The remaining college years went by fast with Renee finishing with a Master’s degree in only four years. I in the meantime, had managed to finish only my first two years of coursework. So, I did what any sensible, bought and paid for man would do, I asked Renee to marry me.
We were wed on her twenty second birthday which was fine by me as it meant one less date I had to worry about forgetting in the future, thinking of others was not one of my finer traits. I had not once cheated on Renee nor had I had the urge to do so. It wasn’t because I didn’t have opportunities thrown at me all the time, quite the opposite, I was after all a handsome young man and I certainly had the appearance of big money.
But aside from all the obvious benefits, I really loved that girl and she knew it. But having everything handed to me so easily I had developed a real sense of entitlement and with my loyalty to Renee, I felt that I was deserving of every dime that was spent on me. Yes, I was a schmuck… but at least I was a loyal schmuck.
As a wedding gift Frank bought us a really nice first palace on the other side of Detroit from where my parents lived. The place had a stone wall with wrought iron spikes on top that went all the way around the five acres of property. An automatic gate let you in to a circular drive that fronted the brick and ivy colonial style home with four large columns.
I’ll have to say it really was a spectacular place. It had a five car garage, an indoor lap pool and a large heated outdoor pool surrounded by marble pavers, benches, statues and pillars. It was a fantastic place for entertaining and with Eunice’s guiding hand we had a number of extravagant affairs there. To top it off we had a permanent house staff of three.
We spent seven happy years in that home before our big move to Florida. As time went on I saw less and less of my parents as they no longer were a good fit for my lifestyle. My father was always uncomfortable when he came to the house and that in turn made me uncomfortable. My mother was a chain smoker and since Renee didn’t allow smoking in our home, my Mom was somewhat put off at having to go outside. She really liked Renee, but she just had to have her cigarettes.
I spent most of my spare time at the country club playing tennis and golf and hanging out with my society crew. My younger brother Rex had left Detroit just after high school and was last known to be somewhere in California. He had been a trouble maker since becoming a teen, having been repeatedly suspended from school, having had minor brushes with the law and he was constantly getting drunk or high with his friends.
I tried once to talk some sense into him, but he wasn’t interested. And who was I to say anything to him while I was still milking off of Renee and her father. I know we both broke my parent’s hearts as neither one of us had turned out anything like I know they had hoped for. I had turned into the rich elitist snob and my brother a lazy California doper.
Just before our Florida move my mother had passed away from a stroke. It was probably from hardened arteries from all those years of smoking. Four months after my mother passed my father went to. I think his was from a broken heart from being lost without my mother. He would just sit in the house all day staring out the front window towards the porch where he and my mother had spent many an evening relaxing after the day’s toils.
I believe it was their passing that planted the idea of a move away from Detroit in my head. I was feeling guilty about not having been the son that I thought they had envisioned. That guilt gnawed at my soul to the point where I thought about it constantly. My self-centered attitude had led me to believe that my life would somehow be better, or the guilty feeling at least reduced, if I could get far far away from Detroit.
So, I convinced Renee that we needed a winter place in Florida where we could escape the unforgiving cold of Detroit. We found a small ranch on the east side of a large central Florida lake. It offered warm winters, stunning sunsets, space from any neighbors or traffic congestion and of course it was a long way from Detroit.
Our first stay was for a Christmas break with Frank and Eunice. It was sunny and seventy degrees for most of the week we were there. A cool breeze blew through the row of palms that fronted the lake in the back yard. Frank really enjoyed the warmth and outdoors part of it, but Eunice was not impressed. I believe her only consolation was that it gave her something to go home and bicker about with her snobby friends.
I fell in love with the place and decided I wanted to visit it as often as possible. Renee had been moving up nicely in the company and a second home was an easily afforded luxury item for us. She insisted on buying it outright for me as she had been amassing quite the pile of wealth from work at the firm. I was given free rein to make any additions or updates to the home and since I wasn’t working, I was all too happy to have some goals.
I practically rebuilt the place from the ground up and added all the amenities including a pool with a guest house, a spa and a boat dock. The floors, windows, kitchen and bathrooms were updated along with a porch built with a nice screened sitting area that had a great view of the lake. I also had a large 6 car garage built so that I would have plenty of space for my eventual plethora of toys.
