by J. F. Krause
They wanted a lot from us, and we really only wanted free access between communities. One thing they wanted that I knew would never happen was they want their people to stop moving to Coalition communities, especially women. We all knew this problem of theirs would persist as long as their people saw a better life in our communities than in their own. They didn’t like it, but it was obvious to anyone who looked at it honestly.
After lunch we started talks with representatives from the Sunni Homeland. Immediately, our conversations with the Sunnis took an unexpected turn. Their representatives informed us they had heard everything said between the Coalition and the Shiite group and knew they would have the same result so we may as well skip to the bottom line. They would open an office in SLO and we could open an office in Cairo. I never thought of SLO as the capital of the Coalition, but evidently, that wasn’t true of most other people. The Sunni Homeland wanted pretty much the same thing as the Framework. So we ended up having ‘links’ with them, too. Tentative links I should add. We left the details for future discussions. Hamdi was actually surprised by the outcome, but he was also very encouraged. Since he will be a major player in the future discussions with the SF and the SH, I took a moment to tell him about bargaining with yourself. He laughed when I told him about it, but I know, at the very least, he won’t be making that mistake himself.
By the evening of the third day in Erbil, I was really ready to head home. I missed the boys, Chanelle, and Dinah. And Kevin. At heart, I’m not a happy world traveler and prefer to sleep in my own bed in my own house.
March 25
I was still recovering from my whirlwind trip to Erbil when Avery and I parted company in Atlanta. He flew on home to be with Dr. Mary and his son. I stayed over to spend time with Jerry and Chanelle up in Asheville, North Carolina. They just started two weeks of spring break by joining a tree planting work crew. This is the second year that 12 to 16 year olds spent two weeks planting American chestnuts throughout their native ranges in the eastern part of North America as part of our reforestry project in North America. It’s the first year Channel and Jerry were old enough to participate. This year every country or region in the Coalition is using their springtime to restore native trees to abandoned farms that are going to return to forests, at least for the next several generations. With a population that has dropped from 8 billion or so all the way down to about 2 million worldwide, there’s a lot of unused farmland that will be going to go back to forest, at least until we need it again, if we ever do.
This little excursion for adolescents is mostly an educational part of the entire reforestry project that will be going on for years. We hope it helps instill in them the need to restore and husband our natural resources. The kids work, play, explore, and learn. At least, that’s the plan. I like to think that I don’t get special treatment, but I know I do when I get to do things like joining my kids at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville for a private lunch in the Mansion. Before I spent time with my kids, I met the leadership team, and probably most of the Asheville survivors. The community in Asheville numbers just about 250 at the moment, and they are hosting about 4 thousand tree planters over the next four weeks, about 1000 at a time. All in all, Ashville will have kids for four one-week planting sessions. After their week in Ashville, Chanelle and Jerry’s group would be bussed up to Knoxville. Next year, Ashville should be off the hook as the tree-planting adolescents will be planting trees somewhere else, but this year, they have lots of kids to supervise. My kids and I stayed in one of the Biltmore hotels on the estate, along with lots of the other kids I might add, but we got a great private tour of the Biltmore Mansion and formal gardens. Even though they singled me out to be with my kids the day I was there, Chanelle and Jerry spent the rest of their time working right along with their tree planting teams. The only deviation for them was the tour and lunch with me. I think our Asheville hosts would have done anything I asked, but I didn’t want Chanelle and Jerry pulled away from their work assignment. All the kids were going to have the same tour as I had during their work assignment; my kids just had it with me. I also didn’t want them missing out on having their meals with the other tree planters. This is also a bonding experience for them.
Toward the end of the tour, Jerry asked me if I was going to visit my childhood home while I was here. I misunderstood what he meant and said I hadn’t planned on it. I was actually flying back to Atlanta the next morning and the idea of driving by a dilapidated old house that I hadn’t seen, let alone lived in, for years hadn’t crossed my mind. Then he said that on their way back to Atlanta, they were going to stop at my house for a tour.
“A tour? They’re going to show you and Chanelle the house where I grew up? That’s nice of them. Aren’t you going to be going back to Atlanta on the bus?”
“O yeah! All the buses are going to stop at your house on the way back. They’re showing everyone your house.”
I was stunned, and the young woman who was giving us our tour laughed when she saw my expression. “Oh, don’t worry, Bobby. We have the Northern Georgia Goat Project located just a few blocks away from your house and they’re going to see that, too. We have lots of goat farms scattered around to try to keep up with the kudzu since goats are one of the only things between us and a kudzu disaster. There are several families of goat herders living just down the street from your old house, and they open it up to show people every couple of weeks or so. Lots of people want to see how you grew up! Don’t fret about it. It’s a good thing! People like you. And, since we need a few heroes right now, you were an obvious choice.”
“I didn’t know anything about this.”
“Would you have said it was okay?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, but then again….. I don’t know.”
