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Title: Earth's Fury: Our Last Thanksgiving
Series: Book 1 of The Prepper's Son Trilogy
Author: Declan Conner
Genre: Dystopian Science Fiction
Prologue
No Mercy
Rob Bell
Bell’s construction site
Ballona Creek. Santa Monica
Day before Thanksgiving
I’d often wondered why people committed suicide. After the morning I’d had at work, I was beginning to think I had the answer. Sitting at my desk in the cabin on my building site that backed onto the Ballona Creek on the outskirts of Santa Monica, frustration had brought me to the point of despair. Working my way through a list of my suppliers’ overdue accounts, phoning them to plead for more supplies for the next house I needed to construct, I was ready to throw the demands in the trashcan. Not having any luck, I had one last supplier left to try and dialed in their number.
“Hi, Bell’s Construction here. I’d like to place an order.”
“Just a moment.” Drumming my fingers on the desk, it was like waiting for Christmas to arrive after they put me on hold.
“Sorry, the computer says your account is on stop.”
“Yes, I know my account is overdue, but I need the materials. I have a sale going through on a house I’ve completed. I need to get the second house started after the Thanksgiving holiday.”
Holding my forehead in the palm of my hand, with my elbow on the table, I listened to his reply. I closed my eyes and shook my head, then sighed.
“No, we haven’t exchanged contracts. It’s Thanksgiving Day tomorrow, but… Shit.” I slammed down the handset on the cradle after he’d closed the call abruptly. I unfastened the button on my shirt collar. Bent my head down and massaged my neck with the fingers of both hands. Pushing back on my chair, I picked up the stack of overdue accounts and tossed them into my in-tray. Picking up my cell phone and scrolling through my contacts, I stopped at Dad’s number and placed the phone on my desk. Chewing on my fingernail, I wasn’t sure if I should call him. The temptation was there to phone him. It was all I could do to resist calling him. It would have defeated the reason I left home in the first place to find my own way in life, without his help. The office phone rang.
“Bell’s Construction,” I answered.
“Kimber’s Attorneys. I have Jeff Kimber on the line for you. Putting you through.” Waiting to hear what he had to say was worse than waiting to see if my wife’s fertility treatment had worked. I expected the worst. From the holder, I picked up a pencil and tapped out a beat on the surface of the desk. His voice boomed in my ear.
“Rob, my friend, how are you?”
“Stressed. Give me the bad news. My day couldn’t get much worse.”
“That bad?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, maybe I can make your day.”
“I hope it’s not something like you’re giving me spare tickets for the next Dodgers’ game?”
“No, the attorneys for that couple who are buying your house have contacted us. Oh, just a moment. My secretary’s saying I have to take another urgent call. Hang on.” Hang on! He left hanging all right. It was as though I had a noose around my neck, and it was tightening as I waited. If it was Jeff going to tell me they were making a further lowball offer, I’d have pulled my hair out by the roots. They’d already caused me pain by pausing the exchange of contracts and completion date to negotiate further, and I’d cut the price to the bone.
“Sorry about that. Where was I? Oh yeah, we exchange contracts the day after Thanksgiving and we can complete the same day. Expect the money to hit your bank account later that day. It will just need you to initial the price change if you stop by the office.”
For a moment, numbness washed through me. I was lost for words. It was as though I’d been rolling around in pain and had suddenly broken wind, such was the relief. “Rob, are you there?”
“What! Oh yeah, I’m here. Listen, I need you to phone Gary Tomlinson, my account manager at the bank with the news. Ask him if he’ll extend my overdraft by eighty thousand, so I can pay suppliers today. It’ll sound more official coming from you if you tell him we’re to exchange contracts.”
“You’re paying me, but I doubt he’ll accommodate you in this recession. Things can go wrong before an exchange and completion date, as you know, and I’m sure he’ll have that in mind.”
“It’s got to be worth a try.”
“Okay, I have your bank details here. I’m on it now. I’ll get back to you within the hour,” he said, and closed the call.
Jim, the groundwork contractor, walked into my office. He had a look on his face that told me I had other problems. He took off his hardhat and slapped it against his thigh. “The cement mixer truck has arrived. Damn driver says he won’t unload his cement into the footings unless his boss tells him you’ve paid your account.”
“It must be a mistake. I’ll phone them and be right out.”
As he stormed out of the door to my cabin, I dialed the supplier’s number. “Accounts please,” I said, and they patched me through.
