Once again I started to get that sinking feeling of being alone. I wasn’t holding out much hope of any earthly military defending against the concussion weapons apparent destructive power. For whoever these attackers were, squashing us was probably like squashing ants. There was no real threat of retaliation.
I returned to my camp that evening with a depression that kept eating away at my will. The following morning I again went to the garden. I had decided to go every other day to harvest whatever I could. Even if it rotted before it could be used it was still worth gathering just to maintain my sanity.
As I squatted in a row of green beans I noticed something move over by the tree line. One of my cows then let out a lengthy moo and the chickens began squawking. Moments later a huge stampede of rats began pouring out of the trees and into the pasture, hundreds and hundreds of them. They were everywhere. The cows were kicking. The chickens fluttering for the trees or fence posts and I was now at a full run heading back to my bunker.
It was a plague of rats and they were probably going to eat everything in their path. I could only guess that it might be the first of many such plagues with the constant dominance of Man removed. After the rats there would probably be cats and after the cats there would be dogs. And all of these would most assuredly bring about a massive gator explosion as small prey was their favorite food. I had already noticed an increase in the mosquito population which would also bring about a growing bird empire.
As I sat in my bunker I could hear the rats skittering across my roof for what seemed like hours. Later that night I could hear the howl of dogs in their chase. The plague of cats was most assuredly happening somewhere else, but it seemed the dogs were next in my little corner of the world.
I poked my head out of the bunker the next morning expecting a pack of something to be sitting there waiting for me, but the plague of rats and dogs had gone as quickly as they had come. After a bit a checking around I made my way back to the garden to check on the damage. To my surprise the cows had survived and were grazing as usual. And the chickens had also held their own, with what looked like only a couple having been caught and devoured.
The garden was a different story. The rats had stripped it of every ripe or nearly ripened tidbit. The plants themselves still looked good so I would be several weeks without fresh vegetables.
With the plagues having subsided I again ventured back to what had been Orlando. As I reached downtown I stopped at Lake Eola Park to have lunch. Once again it was an eerie landscape that confronted me. Except for the fountain not working in the center, the small lake looked like any other day, only there were no people.
The swans and ducks were happily paddling around. Both birds and squirrels were fluttering and hoping about in the few remaining downtown area trees that bordered the lake. The band shell and the surrounding buildings of course were flat, but the lake looked quiet and peaceful.
It was noon so I got out my cooler and fumbled for some water and food to quench my thirst and growing hunger. That day it was an egg and green bean sandwich, courtesy of the pre-rat Kendall’s garden.
The taller buildings bordering the lake had been so compacted from above that they actually pushed the surrounding ground out and up from its previous position. As I surveyed the devastation and began thinking about my lunch something caught my eye.
Something had moved in a nearby mound of pushed up rubble. I drew a pistol and began backing towards my car. I was in no mood to tangle with a pack of dogs at this point. They would most likely not bother with me, but I was not willing to take the chance. I shoved the cooler into the passenger seat, climbed in and closed the door before a feeling of security returned.
Whatever had moved in the rubble was certainly worth investigating, but I was not going to do it without the safety of the car. I took Suzie down the sidewalk for a ways in order to get a look around behind the mound, but I still had no good view from my vantage point. With no further visible threat I decided I could once again abandon the safety of the car.
I left Suzie running just to give a little added noise cover and began to work my way slowly around the rubble. I continued to circle the debris until I could see something or someone attempting to hide. It was a girl! I was so excited at the thought of seeing another living human being that I began waving my arms and shouting as I ran towards her.
The girl darted and was followed closely behind by another. They were moving quickly and there was no way my shouting and waving was turning them around. So, I hustled back to Suzie and headed their way. With all the flattened structures and trees there really were very few places to hide. As I drove in their direction I saw them disappear into what was once someone’s well-manicured hedge.
I stopped Suzie just short of the hedge and got out. Instead of my excited hand waving I had now calmed to the point of being able to speak in a reasonable tone, I would be trying to let them know that I was not a threat. As I slowly walked around the hedge I saw a large plastic dollhouse with the name Sparkles on it, in what was once the corner of someone’s backyard.
As I drew closer a German Shepard appeared in the dollhouse doorway. It was starring me down and bearing its teeth which prompted me to stop my forward progress. I called to the girls to try to let them know I wanted to help. It took several minutes of my talking before I saw one of them move inside the dollhouse.
I could hear that there was some quiet discussion going on so I kept my calm and my distance from them. A few minutes later a young teenage girl emerged from the doorway. She had ratty hair, dirty clothes and a dirty face. She stood looking at me suspiciously while one hand stroked the Shepard’s back.
I again told her I just wanted to help and that I too was alone in all this destruction. The other girl slowly emerged as well. The second girl looked to be about 12 and was obviously a younger version of the first. Somehow these two sisters had survived for more than a month on their own. No doubt their loyal German Shepard had been there to help against any small dangers such as other animals.
