He pushed his glasses up again and continued.
“Additionally, the reactor seems to be operating.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Really?”
“Yes, sir,” Baron replied. “If I understand correctly from what I remember reading about the CDC, they’ve got something on the order of five to ten years of fuel before it shuts down.”
“Hm,” I said and motioned for him to continue.
“The older man seems to bear no known unit insignias, but he drives an older two-and-a-half-ton truck and has shown all manner of weaponry as part of his personal kit. He also seems to be quite knowledgeable in survival and fortification techniques,” Baron continued. “Mister Stern’s assessment is that the CDC would be a quote-hard nut to crack-unquote.”
I nodded slowly and steepled my hands on the desk.
“What about Wilcox?” I asked.
“Montgomery suffered some major fires downtown, but Jake did contact a few survivors along I-65 and some of the more rural and suburban areas. He suspects there may be more but proceeded with follow-up on the Hunter Blake situation.”
“Anything to report on that?” I shuffled papers on my desk. At least it wasn’t warm enough to warrant a fan. The open window sufficed, I just had to keep some of my inclinations under control. It wouldn’t do for some passer-by to learn what I really thought. Baron had grown on me over the past few months, as well. He was eager to please, but I really wished he would be more concise with his information and not wait for me to grunt or wave my hand or whatever.
“Mr. Blake is not at the address he provided, and the house has been rifled. Additionally, there were signs of a grenade explosion near the Welcome Center, which is maybe a ten-minute walk away. Jake suspects that Hunter may have bitten off more than he could chew. He also reported that the remains of a semi and a Dodge pickup were on I-85 near the center, and the pickup had bullet holes in it.”
“I suspect that Wilcox is right,” I said. “Hunter did not seem to be the most stable individual and might have engaged in risky behavior. Did he find any sign of the people that were reported in the area?”
“Yes. They are mobile and active, collecting material from the local area and consolidating their own holding. Right now, there seem to be four, with three children ranging from infant to teenager.” Baron pushed his glasses up again and regarded me. “Is there anything you need relayed?”
“I want Johnathan to have a look at that military base in Cobb County if he can do it without drawing too much attention from the people at the CDC. He should make a stop by Fort McPherson on the way back, as well, if he hasn’t already,” I replied. “As for Wilcox, well, I’d like for him to arrange accidental or incidental contact with the commune in… what was it? Opelika.”
“Yes, sir,” Baron acknowledged. “They’ve put up signs along the interstate, indicating where they are and asking people to visit.”
“Well,” I said with a low chuckle. “That makes it convenient, doesn’t it? Simply have a few of his people pay a visit on their way through to assess the place. I rather suspect our friends there won’t be recruiting by force.”
“We aren’t either,” Baron said.
“Of course,” I fixed him with a smile. “Everyone here has made their choice to join us. I would never dream of subverting a person’s free will.”
Baron smirked.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“Good,” I drummed my fingers on my desk. “That will be all, Baron. Thank you for the reports. Keep me updated with what our explorers are doing and do see if we expand the range of my broadcast.”
“I’m working on that,” he said. “I should know something by the end of the week.”
“Good.”
I leaned back in my chair and watched him leave. Baron was something of an enigma to me. He had been a leader and entrepreneur before this disease struck down a majority of people. Yet, once I had found my way, the young man had fallen into lockstep with me, save for occasionally minor rebellions.
Perhaps if I had a chance to add my own apocrypha to the holy book, I’d make sarcasm a sin. Of course, the Good Lord had left us with very few people to choose from in this new world. We needed to bring in the unaffiliated, and, of course, we needed women.
Hunter Blake had reported seeing the man in Opelika with a young woman of, he described, breedable age. The thought was somewhat disgusting to me, especially coming from the twisted mind of that misguided fellow. He’d been damaged somewhat in his youth.
Probably meth.
I sighed and rubbed my eyes. It wasn’t long before evening service. With the two teams out and about, I was left with perhaps twenty souls to minister to, but with any luck, our numbers would grow. I had visited Huntsville early on after beginning the Great Work, with Baron Chandler and Johnathan Stern at my left and right hands.
There had been a surprising number of survivors up there, along with some goodies from the Redstone Arsenal. Chandler and Stern handled that part of our mission.
I dug in the drawer of my desk to pull out folders of my sermons. What would this evening address, I wondered. Did I have a goal in mind, or just a simple prayer meeting of the faithful, encouraging their loyalty and obedience to me and to God’s Plan as interpreted through my worldly vision?
That was probably the best direction to take, especially considering I was likely on a collision course with Baron, or possibly Wilcox. Stern’s loyalty was without question. I had been extremely fortunate that he survived the judgment of God, in fact. A man’s loyalty can easily be bought with his life, and I owned Johnathan Stern.
He would do what I needed to be done without question.
Wilcox and Chandler, though, were wild cards. I knew that neither of them was particularly faithful, nor did they believe in the Great Work. Still, they had their uses. Chandler handled our technology, and Wilcox, well, he had talents similar to Johnathan Stern.
