The Executive Officer hovered over charts spread out on the table, intently studying a portion of one. Satisfied with his verification of the Navigator’s report, he looked up from the chart to his Commanding Officer.
“Captain, we are in position.”
The Captain said, “Very well. Stand by.”
Twenty hours earlier, the Captain, an Annapolis graduate and career Naval Officer, had the miserable job of announcing to his crew that their homeland had been rained on with Chinese nuclear missiles and most of their families and loved ones living on the West Coast were assumed dead. He was lost for a few hours after hearing the news and contemplated what that meant to him as an individual and a man with a family that had been erased from the world of the living in an instant.
He discovered the news by answering his stateroom door when the messenger from Radio delivered the flash traffic in a red folder. All that he loved more than life itself was gone, and he was powerless to do anything about it… until now.
The Captain looked up from the chart that was spread out on the other table and walked the short distance separating him from his Executive Officer, who pointed a finger on the chart. The Captain nodded his head in acknowledgment, reached up and grasped a microphone that was hanging above his head, and pulled it to his mouth as he spoke into 1MC, the ship-wide speaker system.
“This is the Captain speaking. We all know why we’re here and what we will do to those who destroyed our homes, our country, and our families. Most of you know my family resided in Silverdale, just down the road from our homeport in Bangor. Reports tell us that it was hit by multiple nuclear bombs several hours ago. I would like to believe…”
His voice faltered as he struggled to maintain his composure. The Exec reached over and squeezed his shoulder. They looked at each other, and it was enough for him to get a grip on himself. He cleared his throat and continued, “I would like to believe my wife and children survived, but realistically, I don’t hold hope for them simply because I understand the missiles were direct hits and there are probably no survivors in the entire area.”
He paused and said, “I know most of you… probably all of you, have lost as much or more. We are here today to make sure the people who attacked us in this unprovoked manner will never be able to do it again… ever! Our job has been to protect our country, our homes, and our loved ones through deterrence. That mission failed to prevent what has happened, but we’re going to make up for that shortcoming here and now, with God as our witness!”
There was silence throughout the crew; and the Captain stared into the faces of each man and woman.
“We cannot undo what has happened,” he continued, “But we will take our revenge for what they have done to our families, to our nation, to us!”
As his voice rose with emotion, the crew shouted, cheered, and high fived each other. Some cried and simply stood there, but the message still sank in; they were here to do their jobs and make sure their enemy could never again do what they had just done.
The Captain stood there allowing the hooting and hollering for a few moments, and when it subsided a little, he proceeded in his matter-of-fact voice, “XO, make ready to launch the missiles.”
“Aye Aye, Captain,” came the reply from the XO. “Making ready the missiles, preparing the boat for launch Captain.”
He crossed himself, an automatic response from his Catholic upbringing, oblivious of anyone watching. Moments later after having received all necessary intelligence, he reported back, “The boat is ready for launch, Captain.”
The Captain said, “Very well.”
His voice took on an edge of firmness and professionalism of the consummate career Naval Officer. There was a hardness that came into it as he began with conviction,
“My fellow shipmates, we have arrived one thousand miles east of Beijing, in the Yellow Sea. In a few minutes, we will launch our entire payload onto Chinese and North Korean soil. There are a hundred more of our sister subs aligning themselves in position in the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Japan, the Bering Sea, and the Caribbean. Both the South and North Pacific are covered with our boats, as well. As the U.S. Naval Fleet, we have vessels in the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Bering Sea, and off the East and West Coast of Africa and throughout the Atlantic.” He paused for a moment, swallowing before he continued.
“Each ship has orders to launch everything they have at specific cities and manufacturing areas in at least twenty countries throughout the world. We have had to sit back and take insults from our enemies for years. We have paid them all handsomely to be our friends through aid in technologies, as well as our money. We have tried to educate them and spent vast resources to help build their countries to be self-sufficient, and they turned around, in many cases, and insulted us. Now some of them have committed this terrible act of cowardly war against America, and if they weren’t involved directly, they aided and abetted those who would bring harm to America, to our families, to us. Today, the worm turns!”
Once again the crew went wild with hoots, ear piercing whistles, clapping, and shouts. The Captain allowed it once again, and after a few minutes he said, “Make no mistake, people… what we are about to do will kill hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people. It will cause suffering on a scale never before accomplished by man against other men and on such a monumental scale, but we are just in our cause, and we will stay our course. God Bless America, God bless you all!” He turned to the XO, “Run your check list for immediate launch of all missiles.”
The XO nodded and said, “Aye aye, Captain, running tests for immediate launch of all missiles.” Minutes later, he continued, “Check list accomplished and all missiles ready, Captain. The boat is secured and ready for launch.”
The Captain looked around one last time, paused for only a brief moment and said, “Very well.” This was a moment he would remember until he died. He read from an envelope he had retrieved just a moment ago from his state room, “The launch codes are, one, one, zero, tango, whiskey, alpha, eight, two, zero, one, alpha zulu, three.”
