Disaster In The ‘Burbs - Chapter 3

‘It’ was a slow traveling, relatively small as large things of such nature go, totally unexpected, Near Earth Object, that no one knew was near Earth until two days before the sun began to break it up and the pieces started impacting earth like a gigantic shotgun blast of buck and ball.

The two days of warning probably caused as much panic and problems as would have occurred without it. People began dying literally minutes after the announcement of the pending impact came from the UN Secretary General in a world-wide broadcast at Noon, New York time. Some people with bad hearts that couldn’t stand the stress of the news just keeled over.

Right on the heels of that, came killings, from simple euthanasia to hard core murder, with almost as many reasons for the killings as there were killers. Including a large number of would be killers being killed when they tried to kill someone that didn’t like the idea of dying.

Darlene was working a temp job as an order picker in one of the remaining Electrical/Plumbing/HVAC warehouse operations in the area. It was going to be a pretty good placing, Darlene thought a couple of days after she’d taken the job. Since the warehouse was just about the only source of parts in the area, they were getting almost all of the existing business in the trades in the area. The pay was decent, the warehouse cool even in the worst of the summer heat, and her co-workers were a pretty good bunch.

So, when someone yelled at everyone in the warehouse to come the reception area to listen to the broadcast happening at that moment, and Darlene heard what was about to happen she said probably only the third bad word she’d ever uttered in her life.

“What do we do?” the receptionist asked.

“I’ll answer that,” said the General Manager of the large operation. “You keep working until we find out more.”

It seemed to have the opposite effect of what the GM wanted. The room was almost empty in two minutes. Only the GM, the receptionist, and Darlene were left in the room. The GM went on a cursing streak that lasted fully a minute and a half and had words in it that Darlene had never heard, much less knew the meaning of.

Finally he stopped, looked at Darlene and the receptionist, and said, softly. “Might as well go home until day after tomorrow. I expect you back at work when all this nonsense is over.”

The receptionist almost knocked her computer keyboard off the desk in her hurry to leave.

The GM looked at Darlene. “What about you?”

“I’ll wait until the panic in the streets calms down some. Last thing I want is to get run over on my bicycle by a frightened motorist trying to get home to his or her family.”

“Yeah. Real or not, that’s what is happening out there. You want a drink while you wait?”

Darlene shook her head and suddenly decided that maybe being out in traffic might just be better than being here with the GM now that his eyes were glinting. She turned and ran into the warehouse. Grabbing her work BOB off the Paratrooper bicycle and putting it on, Darlene then pulled her bike from the rack just inside the loading door. She looked around. The GM was just watching from the office door she’d just come through. He just stood there as Darlene put the feet to the pedals and sped away.

It had been an easy ride to and from the warehouse the two days she’d worked there. And just like her projection of the dangers, Darlene had to be very careful not to get hit by the high speed, uncontrolled traffic on the streets.

But she made it home all right. After carefully locking the garage, Darlene went inside and turned on the TV. She happened to have commercial power at the moment. Every station that wasn’t completely pre-programmed was carrying the news. Experts were hastily brought in to studios and were giving their opinion about the situation. That it was going to be a planet killer, or wouldn’t have much effect except for pretty meteor showers. The opinions ran the gamut. On just about every show, since it wasn’t politically correct to just stick with an opinion. Every side had to be given fair time.

Darlene watched calmly. At least outwardly so. Inside she was wracking her brain to try to figure out what else she could do to prepare for the event. If the things did hit, and she happened to be at ground zero of one of them, there wasn’t much she could do to prevent or avoid it.

If one hit close, her shelter would give her some protection, but not as much as an underground one. Not enough time to do that. Probably every piece of earth moving equipment is already in use.

If a hit was at some distance, she had a good chance of surviving the impact itself. The aftermath wasn’t a sure thing.

If any and all impacts were well away from her, the odds went up for surviving the event, as did surviving the early post impact timeframe. Long term… She was as ready as she had been able to provide for.

Thoughts of going to get a ‘few more things’ crossed her mind, but she weighed the pros and cons and the cons won out. Too big a risk for too small a reward. Best to batten down the hatches immediately and go with the flow, no matter what happened.

Darlene got up, did a couple loads of laundry that needed doing, made herself a bit of lunch, worked in the garden, orchards, and greenhouse, and then checked the TV again. Same ol’ same ‘ol.

A good supper, long bath, and one last check of the TV before going to bed. At least there was consensus that there would be no impacts before approximately five in the evening the following day, New York time. The initial impacts, if there were any, would be on the dark side of the world.

Darlene went to bed, and surprisingly, fell right to sleep.

She was up early the next morning and checked the news again. The opinions weren’t quite as wide spread. Yes, there would be impacts, but they would all be small. No, the planet wouldn’t be destroyed completely, but human kind still might perish.

Darlene spent the day tidying up things, especially outdoors. She didn’t want anything blowing away if she could help it. She readied the shelter, though there wasn’t that much to be done.

By five New York time, like billions of others that had a TV, Darlene was in front of it, to see what could be seen, if anything.

“There was something,” the particular on-camera newswoman said, pointing up into the dark sky of central China. “There! There’s another!”

The screen went white for a moment, and then another news reader came on, also out in the open, pointing at the many streaks showing up in the sky.

Another white screen and the anchor man came on. He was in the network’s offices. “I’m sorry, Ladies and Gentlemen. We seem to be losing contact with our crews as the earth turns into this onslaught of extraterrestrial material slowly but surely. We hope to have…”

The screen went white and then black. When nothing happened for several seconds, Darlene tried another channel. It went black almost immediately. Communications were failing faster than she could switch channels. Finally she just turned the TV off, looked at her watch, and then went outside into the twilight that would soon be full dark.

Darlene checked her fence gates. Locked tight. She triggered the security remote and the security shutters on the doors and windows began to close, except for the walkway door into the garage from the driveway. Taking the lawn chair she’d left out when putting things away earlier, she put it on the driveway where she could look east.

