The Dying Time (Book 1): Impact Page 20

  Part two was to contain the compost pile inside a tank and let it digest itself anerobically. When organic material decays in the absence of oxygen it produces methane gas, which, in turn, can be burned like natural gas to heat homes or greenhouses. The small digester the Freeholds community had online before The Dying Time had been destroyed during the first big quake. Three larger replacements had since been constructed and sunk into the middle of the other compost piles for insulation and warmth.

  Terrell Johnson, the resident mechanical genius, and his wife Shirley, a potter/artisan, were in charge of that project. Terrell and Shirley were also the only blacks on the council.

  They looked at each other before Terrell spoke, and Ellen got the idea this wouldn’t be good news.

  “We’ve had some problems maintaining combustion,” Terrell said with a touch of anger. “We’ve got to get the word out. Vegetable scraps and human waste only! No grease or paper! They don’t break down, they just clog everything up.” His temper cooled as he spilled his frustration onto the table.

  “So what’s the solution?” Ellen knew that Terrell and Shirley wouldn’t bring up the problem unless they had a solution.

  Shirley’s chocolate brown eyes held a glimmer of amusement when she announced, “From now on each family’s waste gets delivered in marked containers. Anyone caught violating the disposal rules gets the pleasure of cleaning the clogs out of the digester.”

  Chuckles ran around the table, and Ellen gave a thankful glance to Shirley. In such grim times light moments were treasured.

  “Seconds?” Ellen asked.

  Aaron Goldstein raised his hand.

  “Ayes?”

  It was unanimous.

  “I guess it’s time to face the issue we’ve been avoiding,” Ellen said.

  “Immigration?” Dr. Taraq Fariq joked, causing smiles and chuckles to break out again. No new arrivals had entered the valley in the past thirteen months. He and his family had been one of the last to flee Denver before the snows choked the passes and valleys.

  “No,” Ellen smiled at the man. “Though I’m certain we’ll have to deal with that again when the weather warms.”

  The smile left her face. “No, I was thinking about rationing. We have to cut the rations again.” Everyone in the Freeholds had donated all their food into a common larder, sharing it with everyone else, so none would starve. But no one had expected winter to last this long. Those supplies had been eaten, replaced by what could be scavenged.

  “We can’t do that,” Dr. Fariq was adamant. “Every time we cut rations more people die.”

  “I know, Doctor, but you’ve seen the larder.” Ellen’s voice was anguished. “We have maybe two weeks at current rations. If we don’t stretch what we have we’ll all be dead in less than two months.”

  “I might have a way around that,” Michael said quietly, finally chiming in.

  Her eyes found his. “Scavenging parties?”

  “Fifty teams are out on snowmobiles. Twenty are heading over Boreas Pass to Breckenridge. Twenty more trying for Buena Vista. The rest are scouring Woodland Park again. But that’s just a stopgap.”

  “Any chance of making Colorado Springs?” That was their real hope.

  Michael turned to Aaron Goldstein. “Aaron?”

  The wiry Jew stroked his black beard and cocked his head toward the keening wind outside. “I flew down again just before this storm hit,” he said.

  Terrell Johnson had designed a new air breather system for the ultralight so it wouldn’t stall in ashy air. A variation of the one he used to get the snowmobiles running. Since then Michael’s Pegasus had proven a godsend for scouting snowmobile-scavenger trails.

  “Ute Pass is an avalanche zone like I’ve never seen. Chipita Park and Green Mountain Falls are completely buried. The sound of my motor triggered three slides as I flew by.”

  He shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think snowmobiles would make it through.”

  “We could blast the slide paths,” Michael offered.

  Ellen’s face showed instant alarm. She knew who would do the blasting and how dangerous it would be. She couldn’t allow herself to react emotionally, but a practical question occurred to her. “With what?”

