Dan And The Bottle Ch 06

Dan sat back, rubbing his chin in thought as he considered Doc Michael's note. It would be a good idea to have a few more Doctors around, and maybe start a small medical education program. He fired up his computer and started looking up medical textbooks on the online bookstore site, but soon gave up in confusion.

'Maybe it would be better to have the Doc order these.' He thought. He went back to the small pile of mail, mostly junk, before running up on one from a law firm in Detroit. Opening it, he unfolded the enclosed pages, getting angrier as he read.

His mother was suing him for the money he'd had DJ arrange, thinking it had actually come from her grandfather!

He got up, went to his filing cabinet, and got out the paperwork the attorney had brought him, so many months ago. He looked it over carefully, noting that it had been left to him, specifically, and made no provision for her at all. 'DJ?' he thought, and in an instant, the Djinn was at his side.

"Yes, Dan?" The Djinn could see that his master was visibly upset.

Wordlessly, Dan handed him the summons from the attorney's office.

"Ok.... how would you like to handle this? I can destroy all memory of any of this, in everyone involved."

Dan thought it over for a moment before shaking his head.

"No, I think a more potent message needs to be sent, here. Can you get me several copies of every one of my bank statements, from back in Michigan, showing how many times she withdrew money from my account while she was at the casino? Oh, and while you're at it, get a DVD, two copies, actually, with the surveillance footage from that casino ATM, showing her making those withdrawals?"

Then another thought occurred, and he added "And just to make sure, I want to add a line to this... in my Great Grandfather's own hand, demanding and requiring that I not give her a penny." he concluded, indicating the original bequest paperwork. "Matter of fact, make sure that attorney's copy has the same stipulation."

He sat down and penned a quick note to his mother.

'Mother... as you can see from the enclosed documentation, if I give you one penny from the money my great grandfather left to ME, I lose everything. Quite aside from that, I still have the bank statements showing withdrawals from a casino I never set foot in.... and the enclosed DVD clearly shows YOU using MY ATM card to withdraw money at that casino. In case you are unaware of this, that is called credit card fraud, and it is a felony. If you pursue this frivolous lawsuit against me for property that is rightfully mine and mine alone, I WILL see to it that this evidence makes it's way to the Wayne county prosecuter's office, and you will go to prison. You've taken too much from me already. You will not see another penny from me. Do not contact me on this or any other matter, ever again.'

He signed the letter, put it in a big manila envelope along with all of the copies of the documentation, put half a dozen stamps on it, and put it in with the rest of the outgoing mail.

He sat back with a heavy sigh, thinking 'Another bridge burnt.'

He sat back in his living room, Barb at his side, listening intently as Doc Michaels told him about the various physicians he had in mind.... several had been combat medics who had gone on to med school after their military service was up, and a few had gone on to teach medicine as well. Dan grinned back at him, nodding.

"Ok, Doc, you've sold me.... order whatever teaching aids and books you need, put it on our company accounts, and contact as many of your old friends as you think can be trusted to not reveal our location. Give them the location of the warehouse in town, and we'll have someone meet them there and bring them in. I'm guessing you've already told them a little bit about the set up here?"

Art Michaels nodded. "Most of them think I was referring to paradise.... they are NOT happy with that socialized medicine bullshit.... the bureaucrats telling them who they can provide care to, and who they should just give placebos to, only to watch them die. I agree with them.... the ones who should get the sugar pills are those asshole Washington bureaucrats."

Barb smiled. "It would serve them right.... I had no idea this is what I was voting for."

Michaels shook his head. "None of us did. Hell, Congress passed that mess without reading it. Of course, they don't care... it doesn't apply to them."

Dan nodded, deep in thought. "You know, while you're here, There's something else.... we need to see about getting a few specialists here, too, and the tools of their trades... eye doctors, with all the equipment to make glasses.... a few heart specialists, and surgeons, maybe a few more dentists, maybe a Gynecologist or two," Shooting a look at his wife, who blushed a bit.

"Just make sure we have everything we need... full lab, chemistry equipment, chemicals to make all the medicines we might need, every book on the subjects known to man--multiple copies, mind you... the works. You know better than I do what all we need and what we already have."

