Nuclear Summer by Thornton D. Barnes

Author:Thornton D. Barnes [Barnes, Thornton D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: survivor, nuclear winter, emp, jahid, survival during war, islam, War, survival, terrorism jihad, terrorism atomic bomb attacks
ISBN: 9781310371196
Goodreads: 22758297
Publisher: TD Barnes
Published: 2014-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER SIX - The Move

Both at the mountain outpost and the Nellis base camp, the leaders immediately convened emergency meetings of their people.

With most of his people now being those living near the south portal, Bradley contacted Mayor Robinson to have everyone assembled at the outside corrals. He thought at the time when this might provide him an opportunity to visit his horse that he had not ridden since Stacey and his last ride the morning of the bomb blast that took her and the others away.

By all appearances, he had sucked it up and moved on, but inside the ache of losing Stacey refused to go away. The significant changes in his responsibilities caused by the splitting of the community now gave him more idle time, time that allowed his memories to linger. His spirits lifted when Mayor Robinson offered to have his horse brought to the north portal and suggested he ride it to the meeting.

He and Stacey had returned to their equestrian pleasures at the beginning of this short summer and the lowered radiation levels. They had enjoyed a long ride together the morning of her death. If only she had not remained at the south portal to work with the livestock while he returned to the War Room. This all came back to him as he rode the beautiful gilding sent today, replacing the stallion selected and presented to him by the ranchers a few months earlier. The horse acted skittish when Bradley first mounted, but had now settled into a relaxed walking gait while headed the three miles to the south portal.

Bradley gazed across Jackass Flats at where he and Stacey once raced their horses. Both had learned to love this barren desert even though they never had the opportunity of enjoying the existing wildlife. That was before the diminishing food chain after the EMP and onset of nuclear winter caused extinction.

He rode past the corrals, listening to the cattle mowing, goats and sheep baaing, and his peoples’ excited chatter. Like him, most were dressed in their western garb for this occasion, reminding him of his childhood, the cattle roundups on a West Texas ranch where ranchers pitched in to help each other with livestock branding, dehorning, castrating, and vaccination.

The mood seemed high with the people, at last, enjoying the summer weather and the lower radiation levels, allowing their remaining outside the mountain for longer durations. All still wore their dosimeters, an ever-present reminder of this being a nuclear summer, a summer that might end on a moment’s notice. They seemed to realize the summer’s end rapidly approaching.

Bradley rode up resembling the cigarette Marlboro Man, tilting his hat to the ladies as taught in his childhood, and firmly grasping the hands of the men in brief handshakes as he rode through the crowd and dismounted beside the corrals.

He climbed to the top corral railing and sat facing the small band of western pioneers and their children, some of them now young adults grown from being merely kids when they entered the mountain and a few born while inside the mountain.

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