My final addition was the digging of a canal back to a natural spring where I built a Florida hurricane bunker that was attached to a boathouse. I had read stories of the aftermaths of hurricanes where looters ran wild and you would be without power for weeks on end. There had certainly been cases like that, but it was not the norm. But I had the money to burn and had no desire to ruff it if not necessary, so I had the nearly self-sustaining bunker added.
Even though I had not finished my degree in electronics I had decided to make the hurricane bunker my electronics shop. I could tinker away at any project that caught my fancy. Having such a large bankroll behind me allowed me to stock the bunker with a multitude of high end electronic equipment, many a small business would have been envious.
I had spent the most of eight months getting the Florida house in order which had left me with flying home to Detroit on the weekends at first and then every other weekend by the eighth month. I had a nice boat, a couple of four wheelers and various other toys to now play with.
But I wasn’t happy without my Renee there to share in my spending joy. I had decided it was time to convince her to take a leave of absence from the firm and to move to Florida. We would work on that family she had always wanted. She was hesitant at first, but with a little coaxing she warmed to the idea.
It would mean putting her career on hold, but with her own accumulated wealth, and with still having Frank’s deep pockets behind her, it was easy for me to convince her it was the right move. For three years we tried and tried to get pregnant, but as it turned out the doctors said I didn’t have very good swimmers.
Of course this lack of potency and my own self-centered thinking led to my lashing out at Renee for any little trivial issue. I had convinced myself that I should somehow be blaming her for my condition. Well, needless to say, my selfish behavior and her desire to go back to work put a big wedge between us.
It essentially ended when I told her to go back to Daddy and her career and that I hoped she would be happy with her money. The gravy train I had been on for so long suddenly came to a complete stop. Renee left the following morning to go back to Detroit.
Sometimes you know your reactions are wrong, but for some reason you just can’t control your emotions enough to do the right thing. My pig-headed brain had driven the only woman I had loved from my arms over something that was nobody’s fault. I loved Renee, but I was so embarrassed over my condition and the things that I had said that I eventually let almost a full year slip by without so much as a phone call.
The following spring I got the divorce papers in the mail. The terms were quite generous considering the fact that I had brought absolutely no value to the marriage. I got the Florida house and all its furnishings and toys, and two hundred fifty thousand in cash. I took the deal without even thinking about it as I was furious that she wanted a divorce. At the same time I was deeply hurt. From that day on I had regretted not trying to patch things up.
After burning through almost two hundred thousand Dollars of the settlement the first year I knew my spoiled life was heading for some big changes. With my two years of schooling and virtually no work experience whatsoever, I found myself lucky at 32 years of age to find the electronics tech apprenticeship job at a local custom doorbell factory.
It was a low wage assembly job, but with no mortgage and with all my toys already paid for I found it was just enough to pay the bills and keep food on the table. Since the main technology of a doorbell was electronics and given the fact that I had a shop full of equipment, it seemed that it was just the sort of job I needed. The owners were kind enough to pay for my continued schooling and in return I gave them a solid performer.
What seemed like 15 minutes had then turned into 15 years at the factory. As a consequence of my lower income, most of the toys I had acquired had slowly been sold off as maintenance was due. Without Renee around to impress there was no joy in owning them anyway.
Over the years at the factory I had worked my way up to being floor manager. I had also learned a good lesson in humility and had become quite humble in my dealings with others. My parents probably would have gained back some of the respect for me that they had most assuredly lost.
The pay was low and the hours were somewhat long and boring, but the owners had treated me well. I oversaw a staff of about 20 workers of which 12 spoke no English whatsoever. So, after eight hours on the clock I was all too happy to head home for a beer and a fishing pole.
I had also put on 60 pounds with much of it going around my gut. My curly hair was often unkempt and I was sporting a scruffy beard. I had numerous photo albums with Renee and myself and when occasionally looking at them I had sometimes wondered that if I ever made it back up to Detroit would anyone even recognize me. I was not the dashing young hunk that I had once been.
On the personal front I would have the occasional date and they were all nice ladies, but I was still in love with Renee and those feelings always came to the surface. It had gotten to the point where I no longer sought the company of another as it always ended badly with hurt feelings. I spent many hours tinkering in my shop because of the lack of anything better to do. It looked like I was destined to die as the fat bachelor with few friends and nothing better to do but toy around in his shop with his geeky experiments.
