Final Dawn: Escape From Armageddon

by Maloney, Darrell

  The next step in the girls’ quest would be to design the layout for the mine. The boys had tried to do it, but had screwed it up badly. They had put the food storage bay a hundred feet away from the bay which would hold the kitchen and dining room.

  “Hello! Duh…” Hannah had chastised them. “I mean, what were you thinking?”

  Then they put the kids’ playground in the bay far away from the sleeping and living quarters.

  Sarah had some heartburn with this one. “Why would you expect a five year old to have to walk two hundred yards to ride a swing? It makes no sense.”

  Men, as all women know, can be so stupid sometimes. So the girls fired them from the layout and furnishing side of the project, the men hung their heads in shame and went on to other tasks. Tasks they weren’t so likely to screw up.

  “So what’s next on our agenda?” Sarah asked her friend.

  Hannah responded. “How about we design the common areas around the RVs? Make them look like a back yard. Install some artificial grass, and some patio tables. We could even put some patio umbrellas in the center of the tables, to cut out some of that harsh light.”

  Sarah added some ideas of her own. “How about some playground equipment in the common areas? Not a full-blown monster piece, like we’ll have in the play bay, but maybe a slide, or a small backyard swing set, or something?”

  “Ooh, ooh,” Hannah countered. “And how about a small playhouse for the children as well? They could play even if they didn’t want to go all the way to the play bay.”

  So, by the time the girls had finished their lunch and walked out of Carino’s, they already had their next mission in mind.

  But that was for tomorrow. For now, they planned to go unload their last batch of Walmart goods and take the afternoon off. After all, they deserved it.

  “What do you want to do?” Hannah asked.

  “I want to do some shopping. But for us this time. Some real shopping. And my nails look like hell.”

  They climbed into their vehicles laughing like schoolgirls who had just finished a long and difficult school project.

  -19-

  One of the things Sarah had mastered in college was Auto-Cad, an architectural design program. At one time the whole concept of building design had so fascinated her that she had given thought to becoming an architect. She had taken several courses to that end, until the stars and planets captured her heart in the same way they’d captured Hannah’s.

  Using her Auto-Cad skills, Sarah designed the layout for the interior of the mine. She had to work around certain things, of course. Mark had insisted that the security center be facing the main entry. She didn’t understand why, until he explained that he’d already run miles and miles of coax and telephone cables to that area. To extend them with additional add-on cables would degrade their strength, Mark said.

  Sarah wasn’t an engineer and didn’t know beans about signal strength or why that was important for security cameras, so she just took his word for it.

  She also had to work around Bay 11, where Mark had set up the “Walmart,” Bay 9, where Bryan was putting all the food stores, Bay 15, which held the water tanks, and Bay 20, which held the diesel.

  Hannah wasn’t familiar with Auto-Cad, and looked over Sarah’s shoulder with some fascination as she designed a common-sense layout for the mine.

  Hannah said “You’d think that an engineer and a master electrician would try to lay out a floor plan before they just took off on a project, wouldn’t you?”

  Sarah laughed and replied “Yes, but you have to remember that these are the same guys who would never, ever, ask for directions if they were lost. And the same guys who insist they can put anything together without ever looking at the instructions, and then wonder why they have pieces left over.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. You’d think they’d be better at planning.”

  “But really, what do you expect?” Sarah said. “After all, they’re only men…”

  When Sarah was finished she printed out several copies of the mine layout. She passed a copy to each of the other three over dinner to see if they had any questions.

  They didn’t, and Mark and Bryan were secretly impressed that there was finally some method to their madness. For months they’d been talking about all of the things that they had to cram into the mine, but had no real plan on where to organize everything. Now, thanks to Sarah, they did.

  Under Sarah’s plan, Bays 1 through 4 would be reserved for living quarters.

