Pandemic Reboot: Survivors

by Krause, J. F.

  Calloway House, as well as my personal home on the edge of the campus, had a motor home pad. In fact, most of the Belleview houses had enough parking for a motor home; the lots were that big. Irma had requested the house next to me in the Belleview neighborhood. That meant we’d have the same configuration we had at the motor home park: Irma, then me, then Kevin. Of course, I wasn’t going to live in my Belleview house until my six-month term as speaker was over. As long as I was speaker I would be living in Calloway House on campus. Unlike Irma, however, I didn’t drive my motor home over to my house. Jovantha Barnes did that for me. She also moved Kevin’s motor home to his house. It seems that Jovantha and Hector Corea spend their time between looking in on me and working with reservists.

  Once at Calloway House the boys and I began training both dogs to use the dog door. The puppy was way too young to understand why he had a dog door, but he quickly understood how to use it so the two of them were in and out for quite a while. Puppies and young dogs are wildly energetic and these two were played with until everyone was dog-tired. Irma brought Dinah so after Dinah fell asleep Irma and I started a conversation over coffee and fresh cookies. Before the coffee was even in our cups, Carl, Eric, Lydia, Anna, Zach, and Jane, along with her two wards, began showing up at my door. They were quickly followed by Cynthia and Todd as well as some of their friends. The teens quickly discovered we had a great full basement. All in all, it was a great impromptu housewarming party.

  Second Saturday

  A lot off people are moving into their homes today. For most, it’s merely getting the go ahead to drive their motor homes to the house of their choice. If two people chose the same house, there was a coin flip, or, if there were more than two, a tiny lottery. That didn’t happen very often since there were more than enough houses to go around. Most people listed one or more choices so there wasn’t much disappointment. Fortunately, at least for the housing people, George won his coin flip. Probably fortunately for the woman he was flipping against, although she might not have known it. And lucky for me, he wanted to be on the other side of the neighborhood. Everyone was a winner.

  Most people didn’t want to be that near the university. I think they were thinking about how things were like back when universities were busy and noisy and often crowded. It’ll be many years or even generations before that happens again. Still, I hope there is at least some hustle and bustle going on.

  I’m not very busy since I already was moved into my new home. Of course, I still have to read the reports I seem to get constantly. I find all of them to be somewhat interesting, but I particularly enjoy reading what is happening in other parts of the country.

  There is a still a sniper in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He or she has actually wounded some of the survivors. The troubling thing is they think this individual lives amongst them.

  There is still some gang activity in the New York City area, although that doesn’t appear to have caused any problems for anyone yet. They fight but among themselves. The original gangs must have been massive but now there are only about four or five surviving gang members. Yet somehow they’re still fighting!

  We have a fire starter in Los Angeles. Right now it isn’t a problem since it’s a bit wet here on the west coast in January-February. It will become a problem later so they are trying to find them. Not very successfully, unfortunately.

  There’s a small enclave of independistas, my word, who claimed the Oklahoma panhandle as their home. We didn’t care, unless we suspected that some of the members didn’t want to be there. They weren’t any children among them, but if and when we were to discover any, we’d revisit the situation. Most of the members came from other parts of the country at the invitation of a lone survivor in a small community there. I suspected that some of the Indiana escapees went there as well. They have a couple dozen members so far, including a small number of women, every one of whom, at least to our best knowledge, had expressed a desire to be there. What were they thinking?

  Stanford is starting a transcontinental train service. They asked if we would donate the steam engines from our train museum here. That will to be discussed next week when the west coast people arrive in SLO. I believed it will also be discussed again when the countrywide leaders arrived the week after.

  There are three hockey teams formed already in Canada and one in Minnesota. They even had a schedule to compete with each other. More teams will follow. Basketball is making a comeback, but it’s coed, even here in SLO. So are soccer and baseball. Football, not so much. The small towns can’t field a team and schools aren’t encouraging it.

