SODIUM:2 Apocalypse

by Arseneault, Stephen

  They were evidently experiencing a bit of those awkward teenage years and I was quite happy for it. With a little knowledge they would be two that would get in trouble before they were able to handle the responsibilities that the trouble brought with it. My thoughts were that I hoped they would feel awkward for as long as possible.

  It took nearly three hours to reach Daytona. The roadways were in worse shape in the area and the overgrowth was really taking hold. We found cover for the vehicles in what had once been a park about a mile from the beach.

  We unloaded the four wheelers for the last mile and made our way out to the beach. As we approached A1A we began to try to move quickly behind any cover. We dismounted the four wheelers and climbed up on a pile of debris to get a look.

  A water ship was about a mile offshore, just as we had seen before. But this time we were directly inland from it. The ship was humongous and looked surreal floating just above the water. The five smaller fighters were circling close by it in a seemingly random pattern. I almost began to wonder why the fighters were there at all after they had destroyed everything else so completely. I reasoned that perhaps they were just being cautious.

  We watched all day as the water ship just sat there with the two big tubes in the water and its fighters buzzing around it like so many flies. We had decided to make this an overnighter and had set up a camo tent in some nearby brush, using the cover of a good sized tree. We had plenty of food, water and other supplies and with it being late September the temperature was tolerable enough that we could sleep outside without our precious air conditioning back home.

  Just as the sun was about to set the water ship began spewing a fog out of one side. It was green in tint and after ten minutes I noticed the small cloud was slowly drifting our way. I got a sudden chill when I realized that Chlorine gas was greenish in color and if we got caught up in that haze we could die a painful suffocating death.

  We gathered everything we could with haste and began our way back towards the vehicles, all along the way dodging from one piece of cover to the next. By the time we reached the trucks the green fog was already coming ashore. We made our way back out of Daytona and back on the road to our fortress.

  As we drove I explained to David that the green fog was likely Chlorine gas. My guess at the time was that they were taking in seawater, extracting the salt, separating the Sodium from the Chlorine and then expelling the Chlorine.

  I finally had a reason to let roll around in my head as to why they had come to this planet in the first place. They were here for the Sodium. The reason they were in need of Sodium was not as important as the knowing of why they were here to begin with. David then let me know that on several occasions, when he had still been in Cocoa Beach, that the air had become difficult to breathe and that it had burned his eyes and throat.

  I let him know that he was lucky that the clouds had dissipated enough by the time that they had reached him or he would have been dead. He said it was quite painful when it happened and the affects lasted for weeks after hitting. Again, I let him know that he was lucky to be alive. It was funny, but I remember that incident was the first time since all of this had happened, that I really had felt happy to be alive.

  We were unable to reach home before sunset and were not brave enough to use headlights, so we pulled off the side of the road under some trees. We had managed a sufficient distance from the green cloud that I was no longer worried about its danger. We had some camo covers that we pulled over the trucks as extra disguise and we then settled in for the night in our cabs. It had been a strange but interesting day.

  Chapter 12

  The next morning we were back at our normal routines. We had raided several collapsed libraries in the previous months and Rachel had been like a machine at reading and learning everything she could about farming. After only a little more than a year, her knowledge probably rivaled someone that had been doing it all their lives. And she was always eager to learn more.

  Janie had done some reading on animal care that had helped her also, but she didn’t have the patience of her sister to read for hours on end. Mastering animal husbandry and farming were two skill sets that would be increasingly valuable for any long term survival of the colony.

  David didn’t show the same commitment as the girls when it came to the tasks assigned to him. They were more mundane construction or maintenance type of tasks and he never developed an interest in them. He was instead still consumed by the coil gun and increasingly with Rachel. To date we had all gotten along quite well, but I knew I was at some point going to have to talk with David about pulling his own weight.

  I had decided to build a large covered structure under the trees near the Kendall’s former home. Basically I wanted to raise what looked like the ground, ten feet into the air. From the air it would still looked like the ground, but from below we could move around under the canopy freely. We would use it not only for storage, but would also build a cow pen and chicken coop that were not visible to our guests. This was David’s only assignment and he had been dragging his feet.

  I had been over at the Hayward’s orchard picking oranges all morning when I returned to see David out in the field with Rachel rather than working on the ground raising project. I placed the bags of oranges by the bunker door and made my way out to have a talk. We could not afford to be charitable to anyone who was capable with such a small group. It was time he knew how I felt.

  As I approached him he jumped up and ran towards me excitedly. It threw me off balance from my intended scolding of him and I instead let him talk. His news was that he had done it, his timing program for the coil gun was now operational. I had dialed the current available to him on the coils way down so that he could use the gun without causing any major damage.

