Deadfall: Survivors (14 page)

(Someone laughs)

“Well, I suppose…”

Dawn
“It’s bound to happen, right? I mean, isn’t that what we should do?”

“We?”

(Laughter)

Dawn
“I didn’t mean you specifically (laugh). I just meant, well, that I know I'm past my time, but, isn’t that part of what we would need to do?”

(A few seconds of silence)

Tague
“Is that a good idea? Would we just be making children that would also have no certain future on this planet?”

Dawn
“So just because our death brings more possible death, we should stop having children?”

Tague
“Maybe. Maybe there’s  a reason for this, and that mankind’s time is up.”

(Loud disagreement)

Evan
“Kinda makes sense. But I don’t want to think my time is up. Never thought of it before, but kids would be nice. Then again, we have a problem with that.”

“I agree.”

Dawn
“What problem?”

(Some laughter)

Evan
“Look around. Unless you're gonna start breedin Lucy, something she may not like, we’re kinda stuck in the kid making department. No offense to the old and young.”

(Heather says something)

Aaron
“I think we’re getting a little too far ahead…”

Lucy
“If it came down to it, I guess I’d…”

Aaron
“What??”

(More mixed conversation)

“Everyone like the pork chops?”

(The talking stops)

Aaron
“What?”

“The food, was it good?”

(Silence)

Chris
“Hell yeah it was.”

Heather
“Chris!”

Chris
“What? It was. I was so hungry.”

Tague
“What are you heading at, Brian?”

“Just that we have food and a very safe place.
Maybe, we don’t have to decide tonight because we have plenty of time. I think we all need to get our strength and health back, probably more so importantly for Heather and Chris. Some nights of sleep without worrying about anything will do everyone real good.”

“Tague, you seem to know more than anyone else here about, well, technology, maybe…”

Tague
“Just communications things; cameras, audio systems, things of that nature.”

“Well, it might be more than me. Maybe you can help just identify the stuff stored here.”

“Evan, you’re  obviously the local gun expert. I think it would be wise, I know I need it, that everyone know how to use and handle a gun, and practice, too. I’ll show you where all the stuff is stored tomorrow.”

“Aaron, you and Lucy can maybe get a good detailed count of our food, to give us a good idea of…”

Aaron
“Wait, you're giving us chores?”

“Oh no.
That’s not what I meant. I just…”

Aaron
“I'm just kidding, man. You tell me there’s a dirty toilet needing cleaning, and there are no zombies trying to bite my head off, I’ll do it.”

“You have to stop messing with me like that. I'm just trying to think of things to do, to keep us busy. Again, tons of books and I'm sure there are tons of movies, too. My father mentioned something about tons of stuff stored digitally, and that included movies
,  videos and tv shows,  things like that.”

“Heather, Chris and Dawn, you’ll be with me, to just hit up every single room and try to make sense of what there is. I'm also going to dig through my dad’s stuff to try to figure out, well, anything.”

Dawn
“I can cook, too.”

(Moment of silence)

Dawn
“I'm kidding actually. I can’t cook worth a hoot. But, I’ll try anything.”

“Sounds good to me.
Now, a few more matters of business.”

(Sound of a chair moving)

(Movement)

“Ok, I have a few things here…”

(Sound of a bag moving )

“First, I have vitamins. Who knows how we've been eating, so, take vitamins every day, just to help get back up to shape.”

(Sounds of small bags landing on table)

“And, secondly, I have, toothbrushes and toothpaste…”

(Cheers)

“Yeah, I thought that one would be a popular
one..but just wait until I dig out some ice cream, I think I have some in here…”

Lucy
“Are you kidding me??”

(More convoluted and mixed talking)

(End recording)

Entry 26 – The Grand Tour.
[25]

This entry is a combination of the audio of conversations we had today while I took everyone around the entire house. After this entry, I will collect all the information that Tague and I, and, well everyone, put together for the house. We all still call it just a house. Despite my house being nothing like a normal house, it helps everyone to simply call it that. A place to call home..

Everyone appeared to have slept well last night. I'm sure the couches were more than comfortable enough, although someone mentioned that Evan ended up sleeping on the floor anyways, but I think the nature of the safety here really allowed everyone to sleep peacefully, and probably as fully as they could for the first time in a long time. Also, the heavy meal
likely helped.

I know my father has a beer brewer in here somewhere, he mentioned it many times. I was never much of a drinker, but it might really help morale to find it and get something going. Of course, I have never brewed beer, so it better have a manual.

Everything had a manual. Tague found that rather quickly. He was up before anyone else, and using the one of the three computers located on the main floor. They were set in three separate booths that were recessed into the wall. I was never sure why the design was like that. He quickly started digging through the digital archives, as he put it, and found something that made  reference to a folder containing manuals and instruction guides for every device in the house. He says he only recognized a few things, but that there were thousands upon thousands of files. At some point, we would have to go through that. I hope that it’s  possible for the three computers to work at one time, and then three of us could filter through it all to see if we could find anything useful.

