Home Defense

Carol was making decent time , She could tell that there was a storm brewing in the distance , so she picked up her pace .

Her cart always seemed to get a little heavier just before she got to the old barn

One more hill to go , and it was a long one .

She had made the cart herself , Two wheels from an old fat tire bicycle , connected with an axle from an old piece of farm equipment , she had needed to modify the axle to fit the tires but with a few tools that she had found on that farm she had made it work .

Having grown up poor , in a farming community , she was used to improvising and knew that many farms had their own workshops so they could made a lot of their own repairs and she had taken advantage of that knowledge

Of course it didn't hurt that she had gone to a university working toward a degree in mechanical engineering , with a few electrical engineering courses thrown in for good measure . She would have graduated in another two semesters if she had been able to finish .

The cart's frame was made out of some old pallets and pvc pipe draped with canvas from a tent making a decent cargo space . With two handles that she repurposed from the wooden handrails from a stairway in an old schoolhouse . The thing resembled something between a rickshaw and a horse cart , but it was light on its own and could hold a decent cargo .

It also had a small electric motor which she could engage with a twist throttle on the right handle , which was powered by two car batteries which recharged from a small solar panel , over level ground it almost propelled itself . even when fully loaded as it was now . But the most ingenious part was that she could disassemble and reassemble the whole thing in about twenty minutes , which came in handy when obstructions appeared in her path such as fallen trees or the occasional stream .

Carol came to the foot of the hill , the last hill before she reached the Barn , she spun the cart around , it worked better to bring it up backwards as the handles could easily snag .

At the rear of the cart there was a third wheel with a hand crank boat winch , She flipped the level and dragged the cable up the hill , she pounded a two foot rod with a metal ring into the hillside with her favorite tool in the world ... a small three pound sledge hammer , and clipped the cable to a metal ring at it's top

She then walked back to the cart and began winching the cart up the hill , turning the crank , which drove the gear , which turned the spool , which hauled the cart up the hill . It was a slow process . but one which she both looked forward to because it meant she was almost at her destination , but which also made her nervous and wary because it made more noise than she was comfortable with , the constant clicking of the winch was not a sound of nature and could be heard at a distance .

The cart got to within a couple feet of the metal pin and Carol stopped cranking , She put a block behind the wheels and set the hand brakes , which were also scavenged from bicycle parts , she then walked further up the hill to set a second pin , and then back to unhook the cable and drag it to the next pin .

She then proceeded to winch the cart to the next pin , this was a process which she needed to repeat four times before she reached the top of the slope , her arms were aching with the effort when she crested the rise . and there in the distance was the red barn , her destination .

It sat amid a vast field , nearly five hundred acres , or so she had been told .

She was two days early .

but would have to wait another few hours there at the edge of the cover of the forest , It was against protocol to travel an open field in daylight .

So she set her solar panels towards the sun , and waited for dark . by the time the sun had gone down and a crescent moon was on the rise her batteries were charged enough that she could ride the cart in the rest of the way under the power of it's tiny electric motor , so that was exactly what she did .

The last hundred feet or so she cut the motor and pulled the cart in by her own power .

The weathervane swiveled to face her as she approached from the East even though the wind was clearly blowing from the north .

she raised her left arm , with three fingers extended , and then made a fist she then dropped her left arm and placed her right hand palm up on top of her head and then palm down in the same place .

The weathervane then spun twice clockwise and returned to pointing north

signal received .

As Carol approached the old barn the door slid left on it's trolley half way and stopped , she proceeded inside and the door closed behind her .

Twelve years ago the big red barn had been an active part of a large independent farm , but now it was a large part of something else .

Carol was 20 years old when the first rock hit .

It hit somewhere just off the coast of Africa , it wasn't a huge asteroid

It was estimated to be the size of a football field , actually fairly small as far as what is known to be out there , but it was it's speed that made it destructive , thirty eight hours from the time it was detected coming through the asteroid belt until impact .

it was the fastest object ever detected within the solar system .

the initial impact was considered a " A bit of luck " it hit forty miles off the coast of Africa in the Atlantic ocean there were several Major earthquakes on the continent of Africa but casualties were relatively light , but twenty eight hours later the first waves hit Brazil and Argentina and then the surge entered the gulf of mexico , and florida disappeared .

four days later other rocks began raining down .

no continent was spared , no country

the world fell into despair , into chaos

Once inside the old barn Carol parked her cart in a stall just inside and to the left , she took her personnel belongings , a back pack and a large gym bag , and left the rest .

as she headed toward the rear of the building She passed by Walt in his stall where he always was , she paused just long enough to pet his long nose , he snorted slightly and nuzzled her gently , she knew that he wasn't a real horse but the illusion was so real that she sometimes felt as though he was .

Next came Nellie , two stalls down , but she didn't move or twitch or anything at all , she had been off line for over six months , her stillness gave Carol an uneasy feeling .

At the very back of the barn sat a single bale of hay , Carol set her bag on the floor next to it and then sat down on the bale , the whole section of the floor dropped as the elevator descended , as she looked briefly up she saw the floor close above her , and she rode the open elevator sixty feet down to the main floor of the complex . She walked to the security desk and signed in . Tony was at the desk and welcomed her home as she placed her hand on the scanner , this part always made her nervous .

the little machine hummed slightly as it confirmed her identity and made a bio-scan to check for contamination .

When the result came back " All clear " she gave sigh of relief , missions to the outside world always carried a risk of exposure to the alien element that the rocks had released upon the world . minor exposure to that element typically meant retirement from outside missions , but heavy doses resulted in severe damage to the nervous system resulting in a rapid descent into madness , and eventually death .

In the early years exposure was much more common , but had become almost rare these days , not that it mattered much , now that almost all animal life on the surface had died off especially the human population .

But there still remained a vestige of hope for humanity .

This very facility housed several hundred human survivors as well as several dozen species of mammals , a few species each of birds and reptiles , and even a few species of fish .

Excursions to the surface were a lifeline that kept the facility functioning , agents went out into the world in search of anything that might be used to keep the facility up and running .

And Carol was good at finding things .

Old computers were useful for their components , fuel was always in demand , and many other devices could be useful as well .

But now all Carol wanted was to get some sleep , she headed down corridor B which took her past the high orbit monitoring stations . She glanced at the displays that were being relayed down from the two remaining functional satellites . nothing new there .

She arrived at her apartment and shed her outside clothes , took a quick shower and laid down in her bed .

within a few moments she was fast asleep and dreaming of a day ... far in the future when humanity could once again live above ground .