Shelter: Book 2, A Long Days Night (28 page)

The men cheered the good news. The weapons officer stood, “Sir, my department and I have been working on an idea, it’s a little out of the box, but it might work.”

“Weaps, I love out of the box, hell, we’re sailing in harm's way in a seventy-year old ship. What’s your plan?”

“Sir we think we can reprogram the land attack Tomahawks to hit ships.”

“Do tell.”

“Sir, one aspect of the Tactical Tomahawk update was the ability to hit a moving target, we think we can program the computer to fly to a set of coordinates and when in the area look for the following image, which we insert as Chinese ships.”

“Weaps, good idea, but we need the coordinates of the Chinese fleet in order to program the missiles.”

The weapons officer hands Captain Jefferson two sheets of paper, “Sir, took these off of Google Earth’s bird. Confirmed them with our birds, sir we know where they are, they’re heading directly towards Pearl.”

“Don’t sit here listening to my BS, get programming. I’ll make sure the resupply ship brings us additional birds.”

“Sir, before I leave, why not have anything that floats at Pearl pull the same stunt the Chinese pulled on our boats, mine their approach to Pearl.”

“Another good one, XO, send it to Admiral Long, he’ll get it to the base commander. Any other super ideas?”

The radar officer says, “Captain while you’re asking the Admiral for things, how about a few of the Hornet’s self-protection jammers.”

“I think I understand, you’re going to mount them on the ships, so if the slick 32s don’t work the jammers will. Have you worked out how to mount them in the air stream?”

“Sir, top of the masts, we already have power lines running up the masts. We can confuse the shit out of the Chinese.”

“Go for it.”

“Lady and Gentlemen, we resupply in less than 90 minutes, about the same time our escorts will be ready. I want to be on the way to Pearl at 35 knots firing missiles and shells all the way to stop the Chinese. Any questions?”

Looking around and not seeing anyone have any questions, “Let’s go get some and show the world the BB is still the queen of the seas.”

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Everyone in the shelter realize something has happened. The lights flashed, the fans which circulate the air stopped. A minute later, the emergency lights came on. People move from their rooms into the hallways. Anyone who was sleeping is awakened by the noise everyone is making. People begin making their way to our room, Lacy meets them asking. “Hi, what can I do for you?”

“What happened?”

“Where’s Jay?”

“Why did the power fail?”

“Is something wrong? Has the gang broken in?”

“I want my rifle, I heard the alarm, we all saw the lights go out.”

Lacy takes a deep breath, she decides to address the questions head on. “Listen, I’ll try to answer all of your questions I can. First of all Jay is and isn’t here.”

The hallway is filled with screaming. Everyone is trying to get Lacy’s attention, Richard, asks, “Lacy, how can he be here and not be here?”

People applaud and yell “YES!” in support of his comment.

Lacy takes a deep breath, “He, Tony, John and Todd went outside the shelter. They went to our house to see what was going on while they were there…”

She couldn’t finish, “What do you mean Jay went home? Why did he go home, but we can’t go home? When are we going back to our homes?  This isn’t fair. He promised us we’d all be the same, yet you just told us he went home and left us all here. I want out, I want to go home!”

Lacy raises her hands trying to calm everyone, “Please listen to me, and please just give me a minute to explain. He didn’t go home. He went to our house to investigate what was going on outside and to plan when we can all go home.”

The angry mob in front of her doesn’t let her finish, “If it’s safe enough for him to go to your house it must be safe enough for all of us to go to ours. I for one don’t know why you intend to keep us here, I’m going to pack and go home.”

Please, please listen to me. He’s not at our home, he’s here.”

“Where is he? If he’s here why doesn’t he come out and talk to us? Has he gone loony again? I bet that’s it. Jay’s lost his marbles.”

Fred walks to Lacy’s side. “Hush all of you. You sound like a room of old women arguing over a bingo game. Yes, Jay went to his home, something unusual happened, the Sheriff went to his house looking for him, after the sheriff left, Jay and his team went on their planned trip to see how we can get rid of the gang and return to our homes. While he was at his house, we received a weather warning of a giant storm. This storm dropped 30 inches of rain over the previous twelve hours. An EF4 or 5 tornado formed, I think it struck Jay’s house. It came this way which is why we don’t have any power. We have some very urgent issues to take care of, not standing around and yelling at Lacy that Jay went to his home. Where is he? I’ll tell you.”

Everyone shuts up, the hallway gets completely silent, “He’s stuck in between the outside and first inside door. The tornado must have bent or jammed something in the outside door. It won’t open…”

Fred might as well have yelled fire or bomb when they heard him say the outside door is jammed, they panicked. They started yelling over each other,

“What do you mean the outside door is stuck? How will we ever get out of here?”

“Oh my God, we’re stuck in here, we’ll never get out.”

“We’re going to die in here.”

“How is that possible?”

“I want to speak to Franco, he built the shelter, where is he?”

Others took up the cry to speak with Franco, Fred replied, “Franco is with Jay, as are Tony and John.”

