The Dystopian Diaries

by K. W. Callahan

  8:13 p.m.

  After talking to Ruth, who was doing okay (not great, but who is?), I took it upon myself to visit some of the other remaining residents in our building. They seem to be holding up all right, but not all of them are as well off as we are, especially when it comes to water. Catherine and the girls are especially ill-equipped for our current environment, having gone through much of their food and not having filled nearly enough extra bottles of drinking water for three people.

  I thought all these people would be better prepared considering we’re in hurricane land. And I guess they were if the crisis was only to last two or three days. But they are prepared for disaster scenarios in which there is either a resumption of basic services after a few days or they are able to evacuate ahead of time, avoiding the disaster and its effects altogether. They weren’t ready for an event that lingers and grows worse with time. They expect a situation to grow BETTER with time as the local, state, and even federal governments step in to remedy the issues.

  But this is far different than anything they’ve planned for. Hell, it’s not like I ever planned for it either, but here we are.

  To try to help our neighbors, and seeing as we now have so much cooked food that will need to be eaten in the next day or so (the ice in our coolers is already about half melted), I invited everyone over for a sort of potluck dinner tomorrow night. It’s not that I want to give a bunch of our food away, but what else are we going to do with it? I’d rather help our friends than try to unnecessarily eat it all ourselves or just have it go bad.

  I’m kind of concerned about being around so many people (with the flu and all), but no one is going outside the building. And I think people would have gotten sick by now (or at least be exhibiting symptoms) if they were going to get it.

  I told everyone to bring an extra side dish if they were able (chips or cookies or sodas are just fine, so they don’t have to cook). I also explained that if they needed use of our grill to cook anything in their fridges or freezers (preferably not burgers), that they were more than free to use it. And I explained that if they aren’t “grill masters” per se, that I would do the cooking for them.

  Most of our remaining residents seemed to perk up noticeably at the mention of the get-together. I think we’re all starved for just a little taste of normalcy. I know that I am, as are Liz and AJ. Getting a little socializing should do us all good. I think we also need to get our minds off of what happened to Dan and Angie as well as the aid convoy attack.

  Just because the world as we know it is ending around us, it doesn’t mean we have to become anti-social trolls all hiding away in our hovels. As safe as that might feel, I refuse to be controlled by this flu. It’s time to try to take at least a little of our normalcy back!

  September 12th

  7:02 a.m.

  I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been up for over an hour. It’s just so damn hot in here. And humid!

  Plus, the sounds of the storm that continues outside kept waking me up. It’s really raining out there. I’ve seen some strong thunderstorms tear through this place, but nothing like this, nothing so extended over a period of days. The wind keeps rattling the hurricane shutters. It’s pretty damn annoying. But I don’t want to close them completely because we have the windows open and are at least getting some air circulation in here. It’s really the only relief we get from the heat.

  As the sun comes up, I’m sitting here at the dining room table, in the humid stickiness, alone with my thoughts. I can’t say it’s very enjoyable. While I’m kind of looking forward to the barbeque later today, I have so many other thoughts swirling through my brain that I’m finding it hard to get excited about our upcoming event.

  I guess I’m just in a funk right now. It’s like I’m trapped in a cave, in complete darkness, trying to find my way out. I’m tired of blindly bumping into the mental walls of what to do next. I feel like just plopping down in the middle of the cave and doing nothing. It seems like every avenue I try to go down ends in the same result – a dead end! Just do nothing!

  BUT I’M TIRED OF DOING NOTHING!!!

  It’s frustrating as hell! It seems like the more we do nothing, the worse our situation becomes. We do nothing and the world collapses around us. We do nothing and the power goes out. We do nothing and we lose our fresh water service. We do nothing and our food and other supplies continue to be depleted. We do nothing and I wonder if we’ll ever see home again. We do nothing and I feel like less of a husband and father, provider and protector, by the day. This SUCKS! If it’s only going to be downhill from here, it makes me wonder what the point of going on is. But then I catch myself. The point of going on is sleeping soundly in our condo bedrooms right now – my wife and boy. I have to stay strong and keep my head up for them if for no other reason.

  I think I’m beginning to realize that there is another aspect of our previous lives that I need to start adjusting. Before, when I worked in hotel finance, my thoughts were geared more toward a long-term outlook…college for AJ, retirement for us, grandchildren. In this new world, I don’t think there is room for long-term thinking. I need to tackle the challenges of the day and leave it at that. Long-term is no longer retirement planning set in decades or even next year’s vacation; it’s today, tomorrow, and at most, maybe the next five days. Other than that, it’s just impossible to foresee longer timeframes. It’s like being a racecar driver on a brand new track. You’re not going to set a course record on the first lap, nor should you be thinking about the last lap of a 200-lap race. You need to be focusing on learning a whole new track and setting up your car to get the most out of it. That’s what we have to do here. We need to be re-calibrating ourselves, our expectations, and our goals to meet completely new challenges in a completely new world.

