Megan was already stirring, sitting up in the bed. Zach still slept soundly. I snatched him up, and yelled at Megan, “Come on! Out of here. Get in the bathroom!”
The bathroom was the only room I could think of that was fairly well-protected and had no windows. Not that it would make much difference if the explosions were nearby, but we would know that within a couple of minutes, possibly seconds. And if they were that close, being in the bathroom would hardly be protection against the house coming down around us. If they were further away, however, and I was pretty sure they were, since the whole reason that we’d come to Rejas was because there wasn’t a viable target within a hundred miles, the most we had to worry about for the time being was flying glass and minor structural damage.
“Everybody into the bathroom!”
They all rushed in ahead of me, even as the light pulsed again. I handed Zachary to Debra and slammed the door behind me. Plenty of light streamed in from under the door, more than enough for me to check my watch. Eleven fifty-nine. We counted seventeen more pulses during the next two minutes. Then, the light under the door began to dissipate. The last thing I saw in the fading light was the toilet, and I couldn’t help thinking that rather appropriate.
I checked my watch. The phosphorescent hands had received enough light to glow brightly in the dark bathroom. Exactly midnight. “Okay, the explosions started a couple of minutes ago, so we should know within a few minutes if any were close enough to cause us any immediate problems.”
“How many is a few?” Amber asked from the darkness to my left.
I tried to calculate in my head, but my thoughts were too jumbled… all right, panicked. “I’m not really sure, but five minutes from the time of the first explosion should be plenty. That’s about two minutes from now.”
It was the longest two minutes I had ever waited, all of us crammed into that tiny, dark cubicle. I must have checked my watch at least thirty times, always amazed that so little time had passed. Finally, I saw the numbers I had been waiting for. 12:02.
“Okay, I’m going to go check out the house. I’ll be back in a minute.” I slipped through the door and closed it behind me before anyone could protest.
I immediately noticed that the house wasn’t as dark as it should have been. Turning to the southern window, my throat tightened as I saw why. Across the clearing to the southwest, the sky above the trees glowed orange, a sign that, two hundred miles away, much of the area around Houston was now a raging fire storm. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I stumbled blindly to the kitchen, where I knew Amber kept one of those magnetically attachable flashlights on the refrigerator.
Quickly retrieving it, I checked the windows and walls for damage, but it appeared we had made it through unscathed. Apparently, the explosions had been quite far from Rejas. Houston had probably been the closest, and it was nearly two hundred miles away. Good news for us, bad news for anyone still around Houston.
As I headed back to the bathroom, I felt a faint rumbling, as the house began to vibrate. Distant thunder.
I checked my watch. Twelve-oh-three. We had gone into the bathroom at approximately eleven fifty-seven. That meant between six and seven minutes had passed between the initial explosion and the arrival of the sound wave. I would have to check later on the specifics, but I was fairly certain that indicated a pretty fair distance.
I opened the bathroom door and shined the flashlight inside. “Okay, the coast is clear.” I stopped them as they started to exit. “Hang on a minute. There are a couple of things everyone needs to know. First, if you see any more bright lights, don’t look at them and get away from any windows! Immediately!”
Everyone nodded agreement, and I backed out of the way. “Next, we have to get started on a shelter… right now.”
I anticipated protests, but they just waited for me to continue. “It took just over six minutes for the shockwave from the closest explosions to get here. I don’t know offhand just how far away that means they were, but I’m pretty sure they were a fair distance. Judging from the view outside, I’d be willing to bet Houston was the target.”
That silenced everyone, everyone but Zachary. “They blew up Houston?”
“Not all of it, I’m sure. Just parts of it.” It sounded inane put like that, but we didn’t have time for drawn-out explanations. “Don’t worry about it right now. Okay?”
We didn’t have time for much of anything, including building the shelter we were soon going to need so desperately. I cursed myself for sleeping when we still had so much to do, but I’d been so tired after the day’s events. We all had. Unloading the van had taken half an hour. After that, everyone had been exhausted. Besides, I had figured a few hours of sleep really wouldn’t matter. Surely, nothing would happen that soon.
But it did, and I couldn’t afford to waste more time kicking myself now. Digging a good shelter with picks and shovels would take all of us working hard, nonstop, for at least twenty hours. If those explosions had been the death knell of Houston, we could only hope the wind blew from another direction. If not, we’d be lucky to have three or four hours before the fallout began to drift down upon us.
“Amber, what direction has the wind been blowing lately?”
She thought for a minute, then shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t usually pay attention to things like that. You worried about radiation?”
“Yeah, prevailing winds in this part of the country are from the west.” That was one of the things that made Rejas a good choice for a survival retreat. But just because the prevailing winds were from the west, didn’t mean they
My mind raced as I tried to find some solution to our predicament.
“How long do we have?” Debra asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It depends on the direction of the wind, dammit!” I was immediately ashamed. “Sorry, but if the wind is blowing fallout this direction, then we just don’t have enough time to dig in before it gets here.”
“How long do we need?”
“With the tools we have… at least a day.”
“What if we had a backhoe?” Amber grinned in the light of the flashlight.
June 14 / 12:24 p.m.
It turned out that her neighbor ran a construction company. Luckily, this neighbor lived a mere half-mile away. I left Debra and the kids to get things organized at the house, packed Amber in the van, and drove rapidly out to meet Kenneth Simms.
We pulled into his drive to find a middle-aged black couple sitting in their nightclothes on a front porch swing. As we got out of the van, the man rose and came to greet us. “Hello, Amber. I see we weren’t the only ones the light show woke up. You think this is it?”
“Depends on what you mean by
Kenneth’s attention shifted to me. “Hello, Leeland. Pleasure to meet you, though I’m sure the circumstances could be better.”
“That they could, Mr. Simms.” His handshake was firm, his grip carved from a life of hard work.
“Ken,” he corrected. “So, what can we do for you two at this hour? I imagine it has something to do with all the fireworks.”
“Yes, sir, it does. I’m pretty sure those lights were Houston being rearranged.”
“Interesting way of putting it.” He licked his lips nervously. “So, this is really it? Nuclear war?”
“I’m afraid so. Listen, Mr. Simms-sorry, Ken-we’re going to need some help from you. And I think we can help you, too.”
Ken listened as I explained, and he was at once all business. “The equipment is in the back. Shall we get started? Amber can go back and get your family and provisions.”
I shook my head. “We need to do it at Amber’s. She has a spring on her land we’ll need for uncontaminated water… afterward.”
