Chapter 2

The birds and squirrels let me know that I was fairly safe. I resolved to keep looking for wildlife. As long as I saw birds I wouldn't get really paranoid. I spent the day reacquainting myself with the trails on the property. Sixteen years really hadn't done much to the property. My walk left me with a sense of calm. When would I die? I had no clues. I could be riddled with cancers within a year or last for decades. The only indicators that I knew of were only available thru a blood analysis. If my white blood cell count became abnormal or my T-Leukocyte count went high I was about to eat it. For now, it was 'life goes on'.

I worked on the heater first. The thermostat was fried. When I shorted it out the rest of the assembly worked fine. I pulled out the built-in microwave and used the shelf. The generator gave me pause. I had to read the schematic and took a meter to the components. The regulator was gone, as were two balanced transistors. I could do nothing without a parts supply house. I was about to shoot the damned thing and be done with it. Black and Decker had a factory in Milwaukee. I could probably get what I wanted there. Well, that was for later. There was a scientific supply house South of where I worked. There was no way I was going near there. It probably glowed in the dark, and the metal warehouse was probably blown to hell. It was a good two miles closer to ground zero. No way. Shun. Shun.

Why the hell was DeKalb empty? There should have been people running around. I had raided the cop shop and a 24-hour Walgreens without seeing a soul. I really should go back and look for messages near the phone or the top cop's desk. DeKalb had a National Guard building. I should check there, too. I had no idea where the county sheriff hung out. Maybe a phone book would help. I found an open window on the clubhouse and made my way in. The air had a stale quality to it, as if nobody had used the place for months. I found a phone book where I expected, in the office. By comparing the address of the sheriff substation with the grid map in the front of the book I found them--out near the interstate. This would take a while.

I was surprised by what I found when I approached the interstate. There was a traffic barrier west of town crossing all lanes, comprised of concrete barrier sections.

I took the side road to the sheriff station, parked and walked inside. There inside the door sat a field phone on a table where nobody could miss it. Just to make it obvious, a bright orange placard hung above it requesting that any visitors call in using a 999 code. brilliant. They'd activated the national emergency call system.

I called in as requested.

"Hi. This is Dr. Mark Fry. I'm at the Dekalb Illinois sheriff substation."

"This is Lieutenant Gary Fisher. Care to tell me a story?"

"I was working in Geneva when I observed the flash. I survived the firestorm in a concrete bunker beneath the building HVAC system. I seem to have survived the initial bout of exposure sickness but I don't assume that I have anything like a normal life expectancy. I've got a truck working and a trailer at a shooting club just outside Sycamore. I have supplies but I was considering raiding the DeKalb Army Reserve facility for a water buffalo and a hardened generator and radio. I guess I should ask, first."

"What is your doctorate in?"

"Physics. Retired."

"Let me check with the Colonel, but you've provisionally got an OK. Please contact me When you've got your radio and I'll give you a frequency assignment."

"What happened to the people? I'm outside the blast zone and it's a ghost town."

"You'll hear about it anyway so here it is. We had reports of a mutated airborne strep coming out of the Aurora hospital. It's quite virulent and has killed people as far South as Joliet. Since you're in the isolation envelope we prefer that you remain in it. "

"What are the symptoms?" "As bacterial meningitis" "What's the infection rate?" "Over seventy percent." "Fatality percentage?" "Over eighty." "Time to infectious state from initial exposure?" "Forty Eight to Fifty Three hours." "Nasty. Does it go to spores?" "Rarely, thank God." "Does it respond to any antibiotics?" "That's the problem. No."

"Can you tell me who nuked Fermilab?"

"What do you know about Fermilab?"

"That's where I retired from."

"Our best guess is that someone fired off an experiment before it was ready. A tritium confinement experiment went wild. We measured a triple shockwave microseconds apart, each of about 12 Kilotons."

"Oooh, bugger. Old Henry finally got his banger working. Your tax dollars at work, eh?"

"Precisely.

"What's my Northern boundary?"

"We drew the line at Route 90. East is about forty miles—Route 355."

"How long will the isolation be continued?"

"We're going on an estimate of early Spring."

"That's a long time. I may have to find a house and squat."

"There was a thirty percent death rate just East of Sycamore. If a car is there you're probably not going to step on anyone's toes..."

