The Day America Died! Frozen Apocalypse: After the EMP- A post Apocalyptic America

by A J Newman

  I found three more snow shovels and a lawn tractor with a plow blade attachment, and then drove it back home plowing a path as I went. The tractor’s blade was just a bit shorter than the snow was deep and didn’t do a great job with just one pass. I drove it past Mike and Callie’s homes to help them with their paths. It worked much better clearing the already cleared paths. I was happy until I realized that four inches of snow had fallen in the last 90 minutes.

  The tractor made short work of clearing a much larger area for the dog and I ran it up and down the path between Callie’s and our house. I was plowing away when I heard a noise behind me. I turned and saw Mike riding a big Cub Cadet with a snow blower attachment on the front. It was throwing the snow ten feet into the air. This was much better than trying to shove snow out of the way.

  “Hey Zack, look what I found in the pole barn behind Roger’s place. The metal barn must have shielded it from the EMP blast. I’m going to start plowing the paths between all of the houses and then try to clear the streets if you and Paul will help. The others have already volunteered; we’ll all take turns and make the job easier. Paul is firing up the tractor with the bucket and blade to help with the streets.”

  Okay, I’ll admit it that we were bored and playing with the tractor and snow blower; they were just what the doctor ordered to get us out in the snow. The first day was fun. The next day wasn’t too bad, but the third day was work. Everyone was taking turns, including the women, but we barely stayed caught up.

  Mother Nature unloaded this blizzard on us two weeks after we moved to Rolling Hills. This was made much crueler because one day we were walking out side in shirt sleeves and the next had two feet of snow and 29 degree weather. It snowed for a week piling the snow up higher than most of our houses. We had no warning as we had in the days before the lights went out. There was no three days of warning that a bad storm was on its way and no one told us go to the store and buy all of the milk and bread you can get. This was total surprise.

  Thank God, Ally had selected a two story house for us to live in that had two fire places and a nice basement. By the fourth day of the storm, we couldn’t see out of any of the down stairs windows. The snow was actually about five feet deep and climbing, but drifts were as high as 12 feet against buildings and fences. We had to go upstairs to look outside, not that we could see anything with the blizzard still pounding us with more snow every minute. Hell even I was praying for global warming each night.

  ***

  On the morning of the fourth day of the storm, Mike woke up at what was supposed to be daylight, checked the time and rolled out of bed.

  “Mike, it’s not even daylight yet. Come back to bed.”

  “Hon, it’s 7:30 and there ain’t a bit of sun out there. I’m going to get dressed and get some plowing done before breakfast. I’ll be back in an hour and a half.”

  Mike fueled up the snow blower, but before he took it out of the garage heard the tractor fire up and move out onto the street. Mike pulled the door open with the pull cord and wished the automatic garage door opener worked. This was a sixteen foot door and the bitch was heavy. He drove the Cub Cadet out onto the driveway and was shocked to see another foot of snow covering everything he had worked so hard to plow the day before. He started the snow blower up and cleared the driveway. He waved at Paul who was scraping the road in front of their houses. He saw Paul stop and use the bucket to collect and dump the mound of snow up over the snow wall and on to the top of the now six feet of snow.

  Mike then headed to the back yard to clear the dog’s area and the path between the houses. He headed on down to Callie’s house then my house where he stopped and banged on the door.

  “Zack roll off your hussy and get your ass out here.”

  Ally poked her head out the door and replied, “Mike, shut up. Zack rolled off his beautiful wife two hours ago and is helping Sam clear snow away from his garage door. And be careful with that hussy crap.”

  “See you later, beautiful.”

  “That’s better. Now go play in the street.”

  Mike finished at my house and went back to his to get a tape measure. He measured the wall of snow that surrounded our paths and found the average height of the walls to be six feet three inches.

  I saw Mike making the measurements and said, “You checking to see if it’s a record snow fall?”

  “No. The snow blower can only blow the snow about ten feet in the air and at that height a quarter of the snow falls back on the path being cleared. This snow has to stop before we can’t clear it anymore.”

  “I know, I was talking with Paul and he reminded me that the bucket on the tractor can only dump snow about nine to ten feet out of our cleared paths before the bucket is so high that the snow juts falls back on the path. I’m worried.”

  Mike looked at his watch and said, “Breakfast time. You can have the snow blower for the next 40 minutes.”

  ***

  That was the worst winter North America had experienced since the last Ice Age. We were bored one day and terrified the next. Cabin fever abounded and we just had to suck it up and work hard to survive. There probably was too much snuggling by the fire that winter because we had several new additions to our clan nine months later.

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  Chapter 12

  Terror in the Ice

  On the morning of the fifth day of the winter blizzard, I woke up with a bright light in my eyes and Susie yelling, “Mom, Dad, the sun is shining. The snow has stopped.”

  I raced to the window and looked down on the top of the snow and then at the sun. The snow reflected the light like a mirror and nearly blinded me, but it was great to see across the snow to the buried houses.

