Fallen Land Read Online Free PDF Page A

what had always seemed a happy marriage.
    Thwacker, thwacker, thwack
. Keep the body still, think beyond life, think death into life and the stillness of the other side. Calm yourself, Paul, stop being a child. You’re on your own, your wife has left you. You have no one but yourself. You must look forward. He remembers the way his father preached an edict of self-reliance to him as a boy.
Remember the teachings of the great man, Paul. Regret is nothing but a false prayer. Trust the gleam of your own mind. Be brave: God does not want cowards to manifest His work. Your hands are trustworthy. Society is nothing but a conspiracy against you. If the country is at war, then the average citizen has to look out for his own even more than in peacetime, government be damned.
    In building the bunker he was only thinking about the safety and welfare of his family. He loved his wife, still loves her, loves the boys as well, only ever wanted to protect them and still does. If he had the money, he would fly across oceans to find them and bring them back, knowing he is the only one who can truly protect them. It is no longer enough to worry about nuclear warheads from China or Russia or Iran or North Korea hitting the Air Force base south of town. It is essential to plan not just for attack by foreign terrorists or governments, but also for the possibility of hostile fellow Americans, for a new civil war, or for an environmental, technological, or biochemical conclusion to the human era on this planet. Those who have planned for the other side of now, the wise and prepared, are the only ones who will survive the plains of uncertainty that must be crossed in the coming decades.
    Once he had the idea for the bunker there was just the question of how to connect it to the basement of the house since he had already filed plans with the city; to make a change would cost even more and be a bureaucratic headache and by then Amanda was feeling that she had taken enough chances trying to help him out in ways that were not strictly legal. So as soon as the house was finished, and the city inspectors were satisfied, Paul began excavating the tunnel for the bunker. There was no one to observe him except Mrs. Washington, in her old wreck down the hill. Trees blocked the building site on three sides and he raised a six-foot-high fence around the backyard to ensure even greater privacy for the work he was undertaking without permit. What permission does a man need except that granted by his heart and his God?
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members
, so the great man said
.
He covered the bunker’s walls with lead-lined sheetrock, borrowed a crane and a buddy to help him lower the containment doors into place one night, and encased the whole structure in a layer of concrete, connecting it with the old storm cellar in the woods and knocking through the finished foundation into his new basement at the opposite end. The bunker has electricity and plumbing, just as if it were another part of the house, except it is not, because it appears on none of the plans. With the bunker complete he bricked up the entrance to the basement, leaving a small hole hidden behind a wooden hatch under a shelf at the back of the pantry, just large enough that Paul could pull himself through on his stomach.
    On paper the bunker does not exist, but under the earth of the backyard, behind its containment doors, it has two bedrooms, a full bathroom, an open-plan kitchen and living space, a store of canned and dry goods, a supply of water and water purification tablets, hunting and assault rifles, two thousand rounds of ammunition, energy-saving lightbulbs, an extra washing machine and dryer, and an air filtration system vented into the woods, its exhaust pipe disguised within the trunk of a tree hollowed out by lightning. This is his refuge, the last part of his home he is able to occupy. Surrender is out of the question. When technology