“Love and Family During the Great Death”
Chapter 13: A Few Theories,
a Few Potential Explanations
“Alright, where do we start?” David asked.
He’d been debating that very question while everyone had been getting ready for the past half hour. While it seemed a simple thing to gather in the other room for a quiet discussion, somehow it never seemed to work out that way. As a friend of theirs had said years before, when you have a large family, you have to add an extra half an hour onto anything you want to do, or anywhere you go, for every extra person, because that’s how long it’ll take to get everyone organized.
“I’ve got a lot of ideas, myself,” Ellen admitted, “but I’m not sure you want me usurping your position. So I’ll trust your judgment. You’ve got a good head on you, if you don’t know off the bat, I’m sure we’ll figure it out along the way.”
“I deserved that,” he admitted. “And I apologize for being such an … a buggerhead before,” he said, having decided to switch to a kid-friendly response.
“Please, Dad, if we’re talking about you sleeping with everyone in the house, then surely you can admit to your being an ass in front of us,” Alice replied, sticking her tongue out at him. He couldn’t help it, he laughed.
“Yeah, you’re right. All of you have had to grow up a lot in the past week. I think you can handle a little more adult language than we’ve been willing to use in the past. Yeah, I was being an ass, although I still think I had a good point about people forcing me into situations that I was uncomfortable with.”
“Agreed, on both points,” Ellen replied. “I should have been upfront about things, just as all of us should have tackled the tough underlying issue. But if it took an out and out fight to bring the issue to the fore, then I can’t really complain. As I said, I think worry about what’s happening, and the fact that none of us have directly addressed it, have been stressing each of us out. I think I was trying to address the symptoms and not the underlying condition.”
“All right, I can see that, giving it a little distance. I can also see how everyone has needed more attention, more comforting, a more welcoming and accepting attitude, and the need for some serious distractions, but can I just ask that anyone wanting such distractions and comforting come to me first, rather than going through Ellen?”
Each of the girls, except for Alice, of course, raised their hands at that. David groaned, but he was grinning as he did, so it was clear he wasn’t serious, and that neither were they.
“I still think it makes sense to go through Ellen,” Linda objected. “After all, she’s taken over the role of organizing things, and it is her position that we’re potentially threatening. However, she really needs to talk things over with you before anyone tries anything.”
“Would it help if you set up a routine, a schedule?” Caitlyn suggested. “I mean, from what I’ve read, that’s how they handled harems of old. Each night the sultan, or whomever, would sleep with someone different so no one would feel slighted.”
“I really don’t think … well…,” David hedged, considering the idea. He didn’t even jump on the fact that a girl as young as she would be suggesting such a thing. They were well past that argument. “No, I don’t think so. Ellen is my girlfriend, so she gets her rightful place sleeping with me each night. However, if she wants to decide who shares our bed, I won’t object. Just as long as I’m told ahead of time so I know what to expect, and as long as no one surprises me in the shower anymore.”
“OK, we’ll save the surprises for when we’re working outside,” Sara joked, which produced the expected giggling response.
“Let’s just save the surprises altogether. If someone is feeling the need for a hug, or something more, like Linda did when we rescued Flora, then I can understand it. But let’s not continue jumping someone against their will. And let’s follow Ellen’s model in trying to avoid hard feelings by just grabbing me whenever you want. I’ll try to be more receptive to outright teasing, and if I don’t, either you or Ellen can whack me over the head. How’s that?”
Everyone nodded they could accept that stipulation, so David continued.
“OK, now how about you girls? I know we’ve been exposing you to a lot more than you’d normally be expo—”
“Please, David,” Sara replied, unintentionally demonstrating in how she responded that the girls all felt they were equal participants here. “I think we’ve been doing this for long enough now you can skip pretending we don’t know what’s been going on.”
“OK, I stand corrected. I concede that you’ve all grown up a lot in the past week. So where does that leave us? Are you comfortable with the situation?”
“Let’s just establish what we’re discussing here,” Maggie suggested. “We’re talking about the fact that David is going to be sleeping with each of the adults here, at least the women, that is,” she corrected herself, acknowledging Bob’s presence. “What’s more, that also means that you girls, while you’re free to talk about it openly with us, are not to try to take part yourselves.”
“What about if we wanted to do something … uh, with each other?” Amy asked. However, as soon as she finished she blushed heavily, adding, “Sorry, I’m just asking. I’m not planning on anything with any of you.”
“Don’t be so quick to say that,” Caitlyn said with a smile. “You may be cutting yourself out of some interesting experiences.”
David groaned again, but took the question seriously. “Well, as long as you did it in private, like we were attempting to do, both parties are OK with it, and you didn’t impinge on anyone else, I guess it would be OK. However, that said, I’d like to qualify that by saying that if I hear of anyone trying anything with Alice, they are going to have to talk to me, either before or after.”
