How the HELL did we survive the pressure wave? Alvin wondered, his mind tinged with curiosity, shock, and a bit of anger. He tried not to stare at the body covered in purple and blue bruising as he ran past. This was the third body he had encountered in the past few moments, all but one were neighbors with whom he had shared a friendly salutation just minutes before. He didn’t bother stopping. They were clearly dead, and even if they weren’t dead, he wouldn’t be able to help any of them.
Alvin hadn’t emerged completely unscathed. His head pounded something fierce, his ears perceived sounds as muffled and distant. The baby was crying, but she sounded like she was in a tunnel a mile away. His whole body ached, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t all due to the exertion that his doughy form wasn’t prepared for. A quick glance at his arms confirmed this fact, revealing mottled bruising like he had seen on the bodies. Not as bad, but still rather unpleasant.
He felt compelled to continue, but his pace had dropped to a trot. The burning lungs were a familiar sensation from the many times he had tried to kickstart a cardio regimen, but he was having a hard time catching his breath. Whether it was all the dust he inhaled, the fact that he wasn’t stopping, or maybe even radiation poisoning setting in, he didn’t know. All he knew was the clock had started, and every minute he wasted huffing and puffing was a minute that cars were going to be piling up on the thoroughfares heading out of town.
Keep going! Keep going! Keep! Going! Alvin tried to will himself to his house, shifting more and more of his bodyweight onto the stroller. A side stitch dug into his ribcage, shortening his inhale and causing him to reflexively grab his side.
I’m gonna be dead by the end of the day.
He stopped, not even pretending to believe his own excuse for giving up. I have to check on the baby.
He couldn’t suppress the eye roll as he circled around to the front of the stroller and peeked in. The baby had calmed somewhat, but still carried a look of concern and discomfort on her face. He noticed a bruise forming on her forehead that was clearly new, and a number of bruises on her arms and legs that he couldn’t tell, for certain, if they had been there already. The good news was that she was alert, if a bit freaked out by the transpiring events.
Alvin, satisfied that he didn’t need to triage infant medical concerns, willed himself back to the handlebar of the stroller, and renewed a light jogging pace. No sooner had he gone ten paces when a crack of not-too-distant thunder jolted him. In an exaggerated flinch, Alvin ducked his head down and swiveled around to look in the direction of the sound. His feet caught one another, and he nearly planted himself on the street. After ungracefully catching his balance, his attention tracked to a blossom of milky white cloud. A twin mushroom to match the towering cloud of death menacingly blocking the southern sky, casting a satisfied gaze on its destructive work. The second explosion was much further away to the southwest.
Fort Worth.
With an ambivalence that caused his conscience to hiccup, Alvin turned towards home, ignoring the devastation that surrounded him. Tunnel vision locked his focus on the clearly damaged abode from which he started his journey. It was only a few hundred feet away, but the distance felt insurmountable. His thoughts began cycling through his brain like a runaway train.
I need to grab supplies. I need to grab a gun. I need to grab baby food. I need to grab some cash. Don’t forget the baby. Don’t forget the water. Passports. Precious metals. Ammo. ToiletpaperToolboxEntertainmentHeirloomsMedkitClothes….
Alvin forced his mind to stop as the panic crossed the threshold into meaningless syllables. As he ramped the stroller up the curb and into his front yard, he suppressed the shock of seeing his house in shambles and did his best to replace it with a resolute determination to do the right thing.
We’re going to survive this. I’m going to make sure she gets to have a childhood.
Pausing mid-step, he spun the stroller around and headed for the side yard. The motion of rustling branches in the middle of what had been his home office had sparked a morbid mental image of the stroller being crushed by a particularly large tree branch.
Nope. Just stick her in front of the car so you don’t forget her.
The garage, being on the north side of the house, appeared to be mostly in tact. The roof was still there, more or less, and there appeared to be enough exterior structure left at that corner of the house to hopefully protect the car.
The rest of the house wasn’t so lucky. Both mature trees from the front yard were gone, and by gone, they were four foot tall jagged stumps. The remaining parts of the trees were easily located by the multitude of small and large branches sticking above the mostly-crushed roofline.
After parking the stroller in front of the garage door, Alvin made his way to the gaping front of the house, starting a 5 minute timer on his phone.
I stop when it beeps. No matter what.
