Cal interrupted, “We don’t have any medical supplies at the house come to think of it. We have plenty of beer and I think we could probably defend it pretty well, but we are in a world of hurt if something bad happened. I guess we could eat the family dog if we got hungry enough.” They both had a chuckle.
“Let’s hope it never comes to that. I’ve done that in Asia after flooding wiped out the village we were working in. Everything was lost and outside help didn’t come for 7 days. I won’t even own a dog after that.”
“Well that’s awkward. Anyway….” Cal began to nervously shuffle his feet.
“OK, here’s the thing. It’s not exactly classified as top secret but you need to give me your word that you will keep it close to the vest because it’s not ready for release yet.”
“OK, will do. Scouts’ honor.”
“In last week’s conference call with the CDC executive office in Washington, the topic of Venezuela came up. There is something going on down there and it seems to be very hot.
“The problem is that the borders have been shut to Americans, and any allies of America. We know that their medical system has mostly collapsed, as well as just about everything else down there. Our State Department briefing indicated concern over rumors that the President has fled the capital. But that’s not certain.
“We are deploying virologists to Colombia because there has been some activity on their border with Venezuela. The concern comes after reports of something that mirrors the typical flu, but antivirals have no effect. Rather than feel better after a week or two, people are said to just pass out and die in a convulsion or seizure.
“There isn’t much more than that, but if there is a novel virus that presents as the common flu in most people, but all of a sudden, you either get better, or you just die. That’s a serious problem. We have no idea if this is true, or how bad it really is, or how many people could already be infected. If it doesn’t present with symptoms for an extended period, we could already have travelers or refugees here in the US spreading the contagion. To make things worse, this year’s influenza is worse than usual and the annual vaccination is not proving effective.”
“I thought there was only one type of flu and you just get the shot and you’re done,” Cal interjected.
“Not really, the seasonal influenza mutates over time and the vaccine companies try to predict which strain will be most prevalent and then rush a vaccine in hopes of getting it right. It’s more like trying to pin the right color tail on a herd of donkeys in a dark barn.”
“Well, when you put it that way it sounds like a party,” snickered Cal, trying to hide his horror.
“Not a party I want be invited to, that’s for sure,” Mark added.
“OK, now that you’ve creeped me out more than I already was, what should I do? I was really thinking that if something happened, I’d just put a small group together and lock the door until things cooled down, but now I’m not sure things would ever cool down after this conversation. My wife already called me Chicken Little when I mentioned that we should prepare for a hurricane, if I go home and start ordering pandemic supplies she’ll call the guys with the big butterfly net to pick me up.”
Mark wondered if Cal was the right guy for this discussion, but his gut told him to keep going. “Did you say you had a friend who was on board with preparing? What does he think? What is he preparing for?”
“Rusty? He was apparently way ahead of me on preparing. He said it didn’t really matter what was going to happen, but if it did he wanted to be more self-reliant. I think he focuses more on civil unrest and supply shortages after something unexpected happens. But he seems pretty open minded. He also introduced me to another friend of his who has a lot of tactical experience.”
“Cal, how about this: Why don’t we get together with your friends and see what happens? If things seem to go ok, I would be open to joining you guys if you are ok with it. You seem to have good leadership qualities, I have the medical side covered, your friend sounds like he is well ahead of us in thinking this through. Why don’t we get together after the holidays, at my place? I’ll cook some burgers.”
Cal was in.
“Sounds great. My wife will be thrilled at the idea of baking something.” Rubbing his belly, he continued, “I put her on a baking moratorium. I swear she was trying to fatten me up with all the cake and cookies. I’ll work it out and bring Rusty and Shane along. This will be good, but let’s keep the doomsday pandemic chatter to a minimum. No sense in making everyone worry over something that may never happen. I think the important part is to see how the chemistry works. In my experience, if people can get along, they can get things done, if not, things get rough.”
“I’m looking forward to it and my wife Clara has been pushing me to make friends so she has someone to bake for, too.”
Cal and Mark made for the elevator, both silently pondering what they had just agreed to. They both felt like they were overreacting but in the back of their minds something was looming on the horizon. Hoping against hope wasn’t going to help this time.
Cal was almost mesmerized by the blood-red sun shimmering low over the evening horizon, surrounded by a fiery orange and purple sky as he drove toward his home out near the Everglades. Was it a harbinger of bad things to come?
4
Chapter 4
Sunday, December 24th
Loxahatchee, Florida
Keeping up with tradition, the family Christmas dinner was at Cal’s house. Another common holiday sight was Charlotte in the kitchen, toiling away on at least 3 different meal courses, and several dessert variations. She was a gifted cook who could either work with a recipe or go rogue mixing whatever was in the fridge at the moment.
