The Alpha Chronicles (10 page)

Stroll
ing to the waiting car, Cameron couldn’t help but reflect on how he, his company, and the sleepy settlement of Midland Station had deteriorated to the point where children reacted to an offer of canned meat like he was passing out bags of gourmet chocolate truffles.

As he
ambled to the idling SUV, he was joined by the two security men, the bodyguards abandoning their positions at the school’s entrance.

“Everything okay, sir?” asked Lou.

“Yeah… It’s just as I suspected – the natives are getting restless.”

Lou misread the comment. Wrinkling his brow, the muscular man responded, “I think it’s a good idea if you keep Barry and me with you from now on, sir.”

Dismissing his employee’s concern, Cameron said, “Oh, it wasn’t that, Lou. None of the little kids threatened to kick my ass or anything. It was one of the questions they asked that concerns me. I was compared unfavorably to a dictator.”

Grunting, Lou
relaxed, happy his boss hadn’t been in immediate danger.

“Still, sir. I would feel better if you allowed at least one of us to remain…”

Cameron stopped walking, the reaction interrupting his man. “Lou, I know you only mean the best, but I can’t stroll into an elementary school surrounded by armed security. Those kids going home and telling their parents about that would only make the situation worse.”

A curt nod was Lou’s only response. He knew better than to debate with Mr. Lewis.

The trio entered the SUV and were soon leaving the school’s sparsely populated parking lot. As the driver rounded the building, Cameron spied a line of school busses waiting for the children to board.
At least we’ve got gasoline and diesel,
he thought.
Too bad you can’t eat it.

As the SUV sped through the mostly abandoned streets of Midland Station, Cam’s thoughts centered on food. The population of Midland and Odyssey combined was well over 100,000 before the downfall. When the electricity had first cut out, no one had really been overly concerned. Summer thunderstorms and the
occasional grid failure had caused similar outages before. The terrorist attacks, radical steps by the federal and state governments, and the riots erupting along the eastern seaboard were all thousands of miles away, and while concerning, didn’t impact daily life in the region.

Two days after the power failure, the mood was almost festive. Neighbors were feverishly barbecuing the assorted thawed meats from their freezers and loosely organizing block parties to share the over-abundance of prepared food. After five days without lights and air conditioning, serious concern began to set in, and folks started hording what little was available. When word began to spread that the electric company’s Houston headquarters had burned due to an out-of-control fire in the city, general panic erupted.

The city’s police force had already been decimated by staff reductions, and the fire department hadn’t fared much better. After seven days of indiscriminate civil unrest, the entire city government collapsed. Some police officers died bravely in the line of duty, while others melted into the general population. Lawmen had families – and those loved ones had to eat, too.

The news that Austin was in worse shape than Houston and Dallas didn’t help. When word spread that the governor and most of the state’s elected officials had been killed in the violence, full-scale looting broke out in Midland Station. But it wasn’t until the mayor was bludgeoned to death while sneaking out of town with his family, that a complete vacuum of leadership destroyed what little order remained. Lewis Brothers Oil mobilized its employees and security teams to protect its assets.

Cameron’s view out of the SUV’s backseat bore witness to the violence that ravaged his hometown. Entire blocks of commercial buildings had burned to the foundation, most as a result of arson. The president of LBO remembered those times as if they were yesterday - the panicked managers, the employees showing up at the well-guarded entrance to his home begging for help, the general daily chaos.

Eventually, the civil rage burned itself out. Those with pent up frustrations either starved, died, or quit due to exhaustion.
Each night, fewer fires burned on the horizon, the echoes of gunshots and screaming victims eventually becoming the exception and not the rule. Cameron remembered thinking the worst was behind them.

He began mobilizing LBO’s resources, organizing his people
, and making plans to salvage what was left. That’s when the ugly, inhumane beast of starvation reared its monstrous head.

As he and his security team navigated toward the company’s downtown offices, they passed one of the
mass grave sites. The once well-manicured, uniformly level lawn of the neighborhood park was now deformed by a raised mound of earth nine feet wide and two city blocks long. Grass and other ground cover had healed the scar somewhat, but it was dreadfully clear to everyone that the location was the final resting place of hundreds of their neighbors and family members. People were dying in such numbers there simply wasn’t any other way to dispose of the bodies.

The death toll mounted in the hospitals and nursing homes. Gallant, dedicated caregivers tried desperately to save as many as possible, but the combination of overwhelming casualties from the
violence, a shortage of medicines, and the lack of food deliveries resulted in the disintegration of the healthcare system. Nurses and doctors struggled to reach their hospitals because the roads were thick with rioters, fires, and vandalism. Those that did manage to report faced untenable numbers of wounded, feeble, and dying. Soon the generators ran out of fuel, the cafeterias served their last morsels, and pharmacy shelves were barren. The only thing that wasn’t in short supply was bodies.

The next wave of casualties consumed the nation’s elderly. Many couldn’t fill critical prescriptions and few had
more than a couple of days’ worth of food. Family members helped the lucky ones, but their children and grandchildren soon suffered from bare pantries as well.

If hunger were
a monster, disease was the titan of death. Within 90 days, the combination of unburied bodies, malnutrition, raw sewage, untreated water, mountains of garbage, and a lack of medical care resulted in a horrendous toll. Every germ and virus began to thrive in the petri dish that was Midland Station. Within 120 days, the city of 100,000 became a semi-ghost town of less than 20,000 stick thin, wandering zombies who mostly roamed aimlessly about, randomly looking for something… anything to eat.

Food
, thought Cameron as they approached the sequestered downtown region and LBO’s headquarters.
It always will be about food.

