SODIUM Trilogy Part One

by Stephen Arseneault

  I’d known I wasn’t responsible enough, that I didn’t have the means to support a kid, so even though there were opportunities—and I had certainly been tempted—I had managed to wait. Renee had been my first, and I had actually taken a little bit of pride in that.

  David and Rachel were still only seventeen and fifteen, so that behavior was something that should not have been going on anyway, especially given our situation of not having the medical know-how needed to deal with any accidents. So a talk was in the cards, and I was tormenting myself about having to give it.

  The next day, they were both sitting on a bench up under the canopy David had made. I walked over, sat, placed my hands on my knees, and looked directly at them. My talk only lasted a few minutes, but it seemed like hours.

  They both listened intently, as evidenced by the occasional nod. When I finished, I looked at both of them for a moment longer, gave a little smile, got back up, and walked away. By that time, the beads of sweat were obvious on my forehead.

  I had walked about fifty feet when I heard footsteps running up behind me. As I turned, Rachel grabbed me by the arm and pulled herself up to kiss me on the cheek. She then turned and walked back towards David while swinging her arms as she walked.

  I remember getting goose bumps at that moment, and it was the first time I really felt like I had been like a father to them. Janie would cling to me all the time, but this was the first time Rachel had shown me that level of caring. It felt good and warmed my heart for the remainder of the day.

  Chapter 15

  * * *

  The next day, we went on a scavenging hunt. We decided to go south of Daytona a bit, as we had yet to venture to that area. There were many sections around Orlando we had not been to, but this seemed like as good a selection as any. Covering new ground brought the possibility of new finds. On our list were an extra freezer for food storage, more solar panels, if possible, and a larger telescope for our spy missions.

  We worked our way over on the roadways to the Intracoastal Waterway and followed the road north from that point. The overgrowth was denser along the waterway than elsewhere. Many of the homes that had been flattened were not even visible from the road anymore.

  We happened upon a large home that had mostly been screened by large oaks. The home was gone, but the garage was still halfway standing, so we pulled in to have a look.

  I first walked around the garage to see if there was anything useful by the main house. I was excited at first because it looked as though the roof of this place had been covered with solar panels. But they had been damaged beyond usefulness when the house was flattened. Too bad. The few dozen panels that had covered much of this roof would have had us swimming in electricity.

  I salvaged what small scraps I could with the hope of maybe being able to make use of them in some way.

  The girls and David had been eyeballing a car under a cover beside the drive. It didn’t seem like it was in a place where it would have survived the initial destruction, as most autos had been targets, but there it was, and it appeared to be intact.

  Janie pulled back the cover to reveal a 1978 Ferrari. It was beautiful, it was red, and it was ours. It was a model similar to Frank's, so the memories of racing and Renee came flooding back. I had a strong desire to get behind the wheel of that car for at least one more spin. One of the only big differences I could see between this one and Frank’s was the extremely dark tinting on the windows. Whoever rode around in this one would have done so in total anonymity.

  We would likely have to hot-wire it, but I was a pro at that now. I had acquired a slim jim when we found Mike, so getting the door open would be no trouble at all. I was still baffled as to why it had been spared the death from above, considering where it was parked. Perhaps the cover had helped.

  As the girls and David ran their hands over its still-sleek exterior, I turned my attention to the half-collapsed garage. There was no way in through the main doors, but there was a regular door on the side facing the house.

  The door was locked, but it wasn’t anything a good boot and a little muscle wouldn’t get through. After a heavy kick, the wood around the doorknob splintered and the door flew open... there inside was our prize. Two large horizontal freezers, and they were still in working order.

  As I opened the first one and felt the cool air, I could see the handful of items still in it had been ruined from freezer burn, but we had plenty of our own stuff to stock it with anyways.

  I rummaged around in the two freezers for almost a full minute before it finally dawned on me: they were still running! Almost a year and a half after the invasion, and here were two freezers that still had power!

  I called the others to come in and look, and they had the same initial reaction as me. A couple of high fives and clinched fists were offered in celebration of the fact we had two nice freezers. Again, it took David, Rachel, and Janie almost a full minute before David spoke up, wondering where they were getting their power from.

  I eagerly followed the wiring to the junction box and out to the side of the structure. From there it went down into the ground and, I could only guess, out to the pole by the street. We got back in the vehicles and began following the power lines to see if we could find a substation nearby.

  About five hundred yards up the road, we found it. It was a hundred feet back from the road and was completely surrounded by large trees except for a thin clearing out of the back.

  I followed the lines out of the substation; they went up as they went away. A short walk confirmed that a set of major high-power lines ran back behind this property. They probably came from power plants down south and went all the way up to Daytona. I guessed maybe a nuke plant had been spared for some reason and was still generating. Why it was spared, I had no clue, but the fact it was still cranking out the juice was huge.

  The power lines would bring on a whole new day’s investigation, but our time that day was limited, and we had two new freezers to get home and hooked up. It took us most of an hour to get them out of the garage and loaded onto Mike.