The girls laughed while Alice huffed, getting offended by her father’s attitude, but not from any desire of hers to fool around with anyone.
“Seriously, David, you’d want to know if someone was sleeping with your daughter?” Ellen asked.
“Well, not really. OK, if you’re going to experiment, then it’s OK to keep it secret. But if you’re going to be ‘dating’, or getting serious, then I’m going to want to discuss your ‘intentions concerning my daughter’,” he said, glancing at each of the girls.
“How about if we all agree we’re in a committed relationship with each other, even if some of us aren’t interested in the others sexually?” Erica asked, suddenly sounding like one of the more mature girls.
David lay back on the couch, not actively sighing in frustration, but trying to keep his reactions in check.
“OK, if everyone is serious, and you’re actually concerned with each other’s feelings, then I’d have to concede,” he responded.
“Can we please get the conversation back on track?” Linda asked. “I mean, it looks like you’re doing what we’ve been doing for the last week, trying to avoid talking about what’s really bothering us. If you’re really interested in these questions, it’d be better if we took this discussion off-line.”
“In that case, I don’t think any of us object to the limitations,” Caitlyn answered for the rest of the girls. “We know you have an issue with the age thing, and I think most of us aren’t quite ready to get sexually involved with anyone yet.”
“Alice, what about you?” Linda asked. “Are you really OK with everyone sleeping with your dad?”
“Hell, no,” she answered quickly. “I still think he and Ellen should be an exclusive couple, but it seems to be a largely done deal at this point. So it’s not going to do me any good belaboring the point. But just remember, if you screw this up between Ellen and my dad, and that goes for any of you, you’ll have to answer to me about it.”
“Well, we were trying to keep it under wraps,” David tried to apologize. “That is, until someone started inviting everyone else in the neighborhood into my shower.”
“Actually, she only invited me in once,” Flora responded. “The first time was strictly my own initiative.”
“OK, let’s skip over the incidentals,” Ellen suggested. “No one needs to hear the details.”
“Especially since Flora already told us them all,” Caitlyn added with a sly smile.
“OK, enough with the sex discussions. Let’s move onto the main topic,” David suggested. “What does everyone think about what’s been happening? Does everyone agree it’s worse than we’ve been letting on?”
“Definitely,” Amy said immediately. “I was wondering why no one said anything the first night we arrived, especially since it was the second night of the storm and we’d almost been killed driving here. But it quickly became clear that everyone was more involved in teasing each other than in discussing the situation. So I just went along with it.”
“Yeah, I figured it was more fun playing along rather than addressing a topic that no one wanted to talk about,” Julie replied.
“I figured if my mother was going along with it, that it was OK for the rest of us,” Sara said. “I just assumed discussing what was really happening, or mentioning how scared we were, wasn’t something we were supposed to do.”
“I guess that’s my fault,” David admitted. “I’ve always been a bit of a guy, meaning that I tend to hold everything in. I don’t cry at movies, I don’t gush over puppies, and I try not to show my emotions. I prefer to solve problems rather than stressing over things I can’t control.”
“He’s got that right,” Alice offered. “You should see him whenever a romantic comedy comes on TV.”
“Actually, she’s got a point,” Linda echoed her sentiment. “He never talks about how he’s feeling. He phrases everything as a problem. It’s never ‘I feel sorry you’re having a problem’, it’s always ‘Let’s try to work on something’.”
“You’ve got to admit, though,” Bobby replied, “he is efficient about what he does. At least this way, everyone survives long enough to work everything out afterwards.”
“Look, we’re getting distracted again,” David argued. “What’s the consensus? Is this the end of humanity, or just a little setback to the economy for the next couple of years?”
No one was willing to answer outright, glancing nervously at each other.
“Well I hope it’s not the end of humanity,” Erica announced, “‘cause I haven’t been kissed yet, and I’m not planning on missing out on that.”
“Hey, you should be able to kiss David,” Caitlyn teased. “After all, it wouldn’t require you to have sex with him, and it would get that item off your bucket list so you can put more important things in there, like getting laid.”
“Hey, enough of that,” David said, trying to keep the teasing from getting personal. “Let’s just leave it that Erica’s not in favor of the end of the world idea. What about the rest of you?” David asked.
Again no one responded for a couple of moments.
“Well, the ‘end of the world’ is a bit drastic, but things are certainly not going to be the same after this,” Ellen said out of frustration.
“But the fact that no one said anything says the exact opposite,” David pointed out. “Clearly you’ve been thinking that very thing.”
“Look, the world didn’t physically end,” Maggie jumping in, “but the world’s been set back a good twenty or thirty years, it may take even longer than that for the world to recover, and now we’re talking about some kind of biblical plague.”
“A Biblical plague is either frogs or the death of every first born son, this doesn’t apply on either count,” David countered.
