The Unraveling: Book 1 of the Bound to Survive Series

by Charley Hogwood

  “No, we had a fire but it is out. When will someone be coming?” Rusty asked.

  “Sir, we are not currently sending any personnel for non-emergencies. If the threat has passed we will put you on the list to have someone pick up the bodies and take a report,” the dispatcher said, as if this was an everyday thing.

  “You mean help is not coming? No one will investigate? I have four bodies dead in my house, two of them charred beyond recognition, my house is half burned down, and you don’t think this is an emergency?!”

  “I understand, sir. Right now resources are devoted to the ongoing crisis. As soon as we have someone freed up, we will get to you.”

  “Fine, when should we expect someone to come?” Rusty was becoming exasperated.

  “We do not have a time, sir.”

  “Give me a ballpark,” Rusty demanded.

  “Honestly, it could be a couple days, sir. Please be patient.”

  “A couple of days! You want me to let four dead men rot in my house for a couple of days!” Rusty was beside himself.

  “Sir, I can give you a phone number to a recorded message that will instruct you how to prepare and bury deceased persons until the mortuary crews are able to retrieve them. Would you like that number sir?”

  Rusty was caught between anger and resignation.

  “Sir?” She asked again.

  “Yes, give me the number,” Rusty replied.

  The dispatcher gave him the number and wished him good luck before she hung up.

  Rusty slumped onto the couch alongside Heidi.

  “No one is coming.” They took each other’s hand and knew for sure at this point society had taken a turn for the worse. Sure, everyone knew the flu was really bad but that was the flu: it was easy, stay away from people, wash your hands, and you would be fine. It would pass in a few weeks and everything would get back to normal. But now things had changed for them. It was personal; the flu was causing people to act up in other ways, people were beginning to take advantage of each other. Crime was spinning out of control and the bad guys knew that the cops could not keep up. They were becoming far more brazen and the organized gangs were becoming more militant. They were happy to fill the vacuum of power in the streets.

  “We are on our own.” Rusty said sincerely to Heidi.

  “We are not on our own. We have each other and this is exactly why we worked so hard to put a group together. You have found some great people. I am confident we will figure this out.”

  Heidi went on, “When you teach survival to your students, you always say a couple of things. First, people will always be your biggest problem and second, in order to survive, you need to accept your new reality. You make people say that out loud because you know it works. I want you to say it out loud, do that for me.”

  Rusty looked at her as if he had just fallen in love again.

  “How do you remember that?”

  “Because, you old goat, I listen to you, too. You are my strength and you’ve used that line on me before. Remember when we showed up at the airport and were about to miss our flight home from Texas because the airline had moved our flight from DFW to George Bush International which was 30 minutes away? You said we needed to stop pouting and accept our new reality. We worked as a team and made the flight in the nick of time. Now say it.” She pressed him further.

  “I accept our new reality. Everything that happened before has changed and we need to embrace our new situation and do whatever it takes to survive,” he answered.

  “That’s the man I love.” She kissed him. “Now go do something with that.” She pointed at the man on the floor in the other room with a wire around his throat. Rusty called the number the dispatcher gave him and received the following message:

  “For any language other than English, please press 2. To continue in English, please press 1.

  “We are sorry for your loss. Please have a notepad and pencil handy for the following instructions on how to properly and safely prepare a deceased person for temporary burial until such time as a mortuary crew is able to arrive.”

  The bizarre message continued.

  “The safety of the living is of the utmost importance in these difficult times. Please make every effort to properly apply all infection protocols. Wash hands with warm soapy water for a minimum of 22 seconds after any contact with another person or common surface. For surface cleaning, prepare a solution of chlorine bleach. Mix 1 cup of 5.25% strength chlorine bleach to 1 gallon of cool water. Wear rubber cleaning gloves to prevent skin burns and apply proper ventilation of the cleaning area to prevent accumulation of fumes. Do not manually dry any surfaces. Allow the solution to air dry for maximum disinfection. Decomposition in warm climates will begin within 12-48 hours. If possible, keep the body refrigerated or prepare for burial.

  To prepare deceased persons for burial it is imperative that records and identification be kept close by and provided to the authorities upon retrieval. The information required will be the complete name, date of birth, cause of death, next of kin with contact information, and any further pertinent information surrounding the death. If possible take a photograph of the individual for future reference.”

  Rusty was about to hang up but continued to listen out of morbid curiosity.

  “To prepare the deceased, it is suggested that the body be wrapped in a cotton sheet, shroud, or any heavy plastic material locally available. Use rope or cordage to safely secure the wrapping for ease of carry. Locate a place outside as far away from people, food, water supply, and traffic as possible. It is preferred that the location be 200 meters from a water source, and 2 meters above the water table. Excavate a hole approximately 1.5 meters in depth and lay bodies in a single layer leaving .4 meters between each. Keep all belongings with the body and clearly mark the location on the surface with a unique identification number that will match the paper record kept. It is imperative that the body be buried with the unique reference number attached to it along with other identifying information.

  To repeat this message press star now.”

