Pandemic Reboot: Survivors

by Krause, J. F.

  “Sir, we decided that all questions would be discussed and once a consensus was reached, we would proceed. If no consensus could be arrived at, the decision was mine, Sir.”

  “How was the decision to call for volunteers for a reserve made?

  “By consensus, sir. You were very clear that you wanted a self-defense force, This group started discussing it first in Orange County, and then on Saturday and Sunday. I was with the Leadership team much of Saturday and Sunday, but I met with the full team after those meetings on both days. We decided we needed a volunteer reserve force to complement the fulltime militia. This group developed a plan for the first week of training and a schedule that we distributed to the work groups so they could plan around having some of their members gone each day for their reserve training. The training is a work in progress, Sir.”

  “What do you think will be the militia’s primary responsibility?”

  “If I’m honest, I’ll have to say we don’t really know. We expect to have to protect our community from feral dogs, and maybe an increase in cougars, coyotes, wolves, and such. We need to be prepared to provide protection for convoys and travelers between communities such as this one and LA. I hate to say it, but we think there may be some antisocial types the community will need protection from. We don’t think they will be motivated by greed and the traditional forms of corruption, but we know there have been some murderers and such reported from communities across the country.”

  “Ok, that makes sense, but why so many reservists?” That was really my biggest question.

  “We decided, by consensus, that a community that is fully prepared to protect itself will most likely never have to. We have the skills among this group here to teach proper handling of weapons, self-defense skills, and personal physical fitness. We also all heard some of the comments made by at least one of our leadership team that seems to indicate a desire for a strongman sort of government. I believe I speak for all of us here when I say we prefer the approach you have publicly endorsed.” At that he looked around for confirmation. I did, too, and everyone present seemed to be in agreement.

  I had a few other questions. “Since it appears that you will be not only our defense force but also our police and fire departments, would you give some thought to what kind of rules we need. Keep in mind that, in practice, most rules won’t be enforceable, so we only want the ones that are vital to the well being of our community. Obviously, we are concerned with murder and assault, but what others? I’d also like to ask that we consider some sort of universal training for our young people to sort of help condition them for survival and self-defense. Something that is sort of post high school but pre-advanced schooling. Perhaps we can use it as a common training for all of our defense needs. It’s just a thought that I’d like your group to look into.”

  Seeing heads nod, I closed it up by asking if there were questions, and surprisingly there were only a couple.

  “What are your plans for uniting the communities together?” I was surprised by this one since I’ve never even thought about it, and I told them so.

  “I think that any unification between communities will have to be totally voluntary at this point. We just don’t have the human resources to force any organized group to do anything against its will.”

  I didn’tß try to soft pedal it. “There isn’t a United States anymore, as far as I can tell. Even if there were a group who tried to bring it back together, no one has the human capital to make it happen. We can work everything out by mutual understanding and call it the United States of America, but there is no capacity to make it happen against anyone’s will. We seem to have gone from a federal system to a confederate system literally over night. That, by the way, is one of the hardest things to get used to.”

  That seemed to have left them in a somber mood. As I mentioned to them earlier, I hadn’t consciously thought about it. “Please give some thought to what I just said. I don’t have a plan, but if I’m being realistic about things, that’s what I think. Please don’t hesitate to disagree. I’m only one person.”

  With that, Jane and I walked to the door accompanied by Marco. I smiled good-bye to Kevin. Marco waited until we got out of the training area, then he shared some more thoughts and questions.

  “What will happen if someone declares they are the rightful U.S. government?”

  “Well, I don’t really know. I’ll do whatever the team decides. We probably need a more formal idea. I’d love to find out that there are a lot of people around, and we can have a full time functioning government to take care of us, but I don’t think there is one. I suspect, based on the numbers we are seeing here in SLO, we may have no more than 10,000 people left here in California out of an original population of almost forty million. We’ll be lucky if SLO isn’t the biggest community in the whole state. What kind of United States would we have if I’m right?”

  I seemed to have a sobering effect on everyone I talked with, but like it or not, we had to face reality. According to the reports Lydia and Anna was putting together from the other communities, San Luis Obispo was not only one of the current largest communities, it was also the best organized. We were still growing with another caravan coming in sometime around 3 PM. There were over two hundred people in that group, and there was one planned for the next day that was about the same size. Even with all these new people, we would still be a small community compared to our recent past.

  My next group would be the education group. They were starting the elementary school tomorrow and I wanted to see how they were doing with that project. A number of teenagers had been recruited to baby sit the kids while I met with the education team. I wanted to keep this short, not only for them but for myself. I really wanted to spend some time with Anna, Lydia, Todd, and Jane. I felt very disorganized no matter what people around here thought.