"Got it. I'll check in tomorrow."

I had a busy day ahead of me. First target was the National Guard center. Maybe there would be a trailer mounted generator—I had hopes.

The guard facility was mostly offices and warehouse. I found a Geiger counter and took it on general principles. I had no use for field manuals. I did, however, find a field radio kept in a metallized (read conductive) plastic bag, stored with a deployment kit and manual. The thing was huge. I lucked into a diesel generator. The problem would be moving a diesel truck to fuel the damned thing. It was almost worth plotting out the power lines and trimming out all but a feeder to a substation near a house I wanted. Naah. There was too much work in balancing the capacitance and reactance of a power transmission line, not to mention energizing it without being caught in a grounding arc. It took specialized equipment that I (a) didn't have, and (b) never had practice using. It was too dangerous.

I found a nice ranch house surrounded by trees with a nice, big bulk LP gas tank out back and a pole barn at the end of a gravel drive. It had a sun room in back and a fireplace. A Buick sedan was parked in front of the pole barn. I parked the generator in the pole barn, dropped off the radio and drove back for my trailer. I had to stop back in to Farm and Fleet for some 4-gauge three-wire and connectors to hook the generator into circuit. It already had a distribution panel. I needed a grounding stake kit, too. I found a hundred foot roll collapsible hose to empty a swimming pool and a big tank of construction foam. While there I picked up some power tools and cleaning supplies. I had no idea what the inside of the house looked like. I hit the liquor store to clean them out of good bourbon and headed to my new home. I had work to do.

The door was unlocked. Thank God, as that saved me having to fix my mess getting in. The place was in very nice shape, other than the fridge being a disaster area and an onion on the counter was attempting to evolve into an animate form of life. Bleach cleans anything.

I ran the cable between the barn and the house, then carefully snaked the hose over the cable. It was tricky filling the hose with construction foam. I was about covered in it before I was done. Gasoline got it off. I pulled the circuit interrupter on the power pole to isolate me from the grid, hooked up the cable to the generator and tapped it into the basement panel thru a dryer vent hole that was capped off. The generator started right up with a little ether spray. I was in business with a 200 gallon tank of diesel.

I made sure the water pump was working and lit the hot water heater. I wanted a shower that night. I checked the phone book for any fuel distributors. I could use a bulk milk delivery truck but the connections would be all wrong. I went back to the National Guard facility to check the back yard. It seemed suspicious that they had a generator without a tanker. No luck. It must have been taken when they mobilized. I found a fuel tanker in Sycamore. I replaced the regulator and had a truck. No problem. Another trip to Farm and Fleet got me a 12-volt bulk fuel pump and a couple lengths of hose. Two worm clamps later I had a fuel siphon. I made two—one for gas and one for diesel. I filled the bulk tanker from the in-ground tank at the truck stop. By then it was dark. I tootled on home, knowing that the next day I needed a motorbike to get my damed truck home.

The shower felt wonderful.

The house had been occupied by what appeared to be a retired married couple. There were two recliners in front of the TV and the living room was littered with ceramic figurines. I slept in the guest bedroom for now.

I felt like crap the next morning. I took a long, hot shower to get moving. I had things to do so I cut it short. At this rate I'd better get a hot tub or spa.

I found a small bike at a Yamaha dealer in DeKalb. There isn't much to a dirt bike. I replaced what needed replacing from the dealer's shelves and bungeed it to the front bumper of the fuel truck. I hit a couple of automotive parts stores for their supplies of diesel stabilizer and an Ace hardware for the pipe and fittings to hook the truck's tank directly to the generator supply. I wanted a tee and valve so that the original generator tank could be used as a reserve when refilling the truck. Damn. I was tired already and it was barely noon. Noon. Hell. I headed for the Sheriff station for my contact.

I sat down and called. He asked how I was. I described my general condition and that I was getting tired fast. No comment. I gave him my new address and told him that the radio would go up tomorrow. I asked if I could get anything air-dropped to me. He said that it was possible if it pertained to survival. I said "You damn betcha. Setting up this diesel generator's gonna kill me." He got the idea. An LP gas based generator was doable within the week. He asked me for the model of the radio and gave me a frequency assignment. I headed home for a break.

