The Unraveling: Book 1 of the Bound to Survive Series

by Charley Hogwood

  Firmly creeped out at this point, they figured they’d take a lap and give themselves some space until their next booth attempt.

  Meanwhile, Glendora was listening in on a presentation on aeroponic gardening. .“..If you have ever been to Epcot at Disney World you may have seen something similar called vertical aeroponic gardening.

  “By placing the plants in a vertical tube and allowing fertilized water to rain down on the exposed root systems, the plants receive more hydration and nutrients than they would receive if planted in soil. The roots will grow dramatically faster and with less effort because there is no reason for the plant to search out food and water.

  “NASA has been experimenting with this same technology as a possible method for nutrition sustainability on future deep space travel. Aeroponic gardening allows plants to grow around 30% faster while requiring about 90% less water. By not using soils, there are less problem insects and fungi, not to mention less weight and mess to deal with.”

  Glendora was starting to wonder if she could incorporate the aeroponic system into growing fresh greens for the cafe. They looked really impressive, and the fact that she could grow such a large variety in a small space was intriguing. She raised her hand.

  “I have a question, how does this compare to hydroponics?”

  The presenter, a local home school expert and tower garden aficionado named Leah, replied, “I’m glad you asked. Hydroponics is often operated indoors under artificial light and requires large sources of electricity for the bright halide light fixtures, although there are newer LED fixtures on the market. Hydroponics also uses floating beds of plants which take up a lot of space compared to the three square feet of vertical gardening space required for the same yield. The biggest differences are really the electrical needs, growing footprint, and cost. Also, hydroponic systems require significantly more equipment. Aeroponics have become used regularly at many farm-to-table style restaurants and since they are extremely simple to operate and maintain, chefs are happy to use them. And they can be part of the decorative landscape or placed on the roof of a building out of the way.”

  That was it, Glendora loved this idea. She made arrangements to purchase several for her cafe. Just as she was finishing up, she saw Mark and Clara round the corner booth to her right.

  “Have y’all seen anything like this?” She said pointing to the vertical gardens.

  Mark turned to Clara, “Didn’t we see something like this at Disney?”

  Clara responded sarcastically, “Yes, and I’m thinking you saw twice as many since you took the drink yourself around the globe beer tour last time we went.”

  Mark feigned innocence, “It was really hot that day and I was thirsty. And besides, I love you sweetie, you look skinny today.”

  Clara looked at Glendora, “See what I have to put up with?”

  “How did the medical class go?” Glendora asked. “It was really interesting, we met the couple who put it on, they were really nice. I thought the classes were well planned and informative. They reminded me of us in that they banter back and forth a lot in a drippingly, lovey kind of way,” Mark replied.

  “I thought it was interesting how they were spot on with current events and nicely tied in their class on common infections in austere conditions. The herbal remedies was a nice touch too, we saw some of that among the population in Liberia when there were shortages in some of the medicines. I even picked up a copy of their Survival Medicine Handbook, I love medical books that take a different perspective than the usual clinical manuals and this one looks like it explains thing in everyday language, not the usual medical jargon.” Clara showed Glendora her latest purchase.

  As they continued walking they ran into Rusty and Cal with Shane not far behind. Cal regaled them with the story about the organ harvesting guy, much to their horror.

  “Yeah, so that happened…” he said. “We still want to take another lap around and see the mylar food packaging demonstration, it looks really interesting. They say you can put food in these shiny metalized bags and it will last a lot longer than the factory packaging from the stores.” They all agreed to check it out and then go meet for dinner to talk about what they learned.

  The group found the mylar demonstration just getting underway and took up a spot where they could hear the presenter.

  “The factory packaging for most foods is only designed to guarantee freshness from the factory to the store and then on to your home. After that, all bets are off based on the ‘Best By’ dates stamped on the packages.” The presenter looked to see that he had everyone’s attention before he continued.

