Chapter 2

Day 2 Saturday April 14 2007 2 days to impact

The alarm went off and I wanted to throw it through the wall. Damn I hurt like hell, 4 hours sleep in 48 hours, plus all the stuff I did yesterday, I was a mess. I turned off the alarm and laid there a minute getting my bearings. That's when I felt Betsy behind me cuddling up to my back.

"Are you awake?" I whispered.

"Yes," Betsy said.

"Are you ok?" I asked quietly.

Sniff "Yes."

I rolled over toward her, making sure I didn't squash her as I did so. She was only a buck ten soaking wet and I did not want to hurt her.

I looked her in the eye and wiped away her tears.

"I didn't mean to hurt you in any way, but I don't want you to rip out my heart again like you did last time. It took me a long time to get over you not being in my life, even if it was just as a friend. But I do still love you with all my heart and always have. Even with all the years we have been apart, you've always been on my mind and in my heart," I said.

Betsy started to tear up again; I took here in my arms and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

"Everything is going to be alright, don't worry," I said kissing the top of her head again.

Once she calmed down, I kissed her on the cheek again and tried to wipe the tears away.

"Come on we need to get dressed, and get the show on the road again," I said.

"Ok," Betsy said weakly.

I got up and went out into the unfinished section of the basement and got a soda out of the fridge, and headed back to my bedroom and my desk. I grabbed my bottle of Aleve and took a handful of pills. OK I took 5, I'm a big guy.

I grabbed some clean clothes and headed for the bed to get dressed and to catch a little of the news. I turned on CNN and from first glance the reporters looked frazzled, 'Looks like they have been up as long as I have, ' I told myself.

The reporters were switching from one field reporter to the next showing all the riots that were occurring all over the world. By the looks on the news, civil order was completely out the window and mob rule is the name of the day. 'I just hope we don't run into any of that while we are out and about, ' I thought. They did a special report on the whereabouts of the police and National Guard forces not being on scene of any of the disturbances and speculated that most if not all of the personnel are AWOL and the general population was on its own.

The status of the asteroid is still unchanged; it is still due to impact in the central United States on Monday at approximately 2:30 p.m. eastern standard time. A statement from the President assures us that the government is doing everything it can to advert the disaster and everyone should remain calm.

CNN also went in-depth about all the looting going on in the big cities and elsewhere in the country. People are starting to hoard food and supplies, sometimes in well armed bands working together for better protection and safety. "Sounds like what we are doing," I laughed to myself.

Then the scary reports came on, the reports of rampage and slaughter they had filmed several individuals just walking through the street shooting people at random and for no reason. The carnage not ending until a civilian, also with a gun, shot and killed the person doing all the shooting. It was a scene of total madness that I would not wish on anyone. And I hope to God that we don't run into anyone like that.

I finished getting dressed and got my boots on, and caught Betsy getting dressed out of the corner of my eye. I know she saw me watching her. Damn she still looked real good after all these years, even after the life she had led.

I stood up and walked over to her, gave her another big hug. "You ready for another fun filled day?"

"Oh don't you know it," she laughed.

We headed upstairs and found Lisa and Mom and some of the other women there getting some breakfast ready, so I headed into the other room to discuss what we needed to do for the day.

We got the lists from the night before and looked at them with fresh eyes and started to make a plan of attack. I sat there a minute looking through the lists, all the ideas were great, just a lot of them we did not have time to implement.

A few things I thought we could do that would really help us out in the future would be to

download useful things from the net such as how to make soap, tan hides, cure and smoke meat, how to butcher various animals, how to raise animals, what to feed them and how much per day. Manure can be composted to yield methane gas and still leave behind fertilizer for later use. Manure is also needed as a sourceof saltpeter for making gunpowder. We also needed basic information on survival and any other thing that might come in handy in the future. I also had the idea of getting all the books from a college library. We just might be able to handle all that but basic sustenance and other items we need to survive come first.

I figured we might be able to spare someone to surf the net for us. It would be no problem adding four more hard drives to my computer for storage. Plus I have 200 blank CD's we can burn information to. And I hoped that we had time in the coming days to send some people after the books at a couple of collages around here, we would really need that knowledge in the future.