  Rusty had heard enough. He knew this was not going to work, the water table on his property was less than six inches from the surface, as was evidenced by the Cypress trees surrounding his home. By now, Shane had come back in with little to report. The SUV held little for identification and appeared to be stolen, since there was a screwdriver sticking out of the ignition. However, in the back, he had found a pile of guns and some valuables that appeared to have been stolen.

  “No one is coming to investigate and they want us to either refrigerate or bury these assholes,” Rusty said to Shane.

  “We can’t bury them because of the water table. I don’t want this scum nastying up my water well,” he continued.

  Shane kept listening because he had an idea where this was going.

  “Tell me you are not going to do what I think you are going to do,” Shane pleaded.

  “I’m calling Chad,” Rusty replied, referring to a friend whose family owned a crematorium. The incinerator was intended for animals but it could handle horses, so in Rusty’s mind, it could handle people, too.

  “Oh God, that guy? Really?” Shane said resignedly.

  “Hey, it’s like this. Friends help you move, good friends help you hide the bodies,” Rusty said, as he started dialing.

  Shane sighed and headed to the kitchen for a beer until he was reminded that the kitchen was burned to a crisp. He pried the melted refrigerator door open amid the cracking plastic and grabbed a couple of bottles of beer located inside.

  “Chad, bring Krieg and a truck. No questions. I have four large animals that need to be disposed of ASAP,” Shane heard Rusty order into the phone. He also heard some kind of two-legged varmint joke come through the line from Chad with a giggle.

  That guy needed some therapy, Shane thought.

  About 20 minutes later two guys arrived. Chad was dressed like he worked in an underground human testing lab and Krieg followed in with the intensi
ty of a bloodhound. They shambled inside and made a comment about the smoky smell and asked if Rusty had meat on the smoker.

  “No. That smell is those two guys.” Rusty pointed.

  “Whoa! Wow! What happened here?” Chad asked.

  “I said no questions. I need you to make them fit in small cardboard boxes. Got it?”

  “Ok, you got it. But I don’t want any visits from the cops for this. As far as I’m concerned they never existed and I was never here,” Chad answered, with the understanding complete between them.

  “Uh, I have a problem with this.” Krieg volunteered his opinion.

  Rusty, Chad, and Shane turned to him with the look of thieves who were about to split the loot of bank robbery one less way.

  “Would you like to fit in a small box too?” Rusty said in a serious tone.

  Krieg felt surrounded and changed his tune.

  “Let’s get these guys loaded up. What are we waiting for?” he said.

  “Thought so,” Rusty muttered.

  He loved these guys, but he was not in a mood for discussion and he sure as hell was not digging holes in his yard for the assholes that wrecked his house.

  “Who wants a black Suburban?” Rusty added jollily, as he poured a tumbler of apple-flavored Crown whiskey. Shane shook his head again at the sheer craziness of the situation and chugged the second beer before helping with the bodies.

  25

  Chapter 25

  Thursday, January 11th

  Loxahatchee, Florida

  Cal was out in the yard with Tim, maneuvering the office trailer into a location close to the septic tank so they could easily plumb the trailer piping into the underground tank. This would give them some additional bathroom space for the group. The plan was to connect both the office trailer and the toy hauler trailer in this way. They figured it would work for the few weeks that the group would need to live together while the pandemic burned out.

  Charlotte, Glendora, and the girls all came out with some sandwiches and drinks for an impromptu meal. They had barely started eating when they heard a rumble that sounded like a Deuce and a half. The sound was unmistakable, the big green army truck had a very specific whistle sound that came from the tall exhaust pipe. Every person who had ever served in the military recognized it. The sound usually meant one of two things: chow had arrived in the field or transport was there to pick people up to go somewhere.

  In this case, the Deuce was accompanied by a small caravan that included a four-wheel drive SUV, a matte-finished olive-green Toyota 4-Runner, to be exact. It had large tires, a spare mounted to the back, a roof rack loaded with gear, fuel cans with LED light bars on all four sides, and a bumper jack mounted across the hood. Also in the convoy was a Class A motor coach. Not the full-on Prevost expensive model but a mid-model diesel pusher type, and it was towing a four-door green Jeep Wrangler.

  Cal, holding a bottle of beer, walked away from the family lunch and met the convoy as it entered the gate and drove toward the house.

  “Howdy, roomie,” Rusty announced from the cab of the Deuce. “We need a place to stay. Tomb Raider back there burned the house down in a gunfight.” Rusty pointed toward Heidi, who was driving the RV. She sheepishly waved at Cal.

  “Seriously, dude?” was all Cal could manage as he stretched his neck to see the convoy of vehicles. Then he turned to the growing family that was sitting on the yard furniture.

  “We are going to need more toilet paper…. Park it over there next to the other trailers and come on in for lunch.” Cal walked over to guide the vehicles to their designated spots, shaking his head and trying to hide his laughter at the absurdity of this whole situation.

  The larger group wrapped up eating in the dimming evening sunlight and were headed inside to flesh out some details of how this was all going to work. Even though winter was here, it was still South Florida. No one told the mosquitoes to stand down and being outside became torture as the day waned.