  Michael answered quickly, showing he’d given it considerable thought. “Randy and I have made a few black powder pipe bombs from our reloading supplies. Wayne Anderson found some dynamite at the mine, last time he was in Fairplay. And after the Oklahoma City bombing I looked up how to make explosives out of fertilizer and diesel fuel. We can do it.”

  “I hate to risk more lives,” Ellen said. They had lost forty-seven scavengers to the elements during this endless winter, and she couldn’t forget how her husband had almost been one of them.

  “We’re all at risk,” Michael countered. “I don’t see we have much choice.”

  Ellen nodded reluctantly. “Seconds?”

  Several hands went up.

  “Ayes?”

  Again it was unanimous.

  A gust of wind rattled the barn doors. No one had ever seen sustained storms of such intensity. She hoped the scavengers had all found shelter.

  “Okay,” Michael said. “Weather permitting, Aaron and I’ll fly the Pegasus and the gyrocopter into Woodland Park tomorrow and start blowing the slide zones. Ellen, you better get folks to scrounge up every snowmobile they have and head’em for the Springs. We’ll need more sleds too. It’ll take’em all day to reach Woodland Park, and by then we should have the pass stabilized.”

  Everyone around the table nodded agreement, but without energy. Long months of dark skies and endless struggle had worn them down. Depression stalked the Freeholds like a puma after deer. Almost everyone at the table was already infected, secretly wondering if the effort was worth it. The laughter of moments ago was forgotten. They all knew a grueling, dangerous task lay ahead, another step on survival’s treadmill and it was hard to take that step when all you have to look forward to is another--and another.

  Sensing the problem, Ellen yelled, “Hey!” wearing a mischievous grin. “Be glad it’s winter so we can use the river as a road. Otherwise we’d have to build one.”

  Rueful smiles blossomed and once more the sound of laughter rang out, and this time a seed of hope took root.

  *

  New York

  Otha broke the padlock with his crow bar and pried the outer door open. “In here, hon,” he threw over his shoulder as he slipped inside.

  Dikeme glided through the doorway with her accustomed grace, brushing snow off her coat. The full length, sable fur she wore was made for someone shorter than her, but then so was all the other clothing she’d found.

  Glad snapped the inner lock, cracked that door open, and poked his head in for a peek. Dull gray light filtering in through Plexiglas skylights revealed boxes of canned and dry goods stacked from floor to ceiling in aisles without number that disappeared into the darkness.

  “Wow!” he breathed.

  “You have a remarkable talent for understatement,” Di chided, looking past him into the enormous interior. Her British accent was never more pronounced than when she was excited. “I should imagine our food situation has been resolved, mighty hunter.”

  “Nothing to it.” Glad’s mouth wore a smile, but his eyes roamed the grocery warehouse for signs of trouble and his nose tested the air.

  In spite of her flippant words, Di remained alert as well. This was the third such warehouse they had entered in the past week. The other two…she shuddered involuntarily, remembering tidal waves of rats. A small movement in the darkness caused her to tense, and she pulled her pistol out of reflex.

  Otha had his shotgun cocked and ready. The ragamuffin alley cat skittered across the floor between aisles and they both relaxed. Cats were a good sign.

  From the rafters a pigeon cooed; reminding Glad he hadn’t seen a bird flying in, well, months.

  He settled Di into the building’s office took a flashlight out of his pack and beg
an to explore. Her job was to convert the office into a temporary home. His was to scout for danger, secure their new home, find food and water, and set up the toilet.

  A detailed tour of the block-long building revealed a single opening, that being a torn gable vent on a sheer wall which provided access and egress for the pigeons. There had to be another hole somewhere, but he couldn’t find it. He vowed to look harder later. Rat invasions and wild dog packs had run them out of several good living spaces. With a little luck they could last for years in a place like this, if they weren’t forced out.

  All the other doors in the warehouse were the huge overhead roll-up types that wouldn’t budge without a winch. There were no windows, just the skylights, and incredibly none were broken.