  He had managed to punch a hole in the road sign with only a fraction of the power that I had used before. The thought then occurred to me that if we could somehow scale this up we might have a very formidable weapon on our hands. After returning to the bunker and discussing it with him for hours I started to wonder. If we could really dial the speed of this up, could the alien ships react to it fast enough with their concussion weapons? The speed of a projectile from this gun could potentially far exceed that of a normal bullet or missile. One thing for sure, if it wasn’t successful we would find out quickly.

  For the rest of the day we fiddled with the coil gun and talked about what might be. I had totally forgotten that I had intended to give David a serious talking too. By the time it entered my mind again I was still far too excited about our breakthrough to bring it up.

  With my unique coil design and David’s timing program, I estimated that we should be able to deliver about 85 percent of the power input as power out in the form of projectile speed. A typical BB weighs in at about a third of a gram. Unfortunately, my estimates told me that it would take a tremendous amount of power to send that BB at a speed that would reach a target at ten miles in a hundredth of a second.

  I felt I should be able to scale the coils up sufficiently to deliver that power, but we now had a bigger problem of being able to supply the kind of power needed. With the ultra-capacitors I had, I could only supply about one twentieth of the instant power I needed. We now had a new problem to solve if we wanted our project to become a real weapon.

  It would take a fair amount of time to generate that power with our solar array. And it would take significantly more storage for that power than we currently had with the ultra-capacitors. So, David and I would have to turn our attentions towards power generation and storage of some sorts.

  The hybrid battery I had would provide about one quarter of the energy we needed. We would have to seek more hybrid vehicles to achieve the total power storage required and that would only provide us with one shot. Not a very effective weapon against a multitude of ships. But regardless, we had our next goal set for us and we had nothing but time to achieve that goal.

  The following day I set David back to work on hi
s previous project. It was late October now and our little garden was reaching its end of life for the year. The garden was our largest exposure from the air and we weren’t sure how it would be possible to disguise it.

  We needed full sun to make anything grow and other than allowing some of the weeds to fill in we were stuck with it looking like it was being tended. It was hopefully a small enough target from the sky that it wouldn’t be noticed anyhow. Just as a precaution we decided to make the borders irregular when we would plow it up for the following season.

  We had managed to salvage a couple of freezers and now had a good stockpile of food stashed for our short winter season. I had dug a small pond which we had stocked with bass that we had caught from the lake. We had been fattening them with food scraps from our garden and the fish were flourishing. I kept the pond somewhat clean by pumping some of the spring water into it daily.

  David had managed to make good progress on our undercover city. I could now walk from the bunker to within 50 feet of the garden without ever being exposed. We had all the salvage materials we needed from the surrounding areas and the structure had turned out to be fairly solid.

  Perhaps David was one of those people that were good at having one goal at a time and taking that goal from beginning to completion. I had known others that were simply terrible when asked to multiplex tasks, so much so that they became easily agitated and did a poor job of all. David was evidently one of those single processor individuals, so, I would need to pick tasks for him accordingly.

  With the first phase of our undercover city completed it was decided that another surveillance trip was in order. I was curious if the invaders were still maintaining status quo with their Sodium harvesting. We had been hurried off by the Chlorine the last time out so we had gathered very little intel on the size and capabilities of their fleet, or of their tactics. We were all in need of an adventure just to break the monotony of the daily routine.

  Chapter 13

  On our prior excursions we had not seen a need for a camera, but now that we were in the reconnaissance business it was thought that a nice digital camera with a quality zoom lens might come in handy. We would be able to load any images onto the PC in the bunker for further evaluation and discussion. So, before our next trip to the beach we would be scavenging for a camera.

  In our trips into Orlando we had passed a photo shop or two, but had never bothered to explore the remains as they would not have had anything we were in need of. We arrived at the first store about 9 am. It only took five minutes to know there was nothing to be had from it, so we moved on to the next one.

  As David and the girls poked around in the rubble I remembered that a nice hobby shop had been just about a half mile away. I alerted the team that I was going for a quick look and to come looking for me if I was not back within the hour. We had strict rules against separation, but since we had not seen anyone or anything other than the alien ships offshore for months, I took it on myself to break the rule and go.

  I pulled up to the hobby shop in Mike and began my inspection of the property. With my eyes looking constantly down at the rubble I didn’t notice the unknown visitor slipping up behind me. My firearm was strapped to my hip, but it did me no good if I wasn't watching.

  I first learned of the visitor when I felt a heavy blow to the back of my skull. I fell to my knees as the pain shot down through my neck. What had happened? Aliens? The girls and David, were they alright or...? That was the last question I got to before feeling the next blow and blacking out.

  I awoke five minutes later only to find myself disarmed and tied up with duct tape. A scrappy looking bearded fellow with frizzly hair stood in front of me with a big grin on his face. He started in with the questions of what I was doing there and why I was in his city and were there any others with me.

