Procrastinating at the Baker's. And what it led to -- WfW 1st part

These Words for Wednesday kept teasing my brain. We were given:
    Annihilate          and / or       Business
     Zinfandel                              Panniers
     Lozenge                                Wooden
     Pacemaker                           Thunderstruck  
     Spokes                                  Podcast
    Invoice                                  Zesty
And then they mixed up with old Sci-fi novellas and short stories. I ended up using  about half of them in a story about the end of the world, maybe WW3 or something like it. If you cannot find all the words here, right you are, this is only the first chapter of many. Laura Ingalls' Ma would have been scolding me in church today. I was not listening to the sermon, I was writing bits of the next chapters inside my head. I hope for forgiveness.

I went shopping in the dusky February light. Today my husband was to return home from New York, and we were celebrating a belated Christmas at our eldest daughter's place. I went to the Baker. That baker, the only baker who produced Lebkuchen all year round. Those spicy, honey bread without which in large quantities, our celebrations would never be perfect. While waiting for my turn, I admired the display of cakes and bread. The flat, broad counter, unlike the tall ones normally in fashion in bakeries, displayed a sea of cakes to my hungry eyes. The lebkuchen were to the right, round ones, tree-shaped ones. Some with chocolate coating, some with white glazing. Some even had small decorative patterns of sugar pellets strewn all over.
"Lebkuchen, please." I said to the lady. She stood in the middle of the counter where the sea of cakes parted, sloping up on both ides of her. "Which ones are the best? Oh. let me have five of the tree shaped white ones, and five of the round ones with sugar beads. I better take five of the dark chocolate lozenges as well." The patient lady sighed almost inaudibly and took a larger bag.  Oh and please, five of the milk chocolate ones too." I saw her patient face, and looked behind me at the growing line. "Well, I'll just take five of each, please," I said.
"Five of each. That'll be 55 lebkuchen!" the lady said. She could not wholly contain her surprise.
"Yes please, we're many, and we like our freedom of choice. They won't  go stale for some days yet, will they?" "No," she admitted, "they're all as fresh as can be and will be fine for weeks to come before they'll turn dry. They won't go off for half a year or more, unless they become wet. Our Lebkuchen are the hardiest cakes I know of!" she said with a proud professional smile.
On my way out carrying a big bag of lebkuchen, I met Pete, an old friend. He had begun by being mostly my husband's friend, but he had grown into a family friend over the years. He looked terrible. "Hello Pete, whats up. You look like you meed a cup of coffee, or maybe something stronger. I'm at my daughter's for our annual post-Christmas celebrations."
"Yes!" Pete said, "let me buy a cake or two, and then come with me. We have to talk."
Pete? Did something happen to my husband? I said giving voice to a nagging suspicion
"No, dear Mary, he's as safe as you and me." "Two Berliners please," he said to the lady, "and a Danish. No, make that three, different tastes, please." He got his loot, paid and went ahead of me to his car, an old blue minibus. He held the door for me, like an old fashioned movie star and crawled into the driver''s seat. He quickly, but in a savoring way ate one Danish and a Berliner all the while steering the car though the sparse morning traffic.
"Pete," I said, "you're eating pastry. For Heavens' sake man! You're a celiac. You'll get stomach ache like nothing I know from what you've eaten already."
He parked the car in the empty parking lot by the harbour. "No, I wont" he answered with a face fit for a funeral. "Before all these wheaten bodies of whatever have worked their way through my system, we'll all be dead. A bomb went off late yesterday in the eastern Russia, One of theirs, or somebody else's. I do not know. West of Bratsk, never heard of that place. Now it's too late, it does not exist any more."
I made a move for the radio.
He shook his head. "There's nothing on the radio, but business as usual. Nobody's been told anything, as there's nothing to be done. Ten minutes before the Wave reaches a country the emergency numbers go dead. And that's it. It will reach us at 12 or thereabout. It, the Wave that is, is moving faster than any land vehicle, it burns, or rather annihilates all living matter, melting most metals in its way, and leaving only minerals behind.  It thrives on oxygen, as far as I have understood." He turned on is other radio, the MP one.
We listened: "On its way around the world in 40 hours, the Wave has just annihilated Moscow and Calcutta. The Himalayan mountains delayed its spreading only slightly. Still nobody has any idea of how to stop it, or what will be left of Earth after the Wave. We'll return if and when we have any further news. Over and out." Static filled the air.
"This sounds just like an old science fiction I once read," I said, still thinderstryck by the news.
"I think I read that one as well," Pete answered. "What was their way out?"
"None, I think. I remember our protagonist dying miserably in the end. But I ... I have an idea. How long do we have?
"Something like two hours," he said.
"Time enough to get our families and get out of here?" He nodded "Can we out-travel it?"
"Nope, It's faster than any car, but traveling east can buy us a little time. What are you thinking off?
"Joe's Farm!" I answered. "You remember it. The place where we made these farmers' days re-enactments and markets. It belongs to no-one really And it has an honest to God old-fashioned tornado cellar, very deep, and with its own water supply. Go and fetch your wife. Dress warm, and bring all your edibles and blankets and knives and such. Whatever you would pack for a week in a primitive cabin. But quick! Drop me at the Mega-store, and meet me there again as soon as possible.
As I hoped, the Mega-store had already prepared for Spring. I grabbed seed bags: corn, radishes, kale, 4 or 5 of each different sort, also tomatoes and cucumbers, in short all things edible. On an afterthought I added flower seed to the mix. In the exotic corner I found cotton seeds! I emptied the box, cotton was so much easier to treat than flax and nettles. In the health food department whole, untreated linseed, wheat, rye, barley and oats found their way into my shopping basket. I bought drills, knitting pins and needles, antihistamines and painkillers. then a lot of sweets. bags of tea and sugar and a big freezing box to put it all into. Then I hurried out to meed Pete.
He was as good as his word. He and his wife Minna sat in the car with the engine running. I climbed in, greeted Minna, chucked my crate in the luggage compartment and gave him the address to my daughter's place.
"What a luck you have a big bus," I said to Pete.

