Final Dawn: Escape From Armageddon (24 page)

    
“The showers in your RVs are equipped with two features that will help in this process. First of all, there is an internal water heater inside the wall of your shower that will heat the water on demand. You won’t have to run water and waste it while you’re waiting for it to warm up. It will be warm almost instantly.

     “Secondly, the showers have a ‘low water’ warning bell that will start ringing when you’re down to your last five gallons. If you’re covered with soap and shampoo and you hear that bell ringing, then you’d better hurry. Or you’ll be walking around with shampoo head all day.”

     Sarah spoke up.

     “You
ladies will also notice when you shop at our Walmart that we didn’t stock any conditioner. That would be just an extra rinse you would have to make that would waste more water. Instead, we made sure that we only stocked shampoo with conditioner added to it.”

     Mark went on.

     “Okay, you’ve heard me rattle enough for one day. I’ll shut up, but I want to add two more things first. Please, please, don’t pee in the shower. The process for processing gray water at our treatment plant is not the same process as processing sewage. Please pee only in the lavatories.

     “Also, please don’t ever pour a leftover drink
onto the ground or throw it away. Water is more precious than gold. Even a half-finished cup of coffee or bottle of water. If you’ll bring those to the kitchen, you’ll find a large water tank you can pour them into. We’ll take it to the water treatment plant, purify it, and add it to your shower water supply.

     “Okay, any questions? Good. Thank you for your patience.”

-48
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     On the outside of the mine, the world was in chaos. Tens of thousands of people across the country were committing suicide each day. Some were taking their entire families with them. And the same thing was happening all over the world.

     Coroners were no longer doing autopsies. They had no time. And many of their employees had simply stopped coming to work.

     They merely collected the bodies, said a few words over them, and then buried them in mass graves.

     The President had declared Martial law. The
United States military abandoned their overseas bases and came home with their families, leaving their pets and most of their belongings behind. They were needed back home to help keep order.

     The official government position, of course, was that it was just a temporary measure. The Chinese
rocket with the nuclear warhead would save them all. So the Pentagon told military families to leave their pets in kennels or with local national friends, and that their belongings would be safe with local caretakers hired for the job. After Saris 7 was blasted from the sky, they could return to their homes.

     But the claims were greeted with great skepticism. And each planeload of people the U.S.
Air Force shuttled back to the states was filled with surly, disgusted people.

     And as soon as the last plane left each of the overseas base
s, the local nationals flooded in to loot what they could and scavenge for food.

     Back home, the National Guard was activated and put on high alert. In the larger cities, they were armed with machine guns and assigned to local police precincts to help keep order. Local cops, less well armed, fought to keep the crowds at bay during daylight hours. The military struggled to combat widespread looting in the hours of darkness.

     Shootouts, especially in the cities, were occurring more and more frequently. One reason was that people had simply given up. They were determined to loot whatever they needed to survive. And if they were caught and had to commit suicide by cop? Well, it was still better than starving to death.

     The company that created the suicide kit couldn’t make them fast enough. Other companies began to make and distribute their own versions.

     And bootleg versions were hitting the streets as well. A sick bastard in Pittsburgh was filling syringes with liquified rat poison and passing them out to the homeless and the desperate for a few bucks. He promised them a quick and painless death. He didn’t stick around long enough to watch then writhe in agony for hours before slowly succumbing.

     Drug dealers were doing a bang-up business as many of their regular customers were overdosing on purpose. Better to go out on an incredible high, they reasoned.

     Johns were seeking out prostitutes in great numbers for more or less the same reason. They wanted to have as much fun in their last hours as possible, before pulling that trigger or jumping off that bridge.

     Police, at each of the overpasse
s in some of the big cities, used traffic cones to block off one lane of traffic on the streets below. They didn’t advertise it as such, but it was a convenient “jumping lane.” And people on the bridges above were using the lane in increasing numbers. So much so that the coroners’ workers who came by periodically to collect the bodies had to keep a constant watch overhead. They were afraid they’d get crushed by the next one.

     The coroners had run out of zipper bags several days before. They were simply stacking the dead like cordwood in the back of their vans, unloading them at the city landfill, and going back for more.

     It was impossible to get liquor, beer and wine. All of it had already been either purchased by day or looted by night. All the shelves were empty now. Breweries stopped making beer. Every time they sent out a truck it was hijacked, and their drivers were sometimes killed. So they all shut down and sent everybody home.

     The President was on the television daily. Trying his best to calm the public. To convince them that they had it handled. That everyone would be okay.

     He told them over and over again not to panic. That the rocket was ready to launch. That they were merely waiting until the opt
imal time to launch it, on the afternoon of January 14th. The day before Saris 7 was due to collide with earth in a wheat field in rural China.

     Most people who watched the President’s speeches each day kept their eyes glued on his face. Hanging their hopes on his every word, clinging to their belief that he could save them in this desperate hour.

     But a few who looked past him noticed some very subtle things. The dark blue wall behind him seemed a shade different than the same wall a day before. Perhaps their television just needed to be adjusted.

