Chapter 29

Ralph Barrows looked down at the grave he had just filled. He and his dad had made it through some bad times together. This time, though, his dad had succumbed to some sort of sickness that he couldn't shake.

There had been no way to get help. Most of the roads and bridges were out, and the remaining stock and chickens had to be to taken care of. Besides, there had been people out there that had taken shots at him for no reason, the last time he left the protection of the farm.

He had been forced to stay close, guard the farm itself, and take care of the animals they had left. Until day before yesterday, he had been trying to care for his sick father as well. It had taken him this long to build a coffin, and then dig the grave next to his mom's and his grandfather's graves.

His grandfather had died during the raids that had been going on shortly after the rock strike. Ralph and his father had accounted for the raiders, though. Those bastards wouldn't ever kill again!

He pounded the marker into the ground, releasing some of his anger onto the marker. He took a final look, and walked the short distance back to the house.

The place seemed so empty, now that he was alone. His dad's calming presence was gone. It had disappeared along with his body.

For the first time in his nineteen years of life, Ralph was truly alone.

That damned bunch of rocks hitting the earth had changed things so much. He looked out over the farmhouse. He was at his favorite vantage point, a few hundred feet up the side of a hill, behind the farmhouse.

He was in a little grove his grandparents had planted, when they had first bought this place and the surrounding acres.

Well, those acres had been eaten away over the years. Taxes were always increasing, and they'd had to sell off some land a couple of times, in order to get operating money during lean years.

Though the portion sold most recently was the heavily wooded, it had not been cut down yet. No, the 'rock strike' had stopped that. Ralph was glad of that, at least. They still farmed the remaining hundred and sixty acres of cleared land left to them from the original acreage. They made a decent living.

The farmhouse was old-fashioned in every way. It was a still heated by a pot belly stove in the winter, the oil furnace being out of oil, and although the kitchen had sported a propane stove, after that gas had been exhausted, he and his father had taken it out. They had and cleaned and brought back the old-fashioned wood burner that had been in the home for almost sixty years of the farms life.

The main living room was where the fireplace and pot bellied stove were. It opened directly to the two bedrooms, off to the sides. One was on either side of the living room. A short hallway led to the kitchen, which had an old-fashioned water pump handle. There was a pipe driven deep into the ground. The kitchen, had been built above it. It tapped into a fresh water supply that had never run out or gone bad.

While they'd had electric power put in years before, that was one of the first things to go, compliments of the rocks striking the earth so hard.

Still, that was not too bad of a hardship. All the old appliances were either still in place, or was easily moved back into place once the modern items became useless.

Nothing was thrown away on the Barrows' farm. If it worked and was in good shape, it was stored. If needed, it was fixed. Then it was stored, ready for use, or ready for a museum, whichever the case might be.

There were old buildings and new ones. The new ones had been added in the last ten years or so.

One of the oldest was a platform that was up in a huge oak, which was partway down the hill. It had been used as a 'tree house' for play, when the kids were smaller. Now it was used to keep watch. It was thirty feet up, and was built solidly. No one could see it when the leaves were out, though it was starkly visible in the winter.

When Ralph entered the kitchen, he noticed a puddle by the icebox. Yes, he had an old-fashioned icebox that he filled with blocks and chunks of ice to keep items cool. The puddle was due to his having forgotten to empty the drip pan. As the ice melted inside the icebox, the resulting water was channeled into a tube and directed into a pan under the icebox.

They had an icehouse that had been built over sixty years ago, by his grandfather. The ice came from the same stream that was dammed above the farm, to supply the water to the house. They harvested ice every winter, sometimes twice in a winter. They filled the icehouse up to its very ceiling.

He got the pan and emptied it. After carefully mopping up the water that had spilled, he rinsed out the drip pan, and put it back under the icebox.

It was the seal on the icebox door. It was rotten and needed to be replaced. He had jury-rigged it as best as he could, but it seemed the air leak was getting worse. The pan was filling more quickly, and the ice had to be replaced more frequently.

He sighed. It was just one more thing to add to the list of things needing to be fixed that had stacked up during his father's long illness.

There was a dining room between the living room and the kitchen, but he didn't use it now, and it was closed off. It was just off of the hallway. They did have modern plumbing, but with the failure of the electricity, and with no oil to fuel the furnace, things had quickly gone back to the 'old ways'.

