Glimmer of Hope (Land of Tomorrow Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

thinking of it in those terms. The 'end of the world' seemed apt and had arrived without fanfare or warning.
    Three months ago, Nathan woke early in the morning to the worried whine of their shepherd Daisy in their home on Fort Meade Army Post in Maryland. She stared at him pensively like she needed to go outside. Strange light cast eerily moving shadows through the curtains and he thought he must have overslept. The alarm clock flashed a red 12:00 over and over. Nathan sat up and swung his feet out of the covers putting his hand comfortingly on Daisy’s head, but she crawled under the bed. He bent over to peer after her as a giant blast rocked the house knocking him to the floor. Glass shattered, shelves lost their contents, and car alarms sounded up and down the street. He lay still on the floor before climbing to the window and was stunned by the nightmarish scene.
    He counted the expanding tops of three bright mushroom clouds rising over what must be D.C. in the southeast and two over Baltimore in the northeast. From deep in his subconscious, his brain retrieved a distant memory of a military class on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. He continued to stare outside for a few moments as that clinical information briefing replayed in his mind along with visions of blind Hiroshima survivors. He returned to himself jerking his head away to prevent frying his retinas. Even so, he could see the outlines of those hellish clouds everywhere he looked. At least I'm not blind , he thought.
    He checked his watch to mark the time and then started yelling for Beth and the boys to get up while he got dressed quickly. Bethany, ever the deep sleeper, peered at him confused and groggily rubbing her eyes. He’d told her countless times in jest that she could sleep through an earthquake.
    “Honey, you have to get up now! We don’t have much time!” explained Nathan nearly frantic. “Get dressed and start filling up anything you can find with water and put it in the basement.”
    “What?” she said confused but smiling in anticipation of a punch-line. Nathan took a moment to notice how beautiful she was, even at a time like this. The malignant light outside highlighted her long dark hair, olive skin, and deep brown eyes.
    “Just do it, baby! Please!” yelled Nathan as he ran down the hall. Another series of quakes shook the house knocking him to the floor and he heard a crash downstairs. He struggled up off the carpet and burst into his sons’ room.
    The boys were standing together looking out the window. “Don’t look!” Nathan screamed as he grabbed their shoulders pulling them back. They stared at him with wide eyes. “Help you mother get food and water into the basement," he told them. "Also grab pillows and blankets. We’re going to be there awhile. Move! Fast!”
    Nathan ran to the hallway gun case which was leaning precariously and grabbed everything he could carry downstairs into the basement. Once there, he picked up several pieces of luggage and took them back upstairs to find the boys and Beth at the window again. Nathan thought he was going to lose his mind.
    “God Damn It!” he howled at them.
    They all turned to him with looks of confusion and horror. “What is going on?” asked Bethany. Nathan knew he would have to explain if he wanted them to move with any sense of urgency. He took a deep breath.
    “It looks like three nuclear bombs have gone off in Washington and at least two in Baltimore. We’re fifty miles from Washington and almost forty from Baltimore, but those are probably ten or twenty kiloton nukes. We’ve already been irradiated by the initial blast of gamma rays, and there’s nothing we can do about that, but we have to limit our exposure from now on if we want to survive. Those are fallout plumes you see rising into the air. In about fifteen minutes, thirty at the most, they’re going to start falling to the ground and more radiation particles will come down on top of us. If we