12 21 12

By Dayne Rae Buck

The end of the world, as we know it, has come. Six elderly people built an underground apartment to try to survive the outside weathers. When they think the time is right, they search for living beings. Finding them, they help to bring what's left of the world together. Many struggles abound, but with persistence these six elderly people prove to their followers that there is more to living than just being alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 12, 2009
• ISBN: 9781469116662

Dayne Rae Buck

Dayne Rae Buck, or as known as b most as “Adi”, was born in January 20, 1947 in St. Johnsbury Vt. She was #5 of 7 children. The mother of 5 children of her own and blessed with 9 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. Adi’s love for writing came alive when she was in high school, writing short stories and poetry throughout her life. She was a joyous woman with a courageous heart and infectious laughter. This book being published was her dream. She passed on June 11, 2009, prior to her book being printed, but she knew it was on its way.

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Copyright © 2009 by Dayne Rae Buck.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

DECEMBER 21, 2012

DECEMBER 22, 2012

DECEMBER 25, 2012

JANUARY 31, 2013

FEBRUARY 1, 2013

FEBRUARY 2, 2013

FEBRUARY 3, 2013

FEBRUARY 4, 2013

FEBRUARY 5, 2013

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

FEBRUARY 8, 2013

FEBRUARY 9, 2013

FEBRUARY 10, 2013

FEBRUARY 11, 2013

FEBRUARY 15, 2013

FEBRUARY 16, 2013

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

MARCH 2, 2013

MARCH 3, 2013

MARCH 4, 2013

MARCH 5, 2013

On A Personal Note

My Grandmother

Her days are numbered we all know.

She’ll leave us to the great beyond.

She has left her memories that we shall cherish until we ourselves

will parish.

She’s had her share of bittersweet victories and utter failure,

though she never lets it show.

She loves with all her heart and leaves no room to fall from her graces.

She’s opened her home to all those broken souls, only to have her

spirits sagging, but never does she say no to those souls that need her.

She’s watched her children, and grandchildren have babies, and she’s

loved them all with the enormity that ones heart should not be able to hold.

She’s taught us well, all we needed to know to get through life’s

hurdles that we will defeat.

She’s more than a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother than

anyone could know.

She is my rock to keep me firmly planted to the ground.

She’s my listener when no one else will care to lend an ear.

She’s my confidant when I can’t trust another soul.

She’s my grandmother, she’s my Adi.

We all love you so much and can’t imagine life without you.

We are blessed to have had you in our lives for so long.

Love Kaitlyn

DECEMBER 21, 2012

I looked at the clock. It was four o’clock in the morning. I rolled over and got out of bed thinking, Today is the day; it will be here soon.

I went downstairs to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. I poured myself a cupful and stared out the window. No one was out there yet; the streets were deserted. It didn’t matter, everyone was oblivious to the fact that today the world would change. I had tried to tell them, but they had just laughed at me and called me a crazy old woman.

I could feel it already; it was in the air. It should have been cold out there, but it was like a hot August day. The trees were beginning to bud after losing all of their leaves, the flowers were popping through the dirt, the grass was growing; even some of the birds had returned after migrating south. It was as if nature didn’t know what to do.

I’ve got to get ready, I said, talking to myself. I had already wasted enough time. I needed to pack the rest of my belongings into the car and get out of here. It was just so hard to leave the rest of my family and friends behind.

I had a safe place to go. The others were already there. They had been there all week. There was my brother Don, his wife Grace, my sister Darlene and her husband Phil, and Charlie, the love of my life. Just Buddy and I needed to join them. Buddy, my best friend is my dog. I had chosen to wait; to try to convince more of them to come with me, especially my family and my close friends, but they wouldn’t listen to me.

The people in this little town of Lynxville would be waking up soon and would be getting ready to go to work. The morning traffic would start up in about an hour. It would take me that long to load my car and lock up my house. I’d better get started now.

I had spent the last five years preparing for this day. It saddened me greatly that only two of my five remaining siblings and their spouses had agreed to leave with me. We had pooled all of our monetary resources and had purchased a piece of land in the mountains. The property we bought had a huge old farm house on it with a separate barn. I had spent all my money preparing these two properties for this day.

I gave one last loving inspection to the house I was leaving. I had put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that it wouldn’t be broken into or vandalized. I had reinforced the original structure with brick outer walls; I had replaced the windows with unbreakable glass; the roof was covered with tin and I had installed bars around the whole property, including the chimney. If an intruder did manage to get in, there was nothing here. Except for some of the furniture, the house was empty. Everything else had been moved to the farmhouse.