I sat down and continued to talk in an effort to calm their fears. As I sat I noticed a small pile of cereal boxes and cans not far from them. They had been resourceful enough to scavenge enough food to keep healthy so far. They were survivors and I began to like that about them.
As I sat and talked I couldn’t help but think about Renee and how these two girls would have been about the age of any kids Renee and I might have had. Those thoughts finally shut me up for a moment while I was in thought and gave the girls an opening to speak. They pointed out a nicely camouflaged tree house in what was once a neighbor’s backyard. It had been concealed enough to escape being flattened on that first evening and night of destruction.
Once again the invaders had only targeted larger structures or vehicles, any obvious signs of man. A planned summer night’s camp out in the tree house had been what had spared them. Their own parents buried in the rubble of what had once been their house only a few hundred feet away.
We spent almost an hour talking from the short distance before they felt comfortable enough to come over beside me. Their German Shepard Heinz eyeing my every little move or gesture suspiciously. It was a big dog and could no doubt take me down if it wanted to. But I had no intention of giving it a reason to do so. The older sister went by Rachel although her first name was Elizabeth, the younger sister by Janie Lynn. I was extremely happy to know them both.
Once they had come closer it only took me a few minutes to realize that they were on the thin side. Their pile of cereal boxes had likely been few and far between and certainly did not provide the full nutrition that these two were in need of.
I had food in the car and the hunger in their faces showed their interest. I tried to travel with at least three days of rations in case old Suzie gave me trouble, so I had enough at this point to share. They soon tore into the sandwiches I offered and I did all I could to try to get them to eat slowly.
By the time they had stuffed themselves they we
re at ease around me. This in turn put Heinz at ease with me too. He was obviously a very loyal and usually docile and friendly pet. I was glad that he was comfortable enough to let me open a can of hash for him.
I thought nothing of using that valuable can of meat on that dog on that day. I was on such a high after finding that others had survived. After our meal and some further talk, the girls, Heinz and I climbed into Suzie and began our journey back to the bunker.
I was excited at the thought of having some companions and of having some helpers. Survival after all, did not come without a great deal of planning and manual labor. The girls had not bathed since the invasion started and coupled with the dog they had me riding the whole way back with the windows down, my coconut rag was again put to good use.
Most of the daily shortcuts we had previously taken for granted during life were no longer available. I for one was dreading the day which would soon be upon us where I no longer had my stash of toilet paper. I wasn’t sure if I would soon be using a handful of leaves or scooching my butt along on the ground. The girls had somehow managed during their time alone so I guessed that I would have to one day man-up and figure it out too.
I had an air mattress and some spare bed linens in the bunker and after giving the girls a quick tour of my fortress and the immediate area, they each had a shower. I then gave each a pair of shorts with a draw string and a tee-shirt to sleep in. As the girls showered inside I took Heinz down to the canal and gave him a good scrubbing as he would be staying indoors with us.
I fired up the washer-dryer so that in the morning they would have their first clean set of clothes to wear in more than a month. Once they were situated on the air mattress Heinz assumed his position on a nice cool spot on the concrete floor beside them, the three quickly drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 8
The girls slept until almost noon the next day. It was their first night in a month where they had both security and comfort, it showed. After our morning meal we spent hours just talking about our lives before the attack. When they started to discuss their parents they became very sad and were each soon sobbing. I would guess that this was really the first chance they had to really think about what had happened. I attempted to comfort them, but with no experience in such things I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was helping or not.
An hour into our discussion Janie developed a bad case of the hiccups. I then offered up my tried and true cure. She was to sit motionless, take a deep breath and then breathe slowly for 30 seconds while focusing her mind on nothing. The focus on nothing and sitting still seemed to steer the brain away from telling the body to hiccup. The cure had never failed me before and it proved itself once again that day.
As the discussion continued Rachel talked about how for the first two days, neither of them moved from under their sleeping bags in the tree house. They had a backpack with some snack food in it that they had shared. Part of their reasoning for not moving was that they could not hear. They had been so close to the concussions that it was a miracle they were able to recover their hearing at all.
It was then that Janie Lynn revealed that she still could not hear from her left ear. She had kept that little secret from her sister all that time and never complained. I had no medical training and didn’t know the first thing about one’s hearing. I was lucky to get past getting the wax out of my own ears and I sometimes did a poor job of that.
I felt so bad for these two sweet little girls and what they had been through. It was different for me, having been an adult and not having anyone close to lose. Sure, I had lamented Renee’s almost certain death, but I had not been close to Renee for almost 15 years, these girls had lost their parents while just a few hundred feet away. One couldn't help but feel guilty for being a survivor.
I wondered why I was selected to live while so many others weren’t. My life’s history certainly didn’t qualify me for any humanitarian awards. As I pondered further I began to get the feeling that maybe, for me, this was a second chance at being a caring person, a normal person. I soon began feeling a real need to watch after the two girls.
It was at that moment that I decided that I was going to do whatever it took to care for and watch out for them for as long as I was able. I felt a rush at having a new purpose in life other than just surviving. I had not cared for anyone up close in a long time and it felt good to once again have those emotions.
