Final Dawn: Escape From Armageddon

by Maloney, Darrell

  Hannah responded first. “But who would you be looting from? I mean, if we were the only people alive for hundreds of miles in any direction, and the owners of the stores were all dead, who exactly would we be looting from?”

  Bryan, in his teen years, had kicked around the idea of going to college and majoring in theology, then becoming a minister. He never did it, because by the time he graduated from high school he was tired of studying and wanted to enjoy life a bit.

  Still, he was more deeply religious than any of the other three, and they looked to him for guidance.

  “I would think that God would forgive us. If he allows us to survive, I would think he’d want us to help repopulate his earth. I don’t think he’d want us to starve to death by ignoring things that were readily at hand, just because they once belonged to someone else. Especially if they were now dead.”

  It was after that conversation that Bryan decided to go to a local commercial driving school. He signed up for a twelve week course to learn to drive a tractor trailer, and to get his commercial driver’s license.

  It would be useful after the breakout, he explained to the others, because then he could drive a truck to area supermarkets and department stores to collect supplies and food.

  And it would also solve another problem they had been wrestling with.

  They determined early on that the girls’ method of stocking up on clothing and other supplies worked fine for blue jeans and blankets. But one of their biggest requirements would be for food.

  And eight shopping carts of food each day from Walmart wouldn’t provide enough food for forty people for seven years.

  No, they needed a bigger plan to collect their food stores.

  They struggled for weeks for a solution to this dilemma. They had less than two years to go now, and the longer they waited the harder it would be.

  Then Bryan came up with an idea.

  “There’s an old feed store four miles west of here, on the other side of Highway 83. It has a big ‘For Sale or Lease’ sign on it. What if we leased that building and set up a phony business in it? We could say we were a food distributor for some of the area churches. That we supplied the food and supplies for all of their summer camps and year-round retreats. There are a lot of those going on in this area, so it would be believable.

  “Then once we had a business license, we could set up an account with one of the big food distribution companies. Like Symco, or U.S.A. Foods. We’d be able to buy food by the truckload instead of the grocery cart. And they’d deliver it.

  “And we wouldn’t have to worry about word getting around that we were putting all of this food into the mine. Because the drivers would never see the mine. We’d have them deliver it two or three days a week to the feed store.

  “And the other two or three days a week, I could load it up onto our own truck and drive it over to the mine.”

  None of the group could see any flaws in Bryan’s plan. So they agreed to it.

  The next day Bryan talked by phone to a commercial property company out of San Antonio, which was about a hundred miles to the southeast. He was interested in leasing the property, he said, but first he wanted to find out a little bit about it.

  Two days after that Hannah and Bryan met with a company representative at the feed store.

  They toured the old store, and were happy to see that it met most of their needs. An overhead door at the front of the building and a truck pit, that would allow a tractor trailer a place to off-load. Two thousand square feet of open floor space. An office area that the girls could furnish and decorate to look like a food distribution business.

  “Any problems if we install a portable freezer and refrigerator unit, and a backup power supply?” Bryan asked.

  “I’ll have to check with the owner,” the commercial properties rep answered. “but normally there’s no problem as long as you restore the property to its original condition upon termination of the lease.”

  By the end of that week, the lease had been signed, Hannah had purchased a few desks and chairs and other “officey” looking stuff, and a new sign had been ordered for the building. “South Texas Distributing Co.” It was a generic enough name to mean just about anything, and remove suspicion when a large variety of delivery trucks came to visit. Or left.

  And it solved their problem of how to get large quantities of food and other items into the mine without anyone noticing.

  -16-

  Hannah and Mark were sitting at a Subway restaurant in Junction. They’d left the mine half an hour before, and were starving. They wanted to have a meal before heading back to San Angelo.

  Hannah had been subdued all day. He’d tried several times to find out what was bothering her, but had no success at all.

  So he did what he always did when she was deep in thought. He pampered her, stayed close to her, and let her know that he loved her more than he’d ever loved anyone. And then he waited until she felt comfortable enough to share her thoughts.

  “Honey, I want to start having kids.” Hannah said out of the blue.

  Mark almost choked on his meatball sub.

  “Wow! Where’d that come from?” He was grinning from ear to ear.

  “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I know you’ve always wanted kids, because you grew up with brothers and sisters. To me, family always meant pain and loss, because everyone I ever cared about went away.

  “But something you said the other day, when we were walking in the park, has been coming back to me. You said ‘family doesn’t have to just represent sorrow. Family can also represent joy. And it’s the joy a family brings to life that make the losses a little less sorrowful.’

  “And you’re right. And I do want to have a family. And I do want to have children. I want to know when you think the time would be right.”

  Mark was ecstatic. But he was also realistic.

  “I want to wait until we’re safely in the mine. If something were to go wrong, I don’t want to watch my children die. Once we’re safely tucked away, with not much to do, I want to make love to you twenty times a day. And then, God willing, it’ll happen on its own.”

  Hannah understood his concern, and agreed. But she just had one more question.

