"How many do you think will make it?" Skillshakle asked sincerely.
"That depends on how long the storm lasts. For those who somehow figure out adequate shielding and resist the temptation to go out for even brief periods during the day, they can survive indefinitely. At that point, adequate food, water, day-to-day medical care, and genetics will determine the survival rate. But, we’re hoping that many will be ingenious enough to figure out a strategy and will make it through. It’s our estimate - and this is only a guess - that within the first six months, there may be perhaps as many as twenty to fifty thousand survivors remaining."
"Out of seven billion people?" Skillshakle gasped in total disbelief.
"Yes," Seven responded. "And their numbers will rapidly dwindle due to secondary effects after that. After the first year, only those in deep and well prepared shelters will survive. We estimate that on the first anniversary of the storm that there’ll be less than five thousand human survivors."
Bark Skillshakle looked stunned and speechless. The room was uncomfortably silent for three long minutes. Then he broke the silence. Looking to Joseph Blake, he asked, "And what’s your job in all of this?"
"Simple," the Commander replied. "It's to keep all of you alive."
12
Lew Warren kicked open the door of his old Winnebago parked in a Florida seniors-only mobile home and RV park. The loud bang scared his retarded, black Cocker Spaniel named Marbles, who scampered and hid under the RV’s ratty brown couch. Marbles stuck his nose slowly out from under the sofa and eyed his master suspiciously with wide, stupid eyes. Warren ignored the dog and tossed six plastic WalMart bags onto his clean kitchen counter.
Warren stood 5’9” and weighed in at a lean 160 pounds. With deeply set, permanent worry wrinkles and browned excessively by too much exposure to the ocean sunshine, his face looked older than its mere 50 years. His hair was gray and close cut, a regulation flattop, exposing more scalp than actual hair. His body was hard, toned but not at all muscular, shaped by relentless aerobics and endless marathon events. His dark brown eyes were nearly black and piercingly small, peering out from behind a set of gray, bushy Brezhnev eyebrows.
Warren was a former U.S. Naval Officer and had retired at the rank of Commander. He had spent the bulk of his adult life as a nuclear submarine engineer. His current marital status was single and he often said that he hoped to maintain that status, leaving the clear, but not completely accurate, implication that it was his choice. He resided in his RV with Marbles and a Beta fish he called Friday who lived in a glass sphere on his small, spotlessly clean dining room table. Both animals may have been happier in a finer abode, but Marbles was too dim-witted to know better and the fish could not escape the bowl.
Warren was a certified genius, but for all his brilliance, he had the interpersonal skills of a hatchet murderer and drove others away from him with the precision of a fire hose. He awoke each morning alone but comforted by the fact that he had retired from the U.S. military with a consistent set of high marks on his fitness reports, proving and documenting beyond all shadow of a doubt his ultimate worthiness as a professional and a human being. The fact that he was sometimes about as amiable as Adolph Hitler was not actually documented outside of divorce court and therefore did not hold the status of reality in his mind at all.
As was his evening custom, Warren picked up his remote control and clicked on the wall mounted television that was permanently set to FOX news. He picked up his cold morning coffee pot, poured himself a cup and popped it into the microwave. Forty five seconds later, he sat back in his seat at the kitchen table and looked up at the screen while nursing his new fix of caffeine – hot, black and virtually acidic.
What he did not know was that for him, as well as the other seven billion human riders on planet earth, the clock on the great wall of all-they-had-ever-known had just ticked down to zero.
“Shawna, in just a few minutes from now the President will make what the White House describes as an unprecedented announcement from the Oval Office,” said the FOX reporter standing on the lawn outside of the White House. “According to our sources, the announcement comes after a year or more of hanging onto one the deepest secrets in the history of our government. It is said to involve every man, woman and child on earth. All we know at this time is that it is scientific in nature and may include a serious environmental impact.”
“What kind of secret have they been hanging onto, Lake?” Shawna persisted. “Is there any way you can be more specific?”
“Well, we’re about to find out, Shawna. Word is coming in now that the President will be speaking momentarily.”
The cameras shifted to the Oval Office where the President was seated at his desk, his brow furrowed as he read over a set of papers laid out in front of him. He appeared maximally stressed, his expression as rigid as granite. The most famous face in the world had solidified into a mask of wrinkles, worry, and a deep agony that had no limit for one man. His eyes shifted momentarily to a presence off camera, then to the unblinking lens before him. He paused and sighed involuntarily before he began speaking.
Warren ’s face stared at the television screen without moving, clearly sensing with his own uncanny grasp of politics, government and strategy that something extraordinary was afoot.
“My fellow Americans,” the President began. “It is with a deep and profound sadness that I am appointed by history and circumstances to announce to you what may be one of the most awful cataclysms in all of recorded history. We will all be deeply and personally affected by what is to come.
