He stood where he’d fallen in the pile and surveyed the world around him, more dazed by the destruction than by his injuries, which anyone else would have considered substantial. People around him were running and screaming. An old man he recognized stumbled past, his hand mangled and bloody. He was holding it up carefully, his face masked in shock.
Frank stepped over the debris, pulled Jeff out of it, and left him on top. Finally, he had let go of his beloved horn as it was nowhere to be seen. But, his wounds actually didn’t look as bad as he had expected; the blood flow had slowed to a trickle. So, he left him there, head propped up, and turned to run to the capacitor bank to see if it was functioning and throw the switch, assuming Melanie had been incapacitated and unable to do the job.
His left leg didn’t work very well. Looking at it, he realized it was probably broken from the falling debris.
“Don’t be a wussy,” he told himself, and hobbled forward as fast as he could: first a slow walk, then faster. A few more steps and he was running. He had to get there in time, or they were all dead.
Melanie was a block over from the capacitor bank when the earthquake hit, trying to get a glimpse of the troops coming from the west. When the northern gate fell, and they took out the tower with Frank and Jeff in it, she stopped getting reports. Unable to wait, she ran north up 3rd Street and looked for the approaching men. That’s when the earthquake hit, knocking her and everyone around her to the ground.
When it stopped, she jumped up and ran back toward the capacitor bank, this time not caring so much about the advancing army’s location, but fearing the damage done by the earthquake. On the way she saw some townies pulling debris away from one of their own. She assisted. They were too late.
“I’m sorry,” she said, before she turned and ran the rest of the way to the capacitor bank. It looked fine, in fact it looked great. She turned to the street, the other crucial element of their weapon if it was to work, and was shocked at what she saw.
“We’re screwed.”
43.
You Can See China From Here
Although well shielded from CMEs—unlike coal-burning power stations—both the La Salle County and Dresden nuclear power plants were still ticking time bombs. Like all of the hundred-plus nuclear reactors in the US, they required power to maintain coolant pressure and flow. Without it, the radioactive fuel rods would eventually overheat and melt. Even with all their protective containment measures, at some point a total meltdown would occur. The results would be radioactive clouds, which would spread out and gradually kill every living thing in their path.
This was sure to happen to all nuclear plants without power, but a meltdown usually took longer than most people realized. The rare earthquake sped up this process by cracking the containment domes in both plants. Other flammable materials and the excessive heat released by the melting rods caused massive explosions, almost simultaneously. The billowing clouds of fire, smoke, and radioactive material exploded into the sky.
Wilber, shaken from his grief by two blasts in the distance, arose and trotted back toward his house. He passed a woman wearing an olive-green shirt and GA armband, who in her terror and confusion was barely aware of her sworn enemy running by her. Wilber paid no attention to her or the two or three others, who had been effectively stripped of their desire to fight. Unsure of why they were even there, they’d dropped their weapons or let them dangle like useless pieces of clothing or ornamentation.
He hopped over his pit of fire, now emitting just wisps of smoke, bounded over the barbed wire fence—a skill honed with much practice—and finally scaled the hill and rock wall in almost as much time as it took him to come down. This time he was not fueled by rage and the insatiable need for revenge. He was fueled by alarm and the insatiable need for knowledge. He stood on top of the rock wall, gasping for air, completely disassociated from the war that had been taking place around him mere moments ago. His face fell.
In the distance, he could see two thick black plumes of billowing smoke rising fast to the atmosphere. In that instant he knew where they were from, and what destruction they contained. Even though the fallout would mostly blow north-east, like bacteria its radioactivity would eventually seep their way. Their home was as good as gone.
He jumped off the wall, his lungs still craving air, and ran around his house toward the ridge. He dreaded what he knew he would find, but he had to confirm it with his own eyes. As he ran he scanned the grounds, not worrying about the defeated enemy, but searching for his wife, Olivia. As he approached the base of the ridge, he could see the tangled aluminum poles that had been the tower and the massive fiberglass blades of the wind turbine. Their scattered pieces littered the grounds of his family ranch. In the middle of a pile of the tower’s debris, he could see his wife, hunched over another form: their son, Buck. She heard Wilber, stepped away from their son’s broken body, and sought Wilber’s solace within his loving open arms. They wept together, for now, unconcerned about the next tribulation that approached.
The Teacher’s prayers were not answered. Thinking that God had slammed down the celestial receiver, Paul noted that the earth no longer shook. He heard nothing more. His Heavenly Father had thrashed him violently, though He didn’t cause as much injury as his step-father used to. But, there was no message, vision, or sign afterward. “What am I doing wrong?” he begged God. “Please tell me your plans for me and for my followers.” He said this with his face thrust to the sky, a face bloodied by the falling fragments of glass and debris. He lay prone again, his face and hands buried in the carpet, ignoring the new bites from the sharp surfaces held by the soft carpet bristles. Then he heard it.
Two explosions, in the distance. He rose from his supplication to find God’s answer. Was it the Wright Ranch, or something else? he wondered as he pulled a sliver of glass from his cheek. Rivulets of blood oozed out of the new cut. Stepping over a large piece of the ceiling, through the broken doorway, he walked briskly to the middle of the street, joining several of his followers and a few of Fossil Ridge’s residents. All were staring either north or southeast at two billowing clouds on the horizon. Both looked like mushroom clouds. He wondered out loud, “What the hell?”
“It’s from the nuclear power plants. It looks like they’re experiencing meltdowns,” said an old professorial-looking man, who stroked his beard as he spoke in a tone of scientific detachment, not fear. “I suspect this will kill us all.”
“You mean, like in the China Syndrome?” the Teacher asked.
“Yes, just like that,” the old man answered.
God had spoken!
Thompson Journal Entry
Continued…
The Final Solution
I tried to think of every contingency plan with the beach house and beach warehouse, always knowing that this wasn’t our final place, this was just temporary: a transitional place until you were ready and it was the right time. Likewise, I knew that my ranch was a transitional place; although it is certainly more defensible than the beach house, it still is just transitional and not the place we will all go to, which I’ll get into in the next few pages.