  Ah, I feel slightly better after writing that. See? This writing can be therapeutic. I need to let work go. I need to let AJ’s schooling and Liz’s future work plans go. I need to let our house back in Chicago go. I need to let Chicago go. There’s nothing I can do about any of those things from here. I need to focus purely on the here and now. Otherwise, it’s all just too much.

  I think I hear Liz up and about. I guess it’s time to discuss breakfast. Options are getting slimmer these days. No fresh fruit. No dairy. It’s either dry cereal or pre-cooked meat of some sort. Not complainin’, just sayin’.

  12:15 p.m.

  We just got back upstairs from the pool. Liz organized a group bathing session. No, it’s not as perverted as it sounds. But we still need to keep up some level of general hygiene, and this was the best we could come up with.

  Since the pool is available, as well as convenient and sanitary, Liz thought that we could at least use it to rinse off in since everyone has been stuck inside, sweating like pigs. She thought that it would be nice to get clean before the barbecue later this afternoon.

  John brought his gun for security just in case anyone gave us trouble while we were down there. Then, the rest of us (wearing bathing suits of course) got into the pool to rinse ourselves clean. Sure, we smell like chlorine now, but I’d rather smell like that than stinky human.

  I think that a part of John actually likes this – being the protectorate and guardian of the condo building residents that is. That’s probably why he became board president in the first place. He’s the kind of guy that gets off on the power trip. Not that that’s a bad thing. We need people like that. It’s just not MY thing, if you get my drift. I don’t mind responsibility, but I get enough of it in my own life. I don’t need to go looking for more.

  It rained the whole time we were down at the pool, which was just fine with me. It helped rinse off some of the chlorine scent after we exited. I felt safer being down there in the rain since I didn’t think it was as likely for others to be out and about.

  Another concern was lightning, but we didn’t see any while we were out. Catherine and the girls came down. Even Ruth Benson got her suit on for the event. I held the gun and stood watch while John r
insed off.

  Was it a perfect scenario? No. Was it better than nothing? Hell yes!

  4:02 p.m.

  I’m just sitting down for a few minutes before people get here for the potluck. It’s weird tidying up the condo for company during the apocalypse, but at the same time, it almost feels like normal, which is the whole point I guess.

  People are supposed to arrive around 4:30. I would have set the time later, but without electricity, it makes it tough. I don’t mind eating by candlelight; it’s actually kind of cool. But I don’t really want to have to try cooking by candlelight. That would be much tougher – like cleaning without running water.

  Speaking of which, I don’t think I realized just how often we use a sink each day until recently. Now that I keep turning on the faucet to nothingness, it’s starting to hit home really quick. Same goes for using the toilet. We’ve been dipping buckets of water from the pool to refill our toilet tank, but we’re trying our best to reduce flushes. We’re adhering to the old “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down,” motto.

  It’s easier said than done, mostly due to force of habit. We’re so used to hitting the toilet handle to flush away our nastiness that it’s been hard to stop. I’ve taken to hanging an old sock on the handle as a gentle reminder. I’ve put similar socks on the sink faucet handles in the bathrooms and in the kitchen to reduce frustrated attempts.

  John, Gerald and I have also placed some empty buckets and a couple plastic-barrel-style trash bins up on the roof to collect rain water. We figure that in a worst-case-scenario, we can use that water for flushing and maybe even hand washing since we’re trying to use the pool for bathing. For now, there is a lot of hand sanitizer being used. I never thought that these types of things would be problems. Then again, I never thought the Su flu would be wiping out a huge swath of the world’s population.

  I wonder just how many people are left. Judging by the traffic on the roads – or lack thereof – there isn’t many. But maybe there are larger clusters of people elsewhere. I have no idea. And the way things are going, it may be quite some time before I find out.

  Well, I guess I should finish with the last bit of cleaning before our guests arrive. Cleaning without running water isn’t easy, and it’s certainly more time consuming. But with plenty of time on our hands, maybe that’s a good thing. We’re forced to do things like sweep the floors but not mop them. And washing dishes is pretty much a non-starter without clean running water. Sure, we could use some of the fresh water we’ve set aside, but we’d prefer not to waste it on dishes. Thankfully, we have a lot of paper plates, paper napkins, and plastic cups and cutlery from prior 4th of July events. They’ve been getting us by without having to use a ton of dishes that we would then have to wash.

  9:03 p.m.

  I’m not going to write much since I don’t want to waste candlelight. I just wanted to note that the barbeque went well with a couple exceptions…interesting and unexpected exceptions. I’m not sure I handled these unplanned events in the right way, but I did the best I could under the circumstances. Only time will tell I guess.

  I’ll expound more on what happened tomorrow when it’s light again.

  September 13th

  7:33 a.m.

  It looks like the rain has finally stopped, at least for a little while.

  God, trying to sleep in this heat sucks sooooo bad! It really is brutal. I sweat all night and wake up with the sheets saturated around me. It’s disgusting, but what can I do? Liz and AJ are having a rough go of it too.

