Shelter: Book 2, A Long Days Night (40 page)

I look around, “Crap, didn’t we already live through this nightmare?”

John says, “Looks like there’s military hitting us from each flank.”

We built three lines of small explosive rings around our fighting trench. When the first ring fires, thousands of BBs shoot out surprising the shit out of the Russians, cutting down the numbers coming at us. We set off the mines on our flanks a little too late, most of the Russians had already passed the line of mines when we set them off, we only got five of the Russians attacking us. The sheriff and his remaining men are on foot slowly coming towards us, they are firing and throwing hand grenades while also firing tear gas at us. We had gas masks, only they were in the shelter. The tear gas caught us by surprise. We weren’t expecting it. We’re coughing and cursing while the sheriff and Russians are advancing on us. We pop up to the edge of the trench and fire at the invaders, we’re not hitting them due to our eyes tearing and our coughing. We’re just about to all jump up and fire in mass when we hear new shooting from our flanks. John, Tony and I look at each other. This is different rifles, sounds like M4s or M16s. There’s another group attacking our flanks. I’m thinking, damn it, our limited number of bodies is what’s doing us in. Again! We have the weapons, and the trench, but we don’t have enough people to cover 360 degrees. We need an additional hundred or more people. Goddamn it, we’ve lived through this before. Is this our future? Constant fighting? We rebuild and have to fight for our own land, we retreat, surface and fight again. We’re losing people we can’t afford to lose. Either we need to figure a new force multiplier or we need more people. My thoughts are interrupted by John falling to the trench floor holding his shoulder and cheek, shit, he’s been hit. Before I can do or say anything, Tony goes down, I look up and down the trench yelling NOW, FIRE! We jump up firing in all directions on full auto, we wanted to lay down a wall of lead to take the pressure off of us. I’m firing my sixty round magazine when I feel a hot poker hit me. Time slows down, I can’t talk, I can’t feel anything, except I’m getting very cold, I think I hear someone yell SHELTER! I feel like I’m falling, before I hit bottom everything goes black.

End of “The Shelter, Book 2 A Long Days Night”. Look for Book 3 coming soon.

There are two snippets following, the first chapter from two novels, “Silent Death” and “In the year 2050.”

Snippet from an upcoming new Novel by the author, “Silent Death.”

Copyright July 2015

Ira J. Tabankin

Knoxville, TN 37920

Forward

Many scientists have long speculated that life on Earth got a “kick start” by organic matter carried to Earth by comets and meteors. 

On November 12, 2014, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, and Philae lander successfully made it to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This was an historic event, the first time man had landed a spacecraft on a comet.

On July 6, 2015, the European Space Agency and NASA announced that the Philae lander discovered an organic-rich black crust, which is most likely explained by the presence of living organisms beneath an icy surface of the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Life on earth has ended before, if one believes in the Bible, God destoryed most life in the great flood, he also destoryed cities and nations which he found wanting. If one believes in science there is the historical fact that the dinosaurs disappeared from the planet due to a marge meteror strike in the Gulf of Mexico. Life on Earth has taken different twists and turns, this story is about one such possible turn.

On November 15, 2016, organic matter will again strike the Earth, this time with far different results.

“This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.”

― T.S. Eliot

Part One

November 2016

Chapter 1

Mother Nature lit up the night sky on November 15, 2016, the Leonid meteor shower produced a sky show unseen since November 17, 1966, when thousands of meteors per minute flashed through the night’s sky. There were so many streaks of light, they could be seen with the naked eye. Millions stayed up late and into the early morning hours to see Mother Nature put on a show which exceeded man’s Fourth of July fireworks. People drove for hours to escape their city lights so they could get the best view of the thousands of meteors that streaked through the sky. This event was different than previous Leonid meteor showers. The earth’s orbit and the meteors intersected at just the right point in space that hundreds of thousands of small meteors actually entered the planet’s atmosphere, and thousands struck the Earth’s surface. Hundreds of thousands flared as they encountered earth’s dense atmosphere. People watched the flares and cheered the light show, they oohed and awed the flaming meteors that left flaming trails across the sky. The meteors that made it to the ground exploded like bombs, filling the sky with additional light and noise.

YouTube was filled with hundreds of videos showing exploding meteors and their resultant damage. Many burst just above the ground spreading their fine mist into the winds which carried their remains around the world.  No one realized that many of the meteors carried an unknown form of organic material. When the meteors burned up in the atmosphere, microphonic amounts of the material were carried by the winds, spreading the organic material around the world. The organic material also entered the planet’s water supply when meteors landed in lakes, rivers, and reservoirs.  Meteors which struck the ground spread their organic material into the ground, many times into rich farm land where the food crops will absorb the material. Before anyone realized what had happened, Earth was blanketed in new organic material which people inhaled, swallowed and digested. 