I had to leave now. It would take only a little more than a half hour to get there, but it would be close to seven o’clock by then and it would take all of us about two hours to lock up the farm. By 11:11, all hell should break loose if the predictions were right.

The morning traffic was beginning to flow as I stood by my vehicle. My neighbors were leaving for work or going off to do whatever they do every day. As I watched them drive by, some of them slowed down to give a glance my way; a few of them waved, but most of them just laughed and shook their heads. They all knew I was moving underground today. They called me Maggie, the crazy old lady. They would see. I’m sorry, Lord, I’m not sneering, but I did warn them.

I had taken all of the predictions for today seriously. There had been many documentaries on television about the end of this era, and the internet had been full of information discussing what might occur on this date.

The local newspaper had interviewed the six of us and had printed a story about us as we started preparing my property in town. We had not told them about the farm house. Everyone knew that we had built a place underground, but we did not tell them where this place was located.

I got into my car and started the drive through town. It looked just like any other warm summer day, except that it was almost Christmas in Northeastern Vermont.

As I reached the edge of town, I parked the car and got out. I stood, looking tearfully back at the town I had called home for the last thirty years. I would come back if I survived. I got back into my car and continued the drive to the farm, looking in the rear view mirror as the town I loved disappeared behind the trees.

As I drove, I thought about all the warning signs, some of them going back hundreds of years. There were the warnings in the Bible, the Mayan calendar ending on this day, Nostradamus, global warming, the melting of the polar caps and the shrinking coast lines; and then there was the fact that the sun was not where it was supposed to be and the planets had all moved; it was all there. I prayed that the six of us weren’t the only ones who had prepared for this day. I prayed harder that I was all wrong about today, but I didn’t think so; I was sure that it was really going to happen.

As I crested the last hill to the farm, I breathed a sigh of relief that no one had followed me. There it is, Buddy. This will be home for a while.

I drove through the gate and parked my car in front of the house. Phil and Don were already outside closing and locking up the bars on the windows of the house. The barn was already locked up.

Darlene and Grace came out to help me unpack the personal things I had brought from my house. You see, we wouldn’t be leaving here until we thought it would be safe.

Let’s get this done, Don said as we were bringing my things inside. We don’t have much time. The two men went to the gate to secure it. No one would be able to get in now. The six of us had planned it this way. Not even our children or our grandchildren knew where we were. It had been their choice not to come. It was heartbreaking, but they, just like every one else, had thought we were going overboard about the predictions.

Don and Phil came back from the gate. It’s done, Don said. Everything is locked up.

We had better get inside, said Phil. It’s way too hot out here.

I took one last look around. The bars—I was so sick of bars. There were bars twelve feet high and bars over the top of the whole property, pitched to go over the house. There were bricks covering the entire house and barn and bars over that, just like on my house in town.

Then there were the air pipes; they were hidden, but I knew they were there. We hid them so if any one discovered this place, they wouldn’t suspect we were underground. Once we were in there, there would be no way to let anyone in; we wouldn’t be able to hear them from in there.

The four of them, Don, Grace, Phil and Darlene had sold their homes for the money to put into this place. They planned on staying here when this was all over. Charlie and I were going to go back home to Lynxville, but we knew we would be here for a while. None of us knew how long that would be.

I went inside to prepare to go downstairs while the two men finished locking up then they joined us in the kitchen.

Where’s Charlie? I asked, noticing that he was not there to greet me.

I brought him downstairs when you got here, answered Phil. You know how he is; he wanted to make sure you got here okay, but he didn’t want you to know he was worried.

Yeah, I laughed. The old fart likes for me to think he has no feelings.

We’re not going to be able to stay up here for very long without the air conditioning, so we had probably better get below, I said. We’re going to need the generators for heat if it gets cold.

We went down the stairs. We had installed an elevator for Charlie because he was in a wheelchair most of the time, but we used the stairs so we could lock every thing behind us.

You see, today was December 21, 2012. It was predicted that the world would change today. No one thought it was to be the end of the world, just the end of the world as we knew it.

Don bolted the entry to the first landing, the main living area in the house. The next level was the cellar. It all looked just like an ordinary old farm house. Phil flipped the hidden switch and the wall opened to another set of stairs. As we were descending, the wall closed behind us. Now we were home.

We had prepared these living quarters to appear like an ordinary home; we had installed electricity, we had television and radio for as long as each would keep working. We had installed four generators for back up electricity if we lost power.

We entered the kitchen with all its modern conveniences: stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, washer and dryer. All of us were hoping everything would continue to work properly. We had no idea what the generators would do; they might not work. The men had rebuilt them with no computerized parts, and they could fill them with gas from down here, but we still didn’t know how long or even if, they would work. We didn’t know for sure if any of this would work.

