AN: Just wanted to warn people that the description of the surface conditions of the earth after the nuclear war will be rather jarring. The earth will not be a pleasant place after a nuclear conflict. People will die; friends and family and the survivors will have to make a hard choice – to go on without them or to join them. There will be uncomfortable social norm situations created by a nuclear war that would be unthinkable in a non-survival situation of that magnitude. Some of the social situations in this story will be very uncomfortable.
"The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma." ― Judith Lewis Herman
/"Everything is normal as can be, Sarah"… why was Clayton Webb's voice ringing so eerily. Mac thought to herself. "We can go to the beach house…and be safe." He extended a hand out to her as Mac walked towards him…a mushroom cloud went up far in the distance…and Clay…melted, pools of flesh coming off his body, a skeleton being exposed…as the blast effects blew his entire skeleton apart and Mac felt herself lift off the ground and a burning sensation came up from the pit of her stomach./
She screamed as she hit the ground (she had fallen from her bed in her terror)…opening her eyes and seeing the worried faces of Meg Austin and Jennifer Coates as she looked up, sheer terror in her eyes.
"You're all right now…" Meg said calmly. She realized what it was that Mac was going through. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. "Mac, you need to come to grips with the fact that we went through something no one thought would ever happen."
"H-h-how are you managing to cope?" Mac stuttered, shivering so violently that it seemed like her muscles were spasming painfully.
"I think a lot of us just blocked the situation out of our minds. We're stuck in here for the next, I don't know how long." Jen said "The world as we know it is no longer around, people that we know have perished, but we're still alive and we have to stay alive."
"What if we're all that's left?" Mac asked plaintively. It seemed as though bad things were only happening to her.
"Well, there's fifty of us in this vault…and not all of us knew about all the different vault systems that were available for continuity of government." Meg replied. Her naval intelligence background was coming to the fore as she tried to reassure Mac that they could get through this. And in doing so, reduced the amount of doubt in her own mind. They would have to pull together and survive and if they were able to have made it to this shelter, they would survive, no matter how harsh of conditions the outside world would have become. "Mac, understand this…we're all in this together. We have to tough it out."
"What is there to live for?" Tears spilled from Mac's eyes. She hated this – this weakness. She was supposed to be this tough United States Marine but she was terrified. They had nearly died. If Admiral Chegwidden had doubted even for a second that this nuclear exchange was going to happen, they all would have been incinerated in nuclear hellfire. As it was, it was Rear Admiral AJ Chegwidden's foresight that sent them all to Mount Storm. And it was Animal and Harm's heroism that brought Bud, Harriet and their family to the Mount Storm Vault or they would have been mourning the loss of their closest friends, lost in the detonation of a 5 MT nuclear weapon. The unfairness of it all came pouring out of her in a bitter tide. She had undergone brutal abuse at the hands of her father Joe Mackenzie and with the help of her Uncle Matt she had beat that. She had been drawn up on charges of fraternization with a superior and beat that. She almost went down for murder, but beat that charge as well. Her fling with Commander Mic Brumby and almost-marriage floundered because she couldn't stop vascillating between Harm and Mic and now most certainly Mic Brumby was radioactively char-broiled by a missile from China. And if Australia was most certainly charred from nuclear missiles, then Fort Leavenworth, Kansas would be completely obliterated off the face of the planet. Her heart heaved as she silently mourned for Uncle Matt and for someone she considered as close as a surrogate father – who saved her to the last, Rear Admiral AJ Chegwidden.
"We can't lose hope." Jen said. "That's all we have left…" They seemed to instinctively know after this disaster, there was no military left; there were no ranks – there was only each other and each one of them knew it. The only hierarchy there was left was the base commander who was Tom Boone and the vice-commander who was Animal but everybody else was equal.
"We're cut off from everybody." That was a fact that no-one could refute and it left them silent wondering if they were the only ones left in this world.
Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Cheyenne Mountain, Wyoming. Office Commanding Officer,
North American Aerospace Defense Command
"General Stafford, the attack has destroyed every single city of strategic importance off the face of the earth " Colonel Shawn Hanson, Royal Canadian Air Force stated quietly. General Richard Stafford, USAF General, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command shook his head in disbelief. "The attack destroyed 60% of our retaliatory capability and we have committed those to the attack which has already commenced on Soviet and Chinese soil. General David Horner Jr., commander Space Command looked over at Col. Hanson and grunted, "We'll be sitting ducks when the Soviets retaliate with their backup SS-18 Mod 1s. They've got 20MT warheads and the White House never determined if the Soviets said did what they said they did." Horner growled with regards to the White House-Kremlin nuclear disarmament treaties that were negotiated in 1991. "They may have took them off-line, but held them in reserve. Lugar may have witnessed one SS-18 destruction, but I doubt they destroyed them all. So what do you think we'll be in when they reactivate them?"
"A world of shit!" General Stafford swore. "Backup communications VLF? Any of the other Vaults have command and control?"
"Correct, sir." Colonel Hanson replied. "But essentially, they've cut our head off, because Command and Control is controlled under UHF. With the EMP blast, it's going to take weeks to get the system online. All we can hope for is VLF transmission to the sites and hope that they use their initiative if their control hasn't been taken off-line."
"We have stocked most shelters with CDV-700 Geiger Counters so that people will be able to venture out after six weeks to see how far the rads have come down." Colonel Mitscher stated. Colonel Kevin Mitscher was a CBRN specialist with a group of about 50 people who specialized in treating victims of and prepping for defence against Chemical, Biological, Radiologic and Nuclear situations.
"In a man-to-man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine." ― Erwin Rommel
If someone was still around to be able to see the surface of the earth, it would have resembled the surface of an over-baked pie; an absolutely alien surface covered in little dots of open flame. Smoke deadly and radioactive swirled around the surface of what used to be dotted with trees. Every so often a piece of damaged building would crack and fall off of what remained of the structure. Fires raged throughout the cities unchecked as the emergency services were either vaporized or were dying casualties themselves. The detonation of multiple warheads had made the surface of the earth practically unliveable at least for the next 80 years. Periodic tornadic whirlwinds scoured the earth's surface spawned by the fires and the climate change caused by multiple nuclear detonations.
Large amounts of dust were kicked up by the blasts thrown up into the atmosphere and were now circling the earth in the form of radioactive clouds. Looking down a street one could see the charred lumps of blackened suet in human form, what clothes the people were garbed in had burned off, a figure, similarly a hunk of blackened meat, lay over the hood of a twisted mound barely recognizable as a car. The sign sat in a heap, blown off by winds generated by the force of the multiple five megaton blasts detonated over Dulles International Airport. If one could turn the sign over, they would have read the sign as "JAG Headquarters". Looking closer at one of the charred figures, the viewer would have seen that the figure held a twisted metal frame. The glass of the frame had melted onto the charred edges of a picture, inadvertently protecting it, which barely burned even in the incredible heat of several 5MT blasts and the resultant explosion of the gas furnace that powered the JAG HQ, a portrait of what was recognizable as a dark-haired woman would be seen.
Andrews Air Force Base was an unrecognizable crater two hundred and fifty feet deep thanks to 3 five megaton detonations centered on the base itself, two of the warheads set for surface detonation to take out the runways. The clouds had coalesced into an impenetrable layer from which no sunlight could get through and the roentgen equivalent man (rem) count soared – anything still left alive was sentenced to a slow death from radiation sickness.
"What a curious picture it is to find man, homo sapiens, of divine origin, we are told, seriously considering going underground to escape the consequences of his own folly. With a little wisdom and foresight, surely it is not yet necessary to forsake life in the fresh air and in the warmth of the sunlight. What a paradox if our own cleverness in science should force us to live underground with the moles." ~ J William Fulbright.
