The End of the World

On the other hand, he's driven all the way over here -- at my request. Not answering the door would be extremely rude. I'm at a loss for what to do next, but then I belatedly remember that I've got a basket full of clothes in my arms. Duh!

I put the basket down and start getting dressed as fast as I can. I'm mildly dismayed when I realize that I had no panties hanging. Looks like I'll be going commando. I start with a utilitarian bra, loose-fitting but comfortable jeans that are tight enough at the waist that I can get away with my lack of a belt, and one of my heavy, white work blouses.

I pull on a pair of thick wool socks and slip into the boots that sit at the back door -- all before Walter rings the bell again. Now decent, I walk around the corner into view of the front door. He's turned away, but I recognize his brown jacket with the POW/MIA patch on the shoulder, his black cowboy hat with rattlesnake band, and the ancient, gold windup watch he often wears.

I open the door and he turns toward me. I freeze.

Seeing Greg again is almost surreal. He's just as tall and handsome as ever, but he's not a kid anymore -- he's a man. And he's here.

"Greg," I stammer, "what are you doing?" Again, I'm conflicted. My heart is leaping with joy at seeing him again, but my pride wants him gone.

I hate that I'm dismayed about his seeing me dressed so haphazardly. Worse, I hope he likes what he sees anyway.

"Hi Lana," he says, and my knees go weak. His voice is as smooth and assured as always. "I was in Helena doing a week-long installation that was supposed to take until this afternoon, but I worked late and got done last night. Since my rental car came with unlimited miles, I thought I'd surprise my folks before I fly back to Chicago on the red-eye tonight. Naturally, I made the two-hour drive before I remembered that this is the week Mom and Dad are jungle trekking in Belize."

I'd forgotten that too, and it explains why they didn't answer their phone, but that's neither here nor there.

"That's not what I meant, Greg. What are you doing on my front porch?"

"I got your message. I'm here to help you with your project."

"My message was for your dad."

"The message said, 'Mister Edwards.' I answer to that too."

It's both cute and infuriating. I force myself to glare at him.

"Look, Lana, I get that I should have called first, but I figured you might just hang up on me."

"You figured right."

"And it's why I wore my dad's jacket and hat. I figured you wouldn't answer the door if you knew it was me. But Lana, we really need to talk about--"

"Stop," I bark. He does. "I'm absolutely not going to discuss what happened. There's nothing to talk about." Actually, there is, my heart screams, but my pride can't afford to listen.

"But--"

"Greg," I say, steeling my nerve to do something that part of me may never forgive itself for, "I'm going to have to ask you to leave my property and never come back."

I can see that he'd like to make one more attempt to get me to listen to some lame, bullshit excuse, but the expression I manage to put on my face stops him.

Greg nods. "Fine, I won't say a word about what happened back then, but I'd still like to help you with your project."

"I don't need your help," I say. My resolve is starting to crumble, but my pride is strong.

"Yes you do, or you wouldn't have called my dad."

Unfortunately, Greg is righter than he knows. The power company informed me three months ago that they would be "upgrading" their service on Henson Road. The old stuff had been in poor repair (thus the frequent outages), but they were going to charge me twelve grand to run the new lines out to my property. I told them thanks but no thanks, and used that same money (along with a big federal rebate -- thanks taxpayers!) to buy the components to make my own power. Unfortunately, the shipment came in two weeks later than promised, and it's taken me longer than I'd estimated to install all of it. I'm under the gun now because they're cutting off my branch of the line at noon tomorrow.

After blowing my savings on this new equipment, I don't have the funds readily available to buy a new generator or to pay someone to drive way out here to help me. I'll have to run power from my emergency source, which is problematic, but none of that matters compared to my need to get rid of Greg before I crumble. I decide to use the nuclear option.

I pull my phone out of my pocket. "If you're not off my property in thirty seconds, I'm calling the sheriff."

"Okay, but someday I want the chance to--"

"Now!" Oh God, that hurt.

He puts his hands up in surrender, then turns and walks toward his SUV.

I'm so tense that when my phone rings, I nearly fling it up into the air. Greg looks back for a moment when he hears the ringtone, but I give him a warning look. He climbs in and fires up his shiny red machine.