  “How many shall we have?”

  “I’m thinking twelve or thirteen. Thirteen is my lucky number, you know.”

  “Yeah, keep that up, and lucky is one thing you won’t be, sailor.”

  -17-

  APR 17, 2014. 21 MONTHS UNTIL IMPACT

  As spring started to come to this part of south central Texas, there were a lot of things going on for the salt mine project.

  On this particular day, there was a late frost on Mark’s windshield as he headed out to the construction site to check its progress. But the morning sun was warm and helped melt it away within a few minutes.

  The steel frame for the dormitory building was virtually complete, and they’d start putting the exterior walls up in a few days.

  There was a security guard at the site now, twenty four hours a day, and he waved at Mark as Mark drove onto the property. It was still a bit early, and the crew hadn’t arrived yet, so Mark was able to wander freely around the site without one of the supers bugging him to put a hardhat on.

  The security guard was hired mainly because Mark had inserted a clause into the designs calling for copper pipes and double-insulated wiring to be used throughout the compound. Both of them were very expensive and subject to pilferage.

  The contractor didn’t even ask why. If he had, Mark would have made up some lame excuse for wanting such an extravagant add-on that his “patients” would never see or know about.

  In reality, Mark was planning for a worst-case scenario. That maybe, after the breakout, the area would be overrun with lawless survivors. Maybe they would roam around in bands, like outlaws in the wild west, and rape, pillage and plunder wherever they went.

  If that were the case, Mark knew, the group might have to stay in the
compound for an extended length of time. Decades, maybe, until the outside world became tame and civil again. He wanted the buildings in the compound to last for a hundred years. Just in case. So he wanted them built with materials that would stand the test of time. And cost wasn’t a factor.

  All of the slabs had been poured, and steel fence posts had been installed along the entire west side of the property. Four hundred yards didn’t sound like a great distance, but seeing all those posts lined up almost as far as Mark could see brought it into perspective. This was going to be a very large compound. And it should be plenty big enough to accommodate the original forty, and a few new rug rats as well.

  He walked to the edge of a pit that was fifty five feet deep and ten feet across. This would be the state-of-the-art septic system. Raw sewage from the compound would pour into the pit, which would be covered with a domed plastic top. The sewage would then very slowly soak into the earth, through a series of filters. There would be ten feet of crushed limestone at the bottom layer, followed by eight feet of fine sand, and ten feet of earth containing live microorganisms. They would break down any chemicals in the mix from soaps and detergents. Above the earth would be a second layer of sand, followed by another layer of earth. Live earthworms would be introduced to this layer. The worms would eat any bacterial material which made it that far. On top of that, another layer of limestone, a third layer of earth, and a layer of pea gravel. The engineers who designed this system in Europe swore that the water which finally trickled out the bottom and into the water table would be as pure as the finest spring drinking water. They also claimed that their system would be maintenance free for a hundred years.

  Mark planned to periodically test the water coming out the wells. Just in case. And if bacteria ever became a problem, they’d treat it again. Just to be safe.

  He then walked over to the northwest corner of the property, where a drill rig lay parked, ready to bore into the ground. This is where the first of the two water wells was going in. The other would go into the opposite corner of the property.

  The construction foreman said he personally didn’t understand the need for the second well. But then, he didn’t know the true purpose of the property.

  Redundancy. It was the key to their survival. And if one well pump malfunctioned and couldn’t be replaced for awhile, the second one would come in very handy.

  Mark left the site and went to the mine. He had six more flatbed trailers coming in today. Each one would have two 5,000 gallon storage tanks made of heavy duty plastic. They would be added to the seventy which were already in place.

  There would be a total of 220 such tanks when they were all delivered. Eighty would be stored in the very back of Bay 20, a full two hundred yards from the main entrance. It would be a highly restricted diesel storage area. No smoking would be allowed in the area, and no sparking devices, such as hand trucks or carts with metal wheels, would be allowed either. Only two people would work in the area: Mark and Bryan. And before they entered, they would don special coveralls and booties that would minimize static electricity discharge.

  Diesel wasn’t like gasoline. It was considerably harder to start a fire with it. Its fumes didn’t ignite, like gasoline fumes. That’s why a decision was made early on to outlaw gasoline and gasoline engines. Every vehicle, every pump, every generator, that came into the mine would run on diesel power. Period.

  But even though diesel was considerably safer, it was still dangerous. So the Snyder brothers went overboard on caution. Better to be too cautious than to be dead, they reasoned.

  The other 140 tanks would be placed a few bays down, in Bay 15. This would be the main water supply. The first tanks, already in place, were already being filled.

  When Mark entered the mine this day, he checked on the progress of water tank number two.

  The previous tank, tank one, had taken two full days to fill, with a continuously running water hose from a water tap in front of the mine. They’d had to string eight garden hoses together to stretch to the back of the mine. It was city water, coming out of the water plant in nearby Kerrville. They expected to get clobbered on the mine’s water bills the next few months as they filled up all 140 tanks. But that’s okay. They had the money to pay for it.