“Maybe that’s why nobody told you about it. We can’t put this type of thing off. We needed to preserve it or it would have fallen down in no time. You know that.”
“Is it furnished?”
“Yep. Avery used it as a training exercise for the curator class he teaches. I was just out your way in SLO for 10 weeks to take his class. We planned it all out right there in SLO, and then everyone came here and went to work. We looked at your mom’s family pictures and moved the furniture up from her house in Sandy Springs. It’s pretty close to how it looked when you were growing up. Want to see it? I can take you down there. It’s only a couple hours from here.”
“No. I think I’ll pass this time. I really don’t think I can handle that. You know what I mean?” It’s a little strange, well, a lot strange to know that people have been going through your things to do something like this. I actually felt a bit violated, but then my old habit of giving myself time to think things through kicked in, and I pushed my emotions back, at least for the moment.
“Yes. I think everyone will understand.”
“Tell them, ‘Thank you,’ for me. At least I think so. It’s sort of a different type of surprise. I’m a little surprised to hear you were in SLO, what, just recently? I usually drop by to visit the classes at the university, especially the specialty classes like that one. I know I visited Avery’s curatorship class. It was for people who already had an artsy background wasn’t it? Did you and I meet?”
“Yes, we did.” Lori was gently laughing as she told me. “You looked me right in the eye and said, “I’m so sorry, but I know I’ll forget I was even here. I’m on information overload, lately, but I’m really glad to meet you”. She laughed at my grimace.
Later, after Chanelle and Jerry were back with their respective teams, I had time to form some opinions. If it hadn’t been about me and my house, I would have done the same thing. We needed to develop our own traditions and story. This was our new reality. We were a world made up of orphans with no history of our own except the one we were making right now. At the end of their shifts, while they were having boxed dinners at various locations on and around the Estate, I took a couple of hours to visit as many of the work crew kids as I could. To
them, for whatever reason, I was an old and wise man. I knew I needed to rethink my decision. These kids had a future that could be amazing because we did what had to be done in a timely manner. I was the visible part of that to them, and I needed to acknowledge and respect that.
So I asked Lori, my tour guide, if I could change my mind and stop by to see my old home. I might even be able to help the crew there with a few details.
Of course, it was okay so we notified the people in Atlanta to reschedule my plane, and that I’d be a little late. The next morning, just as the sun was coming up, our little entourage took off for my hometown. Georgia is about as green in late March as you could hope for. Trees have new leaves, flowers are everywhere, and the weather is almost perfect, if you like rain, that is.
I could have easily driven myself, but of course, I almost never drive anymore. I was in the second of two SUVs followed by a supply truck. There were a total of ten of us in our little caravan. In SLO, I always have a guard, and I forget about them most of the time. Here in Georgia, seven of the ten of us were soldiers, if I counted the drivers and the salvagers in the truck, all of whom were local militia members as was Lori. I think I was the only one without a gun. According to Lori, there were lots of coyotes and wild dogs and even the occasional bear or wild pig around. Everyone carried a gun if they were outside, especially if they were traveling. I also think there was a possibility of highwaymen, social isolates that might try to make off with a working vehicle or perhaps a woman. There had been a couple of attempts early on. After all this time, most of the cars and trucks don’t work anymore. A little tinkering has them up and running, but it takes a bit of know how. Thanks to our schooling projects, we had a lot of people who had a good working knowledge of how to maintain automobiles and other essential equipment. Literally, every week we are getting smarter and better trained to live in our current environment.
Lori, possibly remembering my reaction to finding out about my childhood home being preserved and turned into a tourist site, told me her story about the day everyone died as well as the weeks after. Lori was working at one of the art galleries downtown when some of the cell phones began blaring that the government was ordering the closing of non-essential businesses for the next couple of days. Employees were to go home immediately and stay there. She and her colleagues locked up the gallery and the then headed to their cars to drive home. Even before they got to their cars though it was obvious they weren’t going anywhere on the narrow streets of downtown Asheville. They decided to head back to the gallery for a couple of hours and chill until things calmed down outside on the streets. Their gallery was next to a small boutique hotel and some of the guests were starting to gather in the lobby of the boutique hotel. Since the gallery was actually part of the hotel, the three girls stepped over to see if anyone had any information they could share. Almost as soon as they stepped into the lobby, one of the hotel guests grabbed her head, sank to the floor, moaning and regurgitating. The lobby that only seconds ago was buzzing with conversation, suddenly quieted as everyone watched in stunned fascination as this poor woman literally died in front of their eyes. It all took less than three minutes for the woman to lose consciousness. She was bleeding from her nose and mouth and seemed almost to melt. A couple of minutes later she stopped moving completely. During all this time, the people standing in the small lobby barely breathed. Finally, one of the women who had been standing on the stairway started to cry. Then another and another joined in her terrified crying. Lori watched as the crowd stood there in a daze until, a minute or so later, a man sort of croaked out, “My head!” just before he simultaneously clutched his head and sank to his knees. Like the woman before him, he vomited copious amounts of blood, while moaning and rocking back and forth until he collapsed on the floor. Before he could die, another man started the same process of grabbing his head, sinking to his knees in a pool of bloody vomit, and then collapsing in a moaning heap on the floor. Lori and her colleagues looked at each other and promptly exited the lobby to return to their own business space. They each, almost by telepathic agreement, hastily made their way to the employees’ kitchen area where there was a small table and a couch. Completely unnerved, they sat on the couch together for a few minutes until Lori decided to check on what was happening next door in the lobby. Maybe she could help. She couldn’t imagine dying herself, so she stepped into the now nearly dead zone of the lobby. There were a few people still milling about and a few people dead and dying on the floor. Other than the front desk clerk trying to help the sick, no one was doing anything.