Sipping from a glass of iced tea, she talked to a couple of the neighbors that had come outside themselves and saw her sitting there.

“How can you just sit there?” asked Mandy Benson. She was Darlene’s west side neighbor. They knew one another enough to carry on a conversation, but that was about it. The only real dealings Darlene had had with Mandy and Archibald Benson was about the fences, such a long time ago, it seemed like now.

“Nothing I can do,” Darlene said with a shrug. “We get hit or we don’t.”

There was a long period of silence as more and more people came out to watch for the impending impacts. Assuming there would be some. For some reason the majority of those people close came over to stand around Darlene’s driveway gate.

“How long are you going to wait?” someone asked, directing the question to Darlene. It was someone she didn’t know from down the block.

“Just until I see one in the sky, or see an impact.” The words were barely out of Darlene’s mouth when the eastern skyline lit up. “Like that,” Darlene added. “I’m going inside. I suggest the rest of you do, too.”

Calmly Darlene got up, folded the chair, picked up the iced tea from the driveway, and turned to the garage. The others erupted into panic as one streak of light zoomed over their heads with a screaming sound.

Darlene opened the door into the garage, closed the security door after she closed the regular door, set the chair aside, and went into the shelter, locking the two heavy wood and steel doors behind her. One at the outside entrance and the other at the entrance from the baffled entry hall. She was sealed in.

With only one battery powered LED light glowing, Darlene went to her knees, looked up at the ceiling of the shelter, brought her hands together, and then began to pray, her words barely audible.

The long prayer done, Darlene got into one of the four bunks in the shelter and laid down, wrapping herself in the blanket that was on the bunk. She turned to face the wall and waited, eyes closed, for whatever might come.

Darlene felt the shelter shake many times, one time violently. After what seemed an eternity, but was actually only three hours, the shocks stopped.

She tried one of the security cameras that had a feed into the shelter. It faced the street in front of the house, and several houses across the street from her. Everything looked fine, except for it being very dark, even at night. The commercial power was off again. She tried a camera that pointed east. She could see more of the sky. Such as it was. Just one ugly blackness all the way to the horizon. She could see the reflections of flames on the bottom of the dust cloud.

Checking the remote reading radiation meter, Darlene discovered that there was only background radiation. Then she looked at the weather panel. Ad first she thought everything was normal, but when the display changed to outside temperature she gasped. It was almost one hundred and fifty degrees outside, while still only seventy-one inside.

Determined to stay inside until the temperature came down, Darlene fixed another glass of iced tea, and sat down at the counter that held the computer, radios, weather instrument, and inside air quality monitors.

The CO2 level was still within limits but rising slowly. She didn’t have a headache yet. Opening up the laptop computer, Darlene did some reading of the various prep information she’d gathered from the internet and boned up on CO2.

It would be some time before she needed to hang CO2 absorption blankets, and more time than that before adding oxygen from the bottles stashed between the back wall of the shelter and the garage wall. The absorption blankets and oxygen equipment had been the hardest items to get for the shelter, and the most expensive items. Though she’d had to fudge the truth a little, and eat light for a couple of months, she’d managed to get them.

When the CO2 alarm sounded, Darlene was starting to get a headache. She put up the curtains and waited for the CO2 to drop. It did, slowly, but steadily. The oxygen level was down, but still adequate. The humidity was up so Darlene turned on the small de-humidifier in the shelter. The temperature inside the shelter was up to seventy-three degrees. Outside temperature down ten degrees to one forty.

Over the next couple of days Darlene napped for a while when she added oxygen to the shelter or hung fresh absorption blankets, as it gave her time to get some real sleep without worrying about the shelter environment for a few hours.

She didn’t even think about going outside until the outside temperature was down below one hundred twenty. When it had fallen that low, Darlene transferred the various atmospheric sensors to an isolation cabinet she’d made from an acrylic fish tank and a few parts from Radio Shack.

Opening a small valve, Darlene turned on the small fan that drew air from outside, through the isolation tank, and back outside. The sensor changed readings slightly, but, to Darlene’s great relief, oxygen, CO2, and carbon monoxide were within safe limits.

Still, when she stripped down and put on a lightweight Tyvek coverall with attached booties and hood, Darlene donned a respirator, too. Hesitating only a moment, Darlene wrapped the gun belt with the holstered Redhawk around her waist and buckled it in place. There had been no indications of hard radiation, but she made sure she had her pocket alarm in her pocket before she went outside.

Hesitating a moment, Darlene then opened the sealed door to the entry hall, and locked and sealed it behind her. Next she opened the door into the garage. She stopped there and looked around in the light from the bright six D-cell Maglight flashlight. So far, so good. A few things had been jostled about by the ground shocks, but nothing critical was damaged.

Crossing her fingers, Darlene tried the security door remote. The walk through door shutter began to open. “Yes!” Darlene said. There was still power in the battery bank for the house. There were some dead fish, and the water level was low in the fish tank.

Darlene stepped out into the faint light and looked around. There was enough light to see so she slipped the flashlight into a deep pocket in the coveralls. She made a circle around the house. Only on the east side did anything look amiss. The wall of the house and the roof looked different, somehow, and the trees in the orchard had shriveled leaves on their east facing sides.

The rabbits were dead in their hutches. There didn’t seem to be many worms, but there were some.

Next Darlene went out into the street and began to check neighbors’ houses. She stopped after the sixth house full of bodies. There had been a couple of bodies out on lawns and in the street, but their faces were so badly blistered from the flash that must have occurred, and the heat afterwards, she couldn’t tell who they were, even if she might have known them.

Lightning began to flash and Darlene felt a hot breeze. It looked like it would storm.

Turning around, Darlene went back to the garage. After taking out the dead fish and taking them out to the garden spot, she drained the tank down until the remaining fish were flapping around in an inch or so of water. Darlene activated the well pump and refilled the fish tank.