Plunging himself into a destruction that recalled memories of driving through tornado damage, he was immediately greeted with good news. The gun closet had blown open and scattered its contents in the entryway. He could probably get a few guns, ammo, and baby provisions into the car in 5 minutes, assuming that there was a path to the garage from the front of the house. A glance in the direction of the garage was promising. There was debris littering the hallway, but he could see the door to the mudroom adjoining the garage, and it looked only partially obstructed.
Mudroom as staging area, then climb over the mess and load up in the garage.
Alvin scooped up one of the small duffels that he had stored in the gun closet and began shoveling in-tact boxes of ammunition into it. Not paying attention to caliber, he filled the bag with a few hundred rounds and sealed it up. Swinging the duffel to his shoulder with a heft, he caught the handles of a pair of rifle cases with his other hand and made for the mudroom. With the slightest of care for the weapons, he half-tossed, half-put his arsenal across the crumpled bathroom wall that hindered his access to the mudroom and flipped around to navigate to the pantry.
He was moving so quickly across the remnants of his home that cluttered his path that he lost his balance when a piece of sheetrock gave way. Stumbling through exposed beams set up like an obstacle course, he finally succumbed to gravity when something caught his foot. Pain shot through his legs as his already abraded knees plowed into a pile of mixed shards. Whether the most offensive pieces were glass or sheetrock, he didn’t know or particularly care. The sting in his palms and kneecaps was sharp enough to take his breath away for a moment.
Regaining his breath, Alvin scrambled to his feet and took a step before freezing in placed for a moment. A pang of familiarity hit. Through the ringing of his likely permanently damaged ears, the sound of a box of ammo moving had resonated like a clarion call when he tripped.
Pistol bag!
Noting where he was and positively identifying the handle of his pistol bag as the source of the tripping hazard, he pulled the dirty nylon range bag out from under the remains of an antique armoire and set it in the most conspicuous place he could find, an exposed nail head rudely sticking up from a cracked, collapsed joist.
Flipping his head around to the kitchen, his lightening mood was quickly shattered. The pantry had been replaced by a portion of a three foot wide tree trunk, haloed by peaks of sunlight from the gaping hole it had made. There would be no quick retrieval of ample provisions. He’d be lucky to get enough food to last the baby to dinner time.
JFC! too close to real, great stuff, tell us more.
Yep, I’m digging this series. I have to catch up on a bunch of other ones but this one has hooked me.
Yup. Definitely too realistic. That’s meant as a compliment Trashy.
Well, I’m feeling better about my life. Heh, I keed. I don’t, really.
Love it – hope you have more in the pipeline!
Yup, could always be worse…
Dammit! another week for the next installment. Too much good glib stuff.
Bravo **clap gif when I’m allowed to**
Look at the Tulpa here wishing for a day when someone gives enough shits to give him a gif. How cute.
Yusef! Dispatch him!
This is good Trshmnstr. Maybe I’m weird, but I have a soft spot for atomic destruction porn. The Day After, When the Wind Blows, that sort of thing.
I really liked the Jericho TV series until I either lost interest or they fell over with the plot, or some combination of the two.
Both,
Everyone has their kink.
This is a great story. Thanks.
JP Said it, he went there, and good on him,
https://youtu.be/WxZ0mwq5oHg
Thanks, Trashy, almost every day now I am mesmerized by your stuff and the other contributors that I have to follow. I wish the covid series was fiction but unfortunately Biden is sort of a living relic that won’t turn loose of the handlebars, even as the wheel chair gains speed, heading for the cliff.
Keep ’em coming
/Avid Fan of Glib Authors
https://archive.is/5Xnym/87f99b24f261f7c29f0ecac0de87c64148efae74.jpg
NSFW.
https://archive.is/WgHnL/3f28e368d23e87256357830d26d7cd41ef4cbd12.jpg
NSFW.
https://archive.is/df0Dd/a709fdd546e136114a93b9d03363b8225d61430f.jpg
NSFW.
https://archive.is/r9ZRh/32a5dcfc0d6987b6cbc3c6650e273b155302d188.jpg
NSFW.
Yummy,
It’s nine o’clock; does your child know where you are?
I hope not.
They know, they just don’t care,
#metoo
I told you last night, “No!”
