Hidden (Final Dawn)

by Maloney, Darrell

  “Hello, Sally. You look happy to see me.”

  Chapter 3

  The girls weren’t alone in Bay 8. The lounge area Mark and Bryan had constructed the year before very nicely accommodated up to twenty people comfortably, with several couches, recliners and easy chairs.

  On this particular morning, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house. The children weren’t there, of course. They were in school in one of the mine’s two one-room school houses in Bay 6. No, these were all adults. And that was good, because much of what they were seeing would have caused nightmares for the young and weak hearted.

  Outside the safety of the mine, society had broken down and chaos was the order of the day. At least half of America had already perished. Those that remained were the steadfast and gutsy who were convinced they were tough enough to stick out a seven year winter. Or those just too stubborn not to least try.

  The temperature had dropped to between five and ten degrees and had pretty much stabilized. It was the dead of winter, after all. The scientists who told the world of the “nuclear winter” explained that the earth would still have seasons. It would still be warmer in the summer, whenever the earth was closer to the sun, and colder in the winter when the sun was farther away.

  They wouldn’t be seasons like everyone was used to, however. Even on the dog days of summer, in mid to late August, the highs would not get above twenty five degrees. At least not initially.

  As the years went by, and more of the dust in the atmosphere settled, the temperatures would rise slowly. But it would take awhile. What the scientists pretty much agreed on was that the temperatures would not rise above freezing anywhere on earth for at least four years.

  In the fourth year, they said, perhaps those countries on the equator would see five to ten days above thirty two degrees, in the hottest part of the summer.

  In the fifth year, those five to ten days might stretch to twenty or thirty at the equator, and those countries five hundred to a thousand miles north and south of the equator would experience their own five to ten days above freezing. Then the following year, the equator might have forty five to sixty days of temperatures above freezing.

  The problem, the scientists said, was that the earth had never gone through this before. At least not in recorded history. They all had their theories, but nothing had been proven or even substantiated. There was no way to accurately determine how long the earth would take to warm again.

  In even the best case scenarios, though, citizens were told it would be at least five to seven years before they’d be able to live normal lives again. Five to seven years before there were enough warm days each year to grow crops. To reestablish civilization. To once again live anything like they were used to living.

  And, they were warned, for those who stuck it out, for those who wanted to survive, it was going to be anything but easy. All precipitation would now be in the form of ice and snow. And it wouldn’t melt. Couldn’t melt. It would be just too damn cold. No, it would accumulate instead. Would eventually be several feet high. And then, when the thaws finally did come, it would take a very long time to melt it all. And when it did melt the floods would come.

  No, it wouldn’t be pretty. Wouldn’t be pretty at all.

  On the television screen, a CNN reporter was broadcasting from Atlanta, and explaining that the city of Atlanta’s power plant was expecting to go off line within a week. Its coal reserves were running down, and it hadn’t switched to diesel or natural gas as many other cities had done in recent years. The coal plants in Pennsylvania and West Virginia were shutting down. They could no longer find miners who were willing to go underground for eight hours a day and get covered in cancer-causing dust to chip coal from the ground so that people a thousand miles away could be comfortable.

  The dollar was worthless now. What good were wages if they couldn’t be spent? Miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania were busy gathering coal for their own use now. For use in the coal burning stoves that would keep their homes warm for seven long years.

  Or they were leaving those homes in search of somewhere better.

  The CNN reporter went on. Once the lights went out for good in Atlanta, the network had about a week’s supply of diesel for their generators. When that ran dry, they’d be off the air for good. Or at least until the thaw came in seven years. After that, no one really knew what would happen. Or what the world would look like.

  In the meantime, they would continue to report the news twenty four/seven, just as they always had. They still felt a duty, despite all that had happened, to keep their viewers informed.

  The anchor switched from the studio in Atlanta to a reporter in Kansas City. Kansas City had just implemented the first government run mass suicide facility in the country. And it was not lacking for customers.

  The concept was simple. Offer a painless and effective way to die for the doomed, and most people would choose the easy way out.

  So Kansas City took a basketball arena. And they made it airtight. And outside they brought in eight high powered gasoline generators. Each one of them was hauled in on the back of an eighteen wheeler and was as big as a locomotive. By running the generators at full capacity for two hours, and by connecting their exhausts to the air intakes for the arena’s ventilation fans, they were able to gas twenty thousand people at a time. Quickly, efficiently and painlessly.

  The CNN cameras showed a long line of families queued up outside the facility. Most of them had forlorn and resigned looks on their faces and many were in tears. Virtually all of them were holding hands, relishing the last hours of their lives together.

  The network switched to another camera just inside the building, where the families were slowly filing past tables staffed with nurses in crisp white uniforms. Each was handed a dose of a heavy sedative and offered a choice of Kool-Aid or various flavors of soft drinks to wash the pills down with.

  The CNN reporter noted succinctly that none of the drinks offered had caffeine which might slow the effects of the sedative. He also noted that children and babies were given the same heavy dosage as the adults. It would knock them out first, of course. But that was the intent.