  “Those dates only mean that freshness and nutrition are guaranteed to be at their peak under average consumer conditions. If you store it in the trunk of your hot car, the shelf life will be much less, no matter what the food is packaged in.

  “By placing the same fresh rice in a quality Mylar bag we can extend that shelf life upwards of 30 years.” This got people’s attention. The science made sense to Cal.

  “The process is extremely simple and you do not need any specialized tools.”

  As the presenter finished up his demonstration, several people closed in with a variety of questions and made purchases by the bundle. The group decided to pick up some mylar bags up in various sizes to try out, and then headed toward the exit with all their new stuff.

  Cal walked in right at 5 PM and almost immediately tripped over the obstacle course of Costco boxes everywhere in his living room. Charlotte breezed by with a box containing several bags of multigrain crackers, a massive bag of trail mix, and a stack of sardine cans along with a what looked like a lifetime supply-sized tub of puffy cheese balls.

  “What is this?” Cal asked, waving his arms around and pointing. Charlotte had looked all confident until Cal asked his question so warily.

  “Well, what had happened was… I was at Costco and… Okay, I was hungry. I shopped when I was hungry.” She gave him a sheepish smile.

  Cal looked over his nose at her in that ‘you knew better’ kind of way, while simultaneously popping open the container of cheese balls to grab a handful.

  Completely unfazed, she continued, “I figured we should have plenty of on-the-go kinds of food, because you know, appetite fatigue is a real thing. We’ll need snacks in the apocalypse, and you know how I am about snacks.”

  “I know,” Cal replied, “every time we go to the airport you have to immediately stock up on snacks and water bottles for the flight right after the TSA groping. You’re like an unsupervised 9-year-old in a candy store.”

  “It’s my thing. I like to be prepared.” She replied.

  “For a 90 minute flight?!” he added.

  “It’s for safety!” She used her go-to line when he had her in a verbal corner, trying hard to hide the smile that was creeping onto her face.

  Cal sighed and told her he loved her in that exasperated way he did when there was nothing else he could say. He turned and headed back out to get his expo purchases from the truck.

  The group began arriving for their post-expo meeting around 6 pm and like most home events, they all congregated in the kitchen and living room areas. At this point, the core group consisted of nine people. Shane and Rusty came in through the back door with Tervis Tumbler cups in hand, filled with some amber liquid that Cal was sure would be adult in nature.

  “What did you think about today’s adventure into the world of survival expos?” Cal asked no one in particular.

  Tim answered first. “Well, that was interesting. I didn’t know there was a whole industry devoted to such a thing, but I saw some clever gadgets. The people manning the booths seemed normal enough, and most of the patrons did as well, but there were a few I would not want to meet in the dark somewhere.”

  “Aye, the organ harvesting guy went from normal to ‘wow you are crazy!’ in less than two minutes,” Shane interjected.

  “And his wife was right there on the crazy train with him. The more I think about it, the m
ore it creeps me out. I wonder if they have a dungeon under their house,” Rusty jumped in.

  Charlotte and Heidi exchanged confused looks. “Organ harvesting? What in the world are you talking about?” Heidi asked.

  Rusty answered, “This guy and his wife… never mind, let’s just say someone must have been getting all their news from the Infowars website. This couple drank all the Kool-Aid.” Everyone laughed except Heidi and Charlotte, who still looked confused.

  Cal decided to get things back on track.

  “Okay, so what did we learn today? Glendora?”

  “I think the vertical aeroponics tower was really interesting so I ordered a couple to try out at the store. They should arrive by Thursday. We wouldn’t be able to feed the whole crew with two of them, but from what I can tell they would still produce faster than ground gardening. I went ahead and ordered the LED light kits so we can grow indoors if we need to. While I was there I noticed they also had sprout kits. I had forgotten all about sprouts! These days people mostly use them for wheatgrass juice, which, by the way, is like drinking fresh cut grass,” she made a distasteful face, “but they also work with other greens like bean sprouts, chickpeas, alfalfa, and some others. What I like about sprouting is that they easily grow indoors, even in the coldest winters, and are packed with vegetable nutrition. I figure sprouting would be a great backup for quick-growing nutrition, if it came to that. I also learned that rabbits make an amazing small livestock solution and want to look into that some more.”