I made pancakes
, along with some maple flavored syrup. It’s mostly just sugar. It’s one of those meals, breakfast meals, that just seems to hit the spot. Pure carbs and sugar, but, really gets you going in the morning. Well, I can really only speak for myself, but everyone ate up and I just kept pouring batter and making more. About an hour later, everyone emerged showered, shaved, clean and brushed, and was ready for the tour.

I led everyone back out the front door and explained that there were no keys, just a keyed entry, and that
I’d get everyone the code once I figured out how to make new codes. I showed them the small trail that led, rather stealthily, back towards the parkway, the road. I mentioned to them, as a reminder, how we were in a National Forest, so typically construction was not allowed. I'm not sure how my father had managed it, but he built this out here without making it seem like he was building, and there is practically no hint or clue that the house exists. I think the reasons for this are clear. Not only did he want to maintain the status of the forest, something he was keen on, but it was important that this location remain as secret as possible.

So, back in through the door, that goes into a hallway that leads slightly downward into the main level. Here, the main room formed a semi-oval. On the right hand side as you walk in, is the kitchen and dining room area. There are
two grills, a wood stove and an electric stove. I have yet to use the electric stove, and have only used the wood stove a few times. One thing I begin to point out is that while there is obviously electricity in the house, the design leads to minimal use of it, or even none of it, if it came to that. One of the grills is electric and the other wood heated. The main refrigerator works on electricity, but my father made it a habit of only having it on when there was a need to keep fresh items cool. Otherwise, it was kept off. We didn’t have things like milk or eggs that needed to remain constantly chilled, and whatever meats or vegetables we brought up from the freezers were to be eaten right away anyways. A few feet down from the fridge was a freezer, small, but right under a small chute that led down into the lower levels; level five, where the main freezers were. Food down there could be loaded into the small wheel turned elevator and brought up here for cooking and eating.

To the left was the common area, where everyone had slept last night. About seven couches lined up the walls and formed a
semi circle. As mentioned earlier, three little booths built into the walls held three separate computers on small desks built into the walls. There were two small coffee tables in between the couches. Between the couches on the walls were three doors, spaced out. These led to individual rooms, the boarding or sleeping rooms. They were mostly empty, except for pull down beds and a closet. I'm sure that would change.

Facing the entrance into the main room, on the opposite side of the room, was another hallway.
On the left side, there was a small staircase that led up to a balcony above the area and two more rooms. The opposite side had a similar staircase, but that one led to a singular room that housed a few computers and some other equipment. Two of the sunlights poured their light into this room. It was a master control room, from what I understood. I know most everything was run automatically by the computers. The computers themselves ran in sleep mode most of the time to conserve energy, only waking up from time to time to check on everything, give out commands, and then go back to sleep. I know there are far more technical terms for that, but that’s the only way I could explain it.

Down the opposite hallway led to two more rooms, each with doors on the right side
, and then the main house staircase. This staircase spiraled down all the way to the seventh level. It was wide enough for two people to walk side by side, but not much more. Next to the staircase entrance was an elevator, but that was only to be used for moving large objects from different levels. Someone joked that we would continually keep getting our workouts every day. I did point out that there really wasn’t any reason to go down into the lower levels, except to get things we needed.

Each level, except for the fifth and seventh levels were divided into two crisscrossing hallways, each with many rooms attached to them.
At the opposite end of the hallway, linked to the staircase, was a single bathroom and storage closet. The closet also allowed access to a ladder tunnel that linked all the levels, as well.

The fifth level held the freezers.
There is one single hallway, also with a bathroom and a closet, with four large doors, two on each side of the walls. Two of them, on the right facing down the hall, contained the food. The other two contained other items; seeds, medicines, biological “stuff”. I can only assume that we’re talking DNA samples, hopefully, no frozen animals or God forbid, people. All four of the rooms were like mini warehouses, all held at just below freezing temperatures. In the real world, or better yet, the world that had huge amounts of electricity, the megawatts used to power these rooms would be great. I know there was electricity here, but I had always understood from my father that this place was always meant to run on minimal or no power. How these freezers functioned was unknown to me. Something that might remain a secret or information we might come across later.

The sev
enth level was the power level. The staircase emptied out into a large cavernous area. Three small caged sections held the deep cold storage batteries. A fourth caged section held capacitors, from what I had understood, for quick high power needs. The center of the room held all sorts of monitors, and the two computers running everything. Between the capacitors and one of the battery cages on the left, was a door that gave access to the wind tunnel. I took everyone in here because, while the house was an awesome sight, the wind tunnel was by far the most impressive thing in the house, at least, that I had found.