Talkin’ to Q here!
http://moviesupclose.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Module-B-Citizen-Kane-–-An-essential-character-guide-Thompson-2.jpg
No, but her plastic surgeon does!
Youse gaiz are too much.
I literally only started popping back in here for some Q porn
Wow – that tree got blown over clear to MD!
https://www.wbal.com/article/223797/3/tree-crashes-through-towson-home
That was some end to the third set.
Mostly ignoring it, as I usually do the tail end of majors. My two least favorite male players left will battle each other Sunday and I couldn’t care less who wins.
Thanks Trashy, looking forward to the next one.
Im off to work, kids.
Mind the shoppe.
I need to back up on this and start at the beginning.
Meanwhile, the Make-Me State weighs in.
Oh, earlier today I said 49% of Missourians are unvaccinated. My bad. 54% of Missourians are unvaccinated.
Woo hoo! ?
Here’s Ep 1. I hope you enjoy it!
I generally am not a fan of dystopian fiction and especially when I’m in such a shitty mood, but skimming has me intrigued.
Is that total population or just eligible people?
Don’t know.
NoDak is right there with you
Looks like we are at 51% vaccinated.
And I notice it has changed from “fully vaccinated” to “primary series complete”.
“Primary series complete” = bend over for another one
Are you ever gonna Zoom?
…at the same time as me?
Some day.
Yes. This is good. Real good. I’m hooked.
No, no one here is advocating nuking the government.
HI, Preet!
Trashie is getting mighty pessimistic lately.
This should be entertaining. I can only imagine what the response from other federal departments is going to be.
And I want to know what the current vaccination rates for the CDC, NIH, and FDA are.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/usps-not-covered-by-bidens-covid-19-vaccine-mandate-spokesman_3991789.html
Oh my God. Vaccine mandates is just another culture war fixation of you conservatives. You should care about sex work and other shit that is totally important. Just take the jab and the booseter for ever.
#VoteGold
TGA is ENB confirmed.
Note to self: Don’t ever give you email and phone number to car dealers again.
Abine Blur. I gave them disposable emails and a virtual phone number and then blocked them all when I bought.
Only ever online, ever. I was able to weed out probably 60% of dealers by the ones who responded to my emails with actual answers, as opposed to the ones who wrote back “Hey there!!!! I under stand your questions! Come on down to the dealership tomorrow at 9 and we’ll talk about it!”
Just got back from the Lowell Observatory. They only let us look through the little telescopes because of, well, you know the idiocy.
But still, All four of Jupiter’s big moons were out, and the telescope pointed there was able to show the stripes on jupiter’s surface.
The one pointed at saturn couldn’t get any color, but had a very clear view of the gap between the rings and the planet.
The moon was a crecent, so we had some very good crater shadows and a nice, crisp image there.
Very cool.
Cool! You’re making me miss Arizona.
“Dog comes, cat goes.”
Were they afraid you’d give the planets COVID if you used the big one?
I don’t know. I’m not going to waste time on it.
That’s really cool. I can recommend Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles if/when you get that far.
Currently the Grand Canyon is the turnaround point.
I have no plans to visit california until it cleans up its act.
Yeah. I get that.
Desert View on the South Rim is nice because it is much less crowded. I also recommend at least going a bit below the rim on a trail to get a better idea of the scale, and a lot less people. The short stroll down to “Ooh Aah” Point on the South Kaibab Trail gets you below the Kaibab formation and since it is on a ridge you get nice views up and down Canyon.
A nice hidden gem just east of Flagstaff is Walnut Canyon NM. It is a series of Sinaqua ruins in a canyon. The loop trail is short and you can enter many of the ruins.
If you have your mountain climbing gloves with you, the San Francisco Peaks have several trails going up to the summits. You can bag Humphreys Peak (12,633ft) and have all of AZ below your soles. If it is clear you can see into the GC and well south of the Mogollon Rim. (Shortest rte departs from the ski area parking lot.)
No shit. I have been there.
That’s going to be one hell of a long wait.
I’m flying to LA at the moment to inspect the facts on the ground. Naturally, drinking bourbon non-stop is mandatory.
You’re smarter than the average bear.
Sounds really cool, UCS.
Would love to get there someday myself.
Baby don’t First me…Don’t First me…no more.
Time to start ordering 2022 calendars!
I was promised SMOD would come this year.
