by Sage du Toit
She felt warm enough now that she was in the room to remove her gloves and boots. She looked at the label on the white bucket and it showed to have food for 4 people for 3 days. She was amazed at how prepared this family was and sad that they weren’t here to utilize this stuff, but she was very appreciative of all she found. She placed the buckets in the closet. When she came back she opened the large tub that had been marked as Kids Winter Clothes. She sorted through it and found a nice heavy winter coat and tried it on, it was a light tan and she liked that it had a hood. It fit her very well and she threw it on the bed. She dug around the tub some more and found some sweatshirts and pants that were her size. There was a big down jacket, but when she tried it on it was just a little too tight. She would rather have extra room so she put it back. She closed the tub and sat it off to the side.
The second winter clothes tub had a lot more clothes she could wear. There was even a big down jacket with matching down suspender pants, they would be big on her but it meant she could layer more underneath. She was happy, very happy when she found a stack of beanie caps and ski masks. She immediately put a beanie cap on and pulled it down over her ears. There were also various gloves and glove liners. She found a nice pair of women’s gloves with fleece lining. They would be great for inside. She put them on and liked how warm they were but sleek and not bulky like her other gloves. She decided she would hang up some of the clothes in the closet later, so she pushed the tub into the closet and put the heavy jacket with it. She put the sweats in the drawer with the others.
Sam had put off the Emergency gear tub for last. Something told her she would want to spend more time going through this one. She checked the beans again and stirred them around. They were sure smelling good. She checked her watch and saw it was time to feed Mew, she would have to put the tub off a little bit longer. But she figured it would give her something to do tonight that was a little exciting.
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2 November 2020 N-Day +115
Fort Jackson, SC
Just two days after Rick rescued the lady and her 3 kids, Sam and Tom were in line at the breakfast buffet and she saw a lady she didn’t know following Rick around like a lost puppy. She immediately recognized who the woman must be and thought she must be experiencing Knight in shining armor syndrome. Who wouldn’t when rescued from that situation. Her little boy was at the drink station trying to get juice for his little sisters and Tom went to help. He asked the little boy what type of juice his sister’s wanted and the boy asked what type there was. Tom told him and then the boy made some hand signs to his sister. Sam realized his sister must be deaf.
Sam was shocked when she realized that Tom was suddenly talking back to them in sign language. She had no idea he knew sign! She had taken two years of sign-language in High School and two in College, it was the only class she made an A in. She recognized he was telling them that there was also white milk and chocolate milk. The two girls opted for chocolate milk and the little boy wanted white milk, he said he didn’t like chocolate. Tom finished helping them and then got his own coffee and they all went to sit down at their regular table. He motioned for Rick and the Mother to join them with the kids.
Rick sat down and introduced Elizabeth and her three kids, Ryan, Crystal and Hannah. He explained that Crystal was born deaf but she spoke excellent sign language, and Sam noticed that he was saying everything in sign language as he talked. Sam realized this probably made Elizabeth love him even more, she could see the total infatuation in her face. She supposed after what she had just gone through it was a blessing that she wasn’t afraid of every man in the room.
Sam looked at Crystal and signed, “Hello, my name is Sam. Would you and your brother and sister join us in the play center today?” She hoped she got it all right, she was a little rusty.
Crystal looked at her mother and she said, “Yes, of course!” Crystal signed back that they would come, then she dug into her breakfast.
Sam looked at Tom and he was looking at her in delight. He said, “I didn’t know you knew sign language!”
And she said, “Well I didn’t know you did either!” Everyone at the table laughed at them.
Sam explained she had taken two years in High School and two years in College and had loved learning it. Tom explained that all of his Green Berets spoke sign language, they had learned it so they could talk, even when they couldn’t speak out-loud. Sam said she thought everyone should learn sign language, it was only fair that hearing impaired people shouldn't have to learn to read lips or write on note pads to communicate with hearing people. After that Tom mentioned it to John and when they spoke about it at the next meeting they decided there were a lot of benefits to everyone learning sign language.
