by L. S. Wood
Sam figured the flashlights bulb must have blown out from the strong surge of power from the new batteries, but it did not even flicker when he pushed the button. He should have taken a spare light bulb for it down along with him, but he did not give it a second thought, that the bulb would blow out at the same time the electrical power of the station would fail.
He stood there in the dark in total dismay, everything electrical had failed on him, all at once. The pitch-black darkness really ticked him off. Completely upset that the new emergency lighting system that he had so recently installed into the basement of the building he had serviced failed him. It flickered for less than a split second, and then went instantly black.
A sudden feeling of instant nausea and dizziness struck him as if he had just come down with an instant case of the flu. His ears began to ring loudly with an awful buzzing noise inside them that made him more the dizzier from the vibration. He was going to scream at the damn idiots who sold him this faulty equipment, only a couple of weeks earlier, who had said the new emergency lighting system was the best of the line in their newly improved emergency lighting equipment on the market.
In only a matter of a short few seconds, Sammy managed to get his-self turned around down in the basement. He managed to lose his way a couple of several times in the basement of the observatory, for it was totally pitch black down there. All he had to go on in finding his way out of the structure was his feeling around in the pitch-blackness of the cellar with his feet and hands to guide his way out the maze inside the building.
It took him two and a half, almost three hours to find his way out the maze of tunnels, air ducts, and loose wiring conduit left scattered around on the floor of the blacked out basement. He tried hard not to kill himself stumbling over old equipment, and other scattered unknown equipment left scattered all over the cellar floor down in the laboratory by the sloppy personnel working for the weather station, and other personnel who worked there before him.
He had to step over some discarded old scattered equipment in the basement trying hard not to break his damn fool neck. This mess use to bug the hell out of him before when he could see it with light every time he visited the facilities. Now this blackout really bugged the hell out of him, falling over everything beneath his feet.
He decided when he got out of this hell hole, he was going to give whoever the lazy bastard was who was supposed to be in charge of keeping the place clean, and really give him a piece of his mind about the disgusting situation down there. How could anyone leave such a mess, and have to walk over it once or twice a day when they themselves had to go down there to take readings from some of their special weather equipment. It just did not make any sense to him.
Sam was really upset with himself, for just a couple of days prior to this he had given up smoking cigarettes for good, after having tried several times in the past to do so. He was pissed off at himself for his damned cigarette lighter was out in his service truck about a hundred or better feet above and away from him outside in the parking lot, and it couldn’t help him to see in the dark now.
He surmised the top camp weather station had probably lost its power lines due to the extreme winds they sometimes experience up there. The emergency generator in the furnace room failed to kick in when it was supposed to start on its own. Who in the hell knew what was going on up there, he thought, for he was as mad as hell that this was happening to him.
The day had started off real bad for him in the first place with a flat tire on his service van when he first went outside to leave for the mountain. Now this blackout was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Every damn time he came to this God-forsaken place on top of Mount Washington something strange seemed to happen to him, and this left him feeling this place was nothing but a jinx to him somehow.
When this year’s contract with the weather station in keeping their equipment up and running was up, so was he with this damned place. He was not going to climb over the junk they left around down there anymore, and maybe just maybe his damn tires would not go flat on his vehicles anymore. When he was finally able to reach the top of the stairway, he felt like he was walking out into a battlefield when he emerged from the cellar of the weather station and into its lobby finding everyone smelling of deadly phosgene gas, all dead, and looking a disgusting color of burnt orange. He felt like he had emerged into the twilight zone of hell, feeling sicker all the while, not knowing it was from all the many neutrons floating wildly all around him.
Outside the mountain’s laboratory, everyone there were also dead. The cog railway steam engine and its cars were all lined up tight against the emergency stopping barrier at the top end of the railed track with a trickle of smoke still coming up out the engines stack pipe with all its passengers, and its engineer laying scattered every which way in the cars and engine, also dead.
All he could think about was someone had dropped an atomic bomb, some-where close by the mountain. The sky looked a bright orange sheen in color from a nuclear blast he thought, and the bright of blue of the morning sky was gone. He figured it would be a matter of seconds or minutes before he would die from the saturation of radiation penetrating his body, for he felt miserable from so many neutrons surrounding him in the air. He thought this feeling was radiation causing him to feel this awful way, but it was not and he did not die.
He suffered more and more from the extreme amount of massive neutrons surrounding him and trying to attack his nervous system all at the same time. But the working jump suit he had on and his protective leather lined hard hat was protecting him. He tried to start his service van to descend back down the mountain road, but his van would not start. It was as dead as a doornail. There were a couple dead bodies on the ground behind his van he would have to move or run over them to get it out.