Just be before she went into the shelter, Darlene lifted the respirator and took a deep breath. The air smelled of char and heat and dead fish, and was hot in her lungs, but she didn’t pass out or feel ill. She took another breath just to be sure and then went in, sealing the doors behind her again, ready to take some pure oxygen to flush her lungs if she did react.

She monitored herself for several long minutes, but felt no ill effects from having breathed the outside air. Then, bathed in sweat from the heat outside, she stripped off the coverall and stepped into the shower in the small bathroom in one corner of the shelter.

Refreshed, Darlene fixed a bite to eat, checked the air in the shelter again, and laid down for a nap. That heat had just sucked the strength out of her.

When she woke, Darlene began scanning the Amateur Radio bands. Nothing but static at the moment. With as much particulate matter as was obviously in the air, and the possibility of electrical phenomena in the turbulent atmosphere, such as the heavy lightning, she really wasn’t expecting anything for several more days.

She slipped into a routine similar to that she’d followed before going outside. Before she explored further she wanted the outside temperature to come down more, and hopefully some of the dust to drift out of the atmosphere. She would still need a dust mask and goggles, but hopefully she wouldn’t need the respirator.

Keeping an eye on the outside by the cameras and monitor, Darlene saw the sky lighten just a bit every day, with light to heavy rain coming every day or so. It was washing some of the atmospheric contamination out of the sky, but Darlene decided it would be years, if not decades, before it all back down on the ground. Darlene said a little prayer to ask that there be enough sunlight for gardens to grow.

Nine days after the fact, with the temperature outside a bearable ninety-five degrees, Darlene dressed for the heat, armed herself, and went to check more of the housing tract. She’d tried the car and it had started right up, but she didn’t want to use it yet. Partly because of the dust, but also because she could see and go places on her bike she couldn’t if in the car.

There was enough light to see, and Darlene could easily tell where the sun was, but things were a long way from normal.

The bodies she found were highly desiccated. The extreme heat had dried them out before they could begin to decompose. Even those that had died inside were mummified, for the most part.

It took her three days to check every house in the tract that she could get into. If the place was locked up tight she left it as it was. Only those houses that had at least one door unlocked would she enter. She kept a log of what she found, including bodies. Something would have to be done about them, but there was no way she could handle it on her own.

It was eerie riding the bicycle around. It was almost totally silent. No birdsongs, traffic sounds, insects chirping. Nothing. Except for the thunder. That came often, often loud enough to hurt Darlene’s ears. Whenever she heard thunder, even if she didn’t see lightning first, she found overhead shelter. The lightning was horrific and the thunder just as bad. The rains came down in sheets, hot and muddy still.

Darlene finally took the Subaru out of the garage and left the tract to see what might lie outside of it. More of the same, mostly, she discovered. And then she found the first survivor besides herself.

It was a young woman and when she saw the Subaru she ran into the large C-store she’d been standing in front of. Darlene pulled into the parking lot and stopped. When she got out the Redhawk was in the holster on her belt, and she gripped the Marlin in her right hand.

“Hello!” Darlene called, opening the door a fraction. “Hello! Are you there? I’m not going to hurt you. Come on out!”

“Are you a girl?” came a quivering voice.

“Yes, I am,” Darlene answered, opening the door a bit more.

“Are there any guys with you? I won’t come out if there are any guys with you.”

“No. I’m alone. Are you all right?”

Slowly the woman stepped around the corner of the stores walk-in cooler. When she didn’t see anyone besides Darlene she ran forward and hugged Darlene before Darlene could react.

“Hey! Hey! It’s okay. You’re all right now. What happened here? How did you survive? What’s your name?”

“Milly.” That was all for a few moments. Then Milly stepped away from Darlene and took a look out the door of the store.

“You really alone?”

“I am. Can you tell me what’s been going on? How did you survive?”

“I was on late shift. I saw the things in the sky. And then it got even darker than night and really hot. I got in the walk-in cooler with a couple of the customers. But they didn’t stay. They talked about it and said they were going to make a run for it. I never saw them again.

“I just stayed in the cooler, drinking the drinks and water and eating the sandwiches.” Her nose turned up for a moment. “The toilet wouldn’t work and I used one of the plastic buckets from the fast food part of the store to go to the bathroom. It stinks.”

Milly seemed calmer, but she suddenly tensed. “Two days ago I was out looking around. Two guys chased me, but I got away and hid. They just kept looking and looking and looking and telling me what they were going to do to me when they caught me. They’re still around here somewhere. That’s why I hid when I saw you.”

“We are for a fact, still around,” came a voice from behind Darlene. “And there are two now, Harry. We each get one.”

“Yeah. And then the other one.” Both men laughed.

Darlene didn’t hesitate. She knew she couldn’t afford to. Survivors like these two would make living in the new world untenable. Moving quickly and fluidly, Darlene spun around, raising the Marlin to her shoulder at the same time. As soon as the front sight touch human form she fired and worked the lever, and continued to swing the gun in an arc.

She heard a shot that wasn’t her gun, and then her sights were crossing over another human form. Again she fired. The first man had gone down immediately. This second one, hit in the shoulder was able to fire his pistol again.

Darlene felt a burning sensation on her left leg, but had worked the lever of the Marlin again automatically and drew another bead. That heavy .44 Magnum hollow point slug took the top of the man’s head off from the nose up.

Darlene didn’t realize Milly was screaming and screaming again until the action was over. She went over to Milly and put her arm over her shoulders, turning her away from the carnage of the two men. The first man had taken the hollow point at the base of his throat, into the spine, half decapitating him.

“Milly,” Darlene said, “Wait right here. I need to check them.”

“Are they dead?” asked Milly, keeping her face toward the front door.

“Oh, yeah. They’re dead. These were the two after you?”

“Un-huh.”

Darlene picked up both pistols, and then checked the bodies for magazines. Both had two for their respective weapons. The first one had a wicked looking Spyderco CO8 Harpy hawk bill serrated folding blade knife. The second had a more conventional knife, but it was razor sharp. She wiped the blood off the things on the shooter’s pants and then went back to join Milly.

