The Emerald Virus

by Patrick Shea

  Heather was reeling from the smell in the room. She moved behind the wheel chair and pushed the chair and the lady into the lobby. Jack closed the door to the room.

  Heather knelt down in front of the lady and said, “Do you have a name?”

  “I’m Ruth” came the reply in a very hushed tone.

  “What a nice name. Ruth, we need to clean you up a little bit and get you something to eat. Is there a shower room here somewhere?”

  Ruth nodded but didn’t say anything. Jack looked at a map of the recreation area which was posted on the wall, and figured out where the showers were. He said, “Heather, down the hall on the right, the third door on the left will take you to a locker room with a set of showers. Please roll her there and we’ll shower her as she sits in the chair. She has to be cleaned up but I think she is way too weak for anything else.

  “Get her as clean as you can, I’m going to find something she can wear, maybe a bathrobe or something around here. When I join you we’ll take her clothes off and I’ll lift her while you clean the chair, and then I’ll ask you to clean her as I hold her under the shower. Can you do that?”

  “Of course I can.”

  During this exchange Ruth looked like she had fallen asleep. Her head had nodded forward and her chin rested on her chest.

  Heather headed for the shower room and Jack went looking for either a laundry, or a room that received laundry. He found the laundry in the back of the building. The room looked like it had been added on after the initial building had been constructed. What he found were some sheets, some thin bathrobes and plenty of towels.

  He joined Heather in the shower room. She was sitting on a bench in front of lockers and the wheelchair was next to her. She was holding Ruth’s hand and crying.

  Jack said, “Heather, what is it? Is she gone?”

  “Jack, she just died. She looked at me and smiled and reached over and squeezed my hand and she just died.” And Heather’s tears turned into sobbing. Jack tried to hold her, but it was impossible while wearing the mop gear. So he sat next to her and held her hand.

  Heather asked, “What are we going to do Jack?”

  “Sweetheart, we’re going to do exactly what we said we would do. We’re going to clean her up and then we’re going to put a clean bathrobe on her and wrap her in clean sheets. When we’ve finished making her look respectable, we’re going to find some tools and dig a grave for her.

  “I don’t think we’ll ever know how she came to be deserted like this, but all we can do now is give her the respect she deserves.

  “Let me know when you think you’re ready and we’ll start.”

  Jack had thought about simply doing it himself, but after a moment’s thought he knew Heather would what to be included.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes and Heather said, “Okay Jack, let’s prepare her.”

  It only took a matter of minutes to clean and wrap Ruth. They left the wheelchair in the shower room. Jack carried her to the lobby. He didn’t think she could have weighed seventy pounds.

  Jack found the equipment shed behind the building and brought out a pickax and some shovels. He and Heather took turns digging a shallow grave for Ruth. They laid her to rest and Jack spoke a few words over her. They filled the grave and walked silently back to the car.

  When they arrived at the RV, Jack asked Heather to take off her mop gear. They would store it in the compartments accessible only from the outside.

  When they entered the RV Jack said, “Heather, go ahead and take your shower and put on fresh clothes now. We’re going to leave our clothes here just to be safe. When you’re done I’ll do the same thing.

  “We’ll drive for a couple of hours before it gets dark. I’ll make coffee while you shower.”

  Jack took the wheel and Heather, who had said almost nothing since they had buried Ruth looked at Jack and said, “Thank you.”

  Jack smiled at her and said, “For what?”

  “While I was waiting for you to come to the shower room I was scared to death you wouldn’t want to take the time to bury her. I didn’t think you would ignore her, but after all, you and I have left a number of bodies unburied. I knew this one was different and I’m happy and relieved that you felt the same way. You didn’t even hesitate. You just always seem to know what the right thing to do is. I couldn’t have left her there, so thank you.”

  “I don’t know any more than you do about what the right thing is. Most of us know the answer to that question, it’s doing it that separates some people from others, and it’s doing it all the time, regardless of the consequences, that make a few people stand out. I don’t think I fall into that last category, but I try hard.”

  “I don’t know an awful lot about you Jack, but I can’t imagine that you take the easy was out of anything. You remind me of my father in that sense. I used to accuse him of always doing things the hard way, but he never cut corners on anything, and he never lost his patience with me.

  “As I think back, I now realize he knew that it was only the example he set that would impress me, even if I didn’t know it at the time. I learned more from him than I realized. And my mom was just like him. She knew him so well that she always surprised him by being a step ahead of him, but it was just because she always knew he would do the right thing. I wish I had realized more of that while they were alive.”

  Jack looked at her again and said, “You don’t need me to say this, but I’ll tell you anyway. You are doing everything you can to honor your mom and dad. You’ve learned well from them, and wherever they are, they know that. All you can do now is remember who taught you and what they taught you. You have the foundation necessary to lead a good life. That’s all parents can really give a child. Everything else is just things.