Seeing the scene in the lobby, Lori stepped back into the art gallery kitchen to get her co-workers to come help. Even as she approached the kitchen area, though, she could hear one of her friends was going through the first stages of whatever this horrible sickness was. By the time she arrived, she saw her two friends were both heaving blood and vomit as they collapsed together on the floor.
Realizing that any minute she too would be dying, Lori thought she wanted her last act to be one of kindness so she placed two damp cloths on her friend’s foreheads and gently tried to clean their faces and smooth their hair. Her once beautiful friends had both sunk into what appeared to be deep sleep but was in reality, their final moments of life.
Stunned, Lori knelt and wept at their sides. She must have blacked out because, later, when she awkwardly stood up from her crouched-over position her back complained painfully as she straightened up from her prolonged slumping position. She felt old and fragile as she made her way across the galley to the lobby yet again. This time, there was no movement in the lobby, and she realized, after a quick glance at the grandfather clock against at the end of the front desk that it was hours later. Looking around, she noticed that the front desk clerk, a woman twice her age, was lying face down across the back of a man. She wondered if Bernitia had been attempting to help him when she was struck down herself. Realizing she could be joining them in death soon, Lori went back to the gallery where she found a window seat and curled up to wait for what must surely happen to her as well.
The next thing she knew, she was waking with the sun streaming into her eyes. She momentarily wondered where she was. Then, she recognized her surroundings and for just a brief moment she was puzzled as to why she was waking up at the store. Then, it all came rushing back to her. She hurried back to the kitchenette to see her friends on the floor where she had left them. Next she ran across the art store to check on the hotel lobby next door. The entire room was littered with disheveled bodies grotesquely lying in pools of blood and vomit and waste. She hesitated only a moment before stepping carefully across the lobby to look out the front door on the street. There was nothing moving up and down Biltmore Avenue. The cars were stuck in gridlock, many with their doors open, some with bodies in them. Up and down the street she saw bodies scattered on the sidewalk. She wandered up the hill to where she heard music. As she got closer, she realized it was coming from the open door of the gay bar she passed every day on her way to work. She knew one of the bar tenders, a cute guy who always flirted with her when she poked her head in to visit. He was nowhere in sight, but there were a couple of patrons collapsed on the floor. It couldn’t have been busy when the warning had come the afternoon before. Even so, it was quiet now except for the music track playing at the back of the bar area. She called out to see if anyone was there, but no one answered. Feeling very ill at ease, she walked just a few feet further up the street before deciding she should check back at the hotel to see if any guests were still alive. She didn’t have any appetite but recognized that she was getting hungry. She headed back to more familiar territory and finally realized she should go home, but her car was completely blocked into the employee parking area in the parking structure at the end of the block. At last, she decided her first plan, to go back to the hotel, was best. There was food and shelter and she would wait until help came. Surely, help would be arriving soon. As she walked back, she could see no one alive.
&n
bsp; Entering the lobby again, she thought of going to the front desk and calling all the rooms, but since she didn’t know the code for doing that, she resigned herself to just knocking on the doors of all the rooms on all four floors. There were only twenty-four regular rooms plus the honeymoon suites on the top floor. She didn’t know how many of them were occupied and how many of them had occupants at the time of the emergency announcement.
She had counted four dead bodies plus Bernitia in the lobby. She guessed most of the guests would have been out and about and that few of them would have been able to make it back before they died so she reasoned there might only be a handful of people in their rooms. As she climbed up the stairs, Lori remembered her family once again. Everything had happened so fast and she must have gone into some sort of walking shock because she hadn’t remembered she could call them on her cell phone. She’d tried just after the emergency announcement, but the lines were busy and then events sort of overwhelmed her.
Lori lived just outside of downtown with her mom and dad. She was working at the art gallery just paying off a few left over student debts from her time at the university in Asheville before she got married that fall to her college sweetheart. He was finishing his degree in business administration in a few months and they planned to stay there in Asheville; she would teach art at the high school starting in August, and he would work as a bookkeeper accountant while he studied to pass the CPA tests. This time when she used her cell phone, no matter who she called, the phone worked, but no one answered.