The Executive Officer repeated the launch code in the exact manner. The Captain said, “I am inserting my key into the launch code box.” The Executive Officer said, “Aye Aye Captain, I am also inserting my key into the launch code box.”
“Engage your key.”
Both keys were turned, and the Captain looked into the eyes of his Executive Officer and stared for a brief moment. His family flashed before his mind and he was having a difficult time believing his they were gone; he would never see any of them again. He knew these men had wives, children, parents, and friends, and they too were never going to see any of their loved one again. His fists clenched and the veins on his forehead were visible. His look was stern but not angry; it was a look of intense concentration, and he said calmly, “Launch all missiles.”
The XO said, “Aye aye, Captain, missiles away.”
Men trained to do this job went into action pushing a myriad of buttons. Lights on numerous panels lit up and some winked on and off in a pulsing fashion. Supervising the Fire Control Petty Officer was LTjg Chris Bell, standing by and verifying each portion of the launch sequence for which he was responsible.
Remembering his brother Eric, he anticipated this moment with a certain degree of vengeance. The Fire Control First Class Petty Officer sitting the station executed his sequence with precision, until the time came for the final push of the red button. Chris, in a moment of satisfactory revenge, placed his hand on the young Sailor’s shoulder.
“FC1, I’ve got this.” He reached forward and pressed the button with a certain sense of satisfaction, fully justified by the death of his brother days earlier.
The submarine shuddered, and foot and body vibrations were felt for sometime as the huge doors blossomed opened and the missiles began to launch from inside the missile bay. Alarms sounded and whistles screeched. Machinery throughout the boat whirred and activated as the Trident II D-5, Mk 4 and 5 missiles
were prepared to fire and with a roar, launched!
Ejected by compressed gases, they whooshed from their tubes; each one was equipped with eight nuclear Multiple Independently-targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs). Each MIRV was rated at 100 or 475 kilotons, or roughly five to twenty-five times the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during WWII. Once they cleared the surface of the sea, their engines ignited in fiery blasts and roars, muffled fifty meters below the surface to those onboard. The Russian version of these submarines were aptly named “Planet Busters.”
All over the world similar incidents were happening as other Captains of other submarines gave their orders in a synchronized manner as the United States retaliated in kind, from a brutal attack on its soil by avowed enemies. In less than one half of an hour, nuclear devices began impacting targets all over the world, and the carnage of the second half of an all-out nuclear war began in a devastating counter attack.
Whole cities, military bases, manufacturing sites, power generating plants, hospitals, schools, and heavily populated areas cleanly evaporated. Simply put, they were blown into the heavens as radiated dust, only to rain back down on all of the lands at a later time. The radiated particles rode the prevailing winds and eventually, somewhere far away from the explosions that generated them and where gravity decided to turn them loose, they drifted to earth and began killing anew with a residual and secondary effect called fallout.
Countries such as Yemen, Iran, Beirut, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, North Korea, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba and many others ceased to be a threat to anyone, ever again, for many lifetimes to come. Cities and countries turned into radiated ashes.
Meanwhile on the old cattle ranch and former 19th century Avalon Resort, the people of Avalon were saved from the death and destruction that was going on down below their mountain perch and nearly everywhere else in the world.
They survived the destruction and relied on one another to live in relative peace. Some found love and a new life as they looked to one another to fulfill their dreams of surviving in a world devoid of its senses.
Chapter 16 Turmoil and Peace
It was getting cooler in the evenings and downright cold in the early mornings, but the radiators in the cabins kept everything cozy. An added benefit of using the steam system was that it didn’t dry everything out like other forms of heating. Many in the group said that they woke up with a more relaxed and natural breathing than when they had lived in the city.
The harvest was full in swing, and Sally Zeller employed quite a bit of help in harvesting a bumper crop of everything from pumpkins and squash to potatoes and radishes. There was cabbage, zucchini, cucumbers, green and snap beans, peas, carrots, and numerous other crops that would carry them through the winter. They had already gathered in the asparagus, onions, beets, lettuce, and tomatoes and had started either canning or drying them for later use.
With so many hands to help, the haying was done in record time, maxing out the big barn’s hayloft with alfalfa. The bins were full of oats, as well, and the two smaller barns were being used for some of the loose excess, such as straw that would later be used as bedding for the cows and other larger animals.
One of the smaller sheds housed a small amount of barley, hops, and malt that Sam had planted earlier in hopes of experimenting with making his own beer. Given their situation, he needed a bit more time to execute his dream than simply a weekend here and there. It was on the agenda for later, once things reached a lull in activity.
Most of the trees in the orchard were of fruit bearing age when they were in season, so they had gathered plenty of peaches, apples, almonds, walnuts, and apricots. The plum trees were struggling with mold, and the fate of the cherry trees didn’t look too promising, either. Perry had taken to dusting them with pure sulfur and it seemed to be helping, but with the cold weather coming, they likely wouldn’t know for certain until spring. The grape vines were developing a different, black sooty mold, and Perry hoped the sulfur would help them too. Pruning had gotten rid of most of the affected areas, but it was going to be a wait and watch process.
