CHAPTER 24
John called us together in the dining area of the cave. The look on his face was somber and pained. This couldn’t be good news.
“I have been in radio contact with people around the country,” he said, “The meteor storm is over, and the sunlight has returned.
We all cheered. John smiled slightly, but the serious look on his face returned quickly.
“This is what we know so far. Most of the people who built bunkers the way we recommended have survived, but that appears to be a small percentage of the population. Large cities are the worst areas for damage and deaths. In all likelihood we are dealing with more than 300 million dead bodies just in the United States. There is so much destruction and so many corpses that some of the major cities have been abandoned. There’s no one left to bury the dead. Smaller cities fared a little better. Organized efforts are underway to collect the dead bodies and either burn or bury them.”
Intellectually, we all knew what was going to happen with the meteor storm. We weren’t emotionally prepared for the impact of what John was telling us. From the looks on their faces, everyone was taking the news harder than I would have thought.
“We have sent out simple directions for making lye by draining water through wood ashes. Lye can be used to help stop the spread of disease from the rotting corpses. People aren’t the only victims of the meteor storm. Millions of animals have also been killed. So far, no one has seen a single bird alive. We may have lost most, if not all of the bird species in the world, except for the ones collected in Project Ark.”
The realization was sinking in: we have survived a near extinction level event. Thousands, if not millions of animal and plant species may no longer exist. The world as we have known it has profoundly changed. Our ability, as humans, to adapt to changing conditions will be severely challenged. We, as a species, survived the last meteor storm, but the recovery took tens of thousands of years. It remained to be seen just how effective John and Project Ark would actually be.
“The colder weather is helping decrease the stench of decomposition, but it also means that bodies are harder to move because some of them have already frozen and stuck to the ground.
“The top two concerns are food and disease. Without adequate food more people are going to get sick and die, adding to an already devastating situation. I have directed that the food we have in storage be made available to people on an as needed basis. Already we have problems with people hoarding food and supplies. There are some reports of people being killed for their food, but so far those seem to be isolated incidences. Most people are cooperating with us and helping to create soup kitchens and shelters where we can feed and house the growing number of people who are arriving on a daily basis.”
“Will the food reserves in Project Ark be enough to feed all of the survivors?” someone asked.
“Based on the preliminary numbers of survivors, yes,” John said. The real problem is distribution. Some of the people are several days to several weeks of walking to get to where help is available. We’re doing everything we can to minimize those kinds of problems.”
“So how are people going to know where to go or what to do?” someone else asked.
“So far, the only communications are by amateur radio, and much of that is at night. A few police officers have survived and they are providing basic law enforcement. Government services are nonexistent. Most of the roads are pockmarked with meteorite impacts, but with some work will be passable. That’s all I have at this time.”
Meanwhile, teams approached the sixty-four commercial nuclear power plant sites in the U.S. with Geiger counters. The radiation levels were dropping, but still up in the deadly zone, and the area was marked as a health hazard with radiation markers.
The nation’s oil refineries had been destroyed along with most of the pipelines. Whatever oil was left had burned off as a result of the meteor storm. Some underground tanks at gas stations had survived, but they had been drained dry in the first month after the storm. The nation’s natural gas reserves were all underground, as were most of the gas pipelines, but in pumping stations where the pipelines surfaced, fires still raged with no way for ordinary people to shut off the flow of gas. The reality of a lack of fuel for energy and transportation was both sobering and depressing. It would take a decade, maybe two, before any kind of large scale petroleum products would be available.
After the long winter we finally got the rock door open. The snow was still there but it was melting rapidly. Tia and I joined a group that ventured out to finally see the world. The air was clear and a rich blue sky greeted us. The warmth of the sunshine embraced us as we waded through the snow to the rock outcropping. We climbed the back side of the rock and looked out at the vista spread out before us.
The ground where we were at the higher altitude was snow covered with black trees sticking up in macabre shapes by the millions. The valley stretched out below us with a lush green that spoke of renewal and new life.
“The old world has passed away,” Tia whispered to me, “and the new world has begun, reborn with promise and hope. Your old life has also passed away, and your new life has begun, reborn with promise and hope. Carl Palminteri is no more. Only you, Carl Koenig remains, the worthy guardian of a new world.”
I looked out at the green grass below and the bright blue sky and the white stream that rushed down the meadow. Tears came to my eyes. Tia was right. It was a new beginning for me, for everyone, and for the planet. We returned to the cave with the news of the verdant valley below. Tia and I went over to the deer enclosure. The deer were all standing, attentive, and full of expectation.
“Do you think they know?” she asked.
“Of course they know. Look at them. They’re ready to go back out into the world and begin again, just as we are,” I replied.
John opened the deer fence and the rock door. The deer, the elk, and then the moose rushed out of the cave and into the snow. They all headed down the slope, proceeding to the meadow below.
“Be fruitful and multiply,” John said as he watched the herd moving down and away from the cave.
CHAPTER 25
The people in Denver were constructing an administration building for John. Now that the snow was melting, we would be able to make the trip down to the city. Randy, our head of maintenance, had spent the last several days working on a project down where John’s cabin used to be. John had stored 300 bicycles in a protected enclosure for our use when we came out of the cave.
Randy built a platform with bicycle wheels on both sides and a long wooden tongue sticking out the front. He had connected six bicycles to the tongue, three on a side. The new administration building in Denver was going to need electricity and John had decided to move one of the fuel cells from the cave down to the new building.
Randy rigged two strong poles to the fuel cell in the cave with nylon cargo straps. Early the next morning, ten men from the cave struggled down the slope of the mountain carrying the fuel cell to the staging area where John’s cabin used to be. There we loaded it onto the platform and strapped it down for its journey down the mountain road and into the city. I carried the box containing the robot’s head, and Tia carried the box with the computer interface in it. We were still just over a hundred miles from Denver, but the majority of the trip was downhill.