  The house was getting really crowded now. There were ten people calling Cal’s house a home. They were all in good spirits, relatively speaking, at this point. No one expected this to go for long. For the time being, it was more like inconvenient camping, but an adventure nonetheless. There was joking and holiday-style chatter; someone drew up a mock bathroom schedule as a joke. It was all fun and games for the moment–then the lights flickered a couple of times and went dark. Everyone stopped talking and Cal made a half-hearted attempt to joke about the South Florida electrical grid.

  They were all used to the power going out with the tropical weather but this was January. The power rarely dropped out. They all knew something was off with this outage. Amber was the first to notice that her phone had no signal, no data, nothing, just the basic splash screen. The others checked their phones and no one had a connection.

  “That’s odd,” Charlotte said. “I haven’t seen the phones all go down with the power since Hurricane Jeanne years ago.”

  The group was sitting in the dark with growing apprehension when Cal broke the silence.

  “I’ll go out to the shop and grab a couple of LED lanterns.”

  Rusty followed him out the door to help. Taking the opportunity to get serious, Rusty started chatting it up. “Hey brother, I think things are about to get really serious. I’m not so sure this will be only a couple weeks. After what happened at my house today and what I have seen on the news, I get the feeling the situation is worse than they are letting on.”

  “I hate to say it, but I get the same feeling. This is not a normal short-term event. The flu is one thing, but it is like the basic fabric of society is tearing apart. The crime, the shortages, the people not going to work. Even if the flu stopped today I think we are already around the bend. People are out of control and there are not enough good guys in place to help,” Cal replied.

  “I thought they were bringing the troops back to help out, whatever happened with that?” Rusty asked.

  “Well, I heard some radio reports that some of them are back, but with the flu hitting so hard, there have been reports of troops going home to be with their families. There are still a lot of troops withdrawing from foreign theaters. They have mountains of equipment to bring home, that takes time. It has to be shipped back. Even then, once they return, then what? Martial Law? Do you know what that will do to the situation? It may be a massive jump in logic but we could be looking at regional conflicts here in the US.”

  Cal seemed to come to that conclusion as he said it.

  “Let’s keep that kind of talk between us. Those people in the house are not ready to lose hope. We need them motivated and on the bubble,” Rusty added.

  “Here are a couple lanterns,” Cal said as he pulled them from the shelf with the camping gear in the garage.

  Later on, Cal remembered the emergency weather radio he had bought for hurricane season and went to see why it wasn’t advising them of any information. The backup battery was dead. He rifled through the living room TV remotes for a 9-volt battery but they all used AAs. He was standing on a chair in the hallway disassembling a smoke detector to cannibalize a battery when Charlotte walked up and pointed the 1000-lumen flashlight directly into his eyes.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Blinded and disoriented in the dark hall, Cal almost fell off the chair. “Dangit, woman, are you trying to kill me? Now I’m blind,” he said, only somewhat exaggerated.

  “Oh sorry, not sorry,” she joked.

  Cal grumbled at the total absence of flashlight etiquette.

  “Oh, don’t fall down and break a hip, old man. It’s the apocalypse and I don’t need to drag around a lame husband.”

  Cal hopped off the chair with blue dots filling his vision.

  “I’m trying to get the weather radio to work. Maybe there is news to hear. We haven’t had contact with the outside world for most of the day.”

  He put the battery in the radio and surfed the channels until he got a scratchy signal.

  �
��…This is a State of Emergency. If you live in the… (Static) please evacuate to the east now. There is a danger of extreme flooding.”

  At that moment the battery became too weak to keep the radio on. Cal shook it, rolled the battery and did all the things one would do to try to get a battery to give just a little more power.

  “Is that the battery in the smoke detector I asked you to replace at the last time change?” Charlotte asked accusingly.

  “I’m not talking to you right now,” he answered dryly. “I don’t know who could be getting flooded, there is not a cloud in the sky,” Cal added.

  The power remained off for the rest of the night and so did all the phone signals. Shortly before dawn, Rusty was up walking around outside, as usual. His RV was comfortable but he was not the sleeping type. Dressed in his usual earth tones, he blended into the twilight as he walked among the subtropical trees in Cal’s yard. He was walking the big dog they brought home from Belle Glade and was guiding the dog to a far corner of the property to deposit an animal land mine where no one should be walking.

  Cal was also up and about. He made coffee and looked out the back window of the kitchen. He saw the apparition that was Rusty moving among the trees. In the early morning fog he and the dog could have been a scene from The Hound of the Baskervilles. Cal looked at his big ole’ lazy dog, who was still asleep on the floor.

  Gradually, everyone made their way to the kitchen like zombies craving brains, but this crowd would be happy with coffee more than brains. Three pots of coffee later, the group began to talk about what was next. Cal recommended the group establish some work priorities and figure out sleeping arrangements that would offer privacy. He knew that if people had a personal space and the things they needed for basic comfort, they would less likely be at each other’s throats.

  He offered his home to everyone and put forward some ideas about how to organize to make everyone comfortable and most importantly, a feeding schedule. The group had enough food to keep them going for a few weeks; hopefully they would not need that much. He asked Tim and the guys to help with plumbing the trailers into the septic system so they wouldn’t need to drive to a dump tank at a campground somewhere.