Mt Storm Emergency Facility, Somewhere in the Blue Mountains of Virginia
"Admiral…" Tom Boone grinned as he looked over at Animal and Harm "Wanted to show you something that might brighten your day." He pointed to an elevator "Twenty years of technology went into this complex. It's even more expansive than the Cheyenne Mountain complex. As you know, the mountains that this complex is located in are large. In twenty years, we've had time enough to expand this complex into something that the Russians couldn't even begin to think possible." The elevators closed on the three of them and the elevator began its descent. "This complex is rated hardened enough to take the blast of the Tsar Bomba that they planned not just the one they detonated! Frankly it puts the Air Force's Cheyenne Mountain to shame. We put several sections on this facility – each able to withstand a five megaton blast and we can section off areas so that if they're damaged, we just cut them off completely. The food and other storage are located in the section which can withstand a hundred megaton blast so we'll never risk our food supply. But what we have here, for when we need to escape this area is this:" he said as the elevator door opened onto a large underground facility lit up by banks of cold LEDs that were behind Fresnel lenses that projected a large amount of light onto the floor of the facility. Animal looked over the complex which was a wide open flat area. Parked on the flat area were six F/A-18s and 2 F-14Ds as well as six Blackhawk helicopters. CAG grinned back at Animal whose jaw was practically on the floor. "The whole facility roof is anchored to the mountain.
"Tell me you have helo and aircraft simulators to keep up flight hours and to train other potential pilots" Harm and Animal said simultaneously.
"Already done." Boone said. "We need to train more pilots who will be able to fly these aircraft just in case we have to do a rapid evacuation of this facility. The blast doors that seal off the underground airfield from the outside cost two point six billion dollars each designed to withstand overpressures of 100 psi – which means they won't get blown in by a nuke ten times as big as the projected Tsar Bomba. The blast doors will slide apart in just under 30 seconds, so that the aircraft can be airborne inside of two minutes." Animal looked down the mountain complex – it disappeared into the distance - and then looked back at Tom Boone who nodded in affirmative, "The entirety of the runway is underground." He confirmed. "We have ducts and fans to enable the exhaust from the aircraft during run-up tests and take-off and landing to be shuttled from the airfield chamber to the green chamber where we keep our trees and organics to be able to convert the exhaust carbon dioxide to oxygen and that way we re-circulate our air. Helps out the air circulation system so that it isn't overloaded if the greenery takes part of the workload off the ACS."
"Armory?" Harm asked.
"Yes, you realize how much the arms budget was? Some of it was diverted in here." Boone replied.
"Specials?" Animal asked not really wanting to hear the answer. After the nuclear devastation that was visited on the surface, he didn't want to really have to drop one to protect the facility. The F/A-18C was B-83 certified.
"We have 27 B-83s in the special weapons locker. We have an armed guard contingent and the only two people who have access to that would be you…and me." Boone pointed at Animal specifically and then back at himself "So far it appears that we have the only operational nukes left. Unless they stored some in other Vaults too and even if they did, they don't have a functional delivery system. The intercontinental ballistic missiles are all gone and we have, as far as we know, the only functional airfield for miles around. "
The B-83 was one of the smaller nuclear weapons that were rated to be dropped from fighter-bombers but make no mistake, it wasn't a light-weight as far as yield was concerned. The top dial-a-yield for a B-83 was one point two megatons which could impact a severe amount of damage to any potential city-target.
Boone looked at him casually as he said. "It was classified till now, but the F-14s can carry the B-83 too. They were certified prior to the Gulf War. They kept that fact secret to you aviators just so the enemy wouldn't catch wind of it." Animal snorted in response but kept silent.
Harm pondered the sense of having nuclear weapons still left in the special weapons bunker, but a situation like this called for making sure of the safety of their little community. If any attackers (left alive) were to locate an nuclear ammo dump that hadn't been vaporized and become nuclear armed or a hostile Vault stocked with SADMs (Small Atomic Demolition Munitions) were to come across their little community, it would be met with lethal force. Far be it from the Mount Storm survivors to want to nuke other survivors, however if the intruders had hostile intent, it would be necessary to eliminate them with due prejudice. Would he be able to reconcile the "defensive" actions with the result: more scorched and irradiated earth?