  The coast guard cutter boats are working out quite well. We have volunteers showing up almost daily from across the country who want to join our “navy”. Yesterday, we added at least two more boats on all three coasts. I’m guessed that when the countrywide communities get together in two weeks, we’d begin starting talks about a joint mutual defense force. I needed to talk to Marco in person so that I didn’t feel so uninformed. Of course, I was probably one of the most informed people on the planet at that moment.

  I asked Anna to drop Chanelle off to play with the boys today. Anna’s moving sometime today and the three boys and Chanelle can play together in the back yard or the basement while I keep Dinah busy. Irma is helping Carl get moved. I’ve noticed something going on there I think. Irma was divorced long before the sickness. I know Irma was saddened by the death of her ex, but Cynthia had been devastated. They had had an amicable divorce, sharing custody of Cynthia all these years.

  Along that line, I see a lot of our teenagers displaying what looked like dating behavior. They seem a lot more resilient than the rest of the population and are bouncing back from the disaster somewhat faster than the older survivors. Of course, they had their moments of spontaneous grief, and some of them still break into spontaneous tears now and then, but they seem to have a genuine commitment to the future that was just a bit more tentative in most of their elders.

  Another thing I noticed about the teenagers was that they seemed not to bully each other. All of the young people seemed much less cliquish to each other to each other than before The Sickness. They actually seemed to be throwbacks to an earlier and more innocent age. I like that aspect of this new environment.

  In a few months, I believed we would start having young women showing definite signs of pregnancy. I wanted the babies, but I also wanted our young people to have children when they are ready to be parents and not because they didn’t plan. We all understood that we needed more people, and we weren’t getting them from immigration. I figured we’d cross that bridge when we got there. Maybe sending them to a year of self-defense would help.

  Chanelle would be with me from 10 AM until 2 PM. She is bringing her new dog, a French bulldog named Butterbean. That was the name she came with. She must have had lovely human parents because she is so adorably sweet. Nelda, Cedric, and Butterbean never seemed to rest regardless of whether the kids teased them along. So, Dinah and I played with a little ring toy set, while the dogs ran themselves ragged in the back yard. Meanwhile, the boys and Chanelle played basketball in the backyard where there was a slab and a basketball goal installed. Calloway House, even though part of it seemed like a small hotel, really was very much like a house and was where the university president had resided.

  Soon enough the game broke up, and the usual crew got together and had our first group dinner at the closest cafeteria. We talked about church and religion, something I don’t do very often. It was quite educational. Jane is Presbyterian, Irma and Carl are Jewish, although I don’t think they’re the same kind. Lydia is Catholic, as is Marco. Anna is Quaker, Zach is Buddhist, and Kevin and I were nothing, at least I was nothing now. I don’t know if he was raised nothing or not. I just completed my transition to nothing after I left Georgia.

  Of course, everyone was excited because the first batch of our reservists was due to arrive in about half an hour. It didn’t include Marco who stayed behind with the med
ical team members who also stayed behind with the wounded. Everyone arrived in Lancaster/Edwards earlier that day, but the wounded were going to rest before the drive over the hills to SLO. They were to arrive about 4 PM Sunday afternoon. It was decided that Kevin would stay with me since I already had Chad and Dinah. He’d need his wounds, entry and exit, dressed and looked after for a couple more days. There was always time for him to move into his place after he’d completely healed.

  After dinner, I went home to watch a feature length cartoon DVD with the boys. Irma and Carl went to temple. Together, but with Eric who now spent as much time with Carl as possible. I think Cynthia talked Todd into going, too. Anna and Zach were sleeping in, and tomorrow Lydia would be attending the Catholic Church with her girls. Jane was the organist for the combined Methodist/Presbyterian service. Julie and Kyle would be there, too. They adored her.