“Are you okay, sir?” The concern in Lou’s voice indicating he had detected his boss’ mood.

“I was just thinking about Isaac Newton, Lou. He was a smarter man than most give him credit for.”

“I know who Newton was, sir, but I don’t follow.”

“Newton’s third law,
Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem -
To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction. I think that law was in full effect for Midland Station. We sit on one the world’s largest oceans of oil, yet our town is in a fruitless sea of isolation. Oil is our action; lack of agriculture is the opposite reaction.”

Cameron glanced at Lou, the expression on the muscular man’s face indicating he couldn’t connect the dots. Smiling, the executive added, “We’re oil rich and food poor. We’re paying for the abundance of one necessity with the shortage of another.”

Lou paused for a moment and then surprised his boss. “I’m sure there are places that have food and would trade it for gasoline. We need to barter more.”

“Lou! Very good. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do. The problem is finding enough food.”

The only thing going Midland Station’s way was the refinery.
Refinery is actually too strong a word,
thought Cameron.
It’s more like a large-scale test lab that can refine oil in small amounts.

Gasoline had disappeared in 10 days. The hospitals, running purely on generators, had consumed most of the town’s diesel supply in about the same period. One of Cameron’s first actions had been to secure and then restart the lab’s refining process.

Originally built to provide a service for LBO’s customers, the lab could grade, classify, and certify small samples of oil and natural gas produced by the local wells. A mini-refinery, compared to the commercial facilities scattered along the gulf coast, at full capacity the lab could refine 150 barrels per day. This was a miniscule amount compared to the 50,000-100,000 barrels per day common in Texas and Louisiana, but those facilities required extreme amounts of electricity to produce product. Cameron could run his lab off portable generators.

LBO’s engineers had worked round the clock to double
that output. The effort resulting is a surplus of gasoline and diesel fuel.
But you can’t eat MOGAS
, thought Cameron.

The founding fathers of Midland Station probably didn’t realize they were establishing a town right in the middle of a climate zone that enabled very little food production. While cattle ranching was a vast industry, the modern day business of livestock depended on dietary supplements and food sources beyond what grew naturally on the land. Transportation was a necessity as well. Without fertilizer, pesticides, diesel, and grain shipments, agricultural production within reach of the city all but ceased.
Lack of electrical power for irrigation sounded the final death knoll.

Some local farmers and ranchers ventured into town, offering to barter food for fuel and other available resources, but the supply didn’t nearly satisfy the demand. The 20,000 surviving residents required a minimum of 60,000 pounds of food per day. Before the collapse, the average American consumed 5.5 pounds per day, but that was a time of luxury and waste. Twenty tons of food per day, seven days a week, 365 days a year was a monumental problem for the community.

After the worst of the rioting and outbreaks of disease, a vacuum of leadership drew down the resources of the entire community. Some neighborhoods banded together, armed men patrolling the streets to thwart looters and cagey strangers. Other small organizations, such as churches, synagogues and the VFW tried to fill the void, but the scale of the problem was beyond their reach.

Lewis Brothers Oil was a natural candidate to fill the void. The huge corporation had a command and control infrastructure in place, with Cameron at the top. LBO employees fared better than other
citizens; LBO’s facilities were well protected during the riots and had survived relatively unscathed. To a desperate, downtrodden population, the company became their only hope.

Cameron didn’t want to run the local government. He had no wish to manage the entire town. But that’s what happened in Midland Station. LBO organized food availability, generators for electrical power, medical care, and logistics for the community. The company’s earthmoving equipment dug the mass graves while LBO managers rallied the neighborhood to bury the dead in order to halt the further spread of disease. LBO generators powered the pumps that refilled the water towers so residents could drink and bathe
.

After the complete deterioration of the American economy, Midland Station gradually evolved into
exactly what the young boy at the school had called it - a company town. Like the small settlements in the West Virginia coal belt, every resident worked, ate, drank, and motored at the pleasure of the company. People shopped at the company store, were treated by company doctors, and used currency that was printed on company machines.

At first, the citizens embraced the effort. Anything was better than what the community had just endured, and the spirit of cooperation was high. However, that all changed when things didn’t improve.

The grind of the daily routine deteriorated the community’s spirit. There was no belief in a more promising future. Hope gradually evaporated, replaced with frustration and apathy.

The inevitable abuses of power only served to exacerbate the situation. It was difficult enough for elected officials to remain within the guidelines of civil service. Those holding authority in Midland Station now were LBO managers who didn’t have to defeat an opponent in the next election. The police, actually private LBO security personnel, no longer worried about watchdog groups or internal affairs investigators reporting directly to the mayor. The checks and balances in place prior to the economic collapse no longer existed, and the morale of the populace suffered for it.

Justice was harsh and often metered by company men, not elected professionals schooled in the ways and means of the law. Key LBO employees lived better lives, ate better food, and received better work assignments than their non-company neighbors.

Cameron James Lewis knew and understood all of this. It was why he had begun the public relations campaigns like this morning’s visit to the school. In his mind, there wasn’t any other solution. He and his staff had debated, analyzed and proposed numerous different cures, but all led to even more horrendous and complicated situations – at least in Cameron’s mind.

One recent suggestion included holding elections to install a new city government. That idea, floated during a management meeting, engendered a withering outburst from Cameron. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to forfeit company assets to some dipshit new mayor. Let’s say we did have elections and some clown won. What’s he going to do? Where’s he going to get food? A city government would seize everything my family has worked almost 100 years to build. LBO is the only thing that’s working and keeping the community alive. There is no way to predict what would happen if someone outside the company seized control.”