“Milly, do you know if any of your family survived?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been afraid to leave here in case it gets hot again. It was so hot I could barely stand it.”

Darlene looked back at the two dead men. Both their faces and hands were badly blistered. How they suffered that and survived for as long as they did, Darlene wasn’t sure.

“Come on. You’re going with me,” Darlene told Milly and headed out the door.

“Will you take me home?”

“I will. We’ll see if your family is okay. If they aren’t, don’t worry, you can stay with me.”

A subdued Milly followed Darlene out to the Subaru. She gave directions to Darlene on how to get to her house. Milly, like Darlene, wasn’t holding out much hope for her family, and it showed when they got there. “Will you look?” Milly asked Darlene.

“Okay. You sit here and I’ll check.” The front door of the house was unlocked and Darlene went inside. It was the same as so many others. People in poses of trying get away from the heat. In the tub, presumably with running water at the time. In front of the open doors of refrigerators and freezers.

Darlene stripped blankets and sheets off a couple of the beds and covered the bodies. She went outside and called to Milly. “Milly, I’ve covered the bodies. I want you to come in and get some clothes and things to bring with you to my place.”

It was like a recalcitrant child delaying going to school to get Milly in the house. When she did go inside, she grabbed things as quickly as she could and ran back out to the Subaru, clutching everything in her arms to her chest. Darlene looked for and found a suitcase. She took it outside and helped Milly get her things inside, and then close the case.

Darlene decided she’d done enough for the day and drove home, not seeing another soul.

Milly didn’t even question the fact that Darlene had electricity and running water. She just took advantage of them to bathe and change clothes, then eat the meal Darlene prepared. Darlene set her up in one of the bedrooms and suggested she get some sleep.

“It’s so hot!” Milly complained when she went into the bedroom.

“Yes, I guess it is,” Darlene said. She’d been sleeping in the shelter, since it was several degrees cooler, and she felt secure there. She wasn’t quite ready to let Milly know about it.

“Come on into the living room. It has a ceiling fan. You can sleep on the sofa under it.”

Milly eagerly followed and Darlene turned the fan on. It was probably as much psychological, as the fan merely stirred the eighty-five degree air.

When it was full dark again, Darlene closed all the security shutters and prepared for bed herself, luxuriating under the cool shower spray for several minutes.

Darlene was up at her normal time the next morning and opened up the house. It was still hot, but the temperature had dropped another three degrees, to eighty-two degrees. She prepared a breakfast, but Milly was still sleeping soundly. Darlene didn’t have the heart to wake her, trying to imagine the terror the young woman had endured those many days alone in the C-store’s cooler, and then hiding from the two men.

Suddenly Darlene was wondering why she didn’t feel bad about having taken two lives. Especially now, when the population of earth may have fallen by ninety-percent or more. “But scum is scum, no matter how many people are living or dead,” she said to the window as she looked out on the back yard.

When Milly began to scream, Darlene ran into the living room and took the frightened girl into her arms. “Easy, Milly. You’re okay. You’re safe with me.”

It took a couple of minutes, but Milly calmed down and then hurriedly went to the bathroom, after looking around the room and getting her bearings. Darlene went back into the kitchen and Darlene followed a few minutes later, still in her pajamas.

After warming up Milly’s breakfast she gave her the plate and watched as she fiddled with the food, eating very little of it.

“Milly,” Darlene said when Milly pushed the plate back and stretched, “You need to finish that up. We don’t have food to spare and can’t afford to waste any. And you’ll need your strength to…”

“You’re not my mother! You can’t tell me what to do. I’m an adult.” Milly reached over and flipped the plate off the counter, staring at Darlene.

Darlene held her temper and cleaned up the mess before she spoke. “Milly, if you expect to live under my roof, you will follow my rules.”

“Fine. Didn’t ask for help and don’t need help. I’ll take my stuff and get out of your hair, you mean old woman!”

“Milly, don’t be like…”

Milly wasn’t listening she stomped out of the kitchen and went to the room Darlene had intended her sleep in. Five minutes later she came out, carrying the suitcase. “Give me some food!” she demanded. “I’m leaving.”

“Well, young lady, if you want to leave you may do so, but I’m not wasting any of my food on you. There’s plenty out there for the taking, if the heat hasn’t ruined it.”

Darlene didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want Milly out on her own. If the first contacts were any indication, the post apocalypse world was going to be a dangerous place in which to live. But there was no way Milly was going to act like a spoiled thirteen year old in Darlene’s house. She was an adult and needed to act like one.

After those few minutes of thought, Darlene went to the front door and looked out to see if Milly might not just be trying to worry her, by pretending to leave.

“Nope,” Darlene said. She saw Milly across the street trying to get the neighbor’s car started. Darlene just watched. Finally Milly had the car started, backed out of the driveway and took off, screeching the tires when she floored the accelerator. The engine was running rough at first, but Darlene heard it settle down before Milly made the corner. Milly took the first corner on two wheels, and Darlene heard more squealing tires as Milly made her way out of the subdivision.

Hurt and annoyed both, Darlene wiped away tears that had started to roll down her cheeks. “It is her life. She’s entitled to do what she wants with it.”

A moment later Darlene straightened up and said, “Quit feeling sorry for yourself! Time to go do some more exploring. If Milly survived, there are almost certainly others in the area.”

There were, but it took Darlene several days to find them. There were individuals here and there, and a couple of families that had made it. All had similar experiences and had suffered much more than Darlene had in her shelter. Deep basements, bank vaults, walk in coolers like Milly used… All had given just enough protection to save lives, but the survivors had all suffered terribly from the heat.

Many were desperate for water and Darlene began hitting every little and large store she passed to pick up bottles of water and easily digested foods, such as simple soups. Until the survivors she found had recuperated enough to fend for themselves, Darlene made a regular round checking on them and handing out the food she got at stores.

