The Unraveling: Book 1 of the Bound to Survive Series

by Charley Hogwood

  “That would be amazing, thanks Mark.

  “We all have a lot on our plate and I don’t want this stuff to be just another burden on everyone. Are we ok with trying to have an official meeting at least once a month?” Everyone seemed to approve.

  “Would you all be ok with adding some training opportunities throughout the month? Like maybe a couple hours here and there?” Cal asked the group. Everyone nodded in agreement.

  “This gives us three committee members and we still need someone to handle projects and communications.” Cal looked around the table, secretly hoping someone would volunteer so he didn’t have to pick.

  “I think I know someone who would be perfect for projects. He is a true MacGyver kind of guy, a patriot but not crazy. I can reach out to him, if you want,” Glendora offered.

  “Unless someone objects, that seems ok to me, personally. I’d chat with him about it but probably wouldn’t share any specifics about the group or our plans just yet.

  “OK team, I think we have made great progress tonight. We have a group, we have a few important positions covered, and we can make decisions. We have established some priorities to work on and there is plenty of work to do. Please ask for help if you need anything. Remember that together, as a group…”

  Cal was working into another long motivational speech when he was cut off by Charlotte.

  “So, us girls are running low on wine, how about putting together a recon team to the fridge for refills. Feel free to arm yourselves accordingly for whatever nefarious mosquitoes you encounter between here and there.” The girls all giggled. Rusty looked at Cal.

  “It’s going to be a long apocalypse.”

  “Especially if it is the end of the WINE as we know it. Hahahahaa. Get it? TEOTWAWKI but with the end of the WINE instead of the end of the WORLD. It’s funny!” Cal cracked himself up.

  8

  Chapter 8

  Tuesday, January 2nd

  Loxahatchee, Florida

  “Welcome back to Channel 23 News. We now have some more information regarding what people are calling The Texas Flu. This year’s influenza has taken a deadly turn. Earlier reports had already noted that the annual vaccine is not matched well with the current strain of influenza, but now we are getting reports of an increased mortality rate beyond what is considered normal.”

  Tim Franklin always had the TV news on in his workshop while he was tinkering. He didn’t know why, it just irritated him since he felt like today’s news channels were more sensation and gossip and less factual than before. However, this recent flu season update unnerved him a little bit.

  “We are now hearing of an increased mortality in all age ranges which is even more worrisome. Medical centers have been inundated with patients claiming to have the flu, causing an increase in wait times to see medical professionals, as well as a decrease in the available patient waiting rooms and other areas. This is causing backups and overloading emergency rooms, primarily in the larger cities along the southern border with an increase in verified cases in Chicago, San Diego, Los Angeles, New York, and Miami.”

  Tim stopped what he was doing to turn the TV volume louder. Though he wasn’t anywhere that could be considered close to any of those cities, he began to wonder how long it would take to move north into his rural patch of land.

  “In a related story, there is increased demand that the government close the southern border completely, as people are becoming convinced that infectious diseases are being brought into this country by illegal immigrants flowing through the porous border. The Department of Homeland Security has released a statement of awareness of an increase in some common third world diseases in the immigrant population but in joint efforts with local health departments, the DHS is confident that our advanced medical systems are more than capable of tracking, identifying and treating any illnesses that may enter the southern border.”

  “Oh well, never fear, the government is tracking sick people. What a relief!” The sarcasm was just dripping.

  “This is not the same story we are hearing from local health departments on the ground. Doctors and nurses are increasingly speaking out on a lack of guidance and support from the federal government regarding cross-border diseases. They say there is a lot more going on than is being reported on a national level. The situation is being compared to the Ebola scare in 2013. Channel 23 investigated several local clinics near the small town of Del Rio, Texas, near the southern border. We can confirm that obviously ill patients are, in fact, being turned away from hospitals and urgent care centers because they do not have insurance. Del Rio is located only minutes away from Laughlin Air Force Base, which is considered a critical location for national security as it is the largest pilot training base in the US Air Force. We will be right back for some fun with the latest contestant to be dropped from “Celebrity Dance Class!” Seen right here on Channel 23 Thursday nights at 9 right after these messages.”

  Tim shook his head and went back to his work bench. He made a mental note to put some more hand sanitizer in his truck later. Though he didn’t leave his house or workshop much, a little bit couldn’t hurt right?

  In his early 60s, Tim had been retired for several years now, thanks to some good planning and even better luck. After 40 years as an electrical engineer, he was now a part-time inventor. Over the years, he had come up with a few small successes, but he hit it big time when he came up with a new type of magnetic wall receptacle that ran in a strip around a room but did not have any pronged plugs.

  Similar to wireless cell phone chargers, all you needed to do was attach an adapter to a regular appliance cord and stick it anywhere on the wall track around the room. This provided more convenient places to plug in all the usual home furnishings, and it worked for everything from lights and TVs to USB powered devices. The bonus was that it also transmitted your WiFi throughout the house with no signal loss, and it had an LED light strip that automatically came on and lit the entire floor area of every room if the electricity failed or if a smoke detector was triggered. There was a new construction version and a retro kit that would convert an existing home. Tim was thorough in his designs, and his investors loved him for it.