7 November 2020 N-Day + 120
Fort Jackson, SC
Almost everyone was still eating in the dining room. It was too much of a hassle to cook in your own apartment, especially after a long day when there was good food readily available. Tom was talking to Joshua Hardy, who was one of the guys from the greenhouse company. They were talking about how great the greenhouses were doing and they had a great group of people that were working daily in the greenhouses, getting the gardens up and thriving. Tom asked him if the greenhouses were keeping decontaminated and how the beehives were doing, he was concerned for the bee’s because they had had a hard time finding a live colony and were taking special measures to keep them happy and safe within the greenhouses.
Tom had been out working on their latest project, which was installing solar panels on Dozier Halls roofs. It was a big project and thankfully the weather was starting to cool down so they weren’t baking on the roof tops. But he had been so busy lately, he hadn’t had a chance to go by the greenhouses to see how they were progressing since they finished setting them up. Joshua was telling him about the variety of plants they had growing now. He estimated they would have their first vegetables like arugula, spinach, radishes and lettuce in about four weeks. They all talked excitedly about having salad again. Who would have thought they would miss salad!
When they were done talking about the garden Tom asked Joshua if they had enough greenhouse material to make another outdoor enclosure for something else that wasn’t plant related. Joshua nodded with his mouth full of cheddar, mushroom pot pie. He said there should be enough for two more large greenhouses and asked what he had in mind. Tom glanced at Sam and then looked at Tabitha he said that he had heard the kids needed an outside play area and since it wasn’t exactly safe outside, he was thinking maybe they could make an area inside of a greenhouse so that they felt like they were outside. Sam had mentioned Tabitha’s wish of having an outside area for the kids to Tom but she hadn’t expected him to bring it up like this. Tabitha’s face was beaming! She grabbed John’s arm and said, “Honey! That would be perfect! We should start making plans for that.” John nodded and everyone else agreed.
8 November 2020 N-Day + 121
Fort Jackson, SC
The very next day Joshua was outside behind the daycare center and making plans. Sam was in the daycare with Tabitha helping for the day. Her team didn’t have any scheduled supply runs until tomorrow. They watched him out the window, even the kids were fascinated by what he was doing and they kept asking questions. They answered them as best they could. He had roped off a very large rectangular area coming straight out from the building. The rope passed over a sidewalk and enclosed one tree and a couple of bushes. He had set the rectangle so it covered the door to the Daycare and the door to the School room.
After they had set up the daycare, they also set up a small school for the kids older than six in the conference room right next door. One of the people they had rescued in Columbia was a high school teacher, she was supposed to be teaching summer school but she had been home sick with the stomach flu on N-day. Once she saw the daycare she had requested they also make a school. They had gone to the local school and brought back desks, school books, supplies and even a dry erase board. They didn�
��t have many school aged kids, so one teacher was enough for now.
After Joshua had the ropes out and squared off he started painting a straight line down the outside of it. Once he was happy with the line, he pulled the ropes up and using the backhoe he started digging a big hole, about ten feet out to the side of the rectangle. He then dug up the tree and moved it to the big hole. He had a crew of men and woman helping him and they had helped to steady the medium sized tree as he moved it. Next the crew started digging up the bushes and they set those all aside while Joshua used the back hoe to break up the sidewalk and put the pieces in a dump truck that was sitting in the parking lot next to where they were working. He then started digging up the dirt within the rectangle. To Sam it looked like he was taking about 12” of the soil. The crew were also digging down about 12’ along the side of the building where he wouldn’t be able to use the back hoe.
The kids were mesmerized watching the big machine scoop dirt and then dump it into the big dump truck, Sam felt a little mesmerized herself. It didn’t take them long to get the dirt out of the giant rectangle. Once they had it all out and smoothed, they covered the dirt on the bottom with a thick white material that went all the way to the edges but not up the sides, Sam told the kids it was a ground cover or weed mat to keep grass from growing there in the future.
