Hidden (Final Dawn) (23 page)

     It was true that the dead outnumbered the survivors five thousand to one.

     But the few hundred survivors in
Washington, D.C. who made it to the thaw were livid.

     They weren’t angry at Mother Nature, for bringing the wrath of the heavens down upon them.

     No, they were angry at President Sanders, for taking care of himself and those close to him, while letting the others fend for themselves.

     Long before the rising temperatures began to melt the snow pack, the survivors started plotting their revenge. When the summers grew warm enough for them to begin venturing out, they found the doors to the bunkers. They found the ventilation shafts that supplied the bunkers with air. And they found the underground water tanks that supplied the bunker with drinking water, and water for its Olympic sized pool.

     And those few hundred survivors banded together to form their own mini-government. It was a government of the people, by the people, but its purpose wasn’t to control commerce and trade and provide for its citizens. No, its sole purpose was to take vengeance on all the people in the bunker. The ones they had come to despise. The ones they came to call “the lobster eaters.”

     In the fifth year, they had taken welding equipment to each of the bunker’s doors and welded them closed. Then, as an added measure, they backed trucks up against each door, cut the brake lines and flattened the tires. The only way anyone was coming out of those doors was to somehow figure out how to break the outer welds from the inside of the bunker. Then, if they were somehow able to accomplish that impossible task, to push forty tons of dead truck weight. It wasn’t going to happen.

     The main door, though, they decided not to block.

     Instead, the survivors took four U.S. Army deuce and a half trucks from the
Washington, D.C. armory and backed them up, side by side, to a point forty yards from the main door. On the back of each truck they mounted a twenty caliber machine gun, and aimed each gun at the door. And they manned their guns twenty four hours a day.

     In the spring of the sixth year of the freeze, they wrapped all of the ventilation shafts with heavy plastic and turned off the valves on the water source.

     Inside the bunker, no one had a clue why the water stopped running. Plumbers told the President that the fresh water source had been disrupted, but they didn’t know how. The one thing they never suspected that someone had done it on purpose. After all, there weren’t supposed to be any survivors on the outside.

     They had underestimated the lengths to which hatred will motivate a man to survive.

     Then they noticed it was getting harder and harder to breathe as each day went by. When the carbon dioxide alarms began going off intermittently, they finally figured out it wasn’t just the water that had been turned off.

     Their solution was to open the doors and let in some fresh air.

     But the doors wouldn’t open.

     One by one they went to each of the doors and unlocked them. Pushed against them. Hit them with battering rams. Nothing.

     Finally, they went to the main door. A team of three men unlocked the door and it opened easily. For a brief moment they were jubilant, and cheered. Then they saw the trucks with the machine guns mounted on them. The next thing they saw was also the last… the muzzle flashes from the machine gun barrels that tore them to shreds.

     Others inside the bunker managed to get the main door closed and locked again.

     They were safe from the machine guns.

     But not from the lack of oxygen.

     And one by one over the coming days, they passed out. Some woke up again, but it would be just a temporary respite. Most simply succumbed.

     As for the President and his family, they were among the last to go. Weeks earlier, when the air first started to get musty and it began to become apparent that something might be wrong, the President had his trusted aides gather compressed oxygen bottles from the decontamination pits and take them to the President’s private quarters. They sealed the quarters and used the oxygen to continue to breathe easily while others outside the quarters were dropping like flies. It was selfish and cruel, but was what should have been expected from a man who didn’t even make an effort to save his citizens.

     Some in the bunker, of course, grew desperate. Several times, the main door was opened, and men tried to leave. Some waved white flags. Others yelled that they were Senator So-And-So, and actually demanded they be allowed safe passage. Some tried to plead for their lives. Others tried to bargain with food, or gold bars, or political favors.

     All of them, every last one, were ripped to shreds by machine gun fire.

     The men manning the guns never stopped to consider the morality of what they were doing. They were too consumed by anger and hatred. Every single one of them had family members and friends who’d died miserable and painful deaths.

     If Sanders had tried to save them, they might have forgiven him. Might have spared his life. Might even have helped Sanders and the rest try to rebuild their country.

     But what angered them the most was that he wouldn’t even try.

     As for President Sanders, he was one of the last to die. In the last hour before he died, he took the lives of his family, with a handgun. He put them out of their misery first, ensuring they were dead, before finally turning the gun on himself. It was perhaps the only decent thing he did during the whole affair.

Chapter 39

     In those last few months before the world was livable again, the snow once again started to fall. The roads that had been clear during the summer were now once again under a blanket of white.

     Some were discouraged. They felt Mother Nature was teasing them, by giving them a taste of warmth, and then cruelly pulling it back again.

     But those who had been counting the warm weather days from one year to the next knew that the number of warm days was growing more and more each year. And they knew that the following spring, the thaw would bring warmth that would last more or less until fall.

     No, it wouldn’t be balmy. But it would be livable. And it would seem like old times again.

     On
Buena Vista Drive in San Antonio, they were making plans for the next stage in their lives.

     “We can dig up the dead grass in all the front yards. Dig up the trees and shrubs too. Dig up all the front yards until they’re nothing but dirt. And that will give us at least two acres to grow crops. If we do the same to the back yards, we’ll have twice that amount.”

     “But where will we get the seeds to plant?”

