Nuclear Winter Devil Storm by Bobby Akart (great novels txt) 📗

the water and took long, consistent strokes with his arms to propel him forward. Despite the assistance from the waves, he quickly began to tire. His body was spent from the mental and physical trauma it had been through.

Jimmy treaded water for a while, and then he started swimming again, this time using the breaststroke. Swimming like a frog, as he used to say as a kid, he used a combination of leg kicks and outward arm strokes to propel himself forward. He focused on timing his strokes with riding the crest of a wave. He eventually found a rhythm that allowed him to pick up speed without exerting extraordinary effort.

Jimmy was beginning to make progress although he was not sure where he was headed. He didn’t care as long as he found something to hold onto. His limbs were tiring. His muscles were screaming. His lungs were beginning to burn. And his bloody, swollen face was becoming numb.

Then the winds picked up again. A roaring sound filled his ears that was so loud, he stopped swimming and turned in all directions, believing a large vessel was headed toward him. He began to tread water in part to ease the soreness that had come over his shoulders, and to confirm he wasn’t in the path of a boat.

After looking in all directions and twisting his body to confirm he was safe, he became slightly disoriented. He sensed that the wind had shifted, but he had no point of reference to confirm it. He’d been through many hurricanes in his life. Rarely did they stay in one place, hovering over land or sea as it pounded everything around its eye. Jimmy expected the storm was on the move, which meant he might have entered it at one quadrant, but the passage of time had placed him another.

That meant only one thing. He could’ve been swimming in circles if he was relying too much on wind and wave direction. Or he might have been close to making landfall only to change his course as the wind shifted.

Frustrated, he simply stopped swimming. He continued to tread water, hoping to make it until the sun rose. He and Peter had been out in the open water for hours. Surely, daylight would make an appearance soon. He could make it until then. He was sure of it.

Comforted in knowing the storm would pass and the sun would rise in the east as always, Jimmy rolled onto his back and allowed the waves to lift him upward before dropping him again. He closed his eyes and thought about his parents. He relaxed his body and allowed his mind to drift to a happier place.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Friday, November 8

Tarpon Springs, Florida

That night, Lacey, despite being exhausted, slept in fits and starts. Her imagination ran wild as she envisioned the two of them battling a hurricane alone. She considered paying Andino or someone to accompany them to the Keys. She even thought about promising them the boat together with topping off the two one-thousand-gallon tanks with diesel.

After tossing and turning a few more times, she’d chastise herself for worrying needlessly. It was the middle of November in a world in which temperatures had dropped to levels well below record seasonal lows. Hurricanes were not only implausible, they were most likely impossible.

Yet the thought nagged at her as she awoke early that morning. She lay in bed and ran all the possibilities through her head. She’d make a point to speak with Tucker alone before making the offer to Andino to either accompany them to the Keys or allow them to stay a few days until the inclement weather, or hurricane, as the case may be, passed.

It was before dawn when someone began banging on the Andinos’ front door. She could hear excited voices outside her window, which faced the street. Lacey scrambled out of bed and rushed to the window. Pulling the sheer curtains open, she pressed her face against the glass to see who was at the door.

The teen boys who’d helped dock their boat yesterday were milling about near the stoop, the illumination of their flashlights darting about or shaking as a result of their excited state of mind.

The front door opened, and Andino addressed the boys. The next thing Lacey knew, the boys had taken off through the gate into the street, and she could see Andino rush after them, wearing jeans, sneakers, and no shirt. He was also carrying a shotgun. At the gate, like the teens, he appeared to turn left in the direction of their boathouse.

Tucker gently knocked on her door and then respectfully cracked it open. “Mom! There’s something going on.”

“I heard. They ran toward the boats. We should help.”

“On my way,” said Tucker, who immediately turned toward the stairs.

“Together, Tucker! Wait up!”

The two of them rumbled down the oak treads without regard for anyone who might’ve been sleeping. The teens’ banging on the door had most likely woken up the entire household already.

Seconds later, Tucker led them outside into the cool, dawn air and picked up speed as they turned the corner past the gate down the street. They were running as fast as they could when they slowed at the entrance to the boathouse. The beams from several flashlights could be seen dancing around the walls and ceiling of the structure as well as across their boat.

Their chests heaved, begging for fresh air. Lacey and Tucker slowed their pace to a fast walk as they made their way through the chain-link gate. Sandros greeted them as they entered the boathouse.

“We got lucky this time,” he said ominously.

“What happened?” asked Lacey.

“In recent days, many of us have noticed an influx of strangers making their way into Tarpon Springs by water. One of the town’s larger operations, located at Port Tarpon, was hit last week by fuel thieves. They snuck into Anclote River in the middle of the night, siphoned diesel into their containers, and then snuck out into the