Catalyst (Book 1): Downward Cycle

by JK Franks

  He walked out to the road, intending to pull up the post with the mailbox. Just as he began twisting on it, a large brown van came down the road. Scott was shocked to see the UPS truck. The driver checked the address on the mailbox in Scott's arms, then pulled into the drive. When Scott got back to the house, the driver had begun making a stack of large delivery boxes by the garage door. He couldn’t believe it, but they seemed to be the online order he had placed on the night of the event!

  He saw the pistol in the tactical holster hanging from the man’s belt. Pretty sure that’s not on the approved standards list for driver attire. “I can’t believe you guys are still running!” Scott said.

  The man was dripping sweat and hurrying to get the rest of the delivery out of the truck. “Yeah, not sure how much longer we’ll be able to, but we’re tryin’a keep goin’. Most of our trucks don’t use the modern ignition systems. Right now, they’re tryin’a secure more fuel supplies but without phones or In’ernet, there’ll prolly be no real need for us to continue much longer. But it’s life or death for lotsa people. It may not be the end o’ the world, but it is a national emergency. Hell, the Pony Express kept going and they didn’t have power.”

  Scott nodded, realizing that some kind of delivery service would likely always be needed. Even more so in the absence of normal communications. “Well, damn, man, I appreciate it. I’d given up on any of this ever showing up,” Scott said grinning.

  The driver politely leaned in and said, “Sir, if I could, I suggest you get it out o’ sight quickly. I’m pretty sure I’ve had people followin’ me all day. I think I scared the last of ‘em off a few miles back when I finally drew the gun on ‘em. Just… be careful.”

  Scott was still thanking the driver as he turned and left. The man seemed to land in the driver’s seat, start the engine and have the truck pulling out all in one fluid motion. Damn, those guys are good, Scott thought.

  Looking at the boxes, they seemed to contain at least some, maybe even all of the order he had placed online. With considerable effort and time, he moved them into the garage and closed the door. Why did I order that many cases of water? he wondered. It had taken him three times as long to move it into the garage as it had the driver to unload it. He looked at the stacks of boxes, more excited than he could have imagined. He was beginning to think he had a chance to get through all this. Then he remembered the prisoners on the road.

  He walked back out to the end of his drive and picked up the mailbox and post, tossing them into the woods. Off in the distance, he heard automatic weapons fire. It was the same direction the delivery driver had gone in. Now working with even more urgency, he pulled the steel bar gate free from the vines that encircled it. They had always had a gate on the drive when no one was using the cottage, but since moving here, Scott had just left it open. He now latched it closed to the steel post with a chain and padlock. Looking into the woods beside the drive, he selected a couple of downed limbs and accompanying vines and pulled them to block the drive as well. Climbing over the gate and looking at it from the road, it did a pretty good job of looking like just another seldom used two-track road. Most cars going by would never give it a second look. Someone on foot might investigate further, though, so he might need to do more, but for now, it was a good start.

  The power was still off in the cottage, and he was beginning to wonder if it would keep coming back on or not. Scott lit lanterns and opened the garage door just a crack to get a breeze blowing through. He assessed the shipments and decided to stack the bulk food and water for separation later. The new backpacks, sleeping bags and camping gear he kept near the door. Once he loaded those packs, they would be going in the Jeep.

  The boxes with smaller devices went upstairs so he could unbox them and learn how to use them. Some of the batteries stayed in the garage, but about a third went inside. He unboxed one of the small Baofeng handheld radios he had ordered, glad to see that despite the low price, it was in a protective anti-static bag. He installed the rechargeable batteries and turned it on. The unit was tuned for standard ham radio bands. Scott didn’t have a license to operate a ham radio, but he had no immediate plans to be transmitting. His main purpose was to listen in to other operators and hopefully gather more information on what was happening elsewhere. For that he would be fine without a license. The little unit could also listen in on marine bands, Emergency, and NOAA weather, if those were even still a thing. And it could also be used as a normal two-way walkie-talkie.

  Several hours later, he had sorted all of the water purification tablets into various day kits and combined them with fire starters, binoculars, MREs and freeze-dried rations. Both of the large backpacks were filled. The last item he added to his EDC was a small night vision monocular. Pretty badass, he congratulated himself as he took in his work. He knew the feeling probably wouldn’t last.

  It was beginning to get dark in the house, and the power did not appear to be coming back on tonight. On one of his trips out to the trailer, he realized he could see the lights from the house when he looked back at the cottage. The lanterns weren’t bright, but someone from the road would be able to notice. He pulled a roll of black plastic, a razor and some duct tape from the supply room in the garage. Back inside, he blacked out all the windows on the front and sides of the house. That was going to fuck up his nice ocean breeze, and the interior of the house would warm considerably. It was better than being attacked by road gangs, though.

