m not sure how much sleep we’ll get. Because you’re right. This could be the start.”
Buddy took Charlene home the next morning when there were no reports of further terrorist activity. He made her promise that if something really bad happened and she couldn’t get hold of him she would go up to the shelter by herself.
Buddy was finishing up a job, literally putting the final polishing on the sink he’d just installed when the lights went out in the house where he was working. Suddenly the room was flooded with light. When he hurried out of the room he yelled for the lady of the house to get away from the windows, but it was too late.
He dove back into the bathroom, into the bathtub. He heard the glass breaking and the woman’s scream, then the loudest sound he had ever heard. He gave it a few seconds, and then carefully made his way out of the bathroom.
There was nothing he could do for the woman. She was obviously quite dead. The blast wave from the nuclear explosion had shattered the window through which the woman was staring. The broken glass literally shredded the flesh from her bones before it threw her against the far wall. Buddy heard the house creaking. The blast and wind had damaged it severely. Buddy hurried out.
The mushroom cloud was still glowing with heat. None of the houses seemed to have been destroyed, but all looked like they had received moderate to major damage. Buddy tried to start the plumbing truck, but the starter wouldn’t even click. “EMP,” Buddy muttered.
It took only a couple of minutes to get out the mountain bike he’d taken to carrying in the truck. The bike was equipped with a handlebar bag, and panniers hanging on either side of the rear tire from a stout rack. On the rack was strapped a medium size duffle bag.
There was enough equipment and supplies on the bike, Buddy hoped, to get him to the shelter. However, when he climbed on the bike he headed for home, rather than the shelter. The bike would get him to the shelter, but if he could get there with the truck, and more supplies, so much the better.
Buddy cut his eyes toward the mushroom cloud. It was still growing. He stopped long enough to feel the wind on his face. It was from him toward the cloud. The weather pattern should keep it that way. But Buddy was unsure how the nuke blast itself might affect the local weather pattern.
It was a good bike, with good tires. Despite the occasional plea for help from those milling around outside their houses, Buddy knew that if he stopped to help anyone, much less everyone that might be helped, he’d never survive. He changed to a higher gear and sped up, weaving around obstacles.
It took a while, but he was only six miles from home. An hour later he was at the house. Buddy crossed two fingers of his left hand, and turned the key of his truck with his right.
He breathed a sigh of relief when the truck started right up. The EMP had not destroyed the ignition components. He wasn’t worried about any of the other electrical components. As long as the truck would run he was happy.
Buddy quickly set the bike into the back of the truck. It took only a few minutes to add the equipment cases he’d packed and stored in the garage. Just in case. He added the fuel cans from the shed, along with a few other items he kept there.
He heard the survey meter sitting on the seat of the truck began to tick occasionally. He saw some activity at his neighbor’s house on his left. Buddy ran into the house for the last few items he was going to take to the shelter and ran back out. He was glad he had. When he came out his neighbor was just starting to get into Buddy’s pickup.