SODIUM Trilogy Part One

by Stephen Arseneault

  We also managed to scrounge some farming books from what had at one time been the local feed and seed. Rachel had read them from cover to cover, and although they were at times a little technical for her, she stuck with it and was quickly becoming a fountain of knowledge about farming practices. We had made a good decision by drying seeds the previous fall, and the spring planting was now well under way.

  I had noticed the last few times out on my dock that I was seeing a number of small gators. There was a seawall down my property and across the Kendalls’, and it had kept any gators from venturing into the yard in the past. Only once had I seen one in the canal, but I guessed that was soon to change.

  Gators don’t like humans, so they usually make themselves scarce, but it was looking like there was going to be a gator population explosion. In years past, gator-hunting season had kept the population in check. Without that annual culling, I reasoned we were probably in for a big fight in only a few short months. Having livestock near the water was undoubtedly going to get tricky.

  We had all settled into our daily routines, and I was tired of not making any new progress on my coil gun. So I decided it was time for a little adventure. I had two goals. The first was to see if we could find a truck, and the second was to see if we could make it over to the coast around Cocoa Beach. I was never a big beach-goer myself, but the girls were thrilled with the idea.

  We ventured out the next day looking for a truck. We had seen a few cars that sat unscathed, but I had no desire at the time to retire Suzie. And with the roads deteriorating, it was only a matter of time before she would have trouble getting us around.

  I could not remember having gone past any auto dealerships in our past outings, but perhaps I just hadn’t noticed. I knew where the nearest auto dealership had been, so we made our way there to begin.

  Upon arrival, we were disappointed to see nothing but flattened scrap iron on what had once been their prime lot. The buildings were all flattened as well. It looked like we would be shopping for something used. This same highway had previously had a number of used car dealerships, so we moved our efforts down the road. Unfortunately, the fate of each of those buildings and vehicles was the same.

  We continued our ride and decided to go down several of the side streets we had not been down before. Once again, we had a lucky strike. A six-foot-high block wall, holding up dirt from a higher property, and a large tree, had helped hide and protect a nice flatbed tow truck.

  I wanted to thank the homeowner personally for parking where he did, but by the looks of his pummeled hovel, that wasn’t going to happen. We would have to hot-wire it, but I knew how, and it would be a much better vehicle for us to use on our scavenger raids.

  I thought we might take a chance and see if we could find a key in the rubble. The odds were almost impossible, but I thought we should give it a try anyway. In our scavenging, we had come across numerous dead bodies, but it had been long enough now that the horrible smell no longer went with them.

  We had also become desensitized to finding bodies, as after a while the shock of it had worn off. It was still unpleasant, but we had a task to do, so we did it. As Rachel and I poked around in the rubble, Janie checked the passenger door and found it unlocked. She next climbed into the cab and, after a quick search, had keys in hand. The dual batteries in the beast were weak, but still had enough juice to start her up.

  As a reward, I had decided to let Janie drive Suzie on the way home. The truck had functioning AC, so our summertime excursions would be much more pleasurable in the future. After a quick check, we determined that the hydraulics on the bed and winches in front and back were all in good working order. It was an altogether excellent find.

  As I started out of the overgrown yard, I noticed the top of another truck one block further down along the same wall. After investigating, we found a nearly new, four-wheel-drive, diesel pickup. After searching for a key, hot-wiring was needed to get it going.

  It was a beauty. Large new wheels and tires and a lift kit would make it ideal for going into tough terrain. I couldn’t wait to get our two new prizes back to the bunker, where I could check them over more thoroughly.

  I was jealous of Rachel as she pulled out in front of me in the four-by on the way home. I could hear she had the stereo cranked way up, and I chuckled as her head bobbed to the music as she drove. Janie wove back and forth in Suzie in front of her.

  The girls named the wrecker Mike because they said it looked like something a Mike would have driven. Coincidentally, a check of the registration in the glove box revealed just that.

  Mike Hasner had been its former owner. Poor Mike was no longer in need of it, but we kept the name in his honor. The four-by was named Bubba because everyone felt it was definitely the kind of truck a big man named Bubba would have driven.

  The rest of the day was spent cleaning and servicing our new fleet. All three vehicles were diesel, and we had located a number of close-by stations that contained a large stockpile of fuel for our use. We soon scrounged several three-hundred-gallon fuel tanks and built our own little diesel station at the bunker.

  We were careful to conceal the tanks and the vehicles when not in use, as we didn’t know if we would someday receive another visit from above. We did the same for our hoard of storage sheds. From the air, we felt there would be no signs of life other than the animals, and the aliens had apparently not viewed them as a threat.

  Chapter 10

  * * *

  With our new fleet of vehicles in good working order, it was time to try for a trip over to the beach. I was worried about the bridges over the St. Johns River and the Intracoastal Waterway, so we took Mike and Bubba, as they both had winches. If needed, we could abandon one and still have a way home. We left early and drove into the sun on the way there.