They looked at the underground airfield which Animal thought was a crowning achievement. Enormous in its size with a single active runway as well as plenty of tarmac for the few aircraft that they had as well as buildings and a control tower built into the mountain structure to be able to overlook the airfield. Animal could barely fathom the work that had to have taken place in order to create this section of mountain. How much blasting, how much shoring up the mountain had to have to keep from collapsing in on itself.
So long as nuclear weapons continue to exist, so will the temptation to threaten others with overwhelming military force. ~ Daisaku Ikeda
Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Cheyenne Mountain, Wyoming. Office Commanding Officer,
North American Aerospace Defense Command
"So…" General Stafford said. "Can we contact Vaults 1 thru 16?" Vaults were the term for the sixteen bunkers that were built to withstand nuclear attack and were top secret to keep the enemy from learning of their locations. They were just numbered because they were military bunkers primarily built to hold members of the military. The Vaults was scattered throughout the country. Vaults 1-7 were located on the East Coast. Vaults 8 through 12 were located on the West Coast. 13-16 were located in Mid-West. There were also civilian and government bunkers, but the military was not privy to that information.
"Yes, sir. The communication will take some time though considering that we are using VLF transmission rather than UHF communication." Colonel Mitscher replied. "Mt. Storm is not responding. It could be that they have been destroyed or they could not have their equipment working yet."
"It looks as though a detonation occurred at that location during the course of the attack and considering how much it was hardened, the nuke could have destroyed the site." Stafford responded. "Keep hailing them and see if they respond."
"Crow Rock has responded. They withstood a 5 MT blast and are staying put for now. They probably won't be heading outside for at least four weeks until the radiation dies down." Col. Mitscher replied.
"What about Denver?" Stafford asked.
"Denver Airport has been obliterated by six DongFeng missiles and there are reports that the bunker itself has been destroyed." The Denver Bunker was a civilian/military bunker and it was reputed to have been hardened to stop five megaton blasts, but the overpressure caused by six missiles at maximum yield detonating simultaneously spaced one mile apart had obliterated the airport in a blast wave so intense that it caused a crater that was 300 feet deep and six miles wide.
General Stafford had heard about the conspiracy theories regarding Denver Airport and had snickered at the theorists who persisted futilely as they were thought as crackpots or militia-right wing anarchists who had a few screws loose. Most people dismissed them – however in every lie some grain of truth exists. In this case, the theorists hadn't known just how close they were to uncovering the truth.
Freedom Bunker, Somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains
Billy wasn't a happy camper. When he caught wind of the fact that he heard about the rising tensions between Russia and the United States, he was already at his bunker. It was just a matter of getting the rest of the boys there. The bunker was fully stocked – he and his wife Rachel had made sure of that. If the balloon went up, he was absolutely certain that he wasn't going to be stuck outside. So when the news got tense, he and his wife and kids had made their way up to the bunker and had hunkered in. By and by, his buddies had made their way up to the bunker too, each survivalist knowing that they needed to be out of the target area and well upwind of the target area.
Each survivalist knew exactly how to keep an eye on the wind direction and speed. They knew how to deal with radiological poisoning, stocking iodine tablets, water purification procedures and other survival tips and tricks. They were all card-carrying militia group members that knew their weapons and knew how to use them.
Billy and a few of his friends had bought into the prepper lifestyle years ago and the large cavernous bunker that they had was the product of their ingenuity. Excavating an established mine into a usable bunker was a task that had taken the better part of a decade and a half but finishing it up and fitting it with a cast iron 2 foot thick blast door that had to be set on custom-made hinges and manually moved was a feat of hill-billy engineering that they still were proud of. A second set of iron blastdoors were placed strategically after a few zigzags (that were built in already to the mine-shaft prevented an incursion of radiation from entering the shelter. After all, the government wasn't going to help them out at this time. And Billy wasn't about to ask for help either – not from the government. You couldn't trust anyone from the government. If the government showed up, it was to take their belongings by force and leave them out in the cold. When they knew that war was imminent, Billy, Rachel and the rest of the prepper families had bugged out to their bunker and holed up, shutting the door to the outside world. They had no connections with the outside world, but they knew instinctively that the balloon had gone up.
