Bunker: Boxed Set (Books 4 and 5)

by Jay J. Falconer

  They were smiling at him and then at her.

  “Hi, young lady,” said the ancient man in a suit and tie, his hand holding back a flop of white hair from blowing onto his face. “Your brother here was just telling us about your father and the horrible accident you were in.”

  “We’re so sorry, dear,” said the equally antique woman beside him in a flowery dress, its edges wanting to rise up, her free hand occupied with holding it down. “That must have been awful for you both.”

  The couple looked down in tandem at their feet, acting uneasy as if they didn’t know what else to say.

  Lexi concluded that they were probably just nice people who broke down, but wanted to help.

  Lexi couldn’t think of anything else to say either, and the last thing she wanted to talk about with these strangers was their dead father. Apparently Travis had done enough of that for both of them.

  Her irritation started to bubble up again.

  She grabbed her brother’s hand and pulled at him sternly, intending to drag him away if necessary. Then the man said, “I’m Don and this is my wife, Seti. We were headed to church when our car died.”

  Lexi’s eyes darted from Don to Seti and to their car and back to each. Her nerves were shot and she felt a wave of nausea, like she would puke at any moment.

  “You’re Lexi, right?” said Seti. Her voice was calming and reminded her instantly of her mom, and how she talked to her when she was scared of the dark. The nausea passed.

  “We’ve already met your brother, Travis. We’re walking back to Lloyd, to our home. You’re welcome to come with us. I’m sure you must be hungry.”

  She was hungry. They had been driving all night and hadn’t eaten since a burger from McDonald’s—one more thing their father didn’t do, because he was so anxious to get on the road. Maybe it would be all right to stop for food.

  But then she remembered her father’s dying instructions and the shopping list. “They have a market in this town?”

  “Yes, Lloyd has a market. We can stop on the way,” said Don.

  “Okay, we’ll come with you.”

  Seti hoisted a giant purse onto her shoulder and Don slid his hand into hers and they led. Lexi and Travis followed a safe distance away, while Don shot back smiles and stories about them, their town of Lloyd, and so many other things Lexi didn’t care about, but she happily listened because that meant she didn’t have to think. She learned that Seti got her name from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program, because her mother was a scientist and involved in it. Seti was a big science fan and Don had met her at the university, in an astronomy class. He was a science buff too and he loved to build things. He said he would show them his inventions while Seti was fixing them food.

  It went on this way for about a half hour, until they were standing in front of Simpson’s World Market.

  Lexi found herself scrutinizing the small store as if it were a threat, while they all waited for her approval. There were no other buildings beside it, and it was bounded by two roads, a parking lot, and swampland. As long as it had what her father had told her to get, it would do just fine.

  “Come on and we’ll introduce you to the owner,” Don invited as he pulled Seti through the door with him.

  Inside, Lexi’s senses were flooded all at once. The foreign smells would have been noxious to her in any normal circumstance, but because she was hungry and her stomach was finally settling, any food smells were good at this point. Her eyes, too, were suffering from their own sensory overload, as she tried to take in the tangled mess of paraphernalia covering the walls, or hanging from the ceiling, like an overgrown college kid’s dorm. On the walls, each patch of stuff seemed to be separated by flags identifying their country of origin. A surf board from Australia; a bobby helmet from England; a pair of wooden shoes from the Netherlands; and so on. Likewise, the shelves were crammed with foodstuffs from every place imaginable, as well as the US.

  Don watched with amusement as the kids took in what the store had to offer.

  “Yeah, Simpson picked up all of this junk”—he accentuated the last word loudly for Simpson’s benefit—“himself, during his world travels. Then he brought it back and opened this market about twenty years ago.”

  “G’day mates,” Simpson said in a not too Australian-sounding voice. His face glowed with genuine happiness, as if he loved what he did and didn’t want to be anywhere else.

