Shelter: Book 2, A Long Days Night

by Ira Tabankin

  Jay and his people leave the Russians bound to their chairs, they lock the garage behind them, John is the last one into the truck’s bed, he has to jump in because the truck is already moving towards the fighting trench. Sarnoff tires his binds realizing he’s dealing with people who knew what they were doing. He can’t move, his chair is bolted to the floor, his legs and arms are zip tied together. His other men aren’t close enough to support each other, all are duct taped which stops them from talking to each other. Sarnoff’s other problem is the heat is building in the garage. He figures if the American’s don’t return soon, the temperature in the garage will exceed one hundred degrees. Without water he knows he has at best two days of life left. He’s mad at himself for being captured.

  We make it to the trench before our attackers arrive, “John, are the mines armed?”

  “Yes, I have the firing box right here.”

  “Paul, grenades?”

  “We have twenty.”

  “Fred, traps set?”

  “Yes, over one hundred are spread around, we were able to clean up and set up the punji pits.”

  “Can anyone think of something we may have forgotten?”

  Before anyone can answer we hear the horses approaching. They stop at our gate. Someone is trying to shoot our lock, five rounds fired, we hear them coming up our driveway, Todd is watching the monitors, he tells John, “Line one now.”

  John flicks the trigger for the first line of mines. There are a series of explosions and screams. We surprised the hell out of them. John listens to his ear bud, “Todd says we got four of them and two horses which really pissed the sheriff off.”

  Nodding I say, “Keep hitting them, maybe we can cut them down enough that they leave before they reach our line.”

  The sheriff is pissed he lost some horses, men are easy to replace, horses more difficult. He splits his forces to spread out in a line when two horses trip, breaking their legs in our punji pits. The sheriff tells his people to dismount and look for booby traps. Before he can say anything, one of his men dismounting steps in a hunting trap which breaks his ankle. While we are waiting for the sheriff to make his frontal attack, the Russians are attacking us from our flanks. They start firing short automatic bursts at us.

  I look around, “Crap, didn’t we already live through this nightmare?”

  John says, “Looks like there’s military hitting us from each flank.”

  We built three lines of small explosive rings around our fighting trench. When the first ring fires, thousands of BBs shoot out surprising the shit out of the Russians, cutting down the numbers coming at us. We set off the mines on our flanks a little too late, most of the Russians had already passed the line of mines when we set them off, we only got five of the Russians attacking us. The sheriff and his remaining men are on foot slowly coming towards us, they are firing and throwing hand grenades while also firing tear gas at us. We had gas masks, only they were in the shelter. The tear gas caught us by surprise. We weren’t expecting it. We’re coughing and cursing while the sheriff and Russians are advancing on us. We pop up to the edge of the trench and fire at the invaders, we’re not hitting them due to our eyes tearing and our coughing. We’re just about to all jump up and fire in mass when we hear new shooting from our flanks. John, Tony and I look at each other. This is different rifles, sounds like M4s or M16s. There’s another group attacking our flanks. I’m thinking, damn it, our limited number of bodies is what’s doing us in. Again! We have the weapons, and the trench, but we don’t have enough people to cover 360 degrees. We need an additional hundred or more people. Goddamn it, we’ve lived through this before. Is this our future? Constant fighting? We rebuild and have to fight for our own land, we retreat, surface and fight again. We’re losing people we can’t afford to lose. Either we need to figure a new force multiplier or we need more people. My thoughts are interrupted by John falling to the trench floor holding his shoulder and cheek, shit, he’s been hit. Before I can do or say anything, Tony goes down, I look up and down the trench yelling NOW, FIRE! We jump up firing in all directions on full auto, we wanted to lay down a wall of lead to take the pressure off of us. I’m firing my sixty round magazine when I feel a hot poker hit me. Time slows down, I can’t talk, I can’t feel anything, except I’m getting very cold, I think I hear someone yell SHELTER! I feel like I’m falling, before I hit bottom everything goes black.

  End of “The Shelter, Book 2 A Long Days Night”. Look for Book 3 coming soon.

  There are two snippets following, the first chapter from two novels, “Silent Death” and “In the year 2050.”

  Snippet from an upcoming new Novel by the author, “Silent Death.”

  Copyright July 2015

  Ira J. Tabankin

  Knoxville, TN 37920

  Forward

  Many scientists have long speculated that life on Earth got a “kick start” by organic matter carried to Earth by comets and meteors.

  On November 12, 2014, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, and Philae lander successfully made it to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This was an historic event, the first time man had landed a spacecraft on a comet.

  On July 6, 2015, the European Space Agency and NASA announced that the Philae lander discovered an organic-rich black crust, which is most likely explained by the presence of living organisms beneath an icy surface of the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

  Life on earth has ended before, if one believes in the Bible, God destoryed most life in the great flood, he also destoryed cities and nations which he found wanting. If one believes in science there is the historical fact that the dinosaurs disappeared from the planet due to a marge meteror strike in the Gulf of Mexico. Life on Earth has taken different twists and turns, this story is about one such possible turn.

  On November 15, 2016, organic matter will again strike the Earth, this time with far different results.