“Yeah, but we have no idea how bad this thing is, and I’m guessing from your request that we all stay inside that you don’t think it’s a simple case of the flu,” she argued.
“Hey, the ‘simple’ flu killed between 20 and 40 million in 1918 alone. A plague might not mean the apocalypse, but it doesn’t mean I want to take any chances,” David replied.
“Still, I’m not sure we’re talking about a ‘simple’ meteor shower either,” Flora said, finally speaking up for the first time. “This was devastating, and we’ll all be telling our great-great-grandchildren what happened to the world and why they’re in the situation they’re in.”
“Hey, speak for yourself. My only daughter just told me there’s a fair chance she might be a lesbian, so I may not have any great-great-grandchildren,” David laughed, but no one else seemed to think it was very funny.
“The fact of the matter, though, is that our lives will never be the same after this is over, and right now it’s not over,” Bob pointed out. “Sure, the meteors have stopped, but we seem to be the only people who haven’t been directly affected, the government hasn’t recovered, there are no organized recovery efforts, and chances are people are going to get nasty if things don’t improve before long.”
“Is that it?” David asked. “You think people are going to become animalistic and turn on each other?”
“I don’t think it’ll happen soon,” Maggie said, “but I think if things get bad and don’t improve, people will eventually take their frustrations out on each other.”
“Unless they’re all dying from the flu,” Sara suggested.
“Even so, those that are left will be exhausted, frustrated and angry about everything they’ve lost. Those aren’t a good combination.”
“So what, are you suggesting we start stockpiling guns?” Caitlyn asked.
“Maybe not, but it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared,” Maggie concluded.
“Well, I wouldn’t go off ‘half cocked’ just yet,” David tried to joke. “After all, you and I might do OK with a weapon, but the others aren’t trained, and they’d likely be more dangerous with a gun than without.”
“We could learn,” Amy suggested. “I’d love to learn how to shoot. Especially if I we could learn to hunt as well.”
“I can teach you,” Alice offered. “I haven’t shot much, but I went with Dad when he went hunting twice, so I know what’s involved.”
“David? Is that true?” Linda asked archly.
“Hey, it was hunting season and she wanted to go. I didn’t think it would hurt her, and it would at least teach her to understand the shooting culture. I never intended for her to take it up.”
“Well it sounds like she is now,” Linda countered.
“Look, let’s not get into that now,” Ellen warned them both. “You can discuss the proper way to raise young girls some other time, but let’s try to keep focused.”
“Do you really think we’ll need to learn how to shoot?” Erica asked with a mixture of fascination and dread.
“No, I don’t,” David answered. “As I said, I think we should keep the guns to those who know how to shoot them. But I may be willing to teach those inclined to learn.”
“David!” Linda cautioned him.
“Hey, it’s always a good thing to know how to handle weapons safely. If there’s any chance we’ll need to know how to use them, I’d rather they learn now then when we’re all under the gun.”
Linda harrumphed, but didn’t say any more, simply crossing her arms under her breasts.
“Please, Mom? I’d really like to learn,” Alice said.
“It sounds like you already know,” her mother countered.
“Not really. Dad showed me what’s involved and let me fire twice, but I never had enough practice to be any good, and if we’re likely to have trouble, we’ll need to be prepared.”
“Why are you even interested, for heaven’s sake?”
“Like Dad said, it’s necessary, it’s an outdoor event, I like everything else in the outdoors, and I’ll feel safer if I can defend myself,” she said, sounding suspiciously as if she’d practiced her arguments ahead of time.
“I don’t care what her arguments are,” Amy said, “I want to learn just because it’s neat.” She looked nervous after Linda scowled at her. “I’ll be careful, though, I promise.”
“David, if you…,” Linda said, although she couldn’t bring herself to finish the threat.
“Hey, we’re all treating these girls as if they’re adults,” David said. “It seems to me if we do that we should treat them like that. Girls, are you serious about learning how to shoot?”
“Hell, yeah,” Amy said. Alice merely nodded seriously.
“Hey, what about me?” Bobby asked. “I’m serious about it. By the way, could you teach me to drive as well?”
Everyone laughed, though David thought it might be fun to actually give him a chance to shoot just for the experience sometime, though he didn’t think he’d suggest that in front of Linda. She didn’t seem to like guns much.
“Well, what does everyone think about the death and destruction we’ve experienced?” Ellen asked, hoping to get off the current discussion.
“Well, we’re not exactly fond of it,” Caitlyn answered, “but I’m not sure there’s much you can do about it.”
“That wasn’t the question,” Ellen responded. “We’re trying to clear the air here, and if you have problems with it, and any unresolved issues caused by it, it’s better to get it out in the open. That way we can work through it.”
“Frankly I like Dad’s approach better,” Alice grumbled under her breath. Both Linda and Ellen glared at her, and she looked embarrassed, but she didn’t back down.