  He was currently at the point where multiple major companies were preparing to make him offers and it was expected that the rights to this invention would go for upwards of $800 million in the next 6 months. They would be finishing up final component testing shortly, and then go into market research.

  Now that the testing was out of his hands, Tim had spent the last few weeks in his version of “relaxation mode.” His first project was to find a way to keep the neighbor’s cat from sleeping on the seat of his riding mower. That damned cat was trying to aggravate him on purpose, he was sure of it.

  Glendora lived just down the street and decided to pop in for a visit. She knew where he would be since he spent most of his time alone in the workshop out back. She also knew he was single. In her eyes, he was quite a catch at roughly six feet, salt and peppered in all the right places, and lean in all the others. Aside from reminding her of Scotty, the Star Trek engineer who always seemed to complain about something breaking, he was rather pleasant to be around.

  Glendora was loosely acquainted with Tim from the store and the neighborhood get togethers, and she didn’t do a very good job at trying to hide her attraction to him. Unintentionally, she had a habit of gazing upon him as a tall drink of man-meat. At least that is what the waitresses at her country store always teased her about.

  She had slyly gussied herself up a little for the visit and found her way to the workshop where Tim was damning a cat for some reason.

  “Well, hello neighbor,” she drawled out, with maybe a little too much emphasis.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Hamilton. How are you today?”

  “Oh, you know you can call me Glendora. Please, Tim, you make me blush.” So much for playing cool.

  “What brings you around to this fire hazard of a workshop?”

  “
Well, I was just in the area and thought I would drop in.”

  “OK, great…so why do you look like you have an ulterior motive?” Tim looked at her warily.

  “You know Tim, somehow you manage to see through me. I see by the TV over there you like to be informed. How do you feel about this flu thing that has popped up?”

  Tim took a second to ponder, since the reality was that the flu was about the furthest from his mind when she appeared in the doorway.

  “Well… I am aware of it. But my guess is it may be a little worse than they are leading on. In my experience, whenever anyone says everything is under control, it usually seems to be the other way around. Why do you ask?”

  When Glendora left her house this morning she thought she had this all worked out, but now, in the moment, her pitch seemed to be slipping away from her.

  “I have this…friend… who is well-connected, who confirms your suspicions. He is a doctor and works with the CDC on infectious monitoring or something or other.” She fumbled the reply, but not too terribly, she hoped.

  “Oh, I see, a friend that does infectious something or other,” he playfully mocked her and used very liberal air quotes as part of his recap. When he saw her face fall a little bit he reigned it in and tried to recover some composure.

  “OK, back to serious. Why come in here and tell me about this? Are you worried about me?” He gave her a quick wink, hoping she’d cheer up a little bit. “My question to you is, if something serious like an epidemic happened or if the lights go out, would you be ok? I mean, you are all alone here. I think you’re alone, aren’t you?” Glendora was having a hard time holding it together after that wink.

  “This is true, it is only me here. But I think I would be ok for a while. I’m not the crazy guy who prepares for doomsday but since I really don’t like shopping for food I have a tendency to keep a lot more in the pantry. Besides, I don’t really expect anyone in my family to ever come knocking on the door for anything.”

  Glendora got to the point before she could get any more distracted.

  “At the risk of sounding like one of those crazy doomsday people, aside from that doctor, I have a few other close friends who have been keeping an eye on the news and decided it might be a good idea to take a more…proactive…approach. Honestly, it was not something I ever gave much mind to but the doctor laid out a pretty good case to be prepared a little more than I am and if something serious did happen I would be on my own too. I have a brother who is all into this survival stuff, but we all think he is a little nuts. Must have been switched at the hospital or something. I am going to saddle my horse up to my friends’ wagon and help out with some of the work. I mentioned to them that I knew someone who was pretty handy at tinkering and engineering, and that I trusted him, and they asked if I would reach out to see if you might be interested in getting together.”

  “Funny, I didn’t picture you as a militia gal,” Tim prodded, trying to get a feel for what exactly she was asking him.

  “Trust me,” she said, “the last thing I need is to join a militia of any kind. Unless, of course, they make camouflage tie dye. I could get into that.”

  It was Tim’s turn to unashamedly eye her up and down before replying.

  “I’ll bet you could make camo work out very nicely, if I may say so.” Glendora lost her focus again.

  “What were we talking about? Slipped my mind.”

  “Meeting your friends. Yes, if you think they are normal people, I would be happy to meet them,” he replied with a laugh.

  “Well, I am glad to hear it. I look forward to introducing you. I’ll see you later, I need to go shopping… for camo, and stuff.” She smiled coyly as she left.

  Tim wasn’t sure what just happened. As he watched her leave, he thought he saw a little extra hip sway in her exit.

  9

  Chapter 9

  Thursday, January 4th

  Loxahatchee, Florida

  Cal walked into the kitchen where Charlotte was defying the baking moratorium by making cookies. “What good is a moratorium if everyone ignores it?”

