Survivors (26 page)

There were six of us, and with their leadership team of eight, we filled the conference room.
After settling in, I began the conversation. “Let me
first give you a little history of our community, and
then we’d certainly like to hear about what you’ve
been doing.”

Between the six of us, we spent the better
part of two hours telling the Corcoran people all
about how our community started. Major Connors
did the same for the MacDill airbase.

When we talked about our run in with the
thugs from Tampa, Floyd interrupted. “We’ve got
the same problem here. We’ve had to arm everyone
to protect the community.”

The history of the Corcoran survivors was
similar to ours. Corcoran was in the center of a
massive agricultural area specializing in growing
fresh fruits and vegetables. The people living within
the cities of California soon realized surviving
meant they needed to move into rural areas. Their
community had now grown to almost 1200, and
had been drawing survivors from as far away as
Los Angles.

Luis Lopez said, “I was a technician at the
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. It was shut
down of course just after the Federal Government
stopped functioning. We’ve got some electrical engineers here, and with their help, we were able to
restart the reactor and generate electricity. The
plant’s located about fifty miles west of here along
the coast. We keep a team of ten there 24/7 to
monitor things.”

Bill then described the work we had done
using solar arrays. The Corcoran people were impressed. One of them asked, “If you go solar, aren’t
you going to need millions of photovoltaic cells?
Where are you going to get them?”

“I pulled out the sample of pure quartz Greg
had given me. “We’ve been able to duplicate the
efficiencies of the solar companies with our own
manufacturing process. We have a great chemist
who figured out how to make pure quartz glass.
Now he assures us the rest is pretty easy. We’ll be
setting up mass production in a few weeks.”
I handed Floyd a copy of our latest spreadsheet listing all of our skills. He scanned the document with a certain degree of envy. “We need to
do something like this,” he said, “I can see the value.”

He passed the sheet around to his colleagues, each of whom spent a considerable
amount of time scanning the skills list.

I finally got to the point of our trip. “Floyd,
the reason we’re here is groups like ours have to
figure out a way to put the country back together
again. We’ve been preoccupied with just surviving.
Jessie, why don’t you brief them on your assessment of what’s happening.”

Jessie began lecturing to a group of middleaged men who clearly viewed this young woman
with a high degree of skepticism. That was all
about to change.

Jessie had their attention. “The CDC estimated perhaps one in a thousand people would
survive. If their estimates were correct, then a little
over 300,000 people are alive. There’re distributed
randomly across the nation; old and young, rich
and poor, no favorites based on race or anything
else.

“The vast majorities were obviously located
in the cities, but just like with both of our communities, the survivors in the city knew they couldn’t
stay there. They could certainly scavenge for food,
but there was no fresh water or working sanitary
sewers. They all knew they would have to move to
rural areas.

“I believe there are two groups of survivors;
most are people like us who know they have to
work together. But there’re other groups, people
who want to take from others and rape and pillage.
There’s a group in Georgia who are like this, and
you indicated you face a similar problem here.

“If we’re going to put this country back together, we’re going to have to accomplish two major tasks. The first is to locate the surviving technocrats and get them to work together to reestablish our infrastructure, not just for our two communities, but for the whole country.

“The second task is perhaps the more difficult. We need to rid ourselves of these thugs who
are destructive. In other words, we need to restore
law and order to our country.

“To make these two things happen, we’re
going to have to establish contact with all the
communities like ours and yours and get them to
work together. Major Connors’ people have identified another community near Boston with electricity, and we’re going to visit them next. Together,
we’ve got to figure out how to rebuild the country.”

The Corcoran people were thinking about
Jessie’s analysis of what our new world was all
about, and what we needed to do to make the
country whole again. I added to Jessie’s thoughts,
“I think the first step is to figure out how our two
groups can work together. Then we can add the
group in Boston and other groups we can identify.
This process is going to take years, but it can start
with our two communities.”

Floyd asked, “How will we be able to communicate with each other? The phone system is
down.”

Arnie opened a cardboard carton he had
been carrying and said, “We come bearing gifts.”
He handed out eight satellite phones and explained
how the phones operated independently of the land
based system.

Ami then added, “Blaine and I have been
talking about another way to work together. He
and I can train a number of people how to fly. We
can confiscate any aircraft we want. Today we flew
a 737 to a military base in Arizona and took one of
their refueling tankers. We did that because we
didn’t know if we could get any jet fuel at Meadows
Field. Give us six months and between the two of
us we can train a dozen pilots. We can make weekly runs between our two communities.”

A guy named Harvey Black said, “I was
looking at your skills list. We need mechanical engineers here to work on our desalination plant. It’s
always breaking down. We have two doctors here.
Maybe one of them would be willing to move to
Florida.”

I brought up another subject. “I forgot to
mention; because we’re at a university campus,
we’ve set up a school system, and we’re committed
to train our young people in the applied sciences.
How are you teaching your children?”

Floyd answered, “Nothing formal yet. We’ve
got about ninety kids who are living here without
their parents. They all have foster families, but
they’ve mostly been helping out at the local farms
growing food.

We stopped for the day. Floyd’s people had
found us a place to stay, two ranch houses on the
edge of town, but Floyd wanted to first introduce
us to the community at the town hall meeting. He
asked one of his people to ring a large bell to call
the residents together, and within twenty minutes
several hundred people were assembled outside
city hall sitting in a square on the grass.