  The adults were handed flyers with simple instructions. Since the sedatives had already been taken, their children would fall asleep in between ten to twenty minutes, depending on their weight and level of anxiety. The parents would follow suit in forty five minutes to an hour. They had that long to find their own corner of the arena to spend the rest of their time together and to relax and say their goodbyes. If they chose to, there were twelve thousand folding cots laid out throughout the facility, on the basketball court and on all the concourses. They could lie down if they wished while they waited to fall asleep.

  Dozens of ministers and priests were going around the facility administering last rites and providing solace where they could. In most cases, though, the citizens of Kansas City had already accepted their fate and said their prayers.

  Once the building was filled to capacity, a loud horn would sound to tell all medical personnel and clergy they had twenty minutes to clear the building.

  After twenty minutes the doors were sealed and the generators were powered up. After two hours they would be turned off again and the doors reopened.

  After four more hours the cleanup process would begin. Eight hundred volunteers would use tractors and luggage trailers, borrowed from the airport, to gather 20,000 bodies and place them on trucks for transport.

  The CNN reporter didn’t ask where they were transported to. He didn’t have to. A thick, acrid smoke had been drifting over from the city dump a mile and a half away for the last four days.

  The reporter sent it back to the studio with a tear in his eye, stating matter of factly that the process would be repeated around the clock until there were no more lines at the facility.

  Hannah and Sarah had seen enough. Hannah felt sick to her stomach. It wasn’t morning sickness.

  Sarah asked, “Are you all right, hon
ey?”

  “Yes. It’s just that…”

  She swallowed hard.

  “It’s just that seeing those children’s faces… they looked so sad. And so hopeless.”

  She looked Sarah in the eyes before going on.

  “I should feel so guilty, but I don’t. I don’t feel guilty because I know my son is going to have a chance to live. He’ll be able to grow up and actually live and have a full life. What kind of monster does that make me that I don’t feel guilty about that?”

  She burst into tears.

  Sarah held her close and said, “That doesn’t make you a monster, honey. That makes you a mother.”

  Chapter 4

  Mark finished milking Sally. He poured milk from the bucket into three empty plastic containers. Almost three gallons. Sally was a good producer. And that was a good thing. Because as long as she continued to produce milk in such amounts, her life in the mine was assured.

  Like it or not, the livestock operation in the mine had to be run like an old family farm. Once an animal wore out its usefulness it became food for the masses. It had to be that way. There was only a limited amount of cattle feed and water to go around. It couldn’t afford to be wasted.

  After marking the date on each gallon of milk, Mark placed them on a rolling cart to wheel back to the kitchen. Before he left the bay, though, he gave each cow, and each pig, their allotted scoop of feed for the day. And three gallons of water for each cow and two gallons for each pig. They were separated in individual pens for this process. Mark would come back later in the day after the feed and water had been consumed, at which time he’d let them all loose into the large corral and let them mingle.

  He was hoping a couple of them would breed soon. Each cow had a colored ear tag which indicated its age. Whenever a new calf was born and deemed to be healthy, the oldest cow of the same sex could be slaughtered. This plan would accomplish two things. First, it would supplement the group’s food supply. Second, calves could be on half rations for their first year of life. By only eating half as much as a full grown cow, their feed reserves would last much longer.

  Once the cows and pigs were fed and watered, Mark walked over to the chicken coop and spread two scoops of chicken feed over the salt floor of the mine. Then he poured five gallons of water from a fifty five gallon drum into a low profile drinking trough. Every eleven days, he’d use a forklift to take the drum to one of the 5,000 gallon water tanks in Bay 15 and refill it.

  The hungry chickens all scrambled for the feed. They’d learned that once it was gone, there would be no more until the human returned the next morning. So the competition for each bit of feed was fierce.

  He took a head count of the chickens. thirty nine. Once that number hit sixty, he’d examine the colored tags wrapped around each bird’s leg. The tags would help him determine which birds were oldest, and they would be culled and slaughtered for food. It wasn’t a part of this job he enjoyed, but he did enjoy eating the meat he produced.

  They had a fine line to walk. They had enough chicken feed to get them through to the thaw, but only if they kept a tight reign on the chicken population.

  While the chickens were gorging, Mark walked into the chicken coop, took two empty egg trays from a shelf just inside the door, and gathered the eggs from the roosts inside the coop.

  Seventeen eggs. About average.

  There were eight nests, marked with orange duct tape, that would be left alone. These were the eggs that would be allowed to hatch.

  Like the cattle and pigs, the chickens would be allowed to breed, to constantly replenish their numbers. Allowing breeding would enable the herds and flock to remain strong, so that once the thaw came they could survive the rough conditions on the outside. Breeding would also allow a steady, if infrequent, supply of fresh meat for the forty persons living within the mine.