I swipe to take the call. "Hello?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," says a raspy, middle-aged voice. "I was trying to call my Uncle Don in Hackensack. I guess I dialed the wrong number."

Greg is heading toward the wide spot in the driveway next to the old barn so he can get turned around.

"Not a problem," I say. "You have a good day."

"Thanks, you too."

I slip my phone into my pocket before it hits me, but when it does, I have to grab the porch railing to keep myself upright.

Greg has gotten himself turned around and is about to drive by me on his way out of my life. I've got a choice to make in the next three seconds -- possibly a life and death choice. There's only one acceptable decision, though, since I'm an actual human being. I raise my arm to flag him down.

Greg is even with me when I wave, but he sees my motion. He pulls to a stop well past the porch. I walk down the steps and out to the edge of the driveway as his reverse lights come on. As he pulls up, I note that his suitcase is in the way back. The passenger side window comes down.

"Hey, are you alright?" Greg asks, puzzled and concerned. He can probably see my distress.

"Some guy said he was trying to reach his Uncle Don in Hackensack."

"Uh, okay?" he ventures.

"It's a code," I say, though that's not much more of an explanation.

"Yeah, I get those all the time."

Not amusing.

"No, it's something my dad was involved with. He and some of his civilian contractor buddies put a little underground network together. If something was going down at the base, the plan was to call around and get the word out to each other and their families. To my knowledge, this is the first time the network has ever been used, but I wouldn't have thought I was still on the list."

"Uh, what exactly does it mean that 'something is going down'?"

I pause, not knowing if I can say such words out loud. They would convey a concept that almost sounds silly. Almost.

"It means that someone at the base feels that an all-out nuclear war is imminent."

There, I've said it. After living better than a third of my life near one of only three bases in the US that still houses land-based ICBMs, I've learned to shrug off the fear that comes from having a Minuteman III silo practically in your front yard. That fear has now returned with a vengeance.

Greg shifts into park. The radio, still blaring on the back porch, is playing Imagine Dragons' Radioactive. Under other circumstances, such a coincidence would have made me giggle.

"Are you serious?" Greg finally asks. "You do realize that the Cold War ended before we were born."

"But we still have nuclear-tipped missiles," I say, waving my arm out toward the prairie. "And so does everyone else."

He pauses. "Yeah, that's true. So, uh, what's the plan?"

"My dad said most of the people in the network are supposed to shelter in their basements. Almost all of them live in town, though, outside the worst of the expected blast radius. This ranch is too close to the primary targets for that."

"Then hop in. Let's get as far away as we can."

I shake my head. "There's probably not enough time to get clear."

"You have a better alternative?"

I nod. "There's a bomb shelter behind the house." To his credit, Greg doesn't ask if I'm joking. "Grab your suitcase and head for the backyard," I say. "Quickly."

"Are you sure you want me in there with you?"

I nod. "I wouldn't want to live with my conscience if this turned out to be the real thing."

"A true expression of affection, that," he says, but he's smiling. I can't help but smile back. I hate that the bastard can do that to me.

He pops the hatch while I run back into the house. I snag my purse off the counter and my laptop with charger off the desk, then head for the back door.

Greg meets me there. "We should call people and warn them," he says.

I've already thought about that. "Crystal's on a Caribbean cruise with her boyfriend," I say, "and your folks should be safe in Belize. Who would you call?"

"Maybe we should call friends and neighbors?"

I'm considering the pros and cons of that when the radio goes silent. "Crap, there goes the power again," I complain. This is the worst possible moment.

"Does that mean no phone?" Greg asks. He knows from our high school days how my cobbled together phone system works.

"Yeah, it does. I'm sorry Greg."

"We could drive to my folks' place and make some calls on their landline," he suggests.

"With megaton hydrogen bombs on the way, targeting the silos in our neighborhood? We've got minutes at best. Also keep in mind that the Hackensack network is, by its very existence, a major breach of military security. If this is a false alarm and we spread panic because of it, good people will go to prison and the network won't be there for when it might really be needed."

"Then I guess there's no one I'd call," he sighs.

"Me neither. Let's go."