  As Jane and I entered the future temporary school, it was obvious that there had been a lot of work done to make the hall functional as an education center. They had put it together as a grand open classroom with movable partitions separating what I guessed would be lots of classrooms. Like most of our projects, it was a work in process. Even so, I could tell that it was a children’s learning center. Michelle and Janet came up to us as soon as they saw us. We had made it almost halfway across the hall when one of the teachers pointed us out to them.

  Ms. M was the first to speak. “Bobby! Jane! What do you think of our school?”

  Since my immediate background had been in an elementary school, I actually had a pretty good idea what was going on here. “It looks like you’re making a silk purse!”

  Both of them smiled. Michelle asked if I wanted to look around or get right to the meeting. I knew I should do the tour, but I also knew there was a time crunch. The teenagers were still sort of tall children themselves, and it wasn’t a good idea to put them to the test for very long.

  “Perhaps just a brief one? I don’t want to challenge the teenagers too much. Besides, I’m hoping we are only here for a week or two and then can move into a real elementary school.”

  A few minutes later we were in the area where they had decided to have our meeting. It must have been a sixth grade space since the seats were almost big enough to be comfortable.

  “Staff, this is Robert Caldwell. We have him with us for the next hour if need be. Robert was a teacher before The Sickness so he probably has a good idea what we have been doing here.” Michelle, as the lead teacher, handled the introductions.

  “Good afternoon.” I had to consciously resist saying “y’all” when I greeted them. I was pleased to see that I felt right at home with this group. They actually looked like teachers. I may not be able spot a teacher when they’re alone, but put them together, and I’m right most of the time. It’s a skill a lot of teachers have. I’ve met some that can spot another teacher just by watching how they conduct themselves in a grocery or a mall. I can’t do that yet, but give me a few more years. That is if we ever have supermarkets or
malls again. Did I mention that I like teachers?

  “I know we have different levels of educators in the group. How many of you will be with the elementary kids tomorrow?” A little less than half the group raised their hands. “How many will be at the middle school when it starts next week?” A smaller group raised their hands to this. Still, it was a good-sized group. I soon saw that I had made a false assumption, though. The way it was set up, most of the people in the middle school group would also be teaching high school when it opened. They were going to start out with all the seventh graders through the twelfth grades at the same site, but they wouldn’t both start on the same day. That way, teachers could work wherever their specialty took them.

  I was also informed that we would be opening a community college for high school graduates and even a college and vocational school as soon as we could pull it off. Even more interesting, at least to me, was that they had listed me as a future teacher. I figured that as soon as my six month Speaker term was over, I would be one of the teachers and had asked Ms. M to put me on the staff list. She had, and I was rather pleased.

  Most of the future college and vocational teachers were currently members of work groups related to their degrees, and they would continue as members of both groups. We were anticipating anywhere from 200 to 250 post high school students just from our own community. That was probably a month away. I wanted it started soon because all of these things were positive signs to our community that we were going to survive. Additionally, every project we undertook helped us individually and collectively to stave off depression.

  “Bobby do you know where and when we are going to have a permanent school?” Janet Mrozinsky probably asked the number one question on everyone’s mind.

  “Not yet. We have a lot to consider before we pick a neighborhood. We only want to bring electricity to the area where we are going to live. We need to be near one of the colleges as well as near a hospital. Right now that looks like it will be near the university. The SLO natives are part of making that recommendation. And, of course, we have to make sure it’s healthy and defensible.

  Have you considered how we are going to handle students from other groups? The ones who will need to stay in a dormitory while they go to high school or college?”

  At last I asked a question that no one had actually discussed. Carl Markowitz was part of this group having been a professor of political science at California State University, Los Angeles. I liked Carl’s naturally affable personality. He was a bit larger than life in every setting I’d observed him in, and he was a solid leader. Carl was the first to respond

  “Are you expecting a large number of out of community students? We may not have the staff to do an adequate job if we have many students from other groups.”

  “I don’t know what is going to happen. We need your team to think about this and make some suggestions. We won’t stop people from going where they want. I don’t think we could if we wanted to anyway. I just think that once word gets out that we are opening a college and a vocational school, we will get a bunch of young people. Remember, we have a lot of teenagers and young adults with no families. SLO might start looking pretty attractive. It’s likely that college level teachers will come as well if we have a college and their current community doesn’t.”

  I could see by the looks on their faces that this brought a very mixed reaction from them. Some were clearly pleased with this prospect; others not so much. It could become a problem if other communities came to believe we were cherry picking their talent. On the other hand we couldn’t limit travel among our fellow Americans.

  California population centers were unique among states. For instance, we had almost 40,000,000 people in the state before the sickness. Since much of California is desert or mountains, we tended to congregate near the coast and coastal valleys or in the central valley. It may be a big state geographically, but most of the people live in a relatively small space. On the other hand, other states are much more likely to have a more widely distributed population. The dense concentration of population in California made finding each other much easier than had we been more spread out. Some of the other states were much slower to reach the same percentages of pre-sickness survivors.