Then Joshua and his crew started building a wooden frame starting at the edge of the building down inside of the hole and it extended up about a foot above the hole. They build a big rectangular frame, even up against the building. She noticed that every few feet they put an extra block that came out from the bottom and they used it to place an angled block against the wooden wall. It was lunch time, so the workers stopped and the kids all went back to playing while Sam went to fetch their lunch from the kitchen.
They had several great cooks, a chef, and even a baker in the kitchen now. They could get very creative with the limited ingredients they had. The baker made fresh bread almost every day. Sam especially loved her cupcakes and muffins. Most days for lunch they gave the adults three options: an MRE, a sack lunch with sandwich, chips and a piece of fresh fruit if they had it, dried fruit if they didn’t or a bento box of leftovers from the night before if they had any. They found thousands of disposable bento boxes at a Japanese restaurant and the cooks were putting them to good use! They also had snack stands out in the lobby with candy, candy bars, snack crackers, and just about anything you would find in a vending machine. Sam had been the one that found the vendor's warehouse and brought all of it back.
However, for the Day Care they always got a headcount in the morning and made bento box lunches for the kids and workers every day. Sometimes it was a hot lunch, sometimes a cold lunch. All they had to do was go and pick it up. They sat the kids in little chairs at little tables and they sat on the floor on cushions next to them. The bento boxes today had warm grilled cheese, pickle spears, crispy tater-tots, applesauce and a little square juice box. Once they were done, Sam returned the empty bento boxes to the kitchen and got all of the kids a white or chocolate milk.
After they were done eating all of the kids willingly laid down on their mats for a nap. This was Sam and Tabitha’s favorite time, they liked to just sit and talk quietly while the children napped for about an hour. This was also the time Tabitha nursed her littlest one and Sam rocked the other little one that was in the Day care, while feeding a bottle. One of the women they rescued from Columbia had a little 6 mo. old boy and her water had gone off after 3 days and because of her dehydration she had lost her milk. Her and the baby both had almost been dead when they found them.
The workers outside came back while the kids were still napping and they watched them out the window. They finished building the wooden frame, they then put a wire mesh down inside of the frame and then drilled some holes and poked a long white rod through the wall every few feet. She asked Joshua later what those were and he said they were fiberglass rods, he said when they first started out they used metal rebar, but he didn’t like that it rusted so he had switched to the fiberglass. Sam guessed the wooden frame was about two feet tall six inches deep. The wall looked strange and she didn’t think they were going to leave it like that.
The kids had started waking up and she put the sleeping baby in a crib and Elizabeth's two little girls came and sat in her lap to watch the workers. The workers had started laying out tall metal poles on the ground outside of the rectangle, Joshua was taking specific measurements and marking them all around the giant rectangle. Then each pole was placed at a precise location and braced. Sam and the kids watched, riveted to the window as they mixed and poured the concrete once they had all of the poles up. Sam and Tabitha were both surprised at how big it was going to be. The poles went up in height over the second story. Each pole had a funny looking T on top and after the concrete was poured around each, Joshua turned the pole and made sure arrows lined up with marks he had made. Once they had all the poles in the wet the concrete down and cleaned up their mess. The last thing they did was replant the bushes along the outside of the wall, but not too close.
Tabitha and Sam played with the kids and babies until the parents came to take them for the night. If one of the parents had a job that required them to work nights then they made special arrangements for someone to watch their kids in their quarters, they never kept the Day care open at night. As they were leaving Sam peeked her head in the class room to have a chat with Margaret, the teacher. She was a sweet lady in her 50’s and the kids loved her, so did the adults. Sam asked her if they had also been glued to the windows, and she said yes! She couldn’t keep their eyes on their work and eventually she had given up and they all watched. She told Sam that it would probably take about two days for the concrete to dry so they probably wouldn’t get another show until then!