  We decided we would probably need the full day to get over and back. We had only stayed away from the bunker for one night on our previous outings and decided to make every effort to not do that again. Our little eight hundred square feet of concrete was cramped, but it was cozy and it was ours. The world around us was becoming an increasingly wild place, so the security of home had its appeal.

  It took an hour to get to the St. Johns Bridge. One side was intact, but there was a stretch of the other that had fallen into the river; some unfortunate motorist had been traveling across during the attack and had been struck. The overpass of I-95 was collapsed, but we were able to go up the ramp onto the interstate, cross over to the other side, and then go back down the ramp and onto our road again. The bridge over the Intracoastal proved to be similar to the St. Johns. Sections were gone, but there was still a way across.

  Two hours after our journey began, we rolled up to the first view of the beach and the ocean straight down a tree-lined street. Even though the houses along the street were flattened, the big oaks that lined it were still there, providing a beautiful canopy.

  We raced down the road, piled out of the vehicles, and ran down the neighborhood gangway onto the sandy paradise. I stopped to enjoy the sand between my toes, and the girls raced straight for the water. We were so excited that we didn’t notice what was about ten miles up the beach to our left.

  There, hovering just above the waves about a mile out was a humongous ship. By the time I noticed, the girls had seen it, too. They stood staring and stunned, knee deep in the water. I waved for them to come back, but they just stood and stared at the craft.

  A terror that we would be spotted built in me, that we might be only moments away from capture or certain death. The consequences that came from being seen held no appeal, so I continued to wave the girls back and called to them with a low shout.

  They came slowly at first but then began to run. We all hustled back across the gangway to the trucks. We had parked under the trees and felt they provided adequate cover, so we took a moment to evaluate the situation.

  This was our first encounter with the destroyers of Man in almost a year. We made our way back over
to a dune and peered through the sea oats on top of it at the gigantic, dull gray vessel. I sent Rachel back to the truck to retrieve a small pair of binoculars. I then peered at the humongous ship for several minutes.

  I guessed the vessel was probably a half mile across. It was flat on the bottom with a slight domed shape on top. Two large tubes protruded from its center, going down into the water. Was water the reason they had come here? Were we nothing more than a needed resource? I had many questions and few answers. I was most concerned by the five smaller ships that buzzed around it as if always on the lookout for any threat.

  That’s when Janie grabbed my arm and pointed up above the craft and further out to sea. You could just make out the hazy outline of another round, but much, much larger ship. I was guessing it was five miles diameter and perhaps thirty miles off in the distance. As we watched, the smaller craft began retracting its tubes and within minutes was lifting upward toward the larger ship. I reasoned it was perhaps with a belly full of our precious ocean water.

  By that time, I was convinced we had not been spotted. Or, maybe we had been, but were not deemed a threat. Either way, we felt it was a good time to leave. We backed the trucks up slowly at first, and when we decided we had enough ground cover, we turned around and slipped our way back down the street.

  At that point, we were all eager to just make our way back to our little fortress hideaway. As we turned and began our way out of what had once been Cocoa Beach, we were again caught by surprise. Two vehicles were now blocking the roadway. At first I felt panicky, but I soon had the realization it meant someone else was alive. I would take no chances with my little family, as I had no idea if these other survivors would be friendly or hostile.

  We sat for ten minutes with the engines running, just looking out the windows. Other than behind trees or overgrown brush, there was really nowhere to hide for an ambush of any size. So after a thorough scan with the binoculars, I decided to get out of the truck.

  I waved back to Janie and Rachel to stay in Bubba and patted my pistol in a gesture for them to have their weapons ready. I had taken the time to give them firearms training after we found a good stash of ammo at a collapsed gun store. They were decent shots and could defend themselves, but I was worried nonetheless.

  I walked first ten and then twenty feet out in front of the truck. I set my weapon down on the pavement and began to shout for whoever was out there to come out. We were friendly and just passing through. A figure emerged from the brush on the other side of the blocking vehicles. It was holding a rifle.

  After another minute of me with my hands slightly raised as a nonthreatening gesture, the figure began to make its way toward me. I was tempted to raise my binoculars, but felt it might send the wrong signal, so I waited.

  When the figure reached the cars, I could make out that it was a male teen. I gestured to the girls to continue to wait in the truck and to keep an eye on their surroundings. I then began a slow walk toward the boy while leaving the security of my pistol on the ground behind me.

  I was stopped with a warning about fifty feet from the cars. We talked for half an hour before the boy lowered his rifle and came out from behind the vehicles. His name was David, and he had been swimming in the Intracoastal with a friend when it all went down. His friend had run for home while David stayed by the water, hiding up under a bridge.

  For a year he had scavenged and survived on his own. I remembered how happy I was to see other living people after only a few months, so I knew David was probably about to burst inside. However, he kept a cool yet skeptical demeanor during our conversation.

