Before turning in for the night Anne and I talked about what she had found out about the disease that had caused The Event.
“Much of what we had from the e-mails and information that had been in Doc Swenson’s office was confirmed by the Major. But there were a few things that did not seem to fit and I want to digest them a little before making a determination.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“We were pretty certain that the illness could be passed on by blood borne contact, but that seems to not be exactly true because they have had cases where unbitten ended up coming back. The big question was whether the disease could be transmitted by insects like mosquitoes or were we already infected.”
With that information in mind it was not so hot a sleeping night.
May 2nd
The compound was still pretty much buzzing over the visits and the general feeling was a positive one. I am certain that the topic of conversation at the other camp was pretty much the same.
Lance talked with Teckla about making a few return trips up to Hinsdale, he felt that he would be able to work out something that would allow for mobile cameras for them. But he could see no way without a sort of hardwire or radio system to get them to work between the camps.
The Hinsdale people did have working electric power. The military had brought in a diesel generator to operate their equipment. They had set it up in the railroad warehouse where they had been holed up. Ron and I had not seen it when we were there the first time. The town hall, police station and two firehouses had generator set ups also but because of the conflict going on the locals had never taken advantage of those. The military generator had become a focus in the battle between the groups and ownership of it was seen as a major victory.
After seeing our set up the Hinsdale people decided that the central firehouse was a better place to live. It had the sleeping barracks, cooking facilities and room to keep their vehicles in the bays where the fire engines had been housed.
Matt brought up an interesting point today that we had not considered. With all the issue about the propane we had missed the idea that the HumVee was a diesel powered vehicle. That in itself seemed not all that significant except that now we would have three different fuels that we had to look for.
“If we converted all our vehicles to diesel we would have an almost endless source of fuel.” He explained. “Over time gasoline, particularly regular grade, would lose its potency and it probably was the fuel of choice for just about everyone.”
“Not the best long term solution.” he added, “But the diesel, basically kerosene, was less prone to degradation and also not just available in gas stations.”
Frank nodded and stepped in, “The majority of suburban and for that matter, urban homes are heated with oil which is basically kerosene.”
Their point was that it would be wise to start transitioning to big ass Ford and Dodge pickup trucks with diesel engines. “Where are my cowboy hat and country music CDs,” I thought.
May 3rd
We had a Zom show up on the wire today. It was quickly dispatched and burned. It was Anne’s suggestion we did the burning. She is concerned about the bugs becoming contaminated and spreading the illness.
May 4th
Matt, Mark and Margo headed up to the lake today to try their hand at fishing. It is a potential food source. They were able to bring back a few bass for the dinner pot. I am not a big fan of bass, but I am more a fan of that than going hungry.
Just a side note here. Even though we are in a rural, somewhat farming area we have seen no large domestic animals like cows, horses or sheep. From our observations it seems that the infected, or Zoms have managed to kill off whatever was penned up or the animals were able to make an escape and have headed off to safer areas.
May 5th
It was a day of not doing much of anything. One of the ironic parts about our new world order is that every day is Saturday. There is not a work week, or school schedule. The days of the week do not really matter; it is only the dates that are important. And for that matter I may be off in my date reckoning by a day or two from the real calendar.
May 6th
It was unusually hot today which resulted in some thunderstorms late in the day. The good news was that we did not need to worry about losing power but there seemed to be more lightening than I have seen in past storms. It could be just my imagination.
May 9th
I missed a couple of days writing. The only issue we have had was that Cyril is still fighting the idea of his showers. We figured it out pretty quickly but his logic for not taking them is concerning. He claims he does not need them, or that he already took one.
Henry has been out for the day working on plowing up the fields. He is getting ready for the planting season. His goal is to have corn, potatoes and barley as his main crops with a smaller area of tomatoes, squash and beans. The plan is to store the grains and potatoes for winter.
Biter has been going with him as a guardian to detect the Zoms and we have had Ron, or Mark hanging in the area of his work to also keep an eye out.
Peru has been pretty much scavenged or cataloged for what is available for supplies and materials. The vehicles are all ready for future action or rapid escape if it is needed.
Our current food supplies are estimated at about five months based upon current stocks and consumption. The farming, fishing and hunting efforts are all not included in that estimate, but any successes that we have there will extending that five month period.