I had sometimes brought my doorbell solenoid work home with me just to tinker with. As a side hobby I had made an attempt to build a small robot. My prototype could roll around on its treads, had an arm with a claw and a video feed where I could watch where it went from a PC monitor. It was fully controlled by a remote joystick as I didn’t have the computer savvy to make it autonomous in any meaningful way. I had always wanted to find a partner for that, but had never taken the time.
The claw mechanism was quite powerful and sported my own lightweight solenoid design using some of what I was able to discover from the crazy old man's object years earlier. It had been well over 20 years since Pete's death and with not much else to do with my life, I had resurrected the coil for my tinkering projects.
I had also used my coil design to make a coil gun. I had the mathematical equations worked out and had other thoughts for improvements, but that had only taken me so far. I was in need of a precise computer controlled timing mechanism to actually make it more than a toy. I thought my improvements to the old man's coil to be a big plus, but I didn't feel it would get me much further than anyone else without the proper help.
Again, having lacked the computer savvy and the drive to apply my assumptions to the coil gun it had remained for years in the toy stage along with the robot. I had many such electronics projects waiting in the wings for completion someday. After having driven Renee away years before and since I had never really pursued another woman it had left me with my only my tinkering, fishing and beer drinking to pass my time.
My memories about that day could not have been clearer if it had happened yesterday. As I write this more than three years have passed since they first arrived. A truly unexpected life had been thrust upon me and any others who had managed to survive. I sometimes wonder at how lucky I was, even though I did not feel so at the time.
I loved my 12 acres of land, my home, my dock and canal. The block boathouse and solid bunker sat at one end of the canal with the lake on the other a good one 150 feet away. The natural spring boiled up right under the boathouse, it did an excellent job of keeping the canal flushed out and clean.
Numerous large oaks made a dense canopy over the bunker, boathouse and canal, and years of underbrush growth, accompanied by my neglect, had left the boathouse and bunker all but invisible from the house, as well as from the air. The flat concrete roof sported several years of leaf buildup.
My property was bordered by a modest sized cattle ranch on one side and a large orange grove on the other, making the nearest neighbor at the time several hundred yards away. It was definitely a peaceful place which had unfortunately left me with plenty of quiet time to still pine over Renee. I would often just sit out in a rocker on the screened porch and daydream of my younger days.
My new adventure began on a Wednesday... hump-day. A long day at work at the factory had just been completed and I was headed home. A ringing in my ears brought on a need for relaxation and my brand of relaxation was a cold brew and a bit of bass fishing.
Sunset had always been my best bet for action and that evening would be no different. After arriving home and fetching a cold one, I had walked out onto the dock with my tackle box and pole.
I can only guess that the trees and the flow of the spring made the area by my dock one sweet fishing hole. I had so many notches on my dock rail for the bass I’d caught that I gave up marking them after the first year because of the damage I was doing. I was already on bass number three that evening when I saw the first bright flashes to the northwest towards Orlando.
My first thoughts were that a good thunderstorm was brewing. But those thoughts soon turned to ones of skepticism because the flashes were too distant and too large for a thundercloud. I continued to dwell on the flashes in the back of my mind as I began casting into the water.
Ten minutes after the flashes, the rumbles began. I had been to many a Space Shuttle launch in my days in Central Florida and the rumbles seemed eerily similar to the rumble the shuttle made from about ten miles out. It came rolling across the water and shook the ground and the dock, it was as if a train was going by.
I then saw some type of a black craft moving at breakneck speed just above the treetops on the horizon. I didn’t recognize it and thought it odd to be going that fast that close to the ground. There were no military training areas nearby and you certainly wouldn’t do any type of training or stunt flying this close to a populated area. And it didn’t look like any aircraft I had ever seen. As I continued to cast an uneasy feeling was brewing in my gut.
I was then in a mild shock and my jaw dropped as I watched a distant airliner suddenly fracture into a thousand pieces and begin falling back towards the ground as another one of those black craft went flying past it. As I stood in stunned silence my mind was telling me that something really bad was happening. Chill bumps sprang up on my arms as well as the hair on the back of my neck. Soon afterward the sonic booms began, with one being so loud that it hurt my ears. And yet, I still just stood there with my jaw dropped looking out at the skies.