“I’m holding you responsible for this,” Linda warned her ex. But David merely held his hands up, signaling he wasn’t responsible.
“I’m just not sure what good it does to talk about how scared everyone is,” Alice told them. “When everyone was ignoring it, we were being treated like adults. As soon as we started talking about our ‘feelings’, suddenly we aren’t old enough to decide anything for ourselves.”
“Look, young lady, you aren’t that old. We may have been giving you latitude because of what you’ve been through, but…,” Linda said, leaving the sentence unfinished as she realized what she was saying.
“But as soon as things return to normal?” Alice finished for her. Her mother merely nodded, acknowledging she was well aware of the internal contradictions.
“We haven’t merely been humoring them,” David said. “We’ve been giving them more latitude because they’ve had to grow up a lot in the past two weeks. They’ve proven that they can act like adults, so we’ve been treating them like they are. As such, it’s hardly fair to pull the carpet out from under them just because you don’t like what they suggest. If they think they can do this, there’s a need for them to do it, and they can do so responsibly, then I don’t see why we should refuse their request.”
“So, is that settled then?” Amy asked.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Linda sighed. Amy and Alice high fived each other, grinning wildly.
“OK, so am I to assume that everyone is tired of talking about this now?” Ellen asked.
“I think I’ve said what I needed to say,” Maggie answered. “I’d suggest that if anyone has any issues, they discuss it in private with one of the adults.”
“If we have problems, they haven’t surfaced yet,” Julie said. “So far, our evenings with you have been enough to keep our fears at bay. I’m not saying we won’t have problems, but right now they seem to be manageable.”
“OK, if all of you can agree with that, I’m willing to let it go,” Ellen said, glancing at Linda to make sure she agreed. When she nodded her acceptance, Ellen went on. “OK, if we’re finished, it seems to me we have some breakfast to reheat. We’ve been so busy, you forgot about it. Now, what’s on the agenda for the day, since we’re not allowed to go anywhere?”
“Frankly, I was going to call a free period. I thought that maybe Alice would want to take the other girls out to explore the woods around the house, maybe familiarize them with the terrain.”
“Oh, good, maybe I’ll pal around with them. I’m anxious to learn my way around as well,” Maggie replied, winking at David.
“Good, you can tell Amy and me all about shooting,” Alice responded.
David moved slowly through the sun dappled forest in the early morning light. He scanned his surroundings, trying to identify anything out of place near him, in particular trying to detect how the other wildlife was responding. The birds were still chirping, so he took that to mean there weren’t any large animals around them at the moment. He moved a little further, noticed some movement in the distance, and quietly knelt on the ground, trying to hide himself behind a nearby bush. He waited patiently for it to approach.
He’d gotten up early that morning, trying to get underway before the sun approached the horizon. Both Alice and Amy were so excited they’d been waiting for him when he finally made it downstairs. He looked questioningly at them, but it was obvious what they wanted, and it was also clear they wouldn’t be easily dissuaded.
“You know I’ve got to do this alone. You aren’t trained in how to walk silently through the underbrush.”
“I’ll have you know—” Amy started to respond before Alice poked her in the side with her elbow. She shut up and wordlessly nodded her head, so David continued.
“As I’m sure Alice is trying to tell you, I’m not refusing to take you. I’m just telling you that you’ll have to wait by the car until I manage to take it down. You can help after that, but as I said, you’ll need more experience sneaking through the woods before you can try this on your own.”
“We’ve been practicing handling a gun with Maggie,” Amy said, hoping it would buy her some leverage.
“There’s a lot more to this than knowing how to handle a gun. Anyway, you can help me carry it back. Normally I’d do it myself, but that’s always tough, and if I can avoid it I’d prefer it. I suggest you get some gloves. I see you already have your boots and reasonable outdoor clothes, so we should be set. But if this goes well, I’ll take you with me in the future. For now I just want to ensure I can do it as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible.”
“I’ve got the gloves,” Alice assured him. “We got the camouflage from the closet. We had to pin my pants and Amy’s jacket, but I think they’ll stay in place.”
“We’ll have to see about getting you both some outfits of your own.”
After that they’d climbed into his SUV and he explained what they could expect on the drive in.
Maggie had wanted to try the woods near the house, but David had put his foot down.
“You’ll scare the animals away from the house. As long as there are plenty of other places I can access nearby, I’d prefer to shelter the animals near the property. After all, if things get bad, we’ll have to rely on them, so there’s no sense driving them away now when we don’t need to.”
She acknowledged that he had a point, so she backed down, agreeing to let him do this on his own.
David detected further movement and thought he saw something coming towards him, but he remained still and waited. Soon he heard some bushes being brushed aside and soon a decent sized deer appeared, nibbling at some leaves of a nearby bush. It seemed to be on its own, or at least if there were others they weren’t in sight. But in either case, David wasn’t going to wait for any others to appear.