“Joanna speaking.”
“Hi, Rob Bell here, Bell’s Construction. I have your driver here and he says he won’t unload until I’ve paid my account.”
“That’s right. You know our proforma terms and you promised us the money in our account today.”
“Yes, but that was before an exchange was put on hold for a house I’ve sold. My attorney now says we will complete in two days. I can pay then.”
“Sorry, no deposit to our account, no delivery.”
“Can he wait until my attorney phones back in the hour? He’s talking to my bank right now to clear funds and I could wire the money and have them send confirmation.” “I’ll give you ten minutes. We have other customers we can deliver to, and the cement can’t lie idle forever. So that’s it, you have ten minutes.”
“Okay,” I said, and closed the call. “Bastards.”
After pacing up and down in my cabin, continually glancing at the minute hand on the wall clock, every judder of the minute hand wound up my stress levels. One minute to go and the phone rang. Darting over to my desk, I almost lost my footing. A slight tremor shook the cabin, and I knocked over my coffee mug, the contents spilling over blueprint plans. I snatched the handset to my ear, while picking up a cloth to soak up coffee.
“Rob, it’s Jeff. Sorry. The bank won’t play ball. You’ll just have to wait for the money to hit your account. It’s only for two days.”
“Okay, thanks for trying.”
My entire world had collapsed, along with my spirit. With the call closed and heading outside, the cement mixer pulled away. The groundwork contractor threw his spade down and called his team together.
“Don’t ever call us again,” he hollered in my direction. I looked on as they climbed into their van and drove away.
My joiner exited the completed house.
“Any damage with that tremor?” I asked.
“No, we’re good. I had a look around.”
As I headed back inside my cabin, still seething at the cement mixer leaving, I was thinking Dad was right and I was a waste of space. At this rate, I didn’t think I’d ever prove him wrong as hard as I’d tried. At that moment, I wondered if I’d chosen the wrong career after leaving college with a degree in economics. It was the thought of having to wear a shirt and tie every day stuck in an office that made me start a construction business. Maybe it was because I’d been brought up on a farm. I sighed as I opened my desk drawer and pulled out my diary. Opening it at the day’s date, I crossed out the planned note for the cement to be poured into the footings. Flicking over the page, I’d scrawled across it with “Thanksgiving Holiday.” Turning back to the day’s date, I wrote myself a note.
“Today was a shit day with mixed blessings.”
I knew I wasn’t out of the woods yet until the money for the house I’d sold arrived in my account. Even that wouldn’t wipe out my personal, or my business debt, not after buying the land at the top of the market. Only constructing and selling that second house would bail me out. That got me to thinking what would happen if the sale didn’t go through, and I shuddered at the notion. It made me wonder how on Earth I would have told my wife that we were bankrupt, when she didn’t know how bad things were with money.
I glanced over at the wall-mounted television on mute. A news caption caught my attention. I turned up the volume.
“… unusual number of tremors have been recorded in downtown LA. Scientists are linking this to the eleven-year cycle of solar storms. NASA claims that positive charged particles from such a storm could interfere with the Earth’s magnetic core and cause the activity we are seeing at the intersection of Earth’s tectonic plates. They believe this results in overactive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions we are experiencing. But of more concern is the damage that could ensue, caused by radiation which could affect satellites, together with the power grid, and electronic equipment if an electronic magnetic pulse strikes Earth. Meanwhile, in Japan…”
I hit the OFF button and set off outside, wishing an EMP would strike the bank’s servers and wipe out my debt.
Chapter 1
Family Discord
Thanksgiving Day
Rob Bell’s household
The gated community
Santa Monica
It wasn’t like me, as I’m usually passive, but I had it in mind that I would throttle someone before the day was out. Strange how your mind twists inside out when you’re stressed. But then I had every reason to be ticked off.
It was meant to be the beginning of a season of optimism. The day was anything but that. While picking at the turkey on my plate, my mind was consumed with worry about the financial straitjacket we were in as a family if something held up the completion of the sale. Our gated-community fees were overdue, and together with other mounting debts, an overworked thought process fried my brain.
I glanced at the food machines around the dining table masquerading as family. Thanksgiving! There wasn’t anything to be thankful for. At least, no one around the table seemed to be grateful for me supporting them all. I’d worked my butt off day in and day out on my construction site to pay for the spread they were stuffing in their crumb catchers. Saying that, it was the credit card company that had actually paid for everything. Hell, we even had to use plastic to pay for our cleaner to come in and prepare the food we were eating.
