by Joe Nobody
When he had finished writing, he looked up with an expression displaying a more human-like quality. “Helen, I’m going to have two of my men escort you back to your apartment. They will help you upstairs with whatever you need to carry.”
Helen smiled, but felt a sense of disappointment. It took her a moment to admit why. She realized her time with him was over, and she probably wouldn’t see him again. That tugged at her insides, but she pushed it away. “Thank you, Pat,” was all she could say.
Turning to two soldiers standing nearby, he said, “Sergeant, please take one man and escort this young lady back to her apartment. Use my Humvee. See to it that she makes it safely to her door and assist her as gentlemen.”
“Yes, sir,” came the immediate response.
Before she knew it, Helen was riding in a motor vehicle for the first time in weeks. The driver pulled up in front of her building and before going inside, opened the back hatch. The other soldier and he pulled out a case of MREs and two large bundles of bottled water. Helen carried her empty buckets.
The electricity wasn’t on yet, and she tried to persuade the soldiers to leave the supplies next to the elevator door, but they would have none of it. The sergeant made it clear that he was going to follow his commander’s order to the letter. It was 3:48 in the afternoon, twelve minutes before the electricity was to be turned on, so the military escort opted to wait rather than, as one of them put it, “Hump the stairs.”
Helen thought it odd that both men completely ignored her while they waited. Not accustomed to being shunned by men, she finally worked up enough courage to broach the subject. She decided to be clever, “Sergeant, have I done something wrong or offended you in some way?”
It took the older man a moment to figure out what she was talking about. In a fatherly tone, he responded. “No ma’am, not at all. I’ve just been around long enough to know that look on my lieutenant’s face. I think he’s a wee bit smitten with you, and I’m glad. He’s a good man, but a lonely one.”
Helen blushed despite her best attempts to keep a straight face. Her heart racing in her chest didn’t help the effort. She decided to play it coy. “He seemed like a nice person. Perhaps our paths will cross again sometime.”
“Ma’am, when I get back, I’ll bet my next payday I get quizzed in a proper and thoroughly military manner. I can relay the information such that it encourages or discourages the lieutenant. I’ll leave that decision up to you.”
Helen was taken aback with the bluntness of the man. Not only was he forward, the whole thing was just plain weird. Here was a professional solider, a man with a gun, offering to be a matchmaker. What strange times we live in, she thought.
“Sergeant, do you want to know if I’m interested in going out with the lieutenant? Do people still date in these times? It’s not like we can go see a movie or have dinner out or anything.”
The man smiled at her, shaking his head ever so slightly. “Young lady, I’ve been married for 16 years. My experience has been that two people will make the best of it – regardless if the sky is falling or not. Again, your call, ma’am.”
Helen was thinking about how she wanted to answer when the lights in the lobby flickered on. A few moments later, a humming noise came from the elevator’s shaft. Right on cue, the building supervisor appeared, ready to check the elevator before letting anyone else in. Helen had seen this routine before; it wasn’t a complete diagnostic test, but still better than nothing.
The super entered the car where Helen knew he would ride to the top floor. He had told the residents that he checked the elevator’s controls located in the building’s primary mechanical room, trying to be as careful as possible. Ten minutes later, the doors opened again, and he announced the all clear. The line of tenants began entering the car, all of them carrying miscellaneous buckets, bags and other containers holding the necessities of life.
The soldiers accompanied Helen to her door, making sure everything was secure. As they were leaving, she turned to the sergeant and smiled. “I hope you’ll say good things about me.”
The solider looked at Helen and winked, speaking with a reassuring tone. “My pleasure, ma’am.”
Crusoe, Texas
March 10, 2017
Anyone trying to access the island didn’t have a lot of options. Three sides of the sandy strip were surrounded by open ocean with no place to dock or tie off a boat. The west side was guarded by extremely shallow water. Wyatt and several of the men on the dock discussed the previous night’s events and shared a good laugh about the invading killer bears. The conversation inevitably came around to security, and the tone became serious.
“We can’t be the only people along the Texas coast with operating boats. What’s to stop someone from sneaking in here and stealing or worse,” asked one of the men.
Wyatt agreed, surveying their faces for the hint of an idea. When none was offered, he volunteered, “We can keep watch at night. That’s probably smart. But during the day, there are times where everyone is scattered around working on whatever. I don’t think we can keep a watch 24-7. There are even less of us now than at the marina, and we have more work to do.”
“We need some kind of early warning system,” suggested someone. “If we know they’re coming, it gives us time to get ready. We need some sort of alarm or tripwire, booby trap kind of thing.”
Again, there was no dissent among the group, but no one had any experience with setting trip wires on the water.
A long conversation ensued, finally ending with a half-baked concept of using fishing line and a flare gun to build a burglar alarm. Sage’s use of a similar technique to defend against the pirates at Redfish had seeded the idea.
David and Todd were recruited to use the water jets and find out if the concept were feasible.