  The flatbed tow truck had been an invaluable find for our scavenging runs, and with the freezers loaded, our attention returned to the Ferrari. I wasn’t sure if the roads would allow us to get it all the way back to the colony, but we would sure try.

  I retrieved the slim jim from Mike and began fishing for the door lock mechanism. Twenty seconds later, there was a nice little pop. I reached for the door handle with a smile. David and the girls all gleamed with excitement at the prospect of being able to drive her, but I think I may have been even more so.

  As the door was opened, the glee on their faces turned to horror. The smell then hit me and I began to gag. There was a partially mummified body in the driver’s seat. From the looks of him, he had been dead for quite some time. A revolver lay still partially gripped in his left hand. He had apparently taken his own life.

  I stood back and let the air clear a little before getting closer for a better look. His right leg had been splinted and was quite crooked. It had likely been damaged in the initial raid, and he had done his best to mend it.

  The poor guy had probably survived the initial attack but had been in such unbearable pain, and with no one else around, he had decided to end it all. With his last breaths, he had probably placed the cover over the car so it would stay protected. He’d then slid in under the side and into the front seat, closing and locking the door before taking his own life.

  Our elation over the freezers turned to sadness as we all gazed at the poor guy’s bright red coffin. As a sign of respect, I again locked and closed the door, and the girls pulled the cover back over it. We would let the man rest in peace in what had probably been his most prized possession. The drive back to camp was quiet.

  The following day, we had the freezers running at home and began to stock them. They taxed our solar power system, so more panels would be needed if we wanted to add anything else. Acquiring new panels had long been on our list.r />
  With our new additions in place, we decided to see just how far north those power lines maintained their energy. Once our morning chores had been completed, we again loaded into Bubba and Mike and hit the road. It was a good twenty miles from the Ferrari up to Daytona, and the high-power lines looked to be intact the whole way. We stopped periodically so I could go out under them and listen for the low, constant hum that came with the power they carried.

  Just before we reached the roadway into Daytona, the power lines split with one section continuing up the coast and the other heading for what had once been thriving, touristy Daytona Beach. We crossed over the Intracoastal Waterway into Daytona Beach proper and turned south to find where the lines came in.

  A mile down the beach from where we had made camp the two times before, we found a still-intact power substation. Several hundred yards from the debris, we were on the beach and looking out at the still-damaged watercraft and its twin hovering just above.

  I wasn’t certain what we could possibly use power out there for, but the fact we had it was exciting nonetheless. With the two ships and their fighters still only a mile or so away, I decided we had better get back out of there and keep the thoughts of our little power discovery for another day. Besides, it was David’s birthday, and Rachel and Janie had planned a little surprise party for him. It wasn’t every day you turned eighteen, so we headed back so they could prepare for the festivities.

  The girls used the rest of our wheat flour to bake David a birthday cake to remember. I had to keep him away from the bunker and busy so the girls could work their magic. Neither had baked a cake before, but we had stockpiled plenty of cookbooks by then, so they had all the instruction they needed.

  Whenever we came across books, we would scan them for their educational content. If we thought they might be useful to us or to future generations, we kept them and put them in our modest but growing library. We didn’t have much room at the compound, so novels, biographies, fiction, and others would have to be left behind. It seemed an incredible waste of Man’s history of accomplishments, but survival was our priority, so the other books were returned to nature.

  I kept David busy weeding around the Haywards’ orange grove and picking oranges. The trees would undoubtedly produce fewer and fewer oranges every year without proper care, but this was a sizable grove, and with our small group we could eat oranges nonstop and not make a dent in the harvest it produced.

  After three hours in the grove, David was eager to get out of the sun and was jonesing for time with Rachel. Janie came to gather us for lunch. The girls did a great job on the cake, which included eighteen full-sized candles. The small birthday candles had been a bit too hard to come by. Rachel grinned when David blew out the candles and made his wish.

  I didn’t want to think about what it might be, but couldn’t help but imagine by the way the two were looking at each other. It was one of those love gazes where they slipped into their own private world while everything going on around them just kind of faded away. Janie had to give him a nudge to get enough of his attention so he would take the piece of cake she had cut for him.

  David had mentioned that he’d played soccer in high school, so Janie gave him a soccer ball she had scavenged and stashed away from an earlier outing. Rachel made him a tie-dyed tee-shirt, and his eyes lit up over it. I gave him a 9 mm handgun of his own. He had been carrying an old .38 of mine, so I thought it was time he had his own piece to take care of.

  Even though the legal drinking age had been twenty-one, I wasn’t too concerned about the law, so I made him a vodka and orange juice. I had a good stockpile of liquor, but I wasn’t much of a drinker anymore, so the stockpile largely just collected dust.

  I kept a good inventory count of the alcohol, as I didn’t need juvies breaking into it and getting crazy. Halfway through his second round, David was definitely getting loopy. The girls were having a great time with his goofy behavior. The party was a good distraction for us from a world that seemed to be slowly closing in.

