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  Premonitions

  Book 2: war

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  PREMONITIONS: BOOK 2: WAR

  by Diana E. Anderson

  Published by Creative Texts Publishers

  PO Box 50

  Barto, PA 1950

  www.creativetexts.com

  Copyright 2018 by Diana E. Anderson

  All rights reserved

  Cover photos used by license.

  Design copyright 2018 Creative Texts Publishers, LLC

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual names, persons, businesses, and incidents is strictly coincidental. Locations are used only in the general sense and do not represent the real place in actuality.

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  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all of the military personnel who have served this great country of ours, past, present and future, and to their families who also served.

  “Freedom is not free.”

  Premonitions

  Book 2: war

  DIANA E. ANDERSON

  Creative Texts Publishers, LLC

  Barto, PA

  Acknowledgments

  There is no way I could have written Book Two without the help and encouragement I received from my friends and family. My husband, Michael, as usual, has been my rock. I am so grateful for his patience while I sat at the computer every night for hours writing away. I’d like to also thank my friends Jennette Larsen and Renee Davis, who were constant sources of support and encouragement.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I have been experiencing vague premonitions on and off for the last few months, which was both good and bad. It was good in that it helped my family, my friends, and me prepare for the economic collapse of the United States. It was bad because every time I started feeling that sense of foreboding, I knew something else was about to happen.

  This afternoon, I had a terrible headache and laid down for a bit to try to ease the pain. I had a terrible nightmare and woke up screaming. In my dream, the Homeland forces decided to set off an EMP against the rest of the country as part of their plan to institute a New World Order and a new form of government in the United States – one not guided by our Constitution. When I awoke, I knew this EMP was coming, and Tom and I rallied everyone to make sure everything that could be ruined by an EMP was either disconnected or put somewhere safe. I felt really foolish as we were racing to get it all done, but I’d rather feel foolish than lose even one little bit of the civilization we had been fighting to hold onto.

  We had a quick and simple dinner, and then got all the kids and most of the adults settled in the basement with lots of blankets and pillows and a big pile of board games. Tom and I were trying to play along, but I began to feel that old familiar foreboding in the back of my head. It was getting so strong, I could feel my hands starting to tremble. I told Tom I needed to go outside for a few minutes to get a breath of air. We stepped out onto the front porch, and found Carter coming up the front steps. He looked like he had just ran a marathon, out of breath and sweating. He told us he came to let us know he just heard from headquarters at Fort Bragg that they were evacuating the base as quickly as they could because of planes inbound from the east over the ocean, presumed to be Homeland planes.

  “We have a lot of equipment there, but not enough to fight what is coming, and so they are trying to salvage what they can in case these inbound planes plan to strafe or bomb our equipment. I wanted to let you know, just in case you see planes landing near here. They may be ours.”

  I felt a chill, and Tom put his arm around me. “Carter, you don’t think these inbound planes are going to set off an EMP, do you?” I could tell by his stricken face that he thought that was exactly what was going to happen. “How many people are still at Bragg?” I asked.

  “I honestly don’t know. I know that they’ve been moving people and equipment around for a while. They started evacuating military families about a week or two ago. I know they were putting as many troops on planes and helicopters as they could to get them away, and a lot of troops left last night in MRAPs, trucks towing tanks and missile systems, and all other kinds of military vehicles. There was talk in the upper echelons that Homeland might try to invade Bragg, which is another reason why my guys and I are here.” Carter began to pace back and forth in front of the porch. Tom and I stepped down to just walk with him and try to help him calm down and stop pacing. Although I had not known him very long, Carter did not seem to be the kind of person who fell apart easily. Suddenly, he stopped walking and looked at us. “Denise, Tom, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it in front of you. I’ve had the same feeling as you have for about the last two weeks. I reported it up the chain of command, and they listened to me, but I wasn’t sure they were taking it seriously until just now when I got word about the evacuations. At least the majority of folks must have escaped from Bragg, and any left are hopefully in bomb shelters before the Homeland planes arrive. I suspect Homeland plans to bomb the daylights out of Bragg and make it useless for us.”

  “Do we need to worry about them coming this way?” Tom asked, and Carter shook his head no.

  “I don’t think we are worth it for all of the extra gas they would need to fly this far. AV fuel is pretty hard to find these days.” By now, Carter was much calmer, and we were standing in the middle of the front yard.

  “I didn’t tell you about Bragg to begin with because I didn’t want to worry you any more than you already are. I know you already have so much on your mind, and battling Homeland is my job, not yours.”

  “Hey now, Tom and I both took an oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic’. That oath didn’t stop just because we no longer wear a uniform. We’re in a war for our way of life and all of us need to be involved, not just the current active duty troops. Let’s go back to the house so you can tell us what else you have not already told us, and so we can figure out how we can support you with more than meals and watching over the dependents.”

