Final Dawn: Escape From Armageddon

by Maloney, Darrell

  Mark interjected. “Don’t encourage him, please.”

  “No, really, every word I said is true. And besides, I want to see her face when he orders 500 of them too.”

  Mark bought lunch for the four of them. He looked at Bryan and said “It’s the least I can do, since you’re going to help me install the freezer panels this afternoon.”

  Bryan replied “Well, I’d love to, big brother, but the girls need my help sorting and stacking the food.”

  Sarah and Hannah looked at each other and said, in perfect unison “No, we don’t.”

  By the end of the day, the girls had made a large dent in the food inventory, and the boys had the first of the two freezers half assembled. All in all, it was a productive day. Things were coming along nicely, and it looked like they would be able to get everything they needed finished just in time.

  Bryan didn’t order 500 cheeseburgers, but he did order a dozen. And he promised to do his own experiment to see if they made a tasty meal after being frozen and reheated.

  And as December rolled into January, and the weather became bitterly cold outside, the group had plenty to keep them busy in the warmer recesses of the mine. It also reminded them that they only had a year to go.

  -28-

  JAN 17, 2015 12 MONTHS UNTIL IMPACT

  Now that most of the big projects were finished, work shifted into a more relaxed gear. Bryan still got his two trucks of food each week from Symco, only now it was all frozen goods. He loaded it onto his own trailer, which was equipped with a diesel-powered freezer unit, and trucked it over to the mine as soon as the Symco driver was out of sight.

  The plan was to fill the mine’s freezer with frozen food, then do the same with the second large freezer at the feed store.

  Just prior to the group going into the mine, they planned to buy or rent several smaller trucks, each with freezer capability, and then to load them up with food from the feed store’s freezer. They would park them just inside the mine’s door, where the temperature would be allowed to match the temperature on the outside. Once it did, the trucks’ freezer units would be turned off. The mine’s large freezer unit would also be turned off. And the same cold temperature that was killing people on the outside would help keep them alive by preserving their food stocks.

  Bryan got his certification to haul a 10,000 gallon tanker and leased one for ten months. Each Wednesday, he left early in the morning and drove 270 miles to a refinery just north of Corpus Christi, Texas, where he purchased a tanker full of diesel. On Thursday morning, he drove back to the mine and used it to fill two of the 5,000 gallon diesel tanks.

  On Friday mornings, he repeated the process, this time going to a different refinery. Just in case someone got curious.

  Of course, with Bryan being out of pocket for four days each week, Mark had more projects to work. But they were ahead of schedule, so that wasn’t a problem. And Mark, it turned out, enjoyed long haul trucking. It was very relaxing, and he had a lot of downtime. He took Sarah with him on the Friday runs, and the two of them enjoyed the night life in Corpus Christi.

  Hannah continued to buy a wide assortment of items, from lumber to livestock feed, stock tanks to portable swimming pools, insulation to seed. She was careful to schedule delivery of each item on a Monday or a Tuesday, so Bryan would be at the feed store to sign for them.

  The mine was coming together. The RVs were all in place and ready for occupancy. The massive piece of playground equipment was sitting in 160 pieces in the back of Bay 5. They had decided to wait until after Saris 7 hit to assemble it. It would give them something to do to fight the boredom, and they’d have a lot more help then.

  They made the same decision regarding the construction of the miniature golf course.

  Hannah and Sarah had finished the food inventory, and had determined they’d have plenty of food to last for ten years. The same held true for the diesel fuel. As for the water tanks, Hannah had decided to purchase several truckloads of bottled drinking water and soft drinks from the Coca Cola plant in San Antonio just before they went public.

  Actually, the sodas were Bryan’s idea. His reasoning was that if everyone was on a 2000 calorie a day diet to conserve the food, then drinking a 200 calorie soda would help to that regard. No, it wasn’t the healthiest way to get calories, but when you’re in a survival situation, calories are pretty much the same.

  None of the other three could think of a logical rebuttal, so they agreed.

  Bryan then pushed his luck and suggested they buy a truckload of beer and liquor to take into the mine.

  “For the same reason,” he’d said. “To provide more calories and help stretch the food.”

  Hannah nodded her head and paid him lip service, but she intended to accidentally forget that particular request.

  Posted over her computer desk was a long list of items Hannah still needed to order once she found a source. For a long time, it was growing faster than she could keep up with. Lately, though, she’d begun to make some headway.

  They’d done the final inspection of the compound next door, and accepted it. Then they promptly winterized it by turning off the water sources, draining the internal plumbing, and turning off all power. It came with its own security system, but Mark ran five hundred yards of cable to connect it with the mine’s surveillance system and tied the two together. Just to keep an eye on it. Then they closed the gate, sealed it with a high security padlock, and put it out of their mind.

  -29-

  Since the girls had finished their classes, they spent many of their evenings working together on Hannah’s computer. They were well aware that the internet wouldn’t exist after the breakout. Although there would almost certainly be people using computers in isolated pockets, it was doubtful that anyone would be alive to operate the internet service providers. Or the millions of websites, for that matter.