Finally, after a month, those that Darlene had found and helped, began helping themselves. Then Darlene decided to check the hospital. She’d thought of it several times before, but had put it out of her mind. It was going to be a bad situation, and Darlene knew it.

But she went, and discovered a group of survivors at the hospital numbering more than the total of individuals and family she’d already found. A total of fifty-four had survived in the deep basement shelter of the hospital. And they weren’t all patients and staff of the hospital. It was some time before Darlene found out the details, but when she saw Kevin and Jayne Noodles she had an uneasy feeling that things had not been pleasant or easy.

At least the group was organized, to a degree. Thanks to one Dr. Brian James, who had simply taken charge and run the shelter. But there was only a degree of cooperation. There were many that had disagreed with Dr. James and made their disagreement known often and loudly, Darlene discovered.

There were essentially three groups at the hospital. The largest being the one Dr. James led with most of the staff of the hospital and the few patients that had survived willingly following.

The second was a small group, apparently with no real leader, but including Kevin and Jayne, that had caused all sorts of trouble for the Doctor from the time they arrived and demanded entry till the time Darlene showed up.

The third group was about a third of the total group. They were leaderless as well, and tended to back, as a group, first the Doctor, and then the malcontents, as each subject came up for debate.

Forays had been taken in the area around the hospital and food and water obtained, but everyone was still staying at the hospital, many in the shelter, with only a small handful of Dr. James’ group doing the foraging and gathering of supplies for the others.

They also were responsible for clearing the dead from the hospital and burying them. A construction project nearby had a backhoe that one of the men could operate, so the burial wasn’t that difficult. Just heart rending.

As soon as Jayne saw Darlene, with her skin still as smooth and untouched as before the impacts, she became almost hysterical. Jayne’s once beautiful skin was as red and blistered as the rest of those that had endured the one-hundred-forty degree heat in the shelter during the worst of the heat outside. Unlike Darlene’s sealed shelter, the hospital shelter had to bring in outside air, even when it was the hottest, to breathe.

Dr. James came over and, with Kevin’s help, got Jayne calmed down. It took a Valium to get Jayne to calm down and shut up.”

“You know her?” Dr. James asked Darlene when he walked over to her after dealing with Jayne. Darlene had made herself scarce, to lessen the stress on Jayne while the Doctor was talking to her.

“We used to be next-door neighbors,” Darlene replied. We still live in the same subdivision, but not next door to each other.”

“That’s probably a good thing,” said the Doctor with a chuckle. “She seems to think you caused all this trouble.”

“I’m not surprised,” Darlene said, a wry smile curving her lips. “She’s hasn’t liked me from the day I moved in. It had been her best friend’s house before I moved in. She blamed me for her leaving, too.”

“I see. And may I ask how you have managed to survive, with so little physical ailments?”

“I have a shelter at my house,” Darlene said, having immediately trusted Dr. James after talking to him upon her arrival. “Sealed myself in. The temperature inside never got above eighty.”

“But CO2?”

“I had absorption material and medical oxygen to supplement the original air content of the shelter.”

“Wow. You sound like you were expecting this.”

“Not this specifically, though it was one of the things I considered when I built the shelter.”

“So. Are you one of those survivalists out to overthrow the government? Kind of a moot point now, I’d venture to say.”

The Doctor noted the annoyance in Darlene’s face. “I was not, and am not, one of those “Survivalists” you hear… heard about in the media before all this. I prepared for hard times, not the overthrow of the government. I don’t plan to start my own country. Or church, for that matter.”

“Sore spot, I take it.” The Doctor was smiling.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“So. You know how to survive. What do you suggest we do?”

“Oh, no! I’m not getting involved in this group. I’ve got my hands full trying to get the other survivors I’ve found to deal with things on their own.”

Dr. James was surprised. “You mean there are others, besides those of us in the hospital?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know?”

Dr. James shook his head. “I just assumed we were the only ones, and we barely made it at that.”

“Others had basements. There was one family stayed in a bank vault. And several people took up residence in store walk-in cooers.”

“Oh. I see. So we really need to get organized, with this many people to see to, and no help coming.”

“Don’t really know if there will be any help,” Darlene said slowly. “I haven’t been able to raise anyone on Amateur Radio. If we survived, I’m sure there are others. Some areas probably weren’t nearly as badly affected as we were.” There was a pause and then Darlene added. “Of course, there are bound to be huge areas where no one survived.”

“That, I’m sure of. Now, what should we do?”

Darlene sighed. “The basics. I imagine the sewer will stop up, if it hasn’t already. Need to dig temporary latrines. Send out salvage parties to keep supplied with food and water. You have medical supplies, I would think.”

Dr. James smiled and nodded.

“But all of you can’t stay here. There are countless houses in the area that are vacant. Or will be when the bodies are removed and buried. I suggest people take up residence in homes near useable water supplies, plant gardens, and salvage everything edible in the entire area of operations. The homes need to have fireplaces or wood stoves, and teams shou…”

“Fireplaces and wood stoves? In this heat?”

“This won’t last. I don’t know when it will happen, but sometime in the mid-term to long-term future, all the debris in the air is going to trigger swing to colder temperatures. Perhaps even an ice age.”

“I thought it would stay hot. Greenhouse gasses and all.”

“It might. That’s one theory. I happen to believe the lack of sunlight will have a bigger impact than the extra greenhouse gases produced.”

“I see.”

“And…” Darlene said, a bit reluctantly, “You might want to think about arming some of the people. I’ve already run into survivors that aren’t playing by societies rules.”

“Yeah. I noticed the pistol you carry.”

“It’s a double action revolver, not a pistol. But that’s beside the point. Yes. I do. And I intend to keep carrying it all the time, for the foreseeable future. I’ll not have survived this event to be taken or killed by someone that thinks there are no more rules and they can do anything they please without worrying about consequences.”

“You are quite adamant about this,” the Doctor said, studying Darlene’s face.

“I am. Anyone that doesn’t like it can just stay away from me.” She looked the Doctor right in the eyes when she said it.