  Along one aisle he found some Yale padlocks and keys hanging next to heavy-duty hasps. With tools from another section he soon had the two doors he’d forced secured.

  He handed Di a set of keys and went outside to drag in the sleds that held their personal belongings. First order of business, now that the building checked out, was to set up the wood burning stove he and Di had fashioned from a fifty gallon barrel. The walls and ceiling of the office weren’t insulated, but he would take care of that later too.

  A furniture factory down the block could supply them with firewood. Looked like they’d be melting snow for water again. He hadn’t found a clean source of fresh water in several months so they drank though LifeStraw filters they’d gleaned from a burned out Bass Pro Shops store. He unloaded the toilet and sat it up inside a corner of the office. It consisted of a toilet seat fastened to a small wooden bench and a plastic five-gallon bucket lined with plastic garbage bags. Another five gallon bucket full of wood ash sat beside it. Use the toilet, sprinkle in some ashes and when it starts to smell empty it in a nearby dumpster.

  “Glad,” Di called out. “Could you give me a hand with the bed?”

  He smiled; she always asked him where he wanted the foam pad and zip-together sleeping bags placed. It was surprisingly comfortable.

  “What about there?” She pointed to a spot along an inside wall, not too far from the toilet.

  “Perfect,” he announced.

  A slight frown creased her lips. “Mocking me, are you?”

  “Never,” he denied, holding up his palms. “So long as you’re sharing the bed with me, I really don’t care where you put it.”

  Her frown curled into a smile, displaying brilliant white teeth. That smile warmed him better than a stove.

  “Well, if that’s the way of it, Sir, you’d best be starting a fire. I am not about to take to bed until it’s warmed up in here.”

  He saluted and left for wood.

  *

  Edwards

  “Ever think you’d see this much snow in southern Cal?” Roland Mabry tugged his cap down over his ears and stared at the drifts.

  “Seen a lot I never thought I would,” Carl Borzowski answered. Shadows of grief still haunted his eyes.

  “I thought we’d get more rain first,” Raoul Garcia added. “But at least it’s settling the worst of the ash.”

  That much was true. The sky was lighter and visibility had improved. On good days, he could see as far as a mile.

  “We’ll get more rain when it warms up,” Carl said. He hunched his shoulders in his coat and walked back toward the entrance.

  “Ah, Carl, you haven’t smiled in more than a year,” Ariel Garcia whispered softly to herself. “If the world is too heavy, share the weight.”

  “How are our supplies holding up, General?” Raoul asked. He’d seen company-sized foraging parties coming and going for weeks now.

  “The men are good at scavenging,” Roland Mabry said. “We have at least a two month reserve. And when others out there see a well-armed company coming at them they melt away. There’s been no real trouble for weeks.”

  “Except for Scarlatti’s men,” Ariel said, giving the General a don’t-BS-me look. She’d helped Sara with the after action casualties.

  “They probe our defenses occasionally,” he admitted. “My scouts say he has more than 10,000 men, so he could do a hell of a lot more than probe if he wanted to.”

  “That’s what bothers me,” Raoul said.

  Roland slapped him on the back and said, “Bothers me too.”

  *

  Hollywood

  “Goddam snow,” King Joseph Scarlatti snarled at the sky, and it spit snow in his face. “Goddam lousy fuckin’ storms.”

  His attack plan was prepared, troops gathered. Edwards wasn’t that damn far. How much longer was he going to have to wait?

  Not long.

  The air was warming as California’s long winter came to an end. Soon the snow turned to rain along the entire west coast. The rest of the country would wait awhile longer for Carl’s deluge to begin.

  *

  Utah

  Bob Young swung down off his horse and approached the men and women gathered around the camp fire. He slapped snow from his pants and jacket and accepted a cup of hot tea. The honey sweetened liquid helped thaw him from the inside. He saw his brother Adam watching him from across the fire and he looked away.

  But Adam wasn’t to be deterred. “Did you see enough?”