Fred didn’t mean to pour gasoline on a roaring fire, but he did. Everyone panicked, if Jay, who designed the shelter, and Franco who built it, are stuck in the small anteroom with their head of security and second in command, all was lost. Some in the group fell to their knees, crossed themselves and looked up towards the ceiling praying for help. People around noticed, they listened a minute then they joined him on their knees praying for help. Fred said, “My friends, I don’t know what else to say to you. I think it’s a good idea if we all pause in our discussion and ask God for help. If we ever needed it, it’s now.”

One, three, five people bent down until everyone was on their knees, they may have been from different backgrounds and brought up to follow different religions, but they all believed in God. They believed in his love and mercy. They believed he could and if they prayed hard enough, he would save them. This was the south, the Bible belt where the President once said they were stupid for clinging to their bibles and their guns. The people in the shelter believed with all of their heart God would hear them and answer their prayers. Many felt funny after praying for giving Lacy and Fred a hard time. When they stood, they did so with their head bowed, they knew they’d wronged their neighbor and loved one. Richard stepped forward, “Lacy, we’re sorry. This got completely out of hand. What can we do to help?”

Fred looks at the group in front of him, “That’s better, this poor woman meant you no harm, she was trying to tell you the truth. The truth is we have a major problem. We think the tornado took down our windmills and solar panels. It most likely bent our door or jammed something against it. We’re going to have to use the emergency exit tunnel which comes out on the other side of the hill, a long ways away from here. We’re going to have to send some people to check the windmills and panels and some to check the front door. The generators weren’t planned to keep one hundred percent of the shelter running all of the time. You’re going to notice the temperature in here start to rise, this is normal.”

Fred continues, “I have no idea what’s happening outside. The last image we saw was pure pandemonium. People were running out of our homes and running around in all directions trying to get away from the storm. We don’t know if we’re going to run into some of the mob as soon as we open the emergency tunnel door, we don’t know what we’re going to find up top. Hell, I don’t even know that our homes are there.”

“What do you mean our homes may not be there? Where would they be?”

“An EF 4 or 5 tornado would have winds up to 200 mph, if such a storm hit our homes, nothing would be left of them. I mean nothing. Think toothpicks. The twister was bearing down on Jay’s home when we asked Franco to go get them to return here. When the storm hit, we lost our camera feed to outside. I don’t know if we lost the cameras or if we lost the cable or what happened. We have no working outside cameras. Whoever volunteers to go outside, is going to be very brave because we can’t tell you what you’re going to be walking into.”

Richard is very quiet, “Fred, how bad was the twister?” Every ear strained to hear his questions, they all prayed about what Fred would respond.

“Richard, I don’t know. We lost all of our eyes and ears when the twister hit. I’m sure you all felt it pass over us, the entire shelter shook and vibrated. I honestly have no idea what happened outside. Jay and his team got caught in-between the doors. We know they’re OK, we know they have three young people with them, we don’t know what went wrong. We need all of your assistance to help us put everything back on track and find a way to unlock the inner doors so Jay and his team can come home. Then we have to figure out what happened outside and reconnect our electrical system, followed by our cameras. While we’re doing this, we need to make sure we’re secure from whatever, whoever may be out there looking for us. This is going to require everyone’s help. Do we have your support? Can everyone count on each other? Are you ready to be your brother and sister’s keeper? Because Lord knows we need all the help we can get.”

Everyone standing in front of Fred and Lacy felt sheepish, they felt very foolish and childish. Richard walks to the where Lacy and Fred are standing, he opens his arms and hugs them. He kisses Lacy’s cheeks saying, “I'm sorry Lacy, you can count on me, I’m ready to pay back whatever’s required of me. Lacy, your family, saved mine. I’m ready to risk everything to help everyone here.”

The group cheered in their support. Fred whispered to Lacy, “That was too close for comfort.”

She replies, “I agree, now how are we going to get my husband and the others out from the inner door chambers? Do you really plan on sending people outside?”

“Lacy, do we have a choice?”

Chapter 20

One hundred militia members are moving towards the small town that Captain Black and his company is using as their base of operations. The Militia’s leader took the name George Washington to remind everyone he’s leading them and the country back to real independence from the tyranny he and many others see coming out of Washington D.C. His people are armed with the weapons they purchased from Captain Sarnoff. George doesn’t know he purchased weapons from the Russian Army, he doesn’t realize he’s a pawn on the Russian’s chess board. George moves his people into position in the woods bordering the town. They watch the army interacting with the citizens, they see the mess tent feeding everyone and the medical tent. Some of George’s people question him, “George, this doesn’t look like the army is enslaving the people, it looks like they’re caring for the people. Are you sure this is the right place?”

“Town’s name is the same. It matches what the militia who sold us the weapons told us about.”

“I think we ought to do a little recon, send a couple of people into town to check out what’s really going on.”

“I think you might be right, something is wrong here. Everyone looks happy, none of these people looks to be enslaved, they’re working with the army. I just saw two soldiers carry food to people’s homes. I’m starting to question where the other militia got their information. Randy, take three people with you and see if you can learn what’s going on here. I’m going to take the rest of the people back to our base camp. Try to return in four hours.”

“OK, see you in four.”