There were a grand total of seven families with all their kids at the bunker – all had the same belief system – that God was their ultimate judge and the government was an interloper against the rightful decrees of the Almighty. Most outsiders would have deemed their beliefs fanatical. But to Billy, it was just the way he was raised – get up in the mornin', work hard for a livin' and trust in the Lord God Almighty that He will provide. And when the holocaust happened, that he would pray to the Lord that the righteous survive and that they would provide a new foundation for this world to survive and prosper according to God'.
But being stuck in what amounted to a glorified hole in the ground bereft of the creature comforts of home would be enough to drive any sane person stark ravin', foaming at the mouth looney-tunes. And Timmy was part of the way there, sitting there in a chair mumbling to himself, cleanin' his shotguns and saying how anybody tried to break into the bunker was going to get a full face-load of double-ought. But then again, Timmy had served in 'Nam and he was a tunnel-rat. Frankly to be a tunnel-rat one had to be half-off their rocker to begin with. Tunnel rats were expected to go clear out Viet Cong tunnels armed only with a flashlight, a fighting knife and a .45. Timmy was in his late 50s, the hardened, ex-military grandpa of the bunch but this last "war" had nearly sent him around the bend. Because this was a war he couldn't understand – the war he had fought was hand-to-hand, seeing the face of the enemy that you were killing as you shoved your combat knife between his third and fourth ribs angled upwards to make a clean puncture of the aorta. This one was a faceless war – you pushed a button and ten million people died. It was clean, detached almost antiseptic in its brutality and it was something of he couldn't make sense. That pushed his emotional equilibrium completely off-balance.
"Monogamy is the least of the taboos which nuclear war demolishes" ~ Paul Brians - .edu/~
Mount Storm Emergency Facility, Somewhere in the Blue Mountains of Virginia
Tom Boone, Animal and Harm headed back up to the upper levels of the Mt. Storm complex. Looking over at the other two, Tom Boone said. "This has been a hell of a situation that we find ourselves in." Stepping into a conference room, he pulled up a chair and sat down, motioning the other two to sit as well. "We are perhaps one of the very few people to survive this holocaust. Our main goal is survival – nothing else." He rested his elbow on the armrest of the chair that he was sitting in, using his index and middle finger to massage his temple as he pondered carefully his next words. "Social norms are an artifical construct." Animal and Harm looked at each other with a carefully guarded expression as Tom continued. "We all knew that social norms such as killing someone or stealing vital resources would fly out the window in the face of a nuclear war. You might be very uncomfortable with what I have to say here. We have fifty people in total in here. Some of you are already paired up. But it is essential that we have a new generation to run this complex." Animal and Harm started to look more and more uncomfortable in their chairs. "What I'm asking in real life would have been showing a red flag to a bull under more normal circumstances as red-blooded males, however we have all been through hell in the past 48 hours – you're probably all reeling, but I'm going to have to put it to you straight." Tom had always been a straight-shooter, Harm realized with dismay. "You males and the females in this complex are going to have to repopulate this planet. And that pretty much blows the concept of monogamy out the window."
"Are you nuts?!" Animal was the first to stand up. "You do realize that Lia and I have been married for 10 years?" Animal didn't like the thought of it – if anything he was absolutely faithful to his wife and had been no matter whether he was on deployment or not.
"Animal, concept number one. Established fact – genetic diversity allows survival." Tom replied, not rising to Animal's angered reply. "And to that end, monogamy has to end...to allow our survival as a species."
"So you're telling me that I have to tell Lia that our marriage has to be dissolved, so I can go copulate with some female that I don't have any clue of in order to ensure the continuation of our species?! FUCK!" Animal pushed the chair aside, and paced the room – Tom could see the steam coming off Animal as he pondered the unthinkable. Whirling around, Animal snapped angrily. "Oh, that's rich, Tom. What the hell happened to for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish…till death do us part? Am I supposed to forsake those vows I took to Lia and say Oh, Honey, I guess I have to go fuck someone else because nuclear war happened and I have to make sure that we all survive for generations to come?"