“A team of scientists headed by Astrophysicist, Dr. Raylond Desmond, has discovered that the closest star - our sun - will soon enter into a period of instability. These collective instabilities have become known as quantum storms and were predicted by an American scientist, Dr. Aaron Seven, five years ago. These storms will not be visible to the naked eye; in fact, they will occur on the subatomic level. But the effect of these storms will be strongly felt by the earth in the form of high intensity radiation, much like x-rays, during the daylight hours. Every life form will be adversely affected unless they are adequately shielded and protected.
“I know you are probably asking yourself the same question I asked when I first heard of this some months ago – and that is, “Are you certain? Are you absolutely certain that you’re certain?”
“My fellow citizens, I want you to know that the government of the United States has gone to great lengths to verify this prediction and all of its ramifications and we have concluded – no, I have concluded, and I take full responsibility for my own conclusions in this matter - that they are correct. Every scientific model and every piece of data recorded from the sun has verified that the prediction is, in fact, accurate. Hence, it is my duty to report this to you just as soon as I verified it as an absolute certainty. In meetings held and directed by Doctors Desmond and Seven, it has been discovered that this activity will begin in about six months from now. There is no way to predict the start of these storms with absolute accuracy.
“I have directed that all of the resources of the United States government will henceforth be poured into developing survival strategies for every one of our citizens. While the United States government is already constructing deep shelters, it will be immediately obvious to all that even the government cannot build enough deep shelters for every citizen in time. Hence, it is essential that you as individual citizens begin building your own deep shelters. These shelters can be constructed near homes on the order of the fallout shelters of the 1960’s. Other shelter designs can be constructed in and under apartment buildings and condominiums. I have directed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency develop plans that will be available to every citizen by mail, through your local newspapers and magazines, at local post offices or on your home computer.
“My worst fear in all of this has been that our citizens would panic and there would be disorder and chaos when everyone found out about the storms
. There were many suggestions that the word of this calamity not be released until the last possible minute. But I have let my staff know that the citizens of this great country are better than that. I also have an obligation to let you know as far enough ahead as possible to allow every citizen a chance to prepare for the coming storms. From now on, every day, every minute is critically important.
“I will not lie to you. These storms are very serious. Many people will die. The environment will be devastated and many, if not most, plant and animal species will become extinct in a matter of weeks. But I will also tell you that I intend to maintain a strong working government in the United States up to, and beyond, the start of the storms. I will enforce good order and discipline in the United States and every citizen is expected to obey the laws of this nation. And I want to warn our enemies that we will not tolerate an attack on our sovereign nation or our peoples during this crisis and we will retaliate swiftly and quickly with nuclear force, if so challenged. It has always been our greatest strength to maintain our dignity and our discipline and uphold our laws during the times of supreme testing. And this crisis will be no different.”
The President then paused and sighed deeply again, staring back into the camera with the look of a man crushed under unbearable pressure.
“My fellow Americans, we will survive this. This country will survive this, united as before. It will not be easy. It will bring tragedy on a scale that none of us can even imagine now….and like we have never faced before.”
The President stopped abruptly and looked over to an unseen person just beyond the camera. “Turn it off,” he said, pointing to what must have been a teleprompter just out of view. He stood up, walked around to the front of the desk and sat on it as the camera panned back. He sighed, shook his head slowly, then began speaking in a more intense and personal manner.
“I didn’t expect this, and I know that you didn’t either. This isn’t the kind of thing any of us wanted, anticipated or even guessed would happen in our wildest dreams. It has never occurred before as far as any of our scientists can tell, so no one saw it coming. Even the scientist who discovered the theory of the storms had no idea that they would someday happen in this solar system.
“So you and I are both alike here. I may be the President, but I’m human and I have a family and loved ones, and we’re all in trouble here just the same. So let me plead with you – let us labor together to make it through. We can only do that by working collectively and by sacrificing one for another, not by hoarding and not by committing crimes against one another just so that one person can gain an advantage over someone else.
“I won’t hesitate to get tough and declare martial law, if I have to. And I will punish price gougers and thieves to the fullest extent of the law. As of this moment, I am freezing all prices on everything at their current levels until further notice – I have already signed the order. If you price gouge, if you riot, or if you loot – you will go to jail and stay locked up until the end.
“Let us pray, one nation together, that the scientists are terribly wrong. Let us hope that they have made an appalling mistake – I know I do every day. But let us also act prudently and prepare the best we can. And let us survive as we have always survived – one great and united peoples of the United States – forever committed to the freedom and dignity that has made us the greatest nation in the history of the world.”
With that, the television view of the President faded slowly, and then abruptly cut to a stage where a panel of individuals sat in a row of draped tables, each with a microphone in front of them. The man who sat in the center of the table looked fresh but obviously somewhat intimidated by the bright lights and cameras. He began to speak stiffly, obviously reading a statement by way of an introduction.