  “Mmmm…rabbit cacciatore,” Clara added. “Mark, didn’t we have some rabbit chili in Africa?”

  “We did. It was hare and a little tougher than rabbit, but it was pretty good.” Mark replied.

  “Excellent,” Cal replied. “Sounds like the food planning is coming right along.”

  Leaning on the big plastic jar of cheesy puffs, “Looks like the snacks are all stocked up,” Rusty said sarcastically.

  “Hey! I went to the store hungry, ok?!” Charlotte stood up and pretended to fight Rusty for the container.

  “Shane, what did you think about the Perimeter Defense class?”

  “I liked it, it had a great mix of military defensive planning but not too much. It brought the defensive concept down to a usable civilian level. Most people do not realize that a full time defensive posture is just about the most difficult mission a smaller group can take on. It takes manpower, discipline, and constant alertness. For people who have never ‘seen the elephant,’ they do not know what it means to be hunted or observed by a scout sniper outside the wire, they become complacent very quickly and that is when the lions come through. The meek are meat and the lions will eat.” Shane said, as he took on a distant stare, like he mentally went somewhere else for a moment.

  If anyone could bring a pleasant conversation to screeching halt it was Shane. With everyone looking at him with eyebrows up, Shane replied, “What?” He lacked the filter that civilians require. Military guys can be a little more raw than needed in typical social settings.

  “Dude, you seemed a little too into the lion preying on people thing right there,” Rusty said as he snapped his fingers. “Are you back with us yet?”

  Shane made an attempt to recover with some humor, “Whoops! Took a little mental vacation but I’m back. So, the perimeter defense class had some really useful ideas for our purposes. I especially like the 4-D plan he put together and how it adapted to the perimeter planning. In a nutshell, we need to identify our perimeter and apply the 4-Ds. Deter, Detect, Delay, and then Defend. The idea is to keep people not interested in stopping by in a high-threat environment, but if they do we need to see them as early as possible, delay their advance to the house, and, if needed, we have to answer with a strong defense. I can put this all together but in order to plan a defense, I need to know what I am defending. We have not really talked about where we are all going to go if things were to get bad.”

  “That is true,” Cal added. “I guess I never thought about it.”

  Rusty remembered some of the survival group class they saw, “In the group class today, one of the first things he said to do is figure out when to stay and when to go as a group. He also said that not everyone will want to pick up and move at the same time, based on their situation, but if the group is too spread out they cannot be there for each other if things get tricky. I think we should make sure everyone is on the same page. We really do need a meeting location and also, is the meeting location our bug-out location?”

  They all looked around at each other.

  “Uhh, ideas?” Cal asked.

  “Luckily we are all within about 15 minutes of each other but it is true, there could come a time when we need to circle the wagons. Who has the best location where we could all fit with our stuff and not draw too much attention?” Mark asked.

  The group talked it over for a while and seemed to settle on Cal’s property. It was five acres and had a decent sized house with plenty of brush to keep most eyes from seeing in, except for the front yard which had a nice view of their friends’ house across the street. There was also a pond of freshwater that might come in handy. The more curious trespasser would be a challenge, but for now, it seemed to work.

  Charlotte chimed in with, “Everyone is welcome to stay here for as long as needed but what if this place became unsafe? Where would we go?”

  “This is America, what could possibly happen that anyone would need to evacuate for more than a few days?” Cal replied confidently. “I’m sure we are overthinking this. Anyone else need another beer?” As he walked to the fridge, he snagged a couple more cheese puffs for the trip.

  Just then Mark’s phone chimed with a text, and as he read it, he began to look really uncomfortable. The others noticed but were afraid to ask for details.