"Ok.... but... why the urgency? I mean.... do you know something I don't?"

"No... not really." Dan replied, shaking his head. "It's just a feeling. I've been keeping a close eye on the news, and some of the military guys we have here are, too.... anything that makes Them nervous, makes Me nervous.... and they're mostly walking around like long tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs. Don Miller won't let his boys go outside the bunker at all, these days... and I know for a fact that he's plugged in to the Pentagon itself."

Michael's eye's widened at this. If Miller was on edge, there was a damned good reason for it.

Within two months, the additional people had arrived, and the Cave's population swelled by nearly a thousand people. Thanks to Dan's foresight, and DJ's 'assistance', there was still plenty of room for the population to expand, and plenty of room for whatever they needed.

One empty chamber was converted to a garden, growing plants that had medicinal properties, and a number of labs were set aside for pure research.

Dan, meanwhile, was spending what some folks might have thought were utterly absurd amounts of money, on all manner of extra supplies, filling up the extra storage space DJ had given him.... mostly true essentials.

Truckloads of toilet paper, coffee filters, spare appliances from stoves to freezers and coffee makers, toasters, TVs and DVD players, stereo gear of all sorts, computers and routing equipment, miles of cables of various sorts... soon, they basically had their own phone company for communicating within the complex.

Orders on the internet, for books of every description and DVDs of all types skyrocketed, and Marlene soon found herself having to abandon the Minivan and use a full sized pick up to haul them all back to the cave, and to enlist two other drivers and two more trucks to handle the flow. The size of the cave's library tripled in three months.

Barb, of course, got into the act, getting her husband to procure several hundred Cocoa plants, assuring him that they were a necessity, because "There's a bunch of women in here who ain't goin' without chocolate, Man o' mine.... and you're lookin' at one of 'em!"

At one point, Barb was surprised to learn that her husband had forty more truckloads of toilet paper, another ten truckloads of paper towels, ten loads of coffee filters, and twenty loads of assorted boxed and canned groceries coming in at once.

The small trucks, vans, and the crews who loaded and unloaded them and hauled them from the warehouse in town, and those who took it through the complex to the assorted warehouse chambers were running, literally, around the clock, and fresh 'troops' were joining in every few hours.

Over a week's time, they filled up well over twenty million cubic feet, and Dan's bank account was finally starting to run low. Not a moment too soon, as it happened.

Extra supplies were procured by the hundreds of tons, right up until the day that the news reports started trickling in.

Washington D.C. was first to be hit, of course, with major cities all over the country following suit shortly thereafter. As Dan had predicted, many of the nukes were carried into the cities in suitcases; NORAD, having no clue who was setting them off, was basically paralyzed.

The President and his V.P., along with most of both houses of Congress, were wiped out in the first strike. The ranking officers at the Pentagon suffered a similar fate.

A Commanding General at the main missile command at Omaha kept a close eye on the radar and satellite imagery, for as long as it lasted, and adjusted the missile coordinates under his command accordingly.... but there weren't nearly enough to go around for every country that was targeting the US. He started hitting them in order of importance, and the list was long.

North Korea, Communist China, Cuba, and several Nation-States in the Middle east got the bulk of the few ICBMs left in his command, and the 'Boomer' submarines took out several adversaries in the eastern European area and Russia.

Most surprising were a number of missile launches that came from South America... and he saw to it that they got much the same treatment.

When the reports started coming in, Dan hit the siren button, alerting the entire complex, including those who were outside, that the tunnels would be collapsed in five minutes.

What few people who were outside called in to the command center, asking for an extra fifteen minutes, so they could herd the rest of the cattle in and get them secured. Dan grudgingly relented, figuring they'd need the extra breeding stock and milk production.

Within less than an hour, they had everyone in, the cows were contentedly munching on the long grass in the pasture chambers, and all was as ready as it would ever be.

Dan sent out the mental call, and DJ appeared as soon as he was alone.

"Well, my friend, this is what I've been expecting.... I know you still have 'time on the clock' so to speak, but if there's somewhere else you need to be, I will go ahead and release you from my service now." He held out his hand, and the Djinn shook it warmly.

