No Normal Day

NO NORMAL DAY

COPYWRIGHT

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2013 by J. Richardson

THE AUTHOR HOLDS EXCLUSIVE rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

DAY ONE

Chapter Two

THE PLAN

Chapter Three

OFF BASE

JASON and DIANNE

Chapter Four

TRISH and ERIC

Chapter Five

THE COMPOUND

Chapter Six

BEFORE AND AFTER

Chapter Seven

SURFING THE THIRD WAVE

Chapter One

DAY ONE

BETH

A smallish hand somewhat lined with age lifted the slat of the blinds. Beth scanned as far as her eyes could reach for the hundredth time in the last few hours. She held out hope to see the familiar stocky form of her husband Jack making his way home. Her heart sank as she saw the same empty view that had been there for hours. Her worried search repeated at each of the only other two windows that gave her a view of the neighborhood,  she made sure the windows were latched and the blinds were closed. Just a glance at the comfortable brick homes gave the appearance of another bright Spring day. Beth's stomach felt tight and queasy, she fought back tears that had been building—-this was no normal day.

The sub-division was built about 30 years earlier. At that time, when all new it was a good five miles out from the businesses and homes of town, the suburbs. The last twenty five plus years the average size town that Beth and Jack had grown up in had sprawled out in all directions and became a large modern city. Not being dependent on any one big industry, the city prospered through good and bad times. It was a clean and pretty oasis in the Northeastern part of the huge state of Texas. Surrounded by lakes and woods with mild winters and blazing hot summers, it was a popular retirement area. The medical facilities claimed to be some of the biggest in the state. There was a Junior College and a State University branch, a multitude of twentieth century chain retail stores and restaurants filled the miles of streets. A church or a bank seemed to stand on every corner. With 100,000 residents and thousands more commuting in daily, the well kept city over flowed with housing. There were hundreds of apartment complexes, rentals and duplexes, thousands of private homes that ranged from modest to multi-million dollar. Beth and Jack's approximate two hundred home neighborhood, once a bit rural, had become surrounded by the oozing expansion.

Only two streets entered the division, numerous streets branched off but no throughway. That made for light traffic, mostly the residents and their visitors. During the day the school bus growled along a couple of times a day and the yard crews, trash men and repairmen that serviced the homes came in for a purpose and left when their jobs were done. It wasn't very common to hear of trouble or break-ins, in general the neighborhood was safe with a slow bustle of daily activity. The towering old hardwood trees shaded the green lawns and spring flowers bloomed in beds and hanging baskets. On this day the sun was bright and the US flag whipped around on the pole that was mounted at the corner of the house. Most garage doors were down. Beth could see one in the next block, up and displaying the normal collection of things we store in the garage. As usual, some driveways had cars and trucks parked in them, a few vehicles were on the side of the narrow paved streets. A slower look revealed the plumber's van stopped at an angle to the curb and further up, a car was right in the middle of the street. A couple of houses down, the neighbor Mike's truck sat silent, halfway in the street and halfway in his paved drive. There was an unnatural quietness. The only time there had been anything even close to this stillness was when a rare snow storm hit the area, brought down power lines and halted the hum of traffic, muted the everyday noise of life.

Earlier when everything first went silent, Beth stepped outside and joined the neighbors and day folk scattered about. She was immediately embarrassed to realize she couldn't remember the last name of the elderly folks across the street. She nodded to the man, asked him if he was okay?

We're fine—-what the heck you think happened?

Mike walked across the street to them, his head shook with disgust, I was just leaving and suddenly my damned truck went dead, he grumbled.

Well, everything is out at my house, Beth said. They stood for a moment, looked around, there was a stalled van and no traffic could be heard whizzing by on the four lane highway that was only about three blocks east.

Mike turned around and grabbed the elderly man's arm, Mr. Carpenter, what about your wife, her oxygen?

Carpenter, Carpenter, Beth tried to make herself remember the name.

Mr. Carpenter's face showed obvious concern, he replied, We have a back up generator, we're okay for now. Thanks for asking. The plumber waited beside his truck, he punched angrily at his cell phone. One of the yard crews huddled up next to a long trailer filled with mowers and weed eaters and various tools. They looked confused and spoke to each other in Spanish. The mower had been left at the edge of the yard, one young man walked away towards the highway.

Beth noticed several people milled around in yards and the street, some stopped and talked in small groups. A real knot of fear started to form in her stomach, Think I'll go home now. Let me know if you need anything, Mr. Carpenter. If she said a name sometimes it helped her remember. Mike walked back across the street and leaned on the back of his truck.

When Beth got back inside the house she immediately checked again that the windows were all locked, the blinds down and closed. On the front door, the dead bolt lock and door lock were always kept secure, she checked them anyway. The back yard had a tall wooden privacy fence, houses were on each side, their yards enclosed with similar fences. Across the back yard barrier lay the parking lot and several buildings that belonged to the Baptist Church. She closed the tall wooden gates that blocked the opening between the house and Jack's garage/shop, slid the heavy metal latch into place. Back in the house, she secured the back door lock. Her feet padded down the short hall to the bedroom, echoed in the quiet house. She slid open the drawer in the bed-side table and carefully picked up the revolver. There were no longer kids in the house to create worry about the numerous guns. Jack liked to say, The good thing about the revolver, you just point and shoot. The pistol went with her and she laid it on the dining table next to the window where she kept her tense vigil.