I parked the truck and went inside my trailer for a sandwich and a nap. Later I took the bike across town to get my pickup. I kept the bike. It seemed like a reasonable spare, and it wasn't like I could call someone to help if I got in trouble. I hit my favorite store for a pickup load of foot lockers (Farm and Fleet, if you hadn't guessed by now), jeans, shirts, underwear, socks and boots. I was putting a fair dent in their inventory. I figured that I'd better keep a running total of the damage in case they wanted it out of my hide so I could tell them when to stop gouging. I took the foot lockers home and packed up all the stuff that really wasn't mine or my business, like their clothes and all the little decoration crap. I stored everything out in the pole barn. Next I emptied the furniture out of the master bedroom and lined it with shelves. I put a big table under the window and found a chair to put before it. I drilled a hole thru the window frame for a fat piece of coax and set up the radio on the table. The antenna would wait for the morning. I refilled the generator tank, baked bread and heated up some canned beef stew. Dinty Moore. Not bad. Another luxurious shower finished the day.

Oh, shit. I gotta take a day off. Oh my God. I put up the antenna that day and started to hook up the diesel truck. I gave that up realizing that it was just temporary and not worth the effort. Instead, I started looking at how to put in a spa or hot tub. Hmm, the wall panels of the day room would unscrew, insulation and all. I needed a ramp, propane lift truck, 16-to-20-foot flatbed trailer and a source for the tub. Then I could plumb it in from the kitchen sink supply lines and empty thru a hose outside. I would put a layer of rigid pink foam inside the walls and cover them with blonde paneling. I'd have to cap and seal the segments somehow, but I'd do it. Then a simple heater would keep the room warm during the winter. The floor was concrete—it should hold the weight. I diddled with the radio after dark to see who was talking. The rest of the world was still there. Sigh. I could pick up the Rockford TV station audio, so I had weather reports. I was feeling like this thing was survivable until I heard the reports of the daily death toll from the plague.

The next morning wasn't quite so bad. I got up with the sun and headed for a U-Haul place to look for a trailer. No joy. The damned ball didn't fit. As I was about to pull out I got startled so bad I almost hit a telephone pole. I saw a face looking back at me out of one of the truck windows. I stopped the truck and we sat there looking at each other like idiots. I got out and walked half way, then stopped. Soon the truck door opened a pair of jeans crawled out topped by a jacket and long brown hair.

Angie had been a college student at the university, a junior majoring in pre-med. She'd hidden when the trucks came, rounded everyone up and drove off into the dark. Living on everything in the grocery store she was trying to get a truck started to get home. I started to tell her about the disaster and the mutation, but it was obvious that she didn't believe me. Her arms were crossed and her shoulders were hunched. She didn't want to hear what I had to say. I shrugged my shoulders and started to walk back to the truck.

"Hey. HEY! Where are you going?"

"I've got a trailer to pick up so that I can put in a hot tub. Next comes a LP Gas fork lift, then the tub. Then I'm going to raid the library, go home and put everything where it belongs."

"... Want company?"

"If I can trust you. Otherwise show me your back and keep going."

"That's cold."

"That's the deal. Have you seen any bodies yet? That's cold." She shrank in on herself and wrapped her arms around her chest, head down. I guess she had.

"Deal."

"Got any stuff?" She nodded. "Get it. I'll wait." I sat on the bumper and killed time until she returned with a duffel and a backpack. "Toss 'em in the back and climb in." I was headed for an antique car dealer. She kept taking quick glances at me as we drove.

"You know that most of your friends on the bus are probably dead. Military isolation puts everyone in a building inside a fence until people stop dying. They do keep track of people, though. You may have slipped thru the evacuation but they know you're missing. I'll call in tonight and give them your ID. Then you'll be legitimate." She looked at me with a frown, trying to feel for where I was going. "We're mine canaries. They want a sample population here after the fact that they can say they were ignorant of, or would put others at risk to gather in. If we live, the area's safe."

I found my trailer.

"Why don't the cars work?" "Ever hear of EMP? It stands for Electro-Magnetic Pulse. When a nuclear weapon detonates the accelerated free ions and electrons set up a B field that charges any conductor with tens of thousands of volts for a brief period of time. A B field is like what happens inside a transformer or electromagnet. That charge fries the willies out of most electronic stuff. Cars have chip brains, oxygen sensors, gauge clusters and voltage regulators. Poof, no car..."