  I could see the bucket of the tractor scooping snow and piling it on top of the frozen white walls, which defined the path in front of Paul’s house.

  Ally was stretching and yawning as Susie said, “It looks warm outside. I’ll bet the snow melts and is gone in a couple of days.”

  I performed a mental calculation that I remembered from listening to the local Channel 44 weather lady. Ten inches of snow equals one inch of water so our seven feet of snow equals 8.4 inches of water with no place to go except through our manmade paths. The water will be channeled directly into our homes.

  “Oh shit! Son of a Bitch!”

  “Dad is cussing.”

  “Damn Skippy I’m cussing. Ally, where is the water going to go if we have a quick melt off?”

  There was a moment of silence then, “Oh crap!”

  “You said crap.”

  “We need to get the clan together, now!”

  “Susie, get your coat on and run down to Roger’s house and ask him to bring everyone past his house here, right now! I’ll get the rest.”

  I quickly dressed and ran down to the other houses to get everyone to the meeting. I noticed that it was actually colder this morning than it had been during the last week, so maybe, just maybe, we had some time to develop a course of action to resolve our water problem.

  I finished knocking on doors, ran back to the house and only busting my ass twice on the ice.

  I walked into the kitchen, saw Callie and Paul and said, “Ally start a big pot of coffee and please fry up some sausage. Most of our guests haven’t had breakfast.”

  I guess our Bug Out drills had helped instill a major sense of urgency in our little clan because everyone was in our family room within fifteen minutes of notification.

  “I know you want to know what is so urgent this sunny cold morning, so I’ll get right to the point. The sun is out. The weather has to warm up. The snow is going to melt.”

  I stopped and let the words sink in for a moment before the realization sank in on my friends.

  “Oh shit.”

  “Boy, are we screwed.”

  “Water wings.”

  “Noah’s ark?”

  “Yes my friends, we have made a mile long swimming pool that will funnel all of that
melting snow into our streets and paths that will have nowhere to go except into our houses. We need to brainstorm a solution before the temperature rises.”

  Paul asked, “Where is the low end of our neighborhood.”

  “It’s the south east end of the subdivision. The entire neighborhood slants downhill in that direction.”

  I thought for a second, realized that our home was the furthest southeast and said, “Oh shit! This is more serious than I thought. Your water is heading down to our house.”

  Callie asked, “Dad, aren’t there storm drains and underground pipes to take rain water away?”

  “Normally, yes, but not in a country subdivision like this. We have several dry storm water ponds that fill up during a storm. They hold the excess water and then slowly release it into creeks and the lake about half a mile south of here. Our problem is that the storm water ponds have seven feet of snow in them and won’t take much water.”

  “What if we take the snow blower and tractor and make several paths down to the creeks where the storm water normally flows?”

  I replied, “The snow blower won’t work because the snow is seven feet deep, and heavily compacted. We will have to use the bucket on the tractor and that will be a lot of work.”

  Paul added, “We could also build some snow dams to divert the water around the houses at this end of the subdivision.”

  I patted Paul on the back and said, “That’s my boy. You get a gold star for that one. I believe we have a few days before the snow begins a rapid melting, but once it does it will refreeze overnight and become impossible to remove.”

  “You’re right,” said Jacob. We need to get these new channels started this morning before we run out of time. We can’t move our vehicles or gear and would lose most of it if the paths flood.

  We will set up a schedule to work around the clock and pray the tractor doesn’t break down.”

  Roger drew a rough map of the subdivision and we penciled in some suggested routes for the channels.

  I told the team, “Roger, I want you to take Paul and Jacob to the southeast end of the development and choose the routes for the channels. The rest of us will start figuring out where to place the dams.”

  ***

  The heavy snow had kept the wolf pack penned up in their den, which was a small cave that ran into a much larger cavern system. Southern Kentucky had many caves and was famous for being the home of Mammoth Cave. The cave ran back under a large hill and opened up to yield a large chamber that comfortably held the 30 members of the pack. The temperature was a cool 55 degrees in the large chamber that was 40 feet from the opening.

  A small stream ran all year long at the rear of the cave, so water was plentiful though it did have a coppery taste.

  Shelter and water were not the problem for the pack. The problem was the blizzard, dumping seven feet of snow over the past four days, which made hunting impossible.

  Deer, rabbit and opossum are numerous now that the human population had been greatly reduced.

  The pack had eaten well since moving south, until the snowstorm literally locked them inside the cave. The inside of their huge den was completely dark as the snow had covered the entrance, yet something in their makeup told them that the snow had stopped. They began to dig.

  Now that the sun had come out, the pack found that it was difficult to walk on the snow and that there was no game to stalk. They found a few mice, but little else. It had been six days since they had killed a deer and a small beaver. The pack was very hungry.

  Becoming desperate, the Alpha male knew they had to have a successful hunt soon. He could smell the human scent from the north mixed in with the smell of dogs and a faint smell of cat.