He lifted his rifle, sighted on the animal. It was a doe, a smaller female. He didn’t particularly care. Males are generally preferred since they’re bigger, have more meat, carry the impressive racks, and don’t endanger the survival of any offspring. However he didn’t see any fawns around, so he wasn’t worried. If this one had any, they’d be pretty close by this time of year.
Shifting his rifle slightly, he saw he had a clear shot and squeezed the trigger as he let his breath out. He wasn’t an overly experienced hunter, since he didn’t do this that much, but he’d done it enough to know what to do. His father had taught him all he knew when he was young, and he’d hunted enough to keep up on his skills. Plus he’d learned other tricks of the trade from reading over the years.
The rifle fired, discharging its load as it disturbed the quiet of the scene, shoving the gun against his shoulder, and scaring the nearby birds, who all took off at once, flying away in a loud cacophony of calls. David remained where he was, checking to see if there was any other movement nearby. The shot appeared to be true, and he couldn’t see any movement from the deer he’d shot.
He stood up and casually approached it, checking it to make sure it was indeed dead. He didn’t like the idea of making animals suffer unnecessarily. He knew it wasn’t always possible, but it still made him feel better when he could avoid messy kills.
Moving to the doe’s hindquarters, he withdrew his knife and prepared to cut the scent glands, which often gave the meat an unfortunate taste if not removed. He figured he’d drain the animal of any remaining blood after he took care of this little detail. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but it was something he liked to take care of early. He was about to cut into the deer’s thigh when he paused. He wasn’t sure why, but something was bothering him. He slowly pulled his hand back and stopped to consider what it might be.
He considered whether anyone might have heard him, but that was unlikely given his location and the fact that others would be unlikely to be taking a stroll here at that hour, given the circumstances. It was always possible, but the previous lack of a response by the surrounding birds disproved that idea. He looked around to make sure there were no other animals nearby, but seeing none, he was still confused about why he felt so ill at ease.
Finally he shifted around, doing a quick visual scan of the animal. Seeing nothing, and still feeling uneasy, he moved around to the head. Having a suspicion, he used his gloved hands to smooth the skin along its face. It was then he saw what he’d suspected. The animal had various small open sores along its cheeks. The sores were familiar. They looked just like those he’d seen on the people heading into town. He quickly scrambled back, getting as far away as he could to avoid any potential contamination.
This meant that the sickness, whatever it was, had already crossed species, jumping from humans to deer, if not other animals as well. That was serious. It meant it was much more dangerous, more easily transmitted, and the potential for variations were increased as it adapted to different animals’ DNA. However it was also good news, in that it might provide a clue as to where it came from. If the disease they hadn’t been able to identify yet came from the nearby deer population, it would explain why they hadn’t recognized it. It could be a little seen occurrence in the wild deer population. That would be a good place to have people begin to research. What’s more, it would be easier to research than dissecting sick humans.
David stood up, stripping off his hunting gloves and tossing them onto the deer’s body, not wanting to risk transferring any contagious materials to anything else. He briefly considered what to do with the body. Ideally it would make sense to either burn or bury it, but that was problematic. Although the ground was still damp, starting a fire in somewhat dense undergrowth was just asking for trouble, and he had no tools to bury it with. If he went back to get some, he knew various animals would already start sniffing around it, potentially eating or licking it and becoming infected. No matter what he did, it would potentially infect other animals, though it had already potentially done that. No, the best thing to do was to just leave it where it was. The last thing he wanted to do was to manhandle it, given the risk it presented.
When he emerged from the woods back at the car, Alice noticed him right away and nudged Amy. They both got up and started to run to him, but he waved them off. They looked at him in confusion, but he continued on, not slowing down.
“We need to get out of here. I’ve got very unsettling news, but I need to get out of these clothes and burn them before we do anything else.”
“It’s been a few days since we’ve managed to talk,” David said as he managed to catch Bobby still awake when he got home for the evening.
“Yeah, we seem to have been missing each other. I’ve been busy trying to keep up with the news and the discussions that you managed to trigger. But I haven’t noticed you or the girls coming and going, which given the girls, is pretty surprising.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been keeping them busy. We’ve been coming home late at night, getting a quick snack and heading to bed. Each time I’ve come in to check up on you, you were asleep in your chair.”
“Ah, that explains it. You’ve got to be less worried about my sleeping and just wake me up when you come in. The many catnaps I take are a result of my screwed up circadian rhythm. Since I can’t detect sunlight, my circadian clock is way off, thus I tend to fall asleep in the middle of conversations, and I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to get back to sleep. That’s why I’m down here during the night so much.”
“OK, I’ll remember that,” David assured him.
“Good, now what have you been doing with the girls? I’d thought you were trying to keep them sequestered here?”