  On the eastern edge of the main corridor, outside of Bay 1, they would paint a large circle on the floor. Twelve feet across, this would become the “dog park,” and all family dogs would be trained to use it. Mark’s brother in law Mike, Debbie’s husband, was a professional dog trainer, so he’d be asked to make this happen. All dog owners would be asked to take turns cleaning up the mess periodically, and a large 55 gallon drum would be placed adjacent to the park to hold the waste.

  Bay 5 would have a playground, complete with a mammoth piece of playground equipment, a sandbox, and a handful of tricycles, bicycles, skateboards and scooters.

  Bay 6 would hold four small modular buildings, each about twelve feet square. One would hold a clinic, and would be equipped with a tiny exam room and a doctor’s office.

  The second building would provide space for Mark’s brother-in-law David, their resident dentist. At some point they would get a wish list from him and would order all the equipment needed to get through seven years’ worth of dental needs.

  The other two buildings would be one-room school houses. One for little kids and one for teens.

  The first fifty feet or so of Bay 7 would contain a wide variety of pool tables, ping pong tables and foosball tables. Lining each wall would be several full-sized arcade games, and in the center would be three entertainment centers, each with a large television and video game consoles.

  Immediately behind the game room, Mark had already stored all the materials he’d need to construct a miniature golf course, although he wasn’t quite sure when he’d have time to build it.

  Bay 8, due to its location in line with the mine’s entrance, would hold the security control center at the front of the bay, a large lounge area behind it, and small cubicles for watching movies and recorded television shows behind that. This area, like the game room and playground, would be carpeted.

  Bay 9 would have a dining room large enough to seat forty residents in front of the bay. Behind the dining area would be a kitchen with modern equipment to rival a large restaurant. Beyond that, in what would be a limited access area, would be the food storage section.

  Bay 10 would serve a dual purpose. Most of it the front 100 feet would be used as a water treatment plant. Mark had plans to recycle all of the mine’s gray water- water from showers and washing machines- and treat it to be reused for the same purpose. He would use the same tried and true methods used by any city’s water treatment facility, only on a smaller scale. On the right side of the front of the bay would be a bank of washing machines for residents’ use. The back of the bay would contain ten clotheslines, each stretching toward the back of the bay for one hundred feet.

  Each clothesline would be covered with pins of a particular color. Since after awhile, all residents would wear out the clothes they came into the mine with and would start wearing Walmart clothes, Sarah reasoned that everyone’s clothes would eventually start looking more or less alike. They would therefore be encouraged to clip a colored pin to their clothing, not only to remind them to go back for their laundry later, but also to remind them which line it was on.

  “Why not just put clothes dryers next to the washers?” Hannah asked.

  Sarah gave a practical answer. “We could, but they eat up an awful lot of electricity, and if we’re supposed to be conserving power to stretch our fuel, that’s an easy concession to make.”

  The mine’s “Walmart,” of course, would be located in Bay 11.

  Bay 12 already had all t
he materials needed to build a greenhouse. The brothers would pitch in together to build it before Saris 7 hit, and stock it with soil, fertilizer and high wattage growing lamps. As time started to get short, they would collect a variety of seeds and plants. Their sister, Karen, had a natural green thumb and had majored in agronomy in college. She was a natural choice to operate the greenhouse and grow a limited amount of fruits and vegetables. She just didn’t know it yet.

  Behind the greenhouse, Mark had placed three large aquariums. They would be filled with catfish, crawfish and perch. After breakout, these are the fish that would be used to stock the pond in the compound next door.

  Bay 13 probably wouldn’t be used much, but they were putting it in and hoping for the best. A fully stocked gym, with weights and a variety of exercise equipment, would give those who wanted to stay in shape the ability to do so.

  Behind the gym equipment would be a full-sized basketball court, with NBA style goals. It wouldn’t have a wooden floor, though. The natural salt floor had about the same consistency as hardwood, so they merely had to lay out the lines and paint them with black spray paint, which would soak into the salt and require only a periodic touchup.

