Free Radioactive Omnibus- A Prepper Survival Story by BJ Knights Page A

also when you’re allowed to get married,” Jim said.
     
    “Uncle Jim’s kidding. It’ll be when you’re forty,” Samantha said.
     
    Coyle tore open the tent flaps and poked his head inside. His eyebrows were raised and his wild hair stood out in all directions. He looked like a mad scientist.
     
    “Breakfast line’s getting long,” he said. “I don’t want to have to wait thirty minutes like we did yesterday because somebody couldn’t get out of bed,” he looked accusingly at Annie who giggled.
     
    “What’s on the menu today?” Jim asked.
     
    “Well, Monday was gray mush. Tuesday was white mush,” he rubbed his chin and then looked at Jim with over-exaggerated excitement on his face. “You think we’ll get the charcoal mush today?”
     
    Jim led the group over to the breakfast line. They passed other families, loners, and soldiers crawling out of their army-issued relief tents and stretching their bodies in the morning sun.
     
    Jim had seen more people arrive every day. They came from Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas; there wasn’t a major city in the southwest United States, or the entire country for that matter, that didn’t get hit by some sort of attack. He heard rumors of camps similar to their own on the outskirts of cities all around the country. Anytime he asked what was going on, however, he was met with the calculated response of, “we’re working on it.” He just wasn’t sure what “it” was.
     
    When Jim got to the front and held out his tray, the man in the hairnet slopped a pile of bland mush onto his plate. Coyle leaned over with a frown on his face.
     
    “Damn. And I was really hoping it’d be the charcoal mush.”
     
    Before Jim could scout a table for everyone to sit at two MPs slammed into him, knocking his tray to the floor. Jim watched them make a beeline for Samantha and Annie behind him, still in line for breakfast.
     
    “Samantha Kearny?” the taller MP asked.
     
    Samantha pulled Annie behind. Her daughter wrapped her arms around her mother’s legs, peaking up at the MPs between her moms knees.
     
    “Yes?” Samantha replied.
     
    “We need you and your daughter to come with us,” the shorter MP said.
     
    Jim wedged himself in between the two MPs and the girls.
     
    “What’s this about?” he asked.
     
    “Sir, please stay back,” the shorter MP said. 
     
    The shorter MP reached for Jim’s shoulder, but Jim knocked the MP’s hand out of the way. The taller MP went straight for his pistol and Jim kicked the side of his knee collapsing him to the ground. Jim pulled the pistol out of the MP’s holster and clicked the safety pointing it at the shorter MP who had his hand hovering over his pistol.
     
    “Don’t,” Jim said.
     
    The breakfast line had stopped moving. The crowd around Jim had spread out. People had their empty trays pressed against their chests like shields. The soldiers in hair nets behind the counter stood frozen over their vats of slimy meat. A rustling in the back of the crowd caught Jim’s attention.
     
    “Out of the way, move!” a voice shouted.
     
    A brash sergeant burst through the frontline of the crowd with a group of four soldiers with him. Jim kept the pistol aimed between the two MPs he disarmed. The sergeant and the rest of his men un-holstered their weapons. The sergeant inched closer, but Jim didn’t flinch. Not even when the barrel of the sergeant’s Smith and Wesson 9mm was jammed into the side of his temple.
     
    “Drop it, fucker,” the sergeant said.
     
    Jim glanced around the men circling him. He le the pistol go limp in his hand and handed it back to the MP he took it from. The sergeant grabbed Jim’s arms and threw them around his back, cuffed him, and slammed his face into the ground. Jim saw the other soldiers grab Samantha and Annie. The sergeant pointed a finger at Coyle.
     
    “He comes too,” he said.
     
    The remaining solider lifted Coyle up between his armpits and dragged