Harm could see the opportunity, but the simple fact that pair-bonds were being disallowed was a major deterrent. But he had to defuse this situation before it got out of hand. "So, CAG…" Harm began slowly. "So what you're saying is that pair-bonds are disallowed? Sex is allowed but there can't be any emotion about it, no attachments?"
"At least not until we have a lot of children who can end up starting the next generation when they are old enough to pair bond for themselves. As of now you have to consider yourselves all single – frankly to tell you the truth, all your marriage records have been turned into radioactive ash so there is no proof of marriage." Tom replied with finality. "If you want, I can have a meeting and you can all hear it from the horse's mouth."
Animal restrained himself admirably from saying that Tom was speaking from the horse's other orifice and said quietly as he forced his anger down. "So what is this going to be? An antiseptic rotation screw-schedule? Person A, at 4:35-5:10 you go have a roll in the hay with Person B…?"
"Might be an idea." Tom retorted just to piss Animal off even more. "I'm sure I'll get people who are more amenable to it from the ones who are single and fancy themselves as Casanovas. However I'm sure the married ones will object, just as you are doing right now."
Animal got up. "I need to kill this meeting. I have a lot to think about right now." Animal said dourly as he walked to the door. "By your leave." He opened the door, stepped through it and closed it behind him.
"I knew he wasn't going to take it well." Tom said. "But unfortunately we have to do this or we'll only suffer down the road. We need the genetic diversity in order to be able to not have physical or mental problems down the road as a species."
"So when did you become an evolutionary biologist? CAG?" Harm asked sardonically – feeling the fact that his mentor was absolutely pissed off, having walked out of the room.
"Since I had command of this project. You wouldn't believe the shit we had to read and study in order to ensure the survival of our species in case of Doomsday." Tom retorted caustically. "I can understand Animal's anger, but we need every viable chance we can get to make damned sure we don't go the way of the dodo."
Lia and Animal's Compartment
Lia looked up at Animal in horror. "You mean he suggested that?" Animal shook his head quietly. This probably was the last time that Animal would be able to hold her the way that he had for the past ten years.
Animal said quietly. "He already came to the decision to make monogamy illegal in this complex. We have no choice but to comply. I stated my objections and couldn't make him see that there are some of us who hold our vows more solidly than our life."
"But…" Lia said. "What about our marriage. Wouldn't that be going against the social norms."
"Lia, my love." Animal reached out gathering her into his arms. "the first thing he said before he announced this was that social norms have been eliminated when the first nuclear bomb detonated. Our marriage documents are radioactive dust and that monogamy had to be abolished in order for our species to survive."
Lia looked upset, angry even. "I cherish my vows, but to think that Tom could make such light of it that he would turn around and split us apart, it pisses me off to no end." She whirled around and spat out caustically her voice dripping with sarcastic venom. "What does he expect the married folks to do? 'Oh, honey, my sweet, let's have one last fuck for old time's sake?'. This is absolute bullshit! Does he not think that the females in this complex would have something to say about that too? Does he think we're herd cattle, just here to cater to the sexual wants and desires of the men? Does he not realize that we have some desires too…like staying with the man that I chose to be my mate?"
"I don't like this either." Animal said, wondering whether Lia's anger was aimed at him (the messenger of bad news) or whether she was supremely pissed off at Tom Boone. He also wondered if he felt that he had capitulated to Tom Boone too early.
It seemed like Lia collapsed in on herself as a tear ran down her cheek. "I hate to sound like a romantic cliché, but Toshio…I need you." She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned up to kiss him solidly on the mouth. She choked out a mixture of a laugh and a sob and whispered huskily to him. "Oh, honey, my sweet, let's have one last fuck for old time's sake…I want you…and if I am to help with continuing the species, I want the first baby I have to be pregnant with, to be the one that was fathered by my rightful husband."
Mt Storm Communications Room, Mount Storm Emergency Facility, Somewhere in the Blue Mountains of Virginia
"Sir, we have communications restored." Chief Radioman Alan Mahoney stated to "And we have a message coming in from Cheyenne Mountain. They survived the attack but they're staying hunkered down and saying when they are sufficiently able to ascertain the levels of radiation – they will let us know, sir."