  According to Anna’ research team we here on the west coast had coalesced into a few communities on or near the coast and we were maintaining fairly close ties with one another. I didn’t know if things would stay the same over the next few months or years, but right now we had a community centering around Eureka on the north coast of the state. It was pretty small with only about 200 survivors from the northern fifth of the state and southern Oregon. Then there were two more fairly good-sized communities, one located near Davis with about 1200 and the other close to the Stanford university campus where a little over 1000 people were settling in. We had another medium group in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley just south of Fresno with about 800. Next was San Luis Obispo with over 2,500, then San Pedro, which is where the old Los Angeles port had been and where there where a few over 200 survivors planned to remain, and finally there was the San Diego community with over 700. We were setting up small communities in Morro Bay, Monterrey, San Francisco, and Mendocino as well. Right now we hoped to have at least 50 people in each composed of a mix of navy types and fishermen. We already were planning to begin Coast Guard cutter boat visits going up the coast from San Diego to Victoria and Vancouver in British Columbia. We had two crews being trained and hoped to add a few more once we began the regular trips.

  All in all, in California alone we had assembled under 10,000 survivors. We were still finding them, too. Just this morning the Fresno group located a toddler when a sharp-eyed ice cream truck driver spotted him looking out his front window. He barely reached above the sill and had survived by drinking from the water dispenser for the dog and by eating dried puppy chow along with his little miniature schnauzer puppy companion. Yesterday, a day care search in Redding found a three year-old girl taking care of her one year-old sister. Sadly, we still have very few children under four years.

  I shared some of this information with the educators and asked them to think about how to work with other educators across the state and country to see how we can support each other without inadvertently harming each other in the process.

  Another concern regarded adult education. We had too many skills that were being lost as it was without losing some of the more basic ones. We had numerous older and even elderly survivors who had skills that we would need going forward. Our numbers were too small, worldwide, to possibly be able to manufacture and produce the variety of products and tools we took for granted in the past. We specifically talked about, if only briefly, supermarkets and malls. We needed to be able to do a lot for ourselves over the next few years, and maybe longer. I mentioned sewing, canning/preserving, and gardening, but others brought up leather tanning, weaving, and basic old-fashioned home economics. We still had plenty of people, but quite a few were older, and we needed to preserve their skills before it was too late. Better to learn from a real life teacher whenever possible is my philosophy.

  Before long we were finished and I was back to my office. I wanted to spend time with Jerry and Charlie. I couldn’t begin my time as their guardian by neglecting them. Fortunately, we lived between Irma and Cynthia, and Kevin and his kids, Chad and Dinah. But I remembered being a latch key kid, especially after Mom became a principal. Teaching is a good occupation for parents, but it’s not perfect. I was determined to pick them up from the kid center no later than 4:45 PM.

  The first thing I wanted to do was to meet with Lydia, Anna, Todd, and Jane. I needed information. I’d already asked Jane to arrange for a meeting so they were all there waiting when I arrived. We decided to meet in the conference room so I took the opportunity to get a cup of coffee before we went in. Marco was there as I looked up from the coffee maker.

  “Marco! What brings you here?”

  “Sir, I’d like to talk with you about s
omething that has come up. Do you have a few minutes?”

  “Sure. Is it something we can talk about in front of the others?” As I said this I gestured to Lydia, Anna, Todd, and Jane.

  “I’m fine with that, but it’s fairly sensitive.” He seemed a bit subdued.

  “In that case, let’s all step into the conference room.”

  After everyone was sitting, I turned to Marco and said, “Okay, Marco, what’s happening?”

  “Yesterday, that state legislator in Indianapolis declared himself Governor of Indiana and declared martial law. He’s set up road blocks going into the city and is trying to prevent anyone from leaving. He’s demanding that all Indiana residents report to the state capital immediately? We have a recording of his speech. It’s pretty graphic and pretty brutal.”

  Todd had a few things to add. “We’re getting reports that he’s actually killed some people and arrested others who disagreed with him. He seems to have quite a few men who are sort of organized as a local policing group who are helping him. Several people managed to leave and went to the Chicago group. They say it’s pretty bad, especially for some of the women they’ve caught.”

  “I’m guessing you’re getting your news from a different source from Todd, right?” I directed this to Marco.

  “Yes, sir. We are in communication with military personnel in most of the survivor communities. They’re following our model pretty much everywhere other than in Indianapolis. Not many in Indianapolis are happy with what is happening. Since money has no meaning anymore, Governor Hawkins as he calls himself, is bribing his men with promises of women. They captured several before anyone knew what was going on.”

  “Damn it. What are the responses from the other groups? Have there been any yet?”

  Lydia answered first. “Just before you walked into the building, I got my first messages from some of the communities. Essentially, they want to know what we want them to do, meaning you, Bobby.”