“That was my original plan,” David explained, “but they’re young and have too much energy. They need to be busy, and I’ve already had them do everything that needs to be done around the house. However, we were saved by Sherriff Adams. He called me the other day, telling me how the government workers we’d seen repairing the roads had given up, since the government could no longer pay them. Apparently they’d walked off without even bothering to clean the equipment, which would have destroyed much of it. I managed to run out there and, with a bit of difficulty, figured out how to take care of the equipment.
“But it came to me when the girls started to get restless, so I took them down there, we got the equipment started, and we started repairing the roads ourselves. Whereas the union workers managed to do a short segment every day, we managed to do a lot more. True, we were much less concerned with how pretty or how permanent it was. We simply assumed that filling in the open holes was better than the alternative. If they have to be repaired after things get back in order, then so be it. But the girls really took to it. Linda drove the asphalt truck, Maggie and Ellen shoveled the asphalt out, and the girls filled it in and evened it out, while I drove the roller to compact and finish it.
“We’ve been working on it for the past couple of days, and we’ve managed to do the main roads coming in and out of town, and we also repaired some of the highway nearest us. The limited section we did on the highway won’t achieve much, but it at least signifies that there are people working to restore civilization here, and it will potentially alert anyone looking for help where to turn off the road.”
“You’re right, from what you told me when you ran into the construction crew the other day, they hadn’t made much progress,” Bobby commented.
“Yeah, it’s the same old deal. A whole crew stands around yakking while a single man does all the work. Thus nothing much gets done, and the only one willing to do any honest work gets dumped on and demoted for demotivating the rest of the crew. Frankly, as much as I admire what the unions represent, I have a feeling they’re going to have trouble talking their way back to where they were before this started.”
“So the girls didn’t have any trouble keeping up?” Bob asked, sounding surprised.
“Hey, we’ve been building up to this. They’ve been using shovels, rakes, saws and other tools, so their hands have gotten fairly tough by now. And they took to it like troopers. They could see how much progress they were making, and they knew how much difference it would make. I suspect it’s the opposite of the road crews. They see a huge road and think ‘what difference can I make’, whereas the girls see the same stretch of road and think, ‘I can really make a huge difference’.”
“Fascinating, but I’d thought you were worried about exposing them to the plague?”
“Ah, I was worried about it, but we took precautions. They each had masks on, and we didn’t encounter that many people on the roads. The few people that drove by saw us in our masks and figured out we weren’t interested in talking. Hopefully they took heed that it’s dangerous to risk exposure now. They’d drive by, wave at us as they went, but they never even rolled their windows down.”
“Sounds like the best options for everyone involved,” Bobby responded.
“So what news do you have for us?” David asked, getting to why he’d stopped by.
“Ah, yes, where to begin. There’s a lot to tell. You were right about the illness. It was spreading largely undetected since no one could get to the hospitals to complain about it. It seems that most people have not only lost power and their communications, but they’ve also lost access to ready gasoline. Without power, none of the gas stations can open, and since most people don’t have independent pumps with a battery supply like you do, they can’t access the leftover gas at the closed stations. As a result, most people have taken to draining whatever gas is left in the abandoned vehicles on the streets, which just makes them that much more problematic. Otherwise, someone could have gotten them working by cobbling the available parts, but now none of them have any gas left in them.
“Which brings up another point, just like your road crews, all of the organized responses have been running out of steam. Without a constant flow of money, companies and governments can’t pay people, and without the guarantee of funds, most people simply stop coming into work after a while. Whether that’s all there is, or whether the others have been getting sick, have just run off, or no longer have access to gasoline to get into work, most work efforts have halted.
“While that isn’t a big problem for the Walmarts of the world, who have nothing left to sell and no electricity to run their cash registers, it’s a major problem for the electric companies. Thus more and more power plants of all types have been lowering capacity or simply shutting down completely. Instead of gradually getting more people access to electricity, now we have more of the country without any power whatsoever.”
“Shit, that’s no good. What about the cities? Surely they’ve got resources available?”
“Not as many as you’d expect,” Bob responded. “Most cities have a limited amount of gas stations, thus the available gas to run the multiple generators they rely on have drained the available gas resources. What’s more, there’s a general sense of lawlessness. Not from gangs, but people have reacted to businesses shutting down by breaking in and grabbing what they need. The business owners, seeing their stock being stolen, have taken to hiring guards to shoot at anyone around the stores, so many shopping centers have become active combat zones between those trying to keep themselves going and those trying to hold onto their possessions. The policemen have largely avoided the scenes, since they can’t stay there indefinitely, and if they try to intervene they end up getting shot.