  He had been living in the back of a Humvee under a camo net in the trees several hundred yards away. It remained from National Guard troops who had perished in the initial action. I didn’t want to take the time to hot-wire the Humvee, as we weren’t in need of it at that time, so we left it where it was, hidden from view. I waved the girls to come down out of Bubba, and they made their way over.

  I caught a gleam of interest in David’s eyes as the girls approached. Not only did he now have people to talk to, but he had girls who were close to his age. I would have to keep a close eye on him, because from what I remembered, seventeen-year-old boys generally had only one thing on their minds. And, although I already felt a great deal of empathy for this poor kid, that empathy was not yet mated with trust. We invited David to come with us back to the bunker and he jumped at the chance.

  He rode with me on the way back and told me what he could about the activities of the alien ships. The ships came down, dropped the tubes in the water for several days, and then pulled up and headed back to the larger ship. From what David had observed, there were two of the water ships and one of the large ones. They usually stayed much further up the coast, but had chosen that spot near Cocoa Beach that day.

  Each of the water ships carried a complement of what he described as the concussion fighters. He had witnessed a number of attempts by our military to take down these attackers. The first attempts at defense were missiles launched from the ground—probably the local National Guard units. The fighters seemed to also use the concussion weapons as shields.

  As a missile approached, a concussion wave was generated, and it was like the missile hit a wall in the air, never making it near the fighter itself. Even bullets seemed to meet with the same fate, never reaching their target.

  The next defensive actions were from our fighter jets. Their missiles and cannons would not penetrate the concussion waves. They were stopped dead in the air as were many of the planes and pilots themselves. This was the same thing I had seen nearly a year earlier with the jet remains in Orlando. It was as if it had hit a wall while in flight.

  David said virtually everything he saw led him to believe we were way outmatched militarily by whoever these invaders were. He too had been monitoring the radio waves until his scavenged stockpile of batteries ran out. He had not heard a peep since the second week of the attack. I could only believe there were a large number of the huge ships scattered across the globe.

  Since there were at least four of us who had survived in Central Florida, I believed there must be others out there, too. Perhaps small communities were already forming elsewhere. Having not seen a single scout ship, I wondered if maybe we were no longer considered threats. If so, we would be able to move around much more freely.

  We arrived back at our little paradise with an hour of daylight remaining. I gave David a tour of our garden, pasture, and chicken coops. We sacrificed another of Janie’s hens so David could have his first real meal in more than a year.

  The excitement of the day and all that had transpired kept him up and talking well past midnight. The girls were all too happy to have someone closer to their age to talk with. I didn’t mind, though. David seemed like a good kid, making me the proud adoptive father of three.

  We awoke the next morning, and immediately after having breakfast, the girls went about handling their daily tasks. I decided to put David to work on building us a large camouflaged shelter where we could park all the vehicles without arousing suspicion from above. I had often wondered if they were watching our tiny colony and discussing our odd behavior among their anthropologists. Keeping myself busy at the survival game went a long way towards keeping those kinds of thoughts out of my head, but they inevitably made their way in anyway.

  We broke for lunch about one in the afternoon. That break would usually last until about five during the summer’s heat. I had checked on David just before lunch and noticed he had made no progress whatsoever toward constructing the shelter.

  Since this was his first day back around other people, I wasn’t too worried and was willing to cut him some slack. I had given him plenty of instruction on what I had envisioned, but I wouldn’t expect anyone to be able to jump right into that type of project, especially having just come out of isolation.

  After the third day with no progress, I began to worry. I could have given this project to either of the girls
, and they would have been all over the front loader clearing the ground under the desired tree and moving any needed timbers into position. I couldn’t tell at the time if the issue was that he was just not interested; I felt he certainly seemed capable.

  After I talked to him about it, he revealed he didn’t know how to drive and was too embarrassed to admit it after watching the girls speed around in Bubba. I chuckled, which did not help his self-esteem. He was the newcomer here, and it seemed everyone was already so sure of what they were doing that he didn’t want to make a fool of himself.

  He also feared that if he didn’t measure up, he would be asked to leave. I spent the rest of the day with him, teaching him to drive the front loader. By the end of the day, we had the ground cleared.

  By the end of the first week with us, David was finishing the roof over our new parking garage. After a year of salvaging runs, we now had Suzie, Bubba, Mike, two four-wheelers, and the front loader for transportation.

  The garage wasn’t the most attractive building, but it was sturdy and well hidden from the skies.

  We could now safely store our fleet, and it gave David a sense of accomplishment and belonging to our little colony. As a sort of celebration and official welcoming, the girls baked a cake and I made some homemade ice cream. We were all in good enough moods to watch a video, and this time it was a pleasant event. Rachel, Janie, and I were not overtaken by the sadness of what had once been, and David was just excited to be around other people.

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  The following week I showed David my coil gun. He was fascinated, and I was thrilled I finally had someone else I could discuss the technology with. David was not much for electrical things, but he had been somewhat of a computer geek in his previous, short life. When not at school, he had spent many of his waking hours sitting at a keyboard exploring the world of cyberspace with all it had to offer.