We have also begun to look into the idea of foraging for food in the woods as the summer months roll around. We have gotten some literature from the library about edible plants. The local Native Americans survived well in this regard, and it should work of us also. But then I remembered that years ago I had bought a native cookbook when I was into my attending pow-wows days. I found that there were some things that although they would keep you alive were not high on my list of yummy. Acorn soup was one of them, very bitter.
May 10th
We received a radio call from Hinsdale today, it was the Major.
“Have you detected any increase in radiation levels in your area?”
One of the items that had been given to us was a Geiger counter. We had not been running it but Anne did some checking and called him back to report that the levels showed a slightly elevated reading over what was the green acceptable range.
Over the next few hours Major Barkley and Anne put their heads together and developed several possible theories. The first was that it was merely residual radiation from the destruction of Albany that was being brought in by the wind. They felt that over time this would dissipate and not be a long term threat.
A second theory was a little more menacing. It was thought that at the cleansing, when the cities were bombed, that all of the nuclear power plants had been ordered to be shut down and made safe. There was the possibility that one or more of those power plants were not shut down or had somehow been breached. If that were the case, it would be possible that the core or cores would eventually run out of coolant. Once that happened there would be a melt down and containment would be lost.
Unfortunately we had no way of knowing where it would have or could have taken place. The prevailing winds could be bringing the radiation from almost anywhere from the upper half of the eastern United States.
And finally there was a global theory. That simply being that in the efforts to contain the contamination that worldwide nuclear detonations to control urban Zom populations were the cause.
In any cases the levels so far were low enough that they were not an immediate threat, but long term the radiation could have impact on genetics and who knows what else down the road.
We decided that we should take a couple of days to monitor the readings as well as try to research what limited information we had. A meeting at Checkpoint Charlie was set up for May 15th to share data in person.
May 11th
Anne and the college
student types have spent most of the day working on whatever research they could in the local library. It is a small facility but they were able to at least develop some further information on potential causes and effects of the radiation. Ironically our group had the better research staff but Hinsdale had the better resources for printed information.
At this point the issue does not seem to be a critical one but it is better to have some idea of what we might face. It is certain that there is little we can do to contain the radiation, if we could even find the source. But it may be that it is a localized source and we need to get out of the contamination zone.
May 12th
With the uncertainty of what is going on with the radiation readings it has put a damper on plans for just about everything. Henry, although still working on getting the fields ready for planting has lost some of his zeal for the growing season. The Three has not suggested that we are moving or even hinted at it, but there is a certain level of individual planning going on of what to take and what to leave.
May 13th
The winds have shifted a little and the radiation readings have dropped. It was not that the levels were that high to start with, we were not in danger of a Chernobyl like poisoning. But it is there in the background and until now we had not even thought to monitor it, even if we could.
I wonder, when you consider all the radiation that cellphones, TV and radio signals, radar, microwave dishes, heck, microwaves in the kitchen emit, how much contamination of all sorts have we received over our lifetimes.
May 14th
The research has been as distilled as it can be. At the evening meal Anne and the researchers shared what they had figured out. Although there was radiation present, it was within a tolerable level that we needn’t worry. The radiation had only a very small chance of resulting in some genetic issues down the road on any offspring in the group.
The fluctuations in the levels appear to be based on wind direction and weather pattern it was best guess that the source of the radiation was directly west of us. But how close was not an answer that we had, nor could figure.
They had discounted the theories that the radiation was due to the nuclear cleansing of larger cities or on a global level. This was because there was no evidence of dust or debris in the air that would have been the beginning of a nuclear winter as had been so often discussed in the height of the Cold War era.
I had read, or saw somewhere that the detonation of one hundred nuclear weapons around the world would bring about the eventual nuclear winter, and the end of much of mankind. If the stories were true, we had easily met that number with just the cleansings in the United States alone. But then, mankind as we know it is pretty much ended.
Everyone listened pretty intently to the presentation. Toward the end of the presentation Anne asked, “Are there any questions?”
Cyril, her dad, raised his hand and said, “Back in my Navy days I was in the South Pacific in the area of the Bikini Atoll during testing of the early nuclear weapons. One of the ways that we tracked the post blast radiation was with weather balloons.”
It did not seem to make a lot of sense where he was going with this, but then often his stories were just not going anywhere. This one would have probably met the same fate but someone made a quantum leap. It was Lance.
He asked Cyril, “When they used the balloons they were there support planes taking readings.”
It turns out there were.