  Scott was getting hungry, though he was now too tired to cook anything elaborate. This disappointed him—a good meal a day was one of the luxuries he looked forward to. He picked up his phone to scroll through the pictures of food in the refrigerator and was again surprised to see a missed call notification on the screen. There was no message, but the number was the one he had entered for Todd the previous day. He tried to redial the number but was met with only silence. Frustrated again, he opened the refrigerator and pulled out the ground beef, cheese, mustard and ketchup. Quickly cooking up two patty melts with sautéed onions, he sat at the wooden counter and gulped down the food. He turned the new radio on again and spent ten minutes going up and down the dial. He heard several distant broadcasts, but most were too weak to hear much detail. On one of the frequencies, though, he heard an older male voice. The man, from Tampa, was reporting that parts of the city were under artillery fire from the sea.

  He must be wrong, Scott thought. The man said the shelling seemed to be targeting the area of the MacDill Air Force Base. Distant booms of explosions could be heard before the broadcast abruptly cut out.

  Something about the broadcast triggered a vague memory. Shutting off the radio and pulling open his laptop, he disabled the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi receivers and decreased the screen brightness to lessen the battery usage. He had several spare batteries charged, but why waste it? Opening the folder containing the screen grabs from the Homeland Security servers, he began to review what he had saved. He knew he had seen something concerning MacDill, which Scott knew was home to UNCENTCOM, or US Central Command, a strategic joint intelligence operations center. Finding the screen grab of the right document, he read what he had only skimmed earlier.

  Scanning the pages, he found the section he wanted. Ten minutes later, he finished the page for the third time and was even more confused. The Catalyst Protocol had several early requirements to protect the domestic US homeland, ensure continuity of government and establish civil control. A primary tool among these plans was an elite unit that comprised multiple divisions of hand-picked Marines, Air Force Special Forces, Delta team and many other specialists on subjects including urban warfare, biological disease, healthcare, agriculture and civil engineers. The lead unit was code-named “Praetor5” and was based out of MacDill Airforce Base. Among other mission critical tasks, the Area of Responsibility for this group would be to assert political and civilian control in the absence of any other operational structure. If Scott was reading this correctly, the size and budget of this force were enorm
ous, especially since this was essentially a contingency force that you hoped was never needed. While there were a lot of other assets based at CentCom in Tampa, he could not shake the feeling that someone, (another country? hell, maybe even some part of our own government), wanted to make sure these guys never got deployed. Was the Tampa attack confirmation that Project Catalyst had indeed been put into play? If so, what did that mean, a coup, or were we under attack by a foreign power? Too many questions and no real answers.

  Scott spent a few more minutes on the laptop feeling increasingly uneasy about having this information. Ultimately, he was unsure if his brilliant friend, Tahir, had helped save his life, or if he would be the reason it ended. If the black helicopters started circling, he would know the answer. Throwing caution to the wind and years of paranoia indoctrination, he decided to go ahead and copy the file folders over to his tablet as its battery would last longer. He could also review the files from bed easier on the small device. Wondering if there was any ice left, he risked opening the small freezer and found most of the ice was still frozen. Grabbing several large cubes, he dropped them in a glass tumbler with several fingers of Macallan eighteen-year-old single malt cotch. Cold drink and tablet in hand, he headed off to the too warm bedroom to do more research.

  Reviewing and sorting the massive amounts of data into what would be most essential to him took quite a while—several refills, in fact. The more Scott read, the more dismal it all seemed. Most of the decision-makers had known the likelihood of this specific disaster as very high. Few steps had actually been taken to affect the impact of such an event at all.

  One of the exchanges he read was a transcript between a Professor Carl Budding, Ph.D. and several senators on the former President’s Science Advisory Council. The senators had made several requests to find what specific steps could be taken to mitigate widespread problems. Dr. Budding had responded that most likely nothing would prevent systemic and systematic failures of all technological and electrical systems around the planet. Creating large scale Faraday cages would possibly help but would likely be impractical as the Faraday cage had to fully enclose whatever it was designed to protect. It did so by redirecting the electromagnetic energy around the framework of the metal cage into the ground. If, however, you have whatever is in that cage connected to a power grid, a nuclear station or a network line, then you have also opened the door for the electrical energy wave to breach the protective cage and disable the device. So, yes, you could make shielded and protected devices. But they couldn't actually be in use during the unpredictable event.

  The Advisory Council’s eventual report to the president stated that any warnings or precautions given to the American people would at best have a placebo effect, similar to the government’s advice many years earlier telling Americans to use plastic sheeting and duct tape to prevent exposure in a possible terrorist attack. As ridiculous as it had been, many people did exactly that, thinking it would make them safe. Scott glanced up at the black plastic over his windows, held in place by silver duct tape. Shaking his head, he went back to reading.

  The research had gone on for decades. The one positive thing he could see evidence of from all of the studies, subcommittee hearings and expert advice was the emergency shutdown procedure for nuclear power plants and key refineries, which had been developed specifically for just such a scenario. In the end, it had been determined that essentially nothing more could be done to prevent or even significantly lessen the impact of such a solar event. Instead of wasting money to make it seem like the government was ahead of the threat, they did nothing. At least, nothing public. Instead, it was decided that, depending on the magnitude of the event and subsequent damage caused, the plan was to focus on how to survive, ensure continuity of government and then rebuild. Priorities lay with preserving resources, eliminating ancillary threats such as nuclear fall-out, or war and establishing safe zones that would be key to rebuilding.