Cal had just been shooed out of the kitchen when he thought to himself, ‘You know, her cooking style of concocting different flavors with whatever is available could come in handy someday if we are forced to live off of whatever we can forage.’ He caught himself and froze with his beer halfway to his lips, watching Rufus roll in the grass in the yard he shook his head and mumbled, “Why am I even thinking like that, I need to turn off the news, it’s starting to make me nuts.”
Football was playing on TV and the kids were all out in the yard playing their own game. Rusty and his wife Heidi slid in through the screen porch entrance around back with the appropriate liquid holiday gifts and made the round of hugs.
“Randy and what’s her name with their little hellions just pulled up.”
“What is her name?” Cal struggled to remember as Rusty laughed at his inability to get it right.
Charlotte heard him and replied, “It’s Kristy… with a K.”
“Oh yeah. You would think that would be easy to remember as loud as she is.”
Randy pushed in through the front door, empty handed, as usual.
“Hey Cal!” he thundered.
“Hey Randy, say, did you bring my hedge trimmer with you?”
“Oooh about that, I’m, uh, I need to fix the…. No worries, Cal. I’ll get you all fixed up, good as new.”
Kristy heard the conversation and chimed in with, “That idiot drove over it with the camper trailer.”
Randy, looking to move on quickly, attempted to change the subject.
“Sooo, smell that dinner. When do we eat? I’m starving. Princess here was out playing Bunko last night until the cows came home so I didn’t get any dinner.”
“You could open the refrigerator and make an effort; you aren’t six years old. Even though you act like it most times.” Kristy had no filter whatsoever.
“Cal, you got any beer?”
Cal piled on just for good measure, “Did you bring any this time? You cleaned me out at Thanksgiving. As a matter of fact, I seem to remember you loading your cooler with my beer when you left.”
“Uhh, it was a long ride home and she was driving. How was I supposed to survive that journey sober?”
“You were drunk when you left, that’s how.”
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“Don’t be a hater, Cal. Look at it this way, I freed up space in your fridge for all the leftovers. I’ll bring some next time. I just got a new job and they ain’t paid me yet.”
Kristy saw an opening. “Yeah, you are looking at the newest manager at the Wash-O-Mat. A real winner. At least he comes home smelling like soap these days; that Port-O-Let job he had always made the house smell like ass.” She glanced at Randy and dejectedly added “turd” under her breath.
“If I didn’t have to pay for those discount boobs you’re wearing, we wouldn’t be so broke.”
“Okay, okay, you two. Randy, there is Busch Lite in the cooler outside just for you. Why don’t you go help yourself? Kristy, there is some of that fancy box wine you like on the table. Help yourself.”
He turned to Charlotte as Randy and Kristy split up. “I’m going to go swallow my shotgun. Be right back. Why do we keep inviting them?”
Charlotte laughed and replied, “We don’t, they just keep showing up. Besides, he IS your cousin.”
“I swear, that branch of the family tree had all the nuts.”
Glendora caught the last part of their conversation as she walked into the kitchen with a “what was that all about?” look. Glendora was the epitome of a southern lady; she could go from inviting y’all in for supper to chasing you off with a shotgun in no time flat, and she could do it with all the charm and politeness that would have you thanking or apologizing, as necessary.
A fan of the 1960s, she could usually be found wearing tie-dye whenever possible. In fact, Cal, Charlotte, and of course baby Tempest had quite the tie-dye t-shirt collection thanks to her. Glendora owned a large country-style store west of town, not too far from Cal and Charlotte. Her biggest hobby was organic raised bed gardening, which was a challenge in the buggy heat of South Florida. Always looking for the next entrepreneurial angle, Glendora was seriously considering starting a shrimp farm to build on the new trend of local farm-to-table foods in her cafe. Cal found her store a couple years ago when he stopped in for the lunch special, and well, the rest was history.
All told, there were about fifteen people in attendance at the holiday dinner and the smells from the kitchen had stomachs growling all over the house. The meal went well and afterward, over cocktails, Cal decided to bring up the thoughts he had about preparing the family a little more for hard times.
“I’ve been thinking,” Cal announced. “We have done a decent job of keeping the family safe so far, and we already have things like various insurance policies. We have a couple of fire extinguishers and some smoke detectors. So my question to you is why do we have these things? Are we planning on wrecking a car, or setting the house on fire? We lock the door but I don’t think we do it because we have specific information about someone planning to break in tonight. Am I right so far?” Heads nodded tentatively.
At that very moment, Charlotte and Glendora came in from the kitchen with wine glasses in hand, and saw Cal apparently holding court with people nodding in agreement at something about setting the house on fire. Charlotte’s face took on that “Where are you going with this…” squint.
Cal continued. “I mean, do you all carry a spare tire everywhere you go?” More nods. “Are you planning on a flat? Can a flat tire happen unexpectedly? Of course it can, and it has. And it never happens at the tire shop, it’s always on a busy road somewhere. I have been paying attention to things a lot more since the recession that almost sunk us as a business, and as family. We almost lost everything and we have fought hard to get where we are today. I do not think things are completely back to normal. Frankly, I’m starting to think they may never be but it’s more of a feeling that I keep trying to get past. We were barely able to scrape by last time and I don’t want to go through that again. I don’t know if things are getting worse than the old days or we are just better tuned-in with all the media and internet, but I don’t remember things being like this before.