  Carter opened his mouth to say something when suddenly, the entire sky to the southwest lit up in a brilliant white light. Carter looked at the light for a second, then said, almost to himself, “I’ll be damned, they did it.” He looked at Tom and I just standing there, horrified at the light, and said one word: “RUN!”

  Tom grabbed my hand, and the three of us took off for the front porch. As we ran into the house, Tom was yelling for everyone to take cover in the basement and to shut all the doors. Naturally, that got everyone in the basement area upset, and some of the younger kids began to cry. We made it to the bottom of the basement stairs and while Tom secured the door, I started a head count. “Is anyone missing?” I asked. Carter was on the other side of the basement door trying to reach his troops, but it seemed like there should have been more people.

  Bill responded, “Mark, Red, Frank, and Scooter are over at the berm with some of the Marines pulling guard duty right now, but everyone else is here. What happened?” I tried to answer, but my mouth was so dry and I was shaking so badly, I couldn’t get the words out. Tom answered for me.

  “It looks like Fort Bragg was just nuked.”
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  There was a sudden deathly silence in the room; even the crying children got silent. “We don’t know that for sure, but there was a brilliant flash of light that way, and Carter told us that there were Homeland planes headed towards Bragg. We don’t know if it was a ground strike, or even if it really was a nuke, and we don’t know if it was an EMP.” I looked around at all the people in the room who were so dear to me. Their faces were shadowed in the low light of the emergency lanterns and reflected the fear we all felt.

  “What about radiation? What’s going to happen?” asked Stacy. “Are we safe here?”

  “I don’t really know. We saw the flash, but we didn’t feel any explosion or vibration, at least I didn’t. Did anyone?” I looked around and people were shaking their heads no. “We didn’t hear anything, either. There was not any air blast that we know of, so I would venture to say that if it was, in fact, a nuke, it was a very small one. Hopefully, the wind will continue out of the west, and if there is fallout, it will blow away from us rather than towards us. Until we figure out the radiation thing, though, we need to keep everyone down here for now.” I jumped up quickly. “I just remembered I have several Nuk-Alert key fobs hanging on a hook in my office upstairs. That would at least tell us if we were being exposed to radiation. I’m going to run upstairs and grab them.”

  Tom stood up and blocked the basement door. “It is too dangerous for you to go up there right now. Wait until we have more information and we know if it is safe or not.”

  I shook my head adamantly. “I don’t think there is any real risk. Even if that was a major nuclear detonation, it takes time for radiation to reach us. And, the wind is blowing it away from us, not towards us. I think it is worth the risk to just run up there and grab the fobs.”

  Tom started to argue with me.

  “No arguments. I promise I’ll just grab the fobs and come straight back.” I stood resolutely in front of Tom. Eventually, he shrugged his shoulders and stepped away from the door.

  “I promise I’ll be right back.” I climbed the stairs, shutting the basement door behind me. Carter was nowhere to be seen. When I got to the door at the top of the stairs, I had a minute or so of panic, worrying what I would see on the other side of the door. I took a deep breath, opened the door, and… nothing. It was peaceful and quiet. I looked out the window, but I couldn’t see anything out of place. I ran into the office and grabbed the four fobs hanging there. Silence. The little alarms were not making any noise. I knew the fobs were working because I had taken them to the hospital when I first got them about a month before this entire mess started. I brought them to the radiology department and put them on a tray in a room where they were getting ready to do an x-ray. As soon as the x-ray machine turned on, the Nuk-Alerts began to chirp. The radiologist said he had one too, and that they were always on and lasted about ten years. He kept his in his office so it didn’t chirp all day, and he assured me that it would chirp long before there was enough radiation to cause any harm.

  I found Carter on the front porch and handed him one of the Nuk-Alerts. By now, he had caught his breath, and was busy trying to get hold of some of his men on the radio. He had a brief conversation, and then turned to me. “I doubt the radiation would have time to reach us, especially since the wind is coming out of the west and blowing any fallout away from us. I think you are safe for now to let folks go upstairs as long as we have the alarms, but we’ll need to be ready to head back downstairs if the alarms start sounding. I would suggest, though, that we keep the kids down there for the moment while a couple of us see what we can find out.”

  I called down the stairs for Tom and Bill to come up. We headed out onto the front lawn. The alarms were still silent, and I felt a little better. There was a bright reddish-orange glow off to the southeast, nothing like the incredibly brilliant light we had seen just a short while ago. but still frightening-looking. It appeared as though the flames of hell were just beyond the horizon. We could see what we thought might be the shadow of a mushroom cloud, although at that distance we could not be sure. Suddenly, I realized that Carter was talking with his men on the radio. “Carter! The radio! It worked!” He looked at me like I was going nuts, and then suddenly, realization dawned in his eyes.

  “You’re right! It worked! Oh, thank goodness, it worked!” By now, Tom and Bill were looking at both of us as if we were both headed off the deep end.