  Chapter Thirty Six: Go West Young Man

  Sunday: The Tennessee River Valley

  Charlotte and Jane attended worship services together and then met for a late breakfast at Charlotte’s RV. Christmas had come and gone without much ado. Some of the men had gathered smokers from neighboring towns and had brought back a truckload of frozen turkeys and chickens.

  The men had gone to a lot of trouble to fire up so many smokers and then cook over a hundred birds. But even with that, Christmas had been a very quiet affair for almost everyone. Friends and neighbors cooked and ate together, and a couple of the young people drank too much, but that was it.

  Charlotte and Jane had been talking about how it must have been much the same for ships captain Christopher Jones and the 102 pilgrims when they landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, after a long and arduous journey from Southampton, England. This journey was made worse by the fact that their second ship, ‘Speedwell’ was deemed unworthy of sea travel and the passengers from both ships made the journey aboard the Mayflower.

  The Pilgrims celebrated Christmas in thanks of surviving the journey and in hopes of surviving a home in a new and wild continent. Only half of them would live to see the first spring.

  Charlotte and Jane knew their own circumstances were immeasurably better than the pilgrims faced, but they weren’t sure the mental state of their group was noticeably better. Half of their group felt terrible guilt over surviving, and many of the group felt despair at the thought of trying to build a new world. It seemed to many that their only goal in life was to stay alive.

  Jane continued their conversation by saying, “I think Maslow probably got it right for the circumstances of 1943, but he obviously didn’t think in terms of a world in which material goods was not an issue, and in which no families existed. I’m not sure his ‘hierarchy of needs’ would look the same today.”

  “You might be right, but I’m not entirely convinced yet. I’ve spent some time trying to figure out what might motivate a group like ours. If Maslow was correct, at least in the beginning, the bottom tier has been accounted for. We are secure in terms of physiology.

  But if you go up one tier, security of family and health become an issue. We have no trad
itional families, and we have almost nothing in terms of medical care; two doctors and a handful of other health professionals. They couldn’t cope with an outbreak of any disease.

  “And, when we go to the next higher tier we’re confronted with family again.”

  Jane interrupted, “Maybe you’re right, and maybe we can still rely on Maslow. We would have to redefine family in order to deal with that, at least until new family units begin to form, but we would need the cooperation of the group to do that.”

  “Yes we would. But I think it’s possible. And if we can do that then we have only Maslow’s two highest tiers to confront, and this is where maybe we need to look at this differently than did Maslow.

  “Many of our folks have attained these levels already, and they did not necessarily lose them when the world changed.”

  “I agree, self esteem, confidence, and respect are still viable. And much of the higher tier has also been achieved, morality, creativity, problem solving, acceptance of facts or reality, and lack of prejudice are all apparent within the group. Not with everyone, but with enough.”

  Jane continued, “So if we’re right the most important thing we can do is redefine family, at least temporarily. How do you think we can go about doing that?”

  Charlotte thought for a couple of minutes and said, “Let’s start by looking at the demographics of our group. If we are to create families maybe we need to model our attempts after something like the Scottish Clans. In the old days these were self governing groups of families that were loosely bound together all of the time, and tightly bound together during times of crisis. And of course each of them had a clan leader who held a great deal of power.”

  “Okay, let’s use our laptops and look at the list of our people showing what we know based on the original registration.”

  After they looked at the list they started sorting by gender, age, and destination, which was the only common data they had. There were no particular surprises, about half were men and ages were spread pretty much evenly with a slight edge going to the older group. They realized this was probably a result of the natural immunity to the virus. Each generation had fewer people immune to the disease.

  After looking at the data Charlotte said, “We really need more information. I’d like to know of our group, who wants a leadership role, who has real strength of character, who is needy and who likes to meet needs. What are you looking for?”

  “I think I’d like to know who joins groups and who refuses to join, who the less than social folks are and who the natural teachers are.”

  “Good. Now that we’ve dreamed up these things how in the world do we find the answers?”

  “One way is to ask everyone. We have a small group of IT people here who could help us with a survey. We would then ask everyone to fill it out. The explanation would be simple, we tell the truth. We’re looking for a way to break our large group into smaller components, and we think that will help all of us. We can tell them we’re looking at the clan system as a model.”

  “Right, we can ask them who they think they’d like to be affiliated with so we keep new friends together. If we’re going to model after the clans let’s list Scottish clan names on the survey and ask them what their preference for a name would be. I think all we would need to do is to let them know that once they are with their new group they can name it anything they want.”

  The two of them called in the tech group and worked through the afternoon on the survey. At the evening meeting they let the group know what they were planning and asked if anyone thought they were totally off key. A couple of folks raised reservations about the kind of information they were going to collect and the two ladies worked with them.

