Radioactive: A Dirty Bomb Prepper Survival Story Read online

  Jim waved his arms. “John!” he yelled. John didn’t notice him until Jim grabbed him on the shoulder and spun him around. John almost knocked him out with his elbow. “Jim, Jesus Christ,” he said, looking startled and shaken. Jim caught his breath as he dodged out of the way. “John, what the hell happened?” he asked. Captain John shook his head as he motioned to the other soldiers and gave them some instructions. He turned back to Jim. “I need the two of you to report to the rear security office and wait there ‘till we sort this out.”

  John yelled for his assistant, a young female first class petty officer with short brunette hair and almond eyes, to come over. He introduced the two of them and said, “Angela will escort you guys back there. Do either of you need any medical attention?” They both shook their heads.

  “Good. I don’t know how long you guys will be back there, but I’ll meet up with you after you get debriefed,” John said.

  “Are we under attack?” Coyle asked.

  John pointed to the back of the base as he began to trot off. “Get to the rear security office now!” Just as Angela grabbed Jim’s arm, another earth shattering blast knocked all six of them on the ground.

  Jim flew to the ground. His hands pressed hard against the pavement and protected his face from direct contact. Pain shot up through his elbows from the force of the blow. Jim lifted himself to his knees and saw Angela unconscious and lying on her back. He scrambled over to her side and checked her pulse. She was alive, and she was breathing. A slight trickle of blood pooled from next to her ear. She moaned as her eyes fluttered open.

  Jim cradled her face gently in his hands. “Angela, can you hear me?” She moaned in response and her head swayed back and forth as her eyes continued to flit between open and closed. “Angela? Do you know where you are?” he asked. She began to push herself up, but Jim gently pressed her back down. She slurred her speech as she spoke. “What happened?” she asked in a transfixed daze

  Coyle stumbled on his hands and knees with an endless string of cursing. Jim glanced over to John who still lied motionless on the ground. More sirens were blaring in the distance as medical units began to arrive. Jim flew his arms up in the air and screamed for help.

  One of the ambulances made a sweeping turn over to them. Jim knelt down to check on Angela. “Angela, do you know what today is?” he asked softly. She seemed confused by the question but mumbled out that it was Tuesday. He picked up her security badge from the pavement beside her and examined it. “And can you tell me your last name?” he asked. “Parker,” she whispered with her eyes half shut. She then turned her head sharply and threw up on the ground. Surprised, Jim moved away in attempt to avoid her trajectory.

  An EMS responder pulled up beside her and Jim. Angela wiped her mouth with her sleeve and gave out a groan. The EMS responder opened Angela’s eyes and shined a small flashlight into them. Jim patted him on the shoulder. “I think she’s concussed. She knows her name and what today is, but the Captain over there has been motionless for the past two minutes.” The responder nodded, ran over to John, and knelt down at his side. He immediately began CPR. Jim heard the loud cracking of John’s ribs as he watched the man compress his friend’s chest.

  Everything moved in slow motion with the smoke clouding the air; the fire trucks and military vehicles scrambling to help injured people. Jim didn’t snap out of his trance until the other EMS worker came up to him. “Are you, okay?” she asked. Jim waved her off, “Yeah, I’m fine.” He instructed her to go and check on Angela. Jim then stumbled over to a building that Coyle was leaning against.

  Jim examined Coyle for injuries, but couldn’t find any. Coyle’s eyes were closed and Jim slid his eyelids open. “Do you know your name?” he asked. Coyle smacked Jim’s hand. “Shut up, Jim.”

  “Doesn’t look like you have any brain trauma, except for what was already there,” Jim said with a half-smile. Coyle forced a grin. “You think you can stand?” Jim asked. Coyle nodded as Jim helped steady him. Together, they rose from the ground.

  When Jim brought his attention to the rest of the surrounding area, he saw where the second blast had come from. A huge plume of smoke was rising out of the U.S.S. Midway as tourists continued to scatter in all directions. There were only a handful of first responders on the scene still, and too many injured victims for them to help. Jim ran back over the ambulance and grabbed a first aid kit out of the back. He shouted at Coyle to follow him and they both ran off towards the screams.

  The two of them ran along the deck platform next to the ship when Jim saw a young man lying on the ground with his arm blown off. His horrific and painful screams filled the air as people around him ran for safety. Jim rushed towards the injured man, grabbing some gloves out of the bag. He tossed a pair to Coyle in mid stride.

  “What do you want me to do with these?” Coyle asked, utterly perplexed.

  “Put ‘em on!” Jim shouted back.

  Jim skidded to the ground next to the boy and started pulling out gauze and bandages from the first aid bag. Coyle fumbled with the gloves and knelt down beside Jim with his face wincing. The young man cried in agony as Jim tried to calm him. His shrieks grew louder every glance he gave the bloody stump that used to be his left arm.

  Jim stuffed gauze into Coyle’s hands and shoved them onto the wound. “Keep steady, even, firm pressure,” Jim shouted to Coyle over the screams of their hysterical patient. “If the blood starts to seep through, just add more, but don’t remove the bandages you have. Let them pile up.” Jim ran further up the dock a little ways to see if there was anyone else hurt. Coyle grabbed more gauze out of the bag as the white cotton quickly turned crimson red. As Coyle kept piling up the gauze and bandages he shouted back towards Jim in a panicky tone, “Jim, I’m out of gauze!”