Sam looked around the class room, there was a big white board on the wall and some maps and posters that had formulas and A, B, C’s. Margaret had divided the room into an area for the younger kids, and another area for the older kids but the only thing separating them was an empty space with her desk at the end.
When they had gone to the school for supplies and they were taking down the one dry erase board it gave Sam the idea of getting more dry erase boards and hanging them in the lobbies. That is now where people went to sign up for duties or to check the guard roster. They even had a board for announcements and meeting times. It was often the place people came to after breakfast in the morning with their cup of coffee to talk and see what was going on for the day.
They had also taken a back corner of the lobby and moved couches around several low tables and set up smaller tables and chairs along the wall to make a gaming room. There was a wooden cabinet sitting in the corner that had cards, dice, dominoes, chess, checkers, and several board games. Without TV and video games, people had to find other forms of entertainment and game night was becoming popular with a lot of people. It helped to ease the stress or boredom of a long day, and it was encouraged as long as people didn’t just sit around playing all day!
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21 December 2020 (Continued)
Douglasville, GA
Sam had finished feeding Mew and checked Lucky’s food. She was keeping Lucky’s dry food bowl full and giving her the chewable vitamins every day, plus the one can of wet food. Mew seemed to be doing better, her eyes were opening and Sam had even found her suckling a few times on Lucky when she went to get her for feeding time. Sam checked the beans and they were close to being ready. She added salt and stirred the pot then tasted the beans and decided 10 more minutes and they would be perfect.
She took the lid off the Emergency gear tub and started looking through it. There were four each of almost everything: 4 space blankets, 4 water filtration bottles, 4 boxes of food bars, 4 rain ponchos, 4 whistles, 4 tissue packs, 4 antiseptic wipe packs, 4 crank powered flashlights and 4 dust masks. There were 8 body warmers, 2 jars of instant coffee, zip bag of individual packages of sugar and creamer, box of plas
tic gloves, two pair of leather gloves, a small pry bar, playing cards, coloring books and crayons, a multi tool knife, 8 light sticks, big first aid kit, a clear plastic zip bag with 4 toothbrushes and toothpaste. A box of bio-hazard waste bags, 4 canteen cups with little stoves and a box of fuel pouches, two survival knives, a map compass, water proof matches and a small metal box and all of it was sitting in top of a tarp.
She opened the metal box and saw it had been lined with cardboard, effectively creating a Faraday cage. There was a weather radio, 4 two-way radios and an anemometer/temperature gauge with the manuals to the electronics all stacked underneath them and a big box of batteries. Next, she opened the first aid kit, it was a top of the line first aid kit or maybe even an EMT kit. It had an IV kit, surgical scissors, suture kit, instant ice packs, bandages, butterfly strips, first aid tape, gauze pads, alcohol pads, tweezers, moleskin, burn cream, a CPR mask, plus various other smaller items, including a first aid field manual.
Sam was happy to find the instant coffee. She preferred the real grounds, but coffee was coffee. Plus, it would be easier to make the instant stuff, she could do one cup at a time instead of a whole pot. She put it all back in the tub with the first aid kit on top, except for the playing cards, coloring books and crayons, one jar of instant coffee and the box of electronics. She wanted to test them to see if they worked and she was interested to see what the temperature was if the gauge worked. She also thought she could entertain herself with the cards and coloring book.
Taking a deep breath, she smelled the delicious beans cooking and her stomach rumbled. She stirred the pot and tasted the spoon. They were done and delicious. After turning the burner off and shutting the window and flap the rest of the way she scooped up a big bowl. Sitting down on the bed with the manual for the anemometer/temperature gauge she learned that an anemometer was for measuring wind. She had thought the fan part of the gauge was a personal fan and laughed at herself. She continued reading the manual with the light from the gas lantern while she ate her hot beans.