The small tunnel led down a ways, but then slightly up after about
six hundred feet. It was a longer walk, strictly single file, but opened up into a small balcony, where about five of us could stand at one time. It opened up into a large tunnel that went straight up and down, sloping downward and out of sight. LED lights lit up the tunnel down below, but up above, you could see the sunlight coming in at a speck above. From this point, three large fans could be seen spinning slowly above us, and a few more below us. They stretched out across the entire tunnel. The breeze was noticeable, flowing up through the tunnel. The sound of the wind slowly moving through the tunnel was impressive.

(Audio transcript)

Lucy
“What’s  this?”

Tague
“Is this a solar tower?”

“A type of draft tower, yes. This tunnel, where
we’re  at, is almost at the top of it. I haven’t gone all the way down, but it curves out for about five miles, where it picks up the warmer air down in the valley, not too far from where we began hiking up. The warm air travels up through the tunnel, moving the fans, which in turn, generate electricity.”

Tague
“I don’t see any turbines attached to the fans themselves though.”

Heather
“Are those fans, just….floating there?”

“Ok, they are, kind of. See, how
they’re  grooved into the sides of the tunnel? In the grooves, the fans have magnets in them, or the wall does, something like that. And that’s how they float. Now, as the wind turns them, the magnets in the wall react with the magnets in the fans and that creates the electricity. I think that’s how it works.”

(
Some silence)

Aaron
“That powers everything?”

“I really don’t know. I tried reading about these tunnels, and while they don’t generate obscene amounts of electricity, I still don’t know how much the house uses. Except for the freezers, everything is usually turned off.”

Tague
“There were a lot of batteries in that other room.”

“Yeah.
If that means there should be more, I don’t know. It could be that the house isn’t meant to keep us here all the time. So while we’re  out, doing I don’t know what, saving people, the tunnels keep charging up the batteries.”

Aaron
“You said five miles?”

“Yeah, five miles.
In the wintertime, the air flow reverses, too, but I'm not sure why. I know all these different vents open up, and then the fans start spinning the other way. I can’t explain that one. I understand the updraft, but not that way.”

“Also, since the tunnel is accessible, it makes one hell of an escape exit.”

Chris
“Let me see.”

Evan
“Does stuff ever fall in here?”

“Don’t know.
Probably. I know the top is grated, but probably some leaves and dirt debris.”

“Also, I do know there are more fans along the tunnel that aren’t on. I saw that in one of the computers in that main battery room. But I don’t know how to turn them on, or if I even should. Maybe
there’s  something automatic, some kind of parameter, that turns them on.”

“Now,
I’ve  never had power issues here. But the key is, never use too much. Always keep things off.”

Lucy
“Simple enough.”

(End recording)

We all went back up into the main room, up above, talking about the different things we saw. Evan pointed out that everything had a military feel to it, yet at the same time, didn’t. He smiled and laughed when everyone asked him to explain that statement, which he couldn’t.

I managed to find some loaves of bread
, which I took to the kitchen and allowed everyone to make their own sandwiches from leftover pork from the night before. We talked about counting up the food and the first thought was meat. Evan quickly pointed out that he knew how to hunt, and I reinforced that idea by talking about the increase in wildlife I had witnessed in my hiking. There was talk of raising animals for food, but none of us had even the remotest experience with that, although, if we were able to raise them, Evan did have experience butchering animals. With that said, Evan took it upon himself to look into the viability of raising animals for food.

Crops on the other hand, would be far harder to manage. Growing vegetables would be possible, although a little harder up in the mountains, but growing wheat or corn would take substantial amounts of work. We would have to research alternatives.

A lot would depend on the actual food stores. Since I had been here, I had only been taking food from the first freezer, what my dad had called the short term food stores. In this room were the bread loaves, and the already made items. Next to the freezer was a room with tons and tons of canned goods. Most of them had a long shelf life, but were intended to be used first. I'm sure the deep freeze storage areas had more basic food items; flour, beans, cornmeal, and things of that nature. Just how much of it was up to Aaron to find out. From there we could determine just how desperate or not our food situation was. I know for sure that we would have enough food for a year or two, but from that point we would really have to manage.

One thing I did know
, and I mentioned this to everyone, was that this place wasn’t meant as a hideout for the filthy rich to survive. Instead, it was a storehouse for surviving, and then restarting civilization, if needed. The biggest resource we had here were the digital books archived in the computers, from the simple process of baking bread with sourdough yeast, to the specs for building nuclear reactors. Obviously, making a nuke power plant was a big deal, but there were simpler things, like steam power plants, or the making of medicines from commonly found chemicals and botanicals. What worried me the most was if these were “dummy” versions of these books, or the highly technical manuals only PhDs would be able to read, figure out, and actually do.