  “There is an emergency meeting at the EOC tomorrow morning and they raised the activation level from 3 to 2.”

  Tim asked the question everyone was thinking, “What does that mean?”

  “There are three activation levels, level 3 is normal operations, level 2 is increased activation. Level 2 is like ramping up for what is called a ‘Notice Event.’”

  Again confused eyes around the kitchen. “There are two kinds of emergency event, ‘with notice’ and ‘no notice.’ To clue you in on how emergency managers think, they see the world in two ways–well really three but they don’t talk about the third. They see every day as either Blue Skies or Grey Skies. The third is Black Skies. When Grey Skies happen the EOC ramps up to meet the challenge. A level 2 activation does not necessarily mean doom, but if someone is staying up at night worrying about it, that makes me worry.”

  On that note, the group realized that it was getting late. It had been a long day filled with new experiences and heavy feelings.

  “Well, I’m headed home. I want to try out those new tripwire devices I bought at the survival expo,” Rusty said, with a certain unhinged tone.

  “Watch where you put those things, you’ll probably blow yourself up in the night,” Cal said.

  “Good point. Maybe I’ll set them up in your yard first. Let me know how they work,” Rusty said, as he breezed out of the door with a smile before Cal could threaten him again.

  Cal found himself shaking his head, as he often did around Rusty.

  11

  Chapter 11

  Sunday, January 7th

  West Palm Beach, Florida

  Sunday mornings at the Emergency Operations Center were normally quiet. Unless there was a HAZMAT spill from a truck accident on I-95, or a brush fire in the western communities, the EOC had only a handful of people on staff to monitor the Warning Point. Every county had a warning point and usually the EOC was it. All this meant was that if something happened or was expected, the State Emergency Response Team (SERT) would notify the counties involved by way of the new fiber optic cable ring that connected all the EOCs for instant alerting.

  As Mark pulled into the parking lot, he noticed all the usual vehicles he would n
ormally see during a training exercise, but there were quite a few he had never seen before. The large, bus-sized vehicles had CDC Incident Command - Mobile Command Center emblazoned on the sides, and there were other semi-trucks with unusual modular structures fitted to the trailers. In all, there were six of these pod-like units.

  Mark suddenly realized that’s exactly what they were, PODS, or “Points of Distribution” units. His blood ran cold at this epiphany; this meant the situation was about to turn dire.

  PODS were normally kept at secret locations and only mobilized in case of a major health threat such as bioterrorism, pandemic, epidemic, or any situation where mass prophylaxis of the general public is required to potentially prevent an extreme mass casualty event.

  “This is bad, real bad.” Mark said to himself as he rolled through the EOC parking lot. He pulled into an empty space and stepped out with his briefcase, stopping to take the situation in. A fellow doctor from one of the nearby hospitals walked up on his way to the door.

  “What are we looking at here?” he asked.

  “Hey, Jim,” Mark said “They called you in too?”

  “Yep, and now that I see these things lined up in the lot all at the same time, I wish they would have lost my number. Either this is an elaborate drill or the zombie virus got loose.”

  “Frankly, zombies would be better news,” Mark tried to joke.

  “Just not the fast ones hopefully; they creep me out.” The other doctor tried to joke back, but neither one was able to let out a laugh as they made their way past the armed guards lined up around the POD trailers. Mark noticed that the guards were all wearing pouches on their waists with the words “Mask, Protective, M-50” stenciled on the green fabric.

  Mark walked quickly from his car past the ominous vehicles and gathering news crews. The initial security check station outside the main doors was manned by three guards in protective gear. One was scanning each person with an infrared thermal detection camera that transmitted an image to a computer screen on a rolling cart. The second guard was watching the screen for any excessive temperature readings coming from the face scans of the visitors. Mark’s raised eyebrow look came off on the screen more like a psychedelic serial killer clown than surprised doctor, but he was cleared through security to enter the building.