Ozark Retreat (8 page)

He found Harry. “What’s the inside reading?”

“Under 0.05.

“Air?”

“Filters are working good. On battery right now.”

“Any signs of damage from the blast wave and ground shocks?”

“Not in here,” Harry replied. “How about Topside?”

“Didn’t notice anything in the compound. Quite a few trees down. Didn’t really notice if the antenna towers were still up or not. How about comms? The faraday cage work?”

“Don’t know yet. Wanted to wait a bit, just in case of another EMP. We’re thinking about hooking up a broadband to an external antenna once in a while to check for a few minutes and then unhook and ground the antenna lead again. Minimal risk.”

“Good idea. Do it.”

“When do you think we can disperse to the other shelters? Even without full occupancy we’re crowded.”

“I want to give it a day. Wait for the radiation to begin falling and wait out a second attack. Everyone get potassium iodate?”

“Yeah. Doc Started handing them out as soon as he got here.

Barbara came up to them then. “Boss, we’ve got a census and set up sleeping and eating schedules.” She went over the list of names of those that had made it to the compound. And those that had not. Brady could only hope they’d found expedient shelter and would be able to make it to the compound after the radiation faded.

“What do you think is going on out there?” Barbara asked, nodding toward the entryway.

“I’m sure some of that group are trying to get in. Probably will with no one defending the place. I just hope they don’t do too much damage. Everything is locked up. I doubt they have any tools except for their weapons. What I can’t figure is how they survived the blast wave.”

Barbara thought for a moment. “If they were in that low spot just before the turn into our road, they might have been fairly well protected. Think they’ll try to break in here?”

“Possibly. But they won’t be able to without explosives. And then we can destroy them in the entry airlock as they come in,” Brady said grimly. He would have helped as many of the group as he could, the women and children, if they’d just tried to cooperate. But they had decided to try to take over the place. That wasn’t going to happen.

The group settled in for the duration. Brady had planned well. They had everything they needed in the shelter. After the radiation had peaked at nearly 10,000R/hr and then dropped rapidly to under 1,000R/hr, Brady decided to let the primary investors move to their own basement shelters if they wanted. He felt the risk of another nearby burst was very unlikely. As it was, even the basement shelters provided significant blast protection.

So the hatches to the tunnel system were opened and people used the automotive crawlers Brady had purchased to move to the other shelters to ride out the rest of the wait time until they could go outside.

All those that had been outside when the fallout started showed the early symptoms of radiation poisoning. Nausea and/or vomiting the first day or so, with Brady suffering the most. Some became lethargic and lost some hair in the two weeks following, again with Brady having the worst of it. Everyone else was fine.

They settled in for the long haul. Based on the seven ten rule, which the actual radiation readings were confirming, it would be five months before considerable time could be spent outside, with it being a full year before they could expect to leave the shelter permanently. However, after a month Brady sent out a team to check on the compound.

The team suited up in Tyvek environmental suits, rubber boots and gloves, and Millennium CBRN respirators. They were on a fifteen-minute time limit as the radiation was just below 5R/hr.

All the faces were ashen when the team came in, and gave their report after they decontaminated. Brady, Harry, Barbara, and Dr. Amos listened as the team described what they’d seen.

The gates were still closed, the power having been cut off during the attack. Some men had been able to scale the walls and gain entrance to the compound, but they had not been able to open the gates manually. There was a hidden braking system on both gate panels.

There were bodies everywhere, singly and in groups, both inside and outside the compound. Dead from the radiation it looked like in most of the cases, plus a few shootings that had taken place after the compound residents had taken shelter. There were signs of the people having tried to enter the primary housing units, without success.

“There were women and kids all in a group, just outside the gates,” one of the team said, and then broke down, crying. It was a near thing for the rest. Dr. Amos took charge, leading the team over to another of the doctors in the group that had a lot of psychological training.

“Should we send out another team to do something with the bodies?” Harry asked.

Brady shook his head. “Not now. It won’t make any difference to the dead, and we have to save radiation doses for more important things, just in case.” The command group broke up, going their own ways. Brady was staying in the blast shelter while the others in the command structure, all primary investors, had gone to their own shelters.

Brady spent a lot of his time talking to the recuperating Star. She was able to get around on crutches. The wound was healing nicely, but it itched and she had a tendency to scratch at it without thinking about it. Brady himself was recuperating from the radiation poisoning. He was very weak and lethargic. Talking to Star raised his spirits. She was full of stories about her life growing up wealthy in Kansas City.

The first five months passed and groups began going out, fully suited, and for limited times. Only those in the lowest potential risk category went out. Those that were older, mostly, for the residual effects would probably not show up in them until late in their lives. The young, and those that had already received doses, were exempted until the radiation fell to lower levels. Brady chafed at not being able to go out, but he was high risk now, with the exposure he’d had and the resulting depression of his immune system.

Fortunately, they were well stocked with medical grade masks. The doctors ordered everyone to wear one when they were in the blast shelter among the large group, to reduce the risk of spreading any infections. Even given that, mild cold symptoms spread through most of the population of the blast shelter. Those that were staying in their own shelters were for the most part spared that.

The teams began the cleanup and decontamination. The decontamination was made much easier with the designs of the building and compound, and the equipment they had on site. Because of the limited times each group could be out it took some time to do the decontamination, even as easy as it was with what they had.