  Last night we set AJ up a little bed on our floor. The only window in his room faces north, so he gets hardly any air flow from the outside. We’d let him sleep with us, but it would only make things even hotter with all three of us crammed in one bed. We’re all fed up with the constant heat and humidity. It really blows!!!

  So anyway, back to our barbeque yesterday. Things were going well at first. People arrived on time (not that there’s much competing for their attention lately), and everyone brought at least one side dish along with the items they brought to be cooked on our grill.

  Even John was amazingly complementary of our idea and was thankful that at least one condo resident’s breaking of the rules had somehow worked out in the association’s favor. I guess that was a complement.

  So after some polite chit-chat with our guests, and after helping organize the spread of side dishes on our dining room table, I got to work with the meat. I took each delivered dish in turn.

  Gerald and Maggie Philips had some Italian sausage as well as steaks to be cooked. John and June Reynolds had burger patties and some pork chops. Ed and Ira Levine had some skirt steaks, some burger patties, a couple chicken breasts, and some breakfast sausages. Ruth Benson had some chicken breasts as did Catherine and the girls. Catherine also had some stew meat and a small tenderloin.

  It took me over two hours to get all of the meat cooked to everyone’s particular tastes and satisfaction (which was no easy task, believe you me). Everyone has opinions about how things should be cooked, when things should be flipped, and how hot to keep the grill. But all in all, it was a decent experience. I felt good about helping everyone out with their cooking needs.

  Speaking of feeling good about helping people, about halfway through my cooking, I heard something down on the front lawn below our condo. I looked over the edge to see a group of four people hailing us from below. Upon closer inspection, I realized that it was a group of four – man, woman, and two children. I couldn’t tell from above the ages of the children nor their sex, but I could see from their size that they were young.

  The man was asking if there was room for them to stay at the condo overnight. The request caught me completely off guard. I told them to give me a minute and asked Gerald to take over the helm at the grill, a task he readily accepted. He’d been hovering all evening, and I could tell he was itching to have a go at the array of meat we were cooking.

  My first thought was to ask others their opinions about what we should do regarding the people on the lawn. But since everyone was having a nice time, no one had really noticed their arrival but me. Plus, I knew that opening that door would only lead to a lengthy debate over the pros and cons of letting outsiders into our little realm. Therefore, I took it upon myself to sneak downstairs and do a quick interview with the new arrivals.

  I told Liz that I had to run downstairs to check on something. I didn’t really want to go alone, but I also didn’t want to freak the others out, especially after the experience we had with the aid convoy. I figured it would be better to run the risk myself. I thought about asking John for his gun, but I knew that would only raise questions about why I wanted it. And I had no idea whether he would actually give it to me or not. He’d probably just want to come with me, and John isn’t always the friendliest to people he doesn’t know. He can be pretty gruff to say the least.

  Therefore, I hustled out of the condo, with no one really taking notice since people were chit-chatting, eating, and I think for once since this whole thing began, kind of enjoying themselves. It was almost as though things were back to normal. It was so nice to see our friends together again and having a good time, but there was also a pall of sadness regarding those who were missing from our group, most notably, Dan and Angie Highmore.

  Oh, Liz and AJ are awake. Guess it’s time to discuss breakfast options.

  10:02 a.m.

  We just finished the last of the dry cereal. I boiled a small pot of coffee on the grill as a special treat for me and Liz. It was just large enough for us each to have a small cup. We can’t afford to waste much of our fresh water on what is fast becoming a luxury like coffee. Never thought I’d be writing that coffee is a “luxury,” but alas, that seems to have become the case.

  So anyway, back to last night. To make a long story short, the people who arrived turned out to be a family. And they seemed okay as far as first impressions go. I’ve dealt with a lot of people in the hotel business over the yea
rs (having spent my fair share of time at the front desk), and I feel I’m a pretty good reader of personalities. They were a pretty sad looking bunch to be honest. They looked like half-drowned rats standing there in the rain. I conducted my interview of them through the locked breezeway gate that opens to the front lawn.

  The family explained that they were from Cocoa Beach. They had been sheltering in their condo which was located closer to the pier until they’d been ousted by a rough band of miscreants.

  I wondered if it was the same group who had attacked the aid convoy, but I didn’t press the issue. The dad in the group, whose name is Matt James, said that they’d barely escaped with their lives by hiding in a utility closet until the group had moved on. Once they emerged, they realized that all the building’s condos had been pillaged of their supplies and the remaining residents lined up and executed.

  I found their story horrific and terrifying to say the least. And I pray that if this was indeed the same group that had attacked the aid convoy that they have moved on by now.

  Matt then explained that with no supplies remaining in their building, they had little option but to look elsewhere for living arrangements. They’d begun hiking down the beach in the rain, skirting the dunes to help them keep off the main roads and out of sight. Matt said he figured they could duck into the dunes for cover should they see someone coming. Then his wife, Jessica, explained that when they reached the front of our condo building, the kids – Vaughn who is nine and Mary who is seven – detected the scent of cooking food wafting through the air.

  Ha! Leave it to kids to sniff out the scent of edibles.