As a reward I had decided to let Janie drive Suzie on the way home. The truck had functioning AC, so our summertime excursions would be much more pleasurable in the future. After a quick check, it was determined that the hydraulics on the bed and winches in front and back were all in good working order. It was an altogether excellent find.
As I started out of the overgrown yard I noticed the top of another truck one block further down along the same wall. After investigating we found a nearly new four wheel drive diesel pickup. After searching for a key, hot-wiring was needed to get it going, it was a beauty. Large new wheels and tires and a lift kit would make it ideal for going into tough terrain. I couldn’t wait to get our two new prizes back to the bunker where I could check them over more thoroughly.
I was jealous of Rachel as she pulled out in front of me in the four-by on the way home. I could hear that she had the CD / stereo cranked way up and chuckled as I could see her head bobbing to the music as she drove with Janie weaving back and forth in Suzie in front of her.
The girls named the wrecker Mike because they said it looked like something a Mike would have driven. Coincidentally, a check of the registration in the glove box revealed just that. Mike Hasner had been its former owner. Poor Mike was no longer in need of it, but we kept the name in his honor. The four-by was named Bubba because everyone felt you would have to be named Bubba to have owned it. It was definitely a big Bubba truck so the name stuck.
The rest of the day was spent cleaning and servicing our new fleet. All three vehicles were diesel and we had located a number of close-by stations that contained a large stockpile of fuel for our use. We soon scrounged several 300 gallon fuel oil tanks and had our own little diesel station set up at the bunker.
We were careful to conceal the tanks and the vehicles when not in use as we didn’t know if we would someday receive another visit from above. We did the same for our horde of storage sheds. From the air we felt there would be no signs of life other than the animals and the aliens had apparently not viewed them as a threat.
Chapter 10
With our new fleet of vehicles in good working order we decided it was time to try for a trip over to the beach. One of the things I was worried about was the bridges over the St. Johns River and the Intra-coastal waterway. We took Mike and Bubba as both had winches and if needed we could abandon one and still have a way home. We left early and drove into the sun on the way there.
We decided we would probably need the full day to get over and back. We had only stayed away from the bunker for one night on our previous outings and had decided to make every effort to not do that again. Our little 800 square feet of concrete was cramped, but it was cozy and it was ours. The world around us was becoming an increasingly wild place, so the security of home had its appeal.
It took an hour to get to the St. Johns Bridge. One side was intact and the other had a span in the water where some unfortunate motorist had been traveling during the attack. The overpass of I-95 was collapsed, but we were able to go up the ramp onto the interstate, cross over to the other side and then back down the ramp and onto our road again. The bridge over the Intra-coastal proved to be similar to the St. Johns. Sides of sections were collapsed, but a way across was still there.
Two hours after our journey began we rolled up to the first view of the beach and the ocean straight down a tree lined street. Even though the houses along the street were flattened the big oaks that lined the street were still there, providing a beautiful canopy.
We raced down the street, piled out of the vehicles and ran down the neighborhood gangway onto the sandy paradise. I stopped to enjoy the sand between my toes and the girls raced straight for the water. We had been so excited that we had not noticed what was up the beach about 10 miles to our left.
There was a humongous ship hovering just above the waves, about a mile out. By the time I had noticed the girls had seen it too. They stood starring and stunned, knee deep in the water. I waved for them to come back, but they just stood and stared at the craft. I felt a terror building in me that we would be spotted and that we were only moments away from certain death. The consequences that came from being seen held no appeal, so I continued to wave the girls back while using a low shout.
They came slowly at first, but then began to run and we all hustled back across the gangway to the trucks. We had parked under the trees and felt that they provided adequate cover so we took a moment to evaluate the situation.
This was our first encounter with the destructors in almost a year. We made our way back over to a dune and peered through the sea oats on top of it at a gigantic, dull gray vessel. I sent Rachel back to the truck to retrieve a small pair of binoculars. I then peered at the humongous ship for several minutes.
I guessed the vessel was probably a half mile across. It was flat on the bottom with a slight domed shape on top. Two large tubes protruded from its center, going down into the water. Was water the reason they had come here? Were we nothing more than a needed resource? I had many questions and few answers. I was most concerned by the five smaller ships that buzzed around it as if always on the lookout for any threat.
That’s when Janie grabbed my arm and pointed up above the craft and further out to sea. You could just make out the hazy outline of another round, but much much larger ship. I was guessing that it was five miles across and perhaps 30 miles off in the distance. As we watched, the smaller craft began retracting its tubes and within minutes was lifting upwards towards the larger ship. I reasoned it was perhaps with a belly full of our precious ocean water.
By that time I was convinced that we had not been spotted. Or, maybe we had been, but were not deemed a threat. Either way we felt it was a good time to leave. We backed the trucks up slowly at first and when we decided we had enough ground cover we turned around and slipped our way back down the street.