  “Well mister,” she said, “this is for survival.”

  “OK, I need to hear this one. How is making cookies good for survival? Are you trying to fatten me up in case you need to eat me for the apocalypse?”

  “As tempting as that sounds, no. I ordered some freeze dried cookie dough from a company called Thrive. I bought it from a very nice lady named Loretta. I guess I could just toss it all out, if you insist.” She picked up the baking sheet and moved toward the trash can.

  “Whoa, whoa, let’s not be hasty and wasteful,” he said, trying to grab a cookie.

  Charlotte smiled to herself knowing she had won this round, and continued taking the cookies off the hot sheet and putting them onto the cooling racks. Cal wandered into the pantry and looked around.

  “I know Glendora is putting together some food storage recommendations but until then, it looks like we have a whole lot of nothing that works together in here.”

  “What are you talking about, all you need is a little creativity! But I will say, when I was trying to plan dinner tonight, I had a similar thought. Although I am still not convinced we need to go all cave dweller and stock up on beef jerky, or whatever you crazy survivalists eat, I am open to finding some food that tastes good and has a longer shelf life. That’s why I ordered some samples of this Thrive stuff. They offer a monthly delivery for whatever amount you want to budget, so I figured we’d try it for a couple months and see how it goes. We’re gonna buy groceries anyway, might as well try to get the best bang for our buck.”

  Cal turned to look at her and said, “I appreciate you giving this a try honey, and I like that we can talk about this stuff together. I also know that you are not really into all this survival stuff, so really I do appreciate you trying.”

  He leaned in for a kiss but was interrupted by his cell phone ringing. Peeking at the caller ID, and seeing that is was Rusty, he sighed loudly.

  “Hey baby, what’s up? You busy?”

  Cal was always amazed at Rusty’s impeccable timing in interrupting his tender moments in life.

  “Aside from saying sweet things to my beautiful wife, I’m not busy. What’s up?” Charlotte snickered and went back to her cookies.

  “Yeah, you better keep her happy. I have no idea why she is with you.” Rusty laughed and went on while Cal rolled his eyes again.

  “Good news. Glendora convinced her tinkerer friend to meet us. Let’s go. I’ll be there in five to pick you up.”

  “Seriously, you really need to work on this whole plan…. Dammit, he hung up again. I swear, that guy…”

  Charlotte laughed, “Well I can’t guarantee that there will be any cookies left when you get home, you know the official taster likes to do a lot of testing.” Like she knew she was being talked about, baby Tempest came waddling into the kitchen. Running still wasn’t her forte.

  Cal didn’t have many details on the impromptu meeting with Tim until Rusty arrived to pick him up. The plan was to meet Tim at the local waffle joint. Since it was the middle of the day, they figured it would be pretty quiet. In attendance were Cal, Rusty, Tim, and Glendora. The idea was to get a feel for Tim as a person, to try to get to know him a little bit and see how he might fit into the group dynamic.

  The meeting worked out well and everyone got along spectacularly. It turned out that Tim had a lot of similar views, and also had quite a few skills that would be very valuable in a survival situation. Tim presented a few project options that he would be happy to draw up, including a rain barrel system and plans for a solar generator. Everyone was getting pretty excited about these new ideas, and they were all anxious to get started.

  As they finished up their lunch, a different waitress brought the check. She did not look well at all, her eyes were red and she looked like she was very congested. Everyone at the table discreetly looked at each other knowing that they were just talking about not seeing too many people l
ocally who appeared to be sick and it must primarily be out west.

  Cal had intended to pay with his debit card but he no longer wanted to hand it over to someone in her condition. He only had larger bills so the waitress ended up with a hefty tip because he did not want the change. The group, now feeling the possibility that the flu was here, made a beeline for the parking lot, making every effort to not touch anything on the way out.

  Just as they made it through the front door, a family of four was coming in with the mother sneezing and both kids wiping their runny noses with their hands. The group watched as the kids began fighting over the door handle, wiping their hands all over the glass. “I’ll get the door, daddy!” “No, I will, move!”

  Out in the parking lot, a sense of foreboding seemed to wash over them.

  Rusty broke the silence with, “Well I’m going home to decontaminate and inventory my bath soap. You?”

  The group chuckled, and breathed a little bit easier seeing that humor was still alive and well. Cal reminded them about the Survival Expo the following weekend, and they all agreed to meet there in the morning.

  Rusty already had Toadie in gear and rolling before Cal could get the door closed.

  “Easy Tex. Can I get both feet in before you tear off down the road?”

  “C’mon, old man. I can feel the heebie jeebies incubating on my skin already, I gotta go.”

  “Incubating? That’s a big word, I’m proud of you,” Cal poked back.

  Rusty side-eyed Cal as if he was considering putting him out on the curb, but instead sneered and decided to downshift and punch it while Cal was mid-sip on his to-go cup of tea.

  “Oops, my bad,” he said, as Cal grumbled and struggled with the cup.