  Across the main corridor between bays 13 and 14, a chain-link fence would be installed. This would keep family pets and children out of the industrial side of the mine. Ten feet behind the fence, a large canvas smell barrier would be hung from floor to ceiling to keep a variety of unpleasant smells from wafting over to the living area.

  Bay 14 would house the mine’s power plant. All electrical needs within the mine would be drawn from a battery bank, very similar to the one being built in the dormitory building east of Salt Mountain. The batteries would receive their power from the Junction City Electric Company, until it shut down. It would also receive power from the above ground wind turbine. And, as the system in the compound next door, any time available power in the battery bank dropped below thirty percent, one of two large generators would automatically kick in to bring the batteries up to full capacity.

  The water supply would be stored in Bay 15. 140 five thousand gallon tanks would be filled and ready to go when the mine was finally sealed.

  Bay 16 would store enough cattle, pig and chicken feed to keep their livestock alive until breakout. It would also have enough dog and cat food for any family pets that were brought into the mine.

  Adjacent to the feed storage, in Bay 17, plans were to stock two healthy bulls and four cows. Two of the cows would be used for breeding, and the other two would be for milking. Once a new calf was born and determined to be healthy, the oldest animal of the same sex would be slaughtered for food. Only keeping six head of cattle would ensure that they didn’t run out of cattle feed, but would give them a good start for raising a much larger herd after breakout.

  Their plans for pigs followed more or less the same guidelines. Except none of the pigs would be milked.

  In the back of the bay, a large chicken coop would be constructed. Twenty four chickens would be kept, and each would have a colored leg tag to indicate the month and year it was born. Since it would take eight chickens to feed forty people, whoever was assigned to this area would take daily headcounts. Any time the population hit thirty two, the flock would be culled, the eight oldest birds would be removed and slaughtered, then turned over to the kitchen staff. The rest would be allowed to cluck around a fenced part of the bay and lay eggs until their time was up.

  Bay 18 would have everything needed for butchering livestock, including a portable winch capable of lifting a four hundred pound cow carcass off the floor so it could be bled before butchering.

  There would also be two very large stainless steel tables, like those in restaurant kitchens, that would be used to cut and package the meat in a variety of ways. It would be packaged, marked with the type of cut and date, and passed on to the kitchen staff, where it would be stored in one of four large chest freezers.

  Animal parts, skins, and bones left over from slaughter would be placed into large 55-gallon drums, which would be sealed. A quarter inch ventilation hole would be drilled into the center of the lid. A burn valve would be installed into the hole, and after five days, escaping methane gas from the barrel would be ignited. It would burn a three to four inch flame for several weeks while the flesh inside the drum decomposed. It was a safe and sanitary way of disposing of carcasses, and would minimize the smell from decomposing flesh. Animal waste scooped up from the livestock area would also give off methane gas and would be disposed of in the same manner.

  Bay 19 would be the dump. Trash would be carefully separated. Burnable trash would be discarded in specified containers lined with black trash liners. All other trash would be in clear plastic bags. Once taken to the dump, black bags would be piled on one side of the bay, and clear bags on the other.

  This step would be taken in the unlikely event they miscalculated their diesel fuel requirements and ran low before the breakout. If that were to happen, they would use the methane-filled barrels and kerosene lanterns for light, and would burn wood and burnable trash to cook their meals. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, especially over a long period of time. But it was an adequate backup plan.

  Bay 20 would hold the diesel fuel. Eighty 5,000 gallon tanks. If they calculated correctly, it would be more than enough to last until breakout with some to spare.

  Bay 21 would be used for vehicle storage and maintenance. The guys realized that after five to seven years, most vehicles on the outside would be worthless. Batteries would be dead, tires would be flat, fuel would be degraded, and hydraulic lines would have started to leak.

  They therefore had to allow room for the storage and upkeep of all the vehicles they’d need to survive after the breakout.

