by Bruno Miller
IMPACT
Cloverdale, Book One
Bruno Miller
What would you do if the grid went dark?
Vince Walker is looking forward to the beginning of the summer and a visit from his son Cy. But while picking up his son at the Indianapolis airport, the country is thrust into nuclear warfare with the detonation of multiple EMPs.
With fires burning out of control and the loss of the electrical grid, the entire country is thrust into chaos. Vince and his son, Cy, are forced to fight for their lives and escape the city as the world they once knew crumbles around them.
As they try to return to their hometown of Cloverdale, Indiana, or what’s left of it, they struggle to accept their new environment. Forced to come to terms with the harsh reality of the nuclear attack, they press on through what is quickly becoming a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Challenged with the absence of utilities and emergency services, they must save who and what they can before it’s too late.
Impact: Cloverdale, Book One
Copyright © 2019 Bruno Miller
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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NEWSLETTER
Table of Contents
IMPACT
About the Book
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
About the Author
Chapter One
With a population of just over 3,000 people, Cloverdale, Indiana, was the kind of town where you knew your neighbors. It was the kind of place where it was common to see people out on their porches in the evenings while they enjoyed the onset of summer, although that was changing faster than Vince Walker wanted to admit.
It had been a cold and what seemed like an impossibly long winter this year, and Vince was happy he could drive with the window down for a change this morning. It was finally starting to feel like summer, even at this ridiculously early hour. It was such a cold winter, in fact, that he had been deer hunting just a handful of times last season, much less than the usual, and as a result, he only managed to fill his freezer halfway with venison. He hated to admit it, but the older he got, the less tolerance he had for sitting in a cold deer stand for hours on end.
Vince fiddled with the radio as he drove the route to his shop, just like he did most mornings. Due to a sore back and the need for an extra cup of coffee to get him going, he was running later than what he would have liked this morning. It was still very early—4:15, to be precise. He usually made the drive from his house on the outskirts of town to his garage in Cloverdale about an hour later than this.
But this morning was different. This morning he had to be in Indianapolis by 5:35. He was picking up his son, Cy, at the airport, and he promised himself he’d be at the curb early in case the flight landed ahead of schedule. But more than that, he was anxious to see his son. Although they emailed and usually talked once a week or so, it had been six months since Vince last saw him in person. That was over Christmas, when Cy came out and they did a little deer hunting together on the property out back behind the house.
Vince just had to stop by the shop and meet one of his mechanics, Bill. Of all of Vince’s employees, Bill had worked for him the longest, and Vince trusted him the most. He was going to watch the place and look over things while Vince ran to the airport this morning.
Vince glanced at his watch again and checked the time. He should be fine; it was only a couple more miles to the shop. Thanks to I-70 being so close and Vince’s lead foot, the trip to the airport would only take half an hour or so.
The sky was beautifully clear and the full moon cast a silver light across the stubble wheat in the surrounding fields. Some of the farms had yet to harvest their crop of soft red winter wheat, which swayed back and forth in the early morning breeze.
Vince finally settled on a talk radio station out of Indianapolis. He wasn’t familiar with the station, but the hosts were talking about the North Korean government’s recent testing of two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Lately, that was all anybody was talking about on the news. It was the kind of thing Vince would usually ignore and take with a healthy dose of skepticism. As a former major with the 101st Screaming Eagles and a veteran of the Vietnam war, he despised government and politics. He would normally avoid the topic altogether, but it had been all over the news for these past couple of months. These days, relations between countries seemed to be in a constant state of decay. Every week there was a terrorist attack or some other atrocity.
The powers that be seemed more concerned about not offending anyone or their beliefs, and thanks to the under-the-table deals between corrupt governments, the sanctions against offending countries were all but worthless.
Of course, this was all his opinion, and who was he? As far as D.C. was concerned, he was merely a resident of the fly-over states, as they were called. It was like watching a car crash from the back seat. Not much he could do about it.
