“Yes, sir,” Susie replied. “I’ll do my best.”
“I know. I need to get going. Randy is good people. There’s a chance someone else will want some help. I have my dose and rate meters. I’ll work as long as there is no radiation. If we do start getting any, I’ll head home immediately. Mattie, you know where the meters are. Keep an eye on them and let Susie know if we start getting fallout.”
Mattie nodded.
“Doctor Bluhm,” Percy said then, looking over at the young woman. “If you could help Mattie, I would appreciate it. The same stipulation that I gave Jock goes for you, too.”
“I understand,” she replied
“I’ll see you all later. Oh. Mattie, Sara should be showing up around seven. I doubt if I’ll be here. Make her comfortable and reassure her I’m okay. She should be able to get me on the radio. I’ll have one of the handhelds with me when I’m out of the truck. Keep an eye on the news and let me know of anything important.”
“I will. Good luck and take care of yourself.”
Percy was just pulling up to the gate when it opened. He’d added the circuit for the opener to the ones the generator for the house fed. Sara had opened the gate with her remote. Percy hopped down out of the truck. “You’re here. Thank God. I’m off for a little while. Mattie will see to your needs. I’m really glad you came out early. I take it the EMP didn’t fry the hybrid’s computers in the agency's parking garage.”
“All I know is when I tried to start it, it did. When the power went out they sent us all home. There was no reason not to come on out. Where are you going?”
Percy was holding Sara’s hand through her open window. “Help out a couple of people. I’ll be back… when I’m finished.”
“Oh, Percy,” Sara almost pleaded. “Be careful. You like to help people. Don’t let that get you hurt.”
“I won’t,” Percy replied, “I promise.”
“I love you, Percy,” Sara said softly, looking into his eyes.
She saw it there before he said it. “I love you, too, Sara. I’m glad you decided to come. If you want, have Mattie put your stuff in my rooms. But only if you want. I want to marry you.”
“I want to marry you, too, Percy, but let’s wait until things calm down before we jump into anything.”
“I guess you’re right,” Percy said. “But the question, such as it was stands. Will you marry me?”
“When you ask me again, after we know what’s going to happen, Percy. Now go help someone. I want to get settled so I can help Mattie.”
“Okay. Bye. I love you.”
“Bye. I love you too.”
Despite the slight delay, Percy made it to Randy’s within the hour he’d specified. It took only a few hours to dig the hole, place the converted set of tanks, bolt them together, then backfill and mound them over with three feet of earth dug from the trench.
“I owe you for life,” Randy said. I would never have got this done in time. It’s only a matter of time before we get some fallout from somewhere.”
“You don’t owe me for life. Just trade me some labor sometime in the future for this. That’s all I want. Do you need help getting your stuff into the shelter?”
“No. You’ve done enough. We can handle the rest. Thanks again, Mr. Jackson.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be on my way, then.”
He’d barely hit the edge of town on his way back to the estate when someone was flagging him down. “Hey! You for hire? I’ll give you five hundred bucks to dig some dirt and pile it around my basement walls.”
“No money but you’ll owe me twenty hours of labor on my farm sometime.”
“Sweet. You got it. Just knock down the fence. You’ll have to pile some dirt at the one corner after you move what you can, and I can move it the rest of the way on the back of the house with a shovel.”
It took less than an hour. The man and the rest of the family stayed busy shoveling some of the dirt into emptied out dresser drawers and cardboard boxes to stack over one corner of the basement.
Neighbors were coming over to see what was going on. It was close to midnight before Percy got back to the estate. He’d done various excavations and earth moves for a dozen people.
Mattie and Sara were waiting up for him. They had insisted the others go to bed. “Any additional news?” Percy asked as Mattie handed him a sandwich.
“Not really. Just snatches here and there. The satellite seems to be working, but only a few channels are up, and that is intermittent. All we know for sure is that at least one device was detonated almost right over us.”
Before Mattie could say anything else they felt the dome vibrating. It was different from the quake caused by the nuke on the New Madrid fault line. It was enough to bring the Bluhms and Susie running into the kitchen. They were all in their nightclothes.
Percy hurried to the den and the others followed. He flipped a switch and a hollow rumble sound filled the room. The room began to shake even more and everyone crouched beside the heavy desk until the shake passed.
“Was that an earthquake, a bomb, or what?” asked Jock.
“Earth tremor, I think. But it’s different from the others. The roar became louder for a moment then faded away. The TV screens were all tuned to the same channels as they had been for the last several days. All were blank.
“I don’t know for sure, but it kind of felt like the movement was from the west. I’m going to take a look outside.” He checked the radiation meters first, then went to the front door and stepped outside. The others followed. All they could see was the night sky.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Calvin had been a bit worried about trying to cut his hours at the bank, but there were no problems. The bank actually welcomed it. They needed additional tellers with the heavy traffic due to the new banking laws. There were less of other types of bank work, so mid-level staff was being cut back, anyway.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays Calvin would work at the bank. At a significantly reduced salary, of course. But he did still receive enough to cover what few monthly payments they had with that salary. Everything they made with the equipment was available for anything they wanted.
The Stubblefield’s essentially took over the equipment based portion of Andersons’ businesses. It was easy to just continue getting many of the jobs through the Andersons and give them a cut. They got business on their own, too. Even Herbert was amazed at the additional work they were able to do with the new equipment.
There seemed to be a backlog of work that had accumulated, due to the fact that Anderson simply didn’t have the equipment needed to do the work. Fortunately, Anderson was willing to teach Calvin and Nan how to do most of the work that he had not been able to do due to lack of equipment.
One thing Anderson wouldn’t do was use the aerial bucket. One of the beds Calvin had purchased for the Unimog was a utility bed with a forty-foot reach aerial lift with material winch. Herbert didn’t like heights. He would direct the work from the ground, but refused to get into the bucket.
“Okay, Nan,” Calvin called up to his wife. “That looks good. You can ground.”
Nan let the hydraulic powered chainsaw rest on the edge of the bucket as she lowered the boom to bring the bucket to the ground. She unhooked the chainsaw hydraulic hoses and the safety cable and handed it to Calvin.
“This is cool, Calvin. I like the high work.” Nan parked the boom and bucket on the rack and climbed down.