  Shortly before Saris 7 hit, they planned to purchase a second tractor trailer rig, several pickup trucks, a livestock trailer, and two Hummers. All of the vehicles would be stored in Bay 21, with axle jacks keeping their wheels off the ground and with their tires slightly deflated. Exhaust lines would be run from their exhaust pipes of each vehicle to ventilation shafts in the mine’s ceiling above them. For ten minutes every week, as long as they were in the mine, their engines would be cranked and allowed to run. Their wheels would be rotated ninety degrees, to keep everything lubricated. And of course, if breakout came and one of the vehicles failed to work for any reason, they’d have backup parts to get them running again.

  -20-

  AUG 19, 2014 18 MONTHS UNTIL IMPACT

  Mark walked into the showroom of San Antonio’s RV World and was met by a salesman named Sammy Ramirez, who was loitering with a cup of coffee and waiting for his next customer.

  “Hello, sir. Call me Sammy. Are you interested in buying an RV today?”

  “Hi, Sammy. Actually, I’m in the market to buy twenty four of them. If the price is right.”

  Sammy was caught slightly off guard. So much so that he coughed and blew coffee out of his nose.

  Mark chuckled while Sammy tried to recompose himself. Then he explained.

  “I live in San Angelo.” Mark said. “There’s no place in San Angelo where you can rent an RV to take a weekend fishing trip, or take a week to go see Mount Rushmore. I want to buy a fleet of RVs and provide that service to the good folks of San Angelo. I think I can turn it into a good business.”

  Sammy said “I see.” He was just a little bit skeptical. The other salesmen were notorious for pulling pranks on him.

  “San Angelo’s got a couple of dealers. Why’d you come all the way to San Antonio to buy your fleet?”

  “Because you’re ten times bigger. You guys get volume discounts that smaller dealers don’t get.”

  Sammy considered this and knew it to be true. “Okay. Exactly what were you looking for?”

  The pair spent an hour looking at different models until Mark found one that he liked.

  The Safari Model 1200 rolled out on each side to double the floor space. It slept four comfortably, and was nicely furnished. Th
e price tag was $110,000.

  Mark had plenty of money to cover twenty four RVs for this price, but he didn’t want to make it too easy for Sammy.

  “I’ll tell you what, Sammy. I’m willing to buy twenty four of these today, and I’ll pay for them in advance. But, I’m not going to pay a hundred and ten grand apiece for them. Why don’t you talk to whoever you need to talk to and see if you can give me a fair deal?

  Sammy plodded off and went into an office just off the sales floor. Twenty seconds later three other men stood at the doorway to get a look at the man who just offered to write them a two and a half million dollar check.

  Sammy returned with the sales manager, who introduced himself as Tony Aguilara.

  “Hi, Tony. I was telling Sammy that I’m willing to write a check for twenty four of these, and will come back and pick them up as they come in. But a hundred and ten K is just a bit out of my range. What can you do for me?”

  The two haggled a bit and agreed on an even hundred thousand dollars a unit. Tony made a big deal of saying that he’d just break even at that price, and that it was barely worth his while.

  But Mark knew better. He knew that the dealer paid no more that ninety grand for each of the RVs, and would make ten thousand dollars per unit, for doing little more than taking delivery and doing the paperwork.

  Mark wrote a check for just under three million dollars, after taxes, and wasn’t three steps out the door before Tony was on the phone to the bank, making sure the check was good. Tony had been pranked a time or two himself.

  There were only three Safari Model 1200s on the lot that day, and Tony promised to polish them all up and fill them with diesel. Mark said he’d be back the next day with three drivers to pick them up, and would pick up the rest as they came in two or three at a time from the manufacturer.

  On the way back to the mine, Mark called Bryan and then the girls.

  “Hey, I just wanted to know if y’all wanted to take a day off tomorrow. Maybe go into San Antonio for lunch. Relax a bit. We’ve been working an awful lot lately.”