We had installed a water wheel and two windmills in the brook that ran through this property. The men needed only to connect a couple of cables down here to provide for electricity. The only computerized item we had was a computer. We hoped to monitor the outside world with it, assuming it would keep working.

We’ve got one more hour until the catastrophe should begin. I want to go back up and double check everything, I said. We may be down here for a quite a while.

We might be back upstairs in two hours, said Phil.

There’s also the safety issue, said Don. I know we kept this place secret, but it might not take long for someone to find it, especially if there’s smoke pouring out of the chimney.

You’re probably right, I said. If things go the way we think they’re going to, we’ll have a fight on our hands if anybody finds this place. They’re going to want to come in and keep warm; they’ll want to stay here. We can’t house them all and we certainly can’t feed all of them.

I gave Charlie a kiss and went back up the stairs. I was claustrophobic, so when we built this place we decorated it hoping to make it appear as ordinary as possible, but I still wanted to wait until the last minute to be locked up.

Upstairs, in the main house, it didn’t take me long to walk through each room. I checked to make sure everything was locked. I looked out the window for the last time, wondering how long we would be confined to the downstairs. I hated the bars; and as for the weather; the temperature had to be well over a hundred degrees by this time. I could barely breathe because of the humidity, so I went back downstairs.

Once downstairs, I walked into the living room where the five of them had gathered; they were all watching television. No one would ever guess from a casual inspection that this place was underground. There were curtains hung in each room, but of course there were no windows behind them; the bedrooms were off to the sides, ten of them in all. We could have housed practically all of our relatives. It would have been a little crowded, but we could have done it.

The door at the farthest end of the living room led to what we referred to as our stash. We had purchased eight freezers and had put them in this room. The freezers were packed with meat, ice cream and other frozen edibles. The six of us had planted a huge garden during the summer and we had canned the vegetables and stored them on the shelves that were installed above the freezers. There was also flour, yeast, sugar, spices; everything we thought we would need to carry us through for many months to come, if necessary. The latter items we had put into glass containers to keep them as fresh as we could, and to keep out any rodents or bugs that might still be creeping around.

Beyond that room was the space where we had planted seeds to see if they would grow inside. We had installed heat lamps in the ceiling for artificial light. The lights were on a timer to provide sixteen hours of light. Some of the plants had already begun to sprout, but it was too early to know if any of them would amount to more than puny little unproductive plants.

The last room we called our barn. It was actually under the real barn by two and a half levels. We had invested in eight cows, a bull, twenty-five chickens, three pigs and a boar; and of course, Grace had brought her horse; none of us wanted to leave him behind. The four of them, Don, Phil, Darlene and Grace had been staying here off and on throughout the summer and about twice a week, they had brought the animals to this underground shelter to get them accustomed to the surroundings. Phil had come here twice a day to milk the cows and to feed all of the animals.

This underground barn was about twice the size of the barn above the ground. The lights in here were also on a timer. There was plenty of room with the cows in their stanchions, the horse in his stall, the pigs in their pens and the chickens in a coop at the far end.

As I checked through each of these rooms, I wondered what was happening outside. The weather must be unbearable. It had been so hot when I was upstairs. I prayed that our children had listened to us when we explained how to stay out of the elements, away from the terrible weather we predicted might occur.

Its eleven o’clock, said Don as I reentered the living room. Come sit down and watch television with us.

Leave it to you to want to watch TV. I commented, but I knew he wanted me to see what was going on outside.

The TV news was showing clips from New York, Miami, Chicago, Houston, Seattle, San Diego; from China, Japan, England and Russia. All over the world, everything that could be happening was happening, disastrous weather and chaos was in every corner of the earth. There were tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanic outbursts, sand storms; every imaginable weather system was bearing down on this earth all at once, leaving no part of creation unchallenged.

I’m afraid this is the end, gasped the reporter. It’s just too much. Everywhere something dreadful is happening. Things that aren’t being destroyed by this ungodly weather are just breaking down. Ordinary things are not work… .

That was it; the end of the broadcast, the television was off the air. Darlene turned the radio on; that too, produced nothing but silence. This was it; today is December 21, 2012 and the time is 11:11 a.m.

You were right, Maggie, commented Phil. Things just stopped working.

It’s spooky, said Darlene. It’s almost as if you knew.

I didn’t, I said. It only made sense to me. Every one, including each of you, had your own thoughts about what would happen, if anything did. This is almost exactly what I thought would happen.

But, I continued, if my idea of what else will happen, we’re in for quite an ordeal.

Darlene tried the telephone. That doesn’t work either. Of course it didn’t.

Today is the last day of the Mayan calendar. The Mayas,