Walking in the Rain (Book 4): Dark Sky Thunder (7 page)

With ten-foot ceilings and brightly painted walls, the space was not as claustrophobic as one might think with the lack of windows. In contrast, the second, lower level was more utilitarian, and Dad only gave a cursory walkthrough of the mechanical spaces housing the two backup generators, a twelve-hundred-gallon water tank, the sewer pump tied into the septic system, and another armory containing our black powder weapons and spare reloading supplies.

He didn’t mention the emergency escape tunnel secreted in one of the narrow chambers, filled with spare solar gear. Dad had gotten a good deal on the 300-watt panels by buying in bulk, and we had two complete sets of replacement panels, inverters, and dry batteries all waiting in reserve. I don’t know how much he paid, but I’d overheard Mom saying that he’d blown the equivalent of my college tuition on alternate power strategies.

Since their parents maintained a shelter in the basement of their home, none of the Thompson kids gave the concealed spaces a second thought except to compliment their hosts on the accommodations. Connie and Helena, along with little Rachel and Kevin, were flabbergasted. Okay, the adults seemed gobsmacked while the kids just thought it was “supercool” to have a secret hideout.

“But why would you build such a place?” Connie asked, eyeing the rows of bunks. All featured a footlocker, and the room also provided a pair of writing desks in the corners away from the bunks. Nothing luxurious, but still a comfortable place to crash. I’d helped paint those walls and even place the sheets of drywall, so I was particularly proud of the “professional” quality of the labor involved. My painting skills improved with practice, and I recalled my grandfather teaching me how to pull wire in the walls and install the wall plugs. Maybe that’s where I started developing an interest in all things electrical.

“Because the world is a very scary place,” my father explained. “Our country was trending that way as well. We had enemies, real enemies, who would stop at nothing to destroy America. Iran was bound and determined to build those nukes. And Russia was working hard to supply them with the means to do so. In North Korea, that little dictator already had nuclear weapons and just needed a delivery system to make his dreams come true. And China was there as a helpful big brother to facilitate that technology transfer.”

“Oh, Lord, Connie,” Mom moaned in mock horror, “now you’ve set him off. My husband could go on for hours on this topic. Yes, honey, Putin was using Iran as a pawn to distract the West while Russia was busy reuniting key portions of the Soviet Union. Same as how China maneuvered North Korea to exert more pressure over their sphere of influence in Asia. We get it.”

Helena raised her hand tentatively, like she was still in school. From our conversations, I knew Scott and Helena had both just recently graduated from high school, but the classroom etiquette so long ingrained could be hard to break. Mom nodded in her direction, and the young woman asked her question.

“Uh, how do you know all that stuff? I mean, yeah, Russia was all in the news for invading the Ukraine, but…where did you find out about them working with Iran? And China? I thought they were part of the negotiations with North Korea over their nuclear program.”

Now it was my turn to raise a hand, though not to ask a question. Instead, I waved at my parents and stepped in to explain.

“Mom’s an English teacher, but she minored in history and has always been one to keep up on current events. Real stuff, too, not like who was winning on
Dancing with the Stars
or whatever drivel happened to be on TV.”

“Hey, I liked that show, too,” my mother interjected with a laughing protest.

“Sure, Mom, and you can expound on how this CME has impacted the expansionist policies of Russia and China later, please? And then you and Dad can debate over how the loss of manufacturing globally due to this disaster might affect greenhouse gasses. Because right now, my eyes are starting to glaze over at the prospect, and we have an appointment at the range.”

Both my parents nodded and Paige stifled a giggle. I’m sure this all seemed very rude to our newcomers, so Mom decided to help explain.

“Between the two of us, we can talk all day about our favorite topics. When the kids were little, we recognized this tendency and allowed Paige and Lucas to call time out for tummy breaks. So we would stop talking long enough to feed them. Anyway, that still holds true today. Sorry ya’ll had to witness that.”

That explanation seemed to work for everybody except Amy, who gave me a “cool it” look while the others chuckled. I got the message. She was still a little uncomfortable, given my mother’s reaction to finding out about our relationship. Like nearly forcing her to take a pregnancy test. So I resolved to tread lightly with my mom for a while.