“What’s more, the police forces, like the other organizations, have been steadily losing people. While many people were hoping the government would save them, Washington DC has become a military zone. The military has decided they need to prop up the interim government, thus they’ve taken to establishing curfews, and they’re striking rapidly whenever they perceive anyone they suspect might lead any opposition. Those heading out to find food, clothing or medical assistance have been shot and killed, with the bodies lying out in the open as a warning to anyone else not to mess with the non-functioning government.
“Speaking of which, Interim President Daniels hasn’t accomplished much of anything. He seems to be terrified of his position, he’s so afraid of making the wrong decision that he’s unable to make any decisions. And with the military sticking to him, no one else is willing to stand up to offer an alternative. Thus people have been fleeing Washington in droves.
“Without the command from above, the military has also fallen apart. Most people simply don’t show up for duty anymore, instead sticking to their homes where they can defend their families with the guns they stole from their military service. Newport News is another source of almost constant gun battles between mobs and vigilantes.”
“Shit, it sounds like things are heading south faster than we ever anticipated. I’d figured we’d be turning the corner about now.”
“Not without a working financial system, and not without electricity, communications and gasoline.”
“Well, what about the sickness? Any news on that? You said that most of it was unreported, does anyone have any idea of the true nature of the problem?”
“Ah, there’s a lot of conflicting data. The hospitals are filling up with sick people from the diseases, the “Pox” they’ve taken to calling it, since they have no other name for it. So much so that everyone else is avoiding the hospitals. The deaths from it are mounting, but so far most people are waiting to see whether they get better or not. What’s more, there’s an ongoing debate whether this pathogen is actually the culprit. If you’ll remember, someone isolated a new bacterium they thought was responsible for the disease, but many of the dead have no sign of it. What’s more, three other hospital/research labs have identified two other new ones, also completely new, never having been documented before, and completely unrelated to any other pathogens they’ve ever encountered.”
“So what, they think maybe they came in during the meteor storm?” David asked.
“That’s everyone’s best guess. It’s the only reasonable explanation. These strains didn’t exist in nature before, and after the meteor storm they’re all over the place,” Bobby explained as the room suddenly filled up with the other people, curious themselves, and anxious to hear what the ongoing discussion was about. “What’s more, people are questioning what kind of a meteor storm it was.”
“Huh?” Linda asked. “I thought a meteor storm was simply a meteor storm, just a bunch of rocks floating through space.”
“Well, basically it is, but this was an odd one. Usually the debris that litters the universe consists of items of all different sizes, with the big items getting all the attention and the little stuff just getting ignored. Instead, this was a massive wave of tiny stuff. That’s apparently why no one detected it before. There simply weren’t any fragments large enough to show up on any of the telescopes available.
“What’s more, the prevailing theory now is that these fragments must have been from some other world, possibly one shattered apart somehow. Think the likes of the Death Star blowing up Alderaan in Star Wars. The idea is that each of the rock fragments has frozen bits of the bacteria and microbes from the planet’s surface, the waters from the oceans freezing solid as they were exposed to the extreme cold of outer space. When they entered our atmosphere the heat thawed them, causing them to break free to drift on the gentle breezes of the upper atmosphere, which carried them far and wide. Thus we now have these various new pathogens in the general atmosphere, where everyone is constantly breathing them in.”
“Wait, you mean there’s no escaping it?” Linda asked, clearly scared by the implications.
“That would explain why there were so many anaphylaxis reactions,” Maggie surmised. “With that many foreign bodies that the human body isn’t adapted to, the body’s immune system wouldn’t know how to respond to it, thus it would tend to shut down the entire body in trying to shut the new bacterium down.”
“Exactly,” Bob answered, having figured out he now had a sizable audience and once more taking on the role of the sole information source. “The idea is that, if these are fragments of an exploded planet, then each fragment would likely have a multitude of different microorganisms on it. Of course, this is all conjecture at this point, since no one has been able to document any of this. So far they’ve only found three new pathogens, and we have no way of tying it to a foreign life form.”
“What about genetics?” Flora asked. “Couldn’t they just run genetic scans on it and see whether it shared any common RNA or DNA strands with the other Earth based bacteria?”
“Alas, that would be a massive research effort, and right now most of the research labs and universities are without power. They can cobble together enough for quick studies and to power their microscopes, but not to run genetics equipment 24-7. Plus the constant stopping and starting of the power supply tends to fry delicate instruments like genetic sequencers, so they’ve mostly taken the remaining ones off line.”
“Damn, how can they figure anything out then?” she asked.
“Right now it’s all conjecture. All the efforts are going on in trying to identify which microorganisms they can associate with which symptoms, hoping they’re each unique. The fear is that the disease, or diseases, are so complex that they produce a multitude of symptoms, meaning there’s no way to isolate which pathogen is causing which symptoms. That’s why they’re calling the sicknesses the “Pox”, because there’s no commonality to name it after a single trait.”