Then again, Vince lived in Cloverdale because he wanted to be in one of those fly-over states. After his career in the army came to an end, the decision to move back home was an easy one. He was born and raised here, and as an only child, he enjoyed life on his family’s farm. His father grew wheat and corn on the four-hundred-plus acres the family owned until it was no longer financially viable. His parents sold off most of the acreage piece by piece while he was away with the army. Every time he came back to visit, the farm shrunk. Now, it was reduced to a mere twenty-acre parcel that included the house he still lived in today.
With each parcel sold and each visit home, he watched his parents’ health deteriorate. His father ended up taking a job at the local Chevy dealership while he could still work, and his mother ended up as a secretary for the high school. They seemed happy enough when Vince visited, but he never saw his parents as content as they were when they had the farm.
Shortly before his last tour was up, Vince’s mother passed away unexpectedly. Not long after that, his father’s health took a turn for the worse. Vince convinced his now ex-wife that they should move to Cloverdale and take care of his ailing father. It wasn’t a hard sell. After all, it was a safe and quiet town with good schools. It was the perfect place to raise Cy, who was six at the
time. It made perfect sense to Vince; the old farmhouse was plenty big enough for all of them, and this way he wouldn’t have to put his father into assisted living. They made the move and things went well for a while—white picket fence and all—but it didn’t last.
His ex couldn’t handle small-town life. They had lived in and traveled to some pretty exotic places during his army career. It was an almost constant change of scenery from one assignment to the next. He was more than ready for a slower pace of life, and he thought she was too. But she was a city girl at heart, and after a few years, she became bored with Cloverdale and they grew apart.
He found himself spending more time in the woods, hunting and fishing with his son, so he could spend less time at home. When he wasn’t in the woods, he was at the garage, where he put in unnecessarily late nights to avoid the inevitable. He knew the relationship was over but, for Cy’s sake, he held on for as long as he could.
Vince leaned forward and turned the knob on the radio. He’d heard enough news for a while, and besides, he was only half-listening. He wasn’t sure what he believed anymore. Every news outlet had its own agenda to push and changed the narrative to suit its needs. Who knew the real state of affairs anyway? The world was a complicated place, and on this peaceful Saturday morning, the problems in the news seemed a million miles away. He had better things to think about today. Cy was coming to visit.
As Vince passed the place that his wife used to rent when they first separated, he glanced out the window to his left. He couldn’t help himself. Hard to believe that was almost sixteen years ago now. He could still picture little Cy waiting on the front steps for his dad to pick him up for the weekend.
Unfortunately, his ex only lived there for six months before moving back to Washington State. They had made some good friends there during his last assignment at Fort Lewis, and she headed back to familiar grounds. Last he heard, she was living near Seattle with her latest boyfriend and selling real estate for his land development firm.
They never talked anymore, and the only information he ever got on her came from Cy. They didn’t hate each other, but with their child grown and living on his own, there was no real reason to communicate or stay in touch. And if he was honest with himself, he still harbored some resentment over her taking Cy away from him all those years ago. The thought of it still stung a little, even after all this time. But what choice did he have? Someone had to stay behind and take care of Vince’s dad. With no other immediate family nearby, the responsibility was his and his alone.
Vince took a sip of coffee from his insulated mug and swallowed as he tried to wash away the memories. His son would be here today, and he was going to focus on that for now.
Chapter Two
They only had a few scheduled customers today at the garage. A couple oil changes and a brake job, if Vince remembered correctly. No big deal, at least nothing the guys couldn’t handle without him. As much as he disliked being open on Sundays, it was too lucrative not to be. Sunday was a big day for walk-ins. It was the beginning of the summer vacation season, and lots of folks would be traveling past Cloverdale on I-70. It was a main cross-country route and was heavily used by trucks shipping supplies across the country and campers toting vacationers in search of adventure.
It wasn’t uncommon for some desperate highway-weary father, in need of parts or repairs for his overworked SUV, to wander into the shop on a Sunday afternoon. The wife usually stayed in the car and tried to entertain the rowdy kids while the father explained their situation in hopes of finding a quick fix for little money.
Vince usually felt sorry for them and did his best to get them back on the road as soon as he could. In some ways he found himself jealous of these travelers. He’d never been able to do the big family trips like that. Even when he was a child, his parents rarely took him anywhere, though on occasion his dad would take him to see a race at the International Motor Speedway in Indianapolis. But he never went on any significant cross-country adventures like the ones the people passing through Cloverdale embarked on. They could never leave the farm long enough to get away, and there was never enough money. Or at least that was what he was told as a child.