After Dad secured the shelter door, we all moved into the main floor armory and geared up. Dad was going to make use of the suppressed weapons to cut down on any noise disturbing the neighbors, so we grabbed six ARs with the attached devices, and a trio of Ruger 10/22s with similar barrel extensions. Paige, Helena, and Connie would be shooting the .22-caliber rifles for the time being. Paige, due to her size, and the other two ladies due to their still developing skills. Dad, for his part, slung his own suppressed rifle and helped me carry the range box filled with ammunition.

This time we did use the ATVs, each one fitted with an improved muffler that cut the sound of the engines by nearly three quarters. Dad got the design from a prepper site on the Internet and darned if the things didn’t work. The tradeoff was a tendency to overheat quickly, but going no further than we were meant this wasn’t a problem. We took five of them and sat double on the seats as Dad, Mom, Alex, Paige, Scott, Lori, Connie, Helena, Amy, and I all traveled to the range. Summer grudgingly agreed to look after Rachel and Kevin while we were gone.

Many years ago, Grandpa built an outdoor shooting range situated to the back of the property and erected a massive earthen berm to act as backstop. It was that berm, in fact, that got Dad thinking about what eventually evolved into our current earth-sheltered home.

Shooting is a perishable skill. Shooting with a weapon not sighted in to your specifications will often result in a miss at anything over spitting distance. This tidbit, often ignored by Hollywood, led to many fatal failures in a gunfight. These rifles, with the attached suppressors, would be our primary carry firearms around the ranch for patrolling or responding to an attack. Unless it was time to go loud, and at that point I was hauling out the CETME or something else in .308 for the knockdown power. Or the fully automatic M4s, which we would now hold in reserve.

Mike already had a crew from the Big House, as we always called Grandpa’s home, including Sierra and Miss Angelina, Alex’s sister and mother, but Mr. Sheldon was absent, no doubt manning the security station near the front gate. I also saw Miss Beth and her boys there. Mrs. Elkins carried another of the suppressed ARs while the Austin, age twelve and Travis, age ten, carried .22-caliber rifles fitted with the long tubes. I noted Sierra carried a short-barreled AR, while her mother was armed with a Ruger like the Elkins kids carried. Well, I knew Mrs. Stanton wasn’t a big fan of guns personally, so maybe that was why.

Mike and Dad took turns acting as range officers, one overseeing the safety aspects while the other worked with our less experienced shooters. We were using full protective rig, with earmuffs and eyepros, even though the suppressed rifles made for much reduced noise. The subsonic .22 ammo was especially quiet, and I swear I could hear the sound of the bolts cycling as the kids, along with Connie, Helena, and Mrs. Stanton, worked on basic marksmanship. Not too long, as even with Dad’s impressive ammunition stores, .22 subsonic wasn’t growing on trees.

Next came the rest of us, using the reloaded .223 rounds my dad made special for the suppressed ARs. That was crucial, since a lot of the commercially available subsonic rounds had a tendency to not cycle in semi-automatic use. We still suffered more than our usual number of stoppages, but overall I was impressed. We stopped periodically to gather up our brass, all of it, and stowed it in a bag used for that very purpose. Nobody would be making new brass for a while, and Dad could reload for the .223 rounds.

While Mike was working with Lori and Scott, Dad sidled up to me and gave me an assignment, if I was up to it. Seems he’d spotted movement in the woods behind our fence line. I hadn’t seen anything, but then Dad was good at this stuff.

“Grab your gear and fall back towards the house,” he directed. “Once you are over the hill, head out of a bearing ninety degrees left of the firing line and get down in Little Creek. You think you can make your way back up parallel and get eyes on who is watching in those woods?”

So. We had watchers in the woods. Sounded spooky. I nodded, just enough, and started packing up my gear bag.

“Luke? Don’t start shooting unless they make a hostile move. Then, you smoke ’em, boy. You got that?”

“Yeah, I got it.” And I did.

Seeing me preparing to leave, Amy safed her rifle and came over to where I was standing. She tried to look casual, but I’d gotten good at reading her body language.

“What’s up, hun?”