  Before TSHTF, wolves would not normally attack or eat humans, but dogs and cats would fill their belly nicely until they could find their normal game. Hunger would drive them to make a raid on the human town tonight.

  ***

  Roger returned with his crew from the scouting trip and pointed out the best route for our drainage path. Sam and Jacob got on top of the garage at our house with the scope off a rifle and showed Paul where to start digging and piling snow.

  Jacob handed the scope to Sam and said, “See that large oak tree to the left of the red barn.”

  “Yes, it’s by its self so it makes a good target.”

  “Just keep the tractor operator aimed at that tree and we’ll be on target. When we get closer to the tree, we have another tree beside the creek that we will guide us to finish the project. We figure it’s about half a mile to the creek. We couldn’t pace it off due to having to make our way through the snow and drifts.”

  Roger added, “Yes and we wouldn’t have made it if Callie hadn’t come up with the idea to make snow shoes. Joan and Lynn did a great job making them for us.

  The plan was to have someone check the path against the preferred route every half hour to keep it on track. Paul took the first two-hour shift and only dug out a path eight feet wide by 50 feet long. The path was wider than needed because the tractor had to turn to the side to dump the snow.

  I got Mike and Jacob to watch the effort to see if we could come up with a better method.

  “Guys, Paul has only dug up 50 feet of path and at that rate it will take about 50 hours straight to finish our drainage ditch. We need ideas to speed up the work!”

  “Let’s watch for a minute.”

  After observing for a few minutes Jacob spoke up, “Paul is spending too much time pushing the snow from the ground, causing most of the snow to fall behind the blade. Let’s have him move the top five to six feet and use the snow blower to clean up the ground as he goes.”

  “Sounds good, Mike, please get the blower and we’ll give it a try.”

  I got on the tractor and changed to the new procedure while Mike came in behind me to move the remaining foot of snow. This reduced the time for the next 50 feet by a third.

  “Well, that was successful. Let’s pass the process on to everyone before they take their turn.”

  “Using the brain power of the group is always better.”

  “Mike, please check on the dam building. If this works the dams won’t have to be more than a foot, or so high.”

  “Hey big boy, we might have to re-think the dams to keep the water away from the houses.”

  “Why?”

  “Dams keep water in for the most part. Snow will melt on both sides of the dams.

  “Another oh crap situation,” moaned Callie.

  “No, I say we build the dams, but keep an eye on the water flow. If our project works, we won’t need the dams. If there is a backup, the dams could be handy.”

  I suppose dams might not be the best term, channels would be more accurate. While they will perform as dams to keep water out of our homes, their main purpose is to channel the water away.

  I thought to myself, semantics, good grief!

  “Okay, let’s educate everyone.”

  Paul added, “We remind everyone that at night the channels will leave a sheet of ice on our paths. We don’t need any busted asses or broken legs.”

  Smugly, Mike added, “Another great observation.”

  I smiled and said, “Dude, no one likes a smartass. I know because the only friends I have are smartasses.”

  ***

  The Alpha male and nine of the pack struggled through the deep, but hardening snow, to the human’s houses that night to bring home a kill for the pack. There was a strong smell of human, dog, cat and raccoon, but only three humans were outside digging in the snow.

  The two raccoons had raided a garbage can and were moving back to the woods when the pack attacked. The raccoons put up a fight, but were vastly outnumbered.

  The Alpha male ate first and there was a fight for the rest. Wolves don’t normally attack humans, but this pack was starving.

  The humans were stuck below the level of the top of the snow. They would be alarmed at the number of wolf and coyote paw prints in the snow above them. The
Alfa male knew the pack could jump down and kill a dog, but then could not get back up the shear wall of snow and ice.

  ***

  We worked on digging the drainage path for the next two days and could see that we were only yards from the tree line at the creek. By working in two-hour shifts, we dug the drainage path without wearing anyone out, and thankfully, our equipment kept running without breaking down.

  We broke through the last few feet and found the creek to be flowing free. The water level was high and the normally small creek was 20 feet across and opened to the sky. I thanked God that the creek level was five feet below ground level, or we would have just flooded the neighborhood. The ground level on the other side of the creek was three feet lower than our side so I wasn’t worried about the creek flooding the neighborhood.

  Ben ran the snow blower to the end of the path and finished the job.

  “Let’s celebrate. Mike, cut up some deer steaks and let’s have a BBQ.”

  “Great idea, let’s see, it’s 3:00 and the sun will be down shortly. Let’s go get the pit fired up.”

  Later after we had finished eating, we sat around my family room swapping stories and singing our favorite songs.

  “This is as close to before the lights went out normal as it gets these days. People enjoying their friend’s company and having a great time.” Ally said.

  Joan replied, “And no one is staring down at their smart phones and ignoring their friends. This might be a better world if we weren’t running out of medicine and hygiene supplies.”

  That brought a cautious laugh from everyone.