"What about Crow Rock?" Boone asked quietly as Harm stood beside him.
"So far nothing yet." The chief looked at him. "I will continue to check the frequencies and make sure that we make communications contact with them as soon as they get their equipment running again. Sir!"
"Drop the sir, Alan. We're no longer military – this is now a civilian base and we're no longer under the dictates of a United States of America as it ceased to exist." Tom Boone looked at the former Navy Chief. From now on we're our own governing independent state…and we'll be treated as such."
Lia and Animal's Compartment
Lia shuddered in Animal's arms as they both went over the cliff, colloquially speaking. Their joining had been almost violent in its intensity. Nipping his shoulder she ground herself on him in their desire to remember their last time together as a married couple. Collapsing limply onto her chest as she felt him empty himself, his seed rushing to her womb, she panted softly. "I love you."
"I love you too." Animal whispered in her ear as her hair fell softly over them. She eagerly fastened her mouth to his lips – still not tired yet. She was trying to ensure that there would be a growing embryo in her womb by the time they left each other and if it took multiple times to make that happen, she would do so. "You're insatiable." He said softly as he felt her reach down and massage him back to action.
Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Cheyenne Mountain, Wyoming, Office Commanding Officer,
North American Aerospace Defense Command
A radio tech rushed up to General Stafford. "Sir, we just made contact with Mount Storm."
The general looked at the dispatch quietly. "Understood. Mt. Storm is declaring independence." The general grinned at the other general and colonel. "Well…General – secession was imminent. The God's Honest Truth is that the United States of America is no longer a viable nation – it fell the day the bombs fell. We are an independent state – however we can join Mount Storm as a mutual protection coalition." The general said quietly allowing the others time to ponder his words. "We have no military, our ranks are just decorations and the only thing that we have command for is to protect a stable form of governance. The only way that we will survive is to join with Mount Storm and be a mutually beneficial coalition force for survival.
General Horner and Colonel Mitscher pondered this and came to the conclusion that this truly was their only method of survival in a situation where the nuclear weapons had obliterated any form of governmental structure. They would continue to monitor the situation that was going on and make their decisions to extend their communications feelers to any other vaults that would potentially be of mutual assistance.
Colonel Hanson pondered the situation. Canada had been hit just as hard from the nuclear weapons. Ottawa and Toronto were gone. Vancouver was heavily damaged and the ports were destroyed. Vancouver International Airport was hit with a 5 MT Dong Feng to prevent US forces from using it as an alternate staging facility. Edmonton and Calgary were all destroyed. To put it simply - any viable city with an airport that had a runway longer than 4,000 feet was destroyed by nuclear strikes. With the obliteration of Ottawa, Canada's Capital City, there was no more Canadian Forces High Command. The National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa had been the intersection point for three Russian 800kT nuclear warheads – One centered on Parliament Hill, One directly over the National Defence Headquarters and one centered on the Government Conference Center. Each of these three detonations produced temperatures over a million degrees Fahrenheit – the blast waves sending debris from ruined buildings a mile away hurtling at hurricane force wind speeds. In a split second 1.26 million people were vaporized. Including the detonations of 1 800Kt warhead over a civilian airport with a runway over 4,000 feet long and another R12 2.3 MT warhead over Ottawa International Airport and Ottawa looked like a seething mass of radioactive clouds billowing in the air. Anything currently living there would be dying slowly of radiation poisoning. Colonel Hanson considered himself very lucky that he was living in the protected confines of Cheyenne Mountain.
Lia and Animal's Compartment
Considering the fact that they had to conserve water, showering was a very hurried affair. Lia clung to Animal as they showered off from the carnal exertions that they had gone to great lengths to complete. Lia hoped that she had a child from the joining as that would effectively take her out of the reproduction rotation. And maybe in the interim she would find a viable alternative to broach to Tom Boone in order to facilitate the potential of pairing off in bonds.