That was why I sent those two men out into the world with their own handpicked teams. Their military, criminal, and contracting backgrounds made them excellent tools for learning about nearby survivors. Then we could assess their contactability. I hoped it never came to a fight. With so few people left alive, any death was a tragedy of epic proportions.
I suspected that Stern and Wilcox didn’t agree with me, but so long as they didn’t contradict me or subvert my plan, God’s Plan, then we’d have no issues. I favored Stern over Wilcox in a fight, but Jake was better with people, and that could earn him the loyalty he needed to damage my power base.
The longer I could keep the three men apart, the better. Thus I contrived missions of intelligence and acquisition to send them on. Baron Chandler knew this but suspected I used the two soldiers because they had the skills and experience, not because I didn’t want them raising hell in the home base.
I kept Chandler busy, too. Once I had the ability to broadcast across the former United States, I could swell the loyal ranks of my congregation, and begin rebuilding the nation in my own image.
The United States of Price the Savior had a nice ring to it.
21
I radioed home the next morning to check-in, especially since we hadn’t reached the CDC yet. Of course, everyone but me had known at least a few details of the girls’ plan. I had no problem with this, either. It had been a hell of a surprise, and I felt better, both emotionally and physically, than I had in months.
Estelle, too, seemed happier as we secured her old home after loading in a few choice items, memorabilia, mostly. We ended up with a couple of boxes that she tucked carefully into the back seat of the truck. It amazed me how a person could pare down their life to two boxes, but then, there were lots of things we just didn’t need anymore or couldn’t use.
“Ready?” she asked, dusting off her hands.
“Almost,” I replied with a smile and walked over to her.
We shared a long kiss, then parted and climbed into the cab of the Silverado.
As I started the truck and accelerated slowly away, I glanced over to see her gazing back at the house and the neighborhood.
“Thanks,” I said quietly.
She turned to look back at me.
“For what?”
“Everything,” I chuckled. “I think you may have fixed my point of view on a lot of things.”
She had, too. With one calculated night, Doctor Estelle White had shown me that I needed to relax and slow down a bit. Otherwise, I’d be doing a lot of damage to myself both physically and mentally. Stress was good in moderation, but constantly pushing myself had actually lessened my capability, overall.
I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
A smile touched her lips, and she nodded, watching me as I returned my gaze to the road.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” she admitted. “But none of us are any good to the rest if we overwork ourselves. See how much better you feel for just one massage.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think that was the best massage with a happy ending that I’ve ever had.”
“Really,” she said. “And how many have you had to compare?”
Well, shit. I really stuck my foot in my mouth right there. I glanced aside at her and saw a sly smile on her face.
“I never really needed to, actually,” I replied honestly, and I hadn’t. Service girls had gravitated to me for some reason I couldn’t fathom, but I wasn’t about to complain. “Some of the guys from my platoon, though, practically started a chlamydia outbreak in their dorm because of a trip to an unlicensed brothel in Amsterdam.”
Estelle snorted.
“I’ll bet Uncle Sam was pissed at that,” she said.
“You’d win that bet,” I told her. “They ended up the personal gofers for all the platoon sergeants. I never saw so many guys running around looking for striped paint, bacon stretchers, and going out at night on snipe hunts. The natives thought they were insane or possessed or something and started avoiding them.”
“This was in Afghanistan?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It was a shared airfield we were based out of for a while. There were regulars from the Afghanis, along with some British, Australian, French, and others. It was a pretty diverse crew. We all had our little corners, but we mingled, as soldiers do.”
“Made some friends?” she asked.
“A few,” I answered. “Of course, we mostly lost track of each other after we moved on, but we had some good times. Folks over here didn’t get to see it much, but the Afghan people are pretty damn hospitable. We helped them out a fair bit, and they helped us out.”
Estelle nodded slowly.
“Nothing like familiarity to break down the boundaries?” She asked.
“Basically, yeah,” I replied. “Anyway, those times are past now, though I do kind of wonder how things turned out. A lot of tribes and families didn’t have much contact, if any, with the outside. There might be more survivors in the Middle East and Africa than in the rest of the world.”
“Any sort of remote, poorly traveled area,” Estelle said thoughtfully. “Might show a protected population. Since we’re having a hard time discovering any living examples of the virus post facto.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” I asked.
“For anyone that wasn’t exposed to it during the initial wave,” she replied. “Yes. However, with that being said, it points to a possibly synthetic origin.”
“Someone created it.”
“Yes, and it wasn’t us,” she stated flatly.
“Well,” I said after a long moment’s hesitation. “There’s nothing we can do but move forward.”
“Right,” she said with a smile. “We’ve taken steps in the right direction, too.”
“We should never tell Bruce about this,” I said, staring out the windshield ahead as we merged onto the interstate. Off in the distance, the Atlanta skyline rose, silhouetted against the blue sky. It was a clear, nice day, with a few fluffy clouds drifting overhead.
“Oh, God,” she laughed. “You’re so right about that. He’d never, ever let it go. All we’d hear from now on would how the commies or the deep state engineered this thing in the lab to further a globalist agenda or something.”