  Bob cradled the hot cup in his palms and watched the steam rise. After a moment of silence he raised his bleak eyes to his brothers and said, “Yes,” knowing the images might haunt him forever. A pile of human bones showing tool marks, a pot of simmering human meat suspended from a tripod over a fire. The freckle-faced, teenaged girl dead in the snow, naked from the waist down, blood between her legs. Yeah, he’d seen enough.

  “Bring them here,” Adam said, and almost before the words were out of his mouth a bedraggled man and woman were shoved roughly before him. Their hands were bound.

  Bob looked them over. The man was thin, but not as thin as most were these days. He was chewing on a strand of his long, straggly brown beard. The knees were out of his dingy jeans and his tan corduroy jacket was frayed at the cuffs. The woman wore a man’s flannel shirt jacket with a torn pocket. Her jeans were too long and the legs were rolled up. Her greasy blonde hair was mostly covered by a dull red scarf. She had grease on her chin and as he watched, appalled, she brought her bound hands up, wiped her chin with her fingers and stuck them in her mouth.

  Bob controlled his gag reflex and asked, “Do you two have anything to say for yourselves?”

  The woman looked away, but the man stood up straight and said, “We was hungry and the Lord said it was okay.”

  Sure he did, Bob thought. “What about the girl? The Lord say that was okay too?”

  The man fidgeted a second and said, “My woman is all dried up, so she can’t...you know. And a man has needs.” He chuckled, remembering. “A man has needs.”

  Bob looked at Adam and nodded.

  Adam drew his Model 1911 Colt .45 and racked the slide.

  “You can’t do this,” the woman blubbered. “We have rights!”

  “So did the people you ate,” Adam said, and shot her in the face. He swung the gun to the man and put one in his head.

  Later, when they were alone, Bob turned to Adam and said, “They were both stone cold crazy, you know.”

  Adam fixed Bob with a direct stare and said, “That is no excuse.”

  *

  Mount Weather

  The shelter built into Mount Weather was designed to withstand a direct hit from a large nuclear weapon. It was but one of ninety-seven similar shelters the US Government constructed since the 1950‘s, most of them concentrated in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina. This network of shelters formed the backbone of the Federal Continuity of Government program and none of them was open to the American public--not even when the President announced they would be part of the National Lottery system. The bureaucrats from FEMA and other agencies and departments simply ignored the survival lottery and assigned living spaces within these underground cities to themselves and their
families.

  The shelters included amenities such as private apartments, office buildings, water and air purification systems, cafeterias and hospitals. Mount Weather even had it’s own mass transit system and closed circuit television. There was an abundance of stored food, water and medication, and each shelter was protected by a large, well armed security force. The inhabitants snuggled down smug and secure in the knowledge that when the nastiness up on the surface ended, they would emerge and take their rightful places as leaders of the new American government.

  It was a good plan, but the builders had seriously miscalculated the violence of Havoc’s impact and with the sole exception of Mount Weather. all the shelters were pancaked by the extreme quakes that accompanied mountain building, or buried under volcanic magma, or drowned when underground rivers erupted within their closed spaces.

  So the occupants of Mount Weather endured the apocalypse of The Dying Time in luxurious comfort until a virus small enough to come through multiple layers of single micron air filters made its way inside and attached itself to the warm, moist lining of its hosts lungs. Within two months, Mount Weather was the most expensive tomb ever built.

  Chapter 23: Scavenging

  Ute Pass, Colorado

  Michael labored up the slope, gasping, his breath pluming out, condensing, coating his beard with ice. His throat burned. Cold-cracks split his lips and fingers. Fatigue fogged his brain. He wanted to stop, sleep, just for a little while. He slowed and stopped.

  No! He forced his eyes up, away from his snowshoes and along the ridge. The cornice should be close. He shifted his heavy pack, grateful for the pain. It spurred him on. One foot in front of the other. Shusssh, shusssh, his snowshoes brushed across wind-packed snow.