  One thing they said they would not use or collect was any information about race or religion. This was a new world and they were not going to make decisions using those items. They explained the conclusion the Yellowstone Park group had come to, and asked the group if anyone had any issues with the decision.

  They had a lively discussion about religion, but no one seemed to care about not using race as a factor. About half the group wanted to be in a group of religious peers and the other half thought as long as they could still worship with whom they chose it didn’t matter.

  The group as a whole decided that they would break the groups into clans based on an equal spread of age and gender, they would keep friends together, they would ignore race, and they would use religion as a tie breaker.

  They would look not only at who wanted to be a leader, but who had leadership experience. Everyone would have three lines of the survey to show this experience. The tech group would help read and sort the completed surveys.

  They also decided that they should split some subsets evenly amongst the clans, such as medical staff and the veterans. These were specialized skills that could prove to be an overwhelming advantage to one clan if they were put together.

  Lastly they decided that after they had split into clans they would allow people to make changes for the first two weeks. Anyone could trade with anyone else; the only qualifier was they had to find someone willing to trade.

  Charlotte and Jane worked non-stop with the tech people to prepare the survey in time for the Monday evening meeting. A couple of people had stepped forward after last night’s meeting and volunteered to help. One had actually been a statistician who thought she could help the tech people insure the survey questions would not contain biases. One had been a professor at a small college who specialized in anthropology and thought he could help.

  By Monday evening they had the surveys ready and enough printed for everyone in the group. They had decided that anyone fourteen or older would fill out a survey. They used the registration information to make sure everyone was accounted for. Only three people were missing and no one had seen or heard of any of the three for days.

  The group seemed excited about the prospect of breaking into smaller groups. The thought that they would govern themselves seemed to be the motivation behind the excitement. Charlotte explained that they would still live under the groups rules, but those rules would be kept to a minimum and the clans would make decisions on day to day issues.

  Charlotte had done research into the clan system over the past couple of days and she found one tradition she really liked.

  After they had completed the surveys Charlotte told them that in three weeks they would have a torchlight ceremony and a calling of the clans in the traditional style. They should plan on this happening on Jan 17th. Between now and then she would let the clans know what would be required of them. Based on how well this went they would plan on a festival of clans on a weekend in April. They would call the clans on 16 April, a Friday, to start the festival, and they would then celebrate for two days.

  Now it was a matter of determining the makeup of the clans and the leadership, although each clan would have to decide within themselves who the leader and lieutenants would be.

  Charlotte and Jane would also propose to the group the responsibilities of the clans, such as schooling for the young, procuring fuel for the RVs, what to do for food this coming summer, and similar issues.

  Monday: Near Phoenix, Arizona.

  Andy had enough and was packing up. He had decided this morning that he simply didn’t need to put up with Ken House any longer. He had been again humiliated by Ken at the group meeting last evening and had come to the conclusion that Ken didn’t really care if he stayed. In fact he thought Ken was trying to force him out. That would allow Ken to blame any problems on Andy, and would allow him to find someone more suitable as a deputy.

  Andy had been kicking himself in the rear for being so naïve for so long, but he felt better that he had decided to rectify the problem.

  He finished putting everything in place and making sure all the doors and cupboards were closed and latched. He made a pot of coffee and poured it in a thermos bottle, which sat on the console next to him. He made some sandwiches for the drive and drove south to I
-10 and headed west.

  As soon as he was on the interstate he called Charlotte to let her know what he had decided, and where he was going.

  She answered on the first ring and said, “Hi Andy, I’ll bet you’ve called to let me know you’ve solved your problem with Ken House.”

  He laughed and said, “Yes I am, how did you know?”

  “I’ve known too many people like Ken House in my life, and I knew if you were anything like your brother George you would solve the problem rather than letting it fester. Let me guess, you’re on the road now?”

  Laughing again Andy said, “Yes I am maestro, I’m heading for central California to join Padraig’s group. He split from the others in the Imperial Valley last week and I think he can use my help. I know I can use his.”

  “I’m sure he can, and I think you’ll do great things for him. I’m not at all worried about you and I know we’ll stay in touch, even though you won’t have so many problems in the future.”

  In the driver’s side mirror Andy noticed an RV flashing its headlights at him. He told Charlotte about the RV and told her he’d call her back after he found out what the person wanted.

  He stopped in the right lane and un-holstered his handgun while the RV pulled up next to him.

  The driver was a young woman with brown hair and a medium build who smiled at him and said, “Hi Andy, my name is Suzanne. We haven’t exactly met although I’ve seen you at the meetings .A small group of us decided after last night’s meeting that we didn’t want to stay in a group led by Ken House.

  “Some of us were walking to your RV to talk to you about options when we saw you leave. I told the group I’d chase you down and see if you would talk to me. We were worried that you had decided to leave us and we wouldn’t have another chance to talk to you.