Looking across at my wife, I recalled Dad pulling me to one side the first time he met her, when he whispered. “I hope you know what you’re doing, son. She’s a looker alright, but she comes across as lacking substance between the ears.” I was beginning to think he was right. Donna sure knew how to spend my hard-earned money on designer clothes, throw parties, and how to satisfy me in the sack. That was about the sum of her side of the marriage bargain. Donna had inherited her culinary skills from her mom. She could scratch a sandwich together, use the microwave, and make coffee, but that was about the extent of her domesticity.
Before switching off the television and taking my place at the table, the news had been nothing but one natural disaster after another around the world. It reminded me of what Dad always said when he was on one of his end-of-days’ rants as a prepper nutjob. “You’ll have to jettison all excess baggage, and only stick with those around you who can give something back.” Thinking that, Donna would have had to be the first one to go if society broke down following some sort of catastrophic event. It was all I could do to fight the thoughts rolling around in my mind. But with our financial position, my depression was sinking to new depths that I couldn’t crawl out of, leaving me to question my sanity. Maybe if I’d have confided in her, I could have shared the burden. Maybe it was pride. Who knows? Instead, all it was leading to were arguments and me having a bad attitude.
I blamed the stalemate in government for the poor economy and the way my mind was churning.
“Rob, you okay? You seem distant,” said Donna, and reaching out, she gave my hand a gentle squeeze.
“I’m fine,” I said, raising a smile, though I wasn’t okay. It had only been a small gesture, but her reaching out to me gave my spirits a lift. Really, I didn’t have to look far under the surface to know I didn’t want to live without her. I must have been wearing my depression on my face when Donna’s dad piped up.
“You look deep in thought, Rob. What are you thinking?” said George. Then he continued to dismember the rest of the turkey leg with his teeth.
“Yeah, thinking about work. We’re behind schedule.”
I glanced at my in-laws. Six months they’d been living with us, ever since their house got ripped apart by a tornado. Not lifted a finger to help in all the time they’d been staying with us. Not that I didn’t have any sympathy at the time, and they were retirees, but their presence now grated on me. Even the cart full of toilet rolls we had to buy every other week annoyed me. They had sponging down to an art. They were soaking up the life’s blood from me. A question boiled inside me as Ann forked a roast potato into her mouth.
“How’s the insurance money coming along so you can have your home rebuilt?” I asked. Ann choked on the roast potato, but not letting it escape, she managed to gulp it down, then took a sip of water.
George coughed and spluttered, holding a napkin to his mouth, his eyes watering from gorging on the turkey leg as fuel for his two hundred and twenty-two-pound frame. I half hoped a bone from the leg had stuck in his throat.
“You know insurance companies. Dragging their heels in the loss-adjustor’s department,” said Ann, forking another roast potato and then dumped it into her mouth, subject and lips closed, yet still having the appearance of a grin on her face.
Donna poked my shoulder with her finger.
“Talking about insurance claims, or more to the point—not claiming insurance,” said Donna. “I could do with a new car since that idiot banged my fender and bumper. The garage hasn’t made a good match with the paintwork. I told you we should have made a claim and taken it to the distributor for repairs.”
Stabbing at a pea on my plate, it took flight, landing somewhere in the room. I glared at Donna. “Idiot? Since when did they describe inanimate objects as idiots? Last I heard, you were the idiot for not stopping and hitting that shopping cart.”
“Well, some idiot left it there.”
“That’s right,” said George.
“What? That the cart was the idiot, or Donna?”
“Well, someone left it in the middle of the parking lot, and besides, you should have made a claim. Not much resale value in a mismatched paint job,” said George, leaving me feeling outnumbered.
“Yeah, well, we don’t have the budget for increased premiums or a new car. Money is tight.”
Donna laughed, then sent me a closed-lipped glare, wagging her fork at my face. “Tight? You mean you’re tight. Tighter than a duck’s ass,” she said. “I don’t know why you had to stop paying for fertility treatment. You could have found the money somehow.” “We’re only twenty-nine, for Christ’s sake. Plenty of time for having kids.” Her saying that had been like a kick in the gut. She knew damn well there was a recession. I shook my head. Seems I was the only realist around the table. Calling me tight wouldn’t alter the reality that we were financially screwed. I had to dig deep for a glib answer. “Anyway, what’s wrong with being tight? I’d rather land on the water and float than sink in a lake of debt with my ass open. The costs of starting a family don’t just end after term. We need to start being frugal, that’s all. My cards are maxed out until I can close a contract on one of the houses I have for sale. It would help if you were working. It’s been twelve months since you closed the beauty salon. What’s in the pipeline?”