Wyatt watched the two small boats idle across the bay while he checked the tidal charts. Everyone thought the perfect solution would be to string a line just an inch or so under the surface of the water. When a boat came across, it would trip the line and send up the warning flare. The problem was the tide. A line that was one inch under the water could be several inches deep at high tide. It could be exposed when the water was low.
Not every location had the same rise and fall of tide, but the charts would tell all.
He finally determined that Matagorda Bay had an eight-inch tide. That was too much for their plan. If they set the trip wire deep enough to keep it hidden, a small boat could go right over the top of it without springing the warning. He had to think of something else.
As Wyatt sat on the back of Boxer, his neighbor was preparing to go fishing. Everyone took turns at the now-mundane task with varying degrees of success. Some of the guys were beginning to experiment with nets, trotlines and other methods. Wyatt watched as the man gathered his gear, a string of bobbers dangling from his belt. The little pieces of floating Styrofoam caught his attention. That might just work, he thought.
Wyatt headed into Boxer’s cabin in search of paper and pencil. Morgan and Sage were below, trying to determine a better way to prepare kelp. The aroma rising from the pan wasn’t encouraging. It’s constantly about food, thought Wyatt.
A few quick sketches combined with longer periods of thinking allowed Wyatt to finally arrive at a design that might work. David and Todd were just tying off the water bikes when he finished his drawing.
David reported first, “Dad, it looks like the only place for anything other than an airboat to get through is about 30 feet wide. It’s the same cut you plowed through the silt with Boxer. I saw other openings, but I almost got the jet-ski stuck trying to explore them. Even a rowboat couldn’t pass through those.”
That was good news. Wyatt smiled at the two guys and motioned them to examine his drawing. Morgan and Sage came up from below and joined everyone, spying over Wyatt’s shoulder at the contraption he had sketched.
“We’ll need two sturdy rods, maybe one of the broken fishing poles. We’ll drive them into the botto
m as deep as we can. We’ll string the line between them, secured to fishing bobbers. As the tide goes in and out, the bobbers will keep the line a constant inch or so below the surface.”
Wyatt tried to gauge the reaction to his invention. David looked at Todd, who nodded agreement – it just might work. “How do we hook the line to the flare gun?”
Wyatt flipped to a clean sheet and began to draw his thoughts. An hour later, David and Todd were again on the jet-skis, headed back to lay Crusoe’s first early warning tripwire.
Everyone was going to sleep just a little better tonight.
March 15, 2017
Fort Meade, Maryland
Reed was suffering from butt fatigue, the result of sitting in the hard plastic seat far longer than either the chair or his backside was designed to accommodate. The speaker at the front of the makeshift conference room wasn’t helping the situation at all. The non-descript man droned on and on about the progress FEMA and Homeland Security were making in the major metropolitan areas.
A quick check of his watch informed the congressman that the stodgy fellow was already 20 minutes over on the presentation, and they hadn’t even gotten to the question and answer segment. Don’t get frustrated, he told himself, we’re all trying to do our best.
Reed casually glanced at his fellow lawmakers to see if he were the only one growing tired of the whole affair. If they were, they didn’t show it – poker faces all around.
Finally, the mid-level analyst from FEMA said the magic words, “And that concludes my presentation. Are there any questions?”
Way too quickly, Reed’s hand shot up. The Speaker acknowledged him with a nod. “Yes, Representative Wallace, you have a question?”
Reed cleared his throat, “Thank you for the presentation, sir. I appreciate the hard work you folks down at FEMA are accomplishing. I do have a few questions, or clarifications, on my mind though. First of all, what percentage of our 20 largest cities has electricity as of this morning?”
The man at the front of the room shuffled his feet, his expression reminding Reed of someone who had just been caught cheating on his girlfriend. “Well, Congressman, all of them have electrical power.”
The Texan tilted his head slightly. “All of them? Full time electrical power has been restored to all of the major cities?”
The man at the front of the room shook his head, “No, Congressman, I didn’t mean it that way. All of the 20 largest cities have partial electrical service restored.”
“Could you define the term ‘partial’ for me, sir? I’m not sure what that means.”
The FEMA man stuttered, “Well, ummm, ahhhhh…New York City, for example, has electrical power to about 20% of the city about 10% of the time. That would be an example of partial service, Congressman.”
“I see. What about Chicago?”
“We are not doing as well in Chicago, sir. We still have about 5 million citizens who have no service. We have another million who receive electrical power about 5% of the time.”
“And Houston?”
The man relaxed a bit, “Things are going quite well in Houston. The last numbers I have indicate that 40% of the population receives electrical service at least 4 hours per day!”
Reed looked around the room, wondering if he were the only one appalled by these statistics. The expressions returned by his peers seemed to indicate they were waiting on him to continue his line of inquiry. The presenter’s face showed clear frustration.
“Sir, is it safe for me to assume that the restoration of running, potable water is reaching about the same number of citizens?”
“No, Mr. Wallace, that wouldn’t be a safe assumption. We still have sterilization protocols in affect for every city except Portland. The Portland water system, when available, is safe to drink.”
