METEOR STORM

by David Capps

  Randy built a platform with bicycle wheels on both sides and a long wooden tongue sticking out the front. He had connected six bicycles to the tongue, three on a side. The new administration building in Denver was going to need electricity and John had decided to move one of the fuel cells from the cave down to the new building.

  Randy rigged two strong poles to the fuel cell in the cave with nylon cargo straps. Early the next morning, ten men from the cave struggled down the slope of the mountain carrying the fuel cell to the staging area where John’s cabin used to be. There we loaded it onto the platform and strapped it down for its journey down the mountain road and into the city. I carried the box containing the robot’s head, and Tia carried the box with the computer interface in it. We were still just over a hundred miles from Denver, but the majority of the trip was downhill.

  There were several sections of the road that ran up hill for short distances where we had to use granny gear, but for the most part we coasted down the road, zigzagging to avoid the hundreds of potholes caused by small-to-medium-sized meteorite strikes. Six and a half hours later we entered Denver. The smell of decomposing bodies was still in the air.

  As we approached the new administration building, people started running down the street to our right carrying sticks, clubs and aluminum baseball bats.

  “What’s going on?” John asked.

  “We have a breach,” the man yelled. “We need everybody, now!”

  We followed the crowd down the street for a quarter of a mile. There we encountered a large crowd of people swinging their clubs in the air and striking at the ground. As we moved closer to see what was going on, Tia screamed, turned and ran. Rats were running between the people who were trying desperately to club them to death. As much as I wanted to run after Tia and make sure she was all right, the danger the rats posed was even greater. Half a dozen men limped out of the crowd with numerous rat bites on their legs and blood running down from under their pants and over their shoes. John, Ed and I grabbed the clubs from the men limping out of the crowd and joined in the battle. The number of dead rats escalated as the crowd began to focus on an area of a crude wall that had been constructed, blocking the street across the intersection from us. Through a one-foot-diameter hole in the wall, more rats poured like water from a hydrant on a hot afternoon.

  I cringed when I saw two men jamming rocks into the hole in the wall, trying to stem the flow of rats while being bit on the hands, arms and face. Gradually the hole was blocked and the flow of rats stopped. The clubbing continued until there were no more rats alive.

  “What happened?” John asked.

  One of the men recognized John and came over to explain. “After the meteor storm there were so many dead bodies that we couldn’t deal with them. The housing projects in the inner city were the hardest hit. You couldn’t go in there, the stench was so bad. We brought the dead we couldn’t bury or burn and dumped them in the inner city. Then the rats came and started feeding on the dead bodies. The rats multiplied so fast we built this wall to contain them, but sometimes they break through.”

  “They’re that dangerous?” John asked.

  “Yep,” the man replied. “They’ve grown up feasting on human blood and rotting corpses. They don’t fear people; they see us as food. That and the diseases they now carry make things even worse.”

  “What about the people who have been bitten by the rats?” John asked.

  The man looked down at the ground briefly and then looked back up at John. “We ran out of antibiotics three months ago, so it’s a really bad situation. More than half of the people bitten here today will die within the next two weeks.”

  “Where are they taking the people who were bitten?” John asked.

  “We have a makeshift hospital set up a half mile back. That’s where they’ll be.”

  John turned to me and Ed. “Come on, we have to help,” he said.

  The smell of rotting flesh was even stronger in the hospital building with the added smell of uncontrolled infections. People were crying and yelling in pain as we walked through the halls and looked into the rooms. John was clearly incensed at the level of suffering people were experiencing.

  “Who’s in charge here?” John yelled. Everyone ignored him. John grabbed a woman who was caring for victims of the rat bites and turned her around so she was facing him. “Who is in charge?” he demanded.

  She pointed down the hall to a small thin man in dirty blue scrubs. He was moderately dark skinned with black hair and spoke with a Middle-eastern accent.

  “Who are you?” John demanded. The man turned to face John and looked him over quickly.

  “People call me Doctor Ali,” he said. “But I’m not really a doctor. I was an EMT before the meteor storm. Right now there isn’t anyone else. What do you need?”

  John looked around, taking a moment to calm himself now that he understood more about the situation. “That’s what I was going to ask you,” John said. “What do you need to help these people?”

  “What have you got for infections and pain?” Dr. Ali asked. “We’ve used up everything we got from the old hospital and the drug stores. There’s nothing left.”

  “Okay,” John said, “let me see what I can come up with. So what happened to all of the doctors?”

  Dr. Ali lowered his head. “They all left just before the meteor storm. Rumor is that they and their families went to some underground shelter. That’s all I know.”

  “Okay,” John said, “I’ll get back to you.”

  Dr. Ali turned back to his patient without comment. He’d heard it all before.

  We returned to the administration building where we found Tia, still shaken from her encounter with the rats.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “That was so horrible.” She shuddered and held her arms close around her chest. I put my arm around her and she leaned into me.