  It was pointed out multiple times in the Project Catalyst overview that many, many lives would be lost—sacrificed knowingly, in fact, by the government. Large cities would not be evacuated. Where would millions of people go, and how would they be fed? Areas without any real likelihood of long-term survival would not be receiving any real aid; if a city depended on electricity or refined heating oil to stave off the cold winter, you were likely going to freeze to death come winter. New York City was one of the best prepared, with a reported four million Meals Ready to Eat, or military MREs, warehoused around the city. That sounded great until you realized that number wouldn’t even feed half the city for a single day.

  The message, again and again, was that the scope of the disaster was too large to prepare for. Martial law would not be enacted to protect troubled areas. In fact, the plan preferred the hastened reduction in population in those zones, which would reduce the drain on limited resources and therefore, offered the quickest recovery for both the survivors and the nation at large.

  Likewise, areas with high farming yields, critical education centers, leading healthcare or even vital manufacturing areas would be somewhat protected. Living here in the gray zone of the coastal states, Scott surmised, they would likely receive little assistance. Although, it would also be a desirable area to preserve, primarily because of the resources it could provide, such as oil and food.

  Scott was getting sleepy but wanted to review some final projections. The final report noted only 2% of the American population as responsible for feeding 100% of its people. Everything else was imported from other countries. It stated that a grid down situation would require remaining citizens to immediately revert to an agricultural and feedstock-based economy. Even then, it would be impossible to feed the masses of people without working vehicles to transport the food to those who needed it. Massive crops of grain in the Midwest would rot in the field since it could not be harvested by hand; great herds of cattle and hogs would die in the stockyard or holding pens as they would not be processed and delivered; more would die on the farms because there would be no feed for them.

  The ‘good’ news came on the following slides. The projected death rates in the US held that between seventy and ninety percent of the population would die in the wake of such an event, so farmers may eventually have only ten percent of the population left alive to worry about feeding. Within four years almost 300 million people in the US alone would likely be dead as a result of having no electricity. The vast majority of those deaths were predicted to take place in the first eighteen months after the disaster.

  He laid the darkened tablet on the nightstand. I’ve been focusing on surviving for the next few weeks. I need to be thinking about how to survive the rest of my life, he thought.

  Amazon wasn’t going to be restocking or filling any more orders. This was it – The Big Fucking Crunch. Laying in the now darkened room, Scott’s mind raced. Nine out of every ten people he knew would likely be dead. What chance did he have to be in that ten percent? Hell, what right did he have to be in it? He had not contributed to a better world. He did not have children. Shit, he didn’t even have a dog. What made him think he was special enough to live through the end of the world?

  With no answers, he drained the last of the scotch and rolled over. Closing his eyes, he could not block out the images of this new world that his overactive mind kept presenting. How long before society breaks down completely? he wondered. The data said it could be as little as three to four days— about as long as the food in most homes would keep. People could be patient, even polite for a few days after that, but at some point, the general rules that bind society would begin to collapse. For those without many rules to begin with, it could happen almost immediately. They’ll see opportunity instead of obstacles. Scott thought back to the videos of looters in the big cities and the gunshots after the UPS driver had left. He knew the time was up.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Day 8

  Todd looked up from his plate. “No fucking way,” he said. Pointing across the ta
ble to Bartos. he continued: “Even this idiot and all his damn conspiracy theories never laid one out that crazy.”

  “True, bon ami,” said Bartos. “You really expect the government and military to sanction wholesale genocide?”

  It had taken Scott several days to catch up with the guys again. Apparently, the restaurant was feeding them for free, although Scott still wasn’t totally sure why. The men had shared with him the series of events that had taken place out on the water the other day. He, in turn, had relayed what he had learned online and from the radio operator in Tampa.

  Todd and Bartos both thought Scott was full of shit. Preacher Jack seemed less sure. Looking over he said, “Todd, you remember us wondering where that Naval fleet was heading. Could it have been Tampa?”

  “Hell, I don't know. You were the dumbass tryin’ a hitch a ride with ‘em. Did it seem like fucking Tampa was the next stop?”

  They laughed, but Scott noticed Todd’s smile wasn’t really reaching his eyes. A seed of doubt had taken root. “Listen, guys,” Scott said, “I’m not trying to convince you. I’m just relaying what I read and heard. I don’t even want to believe it myself.”

  Todd was shaken with the possibility that the Navy—his Navy—might be firing on an American city. He looked at Scott. “You aren’t sure who the good guys are, are you Scott?”

  Scott shrugged, “Catalyst is awful, but I’m not sure I disagree with it.” Pulling the tablet out of his pack, he pulled up the document files and passed it over to Todd. “I’m certain I could lose my job, my security clearance and probably go to jail just for just having this, much less sharing it… but just skim through those first few screens.”