John Schettler - Fallen Angels - 9 Days Falling, Volume II

“Did we get enough bunkered in Baku for this Fairchild group?”

“Yeah, we made our quota alright,” Flack shrugged. “But that’s the last feather in my cap for the foreseeable future, that is until the men with guns sort this business out. It’s looking like another god-damned world war, Mudman. They’ll fight for the crude all over the globe, unless they blow themselves to hell first with nukes.”

Mudman gave him a wide eyed look. “Nukes?”

“Christ yes! The Chinese were talking that line in the UN last week. Now they’re out after Taiwan and there was a big naval battle in the Pacific. One of our aircraft carriers was damn near sunk! Then that volcano blew its top and things settled down a bit. But this isn’t over, Mudman. Its only just beginning. Someone’s got a serious hair up their ass over oil and gas, and that’s where the fighting will be until they start throwing the ICBMs. I’ll tell you one thing…” Flack looked over the rim of his wire frame glasses. “It’s going to be one lousy Christmas shopping season this year. Folks back home are going to be boarding up their track homes in a matter of weeks and hunkering down.”

“You a Prepper, Flackie?”

“A what?”

“A Prepper—you know, one of those guys with a bunker and stockpiles of food and ammo waiting for the zombies or Nibiru or some other shit to happen.”

“Nibiru? That was all baloney. We don’t need zombies or rogue planets to bring it all down, Mudman. We seem to be doing the job well enough ourselves.”

“Well… What are we going to do now? What are you gonna do when we get home?”

“Me? I’m fixin’ to buy one of those new Quantum Sleepers. I’ll load the damn thing up with Snickers Bars, popcorn and a couple cases of beer, and crank up the music nice and loud.”

“What the hell’s a Quantum Sleeper?”

“Haven’t you seen the ads in the magazines and Internet? It’s a nifty self contained sleeping chamber, big as a California King if you want to lay out the bucks for one. Damn things have TV, stereo, Internet, food and water, and they close up tight as a clam shell—bullet proof too. They even have filters for gas and radiation contaminates. Yup, that’s what I’ll do if we make it back to the States. I’ll get me one of those Quantum Sleepers , and then the world can go to hell and I’ll watch it on TV and eat popcorn the whole damn time. It’s what most of them have been doing over there the last 20 years anyway, so I may as well join the party.”

“Shit, Flackie! Sounds like a gilded tomb!”

“Not too far off the mark, Mudman. They can bury my ass in a titanium lined sleeper, and that’ll be that. But hey, if you have to check out, you may as well do so in style, eh?”

“Big enough to fit in some babes?”

“I should be so lucky. Nope. I’ll be stuck in there with my wife…Hummm, on second thought I may just buy one for her too. Then she won’t have to hear me burping through my beer foam.”

It was as good a plan as anything else Flack could conceive at that moment, and amazingly, not too far off the mark for some in the US. The nation had gone into a kind of holiday weekend shopping mentality. Not since 9/11 or the openings days of the two Gulf Wars had there been anything quite so riveting on the news crawl. People were out at the shopping markets and malls stockpiling and panic buying as if the Chinese were about to mount a full scale invasion at any moment. News of the battle in the Pacific and the damage to several US Navy ships, including a big aircraft carrier, had people spooked.

Yup, thought Flack. The folks back home are going to realize that they are now just hours, days at best, from the plug being pulled. And everything ran on the juice coming through that plug. America, land of the free, was about to go dark. The entire cellophane crackle of people’s lives was about to be suddenly reduced to a very few simple common denominators: guns, ammo, gold, food, water, shelter.

And the more he thought about it the more he also realized that he could shorten that list easily by throwing out the gold. You couldn’t eat it. You might use it to trade for really useful things in the short run, but in a matter of weeks people would realize the gold was really useless. It depended on a functioning financial sector to be redeemed, and the banks wouldn’t survive another month. It depended on the hope of a future where it would once again be traded into dollars for that never ending trip to Costco and the shopping malls. It was just a hunk of rock that primates fancied because it was shiny; nothing more than a gentlemen’s agreement. It had no inherent value beyond a few industrial applications. So now it was just guns, ammo, food, water, shelter, or it would be in a matter of days.

Maybe Mudman was on to something with this zombie shit he was talking. He was kidding him earlier, but that Quantum Sleeper was sounding better and better every minute.

The alarmwoke Robert Wagner promptly at 7:30 AM, the digital numbers seeming to flick on the radio, merging the last fleeting strands of a dream with the voice of the announcer. He lolled for a moment in the plush warmth of his Tempur-Pedic memory foam mattress, hearing that dollar days were almost over at his local Ford dealer. He had to hurry so he would not miss out on the biggest savings event of the year, a blockbuster 1.9% APR and $2000 factory cash back after signing!

He opened his eyes, seeing the familiar pale blue glow of the interior light above him. He was still nestled in the enclosed space of his bedtime cocoon—the Quantum Sleeper he had installed last fall when the terror alert level reached Orange again. It was a special bed, with an outer shell that closed overhead like the roof of a convertible car and created an environment that was completely safe and secure from the outside world. The titanium frame and polycarbonate siding of the outer shell was finished off with finely lacquered wood. Once sealed, however, it created an impregnable refuge, air-tight, water-tight, and with every comfort a person could desire to sustain them through the night, or a long, lazy morning should they care to linger in the protective shell before rising for the day.

The Quantum Sleeper had a console that activated a flat screen plasma television on the upper roof, so he could watch HDTV or DVD movies while he rested in bed. The interior lighting and temperature could be completely controlled, and the air was filtered and conditioned so well that the unit was entirely safe from bio-threats, noxious gas, smoke or any other airborne threat—and that included dust, pollen, animal dander, mold, bacteria, and even airborne viruses! H1N1 would find no refuge here. He had been astonished to learn that the air inside his home could be up to fifty times more polluted than the air outside. It just made good sense to know that he could rest all night in a safe and filtered environment like his Quantum Sleeper.

Beyond this, the twin storage tanks hidden behind the headboard held up to three days of cool, pristine water, with hot and cold taps accessible on the panel behind his pillow where a little splash sink could be pulled out from the headboard. A small microwave oven was also installed there, along with an all band radio, CD/MP3 player with stereo speakers, and cabinet space for snack food and reading materials. There were even emergency side compartments in the unit that could hold additional food, water, medical supplies and anything else deemed an urgent necessity. And the whole unit was backed up with a reserve battery that would last a full eight hours if the power ever failed.

And one day it would fail… soon…