Nuclear Winter First Strike by Bobby Akart (best fiction books of all time .txt) 📗

shelters somewhere when there aren’t.” Tucker shook his head in dismay when seconds later the alert cancelling the prior notification was transmitted to their cell phones and through the Expedition’s satellite radio.

“Finally, right?” asked Lacey facetiously. She’d questioned leaving the house during those frantic few minutes when she’d unsuccessfully tried to reach Owen by phone. She’d made the decision to load up Tucker and some supplies into the truck so they could flee toward the east. It was what she would’ve instructed Owen to do.

“Yeah,” muttered Tucker as he tried to call his dad again. They were both amazed at how overloaded the cell phone network was. “Look on the bright side, Mom.”

Lacey chuckled. The windshield wipers were whipping back and forth as the heavens were bringing a lot of rainfall to the Bay Area but not inland where the farmers needed it. It was an odd weather anomaly caused by Pacific Ocean currents and the Santa Ana winds.

“There’s a bright side?” she asked.

“Yeah. We got to do a practice run.”

“And failed miserably,” she added.

“Maybe so, but at least we’ll be ready if it does happen someday. You know, I’ve got a friend in school whose dad is into ham radios. I wonder if they’d work instead of cell phones right now.”

Lacey shrugged and then nodded her head. “You know, I’ve got the Garmin two-ways that we use when we go hiking, but they have a limited range.”

Tucker laughed. “For sure. The box says fifty miles, but that’s if nothing is in the way. Heck, pine trees block the signal sometimes. I think ham radios, even those portable ones, might work better.”

“We had marine band radios at Driftwood Key,” Lacey recalled. “Granddaddy taught me how to use them. He said they were like two-ways except stronger.”

“I’ve seen them at Walmart. We should get a few. You know, just in case.”

Lacey turned the truck down the winding road that led back to their neighborhood. Traffic began to dissipate. They’d arrived at the wrought-iron security gates and entered the subdivision. Their neighbors were standing on their covered porches, commiserating with each other. A couple waved to her in an effort to have her join the conversation, but she continued home. Lacey had a single focus, and that was to make sure her husband was safe.

As soon as she parked the truck and began to open the garage door, Tucker jumped out and raced underneath the half-open door. She followed him shortly thereafter, and by the time he entered the hallway through the garage, he was shouting to her.

“Dad left a voicemail. He’s okay. He’s walking home. He got stuck on the bridge and just left the car. He thinks it might take him seven hours or so.”

“What time did he call?”

“Twenty minutes ago,” replied Tucker as his mom joined him in the kitchen.

She walked over to the junk drawer, as they called it. It was in the far end of their expansive kitchen counter. The junk drawer was the least useful for purposes of cooking but was ideal for filling up with notepads, pens, rubber bands, and just about anything else that didn’t have a regular, family-approved storage location. She pulled out a pen and paper.

“I’m gonna write him a note to let him know we’re safe. We’ll head down the ridge toward the Dumbarton to find him. I’m hoping we can connect by phone in the meantime, but just in case, he’ll know to stay here.”

Tucker grabbed a Red Bull for himself and a Cherry Coke Zero for his mom while she wrote out the note. Lacey was full of emotion as she wrote the final words—we love you. She wiped the tears off her face and nervously laughed at herself.

Tucker was leaning against the counter. He took a swig of Red Bull and stifled a belch.

“You’re such a girl, Mom.”

“Brilliant observation, son,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m just glad your dad is okay. Now, let’s go find him.”

Tucker handed his mom the can of soda. “Should we bring him some clothes?”

Lacey beamed. Tucker had more common sense and empathy than she’d had when she was a teen. Hank had taught her to be a boy, but her mom had raised her as a young woman. Tucker was all boy, yet he had flashes of maturity she hadn’t had growing up. She gave him a smile and darted up to their master bedroom to retrieve a gym bag, which she filled with jeans, a sweatshirt, socks and sneakers.

“Hey, Mom! Text messaging between phones is working again. It’s Dad. He’s at the Safeway on Decoto Road.”

“Tell him we’re on our way!”

Lacey raced down the stairs, two at a time, just like a boy.

Chapter Forty-One

Tuesday, October 22

Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center

Northern Virginia

The Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center was hidden away in the small community of Bluefield, Virginia, near the state’s border with West Virginia. It was one of America’s best-kept secrets as an unacknowledged continuity-of-government facility operated under the auspices of FEMA.

The two-hundred-thousand-square-foot facility, with multiple structures both above and below ground, encompassed a four-hundred-thirty-four-acre mountain site. Two hundred forty employees kept the lines of communication open between the high-level government officials buried deep underground and their counterparts around the world.

Based on a favorable evaluation of the hardness and integrity of the mountain’s rock by the Bureau of Mines in the 1930s, construction began on the facility’s tunnels in 1954, which was completed by the Army Corps of Engineers under the code name Operation High Point.

The billion-dollar facility included a system of tunnels with roofs shored up by iron bolts driven eight to ten feet into the overhead rock. The entrance was protected by a guillotine-style gate and a ten-foot-tall by twenty-foot-wide thirty-four-ton blast door that was five feet thick. It took almost fifteen minutes to open or close.

The underground bunker included a hospital, crematorium, dining and recreation areas, sleeping quarters, reservoirs of drinking and cooling water, an emergency power plant, and a radio and television studio, which was part