He nodded. “I understand. Don’t really approve, but you are too valuable a resource to run off.”

“Now look! I am not a resource for you! You have plenty of people to take care of business. I suggest you go about doing it.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you angry. Look. You’ve already given advice worth its weight in gold. Just try to keep in contact. I think all the survivors in this area are going to have to get along and cooperate if any of us are to survive very long.”

Somewhat mollified, Darlene nodded. “I’ll keep in touch. And leave you with one warning. Look out for Jayne Noodles. She’s trouble.”

“Funny. That’s one of the things she said about you.”

“I bet. Probably the mildest thing she said.”

“It was, actually.”

“I’ll try to get by every few days to see how you’re doing here.” She held out her hand and the Doctor shook it.

“Thank you for doing what you are,” he said, and then turned when someone called his name.

Darlene made an unobtrusive exit, her mind full of possibilities and potential problems. She was seeing more problems that positive possibilities. With what she’d learned in the past hour or so, Darlene made it a point to stop at the first store she came to and filled the rear of the Subaru with foods suitable for long term storage, and many other items of use for long term survival. For herself.

The slightly haphazard way she’d been gathering things for others had to come to an end. Salvage must be planned and carried out carefully. But she wasn’t going to disadvantage herself totally for the sake of others.

On the way home Darlene stopped at the big park that lay between her subdivision and the next. It had a large lake. Darlene was relieved to see that, though the high heat had evaporated significant amounts of the water, the rains had replenished it somewhat from the last time she’d checked.

Darlene did a great deal of thinking that evening, late into the night. Of course she would help, where she could, but she wasn’t going to give up her independence to take care of people that had made no preparations for anything, much less the event they were in the process of surviving.

Disaster In The ‘Burbs - Chapter 4

Well aware that processed foods would eventually run out, Darlene included rabbits and chickens in her search for long term supplies. She decided to go to the place where she’d bought her first set of breeder rabbits.

It was a gruesome sight. Most of the rabbits were dead in their hutches. But Darlene found several, rather skinny, rabbits running loose around the place. The only thing she could figure was that the owner had turned loose several to fend for themselves. Probably his favorites.

The rabbits were all docile and Darlene didn’t have much trouble picking them up and putting them in cages she found stacked by the hutches. She gave all of them water and some feed, which they devoured with relish. Darlene loaded all the rabbit feed and as well as all of the paraphernalia the dead owner had to raise rabbits on a large scale that she didn’t already have.

It took her a week of looking in the area to find any live chickens. She wasn’t sure how they had survived the event, but they obviously had. Then she spotted the open crawlspace under the two-story house. When she approached that was where the chickens bolted to. Apparently the crawlspace had been adequate shelter for at least some of the chickens. Not all had survived, as there were dead chickens here and there on the property.

Darlene blocked the entrance to the crawlspace and then looked around the small farm. Everything she would need to capture and carry the chickens was there. She left as the light faded. She got the rabbits she’d found in her hutches, ate a light supper, secured the house, and went to bed.

She was up before daylight the next day and on the way to get the chickens. It was light when she arrived. It took an hour to rig an enclosed pen at the crawlspace opening. When it was done, Darlene donned one of her Tyvek coveralls, added a dust mask and goggles, grabbed the Maglight six D-cell flashlight, and wiggled under the house. She turned and adjusted the pen for a tight fight.

It took four times as long as she expected, and she wound up losing three of the birds, but when she finished up, Darlene had two roosters, seventeen hens, and a good thirty chicks. It was deafening in the Subaru on the way back home. With the chickens in their new home, Darlene went back and stripped the small farm of its chicken raising equipment, and all the feed and supplements she could find.

It took her a week to get the rear of the Subaru cleaned thoroughly enough to eliminate the chicken smell. But she was again well fixed for small stock meat production, as well as eggs.

The temperatures had continued to drop, reaching normal for the area several weeks after the impacts. Darlene finally made contact with several Amateur Radio Operators using her unlicensed equipment. There were many survivors, spread out all around the world, though she made only one contact in the areas of Russia, China, and all of Africa. It seems that area took a second round of hits twenty-four hours after the first impacts.

Eastern Europe had been hit with the second round, too, but there were only a handful of additional hits in Western Europe and the Atlantic Ocean.

Australia had been peppered, but with the low population density, there was a higher percentage of survivors.

All-in-all, North, Central, and South America had fared fairly well, if eight-five percent loss of life instead of ninety-five percent could even be called that.

But the information told Darlene what she was desperate to know. There wouldn’t be any help coming from outside the US. It and every other nation was going to be on its own for a very long time.

Between dozens of impact generated tsunamis in every ocean, and enough heat generated by the impacts to melt Northern Hemisphere land locked ice and most of the ice on Antarctica, coastlines around the world had changed. Entire coastal cities and populations had been wiped off the face of the world. The world’s oceans were almost forty feet higher than normal already, and rising. But that was about to change.

With the fresh water influx to the North Atlantic, the Gulf Stream sank. And the temperature didn’t stop dropping when it reached normal in any part of the world. It should have stayed in the high seventies where Darlene was. But the thermometer kept dropping a degree or so every few days as the tremendous rains continued on a near daily basis.

Darlene was never quite sure why the exodus from the hospital ended up in her little domain, when it happened. Perhaps it was because that is where Jayne and Kevin lived. They essentially led the way. Darlene didn’t think the Noodles were any happier about it than she was.

But people began filtering in, taking up residence in the vacant homes. Even many of those survivors that Darlene had found individually got the word and moved in. Most just stacked the bodies from their new homes two or three houses down, if it was empty. When she saw it, Darlene immediately found Dr. James. It wasn’t hard. He’d taken the house next to Darlene.

“We have to do something about the bodies,” she told him.

Dr. James rubbed his forehead. “I know. I told the people that, but no one wants to do it.”

The two were standing by Dr. James walk gate. When a voice came from behind Darlene she jumped and her hand went to the Redhawk revolver on her hip.