They used a gravity feed line for water. A pipe ran from the base of the old water tower, to the top of the house. The water tower was supplied from a sluice, whose only purpose was to keep the water tower filled. A dammed on a small creek made a holding pond. It provided deep water under the ice, for the sluice, so that the water tower was kept filled. With the sluice, the tower, and the pipes heavily insulated, the water would run, even if it was very cold outside.

The water tower, in turn, let them flush the toilet and even to take a bath. Well, it did when the weather was warm. The solar water heater on the roof worked fine in the summer, but it took a lot to heat water for baths, on an old wood-burning stove. Now that the natural gas fired hot water heater was dead, it was 'heat the water the old way', too.

Still, at least he was able to use a flush toilet. He settled for warming a small two-gallon tub of water and making another old-fashioned ritual, a 'whore's bath'.

The sewage went into a pipe, which met with the county line. It had cost a pretty penny putting in, originally, but it was worth it. If worst came to worst, there was always the old outhouse that could still be used.

John Wallace had been thrilled to reestablish the link he'd had with the satellite. He had paid a handsome fee to Google for it. It had the added ability of getting better pictures than they were releasing to the general public.

He had tried numerous times to get that link after the disaster, and had even tested it from this very bunker prior to the disaster, and it had worked. But for some reason, after the disaster --until now, that is-- he had been unable to get a connection. Now, all of a sudden, he was able to make the connection.

He had been checking the controls as he normally did. There was a yellow 'unable to connect' light that had been showing on the automated system he had in place that was constantly trying to access his link. Now, that yellow light was green, signifying a solid link had been established!

He had quickly switched views to the satellite's cameras. He was soon getting a live feed. It took him only a moment to realize that the satellite was in the wrong part of the sky for him to get a look at his house and land, but he was able to see other places, for now.

It would not take all that long for it to get back to his zone. A polar orbit covered the entire earth over and over, and that was how this satellite was placed. Others were placed differently, depending on the needs and wants of the military or parties who had lofted the satellites in the first place. An example were the communications satellites and their geostationary orbits.

He spent hours in the control room, watching the earth under the satellite reveal itself with its new look. He was horrified at the destruction of the coasts. He marveled at the new island that was now in the Atlantic. He was now able to watch his party going out and doing things when the satellite was in proper position.

While he was startled when the view changed unexpectedly, he was not at all surprised that it had happened. The view switched from that of a piece of ground he was looking at to the picture of a man dressed in military uniform. He appeared to be sitting in an area that was very busy indeed with other military in the background, doing incomprehensible things.

"Good afternoon. Whom do I have the honor of addressing?" the military officer, a full Colonel asked.

John switched on his video camera, and transmitted out on the same frequency. The screen split, showing both him, and the other person now.

"Well, this is a surprise. I assume you people are responsible for reestablishing my link to the satellite? I am John Wallace by the way," John answered and asked.

"Pleasure Mr. Wallace. I am Colonel Eric Carston. As the old song goes, I heard you knocking, so I answered the knock, to bastardize it only slightly. At first we thought you were an automated station, but then I decided to find out if there was a directing force behind the attempts to establish this link," Colonel Carston said.

"A very great pleasure to meet you, Sir! I had thought we were alone out here. Well, no central authority, anyway. There are survivors of course, but it is a bit haphazard and confusing," John replied a bit excited with the contact.

"What are you trying to get a look at anyway?" the Colonel asked.

"Well, was hoping the satellite was in position to view my portion of the earth, but since it wasn't, I wanted to see how bad it was. It's even worse than I had feared," John said heavily.

"Well, there is hope. We are slowly reestablishing areas of operation and control. The worst of it seems to be over. Now it is recovery time. The coasts were hit hard of course. The tidal wave took out most coastal cities that the Atlantic Ocean bordered.

"California took a hard hit, and then seemed to catch fire. There was a nuclear exchange between Russia and China, and Israel set off a small nuke to get the Middle East Arabs to back off. Apparently they had thought it was a good time to eradicate Israel. As usual, Israel taught them a hard lesson. For the most part, the Middle East now seems to be quiet for a change," the Colonel said musingly.