Reed couldn’t let it go. “How, if I may, does FEMA recommend people sterilize their water if they don’t have electricity to boil it?”
A loud voice from the back of the room sounded, “They can’t, and that’s why I’m here.”
Everyone turned around to see a young woman dressed in a white lab coat stepping toward the front of the room. She strode with purpose, carrying a folder full of papers tangled in the security badge hanging from her neck. She paid no attention to the man she had just preempted, who gladly stepped aside.
“I’m sorry to interrupt this meeting, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Dr. Linda Mitchel, Assistant Director of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. I just flew in, and with all due respect to my colleagues at FEMA, I don’t have time to wait in line to brief all of you.”
All of the senators and representatives sat up in their chairs, intrigued by the urgency and brashness of the new arrival.
The doctor from the CDC set her folder on the podium and withdrew a stack of papers. Reed snorted when she handed the pile to the senior senator from Florida, and without ceremony told the man to “Take one and pass it around.”
She returned to the lectern and announced, “We have a nationwide outbreak of typhoid. The CDC confirmed several cases in 13 American cities, and it is in the process of verifying suspected cases in another 9 metropolitan areas. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this disease, the anticipated fatality rate without Cipro class antibiotics is over 40%. With said medications, the fatality rate is less than 1%. I’m here, at the request of the director and the president to brief everyone on the situation.”
A murmur hummed throughout the room, the legislators opening the report as soon as they received copies. Reed was handed the dwindling stack and hurriedly opened the short report.
Dr. Mitchel continued, “So far, the outbreak is not classified as an epidemic, but my gut feeling is that will change in the next 24 hours. The early cases are the very elderly and the very young – segments of the populations who are traditionally the most susceptible and show symptoms first. As of six hours ago, we had 416 confirmed cases. We estimate at least 200,000 more people are in the early stages and haven’t sought medical attention yet. So far, there have been 103 fatalities.”
The senator from Idaho glanced up from his report and interrupted. “Do we know where it’s coming from?”
“Yes,” replied the doctor immediately, “We have identified the source as toxic particulates. In layman’s terms, the concentration of people in the refugee camps has led to massive amounts of untreated human waste. This waste eventually dries, forming a paste like layer on land or wherever it is disposed of. Wind, passing vehicles, foot traffic, and other disturbances allow the particulates to become airborne, basically infiltrating and coating everything from food to drinking water. At one camp outside of Nashville, practically every surface we tested was contaminated.”
Reed and several others had been talking about the water supply for days. It had been the primary health concern, with everyone from the Army Corps of Engineers to Homeland Security being questioned on the subject. Reed needed to clarify. “Doctor, isn’t typhoid normally due to tainted drinking water?”
The woman at the front of the room shook her head. “Yes, but not only drinking water. It can be spread by mosquitos and other insects. What we are seeing is different, something new. We finally isolated the source yesterday. Vast amounts of human waste has dried out and turned into a crust in many areas. This material is now becoming airborne and spreading the disease. It is also a strain that we’ve never encountered, and it’s spreading quickly. As of right now, we’re seeing an abnormally high rate of infection in the southern states. The primary concentration seems to be Miami, Tampa Bay, Mobile, and New Orleans. We believe we are actually seeing two different strains of typhoid – one caused by polluted drinking water, the other being airborne. The sewage systems in these areas are all but inoperable, drainage is poor, and potable water is in short supply. Rainfall has been far less than normal in these regions as well.”
“Great…just what we needed,” commented one congressman sitting next to Reed.
The doctor paused to let
her words sink in and then pressed on. “We have to distribute antibiotic treatment in mass quantities immediately or this is going to continue to spread quickly. We could be looking at over 10 million casualties in less than two months.”
“What do you need from us, doctor?” asked Reed.
The question seemed to surprise her. After a long pause, she said, “The president has already diverted military and government resources for the manufacture and distribution of the medications. I’m only here to brief you, not request anything.”
Martial law, thought Reed. Well at least the dictator-in-chief is taking the time to let us know what’s going on. I wonder how long that will last.
The meeting adjourned. As the doctor gathered her materials and prepared to leave, Reed approached her smiling, “Mind if I walk with you, doctor? I’ve got a couple of simple questions.”
“No, not at all. How can I help you?”
“I’m just curious what resources the president is diverting. What’s going to happen?”
The woman stepped quickly toward the door, Reed hustling to keep up. She met his gaze and responded, “The plants that can manufacture the quantities of meds we need are in New Jersey. Electrical power is being diverted from New York, as well as the engineers, linemen and other skilled personnel required to get those facilities up and running. The president hated to do it. This outbreak means a lot of people are going to do without for a little longer, but we’ve really no choice.”
Reed had figured as much - another step backwards. “Thank you, doctor. Have a safe flight.”
Crusoe, Texas
June 1, 2017
One of the biggest problems facing the citizens of Crusoe was salt. Most of the vessels had small supplies of the mineral, intended to fill table shakers. It seemed like every food gathering, curing or preservation process required large quantities of salt.