  Second Sunday

  The kids and I slept in, as much as Dinah would let me. Nelda had taught Cedric how to use the dog door. As far as I could tell, she also seemed to be house training him. They were up and about much earlier than the rest of the household, but they left us alone. It would be more accurate to say the three boys slept in, but I got them up in time to take them to 10 AM Sunday school at Our Saints Episcopal. Aside from it being the closest church to our house, it also turns out that Chad was Episcopalian. The least I can do is take him to his parents’ church. If he was going to church, so would we all. Jerry and Charlie weren’t anything and seemed puzzled when I asked them what church they attended before The Sickness. They all went to the kids’ service and I went to the regular adult service in the sanctuary. I was surprised to see several people I knew there. Rusty Holloway was there with Janet Mrozinski, which means that there were at least a couple of other kids in the kids’ service. I didn’t think Janet was an Episcopalian before because she didn’t know what to do any more than I did. The service was nothing like my childhood church services but we just followed Rusty’s lead. He had attended this church all his life. I saw Avery Wells on the other side of the sanctuary. I guessed his little boy was in the kids’ service with Dinah.

  After lunch, the boys, all three of them had their first piano lessons with Jane. She came to our house along with Kyle and Julie who played basketball in the backyard with Eric who now lived with Carl whose house just down the street from Jane’s. Later, Chad, Jerry, and Charlie all practiced for at least half an hour with no grumbling allowed. I play piano a bit myself, but never in public so I at least knew if they are putting some effort into it. The ambulance bringing Kevin from Edwards Air Base near Lancaster delivered him straight to my door just after 4 PM.

  Jane and I made a fuss over him as we put him in the second master suite. Calloway House was massive and I wasn’t even sure I’d seen all the rooms yet. Of course, all three boys had seen everything there was to see. Even Chanelle had seen everything. Chad was ecstatic that Kevin was home again. Even Dinah picked up that something big was happening. She was pretty good at saying “da-da” so I presumed Kevin had been referring to himself as Daddy to her.

  Amazingly, Kevin had flown halfway across the continent, been through a miniature battle, had been wounded, had been through surgery, and had been returned to his starting place in less than a week. It felt much longer to me.

  Second Monday

  The first guests to Tuesday’s meeting of the west coast leaders started arriving around noon. I had just finished getting myself moved into the new office area. Jane and Lydia are right next to me with Anna, Todd and the communications teams outside my office very much like it was at the fairgrounds except much nicer. The HAM operators are just down the hall so they are more integrated than before. We spend a lot of time trying to track down people and places that aren’t as lucky as we were with finding larger groups.

  Smaller groups have been able to build secure communities because they have information and contact with people from larger communities. One of the best examples of how information spreads through our communications networks can be found in the extensive network of radio stations we now have. When we first started, none of us knew how to start and run any of the fully functioning radio stations that were all around us. Then, early on, we discovered Kathy Kreske, a radio tech in Spearfish, South Dakota. She was part of a very small group of people who had come together because of searchlights and sirens. After making contact with our HAM radio crew, Kathy coached most of the radio station teams until they were up and running. Once that happened, we could get information across the whole country. Atlanta was ready to restart a television station within a few days.

  Now, we could run “wanted” ads on the radio asking for different skills and people were responding, and some were relocating. We were discovering expertise that might have been lost forever had we not put it out on the radio.

  We appear to have the beginnings of a small, but workable symphonic orchestra. That should have been the first thing we lost, but we believe we’ll have one up and running in the next couple of months. Funding is not an issue, that’s for sure. The musicians will have to decide where they will be located, and they’ll also have to decide how they will go about training young people for the future. It’s not one of those skills that you can just teach. The right people have to be taught at the right time, and those right people aren’t that common and they aren’t in one place. Anyway, they’ll work it out.

  Something else we will have to do is solve the riddle of what projects we tackle first. The Chocolate Barometer is turning out to be true of a lot of things. The founding and maintaining of our orchestra is one example. Another is starting a railroad again. It isn’t going to be possible to have the kind of trade we need without it. But looking at all the things that go into starting, running, and maintaining a railroad is really daunting. But we have people working on it, and I’m sure there will be a railroad in our not too distant future.