"I was right. The Lord chose quite well when he set me in your path. Live well, O Kind one. I am going to leave you with one more thing. If ever you find yourself in need of my aid, you've but to think of me, and I will be here. You tell your first born son, and pass it down the line.... I will only show up once, so it had better be important, but I will grant one request."

Dan rubbed his chin in thought for a moment and replied, "Why don't we just do this.... when it's safe, and it comes time for us to dig ourselves out of here, you show up then, lend a hand, without actually revealing your presence. Unearth the entryways for us, so we can feel the sun again-if that day ever comes."

"Fair enough... I will be here."

The Djinn then turned into a column of greenish smoke, dissipated into the same ornate brown bottle that Dan had found, so many months ago, and it, too, vanished. They were on their own.

Dan looked, long and hard, at the spot where the bottle had been, then reached for the console, pushing the button. Distant explosions told him that the charges had done their job.... the tunnel entrances were buried under hundreds of tons of earth and rock. They were sealed in.

Barb lay in his arms that night, sobbing softly.... she knew, in her mind, that they'd been preparing for this moment, but in her heart, she had always hoped it would never come. He did his best to calm her, and they lay together, quiet, each lost in thought.

They smoked several joints of the Philipino pot as they lay together in the master bedroom of thier suite, then she kissed him on the cheek, murmuring "I'm sorry, Baby.... I'm just not in the mood tonight. I just want you to hold me."

"Honey, you know I can do that.... and, if truth's to be told, I'm in no mood, myself."

It was the same in much of the complex that night; people, just clinging to one another, not knowing what the future might hold.

Life went on in the Cave; Tom Jennings proposed to Barb's sister, Charlene, the week after the sealing; Ron Dupree did the same with Marlene, and the double wedding was set for three weeks hence.

Barb was Maid of Honor for both of her sisters, as was Sally Mitchell and Roberta Crenshaw, who, with her husband Jim, had moved to the cave when they had all come back from Hawaii. Dan stood as Best Man for Tom, while Brad Mitchell, another of Tom's SEAL team members, stood with Ron.

Father Tony, as everyone called him, once again officiated over the proceedings, marrying both couples at once, and finally said the words.

"You gentlemen may kiss your brides."

Once again, Dan enlisted a co-conspirator; Barb used duplicate keys to sneak into the apartments of Ron and Tom, leaving silver ice buckets in each containing iced down bottles of Dom Perignon.

Tom and Charlene returned to what was now, officially, Their apartment, and were surprised by the gleaming silver bucket sitting on the coffee table with the long green neck of the Champagne bottle sticking out of the top, with the pair of crystal Champagne flutes set beside it.

Charlene saw it too, and muttered 'Thanks, sis." under her breath. She had no doubt about who had put it there.

Tom pulled the bottle out of the bucket, wiping off the clinging bits of ice and reading the label. 'Dom Perignon 1955... wonder if it was a good year?' He wondered, idly, as the words 'Three thousand dollars a bottle' ran through his head.

Charlene looked to the coffee table, noting the half dozen doobies in the ashtray... wondering, idly if it was Hawaiian, Jamaican, or Thai.

Her new husband popped the cork on the bubbly, rushing to fill the two glasses, trying not to spill too much of this exceptional gift, as his wife turned to him, holding up one of the joints with a raised eyebrow. Smiling, he nodded back at her.

She set it aside for a moment, going off to the bathroom to change into a pair of slacks and a t shirt, hanging her simple white wedding dress up on the back of the door.

Stepping back to the living room, she accepted the glass from her new husband, clinking it to his as he spoke.

"To us, babe... may we have a long and fruitful marriage."

She took a sip, then winked at him and replied. "It's going to be 'fruitful' sooner than you think, dear".

He snorted a bit of the expensive champagne through his nose at her words, and sneezed as the bubbles tickled the inside of his nose. "What.... what do you mean?"

"How do you think T.J. will like having a baby brother?"

"Babe! Are you.... are you serious?" He was now grinning so wide, she thought the ends of his lips might reach his sideburns.

She nodded. "Doctor Willis says I'm about a month along.... and she thinks, from what the lab told her about my amniotic fluid, that it'll be a boy."

He carefully set his glass down, then took hers from her hand, setting it aside as well, and wrapped his new bride in his arms and hugged her close, kissing her neck and ear, whispering "I love you, honey."