“Geez! Bear! Don’t do that!” she exclaimed when she turned around and saw who it was. Bear and his family had managed to survive on their own. Like Darlene, Bear had a good shelter. But it didn’t include the air monitoring and handling options Darlene’s did. He and the family had suffered from the heat as much as the others, despite being well prepared.

“I’ll do it,” Bear said. “I can run a backhoe. We just have to find one around here.”

“There’s one at the hospital,” Dr. James said.

Almost as one voice, Darlene and Bear each said, “That’s too far.” Darlene continued. “Can’t afford to waste the fuel. There won’t be any new fuel for a long time. At least, not in this area.”

“She’s right. There’s bound to be something close,” Bear added.

“I’ll go looking. Even as desiccated as they are, we don’t want the bodies out in the open. Eventually dogs and other animals that survived will start feeding on them. That’s just not a good thing, any way you look at it.”

With her own words in her mind, Darlene took the Paratrooper bicycle on the search. She picked an area that she hadn’t already been through, knowing there were no construction projects going on it those areas.

It didn’t take as long as she thought it would. A mile and a half toward the edge of town a new mall was going in. There was any type of equipment they might need. After getting back to her house she took the Subaru out of the garage and went to get Bear. He and his family had taken the house the other side of the Noodles old lot.

Darlene took it upon herself to make the decision to bury the dead at the mall building site. It would use fewer resources to move the bodies that far than moving the backhoe. Plus there wasn’t a really good place within the development to bury them. There’d already been objections to the plan on that basis.

So Bear began to dig the hole and Darlene went to find volunteers to move the bodies. She didn’t have much luck. It came down to her and Dr. James. With Bear’s help they got one of the dump trucks at the construction site started and the two used it to move the bodies.

Darlene loaned the Doctor a facemask and a pair of leather gloves. Equipped the same way the nasty work commenced. There could be no gentleness to it, with just the two of them working. They had to swing the bodies back and forth a couple of times to get the momentum to toss them up to the front of the dump truck body.

Dr. James and Darlene were thankful for the cooler temperatures. They didn’t stop when the regular afternoon rain came. Darlene shivered once, but put it off to the strain of handling the bodies.

It took three full days to get all the bodies inside the walled development moved and buried. That included quite a few animal carcasses in addition to the human. It was all Darlene could do to make herself handle the several babies and toddlers that had perished. Those got special handling. They were set gently down in the dump truck right at the rear, and then laid carefully down in the mass grave.

Darlene kept to herself for several days after that. But the needs of the community intruded again, bringing her out of the doldrums handling the bodies had caused. Dr. James was ringing the walk gate buzzer and Darlene went out to meet him.

“Now what?” she asked, seeing the sheepish look on the Doctor’s face. “More problems?”

Dr. James nodded. “People are telling me the sewer is backing up. Most people are hauling water from the lake and flushing toilets with it, but they’re backed up now.”

“Well, for goodness sake! I told you they needed to dig latrines or build outhouses! Without commercial power the sewer system won’t work!”

“Some of them just don’t want to do that. They want power back and sewer.”

“Not going to happen. At least, not for a long time. We might eventually get septic tanks and drainage fields put in for everyone, but that’ll take months and a lot of cooperation.”

“I’ll tell them it’s backyard outhouses for now. Uh… What do you think about getting the water turned back on.”

“Crimeny, Doc! Don’t you listen? No electricity, no water! Until we can find someone to put in a local well, and get a pump and tank, and a generator to run it… It’s hauling from the lake, or drive your own.”

“Drive your own?” Dr. James’ brow was furrowed in confusion.

Darlene winced. She should have let that slip. “Well, if they can find the parts, the water table isn’t that far down, and they can drive a well. It’s what I did.”

She let Dr. James through the gate and walked over to the water feature just off the walkway.

“That’s just a fountain, isn’t it?”

Darlene shook her head. “I did that so no one would bother me about it. It’s only an inch and a quarter well. It would handle one house, but that’s all. The lake is still the best source of water. Though… rather than boil it for drinking water…” She gave Dr. James a sharp look. “People are boiling the water from the lake, aren’t they?”

“Well… They’re supposed to be. I’ve had a couple of cases of bad diarrhea that might be caused by bad water.”

Darlene looked down at the ground for a long moment. “Okay. This water is good. I had it tested and I don’t think the impacts would have changed that. Anyone that wants clean drinking water can come get it.” She frowned at the Doctor. “But only at certain times of the day. I’m not going to have people in the yard messing around when I’m not here, or at all hours of the day when I am here.

“You tell them they have to provide their own containers and fill them between six AM and seven AM in the morning, and six and seven in the evening. If I’m not here some of those times, they’ll just have to wait until I am here.”

“That seems reasonable.”

“Don’t bet on some of the others thinking that.”

Darlene was right. People started showing up as soon as word got around. Darlene went ahead and let those with containers fill them, but refused to turn loose any of her garden buckets for anyone to use.

Then Kevin and Jayne showed up. “I knew you were doing something against the CC&R’s,” Jayne said. She stopped outside the fence and motioned at Kevin. “Give her the jugs. We’d better not get sick because of this water,” Jayne added.

Darlene had made no move to come over to the fence to get the milk jugs from Kevin. “You’ll have to pump it yourself.”

“Figures!” Jayne hissed. “Do it, Kevin.”

A quiet and obedient Kevin did that when Darlene used the remote to unlock the gate. As it was, Darlene wound up holding the jugs in place for Kevin to use the pump to fill them. He couldn’t do both.

“From now on, it’s six to seven, morning and evening,” Darlene said as Kevin went back through the gate.

“You haven’t changed since all this, have you?” Jayne asked. “Still the superior little witch that wants to make her own rules and have everybody else live by them. Even carry a gun to make sure everyone follows along.”

Darlene was livid, but she stayed where she was and swallowed the angry comment she was about to make. “Think what you want, Jayne. You always do.”

Chin up, Jayne stalked off, Kevin following docilely. Darlene went into the house to cool down, muttering to herself as she went.