  Mark pushed the rolling cart to the kitchen, where he said hello to his mother and her staff of volunteer cooks. He put the milk and eggs in the refrigerator for the next day’s breakfast and pushed the cart outside the bay, parking it in the main aisle. He’d push it back to the livestock bay in a couple of hours, when he went back to let the animals out of their individual pens to mingle. And hopefully to mate.

  Mark’s next stop was to the security control center. Sami’s father John had volunteered to head up the security detail. For many years he’d been a cop in the Dallas Police Department. He’d reluctantly retired when the department said he’d gotten too old, and spent his days tending to his vegetable garden and walking his dogs. That is, until Mark and Hannah and Sami came to him and told him about Saris 7 and its collision course with earth.

  These days, John had a new mission. He was back in his element. It was his job to keep everyone safe from marauders who might want to attack the mine and steal its treasures.

  But it wouldn’t happen. Not on John’s watch.

  “Hello, Mark. How are you doing this morning?’

  “Just fine, John. Anything worth talking about?”

  “Nope.” He was standing in front of a bank of monitors, watching the outside activity captured on over a dozen cameras mounted on the mountain above the mine.

  “Traffic is getting sparse on the I-10. Either word has finally gotten around that Mexico closed its borders, or there just aren’t that many people left alive anymore. And it’s snowing again. Has been since about three this morning.”

  Mark looked at monitor 6. It was pointed directly at a snow gauge the brothers had installed in front of the mine a couple of months before. It would measure up to ten feet of snow eventually. For now, though, the number “1” was still visible.

  John said, “Any precipitation we get from here on out will be snow or ice. And it won’t melt. Hopefully it’ll get to four or five feet soon. Then nobody will be able to move outside. Then we can stand down and relax a little.”

  Marked stepped back into the main tunnel as Mike and Stuart came motoring by in an electric golf cart. On the back of the cart was a sixty gallon water tank. It was full of gray water the pair had pumped from the tanks of the RVs. It was the water the residents had used to wash their dishes and take showers.

  The water would be taken to the water treatment facility in Bay 10, where it would be pumped into one of several large cattle troughs. Each trough would be treated with powdered chlorine and a cocktail of chemicals that would break down and neutralize soap and shampoo. The water was also aerated several times a day.

  After being treated in this manner, the water would be ready for reuse in about ten days. It was safe to drink, but had a bad taste because of the chemicals.

  The plants in Karen’s greenhouse didn’t seem to mind the taste, though. Neither did the washing machines that everyone used to wash their laundry.

  Everything had to be recycled and reused whenever possible. It was essential to their survival.

  Chapter 5

  On Buena Vista Drive, seventy four miles south of the mine, a different kind of survival operation was in full swing.

  Buena Vista was in the middle of a large housing development in the northern edge of San Antonio. It was a nice neighborhood. At least, it was before Saris 7 hit.

  Frank Woodard was a familiar sight around the neighborhood. Retired just a year earlier from the Bexar County Sheriff’s office, he was the logical person to head up the neighborhood watch program. And he did a great job at it. He knew everyone in the neighborhood, and he was the one they went to to resolve disputes, solve problems, or just ask for advice.

  When the news broke that a meteorite was going to wipe out most of humanity, the first thing Frank did was to set up a meeting with everyone on his block.

  He needed to know what everyone’s plans were as soon as they decided what they were going to do. He said there was strength in numbers, and when the marauders came it was important for everyone to stick together.

  He also made a promise to the group that changed everything on Buena Vista Drive forever.

 
“Eva and I are staying put,” he said. “We’re going to ride out the storm, here in our house. We know it won’t be easy, but that’s the choice we made. If we don’t survive, I want you to take whatever you need from our home to help you survive. Knock my home down, and use the wood to keep you warm. Take the insulation from my attic to reinforce the insulation in your own. Take what food and water stores we have left. Eva and I hope to survive. But if we don’t we want to increase your chances to.”

  Frank’s words brought many to tears. In the back of the room the man who lived three doors down stood up and said, “The same goes for me. If my family and I don’t make it, we’d like to know that our belongings went to someone else to help them survive. We do not believe in letting things go to waste.”

  He was followed by another neighbor. Then another. Finally every family on Frank’s block formed an agreement. If they left for safer ground, or didn’t survive the freeze, everything they left behind would be fair game.

  Frank made another promise to his neighbors as well. Those who didn’t survive would receive a proper burial. It might not be below ground. Digging graves would be almost impossible in ground that was hard frozen. But he promised he’d think of something. And he promised he’d pray over the graves, so that those who didn’t survive would have an easier path to heaven.

  It had been three weeks now since Saris 7 hit. It was dark out in the daytime, but not so dark that one couldn’t see his way around. Frank looked up at the sky. He could see a hazy yellow circle starting to sink low over the western horizon. He knew he had to hurry. Once the sun went down, it would be pitch black. And the marauders would come.

  A few days before, he and several of the neighbors had taken eight cars and lined them up at the end of the street. Bumper to bumper, they stretched from the corner of one house, through the yard to the street, across the street and to the corner of the opposite house. They had in effect built a barricade to keep out the intruders.