“He might be reasonable,” I offered.
“Are you listening to the words that are coming out of your mouth?”
“No,” I replied with a grin, and we both laughed.
Ahead, the skyline loomed closer.
“Think you could teach me?” I asked.
“Teach you what?” she countered. “How to be like Bruce?”
“Oh, no,” I said with a vigorous shake of my head. “Massage.”
“I can try,” she replied after a moment. “Your hands are certainly strong enough, but you need to learn more than a little anatomy. Might help to teach the others, hell, anyone that wants to learn.”
“You were talking the other day about starting to teach the kids,” I mused. “We’re probably going to have our hands full with Virgil and Tommy, then Irene and any kids we all decide to have.”
“I’m sure that’ll happen,” Estelle leaned back in her seat and stretched, smiling. “I suppose I’ll have to pick up a new specialty and teach that, too.”
“What?”
“Gynecology and midwifery, Henry. You need to stop pretending you don’t know these things.” She laughed as she said it.
My ears burned.
“Sorry,” I said, smiling a bit. “It’s kind of weird thinking about it.”
“It is for most guys,” she opined. “I think you don’t realize sometimes that every climax you have could create one or more babies.”
Her eyes sparkled with mischief when I glanced over at her again. The interstate and overpasses all seemed the same as they had. There was just a little more grunge, windblown trash, and grass growing through the cracks.
“I know,” I said. “I suppose I’d worry about it more if there weren’t so few of us.”
“You’re a responsible guy,” Estelle said. “You’ll make a good father if you’ll just relax.”
“Did you have any kids?” I asked.
“Nope,” she replied. “I had a big, extended family. Once I got my M.D., I was the ‘free pediatrician.’” She snorted and shook her head. “I practically raised my youngest brothers and sisters, since my folks had to work. Taking care of Irene and Tommy isn’t hard, either, and Jackie likes to help.”
“Speaking of Jackie,” I said slowly. “I’m not sure what to think with her and that coyote.”
“We threw in a rabies shot when we fixed his hip,” Estelle said with a shrug. “He’s about as safe as a wild animal can possibly be.”
I nodded.
“Guess we’ll see,” I said with a sigh. That was one series of events that still felt weird to me.
“You have noticed that she’s really good with animals, haven’t you?” Estelle asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I just didn’t expect that to extend to wild ones.”
“Who knows? Some people just have a talent for things.” Estelle looked out the window at the passing greenery. “Kudzu is going to thrive.”
I blinked and looked around. It wasn’t yet May, but the brown vines were starting to sprout little shoots of green.
“That’s going to be troublesome,” I said. “At least there isn’t much where we are.”
“Goats eat it, right?” she asked.
“Yep,” I replied. “I reckon we’ll have to keep a better eye on the free-range herds. Deer eat it too.”
“These first few years are going to be really interesting,” Estelle leaned her head back on the headrest and looked at me. “Anyway, what’s keeping us from starting a family of our own?”
I grunted. There really wasn’t anything, I didn’t think, other than just being worried about keeping up with the farm. Of course, pioneers and settlers in the past had to contend with the same sorts of challenges.
“Nothing, really,” I finally admitted. “J
ackie wants to be first, Angie has an IUD, and…”
“I’m on the pill, too,” she said. “But they aren’t going to last forever.”
“I know,” I said, nodding. “Think we can handle more babies?”
“Sure,” she replied. “Why not? Either we can all play frontier wife and help each other out, or we’ll be the brand new start of a community of survivors.”
“I’d been thinking about that,” I said. “It’s an interesting dilemma. I’m happy with just you three and the kids, but I think I have the knowledge to start rebuilding a little more.”
“Then do it,” Estelle said. “How many people do you need?”
“As long as I… we… can keep the equipment going, then probably five or six for most smaller things,” I said. “This is on top of people to take care of the animals and deal with day-to-day operations.”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“Maybe I can help a bit,” she said thoughtfully. “I handled logistics and planning as one of my duties with the CDC. I’m familiar with manpower assignments, but I need information. I also need to know what the minimum operating man-hours are for daily operations. It seems like you and the girls handle the livestock and general maintenance in about three hours a day, correct?”
This was an interesting conversation to have on a drive through the deserted canyons of Atlanta, but it was one that may have been long overdue.
“Yeah,” I replied. “While you take care of the kids.”
“If Virgil takes care of the kids,” she said. “That frees me up to help you. At the very least, I can cook. Would that cut things down to two hours?”
“Potentially,” I replied. “I’d have to see it in action. Virgil can help with the livestock and chores, too, though.”
“Right, but we’re going to have to dedicate someone to teach him and Tommy. I don’t know what skills Virgil already has,” she continued.
“He was a lot like you,” I explained. “Large family, oldest kid. He seems to know woodcraft and householding, taking care of children and such.”
Estelle nodded thoughtfully.
“So all of us have a pretty good bit of crossover,” she mused. “I have a skill set that isn’t duplicated yet, but when Gwen joins us, we’ll have two doctors.”
After The Virus (Book 2): Homesteading Page 15