  “I’m Ron. Welcome to my store,” he said to the two kids. “Sorry, miss; our power’s out, so it’s hard to see everything inside. Ah, and I hope you brought cash, cause the credit card machine isn’t working either.”

  "I've got cash," Lexi said, flashing a forced smile.

  All watched the young woman with the flirtatious black dress and the blue streaks poking out of short black hair grab a basket and start down the first aisle. Travis hung with the adults.

  "Sounds like a lot of things aren't working," Don said while scratching his head. "Ron, did your car start today?"

  "No, the damn thing was dead. Hey, how did yah know?"

  Seti looked first at Ron and then her husband anxiously before asking, "The blast at Jacksonville wasn't the cause. Are you thinking a separate blast in the atmosphere?"

  Don’s travel map of facial lines looked more worn from growing detours of concern. "Yes." He didn't want to voice this in front of their friend Ron and the young people. He had started to suspect it when they had passed all of those other stalled cars on the way to Simpson's.

  "What blast?" Ron asked.

  Lexi slid past the magazines and the car-care stuff, and looked first for the item near the bottom of her father’s list: "Small lighter fluid." All Simpson’s had was the one-quart size. She tossed that into her basket. The fifth item on the list was bug spray. She found the one with 100% Deet and moved on to the food, first grabbing a bottle of apple cider vinegar, completely unsure what this would be used for. But it was on the list and so she threw it in the basket and moved to the next aisle.

  She had heard it was wrong to shop on an empty stomach and now she remembered why. At this moment, everything looked good to her undiscerning palate. In the snack section, she stared into the windowed package of chips with Japanese writing on it and yearned for its contents. But she had a job to do, and she would finish it. Two shelves down, she snatched the only two packages of beef jerky and one bag of spicy Doritos chips. That last item wasn't on the list, but she liked them.

  "Shelled peanuts?" She emoted out loud, reading the next item on the list. She searched and found two bags of them, and into the basket they went. She was starting to understand the reasons behind the food list he’d dictated to her. The food was easily portable, stored well, had a long shelf life, and was high in calories and protein. When she’d first scribbled it all down, she had thought it was just babbling from her dying father. But this list had purpose and forethought. She wondered what treasures she’d find in his bug-out bag currently resting at Travis’s feet, up front.

  Walking past the candy aisle, her eyes wandered over the fruity candies from all over and came to rest on Starbursts Fruit – Tropical. She tossed a glance back up at Travis. He was listening to Don and Ron argue about nuclear blasts. The packet went into her basket. She thought it was a favorite, at one time. Maybe she could use it as a bargaining chip at some point to make him do what she wanted.

  Back in front of the store, she walked down the next aisle and compared the packaged and canned food options. The list said "dried foods - Just add water." She snatched the only three packages of dried soups. Beside this were some rice and beef packages. All had instructions indicating “Just add water.” Laying them in the basket, she went to canned foods, where she picked up two cans of chili and crossed that off her list.

  “Packaged fish? Yuck.” This was definitely not her favorite. But she understood what he was doing here: all the major food groups, and ready to eat without a stove. She found some packets of tuna, surprised that they didn't
require refrigeration. Equally amazed when turning them over, she found they would be good for sale until four years from this month. She grabbed four of these. She’d hold her nose if necessary.

  On the juice aisle, she grabbed some pineapple and apple juice packets. Lastly, she grabbed two gallon jugs of water, struggling to carry those and the now full basket.

  All four of them watched her return and lay all of her items on the counter.

  “Hope you have cash,” he glanced at all the items.

  Lexi threw down her wad of cash onto the counter, making a slapping sound to accentuate her frustration at his repeated question.

  Simpson took out a yellow pad, looked at his Timex watch and wrote down the amount and description of each item, before adding up the columns of numbers longhand.

  “You don’t use calculators in this part of the country?” Lexi asked, her sarcasm meant to be as biting as she knew it sounded.