Most people are not trained to react to such unusual situations and as a result they just stand there gawking at whatever is going on. Only one out of ten of us naturally leaps into immediate action when a crisis occurs. You like to think that you are that one, but chances are pretty high that you aren't, and as it turned out I was one of the other nine. That is why soldiers, policemen and firemen have to go through such intense training. They need to know what they are doing in an emergency or they risk other’s lives as well as their own. It's that heavy training that leads them to take immediate action when an uncommon situation arises.
After a minute or so of confusion and disbelief, I turned and started to run for the house. I was next greeted with a bright flash overhead followed by a dark shadowy blob. I instinctively covered my ears just as a monstrous boom followed and knocked me off my feet. Had I not been covering my ear drums would have surely burst. As it was, I felt dazed. When I got to my feet I first ran in the wrong direction. It took several seconds for the fog in my head to clear and for me to turn back towards the house.
The kitchen door was only about 100 feet away, but that run seemed like it took an eternity. I bolted into the house and realized the power was already out. In addition, the windows had exploded inward from the concussion of the last boom. Glass shards were everywhere.
I headed straight for my gun cabinet and started pulling out my small stockpile of weaponry and ammo. My next thought was to get my wheelbarrow and roll as much as I could out to the bunker. I didn’t know how much time I had, but I was going to make the best use of it.
In the bunker I had a small diesel generator and several months of dry foods as well as other emergency supplies, all stashed for a hurricane. Anything extra I could carry was taken from the house with haste. The hurricane bunker quickly became my fortress.
The bunker was a decent size at about 800 square feet. It was constructed of steel reinforced poured concrete including the roof, it had two steel doors and no windows. I had built some piping into the roof and had it rigged so that I could run the cool 68 degree water from the spring throughout as sort of an AC unit during the summer. With the water running through the pipes it rarely reached 80 degrees, even on the hottest of summer days.
The humidity was another issue though so I had a small window type AC unit that worked mostly as a dehumidifier. The AC unit was built into a steel door that opened into the boat launch.
I had installed several racks of solar panels in the yard that I had bought at a bankruptcy auction. I had them wired to a battery pack salvaged from a scrapped hybrid vehicle. It cost a pretty penny at the time, but having read all those stories of lost power for a week or two during a hurricane, I was happy I had spent the money.
I also had a three hundred gallon diesel tank buried beside the bunker. Between the solar and the generator I planned on keeping the comforts of home going during any major power outages, it looked like I might just be in for a big one.
In my shop was a sink, toilet, shower, small washer and dryer, a twin bed, a small fridge and one of those little electric grills. The bed came in useful on many an evening when I had one too many beers while tinkering and lacked the energy to walk back to the house.
I had rigged the solar panels to keep the batteries on trickle charge during the day with the remaining power being routed to the house and hooked to the grid. With the loss of main power the house only drew enough electricity to run an emergency light in the kitchen.
After pilfering my supplies from the house and any other bit of anything I thought I might find useful, I had shut off the emergency light and barricaded myself in my fortress. I felt I was going to be in for a long night.
Once in my bunker the rumbles and booms continued after sunset, it was evident that something big was going down. Not just big for me, but big for humanity. My little fortress shook almost continuously as if someone was running a jackhammer. The tone of the rumbles slowly changed to shorter thuds and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize some serious destruction was going on outside.
The radio and TV stations were off the air, so I had no idea of how our boys were doing in their fight against the attackers. It was a sleepless night for me and many others I was sure, and a shortened night for the rest. The constant pounding going on all around kept me on edge.
The early morning brought the thuds closer and soon I could hear what sounded like smaller ships passing overhead with the crack of a sonic boom followed by a low hum. After the first several passed over, my reinforced concrete fortress shook with a tremendous force, once again knocking me off my feet. I knew at that moment, that if I had stayed in the house, I would no longer exist. I sat for hours, terrified, waiting for that inevitable strike on the bunker, but it never came.
The thuds and booms steadily continued throughout the next day and into the evening. The loud cracks of supersonic ships passing were soon replaced by what sounded like low hums moving about slowly as if searching for remaining victims, no doubt trying to mop up any stragglers left over from the previous night’s carnage. The occasional hiss followed by a thud and rumble told me that there weren’t likely to be any structures left standing.
