Final Dawn: Escape From Armageddon (20 page)

-42
-

    Hannah and Sarah sat at a table in the back corner of Burger King with Mark’s sister Karen, and her husband David.

     David had been a dentist for several years, and was a good one at that. He’d developed a family of loyal patients in and around
San Angelo, and was earning a reputation as one of the sharpest young dental implant specialists in Texas.

    He knew his stuff.

    But he didn’t know beans about physics, or the forces of nature.

     David and Karen had met the girls for lunch so that he could give Hannah a list of things to order for the mine’s dental clinic.
He, as a registered physician, would have no problem getting a good supply of anesthesia and painkillers. But there were a lot of other supplies he’d need as well to pull and fill teeth, build crowns, and make and fit dentures.

     Hannah had bragged about her procurement skills, so David decided to put her to work.

     Hannah didn’t mind, of course. Her list of things she was ordering for Mark and Bryan was dwindling down and she had more time on her hands. So much time that she was going crazy, puttering around the mine all day.

     So she was the one who suggested, and Sarah quickly agreed, that they were going to get out of the mine, and feel sunshine on their faces one last time, before they were locked away for years.

     This was that one last time.

     After David had passed his wish list on to Hannah and given her a couple of recommended dental supply sources
, talk turned to Saris 7.

     “What I don’t understand,” David said, “is why you say a nuclear weapon doesn’t have much of a cha
nce of working. I mean, that’s one hell of an explosion. It seems to me that, even aiming at a moving target, with an explosion that big, that you don’t have to score a direct hit. That all you have to do is come close.”

     Hannah and Sarah, in
perfect harmony, each uttered “the atmosphere.” at the same time.

     Then they looked at each other and chuckled.

     Sarah explained to David, and to Karen, who was also listening very intently.

     “Okay, if you were going hunting for a bird, and the bird moved very fast, and you weren’t a very good shot, would you have better luck using a shot gun or a .22
rifle?”

     “A shotgun, of course. You’d have a much bigger spread, and much more chance of hitting your target.”

     “Okay, good. Now let’s say a shotgun wasn’t available. You have no choice but to use the .22. Only you couldn’t lead the bird, and you couldn’t aim at him. All you could do was aim the gun at a point where you thought the bird would cross and then pull the trigger when you thought he’d pass by. Do you think you’d hit the bird?”

     “Probably not.”

     Hannah took over for Sarah. “Okay, when you set off a nuclear explosion on earth, it’s the oxygen-rich atmosphere that allows the explosion to spread. Air moves out of the way very quickly. It moves out of the way and lets the explosion and its shock waves happen.

     “But in space, there is no atmosphere. No oxygen at all. No air to give the explosion a place to expand
. So you don’t have a mushroom cloud, and a huge fireball. You have the same amount of energy, yes. But it is much more compact, and in a much smaller area. And it would go bang, and then quickly dissipate into space. So it wouldn’t have like a shotgun effect.

     “The other thing is the shotgun and the .22. Both of them, the shotgun shell and the bullet, have roughly the same amount of gunpowder, and therefore the same rough amount of force. Shotgun pellets don’t travel as far, but have a greater killing field, so they’re great for close or medium range. The bullet travels much farther, but in a single straight line. It can do much more damage than a single shotgun pellet, but you only have one shot so you better be on target.

     “Theoretically, if you were trying to shoot a meteorite out of the sky, the shotgun would be your best option because you have a much better chance of hitting it. But, the force of a shotgun if you do hit it isn’t as great as the force that would be concentrated in that one single bullet.

     “In space, because of the lack of atmosphere, that shotgun blast becomes almost the same as the .22. What I mean is that the nuclear explosion, instead of being widespread like a shotgun blast, would be very tightly concentrated, more like the bullet.

     “And with a
meteorite that’s flying at 38,000 miles an hour, you’d better be a damn good shot.”

-43-

DEC 27, 2015       19 DAYS UNTIL IMPACT

     Christmas had been different this year in houses all over the world. Celebrations were much more subdued.

     Shopping between Thanksgiving and Christmas eve was only a third what it was the year before. The television hacks argued over the reason. Some maintained that Americans had resolved themselves to the fact that they were going to die, and didn’t feel like celebrating. Others believed that Americans had already spent their money on survival supplies and extra food, and simply had no more left to spend. Still others said that people were just holding back, waiting to see what happened. And if Saris never hit and they survived past January 15th, then they’d find time to celebrate.

     The Macy’s annual Christmas parade was cancelled for the first time since the war years. There was just too little interest in putting it on.

     One thing certain was that Christmas got back to being about families, and close friends and other loved ones. It wasn’t commercial. It was traditional. It was about being together.
For the first time in a long time.

    
America, like most of the rest of the world, hadn’t changed much over the previous couple of weeks. There were still two very distinct frames of mind regarding Saris 7. Naysayers continued to scoff, and to laugh at those who were prepping for disaster. The believers continued to spend every waking moment fortifying their homes against looters, and stockpiling whatever food and supplies they could find and afford.

     Churches continued to do a bang-up business. God’s casual followers continued to come in droves, suddenly deciding it was time to be saved. Catholic churches had to call in extra priests and set up additional confessionals. All
occasional catholics in the country, it seemed, wanted to be absolved of their sins.