I turn my key in the big padlock on the deceptively sturdy oak door of the root cellar, then step in and snag the rechargeable flashlight that sits on the shelf just inside the door. I hand Greg the identical spare, then wave him in. I quickly close the door behind us.

"This is it?" Greg mutters, shining his flashlight around. I can't blame him for not being impressed. There isn't a whole lot to see here. Just a six-foot-wide cinderblock room with a low ceiling that runs about twenty feet into the bluff. The walls are lined floor to ceiling with shelves, but most of them are empty. There might be enough food on them to keep two people fed for a few weeks, but that's about it.

"That's what it looks like," I say, still moving quickly, "but looks can be deceiving." I reach behind one of the empty shelving units near the back and grab a firm hold of the 2x2 that appears to be supporting the back edge of the plywood shelf. I give it a good yank and it slides toward me. After about six inches of travel, there is a loud mechanical click and one end of the shelving unit pops out from the wall by an inch or two. I let the 2x2 spring back to its starting position, then swing the unit away from the wall on its hidden hinges, plywood backing and all. There is a standard commercial steel entry door behind it.

"Clever," Greg murmurs. I motion him in first and he hurries past me, pushing the door open and rolling his bag through behind him. I follow, pulling the shelves back into place, then pushing the steel door closed until it latches. Greg is bent over a little as he jogs down the narrow, concrete-lined tunnel for about another thirty feet. I'm close behind.

The last door is more like what you would expect in a place designed to survive a nuclear blast -- heavy metal all the way. It's closed, but not latched. The latches are all on the inside, of course.

Greg grabs the big handle and pulls. Then he keeps pulling as the door begins to swing open on crude-looking, but well-engineered hinges. "Wow, this thing's heavy."

"Yeah, my dad figured it weighs about fifty-eight hundred pounds."

"That all?" he grunts.

The door is now open far enough that we'll be able to squeeze in. Greg stops pulling, but the door shows no sign of slowing down, so he puts his shoulder to it and brings it to a ponderous stop.

Greg nods, obviously in tribute to a nice job of engineering. He follows me through the opening, shining his flashlight on the door jamb and noting the thickness of the concrete walls. "Holy shit, Lana," he murmurs. "How did you guys build this thing?"

I smile. "The basic structure was actually constructed by the Air Force back in the sixties when they were building the silos. Henson road pokes down into the northern border of the base, but they really wanted the location on our property because it completed the pattern on their maps. The problem was that our house was way closer than regulation to a silo, but my great grandfather cut a deal with them, allowing the Air Force to build it there anyway as long as they built a shelter for him and his family. The Joint Chiefs had to okay the deal, but the shelter got built.

"The funny thing is, Great Grandpa never believed there would be a war, so he just used the place for extra storage. It was just bare concrete walls with no supplies, no furniture, and only a very rudimentary ventilation system. It stayed that way for decades, but when we moved here, my dad went right to work, finishing the place up. His ideas about geopolitics were different, and he feared the worst."

"Smart man," Greg says.

I quickly throw the breaker that turns on the inverter, then the light switch next to it. Bright LED bulbs light up a narrow hallway. Greg sets his bag down, then grabs the inside handle.

"Be careful with that," I say quickly. "My dad never liked the old handle, so he pulled it off to do some modifications on it. That one there was supposed to be temporary, and it's not very strong."

"I'll be gentle," he says. Greg applies moderate but steady force and the door slowly moves back toward us, picking up speed little by little. Both of us know that very bad things could start happening outside at any moment. It's been several minutes since I got the phone call, so there's a sense of urgency in the air.

When it's most of the way closed, Greg goes to slow it down, but he's misjudged the door's momentum. Even putting his shoulder to it isn't enough. The slow, but heavy impact booms through the hallway.

"Sorry," he says, cringing, like he's really going to damage a door and jamb designed to survive a nuclear blast. The door has bounced back open by a few inches, so Greg very carefully pulls on it some more. He's got the feel of it now, and it comes to rest exactly flush with the jamb. Nicely done.

The steel doorjamb has four sliding locks on each side of the doorway. I grab the handle on one of them and slide the bolt so it engages the matching hole in the edge of the door. Greg jumps in to help with the other seven.