She held on to him, tightly. "I love you too, babe."

They kissed slowly, languidly, at first, then began to pick up a little speed as their passion grew, and soon their clothes were flying. Charlene was glad that T.J. was off at a sleepover with some of his friends. This night, she wasn't sure either of them would wait to get to the bedroom.

In moments both were as naked as the day they were born, the champagne and doobies forgotten for the moment as Tom dove face first between her thighs.

He licked her nether lips lightly, gently, at first, savoring the clean taste of her as the lips began to unfurl, revealing the pink flesh within, even as the little hood shifted aside, revealing her hard clit. He took it between his lips, fluttering his tongue tip across it lightly, quickly, driving her to clamp her thighs hard against his ears.

She moaned in ultimate pleasure, running her fingers through his close cropped hair as he expertly ate her pussy, feeling the stirring deep in her womb as her first orgasm approached.

"Oh, yes... OH God, honeeeeyyyy!" she moaned as he added a pair of fingers, finding and massaging her G-spot, triggering her first orgasm of the night. He continued even as the juices gushed from her, slathering his cheeks and chin.

He slid slowly up her body, between her wide spread thighs, his cock sliding into her as if it had eyes of it's own and knew where it belonged.

She moaned deeply as he slid into her, feeling his hardness fill her, sighing as he began to pump into her slowly. He covered her lips with his own, seeking and finding her tongue as she began to buck her hips against his. They made love slowly at first, comfortable with each other, but the slow, gentle pace couldn't last, and soon they were picking up speed.

"Oh, God, baby.... fuck me, honey!' She moaned as he really started going to town on her, pulling almost out of her and plunging back in as fast as he could, feeling her cunt spasm around him as she came again and again, finally unleashing his own jets of cum deep inside her.

Ron and Marlene stepped inside their apartment and saw the silver bucket on the coffee table, the pair of crystal champagne flutes sitting in front of it, and Marlene smiled. She, like Charlene, knew exactly where this had come from.

"Looks like Dan and Barb have been busy."

Ron looked over the bottle of bubbly, eyebrows raising as he read the label. This was no cheap bottle of wine.

"Dom perignon '57..... wow! This wasn't cheap!"

Marlene shook her head. ''Dan's no tightwad. I'll bet this bottle cost more than I used to make in a couple of months, back in Detroit."

Once again, on the coffee table was an ashtray with a half dozen machine rolled joints, a butane lighter beside it. She held one up. "Baby, do you...?"

He smiled. "I did, back when I was a teen ager, but I quit when I went into the Navy. Didn't want to walk into a combat zone with a headful of clouds."

"Well, honey, you ain't in the Navy now.... and if I know Dan, we're in for a treat!"

She fired up the cigarette sized joint, taking an experimental hit. It tasted a bit like the Thai that he'd brought in a few months ago, but not quite.

They passed the doobie back and forth until it was too short to hold onto, then she dropped it into the ashtray to go out while he carefully opened the bottle of champagne, trying to catch it all in the first of the two glasses. Filling them both, he handed one to his new bride, and they clinked them together as they drank to their new union.

He got up for a moment, turning on the stereo and selecting a Johnny Mathis CD, setting the player to shuffle and repeat, then rejoined Marlene on the couch, refilling their glasses and drinking the fine champagne, finishing off the bottle and another joint, until both were laughing at the slightest thing the other said.

Finally, she got up on unsteady feet and gave him a sultry look over her shoulder.

"I'm gonna go get out of this dress.... wanna help?"

Wild horses couldn't have held him back.

In the bedroom, he stepped up behind her, slowly unzipping the pale blue gown she'd been married in as he nuzzled at her ear

She turned slowly in his arms, her lips seeking and finding his, kissing him long and slow as he took her in his arms, his hands working at the clasps of her lacy demi-bra as their tongues twisted together.

She brought her hands to his tie, loosening the knot and pulling it over his head as she pulled back from his kiss for a moment to look him up and down.

"Husband, you're a bit over dressed!"

He smiled as he began unbuttoning his vest, then his shirt, as she worked at his pants. In moments, he was nude, and he eyed her lacy panties.