     The same thing happened at protestant churches. Mass baptisms were happening daily, six days a week. Some churches were even doing them after Sunday morning services.

     And the church coffers were overflowing. Many pastors were already contemplating the new renovations they’d make to their churches with all the money that was flowing in. If, indeed, they were still around to make the changes.

     The Pope took the official position that his followers need not worry. God would prevent Saris 7 from happening. He said that man had not yet finished their work for God. And that God would allow them to continue it.

     But not all good catholics shared the Pope’s optimism. Suicide rates were skyrocketing all across the world. Many morgues across the country were resorting to desperate measures to keep from getting overrun. Some were shipping bodies to mortuaries for cremation if unclaimed for 24 hours after completion of autopsy. Others weren’t even waiting that long.

     Others leased refrigerated trucks and parked them adjacent to the morgue, to hold all the bodies until they got around to them.

     One funeral home in Mississippi was under indictment for taking forty John Doe bodies from the county coroner, accepting internment fees for burying them, then throwing them into a huge mass grave and bulldozing dirt over the top of them.

     And police all over
America were responding to “foul smells” coming from eerily quiet houses.

     City landfills were finding large quantities of dead animals which had been killed and tossed into dumpsters. Apparently some families chose to euthanize their pets instead of watch
ing them starve to death.

     Others chose to keep their dogs around as long as possible. They might need them
as food later on.

     Most schools’ enrollment was at fifty percent or less by this time. Many families simply stopped sending their children to class. They wanted to keep them at home, and spend as much time with them as possible, before the end came.

     Other families had moved to different parts of the country, where they thought it would be easier to survive. And simply didn’t bother to enroll their kids into the new schools.

     Businesses felt the pinch as well. Hard-core believers simply stopped
going to work by the millions. The government stopped tracking unemployment numbers. It just no longer seemed to matter.

     In the mine, it was business as usual. Hannah continued to order last minute supplies. Bryan continued to sit at the old feed store three days a week waiting for deliveries, then driving them over to the mine.

     Sarah continued to mine the internet,
copying anything and everything she could find that she thought might be of any future interest to one of the forty.

     She was also building a music library by downloading hundreds of songs per day. There was a rumor that the largest music download site was going down any day now to ride out the storm, and she wanted to collect as much as possible until then.

     Hannah was ordering a truckload of bottled water from the Coca Cola plant in San Antonio every day, and would continue to do so until they sealed the mine.

     The water came in 20 ounce bottles, stored 24 bottles to a case, in brown boxes marked “Dasani” on all four sides. Thirty six cases to a pallet, stacked in six layers of six boxes.

     Bryan was lining the pallets up wherever there was space in the mine.

     All agreed it was probably overkill. After all, if they calculated correctly, they already had enough water to fulfill their needs.

     But hey, they had the money, so why not add a little insurance?

    
Bryan finally figured out that Hannah wasn’t going to order the truckload of beer and spirits he’d asked for, so he took matters into his own hands.

     He b
orrowed Mark’s Explorer and made a trip to a package store in south San Angelo one Friday morning.

    
He filled it full of Bud Light. In cans. They had a longer shelf-life than bottles. And he bought a few liters of Jose Cuervo as well. It would still be good when the beer ran out.

-44-

JAN 8, 2016       7 DAYS UNTIL IMPACT

     The three of them convoyed to the only mall San Angelo had, and met on the edge of the west parking lot. Hannah  drove one of the RVs from Bay 3. Mark drove another. Bryan drove one of the small trucks and followed close behind.

     At 9 a.m., as planned, the last
seventeen of the forty met them there. Everyone else had been gathered up and taken to the mine a few days before.

     The three helped with bags and boxes, loading them onto the back of the truck, while their guests climbed aboard one or the other of the RVs for the two hour trip to the mine.

     Some of the new guests busied themselves with small talk. Some talked of what they expected to happen to the world after it went cold. Others were cautiously optimistic, hoping that they’d be able to return to their homes in just a few days.

     I
n Hannah’s RV, two of the family dogs couldn’t get along and had to be separated. One, a german shepherd, had to be locked in the master bedroom in the back of the RV. The other was a chihuahua with an attitude. She figured she’d won the battle and strutted around the rest of the RV, demanded to be petted by everyone.

     The three cats on board took refuge atop the cabinets in the RV’s kitchen, safe from both canines.

     One topic that was off-limits by unwritten agreement, that no one talked about, was the loved ones being left behind.

     Five miles south of
San Angelo, Mark diverted the convoy by turning down a rarely-used gravel road. This was the same procedure the three had used when picking up the first batch of guests previously.

     After driving three miles down this deserted road, Mark pulled over and came to a complete stop. Hannah pulled up behind him.
Bryan stopped his truck about three hundred yards behind the RVs.

    
Bryan waited for five minutes to see if any cars pulled up behind them. They were very worried that one of the guests had leaked word of what they were doing, and that someone might try to follow them to the mine and force their way in.

    
Bryan readied his two weapons. If a car had come up behind him and tried to pass, Bryan would have pulled his truck across the road to block it, stepped out of his truck, and used his 9 mm Glock pistol to shoot out the vehicle’s tires.