  “John,” a man shouted from across the room. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “This is Steve Shilling, the new administrative assistant for the city of Denver,” John said as he introduced the rest of us.

  “Your office isn’t done yet, but you can see what it will look like if you follow me,” Steve said.

  We followed him up a wide set of stairs to the second floor and down a hall filled with carpenters building walls and doorways. At the end of the hall we entered a large room with openings for windows that hadn’t yet arrived.

  “It’ll look better in a couple of weeks,” Steve said, “but this is where your office will be.”

  John looked around. “This will be fine,” he said. “Right now I need some people to go on a scavenger hunt for me.”

  Steve smiled. “We have a complete department that does nothing but scavenge for things. What do you need?”

  “Gather all of the baking soda you can find and all of the wood ashes in the area.”

  “Okay,” Steve said, “what do you want done with them?”

  “Set up some wood frames with straw or dried grass in the bottom covered with about an inch of sand. Drill holes in the bottom and fill the frames with wood ashes. Pour water over the ashes and collect the liquid that comes out the bottom. Filter it through cloth and put it in jars. Don’t get it on your skin. Let me know when it’s done.”

  “Okay,” Steve said, “we’re on it.”

  * * *

  The next day Steve arrived with twenty large jars of whitish liquid and several satchels full of cans of baking soda. “Where do you want all of this stuff?” Steve asked.

  “The hospital,” John said. “Follow me.”

  We walked to the hospital carrying the supplies.

  “Where’s Dr. Ali?” John asked as we entered.

  A nurse pointed down the hall to our left.

  Dr. Ali turned as John approached. “You’re back.”

  “The jars contain sodium hydroxide which you can use to disinfect equipment and other surfaces,” John said. “You can dilute it way down and use it as a disinfectant
wash for people’s skin.”

  Dr. Ali picked up a can of baking soda and looked at it. “And this?” he asked.

  “Have you got some clean water?” John asked.

  Dr. Ali pointed to a large plastic water bottle with paper drinking cups next to it. John took one of the paper cups, dumped some baking soda into it and mixed in some water making a paste.

  “People with rat bites?” John asked.

  Dr. Ali led us into a room off the hall. The room was crowded with people suffering from rat bites from the previous day. Most of the bites were already infected. John looked around at all of the frightened faces. Two men in the corner had rat bites on their faces. John walked over to them and filled the bites on their faces with the baking soda paste. He had them take their shirts off and filled the rat bites on their arms and hands with the paste. Within ten minutes the men reported that the pain from the bites was going away.

  “Treat all bites and infections with this paste.” John said. “It’s alkaline. Bacteria and viruses can’t live in an alkaline environment. For people who are sick and the infection has spread into the blood, mix a teaspoon of baking soda in clean water, and have them drink it three to six times a day depending on how sick they are: more for sicker people. I’ll have more for you tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” Dr. Ali said.

  The following day we brought more sodium hydroxide and baking soda to the hospital. As we entered Dr. Ali came running from the hall into the main reception area.

  “John! John!” he shouted. “It’s working. The bites are healing and the infections are going away.”

  “Good,” John replied. “We are gathering the materials to make alcohol and should have some for you in a week to ten days.”

  “Bless you,” Dr. Ali said with tears in his eyes. “Bless you.”

  John handed Dr. Ali a sack filled with bars of soap. “We are also increasing soap production and will have more bars of soap for you in a couple of days.”

  Dr. Ali didn’t speak, but the tears and look in his eyes said everything we needed to hear.

  * * *

  The next morning we met in John’s office. We still didn’t have any windows but we had a door which John closed behind us. Major Samuels was there.

  “We have a situation,” John said.

  “There is an underground complex with access beneath the Denver airport,” Major Samuels said. “We’ve gotten as far as a reinforced steel door. It has a keypad entry system but there doesn’t seem to be any power to the keypad.”

  “I believe Carl can help us with opening the door,” John added.

  “Probably,” I replied. “What’s on the other side of the door?”

  “We don’t know,” Major Samuels said, “But we believe that it is the place where the military and VIP’s in the area went just before the meteor storm. We need to find out who and what is down there so we aren’t hit with a surprise attack at some point in the future.”

  “I want Ed and Major Samuels to go into the underground facility once Carl gets the door open,” John said. “I want negotiation to be our first response, but I also want us to be prepared for an armed conflict, so once the door is opened, I want Carl out of the way and in a protected place. Am I clear?”

  Ed and Major Samuels agreed.

  We rode bicycles out to the airport and met a group of armed men inside the main terminal. There were fifteen of us in all, armed with rifles and hand guns. They led us through a security office and down a stairway to a narrow tunnel lined with pipes on both sides. The tunnel was dark and musty. As we walked slowly along the tunnel, examining everything with our flashlights, we kept hearing faint scratching noises as if something was skittering along just out of our view. Finally we came to the door.