I stood up and got everyone's attention. "Good morning everyone, since I am the person who started this party I guess I need to start this meeting. First I want to thank you all for coming up here on such a short notice but if we want to make it through this alive we need everyone to work together to get us prepared to survive the asteroid strike. I have everyone's list, or at least most of them and the ideas on them are great. What we have to do now is to prioritize what we get first. In my book that list starts with food, shelter and heat, those are the most important things we need to get first."

"How much food do we need to get?" Traci asked.

"From what I have read and studied we are looking at five to ten years worth. The asteroid when it hits will throw up tons of debris into the atmosphere which in theory will cause a mini Ice Age or severe global warming, but my money is on the mini Ice Age," I said.

"That is a whole lot of food," KC said.

"Yes it is, but in some ways it is easier to feed a group than an individual and other ways its not. Lisa can attest to that but I am not talking gourmet in any sense of the word just basic sustenance," I said.

"Like what?" Cathy asked.

"Like a giant pot of soup and bread, not porterhouse steaks and baked potatoes. I am not saying we have to eat soup every day, but if it comes down to it we will to survive. I just hope it does not come down to that," I said.

"Neither do I." A lot of people said. And we all had a small laugh.

"Well if we prepare enough we don't have too. We also have to think about shelter, we started yesterday by picking up a couple of big RV's and I hope today we can get more. I am hoping that everyone will have a nice place to call their own, with families having a RV to themselves and singles sharing one," I said.

"Who will decide who gets what?" Cathy asked in an off tone.

I gave her a stern look. "We are supposed to be adults here working for the same cause, not squabbling over who gets what." I sighed and got serious. "Look there are going to be plenty of things for people to have when everything is said and done, that is if it survives the EMP pulse, if not I hope we pick up enough books for everyone to read."

"What's an EMP pulse?" KC asked.

"Electro Magnetic Pulse, it is a wave of energy that is produced by a nuclear bomb, the pulse travels out from the blast and destroys most modern day electronics and devices," Kristian said.

"But why are you expecting there to be an EMP pulse, and how do we protect the stuff from it?" KC asked.

"The government is going to try to divert or destroy the asteroid and the only way they have to do that is nuclear weapons. At least that is the only way with the time they have to do it," Dad said.

"To answer your other question, the trailers outside are all metal and are grounded to the earth so they basically become big faraday cages," I said.

"What's a faraday cage?" Traci asked.

"It's like it sounds a box or a cage of metal that surrounds an electronic device and it prevents the EMP pulse or other electronic static from getting inside the box protecting the device inside. So in theory everything inside the trailers will be protected from the EMP pulse," I said.

"In theory, that does not sound good?" Cathy asked.

"Hey it's the best we have to go on, the last time someone exploded a nuke in space it knocked out a lot of things, mainly the power grid, but that was 60 years ago and electronics were not as prevalent back then as they are now. So no one knows exactly what is going to happen or what is going to be effected, it's all conjecture," I said

I took a minute to allow what we had been talking about to sink in a bit. "The next item we have to discuss is heat. I propose that we get as much wood as we can in here and start getting it split for use in wood stoves," I said.

"What? Are we going to be in the middle-ages again? Why can't we just use the heaters that we have?" Cathy asked.

"No John's right, we will only have so much fuel for the generators that we have and it has to last as long as it can, so wood heat is the best way to go. We can even get one of those automatic splitting machines here to make the job a whole lot easier," Tony said.

"That is what I was thinking also,"Mike said.

"That's great, but we should also get as much fuel as we can here as well. We already have some tankers full of diesel but we have to get more and a whole lot of fuel stabilizers to keep it good. Plus we should add natural gas or propane to the mix as well, "I said.

"There is the propane company's storage facility just north of Monterey, they have everything there that we should need, "Mike said.

"Sounds good, let's split up into teams and see what all we can get accomplished today, "I said

All the teams got the jobs assigned to them for the day. By the time that was done, Lisa and the others had breakfast ready. We all ate and sat around talking about nothing in particular, just enjoying each others company. When we were done, the teams assembled as we headed for the trucks and our job assignments.