  Hannah had written a computer program that selected the 100,000 most common Google searches, and the most chosen results from those searches. It then went into each of those websites and copied the first 100 pages of files.

  With Mark’s help, she hooked a bank of 3-terabyte external hard drives to her computer and had the copied files transferred directly to the drives.

  It was a hit and miss process, of course, and it could never be updated once the ISPs and websites all went down. But it was better than nothing. And it would give them a limited, albeit slightly outdated, “internet” capability.

  After her Google searches were complete, she had a second program which would mine Wikipedia of every entry it had, starting with aaa and ending with zzz.

  He hadn’t had time to do it yet, but Mark had stockpiled enough equipment in the mine to build a local area network between all of the mine’s computers. They would be able to share files, chat, use Hannah’s limited internet, and watch movies.

  They would also be encouraged to write and share journals for future generations.

  The girls were at Hannah’s computer placing an order for wheat and corn seed when Mark walked in with a new shopping list.

  “Well, hello, lovely ladies. How busy are you?”

  “Just wrapping things up.” Hannah said. “Then we’re heading out to meet up with our new boyfriends. We found a couple of guys who will wine and dine us instead of making us work all the time.”

  “Yeah, right. And I work just as hard as you do. Besides, you’re going to have five to seven years to rest. It’ll get boring real fast. So I’m doing you a favor.”

  Sarah interjected. “Hey, Mark. Why are you asking for 400 rolls of 4 inch insulation? I thought it stayed a constant temperature in the mine.”

  “Well, it does for the short term. I mean, over the course of a normal winter. But over the course of a seven-year winter, who knows? It might gradually cool, a degree or two at a time, until it’s unbearable.

  “I hope it doesn’t, but the insulation will provide some added insurance.”

  “What are you going to insulate, exactl
y?” Hannah asked.

  “Well, the entry to the tunnel is over a hundred a fifty feet long, and is separated by three arched supports, right?”

  “Yes, so?”

  “Each of those arched supports is two feet thick and extends six feet from each wall, then up and across the mine’s ceiling. The opening in each support is fifty seven feet wide and sixteen feet high.”

  Hannah looked at Sarah and said “My sailor boy’s been playing with his tape measure again.”

  Then she looked back and Mark and said “So?”

  Mark explained. “Okay, if we went into the mine and left the entryway the way it is, we’d have 62 degree temps on the inside of the mine. And outside it would be below freezing. And we’d have to worry about the freezing temperatures eventually winning the battle and causing the mine temps to drop.

  “So what we’re going to do is use plywood to seal those three openings in the archways. We’ll fill each opening with insulation, and staple an additional layer of insulation onto the plywood on each side.

  “Then we’ll cut walk-through doors on the side of each arch support where it extends six feet from the wall. We’ll install insulated doors, and then we’ll have three air-filled chambers that will moderate the outside temperatures.

  “You guys are the scientists, I’m not. But I expect the first bay, just inside the mine’s entrance, to be the same temp as the outside. That’s because the metal overhead door won’t provide any thermal protection at all.

  “But that’s okay. Because it will allow us to turn off our big freezer, and open the back of the freezer trucks we bring over from the feed store. Mother nature will keep our food frozen so we can save the electricity.

  “Say the outside temp is zero degrees. But the second bay, because we’ve closed and insulated the large opening, doesn’t get any cold air except when we go through the walk-through door occasionally to restock our kitchen. So even though the outermost bay is a constant zero degrees, the second bay should be warmer. Let’s say it never gets lower than twenty degrees.

  “Using the same principle, the third bay will be even warmer, because it’ll never get the coolest air from the first bay. It’ll only get the slightly warmer air from the second bay. Say it never drops below forty degrees.

  “Then the fourth bay, say, never drops below sixty degrees. That won’t be a sufficient amount of cold area to significantly change the mine’s constant temperature.”

  Sarah countered “Well, that sounds good, in theory. But lots of scientific theories don’t pan out.”

  “Agreed.” Hannah said. “It’s a good thing we stocked coats and long underwear. Just in case.”

  -30-

  Hannah and Sarah walked into the mine with two bags of sandwiches for lunch, to find the boys standing in the open doorway of the large freezer. It was packed to capacity now, and a cold fog came out from the freezer and swirled around their feet.

  “Whatcha looking at?” Hannah asked.

  Bryan answered. “We’re just trying to decide whether we can stack the pallets two high, so we can pack twice as much food in, without damaging the food.”

  Sarah said “How can you damage meats that are frozen hard as a rock? It’s like stacking stuff on bricks. As long as it’s frozen, it should be able to take a lot of extra weight. And if a few boxes get broken open and the food gets spoiled, so what? If you’ve got twice as much food in there, you can afford to lose a few boxes.”

  The girls walked away, looking at each other. Sarah said “Duh…” Hannah just rolled her eyes.

  Mark’s voice stopped them short. “But are you going to have trouble inventorying the new food if we stack the pallets two high?”

  Hannah turned and said “Oh, did I forget to tell you? We don’t go through it box by box any more. I have the calorie counts written down for each item we order from Symco. I just use each invoice that comes in and multiply the two quantities together.”