  A keypad was mounted on the right side of the door, but the display wasn’t illuminated. I punched in several numbers on the keypad, but it didn’t make any beeps or clicking sounds. Major Samuels was right. No power. I took my pocket knife out and cut away the plastic covering to the panel. Underneath was the usual set of screws. I opened the Phillips head screwdriver on my pocket knife and removed the screws. I pulled the panel off and looked at the wiring inside the box.

  Wires came into the box from three different places. The two heavy wires were obviously the power lines. Most of the wires went to a plug-in connector mounted on the back of the box. My guess was that this was the interface to the computer and the matching box on the other side of the door. The release for the door would be electrical and run from one box to the latching mechanism. If it was done right, the wires to the latching mechanism would come from the secure box on the other side of the door, not the one outside to which people had access. I shook my head in disbelief as I saw the two wires leading out of the bottom of the box. They did it backwards.

  I figured the system was the usual five-volt computer power supply. I removed the batteries from my flashlight and borrowed another guy’s flashlight for a third battery. I used my knife to cut the two wires loose from the printed circuit board and stripped the ends of the wires. I examined the back of the circuit board and quickly determined which wire was connected to the ground path. I pulled on the wires and got enough wire free to reach the ends of the batteries. I held the three batteries connecting positive to negative in my hand. Three batteries would produce 4.7 volts, which should be enough to activate a coil designed to operate at 5 volts. I touched the ends of the wires to the batteries and heard a distinct thunk from the side of the door jamb. Major Samuels pulled on the door and it swung open slightly.

  The stench of decomposing flesh poured out of the doorway. I turned to the side, but it was too late. I threw up on the side wall. As I headed back up the tunnel for some fresh air I heard two other guys lose it as well. I stopped when I reached the stairwell that led up to the security office and waited. The two other guys who couldn’t stand the smell joined me there.

  “Ed and Samuels led the group into the tunnel,” one of them said to me. “We’re supposed to wait here with you.”

  “Works for me,” I replied.

  “If anything happens we’re supposed to protect you,” he said.

  The three of us looked at each other, thankful we were not venturing deeper into the tunnel system. Ten minutes later we heard gun shots and the sound of running feet, followed by the steel door slamming shut. We watched as the flashlights wobbled in the dark tunnel approaching us. Ed and Major Samuels led the remaining group through the tunnel and up the stairs into the security office before anyone spoke.

  “The rats got in through the ventilation system,” Ed said. “The designers of the underground city made sure a person couldn’t get in through the grates and filters, but it was easy access for the rats.”

  “The skittering noises we heard in the tunnel?” I asked.

  “Rats in the ventilation pipes,” Major Samuels said. “There’s no one left. All the people have been eaten by the rats. The only things left back there are bones and rotting rats. It looks like they put up one hellova fight, but they didn’t have a chance. There were just too many rats.”

  “And the gun shots?” I asked.

  “The rats have become very aggressive,” Major Samuels said. “We just barely got out.”

  We rode our bicycles back to the administration building in silence.

  “Are there any supplies we might be able to use?” John asked after we told him what we found.

  Major Samuels shook his head. “Too many rats,” he said. “We can’t get far enough to get to any of the supplies.”

  “Okay,” John said. “Thank you for trying.”

  CHAPTER 26

  John established the New American Bank. The currency was a scrip developed through radio conversations between members of the Survivalist Network. A printing press of the same type used to print U.S. currency was already in a member’s business and was stored securely. Acquiring the proper paper took a little longer but was finally resolved. Survivalist Network Members i
n the larger population centers became the default bankers for regenerating our civilization. Initially, accounts would be kept on paper ledgers and stored in vaults. The new currency would have the same denominations as regular U.S. currency, but would look substantially different.

  The differences would not end with appearance, either. The new currency would be loaned into existence, but would have no interest attached to it. Individual people would borrow money at no interest and pay it back over an extended period of time. In addition, loan payments would not begin for a period of ten years, giving people a chance to become economically stabilized before repayment of the loan started. Businesses would borrow larger amounts of money with a payment schedule stretched out over the next hundred years, depending on the amount the business needed to borrow. Anything having to do with infrastructure came under the direct spending of the New America.

  As soon as the meteor storm ended, John had asked for a survey of how many people survived and what resources were available and what was needed. Within three days, a stark picture of what life remained was pieced together. Best estimate was between six and seven million people had survived the meteor storm, but most of them were either out of food or nearly so. Very little in the way of shelter remained, and what did had no source of heat to get them through the winter months. Almost all sources of water were contaminated. No electricity was available. Some people had generators, but the fuel for them had run out within a few days.

  Clean water became the top priority, followed by food and shelter. Water filtering stations were established, and stored food was made available. People gathered in areas where remains of brick and stone buildings still stood and make-shift shelters were being constructed. The fire-damaged trees were being cut down, sawed up and split for firewood. Everything was accomplished through manual labor.