“Not much. Dad wanted me to head back early. He thought he spotted somebody in the woods, so he wants me on over watch.” I said all this softly, my lips barely moving, and Amy replied equally softly when she spoke. As mentioned before, we’d traveled together for long enough to rub off on each other. She knew about standing over watch.

“Be careful.”

“Always am,” I lied. Giving her a jaunty grin and a kiss on her forehead next to her still healing wound, I slung my bag and pretended to be headed back to the house without a care in the world. As I walked, I started thinking about what I would have to do next. Wishing I’d brought one of my hunting rifles or at least my scoped Ishapore, something that was a Scout Rifle before the term was coined, I decided to see how close I could get to the watchers to increase the likelihood of a first-shot hit. At least this rifle was quiet, anyway.

“Anything?”

My Dad asked his question before my feet hit the first step up to the enclosed porch. He was sipping at a cup of something, probably hot tea, and had a shotgun across his lap. The tea was familiar, but the shotgun was new.

“Yeah. Looked like two, maybe three, but they were glassing with binoculars. Not rifle scopes. Looked pretty ragged. Didn’t approach the fence though. All I saw were shotguns.”

Dad digested this and stroked his beard. All the time he’d been in the Marines, my father had kept a clean-shaven appearance. Once out, he let his beard grow to mountain man proportions, then Mom put her foot down and he settled for a bushy goatee. Compromise, he called it.

“How close did you get?”

“Close enough to tell they haven’t bathed in a while. Not grungy, but sparing with the water. And awful skinny.”

Dad gave me a closer look with those comments. I shrugged. “They never knew I was there. Took my time, and eased up with the wind to my face. They looked more scared, or concerned at least, than threatening.”

Dad nodded to himself. “Sounds like those squatters who moved in at the Skillman place then. There’s been somebody living there these last few weeks, anyway. Mike and I both wanted to go scout them but were worried about leaving the home place uncovered.”

I got that. Usually proactive, Dad had been forced by the lack of trained manpower to stick close to home since the lights went out. Mr. Ike and Uncle Billy were coming along and would be good in a fight, but moving around in the dark to scout out the other side was not something most people could do without tipping somebody off.

Dad had been in infantry for most of his career as a Marine, but back in his youth, he’d qualified and been selected for training as a scout sniper. He’d endured ten weeks of training at the Scout Sniper Basic Course at Camp Pendleton and had graduated near the top of his training class.

Some graduates went off into the specialized scout sniper and recon teams, or went further and entered the realm of the MARSOC or Force Recon Marines. But not my father. Instead, he had gone back to his old unit after earning this latest “merit badge.” He never said why, but I suspected it was because Mom was pregnant with Paige at the time. I had no recall of this, of course, since I was still in diapers. But Dad did comment later that those recon and scout sniper guys stayed constantly deployed.

So, at one time, Dad had the skills to maybe carry out a covert scouting mission to check the new residents at the old Skillman place. No one had lived there in years, and I wondered if the roof was still up on the old, ramshackle house. The last time I’d been by while hiking, I noticed the roof was getting the swaybacked look that threatened rotten timbers.

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

“You are still recovering from your wound, and besides, you’re not that stealthy in the woods. I know, because I’ve tried to train you, remember?”

“I’m better now.”

Dad gave me that disbelieving look he used when I said my room was clean or that I’d already finished my chores when clearly I hadn’t. “Better how? Your gut, or your two left feet in the woods?”

I almost laughed at that. I might not have been ninja-like in the dark before, but I wasn’t herd-of-elephants bad, either. “Both. Remember, I survived by being small and quiet and sticking to the woods as much as possible. I’m almost two weeks past the surgery, and besides, that pain makes me go slower. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. You taught me that.”

Dad nodded. Not agreeing, but in a way that made me think he was taking it under advisement. “All right. But you know that saying is bullshit. Slow is slow. Period. Smooth is fast. Anyway, we also need to get with Buddy and Ronnie and see what Gaddis has gotten up to in the last week or so.”

“So you’ve been keeping up with them?”

“Yeah. I check in every week or so with our nearest neighbors. I helped where I could and offered advice. We were too shorthanded here to do more than that. To tell the truth, since Pop…was killed, we’ve been staying close to home. We need to remedy that now. Sounds like we may need all the friends we can get.”