“Hello. I’m Dr. Steven Poindexter, Science Advisor to the White House. We have assembled a panel of experts and I will introduce them to you. To my right is Dr. Raylond Desmond, head of the United States Quantum Storm Response Team project. To my left is the discoverer of the phenomenon, Dr. Aaron Seven. To the right of Dr. Desmond is Fred Amlishing, FEMA Director, and to the right of Dr. Seven is Amy Lorington, Director of Homeland Security. We will take the first few minutes to describe the storms and what we may expect from them, then we will go on to discuss measures already taken, and measures that will be taken, to mediate the events. We will begin with a statement by Dr. Desmond.”
The cameras panned to Desmond whose face was pale and drawn before the harsh television lights. It was more than obvious that no one had bothered to make him up and he looked ghastly on the television monitors. He began to speak in a voice filled with exhaustion and dread, reading from a carefully prepared statement.
Warren , stunned, looked away from the television monitor. The words were passing through his brain, but he was no longer hearing any of them. As a nuclear engineer and self-designated genius, he didn’t need another shred of information to know he was personally in some serious kimchi. He looked over to Marbles who lay on the floor facing him. As soon as the simple dog saw he was being eyed by his master, he averted his eyes.
“Ok, you brainless black fur-ball, this is the way it’s gonna be,” Warren said with uncharacteristic softness in his voice. He stood, took a single step over to Marbles, picked up the 24 pound dog and lifted him eye to eye. “It’s just you and me pooch, and we’ve got to get the hell out of Dodge - like right now.”
Warren took the dog and sat him gently on the passenger seat of the RV. He then kicked the door open and strode outside in the gathering darkness where he unplugged his power, stowed the sewer line and tossed his satellite dish onto his side rack and secured it with elastic cords. He swung his leg over the hitch of a fat, low slung 12-foot trailer sitting directly behind the RV and, with brute strength, lifted its tongue and sat it on the ball of the RV’s rear bumper. He then quickly latched its safety chains and plugged in its rear lights. The whole series of events took less than six minutes.
“You been listen’n to the TeeVee?” drawled a shrill voice beside him.
Warren looked over and saw his frail but cantankerous neighbor, Miss Watson, headed in his direction with her housecoat flapping and her hair filled with countless blue plastic rollers, one of them hanging loose over her right ear.
“Yeah, I heard it,” Warren replied, pacing quickly to the drivers seat, slamming his door and turning the key on the old RV’s tired engine. He could see her mouth moving below a set of bushy gray eyebrows outside his window but could not hear her above the din of the engine just warming up. Warren wanted to pull away and leave her standing there, but he rolled his window down and looked her in the face as her mouth continued to move without pause.
“Miss Watson…” he began, but she would not stop speaking. “Miss Watson, shut up for once, will you?” he finally demanded in exasperation.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” she persisted.
“Me and Marbles here are headed out to Ok-la-ho-ma,” Warren said mockingly, pronouncing each of the state’s four syllables with a deep artificial drawl.
“Why? Why on earth go to Oklahoma at a time like this? I declare, man, we’re gonna need your help around here… if you’re as damn smart as you say you are…”
“Miss Watson, close your mouth for one second and take my advice,” Warren said as he flipped several switches.
“What?” she asked, finally insulted, but finally silent, at last.
“Go find yourself some sun block with an SFP rating somewhere in the five billion range, slather it all over yourself, then dip your cats in it and y’all be just fine.” With that, Warren shoved the cumbersome RV into gear and left Ms Watson standing in a cloud of putrid black smoke. The image of her and her twenty some odd cats lying toasted in the bitter Florida sunlight left an iniquitous smile on his face.
13
Little Luci prepared carefully for her night's outing. She was desperately hungry, weakened and emaciated, and was beginning to show all t
he classic signs of dehydration and starvation. But the last primal urges of her body and mind pushed her on, just one more night, and one last look for food before she gave in to the deep desire to sleep on and on and be taken by the nightmares whose hold on her strengthened each time that she slept.
Luci twisted her tiny, tattered shoe laces around her ankles and pulled them tight so that they would not come undone as she ran. That was another lesson she had learned the hard way and at the cost of yet another morsel of food. She tucked her Barbie pack tightly under her arm and laced its straps tightly about her clinched fist. If she got lucky at all, this would be the place she hid her food before making a run back to consume it in privacy and safety.
Luci wound her way carefully from her hiding place through the underground chambers of Seattle 's sewers and utility catacombs. She emerged onto the streets of Seattle by way of a narrow storm sewer drain so tiny that she could barley squeeze past the clusters of cables and pipes. It was so small and difficult to enter that it had saved her on several occasions since her considerably larger pursuers could not follow.
As Luci carefully peered out of her tiny access way, she saw the night streets obscured by fire and smoke. She could hear shouting, gunfire and the sounds of chaos. She had never seen such total disorder, even on the worst of nights. It was as though all order had disappeared and had been replaced by a city gone completely mad. But Luci’s little-girl mind had been seasoned by the reality of the streets. Instead of fear, she felt some measure of relief. She reasoned that if everyone was concentrating on the riot, perhaps she could move around and become as invisible as she always wanted to be.
"After all, in all the noise and action, who will notice me?" she said encouragingly to herself.
Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven Page 9