  He wrote the total and then spun the yellow pad around to Lexi. "I doubt adding is something your generation could do without a calculator. Besides, that's what I have a cash register for, which doesn't work without power. $67.58,” he said with a sly smile.

  “Do you have a telephone I can use?” Lexi asked putting the remaining cash back into her father's wallet from where it had come, and then shoved it into his bag. She kept the coins in her hand, jingling them.

  “There's a payphone by the bathroom, that way.” He pointed toward the back of the store.

  The bathroom was clean and the toilet flushed—she wasn’t sure it would with the power out. After changing into an old T-shirt and oversized jeans, for reasons unknown to her at the time, she slipped the rabbit’s foot and keys into her pocket. The pay phone didn't work; it only emitted a sickly sounding crackle rather than a dial tone.

  “Hey, you know your payphone doesn't wo—” Lexi froze when she saw Don and Ron hovering over Seti, who was on the floor. Travis was crying again.

  “What happened?” Lexi shrieked. Her panic back in her throat.

  “I think she's had a heart attack,” Ron said, feeling for a pulse and then starting CPR on the woman. “Does she have a heart condition, Donny?”

  The old man shook his head no, holding her hand.

  Lexi walked around them, grabbed their groceries and then whispered into Travis's ear, “We’re leaving.”

  They slipped out of the front without being noticed.

  It was another quick getaway from death and questions. They had their own problems to deal with.

  The sun was high in a sky that seemed angry.

  They’d return to the highway. They’d find a tree off the road where they’d stop and eat and maybe nap. She felt so tired.

  Travis kept tugging at her hand, each time he’d turn and look back in the direction of the market, which could no longer be seen. He kept mumbling something, but she wasn’t paying attention. She was too busy noticing all the dead cars leading up to the highway, remembering Don’s conversation with Ron.

  When they were back on the highway, the gravity of their situation finally sank in. On both sides of the asphalt, as far as she could see, all the cars were dead and lots of people were walking, although in the opposite direction as them.

  Chapter 4

  Frank

  All his senses knew what his mind argued it couldn’t be.

  It had to be terrorists. But there were the unanswered questions: Why was he a target? Why on his property? Why in the backwater of Stowell, Texas?

  Frank paced through the reasonable possibilities as he plodded back to his house, after making sure his property was clear of any more of the combatants.

  “Combatants?” he chuckled at this. It was the term the Army taught him to use when describing the enemy. “Combatants” was duly descriptive, yet very generic, and it was woeful in describing these men and their intentions. The term was perhaps useful in the theater of war, but not on his ranch in Texas.

  He’d served three tours, and multiple combat missions, where everything was black and white, where everything made sense. So everything about this situation seemed surreal to him.

  He suspected that this was just normalcy bias: an American disease that he now suffered from, that he’d been infected with the moment he retired, and that had incubated through a solitary civilian life for twelve years. He had thought he would be immune to this, and found himself angry that he wasn’t.

  He felt he was not unlike the media and politicians who were always so quick to report that a violent act committed by someone claiming Islam as their religion to be anything other than a terrorist attack. But always, the inconvenience of the truth became unforgiving: it was Islamic jihadists. The dead man’s words were his proof of this. Still, this attack was different.

  Besides the paramilitary outfits, jihadists usually sought to kill as many targets as possible and usually in a very public place. That way the public would be filled with terror. That was their modus operandi.

  Frank's ranch wasn’t public, and he was the only soft target on it, other than a few goats and the coyotes always trying to eat them. And in spite of their noisy and boisterous attack, it wasn't meant for public consumption. No one would have heard about this, especially if they had been successful in killing Frank. So he reasoned there could only be one reason for this attack.

  Despite its sloppy execution, this was an invasion. It was the beginning of a war.