To be fair, that’s a 2022 calendar, so SMOD is coming *next* year.
oh god, now I’ve had the horrible thought that there must be a Biden calendar
Now how am I supposed to sleep?
You guys need more “The Libertarian Case for Concentration Camps” and “The Libertarian Case for Anal Probes, Because Reasons” articles. How do you expect to get that sweet sweet Koch cash if you’re writing stuff focused on not regurgitating the NYT editorial page uncritically?
did you ever notice, all this time the Aliens have been coming and probing us, all they ever found out was ten percent of us don’t really seem to mind,
Have you been reading Winston?
KITH, this,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBhru5nLpGE
Stop terrifying me. I’ve had those nightmares before. Nice bit of writing, Friend!
Call me, they won’t let me call Canuckistan!
Regarding injuries,
I dated a girl back in college. She was a bit nutty but worth every minute of it. I kinda lost track of her but missed her so I did some sleuthing.
Turns out she moved out into the mountains of New Mexico and avoided all contact with humans.
Lately I am wondering if I shouldn’t look her up.
This is now the entire focus of my life. To make sure the other Nuke having countries know that the US Nuke stockpile is ready if, Heaven forbid, we ever need it.
I haz a sad about the world yet also a happy about my mission.
One of these days I am going to cook for you.
Watch out, Hayek; he’s misreading To Serve Man.
Y’all are too much! ?
Доброе утро!
That’s what she said!
suh’ fam
yo whats goody yo
My Kroger re-stocked so TALL MOTHERFKIN’ CANS !
We forgot the trash pickup was running a day behind because of Labor Day and put our cans by the curb as usual Thursday night. When he realized our error, TT brought the trash can back into the garage but left the recycle by the curb. Then we both forgot about putting the trash back out last night.
I just checked. They’ve already been down our street. ?
Sorta related, I got my Tenpines Bluff settlement built this week.
I’ve got too many settlements to care after, but I am the richest MF’er in the commonwealth or Far Harbor.
How many coupons did you get?
*tilts head*
Huh?
Oh, I was thinking you got a class-action settlement.
https://thechive.com/2021/05/17/pole-vaulting-italian-has-champion-level-firm-buns-32-photos/
#TeamGherca
http://pepperfestival.com/
Only yesterday and today. I probably won’t get there.
I’ll have to try next year.
The Washington County cheese tour is this weekend, but I’ll be stuck at home.
I picked up some pizza flavored fresh cheese curds last weekend.
Om nom nom.
https://www.pennlive.com/life/2021/09/storm-carried-armyworms-devastating-pennsylvania-lawns-fields-as-part-of-once-in-a-generation-outbreak.html
Build the wall! Or something…
At least it’s not Bunga-Bunga. Or Snu- Snu. I dont know.
Kerala: Workers block ISRO truck in Thiruvananthapuram for ‘nokku-kooli’.
https://nationaldaycalendar.com/national-hot-cross-bun-day-september-11/
Happy national hot cross bun day.
Mine are pleasantly warm and comfortable, but thanks! ?
Why are they cross? Chafing? ‘Roids ?
If you’ve paid attention to the weather forecast, we’re approaching that magical time of the year here. Cool enough at night for the furnace, hot enough during the day to turn on the a/c.
Smells like football weather.
Our magical weather is here. Comfortable day and night with no manipulation required.
Thanks for that. Now I have an earworm of my son’s third grade “band”.
This needs to be added to GlibFit.
Forget football, it’s Steinholding season.
Is this what you’re after?
Kinda slender, and its not Milwaukee’s Best. But by my best assumption of her hip structure and likely thicc LAIGS, Im sure I could make it work.
Jugsy wont be home for another week, after all.
FloridaWoman™ FTW !
Naked woman, 28, drives golf cart into Florida standoff scene with armed suspect: reports
Needs more pictures.
She looks the part.
O be still, my beating heart. Nope, no, nein, nyer.
Yikes. Someone call a priest.
*Googles*
Meh.
“I think the President made a mistake by announcing federal vaccine mandates,” DeWine said.
Yeah, well what are you gonna do about it, Scooter, ya big chickenshit?
Write a strongly worded letter that makes it on Breitbart and then have his interns make a dunk on Twitter. Then make a speech where he says we have to respect the president so everyone go get it but everyone be sure to vote and also support your local candidate financially.