September 6, 2033 – AT 6 Autumn Waxing 27 (6.5.27)

This is one of the news stories I found in the Willits Library:

[pasted in the book]

Hurricane Maria Stuns Chesapeake Bay

August 25, 2025

AP – Raleigh, NC

On Sunday about 3:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time Hurricane Maria made landfall at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. At the point of landfall Maria was rated by the National Hurricane Center as Category 5 with wind speeds recorded as high as 163 MPH. Communications with the affected area have been poor all day but reports of major damage are coming through hard line internet connections. Storm surges in excess of 30 feet have been reported along tributary rivers of Chesapeake Bay including the Potomac, which flows by Washington, DC and the Patapsco River on which the City of Baltimore is situated. Many residents of Washington and Baltimore had moved inland due to warnings from the National Hurricane Center but both cities still have significant residents in the way of the storm. The US Senate voted against adjourning as the Republican Filibuster of the Budget moved into day 31. No communication from Capitol Hill has been made since about one hour after Maria made landfall, at which time the Senate was still in session as Senator Louis Arbuckle (R Kansas) read the 2012 White Pages from Kansas City, Kansas into the Congressional Record..

Scattered reports indicate that a ship has foundered near the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Station, 40 miles east of Washington, DC. Those reports indicate that the ship may have somehow damaged the power plant. No reliable reports of the damage have been confirmed.

This is when the Hurricane hit. They didn't know all the stuff that had happened, just bits and pieces. The Senators were being so stubborn in their arguments they couldn't get themselves out of the way of the storm. Ronald says a lot of them may have died that day. They were so STUPID!

Ebook version

Paperback version

Mother Rainbow's Children: The Cave

 "Before the Tribulation driving up Highway 5 from Grants Pass to Roseburg was about an hour's drive. Good road, rest stops, a little windy, a lot of up and down. Now it was an obstacle course. Cars abandoned or crashed into each other. Road trains mangled and blocking the road across all the lanes. Human remains in many of the vehicles. It was a nightmare. If we weren't fleeing from the nightmare in Grants Pass it would have dissuaded us from our trek, but we knew that there was no reprieve behind us. It took us about 10 hours to go 68 miles. It was dark by the time we got to Roseburg. I think it was late May, so that had to be after 9. We couldn't see much. Naturally, there were no city lights. We found an abandoned church and slept inside, feeling somehow safer in a House of God."

"Just before dawn we were woken by a gunshot as one of our sentries died near a smashed window. We all grabbed rifles and took positions where we could shoot back. There were about 40 men outside. They were in worse shape than we were. I could see signs of radiation poisoning in several of them (I recognized it because I had seen a lot of it first hand very recently). They all looked starving and desperate. We started shooting back and my focus just became what was in front of me. Fire, duck, shoot again, look out for the guy sneaking behind the shed over there, shoot again, pull the trigger and curse because the magazine is empty. Reload, shoot again. I don't know how long the fire-fight lasted. It might have been 10 minutes. It might have been an hour. It felt like days. Eventually they ran away, realizing we had numbers and fire-power, I guess. I know that two bullets I fired killed men I didn't know. I know that two of my friends were dead and several more were wounded. The women patched them up as well as they could. We took a look outside. Fred took a team on the west side of the church, I took a team on the east side. I heard one gunshot from the west and we went running. Fred said that one of the attackers was still alive and tried to shoot him, so he killed him. The other boys with him looked pretty scared, of Fred. They didn't say anything, but I got the idea that Fred didn't wait for the guy to pick up a gun."

Ebook version

Paperback version

Mother Rainbow's Children: The Cave

 February 3, 2033.

My 9th Birthday, 5 years to the day from when the sky was clear and blue. I suppose I ought to say who I am and why I have this journal. My name is Sarah. My parents died during the Nuclear Winter (that's what Uncle Ronald called the Dark Time), along with pretty much every one else we knew. I don't have a lot of memories of all that. Uncle Ronald isn't really my Uncle, but he knew my parents pretty well. We lived in a cabin on Ronald's parents property here, near Comptche. Ronald used to visit from Sacramento because he was working on some sort of project for the Mendocino County Museum. That's when he met my parents and helped them move to his parent's place. Anyway, when the bad times started, Ronald moved here to stay near his folks and to get away from the city. When people started dying of the Poisons, Ronald and I were the only ones left. Ronald was staying in this stone cabin and he took me in. We have our own spring in the cave in back and Ronald brought all of the canned food and well packaged food stores he could find here. We had a toilet, water, food, mini-hydro for lights and the hot plate. We just stayed inside for a couple of years until the sky was blue again. Today Ronald gave me this journal. He found a stack of them down in Mendocino Village. He wants me to start recording history. He says that what I say will be important years from now, cause things are starting over and he says I'll be one of the founders. He said to write as well as I know (he's pretty fussy about that, being a professor and all). I guess that's enough for starters.

Bobcat read it again, and then again. If he remembered right, Mother Rainbow's name was Sarah before she changed it. He was sitting in a cave, reading a journal by a little girl named Sarah who survived the Dark Times with her Uncle. Could this indeed be Rainbow Cave!? Could this be the very journal of Mother Rainbow's!? Bobcat kept reading. He could not stop himself.

Click here to buy

Ebook version

or

Paperback version

Mother Rainbow's Children: The Cave