As bad as I wanted to, I didn’t dare poke my head out to see what was going on. The bunker had been designed with no windows, so there would be no worries, even in the strongest of hurricane winds. Of course, it had left me sightless as a consequence. As I looked around the bunker I noted that I had plenty of food and enough battery power to keep my ceiling light running for months, so I would just have to wait it out.
My power meter told me that while my solar panels were certainly not running at peak efficiency they were at least still functional enough to keep my batteries trickle charged. My guess was that the solar stand had been knocked over by the destruction of my house making the panels no longer pointed at the Sun. I still had my generator and diesel tank, but I was happy with whatever solar I could still get as that was the key to long term power.
The spring in the boathouse provided water with an electric pump and an old manual piston pump worked as a backup. I was infinitely glad that I had taken the time to install the toilet, sink and shower. The cool water from the spring also kept the temperature bearable even during the mid-summer day’s heat.
The scenarios of what might have been happening outside ran continuously through my head. It wasn’t nukes or I wouldn’t still be there. And my own country's leaders in their wisdom had thankfully not detonated any bombs on our own soil in an attempt at defense. Also destroying oneself was not a good offensive strategy. As I thought about the situation I concluded that no other nation had the technology capable of doing what was going on outside. It would seem that hostiles from elsewhere had decided on a visit to our watery blue paradise.
I had stayed awake for 36 straight hours. Needless to say the events during that time and the numerous spurts of adrenaline were taking their toll. It was nearly midnight before the hum of the ships and the lessening frequency of the thuds lost out to fatigue. I slept until noon the following day before suddenly awakening with the feeling that I was late for work.
I could only dream of how wonderful being late for work would have been that morning. I had no doubt that work was nothing more than a pile of rubble by then. I dragged myself over to the sink and splashed some cold water on my face. As I grabbed a towel and began drying my face I realized that the low hum of the ships, the thuds and the rumbles, were nowhere to be heard. Had they gone? Was it over? Was anyone else out there? These were all questions that I was eager to find answers to.
The steel door to my shop was designed to open outward so that it wouldn’t blow in during a hurricane. After rigging myself with a small arsenal I attempted to open the door only to suddenly realize one big design flaw... debris. It was obvious that something was stacked against the door, preventing it from being opened. I turned and hurried to the door to the boat house. If it had also been blocked I would have next turned to a sledge hammer to make a new door.
The roof over the shop was solid reinforced concrete making for a very rugged bunker while the boat house roof was a standard wooden truss design with block walls. Before checking the boathouse door, I rechecked my weapons and ammo. I was not going outside unarmed. I opened the boat house door just far enough for me to squeeze out. The truss roof had not survived and the whole thing had collapsed.
Only a small area of the structure was intact enough for me to stand in. I would have to go under water to get out. I removed my guns and then dropped down into the water and after submerging for a moment, I exited what was left of the structure.
I slowly poked my head out of the water on the other side, fully expecting to have some hideous creature standing there with a blaster weapon ready to incinerate my skull. I was greeted with nothing more that the quiet rustling of the trees with the Sun blinking through the leaves. It was good to see the daylight again and see that the Sun had not also been blasted from the sky.
I climbed up the bank of the canal and pulled myself up through the underbrush towards my house. Even though I had heard and felt its destruction, I still wasn’t prepared for the sight of it. Nothing remained but a large shallow crater, spattered with bits of what was once my little paradise.
Whatever weapon had been used had basically pancaked the structure. It was as though it had been hit by a giant sledge hammer from above. I guessed it was some type of concussion weapon that crushed and compacted whatever it hit, the concrete block looked to have been pulverized.
I returned through the water into the boathouse for my weapons and after passing them through a small hole I once again submerged to exit. I again pulled myself up from the cold spring, rearmed, and was ready to explore the immediate surroundings.
When my father had passed I took his old Mercedes and put it in storage. It had come down to Florida with Renee and I. I had hoped to one day finish its restoration. With all the toys I had had in the garage I had eventually constructed a small shanty under a larger oak and had parked the Mercedes under that for safe keeping. The shanty roof provided only modest coverage from the elements and a large brown tarp was used to do the rest.