Chapter 17

Relaxation and contentment quickly changed to near panic as Josh awoke early the next morning. His memories of the disaster of the previous day left no room for the warmth which embraced him, and he was afraid, in his grief, he had done something he would later regret.

He cautiously wove his way free of the encircling arms, and rose to his knees in an effort to determine who had joined him. He was both surprised and relieved to find himself fully dressed as he slipped from beneath the single wool blanket. The complete darkness of the below-ground room hindered his attempts to determine the identity of his mysterious companion, and forced him to strike a carefully shielded lighter to dispense the gloom.

A crawling sensation sped across his t-shirted shoulders, as at first he did not recognize the tossle-headed form still immersed in soul-healing sleep, but knowledge did come to him when his bleary eyes focused on the powder blue jersey blouse, rather than the beatific smile and youthful dimples. This realization answered his initial questions, but raised more in their stead as he vaguely remembered the comforting warmth enclosing him, allowing him to drift into slumber the night before. Sammantha and Vicky were gone. The surface of his mind knew this, but somewhere deeper, in a spot he couldn't reach, there lurked a wild forlorn hope that his wife and daughter survived and would return. This kernel of doubt, combined with the wide difference in their ages served to dampen those sparks of attraction he felt for the young woman, even dampened, the sparks remained.

The old zippo closed with a muffled click as Josh extinguished the sole illumination and brought back a darkness achieved only with the total absence of light. He rose from his position next to the small camp bed, and threaded his way across the room to the door opening on the silent hallway. Anyone else venturing into the sub-maze of boxes, tables and stools, would find it impossible to move more than a few feet without encountering an item to block his chosen path. Josh had arranged it himself, for precisely this effect. So intimate was his knowledge of this and the other rooms in 'The Haven' that he needed no light to move freely and quickly from one place to the next.

Dawn was still a ghost on the eastern horizon when he reached the gravel walk off the patio, and it came as somewhat of a surprise when he was challenged from the enclosed roof of the garage.

" What the hell are you doing out without a weapon? Don't you know it would be bad for morale if someone were to see you violating one of your own regulations Captain."

It took Josh a moment to place the voice, and a moment longer before he remembered the hasty meetings of the previous night. The muffled " Shit!" which followed brought a low chuckle from the invisible sentry above, and was the precursor to Josh's quick turn back to the house for the mandatory weapon. Less than a minute later he was back at the edge of the patio snapping a quick "Reich Salute" to the still unseen guard followed by a smiling " Jawohl Herr Corporal."

" That's better. If it happens again I'll have to report you to the Captain, and he'll chew your ass to the bone." After a short pause interspersed with quiet chuckles the disembodied voice continued. " All's quiet Josh. Come on up if you're a mind too. It's hard to keep watch in a three-sixty all by my lonesome. I could use the help, and the company."

He paused only long enough for a quick survey of the eastern sky before entering the garage and climbing the concealed ladder to the trap door access to the roof.

" It doesn't seem real. It just doesn't seem real that all of this could have happened. Twenty-four hours ago we were all leading normal lives and believed the possibility of something like this happening, and us surviving even this long, was as insubstantial as Dorothy's OZ."

The big trucker never stopped his slow sweep of the area surrounding his post as he finally voiced the question which occurred to him immediately upon finding how well equipped the Haven was. " If the possibility was so farfetched, then why are you so damn well prepared. I asked Toby last night how much stuff you had here, and he told me he wouldn't be surprised if you had more in the way of assault, and technical weapons than any three high-tech gun shops. His wife came back about then and said there was enough food downstairs to feed all of us as much as we could eat for a month before we would have to start really worrying about supplementing our supplies with hunting and foraging. That's what doesn't seem real to me. Why are you so damn well prepared for something like this. Hell, the rest of us, and all of our friends put together would be hard pressed to feed this group for a day, much less a month."

" In all of our collective imaginations none of us would have ever dreamed anyone besides the army would have one, much less three of these starlight scopes. All still in the original boxes. All sealed in plastic, complete with desiccants to remove whatever moisture might have gotten in before they were sealed. In short my friend, and I stress the word friend, I don't really know which makes me wonder more. How something like this could've happened, or what kind of person would be this well prepared, and yet still say the first order of business is to go out and get more supplies?"

" Now don't get me wrong, I ain't bitching about being here, and I'd trust you at my back with a loaded gun, but just the same... Come to think about it you are at my back with a gun now aren't you? Anyway I still wonder which is more dreamlike. That someone bombed us. Or that I'm still alive in the security of a place like this? I mean, why would anybody go to all of this trouble?"

" Have you ever heard of the Mormon's?

" Yeah, They live out in Utah, but what's..."

" I'm trying to tell you, at least about part of it. I've got a good friend, at least I think he's still alive. He and I went through part of high school together about a hundred miles south of here in a small town we both moved to within a couple of month's of each other. He was never really accepted by the kids in the town, well I wasn't either, but I was older, and I worked around it. "

" Anyway, we palled around together, and were always the first to get blamed for anything that happened because we didn't fit into the small-town society. So we avoided the others. We didn't take part in the sports programs although both of us were in good shape, and either of us could have been stars with the football team. Instead we went out and shot, and talked about everything under the sun. Tab, was the original trivia expert, and through these talks I learned a lot, and began to wonder about a lot more.

" Those talks are what really led me to build this place. To recapture those times with Tab at the pond. You see he helped me plan the house, hell he drove the backhoe that dug out the cellar. And just like before he helped me to open my mind to the possibilities."

" One of the things we talked about while we were building the cellar was the Mormon idea of preparedness. You see the Mormon's have, as a basic tenet of their religion, a rule that each family should have a year's supply of food stored in a safe place. Originally this was in case of one of the biblical horrors returning, but after we started the cellar I started to see the idea in a different light. If you go to the store and buy five pounds of sugar. You pay thirty-eight cents a pound for the sugar. But, if you buy a carton of five pound bags with a total of one hundred pounds in it then you only pay nineteen cents a pound. It cuts your sugar bill in half, and you still have the convenience of those five pound bags. The same goes for flour, rice or any other staple commodity. Before I had the cellar, I didn't have room for all of the extra. But when we started building the cellar, talking about the year's supply, and some of the problems associated with keeping it, like refrigeration, I got intrigued by the idea, and went on from there."

" As far as the guns are concerned, or should I say weapons, shooting has been a hobby since before Tab and I started going to the pond to shoot turtles, snakes, or even pine cones. It was in the same small town, during the riots, that I got interested in personal defense. You see, one night the car I was in was attacked by a dozen rioters. Right in the middle of the downtown area, across the street from the police station. Since then I've realized how thin the veneer of civilization is and how easy it is to crack and peel away. From there it was a small step to the collection, and learning the proper way to use the weapons I collected. Some times I feel like I have gone overboard, but then something new comes along, and I have to add it to my collection. If you've ever collected anything at all you know what I mean."

" I had an Aunt who collected cats, last I heard she had more than forty, and people were dropping them on her doorstep at the rate of two or three a month. She was probably glad when the bombs came down, cause she lived in a one bedroom house. "

The smell of bacon, and a hail from the house, interrupted them as many of the others had risen with the sun to begin the first full day at 'The Haven.' Rafe called out again as he started across the gravel walk to the garage carrying an AR-15, a musette bag, and a thermos full of dark, rich coffee with chicory.