Once the material entered the human body it combined with our DNA to form new cells, these cells started attacking our bodies. Because the initial reaction didn’t have any adverse effects, we didn’t realize our bodies had been infected. As the new cells multiplied and adapted to their new hosts, us, they began impacting our natural systems. Many people began feeling ill. The degree and quickness of the spreading illness was different for many. There were too many variables to measure, height, weight, amount of organic material digested, how the material entered the human body, what else was consumed with the material. Some people became ill very rapidly while others didn’t show any effects for a much longer time. Medical professionals didn’t realize what they were seeing until it was too late because the new cells initially attacked our bodies very similar to an existing disease.

The impact of the organic material plus our stupidity and insecurity led to the deaths of billions. The illness brought on by the new organic material was the spark with lite the fuse for the beginning of the end of mankind.

Leonid meteor shower lasted three days, people captured the images of the falling meteors on their dash cameras and mobile phones. People stopped their cars to watch Mother Nature’s light show, people stood outside their homes with cameras recording the once in a lifetime event. Every television channel was filled with images and videos of the meteors. The entire world shared in the multi-colored light show of meteors striking the atmosphere. Some scientists warned that some of the meteors were large enough to survive reentry, they would strike the planet causing damage.  For the most part, their warnings were ignored as a group of white haired old men crying, ‘Chicken Little.’ These ‘Chicken Little’s’ were right, many meteors did strike the planet. At least twenty-two thousand people were confirmed killed by being struck or being to close to an impacting meteors. Many homes and buildings were damaged by being struck by the rocks. A large rock just missed the Hoover Dam in Nevada had it struck the dam, hundreds of thousands would have been at risk. One rock struck Newark Airport’s primary runway, shutting the airport down for a week. Two airliners were struck in mid-air by small meteors which destroyed the planes in mid-air with the loss of all life on board. Meterors that landed in the open seas caused Tsunamis, which traveled around the world’s oceans at hundreds of miles per hour killing millions as the waves flowed over various islands and low-lying lands and harbors. The Tsunami destroyed Hong Kong harbor killing over a million people in less than twenty minutes.

While the destruction was heavy and the loss of life worse than the ‘experts’ projected, the news organizations blamed God and Mother Nature for the deaths. They reported there wasn’t anything we could have done about it. The world grieved for those lost in the tsunamis and land meteor strikes, concerts were held, charity balls thrown, retired world leaders made commercials asking for donations. Worldwide, over two billion dollars was raised. Much of it went to cover the overhead of the organizations who were quickly formed to raise the funds. The dead were the lead story on the evening news programs for an entire week before it was pushed to the files by a famous sports figure marrying his girl and boyfriend, the first three-way marriage performed in California. Multi-partner marriages were an unforeseen spin-off of the Supreme Court’s acceptance of Gay marriage in June 2015. Given most people’s very short attention span, because they get their information in short twenty-second sound bites, the meteor shower was soon forgotten. It was pushed aside by the networks and news reporting organizations who knew they had to change the focus of the news or the world would suffer a poor holiday shopping season which could push the developed world into a deep recession. They picked up the story of the first three-way marriage, they made it their hottest news story to distract people from the deaths and destruction caused by the meteors. Had they not changed their reporting focus, people might have put the information about a new disease together with the story of the meteors and gotten, one plus one equals two. Instead, they missed the connection and came up with a totally different answer to the cause and source of the new illness, one that was going to prove more deadly.

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Given the state of the world in late 2016, with the American Congressional and Presidential elections on November 8th, the upcoming holiday shopping season and the world’s first three-way marriage the story of the meteor shower and the deaths was quickly forgotten by the media. The world went about its business, forgetting all about the meteors until Thursday, November 24, Thanksgiving Day in America. People around the world woke on November 24 to a clear, cool day. One that was unusual in that it was a beautiful day around the world. The only unusual thing about the morning of November 24
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was that millions woke with a sore throat. Since sore throats aren’t an earth shattering event and no news organizations reported on the large number of illness. Every news organization missed the fact that the sore throarts weren’t a local issue, but were happening worldwide. They were focused on other stories, they missed the fact that millions became ill with similar symptoms at the same time. They missed any connection between the millions of cases of sore throats and the meterors.

Most who had to work assumed they’d picked up a mild flu or a mild sore throat, they figured it was something they’d picked up at work or in school. Some decided that their throats were tender enough they should be checked by a doctor. In America, those that called their doctors were quickly reminded by message services and voice mail that doctor offices were closed until Monday due to the holiday. Many decided they would wait and see, they used their sore throat as an excuse to return to bed and call in sick, after all most people really didn’t want to work on Thanksgiving Day.