  I wasn't about to rat out my family so I told him I was just scavenging. The man started waving a red handkerchief in the air and a minute later another fellow pulled up on a dirt bike with saddle bags hung all over it. It was loaded with booty. It was a short round man with a pig like nose and the same frizzly hair.

  I asked what they were doing there which only agitated them. It was not only none of my business, but I was in no position to be asking any questions. As the pig faced man began his interrogation the bearded guy left to retrieve his own motorbike.

  His bike was also loaded with saddlebags and had a boom box of sorts strapped to the back. When he pulled up he turned it on and had blaring heavy metal playing. It fit right in with the two men in their tank tops, jeans and boots. The bearded man pulled out a bottle of whiskey and took what was the biggest swig I had ever seen anyone take at one time. Some of the booty was hanging out of one of the saddle bags and it looked to be gold chains and pieces of jewelry.

  For the life of me I couldn't reason why these two rednecks were pilfering jewelry. What possible use could it have? Was there a larger settlement nearby? Real civilization perhaps? These two certainly didn't bring civilization to mind, but I reasoned they must have come from somewhere.

  After each had downed a few big swigs of the whiskey I could see it was having an effect on their manner. Their tone would go from laughing at my demise to threatening me with death. So, I began my usual over analysis of the situation and tormenting of myself for not having paid attention to my surroundings. The scenarios running through my head of what they might do to the others had my stomach in knots.

  I then remembered that I had told David and the girls to come looking for me if I wasn't back within the hour. Were they going to walk right into the situation not knowing what was happening? Would they see me trapped and not come at all? The more alcohol the rednecks consumed the shorter I imagined my time remaining alive was. The pirates were in complete control and I was powerless to act.

  At that moment I heard a shot fired and a young man's voice commanding the two to lay down their weapons. Then a second voice came from the left side barking the same order and then a third from the right. David and the girls had managed to sneak up on the drunks and out flank them. The pig faced man was the first to slowly turn his head and assess the situation. After looking from side to side he let out a roaring laugh and slapped his buddy on the shoulder.

  At first the rednecks attempted to intimidate my rescuers by calling them punk kids and telling the girls just what they were going to do with them when they got a hold of them. I wondered at how the kids would hold up as many a person would have just turned and run away from their drunken brazenness, but not my gang. They would have none of it and the rednecks attempt at intimidation soon turned to anger.

  The bearded man was the first to snap and he began yelling at David at the top of his lungs while half waving his gun around. David and the girls were each well positioned, but the rednecks didn't seem to feel threatened by the pack of scrawny teenagers. Next the bearded one turned towards Janie and as he yelled at her to drop her weapon he began to raise his own.

  I was looking directly at Janie and there was a fierce look in her eyes as she let go of a round from her .38 straight into the bearded fellows thigh. He dropped to the ground with an enraged cry of pain and at the same time again began raising his weapon.

  By this time his pig faced friend had turned and began to run and David fired off a shot just missing him. Rachel fired next and struck his upper arm, but it was only a grazing wound. He then returned fire as he ran and the two took cover.

  Janie on the other hand was now mostly hidden behind concrete blocks and at the same time the bearded guy fired off his first round, she let loose with a burst of three. His drunken shot hit a concrete block in front of her sending rock and sand shrapnel into her face as she fired back.

  Time stood still for me as the short gun battle raged. I was taken back to the time of my Ferrari accident where it seemed as though I was watching from outside of myself. Janie's first round entered the man's right shoulder spinning his upper torso slightly around.

  Her second roun
d ripped through his neck and a stream of blood splattered into the air from the exit wound. Her third round entered his left eye that was then looking directly at her. As it left it created what was a large hole in the back of his skull. The man dropped to his knees and fell over backwards.

  The lifeless bearded man lay slumped over on his back as his blood flowed freely onto the ground. Throughout the bearded fellow’s death the heavy metal booming from the back of his bike raged on. Their drunken mistake had allowed David and the girls to move in silently when they had noticed there was trouble from a distance.

  By the time the gun play had ended the pig faced man had managed to get to his bike, start it and was fleeing the scene. Rachel ran over to tend Janie and David worked on giving me my freedom.

  Although the back of my head was throbbing and bleeding, my wounds were superficial. Janie on the other hand had taken a spray of shrapnel to the left side of her face and was a bloody mess. We got a water jug and first aid kit from Mike and tried to rinse and bandage what we could, but it was evident that she needed much more help than what we could give to her there.

  We got back into the vehicles and headed for home, at first heading in a roundabout direction in case anyone else was watching. The last thing we wanted to do was to lead bad people to our little sanctuary. The day’s events had shattered our once happy little world. I would heal and Janie would need help, but the bearded man was gone forever, along with our sense of security.

  We returned to our no longer innocent little colony while looking over our shoulders the whole way there. I was somewhat in shock at the maturity and fierceness that Janie possessed for someone that young, and at the same time worried about what damage the shrapnel might have done.