Thankfully the bees had multiplied quite a bit and several stories had to be added to the hives; Perry referred to them as supers because of their height. There were now nine four-foot hives in all, and although part of the honey had been harvested, Sally felt it might be a good idea to leave about a third of it with the bees to overwinter with. That would eliminate the need to feed them sugar water.
The small spice and herb garden yielded so many different spices and other seemingly exotic ingredients that only Chad, Linda, and Sally knew what they were each for. The coffee plants showed a great deal of promise, but the tea was debatable, and the medicinal plants were primarily kept in the green house and seemingly doing well.
All of the different homegrown foodstuffs combined with the harvest of corn, wheat, soybean and the literal tons of food they had laboriously hauled up here over the years amounted to a sizable amount of stores. They weren’t in danger of starving anytime soon.
In fact, a couple of the women were starting to put on weight and some suspected they were pregnant.
Dennis and Perry built a structure for the silage they would use for the cows and when it was completed, they built a second greenhouse for tables and racks and wood bins that were filled with rich soil to be used for starter plants. It would allow for year-round growing of some plants as well as faster crops since they could have seedlings grown in a fraction of the time it would normally take outdoors.
They divided specific areas of the greenhouse into zones so they could pass between tables and still have as much space as possible to work. They built a potting table, complete with a sink, and they installed several windows that opened with hinges made of leather. The watering would be done by hand for the time being, until someone could come up with a gravity-feed device. Sam was already talking about building a hydraulic ram pump that would use the creek’s own water flow and pressure to deliver water to a tank on a stand.
For added heat, they re-purposed a small coal-burning pot belly stove that Sam and Harlan installed with a large pot on top to keep the humidity high. They also installed a metal wall behind it by using several pieces of scrap metal they scrounged up in order to reflect heat out into the greenhouse. They didn’t need the little stove yet, but they would when the strawberries and tomatoes started to bloom; winter was coming fast, and it was going to get very cold outside.
The manure piles continued to grow and had to be moved weekly to another location. The compost bin was maxed out and yielding methane daily; they had plans to build another so they could maintain methane productivity when they added or turned over each pile. Someone wanted to move it by the kitchen for convenience, but the idea was nixed in a hurry.
Occasionally a calf or pig would get butchered to put fresh meat on the table, but they were conservative, even though all of the animals were multiplying nicely. They had chicken, eggs, pork, bear, calf and cow beef, mutton, and occasionally a deer, but that was rare.
They also had rabbit from the small coop they kept behind the barn. In addition to their reproductive speed, rabbit meat was the lowest calorie conversion from grain/hay they had and was consistently lean. The rabbits multiplied lightning fast, at the rate of several pounds of meat a week, so there was always rabbit stew or rabbit gravy.
At Dan’s suggestion, they only listened to the world news once a week. It lowered everyone’s morale for nearly a day or two after each broadcast, and the news worsened each time they listened.
They discovered that the area between Chicago in the North and Biloxi in the South, essentially those areas surrounding the Mississippi River, was managing to keep its head above water, but no one was making an effort to rock the boat either. Anytime raids happened in that territory, hundreds of citizens rushed to the scene and killed every perpetrator they could find. There were no exceptions; the battle cry became, “If you c
ome in here looking for trouble, you will die.”
Nationalism was getting a new life, and people began praying and asking, not only for help, but for forgiveness. Things seemed to be turning around slowly.
Until it happened!
The plague, mankind’s most unmerciful killer, swept through the human population and annihilated people everywhere. As best anyone could tell, it started in Europe and spread like a forest fire, crossing oceans in quick succession.
One hundred million died in Europe the first month, and the plague quickly crossed the Dardanelle Straights into Asia, where another hundred million perished in bone wracking misery. It didn’t stop there, however, and it quickly swept across what was left of China and Russia, making its way through the former “fertile crescent” and down into Africa.
Human skeletons were everywhere, the flesh rotting off where people had fallen in agony.
Not a single continent was spared the wrath of the wholesale killer, which left a huge scar on the human race, killing nearly six billion people in its aftermath. Later written by survivors for hundreds of years thereafter, it would go down in the journals of history as the “Big Sorrow.”
Bodies floated in the waterways and stacked up in towns and villages. Abandoned houses and vehicles were left to rot or rust where they had each stopped for the last time. Buildings in the large cities became ghost towns because not many brave souls ventured into them.
In the upcoming years, weeds and trees would grow up and begin to reclaim their lost territory. Forest fires would burn themselves out, leaving nothing more than blackened stumps in fields that resembled a lonely and abandoned battleground.
People wandered the land like nomads, armed with whatever weapons they could find to protect themselves from wild beasts. Many were once-domesticated dogs and cats and some were zoo animals that now roamed freely. They were starving and ferocious and would tear to shreds any living thing that would serve as food.
Avalon: The Retreat Page 13