  Both mind and body in sync now, Frank dashed through his already open doorway, ignoring the pain from his aching knee, and bolted to the TV, slapping the remote's on-button as he scooped up his phone. He had this horrible feeling that Stowell, Texas, no matter how dumb it sounded, was the front line of an invasion by Islamic jihadists.

  "Damnit!" he swore, realizing that his aging cell phone was dead. After all the work he'd done on his land yesterday, when he finished last night, he'd forgotten to plug the stupid thing in. He snapped it into the wire snaking from the wall and left it on the living room table, already crowded with books and the mostly empty bottle of Michelob Light, its contents drying on the floor.

  He glared at his flat-panel TV; a static buzz in the background matched the picture on its screen.

  Thinking he must have accidentally knocked it off the satellite, Frank stared at the remote for a long moment, trying to make sense of its multiple buttons before clicking on the one that turned the satellite on. He cursed the damned thing for its complexity. The picture flickered in response, and then displayed static once again.

  He switched channels and received the same result from his TV. Why the hell would the satellite be out?

  Moving more slowly over to a computer perched on a roll-top desk across the room, he stabbed the on-button with his forefinger and watched. His mind begged for the standard annoying Windows emblem. He craved normalcy. The screen splashed the familiar logo and ground through its routine. His mind raced, frustratingly faster than the computer's.

  After an excruciating couple of minutes, the computer was fully booted and the web browser window opened, confirming what he suspected. His connection to the Internet was down as well.

  "My radio!" he blurted out to the unquestioning morning light flittering thru the living room door he'd left open. Ignoring this he trotted over to the short wave, a timeworn Heathkit that still used tubes, and flipped on the toggle. A low hum told him it was warming up. Everything seemed to take an unbearable amount of time, when he needed answers immediately.

  To punctuate his frustration, he walked over and slammed the door for no reason other than it seemed better than just waiting. He dragged a stool across the room and plopped himself in front of the short wave, nestled in his bookshelves. Static blared from the two speakers, spaced on opposite sides of the room. It had last broadcast a church's radio program several weeks ago, a firebrand preacher spouting how Revelations was coming true today. The station, a local one that played mostly Christian music 24/7, which he sometimes liked to have on in the background when he was rea
ding, was noticeably gone. Maybe that preacher wasn't as loony as he had first thought.

  Frank spun the dial to another end of the band; the speakers sang out a whistlelike sound with occasional pulses from live broadcast stations. Each was perhaps broadcasting something and maybe telling him that this was just local. But he didn't stop; he was looking for a specific station.

  “We return to Peter, who we were able to locate in South Carolina, United States,” said a somewhat frantic woman, with an otherwise silky British accent.

  “Thank you, Ashley,” said a staticy male voice. “I can now confirm through multiple reports that America has been attacked by several nuclear blasts, including two high in the atmosphere, causing electrical outages everywhere in North America. We're told that New York, Washington, DC, and Chicago have been destroyed by separate nuclear devices—"

  “Fuck me!” Frank yelled, backing up and out of the stool, like he had been punched. He grabbed the mostly empty beer bottle and drank the remaining warm liquid while sinking into his couch.

  “ABC Radio thankfully had backup equipment that we were able to broadcast on—”

  Frank’s phone beeped at him, a tone indicating that it had enough power and had turned itself back on. Then another tone, telling him that he had a text. Then another text-tone.

  He scooped it up into his palm, stretching to match the cord's length from the wall and glared at the phone's messages in shock. Like everything else today, it was surreal.

  There were two texts displayed on the phone, both from Stan, his best friend whom he hadn't heard from in years.

  The first one was dated July 3rd—yesterday. “Terrorists will strike. America will fall any day now. Prepare. Taking kids to Florida.”

  He stared dumbfounded and then gnawed on the next text, “Could happen any time. If don’t make it might send kids your way via highway, or Abe’s. Please watch—”

  There was nothing more.

  He looked at his recent calls and saw the last one was from Grimes, probably calling to find out what he knew. But there was no coverage, no cell service.