He was in a war zone, and he knew it. He went to a car parked next to the road’s exit leading down the mountain to see if there were keys in it, and there were. There were also a couple of dead people in it, and when he opened up the door to see if it would start, an horrific odor met his nostrils almost making him instantly vomit. He took a mountain bike someone had ridden up to the top of the mountain and had no use for it any longer for the cyclist was lying dead on the ground beside the bike. He righted the bike from the ground and swiftly proceeded in descending back down the mountain road.
There were cars scattered off the roadway everywhere that had been coming up the mountain, and several very severe car wrecks going down the mountain. There were bikers of all kinds, motorcyclist, and pedal bikers alike, hikers of all ages were strewn all over the roadway like fallen dominos. The landscape of the mountain was a nauseating mess covered with dead birds of all kinds scattered everywhere along with all the dead bodies.
Around the world, a vast assortment in species of fowl from the air rained down from the heavens dead in record numbers, drained of any electrical impulses they once had. Millions of birds, insects, bats and other species around the planet instantly died along with the hundreds in air planes falling from the skies filled with thousands of innocent people that came raining down.
Half way down the mountain at the ranger station, he saw many people scattered around on the ground dead, while others just lay there shaking from immense seizures from the massive invasion of neutrons that were almost dead. Sam thought at first that he had crossed over into the twilight zone from hell or that he was in an Alfred Hitchcock movie’s live set of a still set production before he made it all the way down to the mountain’s base camp at the end of the mountain roadway. When he finally reached the bottom, he found the situation similar to that at the half way mark except for all of the dead people. Instead he saw people just walking around lost as if they had all been at the ranger’s station halfway up the mountain. They were in total disarray, lost to what was happening and taking place around them. The world had instantly transformed into a world of chaos. Some of the people had the hoods
to their cars and pickup trucks opened wondering why the engines to their vehicles would not start or had quit running. There were no longer any more cell phone communication systems anywhere. Radios around the world didn’t work any longer as there was no more electricity available to anyone to operate them. The once bright blue color of the sky above had turned a pale orangey watery foggy color of dirty green.
Sam rode the borrowed mountain bike and had to ride it thirty-five miles away to his home. Along the several roads, he came upon more horrifying accidents from the many neutronically induced deaths. The higher in terrain he rode, the more tragedy he found along the roadways.
When Sam finally arrived back home, he was cheerful, relieved and very fortunate because his lovely wife and two beautiful little children were secure away from any harm inside their modest home. Their lives had been spared, but would never be the same from that day forward.
He would find tragedy had felled many of his friends, relatives, and neighbors living in the surrounding higher terrain area that day as did so many in the world. It was a very good thing, that Sam had a small farm he worked and lived on for his hobby and was able to work the land to his benefit and enable him to help his family survive in the hard times that were to come. He, too, would become a helper of friends and neighbors in dire need and of the local farmers in the region who relied on each other to work their fields and to help the many others less fortunate in need of survival.
The sky and air above the earth was much less crowded now with so many fewer birds to occupy its vast space. Some species of birds and insects had become instantly extinct because the effects of the neutron blast. Some wildlife species around the globe were mostly wiped out, but with a very few still remained to carry on their breed of life.
It would take years to rebuild the population of birds, insects, and other wild life in the world back to where they had been before the blasts occurred around the globe.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Daring Pilots
Not many daring souls had tried to face this creature in the heavens by flying since the big blast. A couple enthusiastic balloonists figured it was now safe to fly their hot air balloons again. Not using any electrical power in flying their balloons, they figured it would be safe to fly them. They as well met their untimely deaths when the hot air balloon tie down ropes hanging from the gondola acted as a static electrical conductor dragging along the ground. They, along with their daring guests aboard their air ships, glowed an orange sheen of smoke in the air like a bright light bulb, dying almost instantly as the masses of killer neutrons surrounded them. The monster in the sky sucked the smallest of electrical impulses of life out from their frail bodies before returning back into the quiet heavens. The so-called smart balloonists all figured it would be safe to fly as they had nothing of electrical power onboard their craft, but had forgotten to take into account the possibility of static electricity generated by the tie down ropes possibly skipping loosely along the surface of the earth, might cause such a thing to happen.
The Twitchel had been the only aircraft known to fly successfully ever since the neutron bomb incident. Maybe it would be safe to try to fly her once again, but nobody knew for sure. There had been several people around the planet that everyone knew about who had died trying to fly.
In Ann’s father’s prediction was more than a 100% correct when he said someone would be foolish enough to try to start to fly the deadly skies once again real soon.