Leaning up to kiss Animal, Lia murmured softly. "I hope we have a child…out of this. My first should be yours."
"So do I." Animal replied as he caressed Lia's bare back. Washing off entailed turning the showerhead on, getting wet, turning the showerhead off while quickly soaping up, turning the water back on then rinsing off. All water went to a waste-water reclamation plant inside the mountain to be disinfected, cleaned, deodorized and sent back into rotation for use again.
When they had gotten dressed again, Lia mentioned quietly. "So what are you going to do about the jealousy aspect of this plan."
"I'd hope that Tom Boone had thought of that." Animal replied. "Because things are going to get ugly if people develop pair-bonds even as a result of this and start getting jealous of the situation."
"You guys have it lucky. You can impregnate at will. We have to bear the children." Lia raised an eyebrow and gave him a glower. "That's nine months of having to lug around a 7 lb bowling ball and you guys get to go off and hump another woman."
"ouch…burn…" Animal winced.
"I swear to God, that I will castrate you if you decide to do the dirty with Sarah Mackenzie…" Lia shot daggers at Animal – and those daggers if they were real would have perforated him straight through.
"Heaven forbid…" Animal rolled his eyes. Sarah Mackenzie did not interest Animal in the slightest. And despite the fact that Tom Boone had said that rotations were to involve anyone and everyone in heterosexual pairs, Animal just found the thought of this whole thing as distasteful.
"I love you so much…" Lia whispered softly as she turned up those lashes and eyes at Animal in a pose that he loved so much. "This whole damned reproductive cycle that Boone proposed just makes me feel like a whore. I don't like it." There was nothing much that Animal could say either. The men got the benefit of this, being able to sow their seed far and wide and propagate the next generation of men and women who were to try to bring this barren and radiated planet back to life. What a horrendous setback for women's lib. They were back to being the child-bearers and child-raisers of yesteryear.
Jen, Meg and Mac's Quarters
"They want us to WHAT?!" Mac's voice was a shrill shriek as Harm wondered if he would have to duck to avoid sharp objects being thrown at him. "We're being turned into BREEDING CATTLE?!" Harm was sure that the female Marine had pulled out of the depressive PTSD doldrums by that statement and she was looking for a KBAR to inflict lethal damage to Tom Boone.
Meg's look was of absolute disgust at the thought that such a process of love and commitment could be turned over on its ear and turned into a process of industry – we must make babies or else the future of the world is at stake. Whoever came up with that idea should have been shot, staked and had his (it was a him…only a man could come up with an idea like that…Meg thought to herself) bolsa que contiene los testÃculos surgically removed without aid of anaesthetic. Meg did let her mind wander. To tell the truth, there were only three men in that shelter with whom she could even think of letting them touch her in that way. She had a mind to go tell the former rear admiral and CAG where the hell he could stick his disgusting idea.
Jen had her head in her hands as she could barely wrap her mind around the fact that she like her other two room-mates were considered a baby-train. The men would fall over themselves trying to hump every elegible female in the shelter and they were split pretty evenly down the mix. Twenty six women to twenty four women. She and Harm locked eyes and when Harm looked over at her, she shrugged her shoulders. "I'm formerly a preacher's kid. You can see how much I care for this idea." Jen said softly as she looked over at Harm.
"Tom told me to go tell you. He's going to hold a meeting down on the lower levels to notify the rest of the people in the shelter about the plan." Harm replied not liking the response that he was going to get from the rest of the people in the shelter. When a group works for a long as they did on this project, it was certain that a few of them were close and that they would be pairing up in contravention of Boone's edict.
"Well…my answer is exactly this:" Harm only had a split-second warning before a shoe whistled past his left ear. Mac was glaring at him with a lethal expression that stated that he had better make himself scarce while she figured this out or he would be carried out in a stretcher. "I…AM…NOT…A…BROOD…MARE!" she bit out as she looked Harm in the eye. She was in a lethally angry mood and it wouldn't be wise to prod the she-wolf any longer. He figured discretion was the better part of valor and backed out the door, shutting it before Mac could make any more heavy objects airborne.
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