Relief washed over me at having broached the subject of the financial position. Donna shrugged her shoulders.
“Oh, for God’s sake, I saved you four hundred dollars on this cheap dress I’m wearing.” It was my turn to choke on my food. I knew better than to have asked how her nonexistent job applications were coming along. Now she was changing the subject. “But the damn dress cost me four hundred dollars.”
“Yeah, but I got it in the sale. It should have been double that price.”
I rolled my eyes. Her logic defied a reply.
“That’s my daughter. Frugal should have been her middle name. You tell him, honeykins. I didn’t bring you up to be anything other than careful spending money,” said her mom. I stared at Ann. She should have said, “careful to spend other people’s money.” My hard earned money, I thought. And then, maybe she could have added a hyphenated surname of “Freeloader” into the mix, so I’d have known what I was up against when we first met. Can’t say I could recall ever having split a restaurant bill. I should have read the clues if I hadn’t been so smitten, never mind my best friend Tom trying to put me straight. I’d put his warnings down to his jealousy of her taking up my time that we could have continued to spend hellraising at sorority parties in college. Tom had found it hard to socialize without me as his wingman. Especially considering his sheltered upbringing with ultra-religious parents over in Utah. Maybe that was why we were kindred spirits after my experience of Dad controlling my every move. I had to wonder if his lack of social skills was why he was still single. Sighing, I pushed my plate away. I stood, then moved away from the table. “I need to go to work. Hope you all don’t mind. Money doesn’t grow on trees. I have a house to finish snagging ready for tomorrow.”
“We don’t mind, do we, Mom?”
“No, if things are that bad with money, no problem at all. We’ll miss your company, but needs must.”
Ann was lying when she said they’d miss me. She delivered what she’d said with her prissy falsetto voice, followed by a smirk. She probably realized that my going meant it was more apple-buttermilk pie and custard for them. George was too busy munching on a slice of pumpkin cheesecake to notice me leaving. It was a good thing I did decide to walk out. Any more of the sanctimonious crap that they all threw at me and I’d likely have tipped over the table. Something was going to have to give, and that was the truth. Donna rose from her chair.
“Wait, I’ll put some of your favorite cake in some tin foil for you,” said Donna, and cutting a slice of chocolate cake, she hurried off to the kitchen. She returned, having wrapped up the slice in foil, and then handed it to me. She gave me a peck on the cheek. That sort of took the sting out of what would have been me leaving on a bad note.
Stepping into my den for the pickup keys, the television was still on mute. A news caption caught my attention that the Californian secession terrorists had struck in LA. I turned up the volume. They showed a social-media video clip that the terrorists had uploaded. All it displayed was the Hollywood sign. My jaw dropped in disbelief. In quick succession, a series of explosions threw the letters into the air, then crashed down the hillside. The camera turned to a guy dressed head to toe in black, wearing a motorcycle helmet with a dark tinted visor.
“Now is the time for all you celebrities, film stars, and producers to stand up and be counted. No more pretending that you are not racist when blacks and Hispanics are ignored and denied work and left out of the awards circus. We are coming for you. Come the secession and we will weed you out. Time to repent and to come out now to support our cause for an independent Cascadia.”
The terrorists knew what they were doing. They were already creating fear in the film industry, with many famous names calling for an independent California to suck up to the terrorists out of self-preservation. What with that news and the rest of the riots in the cities around the US, it was getting to the point where I wished I could go and live on an island that couldn’t receive any news broadcasts.
The film cut to the newscaster. He looked unperturbed, simply saying, “Police and the FBI are investigating.” Then he moved on. “In the meantime, following six volcanic eruptions on the North Island of New Zealand, they estimate that the pyroclastic flows have caused at least six thousand deaths in proximity to what they thought were dormant volcanos. Meanwhile, the country has also been rocked with an earthquake in Wellington above eight on the Richter scale…”
I turned off the television, thinking I had enough to worry about at home without distressing about what else was happening around the world.
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