"Jill," I said, as she opened the door, baby on one arm. "We're turning the party into an outing. A pique-nique if you like. Pete and Minna, are out there in that old, blue bus of theirs. Dress warm, and let me help you carry all the food and your bedding to the bus. It's a surprise party for your Dad. Pete'll go and pick him up. Pack some more clothes and night things for the kids and you as well. We might stay for the weekend."
Jill and George did not ask many questions, used to my quirky ways and whims, and I answered in short words only. The children awoke, or tore themselves off the computers or whatever, and came and gave big hugs all around. I had not much to pack, my faithful backpack was not unpacked yes. I placed it in the bus with crates of Jill and George's zesty cooking and cans.
Then I helped Janet tie the laces of her clumsy boots, and bade her go and fetch some shoes as well. "You can't run and play indoors in those big ole boots," I teased her. Gregor needed more help, at 2 he wanted to do everything, by himself but could not quite manage.
Lil'George, all of eleven, big, and a bit sensitive, felt the tension between Pete and me. "Are you angry with  Pete?" he asked. "Nope." I said, "Not really. We just had a little old discussion is all. I wanted him to call granddad while still in the plane, he said it could not be done,"
Pete listened, and said "I still think it cannot be done, but you know granny, she's stubborn like."
Lil'George smiled. Grown up spats was something he could understand. Pete smiled a mirthless smile  at me when his back was turned.
"Diapers, don't forget the diapers!" Jill called back at George still in the sleeping room.
In less than an hour everything was in the car and Pete at the wheel: "Pile in," Pete said and started the car.
 On the way out of town we picked up Pete's brother Ben and his wife Sally. He had told them the story by phone, and they were ready, carrying bedding, a crate of tools and a bulging bag of clothes and edibles.
Then we drove off. I let my daughter and George in on the real reason behind the outing. Pete let the MP radio run and we could follow the Wave as it came nearer and nearer. We drove along the railway. A train was traveling alongside us. Then it set off full speed ahead. "They are not going to escape," Pete said, shaking his head. We heard the radio announce that the Wave was estimated to reach the shoreline in 10 minutes "but the Wave is no longer an uniform front. Mountains, shallows, bodies of water and so on has made the edges rather jagged."
The air behind us began to take on a strange hue, glowing almost. We were overtaken by a handy-man in a Ute. He had several pressurized gas bottles in the back. He was driving like a madman.
"Keep away from him," Sally said. "Those flasks will explode in the Wave or maybe earlier."
"By golly, and so will our gas tank!" Pete gasped.
The man in the Ute careened wildly from one side of the road to the other, and ended up in the ditch. Only Pete's superior driving skills saved us.
We all sat, urging the car to go faster, pressing against the seats in front of us, Pete drove as fast as humanly possible. I yelled: "Turn left here! Joe's farm is over there."
Pete ran the bus as close as he deemed safe. Everybody helped emptying the bus and carried the stuff to the farm while I alarmed the caretakers.  They came tumbling out, and ran to open the door to the farm and unlock the cellar. I turned on the water faucet outside the kitchen and Jill and Ben thoroughly wet our clothes and all the decorative pillows left over from the exhibition last week. Pete filled some big jars with water and we lugged them and us into the house together with all our belongings.
As we loaded the children down to their waiting parents Linda, the caretaker's wife suddenly said: The animals! She ran to the barn, opened the doors and let the dogs and donkeys out. 
I looked back the way we had come and saw the town turn into a mushrooming cloud.
"It's landed!" I screamed. Linda and I watched the cables along the train tracks starting to burn, then combust and in slow motion the tracks began lifting. Then we hurried into the cellar after the others, closed and bolted the trap door and waited.

to be continued
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