  The boys looked at each other with a “Why didn’t we think of that” look.

  “You boys better come and eat, the burgers are getting cold.”

  The four sat in the mine’s dining room and feasted. Talk turned to Mark’s toothache, which had been dogging him for two or three days. It occurred to him that although they had bought the equipment to furnish the small dentist’s office in Bay 6, they couldn’t buy the medicine and filling material that Karen’s husband David would need.

  They wondered how soon they would need to tell him about Saris 7, to stock up on the things that they couldn’t buy. The problem, as they saw it, was that although David was a great guy and a very good dentist, he was not a man who could keep a secret.

  They finally decided that they’d tell David just before Hannah and Sarah went public about Saris 7. They’d tell him about the plan and ask him to determine what he’d need to run a dentist’s office for several years, and then to start buying it.

  Mark said “Speaking of stocking up on medicines and things, what about prescription meds? Mom is old and takes all kinds of meds for her diabetes, and Debbie is on blood pressure meds. What do we do about that?”

  “I’ve been ordering all kinds of natural herbs and medicines.” Hannah said. “And books on holistic medicines.” Some of them are supposed to be quite good. I’ve also done some research and you’d be amazed at how many reputable doctors believe that people are way over medicated. They say that many of the drugs we take are merely to counteract side effects of other drugs we take.”

  Bryan added “Once the girls make their big announcement, I’ll take Mom around to doctor shop. She can see ten different doctors, and tell each of them that she’s not happy with her present doctor and that she’s looking for a new one. They’ll prescribe her meds for ninety days. Walmart and Walgreens will both do ninety days fills instead of thirty. And we can pay cash to keep the insurance companies from causing problems. I think if we do it right everybody can bring at least two years worth of meds in with them.”

  Hannah added “Right. And once we’re in here we can slowly wean them off of their prescription meds and onto the natural ones. And cross our fingers and pray a lot that they’ll be effective.”

  Sarah added her view. “I’ve been doing a lot of research on diets and how different foods relate to health. There are some things we can do to help, like putting diabetics on certain diets, and people with high blood pressure on other diets. It’ll be a pain in the butt for the kitchen staff, but it should help them live longer.

  “When the thaw comes, it’ll come gradually. It won’t come all at once. It’ll be like, one summer it’s warm enough to melt the ice and snow for twenty days. Then it’ll get cold again. The next summer it might be warm enough to melt the ice and snow for forty days.”

  Everyone looked at her with puzzled looks.

  So she continued. “What I’m saying is that after two or three years we might be able to get a vehicle out and get drugs from one of the local pharmacies. It would be treacherous driving, of course. Even if it was forty degrees outside the third summer, it wouldn’t melt everything all at once. So there would still be a lot of ice and snow. Maybe the Hummer could make it to Junction and back.

  “And I wouldn’t even suggest we try unless the medicine is desperately needed.”

  Sarah and Bryan finished their lunch and went back to their previous tasks. Hannah took Mark’s hand and said “You stay here a minute, sailor. I want to talk.”

  “Oh, I like the sound of that. Would you like to meet up in one of the RVs? We can ‘talk’ a lot better in there.”

  “Settle down, dirty boy. I mean really talk.”

  Mark looked crestfallen. She kissed him on the cheek to cheer him up a bit.

  “This morning when I got up you were already gone. I told you I wanted to sleep in because I was exhausted. But really it was because I missed my period three weeks ago. I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure. So I took a home pregnancy test after you were gone.

  “And I’m pre
gnant.”

  Hannah eyed him warily. She knew that under normal circumstances, he’d be ecstatic. But these circumstances were anything but normal. And she honestly didn’t know how he’d take the news.

  She needn’t have worried. He whooped and hollered so loudly that Bryan and Sarah thought something was wrong and came running back through the mine. They found Mark holding Hannah and spinning her gently around in circles. Both of them were laughing and smiling and had tears on their faces.

  Bryan was confused and dumbfounded. But Sarah ran to them and hugged them both. Only one thing could cause this kind of behavior. And she needed no explanation to know what it was.

  -31-

  SEP 23, 2015 4 MONTHS UNTIL IMPACT

  The group had decided it was time to go public. Sarah met Hannah at the CBS affiliate in San Antonio and the two of them sat in Sarah’s car for a few minutes to talk and calm their nerves.

  Sarah said “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing? What if they come after us?”

  “Yes, it has to be done. Most of the world will perish anyway. But if we give them time to prepare, some others will survive. We owe it to them to at least give them a chance.”

  “Do you think anyone will believe us?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  “I think I felt the baby kick this morning. I worry sometimes about how all this will affect him. Emotionally, I mean, later in life, from spending his early years in the mine. Not feeling the warmth of sunshine on his face, or the coolness of a summer breeze. Never having the chance to chase a butterfly, or listen to a bird sing.”

  “The birds survived the first extinction, sweetie. They went into caves and lived off of worms and insects. They’ll likely survive again, but it may take decades for them to repopulate. Maybe he’ll be lucky enough to experience birds in his lifetime.”