“Even when President Reagan was staring down the whole Soviet Union we had a sense things would work out. Today, things are literally crazy. After 9/11, they said things would never be the same and I think they were right. Originally it all seemed like hype to get public interest for a war and ratings but either things are spiraling down a rabbit hole or there really is a military-industrial complex that has taken over our economy. Maybe the complex is what has ruined the economy.
“Whatever the case, it is all twisted up and we need to look after ourselves as much as possible. I know there are many things out of our control but there is a lot we can do to make sure that if something happens, we are at least prepared to deal with it. I don’t like the thought of waiting around for someone else to come to our rescue unless we had already done everything within our power to help ourselves and family first. We have health insurance, why not create some life assurance.” Snickers and eye rolls made their around the room at the cheesy cliché.
“I am not saying to prepare for space aliens. I’m just saying that as the father of this family it is my duty to keep you safe from whatever life throws at us. I take that responsibility seriously. Besides, think of the family stuff we can do to make us stronger. Camping…”
“I love not camping!” Charlotte chimed in, with laughter around the room, raising her glass for emphasis.
“Seriously, being a father is overrated sometimes,” Cal added, shaking his head. Charlotte blew him a kiss to show her support, even though she still wasn’t quite sure how she felt about today’s soapbox speech.
“Here’s what I want to do. I want to look at where we stand as a family and try to get a feeling of how long we could go without power if a hurricane were to hit us. We don’t need to prepare for zombies but I think if we consider what would happen if the power was out for a couple of weeks and prepare that way, we could be ready for almost anything.”
“I like zombies!” Rusty added, to another round of laughter. The kids in the room started acting like zombies and crawling over each other yelling “BRAINS! I want your brains!”
Randy burped and added obnoxiously, “All I know is if the shit hits the fan, I’m coming to your house.”
“Randy, every time you come over the shit hits the fan.”
Randy, looking dejected, headed toward the beer cooler.
As the room emptied out after dessert, Cal and Rusty were left sitting on the couch sipping their drinks.
“Well that could have gone worse, old man,” Rusty lamented.
“I’m sure. Charlotte doesn’t seem impressed. If I don’t have her support I don’t think it will work out.”
“Look, you did a great job of not framing the talk as if the situation is hopeless. You didn’t say the apocalypse is coming, you didn’t say all the bad keywords like martial law, government collapse, alien invasion–well, you did mention that, but I think you sugar coated it enough. And most importantly you didn’t come out with your foil hat on. That’s about all you can do.”
“Oh yeah, and remind me to buy extra sheet plastic, duct tape and shovels for when Randy and what’s her name show up on Doomsday. I’m just sayin’…”
“Dude, have we ever discussed cannibalism?” Rusty added.
“Lalalalala, I’m not listening to you any more, see, this is me walking away right now.”
“Was it something I said?” Rusty laughed out loud.
5
Chapter 5
Tuesday, December 26th
Loxahatchee, Florida
A couple days after the family dinner, Glendora called Cal on the phone.
“Hey, I was thinking about the other night. I didn’t catch the whole conversation because I was in the kitchen with Charlotte cleaning up, and we had to finish that open bottle of wine, of course.”
“Naturally,” Cal replied.
“So, the part I remember hearing was about the flu. The news has been going on about how bad it is this year. I’ve noticed that quite a few people coming into my store have been sick. It was getting to the point tha
t I had to set out hand sanitizer dispensers at the entrance and around the store along with those alcohol wipes because it was giving me the heebie-jeebies.”
Cal felt her pain.
“I’ve had several employees out sick and one of my subcontractors won’t even go to work at the hospital this week because he’s a total germaphobe. What’s your take on things?”
“Well, the news keeps saying this year’s flu shot isn’t very effective. I poked around on the internet and read an article about this WebCrawler program that scans for internet trends and makes forecasts based on the popularity of web searches. Apparently, there has been a significant rise in searches about flu symptoms in different parts of the country. So, I’m guessing things are going to get worse before they get better.”
Cal seized the moment. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Oooh, I love secrets, who’s pregnant?!” Glendora gushed.
“What?! No, not that kind of secret… I swear…. You must keep this on the down low.”
“OK, just kidding. Cal you were about to get all serious, I could feel it.”
“Well you’re right about that part. I have an ongoing renovation project at the hospital and one of the doctors that I work with has a background in infectious diseases. He said that there are whispers in his circles that there is something that mimics the common flu but may be much worse. The Health Department has put out word to track flu-related illnesses for anything beyond the usual symptoms.”
The Unraveling: Book 1 of the Bound to Survive Series Page 4