We spent the next month mostly at the bunker. I tried to teach them everything I could and they were eager learners. Anything that kept us busy and passed the time seemed to really help with the anxiety we each had over our situation. Rachel took to Joanne’s garden, Janie Lynn to the chickens and cows and Heinz to chasing off rats.
The new help freed up some time for me to work on our little fortress. In my foraging of the surrounding county I had managed to find six more solar panels. It gave us enough electric power in the daylight to run almost everything we had at once. At night we switched to the hybrid battery pack and tried to be conservative, it was mostly used for lighting and electronics.
I had a PC in the bunker along with the rest of my electronic equipment and the girls spent many an hour during the evenings mastering the couple of games that were on it. It only had a CD player, but I didn’t have any DVDs or CDs other than the couple of games anyhow. I had a police scanner and weather radio that ran every evening also, just in case anyone out there was able to broadcast.
It had been two months since the attack and we had not detected a peep of a signal. The only conclusion I could draw from that was that the devastation brought upon us by these invaders was worldwide in scope. For a while, with all the latest technology, the world was beginning to seem smaller and smaller. It now seemed immense and had it not been for the company of my new little family it would have seemed very empty also.
With the extra time afforded by the girls tending the garden and animals, I had taken the time to get back to my coil gun tinkering project. The coil gun worked on the same principle as the doorbells I had designed at work. Coil up a bunch of wire around an iron bar and apply a current. A magnetic field would be generated in the center of the coil drawing the iron bar inward and causing it to strike a bell.
If the piece of iron was set on one side of the opening of the coil and a current applied for only an instant, the magnetic field would pull the piece of iron through the coil to the other side. This was the main principle behind a coil gun. When a number of coils were strung together, back to back, a piece of iron could be magnetically propelled through them. When the piece of iron got to the other side of the first coil it would meet another coil that would again pull it through, each successive coil afterward would accelerate the pull.
By lining up a bunch of coils and timing when they got powered on and off the piece of iron, a BB in my case would accelerate to potentially very high speeds. With the initial calculations I had done I figured that I should be able to get that BB moving as fast as a bullet from a high powered rifle. I had a few tricks up my sleeve, along with the old man's coil design, that I hoped would take me to a point of high power, which in itself, would be very impressive for a hobbyist.
I had a limited amount of ammo for my guns and it was a resource that was only going to become scarce as time progressed. There were no longer factories churning out tons of ammunition every day. But electricity was something that I knew I could generate more of. I reasoned that if I could create a weapon that didn’t require gunpowder we would be better off. I didn’t want to have to resort to using a bow if I didn’t have to. I hoped that, with some luck, my coil gun project could perhaps keep man from sliding back a thousand years on the weaponry front.
Well before the attack, I had procured a modest supply of ultra-capacitors from an Orlando salvage store which I had incorporated into my coil gun design. My ammo of choice had been BB’s of which I had a huge case of in one corner of the bunker. With my tinkering I had managed to get the coil gun to launch a BB at a pretty impressiv
e speed for a hobby toy.
It would put a nice dent in a road sign from 100 feet. I felt that if I could somehow manage to double that speed I would have a weapon that was useful for hunting small game. With the farm we had going we had no need of hunting anything, but we didn't know what the future might bring. The coil gun was about five feet in length and weighed in at about 15 pounds. It was clumsy and bulky and wasn’t anything you wanted to carry into a gun fight. But it was what we had.
I had potentiometers on each coil and a bank of mercury switches that I would use to attempt to tune the timing of firing the coils. My tweaks to date had taken it from a balloon popper to a sign-denter. Over the course of the next several weeks, as I continued to tinker, I was able to get the power cranked up enough to punch a hole clean through the street sign target that now sat on top of what was once my home.
After taking several more test shots with similar results I could no longer contain my excitement. The girls were at the Kendall’s tending to their daily farming rituals and I went running over to tell them of my news. As I ran I was yelling and waving my arms. They at first turned and began to run away towards the woods. I guessed they still had a little of the "flight for survival" instinct in them.
When I slowed to a walk they stopped their run and returned to see what was happening. They were very unimpressed with my news and quickly returned to their chores. I hadn’t stopped long enough to think that two young girls would have no interest whatsoever in my coil gun project. So, I returned to my masterpiece without a victory celebration, but with my excitement level still very high.
I had one more innovation to try on my gun, but it would have to wait. I had surmised that if I could somehow deliver the energy a coil needed to the whole coil at once and not just from one end of the wire to the other I would be able to ramp the coils magnetic field up far faster than normal. That would lead to not only a tighter set of coils, but to a much higher output energy transfer to the BB. I already had an idea of how I was going to accomplish the feat, but I had no idea of how long it might take me to bring the idea to something that was usable. I had decided that time seemed to be one thing that I had plenty of and after my own little victory celebration that evening I would start work on it the following day.
SODIUM:2 Apocalypse Page 5