This only made him more curious about what lay beyond this sleepy little town and fostered within him a desire to travel. Vince yearned to see the world and always had an inquisitive nature when it came to how things worked. These were the things that motivated him to join the army out of high school—that and the fact that he would have been drafted anyway if he didn’t attend college. Not really knowing what he wanted to do, he decided that college seemed like a waste of time and money.
He initially learned aviation mechanics in the army before realizing he’d rather jump out of planes than work on them, but his true passion was cars. On the farm, he learned at a young age how to fix things and was always expected to help out when it came time to work on their 1956 Massy Ferguson tractor. Vince never minded helping, though, and those times were some of the best memories he had of his father and the reason he still had the tractor today.
The now antique tractor still ran like the day it arrived on the farm. Vince remembered it well. It was one of his earliest memories. He was five years old and it was a warm summer morning when it arrived at the farm on a large flatbed truck. Vince remembered how proud his father looked as the delivery man unloaded the shiny red tractor. His father seldom showed that much emotion. Maybe that was why he took such good care of it. He kept it parked inside the old barn behind the house and only used it a few times a year. He had long ago let most of the twenty-acre property return to its natural forested state and mostly used the tractor just to do a little bush-hogging around the place and to cut trails to his deer stand. The tractor was also a favorite in the town Christmas parade, and he usually got asked to pull the local 4H float with it.
Vince’s mechanical ability served him well throughout his younger years, and the opportunity to take auto mechanics during his last three years of high school only fueled his passion for all things mechanical. It was something the school had eliminated from its curriculum years ago due to budget cuts.
Vince shook his head as he thought about the time he wasted attending every town hall and school board meeting possible. The decision to remove the course had been made, and it served to reaffirm his opinion of government—that the common, everyday person had little say in how things were run.
Growing up, he owned an assortment of cars and trucks and often sold them for a tidy profit once he finished restoring them. It was enough to forgo having a regular job and working at a burger joint or the local lumber yard like most of his friends.
Something about working on cars put him at peace with the world. It was a chance to immerse himself in something and forget everything else. It was something he could do alone, and he liked solving problems. He always dreamed of owning his own shop one day, so when the opportunity came along to buy the local garage in town, he jumped at the chance.
When he and his ex first moved back to town with Cy, he took a job at the same dealership his father worked at. He was thankful for the job, but after thirty years of doing things the army’s way, Vince didn’t want to work for anybody but himself. The garage was his chance at independence and to be his own boss while doing what he loved.
He renamed the place Major’s Auto Repair. “Major” was also the nickname his high school buddies gave him when he returned from the army. It stuck, and that was pretty much what everyone knew him as. He reckoned there were probably some people in town who didn’t even know his real name.
Major’s Auto Repair quickly established a reputation for top-quality work and honesty, and he considered himself blessed to have enough customers since the day the doors opened. He had enough business to keep three full-time certified mechanics busy. He didn’t turn a wrench much himself anymore, and it was just as well. There were plenty of other aspects of running the business to keep him busy. It was also a gas station with a small storefront attached t
o the repair shop. There, he sold everything from light camping gear and RV parts to snacks and fresh-picked produce—when he had it.
The produce came from the little garden behind his house. He had a plot measuring roughly one hundred by fifty feet, and he tilled it every spring and grew an assortment of vegetables for himself and some neighbors. He sold any extra produce at the shop, although “sold” was probably too strong of a word to use. In a sort of honor system, he put the produce on a table out front and left a can for people to put money in whenever they took something. He didn’t mind helping people out if they couldn’t afford it; it was better than seeing the vegetables go to waste.
Vince slowed down as he turned off North Main Street and made his way around to the rear of his building. He normally parked inside the fenced-in area out back. There was a rear door that led to a storage room and then his office on the back side of the building. This required him to stop and unlock the chain-link gate that led to the vehicle storage yard. But that wouldn’t be necessary today.
Making sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, he brought the car to a stop as he leaned over the steering wheel.