At that point we were all eager to just make our way back to our little fortress hideaway. As we turned and began our way back out of what had once been Cocoa Beach we were again caught by surprise. Two vehicles were now blocking the roadway. At first I felt panicky, but I soon had the realization that it meant someone else was alive. I would take no chances with my little family as I had no idea if these other survivors would be friendly or hostile.
We sat for ten minutes with the engines running just looking out the windows. Other than behind trees or overgrown brush there was really nowhere to hide for an ambush of any size. So, after a thorough scan with the binoculars I decided to get out of the truck.
I waved back to Janie and Rachel to stay in Bubba and patted my pistol in a gesture for them to have their weapons ready. I had taken the time to give them firearms training after we found a good stash of ammo at a collapsed gun store. They were decent shots and could defend themselves, but I was worried none the less.
I first walked ten and then 20 feet out in front of the truck. I set my weapon down and began to shout for whoever was out there to come out. We were friendly and just passing through. A figure emerged from the brush on the other side of the blocking vehicles. They were holding a rifle.
After another minute of me with my hands slightly raised as a non-threatening gesture, they began to make their way towards me. I was tempted to raise my binoculars, but felt it might send the wrong signal, so I waited.
When the figure reached the cars I could make out that it was a male teen. I gestured to the girls to continue to wait in the truck and to keep an eye out on their surroundings. I then began a slow walk towards the boy while leaving the security of my pistol on the ground behind me.
I was stopped with a warning about 50 feet from the cars. We talked for nearly half an hour before the boy let down his rifle and came out from behind the vehicles. His name was David and he had been swimming in the Intra-coastal with a friend when it all went down. His friend had run for home while David stayed in the water, hiding up under a bridge.
For a year he had scavenged and survived on his own. I remembered how
happy I was to see other living people after only a couple months, so I knew David was probably about to burst inside. He kept a cool yet skeptical demeanor during our conversation.
He had been living in the back of a Humvee under a camo net in the trees several hundred yards away. It remained from National Guard troops who had perished in the initial action. I didn’t want to take the time to hot-wire the Humvee as we weren’t in need of it at that time, so we left it where it was, hidden from view. I waved the girls to come down out of Bubba and they made their way over.
I could see a gleam of interest in David’s eyes as the girls approached. Not only did he now have people to talk too, but he had girls that were close to his age. I would have to keep a close eye on him because 17 year old boys generally have only one thing on their minds. And, although I already felt a great deal of empathy for this poor kid, that empathy was not yet mated with trust. We invited David to come with us back to the bunker and he jumped at the chance.
He rode with me on the way back and told me what he could about the activities of the alien ships. The ships came down, dropped the tubes in the water for several days and then pulled up and headed back to the larger ship. From what David had observed there were two of the water ships and one of the large ones. They usually stayed much further up the coast, but had chosen that spot that day.
Each of the water ships carried a compliment of what he described as the concussion fighters. He was witness to a number of attempts by our military to take down these attackers. The first attempts at defense were missiles launched from the ground, probably the local National Guard units. The fighters seemed to also use the concussion weapons as shields.
As a missile approached a concussion wave was generated and it was like the missile hit a wall in the air, never making it near the fighter itself. Even bullets seemed to meet with the same fate, never reaching their target.
The second defensive actions were from our own fighter jets. Their missiles and cannons met the same fate as well as many of the planes and pilots themselves. This was the same thing I had seen nearly a year earlier with the jet remains in Orlando. It was as if it had hit a wall in mid-air.
David said, virtually everything he saw, led him to believe we were way outmatched militarily by whoever these invaders were. He too had been monitoring the radio waves up until the point at which his scavenged stockpile of batteries finally ran out. He had not heard a peep since the second week of the attack. I could only believe that there was a large number of the huge ships scattered across the globe.
Since there were at least four of us who had survived in Central Florida, I believed that there must be others out there too. Perhaps small communities were already forming elsewhere. With having not seen a single scout ship I wondered if maybe we were no longer considered threats. If so, we would be able to move around much more freely.
We arrived back at our little paradise with an hour of daylight remaining. I gave David a tour of our garden, pasture and chicken coops. We sacrificed another one of Janie’s hens so that David could have his first real meal in more than a year.
The excitement of the day and all that had transpired kept him up and talking well past midnight. The girls were all too happy to have someone closer to their age to talk with. I didn’t mind though. David seemed like a good kid making me the now proud stepfather of three.
We awoke the next morning and immediately after having a breakfast the girls went about handling their daily tasks. I decided to put David to work on building us a large camouflaged shelter where we could park all the vehicles without arousing suspicion from above. I had often wondered if they were not watching our tiny colony and discussing our odd behaviors amongst their anthropologists. Keeping myself busy at the survival game went a long way towards keeping those kinds of thoughts out of my head, but they inevitably made their way in anyways.