  Jim rushed back over to the side and noticed that the injured man drifted in and out of consciousness. His screams had ceased. Jim pushed Coyle aside and lifted the blood soaked gauze off of the stump. “He’s losing too much blood. We need to pinch off the brachial artery to stop the flow.” Jim jammed his fingers into the stump to locate the artery. “I got it. Get some of that tubing out of the bag and we’ll make a tourniquet to stop the rest.”

  Coyle pulled the IV tubing out of the bag and began wrapping it as close to the end of the stump as possible per Jim’s instructions and tied it off. Jim turned his attention to the man and checked his nose for any air flow. “He’s not breathing. Check for a CPR mask in the bag.”

  “A what?” Coyle shouted.

  “It looks like a water jug with at mouth piece on it,” Jim yelled back.

  Coyle pulled the mask out and slid it over the man’s face. Jim stopped him. “No, you’ll need to open his airway up first. Tilt his head back with the palm of your hand, then place the mask over his mouth and give him two full squeezes of air.” Coyle did as he was told to satisfactory results. Jim instructed him to get on the other side and find the sternum in the middle of his chest right between the man’s nipples. “Now, put the palm of your right hand on the spot there,” he instructed. “Good. Now place your other palm directly over that. Perfect. Keep your arms rigid and bring your body weight over his body and press down hard. Do that thirty times and then give him two more breaths with the mask and repeat.”

  He went on with this routine for several minutes. Jim kept coxing him on. “You’re doing great, Coyle. Keep it up.” Jim looked around to see more ambulances arriving on the base. Another young man who was coughing terribly ran by them. Jim shouted, “Hey!” to get the man’s attention. The man stopped and stumbled over.

  “Go and grab those ambulances and tell them you have a priority over here with a severed limb that’s unconscious with severe blood loss.” The man hesitated as he saw the huge pool of blood Jim was kneeling in. “Go!” Jim shouted. The man snapped back into reality and took off at a stumbled sprint. Jim knelt down and checked the man’s pulse. As Jim’s free hand pushed up against his neck, he couldn’t feel anything.

&nbs
p; Another minute went by and two EMS responders with a stretcher came rushing up. The first one took over for Coyle who had fallen back on the concrete exhausted. The second knelt down by Jim. “I’ve got the brachial artery pinched off, but he’s lost a lot of blood,” Jim told the responders.

  The EMS man nodded and the three of them lifted the man onto the stretcher, while Coyle looked on in shock of what he’d just done. Jim followed them all the way back to the ambulance with his fingers jammed inside the man’s stump. The EMS worker and Jim traded places when they got to the ambulance doors. The two EMS responders and the young man flew in the back and the ambulance took off.

  Jim walked back over to Coyle and surveyed the dozens of ambulances and fire trucks now on scene assisting the wounded. When he finally reached Coyle, he was sitting still staring at the pool of blood the young man left behind. Jim put his hand on Coyle’s shoulder as he knelt down to him. “You did great,” he said. Coyle glanced back up at him with watery eyes and nodded his head. Jim stood back up and extended his hand to help Coyle off the ground.

  Firefighters were extinguishing the flames in the surrounding buildings. Debris lied strewn along all areas of the base. Jim couldn’t believe it. There was no way this was the same Naval Base he had entered this morning, but it was.

  Jim saw Angela propped up on a stretcher as they were walking back and trotted over to see her. She was conscious with an IV running into her and a bandage wrapped around her head.

  “Where’s John?” he asked.

  “They took him up to the Naval Medical Center,” she answered.

  She then paused for a moment. “He wasn’t breathing when they left,” she continued.

  Jim placed a hand on her shoulder. “Who’s second in command?”

  “Captain Forth,” she responded.

  “Where is he?”

  She pointed behind him to the smoldering U.S.S Midway as tears welled up in her eyes. Jim looked back at the fiery blast as the EMS responders loaded Angela into the back of the ambulance. They slammed the doors shut, startling Jim. And before he could say a word, the ambulance was off.

  Jim rushed back over to Coyle who was trying to hold himself up with a steady balance. Jim started to cough as the smoke in the air thickened. He grabbed Coyle’s arm and pulled him along as back to their vehicles. Jim hoped beyond anything that they were still intact. “Jim, what are you thinking? What’s going on? What are we gonna do?” Coyle asked between exhausted breaths. Jim didn’t immediately answer, leaving Coyle to wonder if Jim had heard him.

  As the two of them headed off away from the chaos Jim said aloud the one thing he was thinking. “Get the hell out of San Diego.”

  Chapter 2 – Panic

  Jim and Coyle found their cars intact where they’d left them. Jim threw his and Coyle’s bag in the back of his truck as Coyle tossed him the keys. He unlocked the back van doors and took a scan of its contents. He grabbed some of the multi-use tools that Coyle had, along with a tackle box, and combined them with the rest of the items in his truck. He locked the van and tucked the keys into his pocket.