“So we could be facing a whole pantheon of diseases, originating from some other planet, which probably aren’t even associated with our own DNA, floating around the atmosphere which we can’t help but breathe in?” Ellen asked, unable to comprehend such a massively complex threat.
“If that’s the case, then we’re already dead,” Linda said, sounding like she was close to panic. “There’s no way we can protect ourselves from it. It’s not just a matter of avoiding anyone else with the sickness, we have to stop breathing, too!”
The other women saw she was about to lose it, so they quickly clustered around her, trying to calm her down before her panic began to influence the others. The girls just seemed to be focusing on what Bobby was telling them, trying to figure out what he was explaining before they tried to work out what it might mean.
“Well, so far it’s only one of a variety of theories. It could be complete nonsense, or it might be partially correct. All we know is that we have one disease we can’t understand, and it’s looking like we potentially have a couple of others we haven’t identified yet. Right now we don’t know what any of it means, or what it impacts as a result.”
“What about the other countries?” David asked. “Surely we aren’t the only ones working on this? Have they managed to run anything up? After all, there must have been a bunch of countries that escaped the devastation we’ve experienced.”
“Ah, but that’s a complex problem in itself,” Bobby explained. “Remember, most of the world’s communications have failed. Even where we have underground cables to run telephone services, many of the sites where the cables would run through don’t have the power to run their phones. And while there were probably plenty of countries that weren’t affected, many of them were in the poorer Southern countries like South America, Africa and India, where they’ve focused their limited money on things other than genetic research facilities.
“Besides, we wouldn’t know if they succeeded or not, since they’re mostly concerned with solving their own problems, not in helping us.”
“And with all the planes in the country grounded, we can’t reach any of the other countries either,” Ellen said, stating the obvious.
“Even if we could, would you be willing to fly to a foreign country, possibly the only hope of solving this problem, either exposing yourself to new pathogens, or possibly carrying them to that other country?” David asked, drawing out the potential problems with the scenario.
“So what are we supposed to do?” Linda asked, sounding clearly upset.
“Right now we’re trying to discover the extent of the problem,” David patiently explained, trying to exude his calm approach to the others around him, speaking in a slow measured pace. “We can’t figure anything out until we know what’s involved. And right now, the idea of otherworldly pathogens is just that, a wild-assed proposal. I wouldn’t take it too seriously. It was offered because it explains things better than any other ideas, but the idea is so farfetched it’s hard to take seriously.”
Here David turned back and addressed Bobby on a more personal level. “What about Ma? How’s she doing if her hospital is being inundated?”
“So far she’s doing OK,” he said, revealing he was well aware of the risk to her, both now and in the future. “Luckily, since the only way the scientists can convey what they’re finding is via short wave, she’s now considered essential personnel. They had her in the infectious care ward, thinking she’d have more privacy there than anywhere else, and could continue providing the hospital with information, but once they decided this sickness might be more severe than they’d initially suspected, they yanked her out of there and moved her to a separate level.
“She still gets restless, so she stops by the ER to help out occasionally, but she’s not involved with the high risk patients any more. At least not on a continual basis.”
“This is probably the wrong time to mention it, but I’ve determined that it’s crossed the species barrier. I found a doe with the same symptoms I saw in some people in town. I don’t know if it originated with people or with the deer, but it’s multispecies now.”
“That’s not good news,” Bobby said, considering just what it might mean.
“No, it’s not. That’s why you’ll have to convey the news as soon as you can. The chances the disease will mutate are going to be higher now.”
“Someone will have to take samples and start checking out the various deer populations, so they can determine how widespread it is, which areas are the most effected, wh—”
“I can give them the location of an infected animal, but you can’t use my name, since it was killed illegally. However, I figure it’s more important to trace this down than protecting myself is. But they shouldn’t be able to trace it to me.”
“Trying to fill the larder without risking the grocery stores?” Bobby asked. David simply nodded, then remembered that Bob couldn’t see him. It was easy to forget little details like that when he was so quick to respond to everything. It’s easy to forget he can’t see when you learn to trust someone.
“Yeah, I did,” he admitted.
“I’ll tell the hospital, and spread the news around. Hopefully there are plenty of out of work hunters who would love the opportunity to hunt out of season.”
“Just warn them to take adequate safety precautions,” David warned.
“Don’t worry, that’ll be the very first thing we tell them. Well, if you don’t mind, I’d better spread this information around. I’m pretty sure Ma’s already gone to bed, but I should be able to reach the West Coast so they can start acting on the information. You should probably contact the Sheriff so he can collect the sample for us.”
“I’ll do that, you can send him a message in the morning, but don’t stay up too late tonight. We’ve all had a busy day, and I’m sure tomorrow will be just as busy. You may not be able to sleep, but you need your rest.”
“Hey, as the old saying goes, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
No one laughed, though. Bobby’s humor struck a little too close to home.
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