  Mark would check the water level in the tanks once each day when coming to work, and again before he went home. When a tank was close to getting full, he’d check it more often. At the rate they were going, they’d have plenty of time to fill all 140 before impact. And those 140 water tanks represented seven years of life for the forty.

  While Mark was puttering around the mine, waiting for the air horns that would signal the arrival of today’s tank deliveries, Bryan was at the warehouse down the highway, unloading a truck from Symco Foods. The 53-foot trailer had backed up just over an hour before, with 24 pallets of food and paper goods. Each pallet measured 48 inches long and 40 inches wide, and stood about six feet high.

  This load, like the one that came in the day prior, would be lined up in the receiving bay. Once all the pallets were off the truck, the driver would provide Bryan an invoice, and Bryan would call off each item.

  “Rice, 25 pound bag.” Bryan said. “Twenty.”

  The driver would find the rice bags on the pallets, show them to Bryan, and Bryan would mark them off the list.

  “Toilet Paper, 48 count case. Bryan said. “Twelve.”

  “Check.”

  “Ramen Noodles, Beef, 96 count case. Twelve.”

  “Check.”

  The pallets were wrapped with clear plastic shrink wrap, which allowed the markings on all boxes to be read easily. The workers at the Symco Foods distribution center were experts at stacking the pallets so that everything was visible from the outside. Only occasionally did Bryan and the driver have to break into the pallets to look for a missing box packed on the inside.

  Once the invoice was signed and the driver departed, Bryan would pull his own rig out of the west parking area and back it up to the truck pit.

  Then he’d jump on a 4,000 lb Hyster forklift and load the new pallets into the back of his trailer.

  Once loaded, he would call Mark to make sure there weren’t any truck drivers at the mine who might ask too many questions.

  Given the all clear from Mark, Bryan would drive to the mine, into the entryway, and would park in the main corridor.

  In the main corridor, Bryan would climb aboard another Hyster forklift, the identical twin of the one he’d been on half an hour earlier. He would take the first two pallets from the end of the truck and place them in the food storage area at the back of Bay 9.

  After the first two pallets were off-loaded, Mark would lend his brother a hand.

  Mark would climb aboard the back of the trailer with a heavy chain and wrap it around the center piece of wood on the next two pallets. He’d then attach the other end of the chain to the rack on the front of the forklift, and hop back down while Bryan dragged the next two pallets to the door of the trailer.

  They’d repeat the same process for the next two pallets.

  Once the first six pallets of food and paper goods were off the truck, Bryan would use the forklift to lift a pallet jack onto the back of the trailer. Mark would use the pallet jack to take the rest of the pallets to the end.

  It was this method the brothers used, after some trial and error, to unload several trailers a week full of dry foods, paper goods, and other supplies, into the back of the mine’s food storage area. And they were getting pretty good at it now. The two of them could now unload a truck in under an hour. Twenty four pallets of lifesaving food and supplies.

  It wouldn’t all be dried beans and spaghetti noodles, of course.

  They planned to stock a variety of foods. So they ordered all of the dry stock first- the foods that wouldn’t go bad.

  The next step would be to order the frozen goods. They were building two huge freezer units. One was at the mouth of the mine. The other was at the feed store. Each freezer kit was
identical, and was ordered from a company in Pittsburgh. They were like big erector sets, really. Each had dozens of four-inch thick insulated steel panels, which bolted into place. Ceiling panels held the walls in place and added stability.

  The last step was to install four huge condensing units inside each freezer, which would keep the temperature at a constant twenty degrees, and would keep their food edible for several years.

  When completed, each of the two freezers would measure forty by thirty feet, with 1200 feet of floor space. Each would have a sliding door which would allow a small forklift to drive in and out of it.

  And each would store a lot of food.

  After all the dry foods were safely stored, and after both freezers were full of frozen food, the third step would be to buy canned goods. Lots and lots of them.

  Symco’s distribution center stocked hundreds of different foods in large, number 10 cans. These were the type of cans that supermarkets usually carried in that out-of-the-way aisle that were as big as a man’s head.

  So, first, the pasta, then the frozen stuff. Then cases and cases of canned Ravioli and tuna fish and vegetables. And when they were done, they’d have plenty of food to keep the forty fed.

  -18-

  JUNE 3, 2014. 19 MONTHS UNTIL IMPACT

  Sarah and Hannah decided to stop at Carino’s to celebrate. They both loved lasagna, and they figured they deserved a nice lunch after finally crossing the last item off of their shopping lists.

  They had become so weary of seeing the same tired cashiers at Walmart for months. Using the same blue shopping carts with the wheels that went “thump, thump, thump” as they pushed them up and down the same, tired aisles.

  “Here’s to us, and to the end of our joint reign as the Walmart queens!” Sarah said, as she raised a glass of iced tea.

  Hannah said “Yes, and good riddance to you, big blue box store, now and forever,” as she toasted Sarah’s glass with her own.