     Frank had already pondered the question even before it came, and was ready with the answer.

     “There’s a Walmart store a mile away. When the freeze hit, I’m sure it was ransacked. I’ll bet anything edible was taken off the shelves and is long gone.

     “But I’ll make another bet too. I’ll bet that in the Walmart garden center, I’ll bet that stand full of flower and vegetable seeds is still untouched. I mean, who would think to take tomato and squash seeds when the world is freezing over? I’m going to make a trip there tomorrow, before the snow gets too deep to walk again.”

     “Is it wise to walk now that there’s snow on the ground? I mean, it’ll make it too easy for any marauders out there to track you.”

     “I’m going to use that to my advantage. Watching for footprints in the snow works both ways. If there are people still going in and out of the Walmart for food or supplies, I’ll be able to tell before I just walk in there and get ambushed.”

     “What if the seeds won’t grow because they’re so old?”

     Eva spoke up.

     “They’ve got to grow. And they will. God has watched over us this long and kept us alive for a reason. He wouldn’t let us down now.”

     Jesse added, “Before the freeze came, I remember seeing this show once on the Discovery Channel. It talked about what would happen if a virus or some kind of plant disease wiped out all the world’s crops. A bunch of scientists said it was a possibility, so some of the countries got together and built this huge seed repository up around the arctic somewhere. It was buried below ground, in the ice, and they were storing thousands of varieties and strains of seeds in there, in the event such a catastrophe ever happened for real.”

     “I’m not walking to the Arctic, Jesse. It’s way too far.”

     Frank was joking, of course, and the group laughed.

     “My point is, if they store these seeds in the Arctic to preserve them, then wouldn’t the freeze also preserve them? I mean, maybe they go into hibernation or suspended animation or something when they freeze. Maybe they’ll be as good as new.”

     “That is a valid point. And we need to get some before others realize that’s their future food supply and clean all the seeds out.”

     Jesse said, “Frank, I’m going with you. If there are marauders anywhere near Walmart, you’ll need backup.”

     “Okay, Jesse. You’re welcome to come. We’ll take a couple of duffles, in case we see anything else we can use.”

     The next morning, as soon as it was light in the sky, Frank and Jesse set out.

     The going was relatively easy. Since the warm weather months had cleared the roads of snow, the new snow pack was only about four inches. It was no match for the hiking boots both men wore.

     They were careful to watch for vehicle tracks and footprints. But they saw none.

     “I wonder where all the people are?”

     “Mostly dead, I suppose. Or maybe since the weather turned cold again they’re holed up in their houses.”

     They looked around for the telltale chimney smoke that told them which houses were occupied. They could count the number of smoke trails on two hands during their one mile hike.

     There just weren’t many survivors left.

     As they neared the Walmart, they both unshouldered their AR-15s and charged them. They didn’t want to appear as a threat to anyone who might be watching. But they didn’t want to be at a disadvantage either if a firefight started.

     Before they went in, they crept completely around the store. They knew that if anyone was going in and out of the building for supplies or food, they wouldn’t necessarily use the front door. There were plenty of fire escape doors and overhead doors around the building that could be used as well.

     But they saw no footprints. And there was no smoke coming from the building either.

     Frank knew that if there were people hiding inside the store, they’d have to keep a fire going to melt snow for drinking water, and to cook their food and keep from freezing to death. And burning a fire inside a building, of course, would be deadly unless there was a place for rising smoke to exit the building.

     This Walmart was built with dozens of plastic skylights which once helped reduce the building’s electricity costs. They could very easily be punched out to allow smoke to leave the building.

     The pair had watched as they approached the Walmart. There was no smoke coming from the building.

     The lack of smoke and footprints convinced both men that the building was unoccupied.

     When they went inside, they found out why.

     Frank and Jesse entered the Walmart through a fire escape door at the back of the building. It was slightly ajar, and opened to the outside. But the snow that had drifted up against the door told the pair that no one had walked through it since the snow started to fall again a couple of weeks before.

     The door entered into what once was the butcher department. Long stainless steel tables, once used by butchers to slice and package meat, now lay dusty and unused. All the meat that might have been here when the panic started was long gone, of course. So was everything else that might have been edible.

     They paused a few minutes to let their eyes adjust to the semi darkness. They brought flashlights with them, but preferred not to use them unless they had to. Just in case they were wrong about the building being unoccupied.

     Very slowly the pair progressed through a set of double swinging doors and out into the store itself.

     What they saw amazed them. It looked like the store had been hit by a huge bomb blast. There was debris everywhere. But it was easy to see that it was mostly inedible items. Frozen and swollen canned goods by the hundreds. Laundry soap. Kitty litter. A whole lot of everything, but virtually nothing in the way of edible food.

     Most of the shelves had been toppled over, either by angry crowds frustrated because all the food was gone, or by vandals.

     Frank was puzzled to see that dozens and dozens of bags of flour, though, had been thrown around and broken open, and a fine dusting of flour seemed to be everywhere. Were some people actually so stupid that they didn’t know flour and water could keep them alive? Apparently so.

     They also noticed that many of the skylights had indeed been broken out, and much of the debris was covered with a light blanket of snow. Frank could still smell the scent of burned wood, from long ago. He assumed that some people did use the building for shelter from the cold at one time. But he also correctly assumed that they were long gone.