Not much of Darlene’s garden had survived the days of high heat. She was using the tiller on it to mix in the remains when she heard the bell ring that she’d fastened to the walk gate to her property.

“Now what?” she asked. Darlene glanced at her watch. It was ten in the morning. Long after everyone that wanted water was supposed to be getting it. She went around the house and stepped through the side gate. Darlene saw the Doctor, Bear, and three other men.

Darlene walked over, but made no move to open the gate. “What is it?” she asked.

“We have another problem,” the Doctor said. “Garbage is starting to pile up and…”

“For crying out loud! Just get a couple of guys to start up a garbage truck, load it up, compress the load and dump it at the dump. What’s hard about that?”

Bear looked a bit sheepish. “Well, when you put it like that, nothing. We were talking about digging a hole and burying it here, using pickup trucks to gather it up.”

“That’s not at all efficient,” Darlene said.

“No, it isn’t that’s why we came to you,” said one of the other men. One she didn’t know. “Everybody says you always have an idea.”

“Yeah, I have ideas, all right. But you don’t want to hear some of them right at this moment.”

“Come on, guys,” Bear said. “I think I can figure out a garbage truck if we can find one.” The group started to move away.

Darlene thought Dr. James was going to stay and say something else to her, but he shook his head and went with the others.

Later that day Darlene got on her bicycle and rode around the tract. Sure enough, there was Bear, driving the garbage truck, with the Doctor and one other man pitching the bags of trash and garbage up into the hopper. Every few stops Bear dumped the hopper into the tank and ran the ram to compress the load.

Darlene stopped. “Dr. James, you shouldn’t be doing this! You’re way too valuable to the community to catch something from handling this stuff, to straining your back, or something equally debilitating.” She looked at the other man. “No offense.”

The man smiled and replied. “None taken. I happen to agree with you. But no one else would volunteer to do it.”

Darlene suddenly took a closer look at the man. “Are you… Are you Jim Haynes? The well driller?”

The man smiled and nodded. “Well, I don’t really consider myself a real well driller. I jet in shallow wells for garden irrigation and for farmers to fill their water tanks out in the fields.”

“You were the one I talked to and suggested I use a drive point to get water.”

“Yeah! I remember that now! What did you ever do?”

“Drove two of them, as a matter of fact. The one everyone is using and…” Her eyes suddenly cut to the Doctor. He was smiling slightly at her inadvertent slip about having a second well.

She looked back at Jim. “Yeah. It worked fine.” Suddenly excited, Darlene asked, “You still have the equipment to do it? Jet in wells?”

“Well, sure. But I don’t have any materials. Things were so tough before this happened I quit stocking strainers, pipe, and fittings.”

“But you could drill wells for the houses here, if we got you the materials?”

“Sure. Probably wouldn’t need but one well for four or five houses, if the water flow is good.”

Bear had left the truck and was listening in.

“Both of mine pump really easy and there is a full spout of water with every stroke.” Darlene’s face fell. “But we’d have to get pumps… And they’d need electricity…”

“It’s doable,” Jim interjected. “I know there are still some pumps where I was buying them for resell. We’d just need to find some portable generators. People would have to limit their water use to a couple of periods a day, so the generators wouldn’t have to run all the time. You’d be able to get water, have light, cool down the fridge and freezer…”

Jim was getting excited. But his face suddenly fell. “But… Gee… I feel like a heel… But I have to figure a way to get food and stuff. Things are getting hard to find. Some of the ones without families are going far and wide to gather things up, but they want to get paid for them. I… I’d need to get paid for the work I do, to buy food, since I wouldn’t be able to go out salvaging.”

“That’s understandable,” Bear said. “I kind of feel the same way. I think the community should pitch in and help the ones that are working for the good of the community. Like us, doing the garbage.”

“I don’t mind doing it,” Dr. James said. “And I certainly won’t refuse to treat someone if they don’t have any money. What can we really buy with it, anyway?”

“Nothing. At the moment,” Darlene said. “It would pretty much just be trade goods for services, services for services, and services for goods, and goods for other goods. After that… Well… there is something… But it’s too early to talk about it. I’m certainly willing to contribute to the community coffers, and to pay individuals for any work they do for me.”

“What do you say, Jim?” asked Dr. James. “If we get food for you in trade, and we can get the materials, you’d do the wells?”

“Absolutely!”

“The sooner the better, then,” Darlene said. “This getting water from my hand pump is already getting really old. Half of them expect me to pump it for them. Even had one ask me to carry the bucket back for them.”

“I guess we need to get some kind of formal organization going to get this done,” Bear said. “A community council of sorts. A council in charge of a town meeting.”

“Anyone even tries to resurrect the old CC&R’s and I’m out. I mean it! This place had so many restrictions you wouldn’t believe it.”

“But you’d participate?” Dr. James asked.

“Sure she will, won’t you, Darlene?” Bear asked.

“Actually,” said Jim, “I think she should be nominated for council chair, assuming we’ll do a vote and all.”

“Not on your life!” Darlene said. “I’m not about to get involved in a mess like that. I’ll go along, as long as things are well thought out and reasonable. And don’t impact me much. I’ll contribute to the community coffer, like I said before, but I’m not going to carry this place just because of a few people not wanting to lift a finger of their own.”

“You’re talking about Jayne Noodles,” Dr. James said.

“That’s one of them, for sure.”

“She likes to throw her weight around and has a negative opinion about just about everything,” Jim said.

“Yeah.” Bear agreed, too.

“If I keep her out of your hair, you’ll consider participating?” asked Dr. James.

Darlene hesitated, but finally nodded. “You keep her out of my hair and I’ll participate. But not as an elected official! Just as a citizen with her own opinions to contribute.”

That seemed to settle the matter. Bear headed back to get in the cab of the garbage truck, and the Doctor and Jim went to the next house to pick up their trash. Darlene got back on her bike and took off. All three of the others thought a similar thought. Like Darlene was on a mission.