Using the light construction equipment Brady had provided the MAG a mass grave was dug and the bodies of the dead were buried out near the trees where most of them had died. Holly and her son got individual graves in an area Brady had set aside for such cases. No one had known about it until Brady brought it up.

The farmers stripped a thin layer of soil off the garden area and began putting in the garden when spring arrived. They didn’t have much hope for it. The sky was cloudy more often than not, and the temperatures were not coming up the way they should, even for early spring. They did get quite a bit of spring rain. It carried a tiny amount of fine fallout particles, less and less with each rain.

Juan Mendoza moved back to his farm. People had been making trips to see about the animals. Some had survived in the shelters the MAG had had built. Juan had left plenty of feed and water for them. But there were still heavy losses. The compound’s own animals came through without a problem in their earth sheltered barn.

The communications people had to replace a couple of antennas, though the heavy duty free-standing towers had come through with shining colors. The amateur radio operators in the group kept the command team informed on what was going on in the rest of the world. It wasn’t much. It had been global nuclear war. Even the Southern Hemisphere had taken some hits with nuclear weapons, including Australia, Africa, and South America, though not nearly to the degree of the Northern Hemisphere.

The Swedes and Swiss had come out the best, with their extensive Civil Defense Preparedness Programs. Russia and the Republics had managed to shelter much of their population, but had lost almost all of their infrastructure, including many of their underground factories.

China had attacked Europe as well as North America and the Russian Republics. She had been hammered in return, by the US, Russia, Great Britain, and France. The Republics had also hit Europe hard after an initial delay, and Great Britain, France, and the US had responded.

The Middle East became one huge battlefield. Nuclear weapons from both sides flew, but when all were gone, ground forces began battling. It was ongoing. Just as it had been for the past many centuries. Essentially the same thing happened in Africa. Not that many nukes, but all the old tribal rivalries came to the fore without the interference of United Nations Peacemakers. Most of Africa actually did revert to near the Iron Age.

South Korea was overrun by the North, and China managed to take Taiwan, despite the efforts of the US Carrier Task Forces. They ran out of munitions and had to retreat. Both Task Forces were nuked, causing the loss of one of the carriers and most of the support ships. Only the submarines operated with impunity. Those on the high seas, anyway. All known US submarine support bases were hit with multiple warheads. Several subs were caught entering and leaving the area and were lost.

The American hunter/killer submarines had several field days. They were taking out opposing subs and surface ships right and left until they too ran out of munitions. The subs that the hunter/killers didn’t get the ASW destroyers and frigates did.

The information came to the compound in bits and pieces over time. Initially they only knew what happened locally.

As the radiation levels continued to fall those in the compound began to make excursions further and further from the compound, using the small fleet of vehicles Brady had provided. Of all the vehicles brought by MAG members only one ran after the EMP attack. A young single man’s diesel converted Jeep Wrangler.

Branson was almost deserted. Most of the surrounding farms were as well. The group managed to corral surviving stock animals and add them to Juan’s herds and flocks.

Three more MAG members and their families showed up after the local radiation level had fallen to less than one. They’d agreed to run together. Car trouble for one of them delayed their arrival long enough that they had to take local shelter. Fortunately, they were far enough away that the local blast didn’t affect them. They received minor fallout from the west and northwest, but managed to shelter safely in a small town city hall basement.

When they began to travel after their local radiation dropped below 0.1R/hr, they would stop if they hit an area with higher radiation levels until it fell to a safer level, or they would try to go around.

All three families had been avid campers and were able to carry all the supplies and equipment they’d had in their vehicles on bicycles. Some which one family had brought with them, and some scavenged.

Every member of the small group suffered serious radiation poisoning symptoms, but only one of them died after they got to the compound. The others had to stay in the primary shelter unit they were sharing most of the time. They were just too weak to contribute to the work and would be for some time. Dr. Amos and the other medical people watched them carefully and treated them the best they could without a hospital.

Star, on the other hand, as soon as she could get about without the crutches and too much pain, threw herself into work. Brady had to sharply limit her outside access in the early days, much to her dismay. Even when inside she was usually helping the two teachers the MAG had as members with the children while their parents were working or taking some time for themselves.

The garden didn’t do well that summer and fall. Most of the plants were disked into the soil. The three green houses, with grow light augmenting what natural sunlight there was did very well. Every inch of growing space inside was being used.

Juan had moderate success with his oil crop, but he managed to make over a thousand gallons of biodiesel over and above what the farm and the compound used that year. It was set aside for trading purposes.

They did some trading with some of the other local survivalist compounds as contacts were made with them through radio communications and exploration trips. There had been quite a few similar groups in the area. Not all of them had fared well, Brady learned.

One of the first Brady’s MAG checked on was the one to which LaRhonda belonged. They had made it through the heavy fallout, but one of the members had been ill when she arrived and severe flu ran through the entire group. LaRhonda was one of only a dozen members out of thirty that survived it.

Brady set up an agreement with Sam Fellows, who had also survived the flu. Their animals had come through without a problem. Sam’s MAG had a barn very similar to Brady’s. They needed manpower and fuel. They had run their generator almost constantly when everyone was sick and dying. Brady’s MAG would get additional firewood, animal food products, and propane. One of Sam’s MAG members ran a propane business and had brought a semi-load and two delivery truck loads with him when he and his family bugged out to their compound.