When we're finished, I breathe a little easier. We're about as safe as we're going to be under the circumstances.

It's now dead quiet in here, like a tomb. I look at him and he looks at me. I think he can feel it too. We're really doing this. "Do you have any communications gear?" he asks.

I nod. "Come on, I'll show you." I lead the way down the hall, past several unlit rooms, then through the open doorway at the end. "Welcome to the Comm room," I say.

One wall is taken up by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with an amazing assortment of textbooks and manuals, chosen by my dad in the hopes that they would be useful in a society that had bombed itself back into the stone age. The other wall hosts a worn leather couch, sitting between a table and a small desk. The table holds several communication devices.

"Are you licensed for that?" Greg asks, pointing at the ham radio.

"No, but my dad was, and he taught me how to use it."

"That ought to come in handy, and I don't imagine your lack of an FCC license is going to be an issue at this point."

"True, that."

The table also holds a forty-channel CB and a quality shortwave radio. I plunk down in the roller chair in front of them and hit the power for the shortwave. When I give the equipment its occasional checks, I usually tune to the BBC in London. I'm looking at the frequency readout now, but nothing on the face lights up at all.

"Huh?" I mutter, displaying marvelous elocution. "It was working fine last week." I flip on the CB radio. Nothing. Ditto the ham. It's time to do some troubleshooting.

They're all plugged into the same surge-protected power strip, so that seems like a good place to start. The strip's switch is on and the green LED indicator is lit. I flip the switch off, then on again, but the radio equipment stays dark.

"Let's try plugging into the wall directly," Greg suggests. "It might still be the power strip." That's true. I try the shortwave while he plugs in the ham and CB. It's to no avail.

"That's the extent of my skills," I say. "You wanna take a shot at it?"

"Sure," he says evenly. "Hang on while I grab some equipment." I realize that he's been remarkably patient, especially since he, as an electrical engineer, must know tons more about this kind of stuff than I do.

He's back with his roller bag a few seconds later. He unzips a padded side compartment, revealing several tools of his trade, then pulls out a multimeter and a multi-bit screwdriver. First, he unplugs the shortwave and removes the back panel. He peers at it closely.

"The fuse looks okay," he says. He puts a multimeter lead to each end. "Yup, it's not the fuse." He quickly checks the other two radios and finds the same thing. They've got good fuses, but they're dead.

Oh no. "Maybe it's that thing my dad told Crystal and me about," I say.

"What's that?"

"It's a scenario that the military planners supposedly wargame every now and then. The Russians or Chinese or whoever could hide a certain kind of nuclear bomb in some of their GPS satellites. Then, right before they were planning to launch a full-scale attack, they could deorbit a few over the US and set them off with basically no warning. Supposedly, they would explode too high up in the atmosphere to cause any blast damage, but it would destroy almost all the electronic stuff in the US, except for a certain kind that the military uses."

Greg nods. "You're talking about Electromagnetic Pulse?"

"Yeah, that's what he called it, but what is it?"

"It's a very high-powered burst of electromagnetic energy. I read a novel about an EMP attack back in college. It permanently fries the PN junction in every transistor within like a thousand-mile radius."

"Which means?"

"It basically kills any device with a chip in it. Computers, radios, any vehicle newer than about 1970, pretty much everything. It would knock out all communications, transportation, modern farming, and the entire US electrical grid. Supposedly, 95% of the US population would be dead of cold or starvation within a year, since all of our industries are now totally dependent on electricity and computers."

That's bad, if it's true. "So, if we've been hit by an EMP bomb, how come we still have electricity here in the bunker?" I ask.

"Hmm, what's this place made out off?"

"Uh, my dad said it started with corrugated steel panels, like for a Quonset hut. The Airforce assembled them, built a cage of rebar inside them, then sprayed like a foot of shotcrete over the rebar."

"Is there metal in the floor?"

"Yeah, even the floor, which I thought was a little strange. Dad said we'd be sealed inside like a can of sardines. Why is that important?"

"Because this place is a Faraday Cage."

"Huh?"

"A Faraday Cage is an enclosure used to block electromagnetic fields. Basically, the bunker's unbroken metal walls shielded the electronics inside from the pulse."