The streets and homes were pretty silent now. Everyone had finally given up on figuring out what happened and drifted away to their homes or out of the neighborhood. She wondered if the school buses are dead, how will all the children get home? How will her grand children that live all the way across town get to their home?  Then she remembered that this was Saturday, at least the kids wouldn't have been at school. This wasn't the time to allow herself to panic about that.

She would try not to think about the worst is happening, the S—-hits-the-fan scenario that she had increasingly worried about for the last several months. Only a couple of weeks ago, at a lunch with three other women friends, the conversation had turned to what if situations. Beth recalled that day, as they chattered and enjoyed the crispy tortilla chips and salsa.  They each had somewhat different ideas of things that might happen to disrupt their pleasant world, however, they all agreed that many things could happen and they all believed in some type of preparations for disaster. 

These ladies had been her friends for many years, none of the four of them were what you could call youngsters. They had lived through good times and hard times, each had their own reasons and opinions for hedging against unexpected events.

Beth's oldest friend, all the way back to grade school days, was a woman of strong faith. She believed that the apocalypse would be of the biblical sort. She admired her friend who seemed to be at peace with her beliefs and just accepted the possibilities. Her other two friends were more on her own page—-didn't know what particular catastrophe would occur, couldn't see any harm in storing up some provisions for a disaster.

One of the friends said, Did you hear about those tremors up in Arkansas? You know there's a big fault right down the middle of the country.  They claim there could be a massive earthquake.

A friend laughed, Good lord—-earthquakes, the wrath of god, our enemies—-hell, our own congress is probably going to ruin us.

Beth said, I don't know. You could make yourself crazy thinking of all the possibilities. I do know that if anything takes out our electrical grid, it will be total chaos.

At that moment, one of the friend's cell phone buzzed, she studied it a moment, said I'll call back later. 

Thinking now of that day, Beth went to her desk and rummaged around the top for her cell phone.  She punched the button on the side, it lit up and of course, the little annoying icon in the top corner showed the battery to be dead. It didn't really matter, Jack might as well have a rock in his pocket for all the use he got out of his cell. Even though she nagged him about keeping it with him and charged. There would be no message from her husband.

She couldn't claim to be much better, used her phone mostly for emergency or necessity—-didn't chat, text or whatever. The laptop sat on the corner of the desk, that battery ought to be good for a while, maybe I can find out what's going on. She opened up the cover and once again, nothing but blackness. From what she had researched, it was seeming more and more likely that something like an EMP had occurred.

Just breathe, old girl, keep it together. It will be fine when Jack gets home. Let's see—-he's been gone about five hours now, his destination about twenty miles away. Beth tried to distract her mind, she began to figure out how fast he could walk, how many hours it would take him to make his way home. Because she and Jack always had a plan, together they could tackle anything.

JACK

Jack raised the garage door, backed his pick-up down the drive and headed out of the pleasant neighborhood. He waved to Mr. Carpenter as the neighbor picked up his newspaper from the yard. He enjoyed the fact that he didn't have to get up and hurry any where these days. Unless of course, it was something real important like golf or fishing or hunting season. He smiled to himself. Most days, he could sip a couple of cups of coffee, read the newspaper and fix himself a little breakfast. Beth didn't do breakfast, didn't eat it or cook it. Lunch was also you're on your own. He had been lucky to retire a lot earlier than most of their friends, even though most were now catching up. Since that retirement, the two of them fell into some solid habits and rarely strayed from the routine. Supper was always at 7:00, prefaced by what they laughingly called their cocktail hour which stretched from 5:00 until supper. Beth unfailingly had supper on the table at 7:00.

The kids—-the three daughters now being age 40 to 45 but forever his girls—-joked to their friends, "If you need something from Momma and Daddy, call between 5:00 and 7:00, the happy hours. Never call during the holy dinner hour." Funny.

The steady traffic zoomed by, moved North and South. He reached the intersection that exited his neighborhood, waited for an opening, his intended to merge and move with the traffic.  His destination was the liquor store just over the county line, a booze run as Beth said. The trip took about twenty minutes and they didn't sell whiskey before 10:00, he was in no big hurry. Maybe, he would buy an extra bottle or two and some extra of Beth's wine. Her paranoia the last few months amused him, she talked a lot about doomsday type events. She washed and filled the empty whiskey and big soda bottles with water. I bet we've got a hundred gallons out in the storage building. Over the years, she had never been much into storing up extra food or supplies but in recent months she filled that closet next to the office flat full. She even asked him to build her a couple of more shelves not long ago.

Jack muttered to himself, something he did quite a lot of lately. Hey, he didn't doubt the possibility of weird things happening on this earth. The old US of A was not real popular around the world and that nut case