  Tom had a puzzled look on his face. “So, what if the radio works…… OH! Does that mean that even if there was a nuclear detonation, there was no EMP?”

  Carter smiled. “It appears that if that detonation caused an EMP, it either is not affecting us here, or else it was not big enough to interfere with smaller things like radios.” He looked at the watch on his wrist. “I have a computerized watch, and it is still working, so I guess any EMP that may have occurred simply did not affect us.”

  “Do you think Homeland is done with its attack?” asked Bill. Carter looked thoughtful for a minute.

  “I would hope so, but there is really no way to tell. I am going to try to get hold of the General to find where they are and see if he knows anything. Meanwhile, I need to go check on my folks on the outer berm. Let’s plan to meet back here on the porch in an hour if nothing else happens. Keep your eyes peeled for drones or other aircraft, but let’s stay off the radios for now if we can.” Carter headed off towards the barracks, and I turned to Tom and Bill.

  “I would feel a lot better if we kept everyone downstairs for a while until we knew something more. Let’s wait until morning and if it looks clear, we can let people come up out of the basement and also get a few of the security cameras back on line then.” Tom and Bill agreed with me, and Bill went back into the house to let everyone know to stay in the basement until morning. With nothing else to do, Tom and I sat on the front steps to wait for Carter to come back. The Nuk-Alerts remained silent, but I continued to feel a strong sense of foreboding. As the minutes passed, the feeling of foreboding continued to grow. After about 20 minutes, the feeling was so strong I could feel myself start to tremble. Tom must have sensed my distress because he put his arm around my shoulders.

  “You’re shaking. Are you cold?” I shook my head.

  “No, I’m just…it’s that feeling again. It’s not over. Something is going to happen, and soon. I know Carter said to stay off the radio, but can you call him and see if he is on the way back?” Tom pulled the radio from his pocket and attempted to call Carter.

  “I thought we put fresh batteries in the all the radios. This one is not coming on.” Tom took the batteries out of the back of the radio and wiped them off before putting them back in and reassembling the radio. He continued to fiddle with the switches, but nothing seemed to make the radio come on. Suddenly he stopped and looked at me.

  “It happened, didn’t it. An EMP just hit us.”

  “We don’t know that for sure, but that radio was working fine a half an hour ago. Is your watch still working?”

  Tom grinned as he looked at his watch. “This watch is EMP proof. It belonged to my grandfather and it has no batteries in it – just a plain old wind-up-every-morning kind of watch.” I looked at my wrist, and my watch had stopped. For some reason, that made me incredibly sad – as though life itself had just stopped. I could feel the tears starting to slip down my cheeks. Suddenly, I could not help myself and I was sobbing into Tom’s shoulder. I don’t think he expected that, because he started helplessly patting my back as I bawled. After a couple of minutes, he pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped my eyes and cheeks. I took a couple of deep breaths and pulled myself together.

  “I’m sorry, Tom, I didn’t mean to get so upset. It just seems that we can’t catch a break. Everyone has been through so much already, and this is like the final straw. The power was out before, but it was because there was nobody willing to work for free to keep the power going. An EMP will destroy what was left of the grid, and it’s going to put everyone back a hundred years or so. How wil
l we ever get back to normal?” I was silent for a minute or two, and then Tom answered me.

  “It’s not really the final straw, just the end of our old way of life. This could be a beginning, if we can learn to have the right attitude. It is going to be up to us and to others like us all across the country if we ever want to get our America back. We just have to keep plugging away at fixing things. Please don’t let this get you down. You’ve been so strong though all of this, don’t give up now.” It took a few minutes for me to get control of my tears, but eventually I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and turned to Tom.

  “Thank you. You’re right. We need to look at this as just another bump in the road. Right now, we need to find Carter. Until we know if our electronics that were supposed to be protected will work, we will need to post extra sentries on the outer berm, and we’ll need to let our folks in the inner berm know what is going on. We’ll need to keep watching for radiation, too. Let’s see if the ATVs still work, and we can ride over there.” Luckily, the ATVs were not computerized at all and were not affected by the EMP. We decided to swing by the foxholes on the inner berm first to check on everyone and let them know what we thought was happening. After a few quick words of reassurance with each of our folks, we headed over to Carter’s RV.

  We found Carter outside the RV talking with Mark and several of his officers. When he saw us coming, he waved us over to join their discussion.

  “I was on the radio with the general when the EMP hit. Fortunately, we were almost done with our conversation when the radio went dead. The general and all but one group of his troops are accounted for and made it out of Bragg safely. He plans to be here tomorrow morning to meet with all of us. I don’t know if the EMP will change that, but I don’t expect that it will. General McPherson doesn’t usually let little things like the collapse of the country or the total destruction of the grid faze him too much!” We all chuckled at Carter’s unexpected humor.