     But wait a minute. The Americ
an flag behind the President had some very subtle folds in them. Like the flag had recently come out of a box. Were those wrinkles there the day before?

     And the truck on top of the flag. The little gold ball. Wasn’t the one at the news conference a couple of days ago just a little bit larger?

     That’s when the most astute of the President’s listeners finally gave up hope. When they realized that the President was no longer in the White House press room. That he had moved to another location. That he was now in his hidden bunker, standing in a room that was constructed to be identical to the White House press room. To fool the American public into believing his claims that he wasn’t worried. That he was in this with them.

     No, now the President was safe. And he couldn’t be reached by the angry mobs. And he needn’t worry about Saris 7. Because he and his family were safely tucked away. They would be warm when the world turned cold. They’d have plenty of food to drink and plenty of water to drink.
And they would survive.

     The President quoted
Roosevelt to try to convince the American people that all was not lost.

     “Let us not give up hope. All we have to fear is fear itself. I implore you, do not do the rash things that others are doing. Do not panic. Help your neighbors, help your friends. Bring no harm to their doorsteps.

     “We are in this together. And together, we will persevere.”

-49-

     Back inside the mine, the large television in Bay 8 stayed tuned in to CNN. The adults hovered around it non-stop, hoping and praying for a miracle. Most had secretly given up hope, of course. But they had trouble admitting it to themselves, and certainly wouldn’t admit it to the others.

     So they, like everyone else around them
, put on brave faces and played the game of make believe.

     The parents comforted their children. “Everything will be okay.” They told them. “Yes, of course. All of your little friends from school will be okay. They all have safe places to go too.”

     And even as they lied to the littlest victims of Saris 7, they tried their best not to think of their own friends and neighbors, their own family members, who were stuck on the outside.

     And they all- even the ones who’d never found God- prayed. A lot.

-50
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JAN 10, 2016       5 DAYS UNTIL IMPACT

     Perhaps it was his personal desire to do good. Perhaps he was just sadistic and wanted to provide a type of false hope. Or maybe he honestly believed in what he was saying.

    
Or maybe he just wanted to have his fifteen minutes of fame before he died.

     Whatever Denny Hale’s motives were, it didn’t really matter much
.

     When he walked into
a major news hub in Atlanta and said he was a government scientist, they didn’t scoff. Didn’t ask for credentials or proof. They were desperate for a new angle, after broadcasting the same tired interviews with the same talking heads for days.

     And when Hale said he might have a solution that
could save hundred of thousands of people, he was ushered into Studio 4 and immediately put on the air. No makeup, no prep. Live in 3..2..1.

     Hale then captivated the world when he claimed that the belt of warmth that surrounds the earth’s girth- the equator- was the place to go to survive the catastrophe.

     He explained that the reason the equator was the warmest place on earth was because it was the closest spot on earth to the sun. And it was that extra warmth, he claimed, that would allow humans to survive the collision and weather the ensuing storm of a long, cold winter.

     Hale maintained that yes, of course it would be
cold there too. But with the help of huge sheets of glass to focus the dim sunlight which made it through the dust canopy, that certain species of plants could grow and prosper underneath the glass. Enough to feed hundreds of thousands of people.

     At any other time, of course, the world would have scoffed at Dr. Hale. Called him a crackpot. Laughed him out of town.

     But these weren’t normal times. People were desperate, and they were grasping at straws. No matter how flimsy those straws were.

     No one thought to wonder where the thousands and thousands of panes of glass would come from. Or
who would erect them in the five short days before Saris 7 hit. Or who would determine which plants to plant or where the plants would come from.

     No. No one thought to ask the basic, common sense questions that needed to be asked to poke holes in Dr. Hale’s plan. They finally had the ray of hope they’d needed. And all it took was a twenty minute inter
view with this man on national television to start a stampede of 350,000 Americans south, toward the Mexican border, where they planned to make their way to Central America and to survival.

     It only took
Mexico half a day to have enough of this foolishness and declare their borders closed.

     The cars just inside the International Border on the
United States side couldn’t turn around because a long line of cars was behind them. They pleaded with the Mexican authorities to reopen the border gates and let them in, so they could turn around and return to the United States.

     Mexican authorities weren’t having it. They saw the mile
s-long traffic jam on the American side as a very effective way of keeping Americans out of their country.

     But just to be sure, they backed two army trucks up to the border gates. Each one had a machine gun, pointed at
the Americans clamoring to be let in. This same scenario played out at all thirty seven border crossings from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.

     That didn’t stop people from coming, of course. Cars, trucks,
and RVs from all over the country made a beeline to the border. Thousands came from Canada too.

     No one could really blame them, of course. In the same manner an atheist turns to God on his deathbed, these people were grasping at any
hope of salvation they could. And even when they were told of the traffic jams, they went south anyway. They were convinced that Mexico would do the right thing, the humanitarian thing, and reopen the borders. After all, they reasoned, they had no plans to stay in Mexico. They were just passing through on their way to Central America.