  “This is the way the world ends

  Not with a bang but a whimper.”

  ― T.S. Eliot

  Part One

  November 2016

  Chapter 1

  Mother Nature lit up the night sky on November 15, 2016, the Leonid meteor shower produced a sky show unseen since November 17, 1966, when thousands of meteors per minute flashed through the night’s sky. There were so many streaks of light, they could be seen with the naked eye. Millions stayed up late and into the early morning hours to see Mother Nature put on a show which exceeded man’s Fourth of July fireworks. People drove for hours to escape their city lights so they could get the best view of the thousands of meteors that streaked through the sky. This event was different than previous Leonid meteor showers. The earth’s orbit and the meteors intersected at just the right point in space that hundreds of thousands of small meteors actually entered the planet’s atmosphere, and thousands struck the Earth’s surface. Hundreds of thousands flared as they encountered earth’s dense atmosphere. People watched the flares and cheered the light show, they oohed and awed the flaming meteors that left flaming trails across the sky. The meteors that made it to the ground exploded like bombs, filling the sky with additional light and noise.

  YouTube was filled with hundreds of videos showing exploding meteors and their resultant damage. Many burst just above the ground spreading their fine mist into the winds which carried their remains around the world. No one realized that many of the meteors carried an unknown form of organic material. When the meteors burned up in the atmosphere, microphonic amounts of the material were carried by the winds, spreading the organic material around the world. The organic material also entered the planet’s water supply when meteors landed in lakes, rivers, and reservoirs. Meteors which struck the ground spread their organic material into the ground, many times into rich farm land where the food crops will absorb the material. Before anyone realized what had happened, Earth was blanketed in new organic material which people inhaled, swallowed and digested.

  Once the material ent
ered the human body it combined with our DNA to form new cells, these cells started attacking our bodies. Because the initial reaction didn’t have any adverse effects, we didn’t realize our bodies had been infected. As the new cells multiplied and adapted to their new hosts, us, they began impacting our natural systems. Many people began feeling ill. The degree and quickness of the spreading illness was different for many. There were too many variables to measure, height, weight, amount of organic material digested, how the material entered the human body, what else was consumed with the material. Some people became ill very rapidly while others didn’t show any effects for a much longer time. Medical professionals didn’t realize what they were seeing until it was too late because the new cells initially attacked our bodies very similar to an existing disease.

  The impact of the organic material plus our stupidity and insecurity led to the deaths of billions. The illness brought on by the new organic material was the spark with lite the fuse for the beginning of the end of mankind.

  Leonid meteor shower lasted three days, people captured the images of the falling meteors on their dash cameras and mobile phones. People stopped their cars to watch Mother Nature’s light show, people stood outside their homes with cameras recording the once in a lifetime event. Every television channel was filled with images and videos of the meteors. The entire world shared in the multi-colored light show of meteors striking the atmosphere. Some scientists warned that some of the meteors were large enough to survive reentry, they would strike the planet causing damage. For the most part, their warnings were ignored as a group of white haired old men crying, ‘Chicken Little.’ These ‘Chicken Little’s’ were right, many meteors did strike the planet. At least twenty-two thousand people were confirmed killed by being struck or being to close to an impacting meteors. Many homes and buildings were damaged by being struck by the rocks. A large rock just missed the Hoover Dam in Nevada had it struck the dam, hundreds of thousands would have been at risk. One rock struck Newark Airport’s primary runway, shutting the airport down for a week. Two airliners were struck in mid-air by small meteors which destroyed the planes in mid-air with the loss of all life on board. Meterors that landed in the open seas caused Tsunamis, which traveled around the world’s oceans at hundreds of miles per hour killing millions as the waves flowed over various islands and low-lying lands and harbors. The Tsunami destroyed Hong Kong harbor killing over a million people in less than twenty minutes.

  While the destruction was heavy and the loss of life worse than the ‘experts’ projected, the news organizations blamed God and Mother Nature for the deaths. They reported there wasn’t anything we could have done about it. The world grieved for those lost in the tsunamis and land meteor strikes, concerts were held, charity balls thrown, retired world leaders made commercials asking for donations. Worldwide, over two billion dollars was raised. Much of it went to cover the overhead of the organizations who were quickly formed to raise the funds. The dead were the lead story on the evening news programs for an entire week before it was pushed to the files by a famous sports figure marrying his girl and boyfriend, the first three-way marriage performed in California. Multi-partner marriages were an unforeseen spin-off of the Supreme Court’s acceptance of Gay marriage in June 2015. Given most people’s very short attention span, because they get their information in short twenty-second sound bites, the meteor shower was soon forgotten. It was pushed aside by the networks and news reporting organizations who knew they had to change the focus of the news or the world would suffer a poor holiday shopping season which could push the developed world into a deep recession. They picked up the story of the first three-way marriage, they made it their hottest news story to distract people from the deaths and destruction caused by the meteors. Had they not changed their reporting focus, people might have put the information about a new disease together with the story of the meteors and gotten, one plus one equals two. Instead, they missed the connection and came up with a totally different answer to the cause and source of the new illness, one that was going to prove more deadly.