Floyd spoke to the group and explained
what we had been discussing. He talked about the
need for cooperation between the two communities,
and much to my surprise reiterated many of the
elements of the speech Jessie had given earlier in
the afternoon. He explained the need to exchange
skills so both communities could solve our common problems. Finally, he talked about training
people to fly so regular trips could be made between the two communities.

After the community meeting, we were
brought to the two houses where we would spend
the night. Floyd asked our group to join his team
for dinner, and we were driven to his house after
we had a chance to freshen up. We were served
some fine California wines with roasted chicken
and fresh vegetables.

There were several toasts and then as we
were drinking coffee after dinner, Floyd asked,
“Major, what are we going to do about these
thugs?”

Arnie asked, “Tell me about where they’re
located. How many of them do you think there are?
What are their actions?”

Floyd explained there were about onehundred of them, mostly men but some women.
“They’re mostly holed up in Fresno, but they send
out raiding parties a couple times each month.
They abduct our women and steal our food.
They’ve killed a couple dozen of our men. They’re
always high on drugs. We tried to talk to them
once, but they killed the people we sent. Almost
half of our men spend their time guarding the
fields now.”

“Floyd, I’m going to send Lieutenant Monroe
here with a few of his men. I’m going to have him
solve your problem. Do you have enough weapons
here?”

Floyd answered, “We’ve got a lot of hunting
rifles we took from a few gun stores and enough
ammunition, but nothing more.”

“Okay, I’ll have Lieutenant Monroe bring
some heavier weapons with him. We’ll provide
some training and help you get rid of these guys.”

On that somber note we ended our evening
discussions and were driven back to our homes.
Ami, Jessie and I stayed in one house and Blaine,
Bill, and Arnie spent the night in the other. Each
was a three bedroom home, and we split up for the
night.

About an hour after we said goodnight, my
bedroom door squeaked open and Jessie appeared.
I lifted my covers and let her in. It was the first
time we were really alone since the day in the
woods. At first we just looked at each other in the
darkened room. I guess we were both thinking
about the implications. The first time might have
been a mistake, but a second time delivered a
strong message. Jessie ended the stalemate. “During the wedding ceremony, I kept on thinking
about us. Our people were so happy. We’ve made a
mistake not understanding the importance of celebrating the joys in life. We can’t let that ever happen again.”

Jessie never answered me; she just
wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me
on the lips. I had little doubt where the night was
heading, and I offered zero resistance.

Somewhere around dawn, Jessie left my
bed and snuck back into her bedroom. We were
adults; why should we worry about what others
might think? Then of course I realized we most definitely needed to worry about what others might
think. We’d just have to wait and see how things
played out before Jessie and I made it official.

The morning discussions were highly technical, but we finally agreed on a few important priorities. First, we needed to rid the countryside of
the people creating terror in our land.

Second, to put the country back together,
we needed to bring infrastructure to all of the isolated communities scattered around the country.
Major Connor’s group at MacDill would continue to
identify clusters of survivors using their spy satellite, and we would set up a technical working
group to make recommendations.

Third, as Jessie pointed out at the meeting,
both communities had a need for flour, and therefore a trip to the heartlands to trade infrastructure
for wheat and corn was important for both of our
communities.

And finally, our group would make contact
with the Boston area survivors and take steps for
them to join our expanding alliance.

Floyd had put together a list of ten residents who wanted to learn to fly, and Blaine and
Ami promised they would return next week to set
up a training program out of Meadows Field.
Blaine had already identified a number of single
engine aircraft and a few private aviation jets perfect for working students up to the larger multiengine commercial jets.

Corcoran’s two doctors did not want to
leave the area, but agreed to help train Mary and
our medical team, and with Major Connors’ satellite phone system, they could stay in touch. It
would have to do for a while at least.

All in all, it was a successful trip. We left
with a plan to put the country back together, and
we had established communications with another
group. It would be interesting to find out what we
discovered on our trip to Boston.

With the refueling tanker still almost fully
loaded with fuel, we flew non-stop back to the
MacDill airbase, and then Blaine flew us back to
the campus. Mary had been waiting for us at the
dining tent. While we had something to eat, she
explained what she had found out about Margaret.

Margaret had cancer a few years back.
She’d been taking a pill called Tamoxophil. It’s a
specialty cancer drug, and she ran out of the pills
one month into the pandemic. Now the cancer’s
starting to come back.”

“I did some research in the library. The
supplier is Paragene Industries, and they’re located
in an industrial park just south of Columbia,
South Carolina.”

“You know Margaret; she didn’t want to
create any problems. She felt she was getting old,
and it was just fate intervening.”

“Where is she now?”
“She’s in her apartment resting. I think
she’s got only a few more months to live unless she
gets the drug.”

Of course we would get the drug; we
couldn’t let our chief librarian down; she had done
so much for the community. I called Major Connors and explained the situation. Mary had given
me the address, and I asked him to have Private
Duncan use the satellite to monitor the area.

Meanwhile, we began to immediately plan
our trip to the drug manufacturer in South Carolina. Jessie and I looked at some maps. We knew
the area north to Ocala was probably clear of
threats, but the group Ralph had seen in Georgia
would be a problem. We needed to avoid them at
all costs.

We figured it was about a twelve hour drive
to Columbia. Driving at night was the safest. If we
left the campus about five o’clock in the evening,
we would arrive at the industrial park just before
dawn.