  Coyle looked at him suspiciously. “What are you doing?” he asked. Jim hung on the driver side door as he waited for Coyle to get in. “It’ll be better if we take one car. My truck is a four by four.” Jim got in and started the engine while Coyle mulled over the fact of leaving his van and tools in the middle of all the madness. Jim rolled down the window and shouted, “Hey, the longer we wait the worse it’s going to get!”

  Coyle lingered next to his van. “Coyle, if I’m wrong I’ll buy you a new van,” Jim pleaded. Coyle let out an exasperated breath and jumped in the truck. “That one has sentimental value,” he said in all seriousness.

  Jim pulled out of the space dodging the emergency and military vehicles scattered around the base. The crowds from the U.S.S Midway Museum were half awestruck and half panicked. The majority of the people had been evacuated from the immediate area, and all of them seemed to spill into the road clogging up traffic.

  Police arrived in droves and started herding the tourists away from the harbor and roping off sections of the base. Jim wanted to get out before they were stuck here for questioning.

  Jim pulled his truck out of the base and onto the intersection riddled with congestion. The influx of the emergency vehicles trying to get in combined with the number of people trying to leave resulted in some nasty gridlock. A few irritated drivers began laying on their horns.

  A military officer came over to one of the upset drivers and tapped his AR-15 on the glass of his driver side window. “Honking won’t make it go any faster, pal.” The man sunk back into his seat and took his hand off the horn.

  Drivers became restless as the crowds thickened and patience dwindled. Horns and shouts from all over could be heard for miles. The EMS vehicles were flipping on their sirens as cars tried to make room for them to pass.

  Jim was right on the curb in between the intersection and the highway. “If we can make it up to the street I can jump the median and get on the interstate back to my place.” Jim drummed his fingers on the steering wheel then opened up his glove box for a pen and paper. He shoved the pen and paper into Coyle’s hands and told him to make an inventory of everything in the truck.

  Coyle rummaged through the glove box, checked back behind the seats, and got out into the bed of the truck and wrote down everything that he could find. He climbed back into the truck after the survey. During that time they had moved about a foot.

  He handed the list to Jim who looked it over. “Not bad. We could be in a worse situation.” Coyle surveyed the massive, un-orderly exit of families on vacation and turned to look at Jim who was still studying the paper in his hands. “Jim, what the hell happened back there? What kind of a blast does that to a military naval ship?”

  “It was probably a dirty bomb. Terrorists will take a dynamite base explosive with a radioactive component to enhance the blast radius and sheer power.”

  All of the frustration, fear, and anger that Coyle had come pouring out as he punched the front dashboard repeatedly. “Goddamnit!” he screamed. “How could have this happened? We’re on a military base!” He paused for a second. “In San Diego!” He continued to beat the dashboard until Jim subdued him.

  “Hey, easy! Punching my truck isn’t going to help anything and you’ll bring attention to us, which I would like avoid.” Coyle slammed his head back into the headrest. Jim put his hand on his shoulder as he spoke. “The San Diego Naval Base is the central logistical hub for the entire southwest region of the United States. It’s homeport for the Pacific fleet and is also one of the Navy’s formal training grounds. It’s a perfect target for somebody wanting to hurt the United States.”

  A horn honked behind them and Jim noticed that traffic had picked up a bit and he lurched forward. He was able to pass the intersection and jump onto the highway where he went twenty over the speed limit.

  The truck pulled into Jim’s driveway and he jumped out. Coyle followed suit and started to reach in the back to grab their gear and Jim stopped him. “Leave it. We won’t be long.” Coyle looked at him crazy. “We’re not staying here?” he asked.

  “No, we have to get out of the city.” Jim swung the front door open and ran to the small closet in the hallway. He pulled the backpack out and placed it in the hallway, then took out his keys and put the smallest in the lock of the black safe that lined the inside of the closet. He opened it to reveal a shotgun with a tactical grip, a military grade AR-15 with scope, two 9mm pistols, and stacks of ammo for each. The assault rifle would be good for any combat situations, and he had a variety of shells for the 12-gauge for hunting ranging from the big buck shot shells to the “number four” shells for duck hunting. Jim grabbed a large duffle bag from the top and started emptying the safe.

  He pulled a holster out and strapped it to his belt. He liked to keep his pistol at his hip for easy access and the Ruger LC9 was small enough to be hidden under a jacket without looking too
bulky. He kept one of the pistols out and loaded a magazine in. He placed it in the holster covering it up with his shirt along with two other loaded magazines. He walked back down into his room and grabbed a jacket out of the closet.

  Jim placed the duffle bag of guns and ammo behind the seat of his truck along with the backpack. When he came back inside he saw Coyle sitting on the couch with Tigs in his lap purring loudly. Jim walked to the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of pills from the cabinet and headed over to Coyle. He tossed the pills into his hand and Coyle examined the bottle. “What’s this?”

  “Potassium-iodide,” Jim replied. “It’ll help fight off any radiation poisoning we may get. Take one.”

  Jim returned with a bottle of water and handed it to Coyle to help swallow the pill. He handed one to Jim who did the same.