  @@@@@

  Given the state of the world in late 2016, with the American Congressional and Presidential elections on November 8th, the upcoming holiday shopping season and the world’s first three-way marriage the story of the meteor shower and the deaths was quickly forgotten by the media. The world went about its business, forgetting all about the meteors until Thursday, November 24, Thanksgiving Day in America. People around the world woke on November 24 to a clear, cool day. One that was unusual in that it was a beautiful day around the world. The only unusual thing about the morning of November 24th was that millions woke with a sore throat. Since sore throats aren’t an earth shattering event and no news organizations reported on the large number of illness. Every news organization missed the fact that the sore throarts weren’t a local issue, but were happening worldwide. They were focused on other stories, they missed the fact that millions became ill with similar symptoms at the same time. They missed any connection between the millions of cases of sore throats and the meterors.

  Most who had to work assumed they’d picked up a mild flu or a mild sore throat, they figured it was something they’d picked up at work or in school. Some decided that their throats were tender enough they should be checked by a doctor. In America, those that called their doctors were quickly reminded by message services and voice mail that doctor offices were closed until Monday due to the holiday. Many decided they would wait and see, they used their sore throat as an excuse to return to bed and call in sick, after all most people really didn’t want to work on Thanksgiving Day.

  Millions around the world called in sick while those in America considered what they would do about their Thanksgiving Day plans. The media in America was being run by second and third string holiday staff who weren’t investigative reporters, they read the scripts which came from the major news reporting organizations, many were also short staffed due to the sudden attack of sore throats. As such, none of the world’s news organizations mentioned the mystery illness, they had more important stories to report on. In America, there was the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade with the first transgender Santa Claus and the multiple football games which took up all of the time the news programs had. Many local news programs didn’t even broadcast that Thursday evening in order to provide additional time for the various football games. Many news directors thought, “Who wants to hear about people calling in sick on a holiday weekend?” The story was buried and not reported.

  Restaurant owners and managers were overwhelmed by the number of voice mails left by their workers calling in sick. They started calling every employee to find replacements for the afternoon and evening shift’s full bookings. They were surprised to learn many of their other workers weren’t feeling well either, some restaurants were faced with the unpleasant and money losing task of informing their customers they had to close for the holiday due to a lack of workers. Some hired new part time staff so they could serve their customers. Many diners were inconvenienced and upset they were going to have to make alternative plans on Thanksgiving Day, an almost impossible task in normal times, with many restaurants closing, it was impossible to rebook. Supermarkets which remained open on Thanksgiving saw a run on turkeys with demand for prepared dinners skyrocket.

  Hospital emergency room managers showed up for their morning shift at 7 AM to see lines of people waiting to be seen in the ER, they were shocked to learn of a high number of doctors, nurses and other support staff who themselves had called in sick. They contacted their human resource department to call in everyone possible. An hour later, HR reported they were only able to recall 10% of the vacationing staff. The lines of people continued to grow outside every ER. Some hospitals watched in shock as people lined up around the hospital waiting for their chance at seeing a doctor. The ER administrators watching the lines of people grow felt fear and ice form in their stomachs, they didn’t know what was going on, clearly they’d missed something,
but what? They tried contacting the CDC to learn if there had been a high priority warning they’d missed. They quickly learned the CDC was also operating on a holiday shift with only 10% of their people in house and they hadn’t issued any special notices or updates. The CDC was as surprised as the calling ERs about the number of people claiming similar symptoms. The CDC was quickly overwhelmed with calls, faxes and emails for help. Their incoming phone lines became overloaded and jammed. Due to the limited number of support personal on site, the phone lines remained jammed, no one was able to reach anyone at the CDC until midday Friday when additional emergency phones could be installed. Some hospital administrators even tried calling the US Military biological labs at Fort Detrick in rural Maryland. Fort Detrick didn’t have any information of any biological attack against America, or, none they could share, they referred the calls back to the CDC whose switchboard was already overloaded and shut down. Local medical systems were on their own for the first thirty-six hours of whatever was affecting people.

  The first time the average person knew there was a potential problem was when they noticed different people reporting on their morning news and entertainment programs, most of the usual anchors and actors had called in sick. The new faces were quickly forgotten about when the viewers remembered it was a holiday. Many laughed saying they had the holiday flu, they would be fine and back to work come Monday morning. Family members noticed some of their loved ones had a serious sore throat, one that caused their throats to swell making talking almost impossible. The most serious cases caused the swelling of the patient’s throat, blocking breathing. Those affected grabbed their throats as their eyes widened in shock, they tried their swelling throats blocked all movement of air. Unless someone was with the affected and trained in performing an emergency tracheotomy, the most severe cases died within three minutes. Hospital ERs and Immediate Medical Centers also took note that many of their patients couldn’t speak to explain what their symptoms were. They could only point to their throats or write their symptoms which caused additional delays as many local medical facilities were short on translators. People arrived at hospitals and Immediate Medical Centers, to find long lines of sick people waiting to be seen by a doctor or nurse. Many decided they didn’t want to spend their holiday waiting in a line, they turned around, returning home figuring they would see how they felt in twenty-four hours. Many of the affected didn’t survive twenty-four hours.