  Chapter 16

  * * *

  I went out one morning to get some gardening tools for Rachel from a rack we made under the canopy. The rack and shelves formed a deep U shape. When I entered into the middle of the U, I froze at the unmistakable shaking of a rattle just behind me. As I slowly turned and looked down, I spotted a large diamondback rattler lying there all coiled up and ready to strike.

  I was lucky in that I had walked right past it and had not been bitten. Maybe it had been just as startled as I was. I had hated snakes since being bitten by a common yard snake as a kid. Being cornered and poked at with a stick had not been its idea of fun, so it got a little revenge and latched onto one of my fingers.

  There was a hoe hanging nearby, but I couldn’t reach it without moving past the snake, and I had no intention of attempting such. I stood there at odds with the coiled menace for almost fifteen minutes before Janie went walking by on her way to tend her herd. I called to her, but with too low a voice to get her attention. A louder call turned her head. As she walked toward me, I raised my hand slowly in a gesture to try to get her to stay back.

  While a bite from a rattler in a civilized place was usually not fatal, we lacked medical equipment and anti-venom, so fatality was not out of the question. Besides, this was a big snake. It had apparently been eating well, because it was about a six-footer with a really fat body.

  As I struggled for what direction to give Janie to help me out of the situation, she made her way over, grabbed the hoe, pinned the snake down by the head, and picked it up by the neck. I wanted to yell out, but she was too at ease, and no words came out of my mouth. She turned the snake toward herself and then began scolding it. With all the commotion, David and Rachel had come over to see what was happening.

  I was blown away at how much it was a non-event to them. David told me later that Janie had kept the rattler as a kind of free-range pet and had been feeding it for months with rats she had caught. Here I was, terrified of this thirteen-year-old girl's pet. I tried to give her a talk about it later, but she wasn’t interested in listening. Again, I was taken aback at how fearless she was. At thirteen, she showed more guts around the snake than I ever would. Once the excitement died down, we all got back to the day’s tasks.

  Later that afternoon, David and I turned our attention back toward the coil gun project. We had racked our brains trying to figure out how to get enough power to the coils to make it a formidable weapon. That’s when the thought of the power lines crept into my head. With the high-voltage lines, we could build a bigger gun and really ramp up its power output.

  I began imagining what a megawatt or two of instant power might accomplish. According to my calculations, with the right amount of power, a mile of distance could be covered in less than a hundredth of a second. While we didn’t know how rapidly the alien ships could raise their shields, a hundredth of a second was not much time to react.

  My mind raced at the possibilities. Would we actually be lucky enough to build a gun that could harness this vast available source of power? And could we get it close enough to the alien ships to get off a shot? I wasn’t certain, but just having the possibility was enough to get David and me back to work on the project almost full time.

  Once David got started on the gun, Rachel was a little put off by the lack of attention she then commanded, but she was a trooper and mostly kept it to herself. David was consumed with building a bigger model. We had decided the tow truck would make an excellent platform for making our weapon mobile. We worked for a full week at nothing but building a larger version of the gun.

  Scaling up the coils seemed easy as opposed to making them smaller. There were still enough salvageable electrical parts and wiring available from the surrounding destruction that we didn’t lack for resources to scrounge from. The larger gun was coming together quickly.

  After several weeks of hard work, we had a coil gun that was twenty feet in length, and it went from near the back of Mik
e to just over the cab. I had been concerned about kickback from launching even such a small projectile to those speeds. By my calculations, it would have the same force impact as the mass of the truck striking at a BB-sized point at 20 mph. I felt that amount of force should be able to penetrate a fairly thick steel plate and cause havoc once inside. What damage that could do to the large ships might not be much, but it was something.

  We decided that with the available high-voltage power, we could ramp up the output even more, but it would tear the structure from the truck. We would have to figure out a way to limit or counter the kickback when launching, but we didn’t need full power to test it out.

  With our first large gun completed, it was time to try the scaled-up design. After our initial morning chores, we set out toward the power substation we had seen just past the Ferrari memorial. With the gun sticking up over the cab, we had to drive slowly through many areas, as limbs hanging down from tree growth were beginning to interfere with our driving.

  After an hour, we reached the substation. Mike was the perfect transport for this weapon, as we also had fifty feet of high-current cable to truck along with us. After some inspection of the substation, I figured out a way to get us connected.

  We would use the local power line that ran out to the roadway. With some planning, I was able to knock out the fuse coming off the local transformer, which allowed us to then safely connect in.

  I had salvaged another fuse from closer to home to act as our power-on switch. We had positioned Mike so the gun aimed squarely at a fat water oak about thirty yards away. The moment of truth was upon us.

  Since we were dealing with a large amount of power, I had the girls and David back Bubba up a good distance from Mike. I had a ten-foot pole I would use to flip the fuse into place and arm the weapon. David had rigged a remote control from an RC car to our fire button. I flipped the fuse, and after a large arc, the transformer on the pole hummed as the weapon charged.