  In prepping for the meeting tomorrow, I asked several people to join me at noon to get their thoughts on working interactively with our fellow west coast communities on how we can go from just surviving to how we can progress and thrive in this new and very different environment. That meeting was set for 10 AM in the conference room down the hall from my office.

  The first person in the room, aside from Lydia, Jane, and me was Dr. Truitt. Mary Truitt had taken care of Kevin after he was shot, and arrived from making a house call at my house. Jane assigned Kyle and Julie to look after Kevin. They, in turn, were joined by their new bud, Eric. All four of them were playing video games. Tomorrow, Kevin would be returning to his medical work group which was now located at the medical clinic here on campus and the small hospital just across the street. He would have an easy assignment for the time being, but he was healing nicely and chomping at the bit to get back with the medical team. Without proper medical treatment, even his relatively minor injury could have easily lead to an infection which could in turn lead to death. Julie and Kyle would be starting middle school tomorrow so all three were happy to kick back and take it easy with a game day today.

  Mario, Carl, Irma, and LaWanda were next. Mary didn’t actually know most of the people in the room so we were introducing her to them when Avery Wells walked in. Avery was the last of the group to arrive at precisely 10 AM. He just had to walk a couple hundred feet from his own meeting that began earlier at 8 AM. Several of the people in my group had just come from one of the two meetings that were planning labor transitioning and governmental guidelines. Once they were all seated I began.

  “Thanks for coming this morning. Tomorrow we will be meeting with the leaders from the other west coast communities. We’ll be starting at 7 AM with a group breakfast, courtesy of Leona Nichols and her food team. Please don’t let me forget to thank her when we see her tomorrow. I thought I would share with you a few of my thoughts before we open up for a group planning session. I was thinking we would meet and greet and set some goals and guidelines. After that, I thought it best if we put job alike ty
pes together and start seeing if we can come up with some real plans. We have all week. At first we were going to meet with just the leaders, then the work group leaders got included. Next week we will do much the same thing all over again with representatives from all over the country as well as Canada and Mexico.

  One thing that has come up a couple of times in discussions is ‘why the rush’. I’m guessing most of us understand that ‘nature abhors a vacuum’. I’m going to modify that saying into ‘human nature abhors a vacuum’. Already we have a group of ‘independistas’ who have set themselves up in the Oklahoma Panhandle. We may have groups like that in a lot of places. Eventually, I think they will have a civil society breakdown, and we are too few to easily contain the problems that may cause. We don’t have time to waste in getting ourselves back to some sort of normalcy so people have something of value to defend, a future worth protecting.

  We are already seeing a bit of movement from one community to another. Collectively, need to avoid hollowing out and end up putting all of us in the same three or four places. I think there’s safety in numbers, but there’s also enormous risk in putting too many of us in just a few places. An earthquake, a tornado, a hurricane, a tsunami, a forest fire, any of a number of things could bring us to our knees again if we don’t have a plan.”

  As soon as I stopped my little introduction, I could see I wasn’t the only one who had similar ideas. Mary Truitt had some insight to share from her time in Indiana.

  “We have a lot of medical skills left, but they are spread across the country. If we work together we should be able to set up areas of specialties for treatment and training. I believe we can utilize a lot of skills by having our doctors alternate between training our medical students for a few months a year on a rotation basis and then spend the rest of their time in practice in their home communities. That way, we have people on call all the time. For example, we can make sure we have pediatricians spread out over the country, but bring each of them back to a central training facility for a couple of months or so to participate in a medical school or even schools. While I was in Indiana, several of us were able to share some ideas along these lines. Were you aware that we even had a small contingent of Australians in Indiana? They volunteered two doctors and five policemen because they know they need us to help them train their young people. And they’re willing to help.”