The Air Force itself was preparing to try and test flight a newly outfitted flying machine. The space craft Twitchel was being stripped out and re-outfitted as they talked to try to fly back into outer space for another mission. It would be a mission of mercy to bring more food, oxygen, and supplies to the unlucky ones still stuck out there in space. NASA knew time was running out for the crew if no one did anything real soon as they would all mostly perish. The time was soon approaching when only a mere half dozen citizens of the world would have a slim chance of returning back home to the earth as the others in outer space would all perish a slow if not agonizing death of misery starving to death, or suffocating for lack of oxygen to breath.
Ann did not know it at the time, but in the near-off future she would be asked to preflight the newly re-fabricated space shuttle Twitchel. She would be asked in the near future by NASA to join her old crew in an attempted rescue mission to go back into the unknown of new space travel to bring oxygen and desperately needed survival supplies back to the space station circling the earth above.
Whenever Ann spoke about her last year living above, she would always talk very highly about all the very nice people still held captive against their wills, and were not able to return home to Earth from aboard the space station. How desperately she worried about the ones who had helped save her life with being out there without any means of retuning back to the earth without the help of others.
CHAPTER FORTY
Sunday Morning Mass
Most the town’s people around Lunenburg, Vermont all went to church that next Sunday morning for worship. Some just turned out to meet their home town hero, and celebrate Ann’s successful return back home to Earth. The church instantly overfilled. All the town’s people, along with many people from surrounding towns, had come out to see their hero who returned from space. Many had to stand inside and outside the jammed doors of the church listening to the mass and sermon.
Ann was given the podium just prior the early morning sermon and was asked by the clergyman of the church to give a short oration of her experience before the regular sermon began. She talked shortly about the ordeal she and the others first went through when the shower of comet dust and dry ice activated all the deadly missiles. She then went on about being aboard the space station, and how the ones up there, the Russians mostly, and the two Germans in space had helped save the Twitchel’s crew along with herself from dying a horrendous death in space. With no place to go that looked safe for them floating helplessly above a world that at the time looked like a huge floating orange basketball, the space station crew opened their doors to them so they accepted the invitation with delight at the time. Everyone on the space station prayed for the ones on earth hoping they could return one day to be with their loved ones back home.
Ann took questions from all the children and a few of the adults. She then handed the podium back over to the cleric for his Sunday morning sermon that was short but to the point. It was all about the Good Samaritan who had come along the roadway to find a beaten and robbed person, and helped the one in need. He went on to say how everyone should give a helping hand to the ones less fortunate than they, especially now in these times of need. The ones aboard the space station in his sermon were the Good Samaritans, and the crewmembers aboard the Twitchel pointed out the less fortunate ones in need of the helping hand. The sermon was short, and the people all seemed to get something out it this day including Ann and her family.
Everyone greeted Ann as she disembarked out through the front doors of the church heading for the town’s common on the hill where the big gathering was to take place. There some of the women folk asked Ann what she planned on doing now that she was back home on Earth safe and sound.
Ann had a most wonderful reply, Ben thought. She told everyone she was going to settle down and become a good mother to her two beautiful little girls and a good wife to her husband now that she was back. She had had just about enough of space travel and was ready to stay put helping Ben out taking care of the farm, her folks, and the children. Her answer both delighted her parents and Ben to tears after hearing her say that. Maybe she was getting sensible after all, her father thought quietly to himself, and was going to settle down and stop all those foolish damn dreams of hers about visiting the other planets of Mars, Jupiter, and any other of the celestial heavenly bodies that so intrigued her young fancy mind to venture off into the great unknown of space. Maybe her imagination had had an inspired reality check
starting to get some common sense knocked into that real thick skull of hers, he thought.
Fun and games filled the warm sunny cloudless afternoon with the great assortment of foods and fond conversation. Ann was becoming hoarse by the end of the day from talking so much. She stood there in high spirits while being back home in the little town of Lunenburg, Vermont surrounded with so many friends and family.
She could not help but to reflect back all afternoon on the sermon of the cleric from the morning as she went about being happily home and having fun with family and friends. The sermon really touched her deep down inside her soul as it reflected back on the space station and all the wonderful people who had helped save her life and got her through that most terrible time. The crew up there certainly deserved better than being stuck up there with only one space capsule onboard that could only save a very small handful of them when the critical time came for some of them to leave the space station and return back home to the earth.
It would be unfair to leave all the others out there to perish in space, and probably wouldn’t die a very pleasant death when the time came. The thoughts of them in the space station kept reflecting back and forth through her mind all afternoon as she glanced around at all the wonderful people who were out celebrating her safe return back home to Earth. What were their families and friends thinking about, after hearing about the successful return of the Twitchel back to Earth?
At the conclusion of a most joyful day, Ann felt more like a politician running for a state representative’s office or other higher government office. She felt more than a celebrity astronaut hero returning back home from outer space, for she wasn’t a John Glenn or anyone like that, she was just another astronaut in another point in time and in a different situation of space.
