Reset

“Well they didn’t look like the solar cars that were placed in California. They worked using a reserve power pool, power source gained by the solar arrays or panels on the unit. It didn’t move fast, and it only ran when it was daylight and it could draw from the sun. The more sunlight, the faster it moved. Keep in mind, we are dealing with NASA.”

“True.” Malcolm exhaled. “Well, what are the odds?”

“Of?”

“This being the warehouse?”

“My opinion… they’re good. If they left transportation they would have left it protected and where we could easily find it. This is the closest big building.”

“Fingers crossed.” Malcolm tried the garage door to the right.

Nothing. Locked.

He moved over and tried the other one, that too was locked. Knowing that more than likely the door to the building was locked as well, he pulled his tool pack from his shoulder, opened it on the ground and slid out the small crowbar.

It was small and he hoped it would work without bending.

After several minutes, he was finally able to pry open the door. The crowbar was useless afterwards. He shoved it aside and opened the door wider.

Amy stepped in first. “It’s really dark.”

Before following her in, Malcolm propped open the door, grabbed the flashlight, turned it on and walked in.

“Malcolm?” Amy said with a slight smile.

Malcolm aimed his flashlight beam into the large warehouse. It didn’t light much, but it did eliminate enough for him to see that they had found what they were looking for. “Bingo.

Step one. Before they could figure out how to operate the dune buggy looking vehicles, they had to get more light in the warehouse and for that… they needed to work on the garage doors.

<><><><>

They lab office was a room twenty feet by twelve. Filled mostly with desks and computers, John figured it to be more of a monitoring station. They moved some of the desks out of the way to make room as he and Grant went through supplies.

“Seventy-five bars,” Grant said. “Ten each, five for this evening to divide.”

“Works. Water tablets?”

“Twelve boxes. Divide the extra?”

“Yes.” John made a note on paper. “Water is going to be tough.”

“The one thing you didn’t grab much of.”

“It was heavy. So everyone gets an eight pack… oh wait, the president isn’t here, we all get an eight pack plus a bottle. I get the extra.”

“Fair enough. Veggie bits … Twelve packs each.”

“How many first aid kits.”

“Twelve.”

“We’ll divide up the extra,” John said. “Everyone should have enough each.”

Meredith, who had been staring out the window, spoke up. “Then what?”

“This land is your land,” John said, “We hopefully find a farming region, food may still be growing wild. Again, we don’t have a clue how long we were down there.”

“Why are you dividing all this?” she asked.

“Because Meredith, as much as I am a dick, it would be too much of a dick move to keep it all myself. We all need it for our travels.”

Grant asked, “We need to come up with a route. All of us live spread out over this country.”

“We can work it out. Unless Malcolm finds more than one vehicle.”

“Hate to see us split up.”

“What choice do we have?”

Meredith answered. “Don’t split up. There is safety in numbers. Stay grounded. Find one place, make it center base and two at a time go out searching, when they return, the next two go. If by some chance things are barren out there, the last thing we need to do is not be together.”

“Don’t you want to find your family?” John asked.

“I have none. There’s no one to find.” She stood up. “We need a long term plan.”

Grant looked at her. “We need answers first. I don’t think any of us can just settle down and accept this without answers and closure.”

“Exactly,” John added. “We are on a base. Everything outside of here could be fine. This illness could have hit only one city or state or part of a country. We don’t know, we really don’t and until I find out the extent of all that we missed, I can’t make any long-term plans. The answers most certainly aren’t in this dark room.”

Just as he finished saying that, a deep hum rumbled and within seconds, the lights flickered and came on.

John looked up. “Well I’ll be damned.”

Grant pointed to the computer that started a boot up sequence. “You were saying.”

The moment of shock and silence was broken when Malcolm rushed in the room.

He released a gleeful and proud laugh. “Yes! It worked.”

“You did this?” John asked.

“I did.” Malcolm looked around and chose a random computer. “Well, we did this.”

Amy replied. “Don’t let him fool you. He did it. When he saw the controls he knew.”

“Back up plan,” Malcolm explained. “In case everything went off line. Like an EMP caused them to go off the grid. They needed to be able to communicate with those on the space station. The batteries, the buggies, not to mention the solar arrays on top of the building 4601. Told me it was our jackpot.”

“You’re a freaking genius.” John said.

Meredith pointed to Malcolm. “If we split up. I’m going with him.”

Malcolm smiled, and then returned to the computer.