We broke for lunch about one in the afternoon. Lunch usually lasted until about five in the afternoon during the summer’s heat. I had checked on David just before lunch and noticed that he had made no progress whatsoever towards constructing the shelter.
Since this was his first day back around other people, I wasn’t too worried and was willing to cut him some slack. I had given him plenty of instruction on what I had envisioned, but I wouldn’t expect anyone to be able to jump right in to that type of project. Especially having just come out of the isolation he had been in.
After the third day with no progress I began to worry. I could have given this project to either of the girls and they would have been all over the front loader clearing the ground under the desired tree and moving any needed timbers into position. I couldn’t tell at the time if the issue was that he was just not interested, I felt he certainly seemed capable.
After talking to him about it he revealed that he didn’t know how to drive and was too embarrassed to admit it after watching the girls speed around in Bubba. I chuckled which did not help his self-esteem. He was the newcomer here and it seemed everyone was already so sure of what they were doing that he didn’t want to make a fool of himself. He was also in fear that if he didn’t measure up he would be asked to leave. I spent the rest of the day with him teaching him to drive the front loader. By the end of the day we had the ground cleared.
By the end of the first week with, us David was finishing the roof over our new parking garage. After a years of salvaging runs we now had Suzie, Bubba and Mike, two four wheelers and the front loader to garage. The structure wasn’t the most attractive, but it was sturdy and well hidden from the skies.
We could now safely store our fleet and David now had a sense of accomplishment and belonging to our little colony. As a sort of celebration and official welcoming, the girls baked a cake and I made some homemade ice-cream with the ice-cream maker Rachel had previously found. We were all in good enough moods to watch a video. This time Rachel, Janie and I were not overtaken by the sadness of what had once been. For David, he was just excited to be around other people.
Chapter 11
The following week I showed David my coil gun. He was fascinated and I was thrilled that I finally had someone else I could discuss the technology with. David was not much for mechanical things, but he had been somewhat of a computer geek in his previous short life. When not at school, he had spent most of his waking hours sitting at a keyboard exploring the world of cyberspace with all it had to offer.
Hours upon hours had been spent in online gaming with his cyber friends from around the globe. His father had been an engineer and had peaked David’s curiosity in cyber kinetics. His dream for college was to get involved in programming robotics so that he could one day dominate the world, the same dream that many a young man who had spent too much time gaming in cyberspace had probably had. What he didn’t know at the time was that he might one day be headed down that very path.
The coil gun project had stalled at having the ability to poke a hole in a road sign. I was excited at the thought of having someone on-board who had some computer savvy. My PC was several years old, but would have plenty of power to handle the delicate timing the coil gun needed. I could handle connecting the electronics to the computer, but I didn’t have a clue as to how to make the computer control them. David did.
He was consumed with the coil gun from the first day he had seen it and of course at having the chance to get on a PC again. He had no online buddies to chat with or other worlds to conquer, but he now had a project that he could really get his skull into.
As it turned out he was not much of a farmer and had caused the girls some grief whenever he attempted to help with their tasks. Rachel was very patient with him, but Janie would just lay into him whenever he was slowing progress or outright messing something up.
He still lacked a little confidence around the girls because they seemed to always know what they were doing, and they were having to tell him what to do at nearly every turn. The coil gun was his escape. I would often have to force him to leave it be because w
e had issues to deal with in keeping our colony going.
After one such incident he became irate and began yelling at me about how I wasn’t his father and he could do whatever he wanted. Had he acted that way to me 20 years earlier I would have given him the beat-down of his life. I had once punched a guy because he had sneezed just as Renee and I had been walking past him.
The sneeze had given a little jolt to my manhood and I wasn’t going to let anyone do that when she was around. Back then, I would have punched him even if I had been by myself. I was a much more patient person now and in no need of puffing up my chest over some kid’s temper tantrum. With a little understanding I was able to calm him down without firing a shot.
It had been three months since David had joined us and he was in need of a break from the project. So, I decided that we should take a trip over to the coast as a sort of surveillance run. There were multitudes of questions about the aliens that I wanted answers too. What were they doing? How many of them were there? What did they look like? Did they ever come out of their ships? And a slew of other items that needed answers.
We packed heavy for the trip and decided to try for Daytona and a closer observation. We loaded Mike with the two four wheelers and set out for the coast, David road with me while Rachel and Janie once again took Bubba.
I had been noticing a little gleam in David’s eye and a returning one in Rachel’s for several weeks. She had blossomed into quite the looker over the course of that first year and I was a little worried about them being kids and being curious. David had so far been quite the gentleman and Rachel a bit shy. I could only guess that the only thing that had kept them apart was that neither one had a clue as to what they were doing. David had been a teen computer geek and Rachel had not reached the age where she or most of her friends for that matter, were allowed to date.
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