Lance took over the floor, and in a sort or stream of consciousness that went from balloon tracking to airplane tracking to we could do this too. There were more than a few puzzled looks.
“We could put up a plane, with detection equipment and head west to see what was out there. If we flew to the other side of Albany and found no radiation, we would know that our source was likely the city.”
It did make sense. But there were a couple small issues that needed addressing. The first was that we did not have any aircraft locally available and, if we did, there was no one who was capable of piloting it. A number of us had flown computer simulators over the years. But did that qualify us to risk our lives on this type of a mission. Maybe someone from Hinsdale was a pilot. Tomorrow will tell that tale.
May 15th
Anne, Fred, Lance and I headed up to Check Point Charlie to meet with the folks from Hinsdale to talk about the radiation thing. Major Barkley, John the science teacher, Ethan the college kid and Larry the truck driver were waiting there. After brief formalities we discussed the radiation issue.
Both Ethan and Anne had worked out projections as to what the impact would be in both long and short term. The long term, and by long term we are talking years to decades was a little more disturbing. But without a source or cause it would be difficult to project what the realistic long term would be.
Both teams had come up with the same ideas as for what the source could be thinking it was some form of nuclear reactor meltdown. In brainstorming the idea was suggested that we could send out teams overland to try to get some readings in various directions to the west and southwest to see if we could somehow narrow the field. But that idea was dependent upon the ability to cross the Hudson River.
We knew the I-90 Bridge had been taken down but the rail bridge that ran parallel had been left intact. It would be a difficult crossing in trucks and cars but could be done.
Lance pitched his idea of air reconnaissance. Unfortunately, like our group, Hinsdale had no air experienced pilots and like our group there were a couple of people who had been quite qualified and practiced in computer simulations and video game flying. It was the best that we were going to get.
So after a little discussion the consensus was that it might work, assuming that we would be able to find air worthy planes. Lance had already covered part of that in his research by finding three different small airports within a 25 mile radius.
By the end of the meeting we had decided that the Peru Crew would check out the two fields (Dubois and Kendall) to the north. Both were listed as landing strips or air strips but it seemed reasonable that we could find a plane or two available. The Hinsdale Survivors would check out Blueberry Hill Airport to the south.
If planes were found, then there would be some pilot training. Well, by training it would likely be a slow solo effort by those qualified based upon the computer simulator flying. Once we had at least one flight worthy crew we could start sending them out to scout the area.
May 16th
Mark and I made the run out to Kendall Airfield to see what is out there in the way of aircraft. We found that although there were some spare parts and broken down pieces of planes there weren’t any that were in airworthy shape, only an old Cessna that was in the midst of maintenance with the engine laying in pieces on the hanger floor.
Matt and Ron made the run to Dubois. They had a little more luck. They found a couple of small planes that had battery power to the engine and they were able to fire up the engine. It appeared that they could be a workable option.
On our way back Mark and I stopped at the local Ford dealership on the north end of Hinsdale. We checked out their inventory of trucks. I am thinking that there is a red F 350 diesel that has my name on it. But in fairness we will have to talk that over with the Hinsdale folks. There are more than enough vehicles in stock so that it would be unlikely that there would be resistance to our taking some.
When we got back to Peru, we found that there was already a computer flight simulator up and running. Lance and Fred were all over that and were actually practicing with it. Of course they were flying F-18s and doing dog-fighting. We give our report of nothing found, that took the wind from under their wings. But when Matt and Ron got back with their report things perked back up.
.
I spoke to the council about the diesel trucks we had found and tried to push them into getting on the horn with Hinsdale to clear the acquisition. Charlene declined saying, “Let’s not get too grabby. We’ll wait until our next scheduled contact o
n the 20th and I’ll run it by Barkley.
May 17th
We have a couple of days before we hook up with Hinsdale regarding the airplane stuff. We have a couple of small planes so we may have some options. I am hoping that the Blueberry Hill Airport has some planes, and I am optimistic that it will because it is a larger facility.
In thinking about flying, assuming we can put all the pieces together, that is one concern I have. If we go airborne we are sending up a beacon that says “Here we are”. It may not be a trail of bread crumbs to our door but if there are others out there, and I am certain that there are, at this point they must be as resourceful as we are. They will have maps, and supplies and they must be armed. The important question is if they found us what their intentions would be.
The Event Trilogy (Book 1): Life After the Meteor Page 15