the armory he still had the canned food plus nine other folks who wanted out of there and back to the farms. Thus is established the core of the community which the reader will follow. And that?s the first twenty pages. As novels go, there is a price to be paid for this degree of conciseness. There is only the barest level of character development for many of the players. By no means does this destroy the story. There is plenty of action and drama to keep the reader engaged in the story line, but it does cause the reader to pause and consider which particular character is this, and where have I seen them before? It is simply the price of efficiency. Survival of the small community is threatened by fallout, tornado, a band of savage prostitutes turned into looters, and a government official who shows up out of nowhere. Fallout poses a concern about which nothing can be done. There is no hard information about where bombs have been dropped nor where the winds may have taken the fallout. Geiger counters and potassium iodide are not even considered (and perhaps were not even available to the general public in 1985). At any rate, all our characters can do is hope for the best on this count. The tornado presents a surprise challenge. It is not that tornados were unheard of in Eastern Texas, but they were not to be expected in summer. Some of the old timers could