Dark Grid

by David C. Waldron

  “Actually, yes sir, if I could I’d like to take advantage of both. Maya’s been squirming for a couple of minutes too,” Josh replied.

  “Ewww, gross!” Maya said and slugged him in the arm. Man, he was getting beat up a lot the last couple of days.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard it before but I’m not Sir, I work for a living,” Kyle replied. “We save Sir for the officers, none of whom are here right now. Typically we refer to each other by our rank. That’s more than sufficient respect, we know how much it means to have attained it and there’s no disrespect in not being called Sir or Ma’am. For that matter you can feel free to call me Kyle or Mr. Ramirez if that works for you.”

  “In that case, Staff Sergeant, I need to pee please.”

  Kyle couldn’t help but laugh at the combination of formality and casual address. “Carry on, son. The bathrooms are down the hallway to the right on the right and left side. The soda machine is at the end of the same hallway. While everyone is taking care of business I’ll go get the First Sergeant. If we could all be back here in five minutes we can go through this all over again.”

  …

  Everyone but Joel and Rachael had left for either the bathroom or to get a soda or both. “Joel, what’s wrong? You haven’t said anything since you asked about the GPS.”

  “You haven’t said anything either, why’s something wrong with me?” Joel snapped.

  “Well, your sunny demeanor aside, you usually aren’t this quiet. You were much more involved back at the house yesterday and I doubt you’re still dwelling on the Carey situation. Personally, unless I have something specific to add, I’m going to let the men handle things for a while. I don’t feel like I’m bringing a whole lot to the table, Joel. I feel like the kids and I are baggage right now--I’d rather not call attention to that if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Well hon, now you know how I feel. The longer we sit here the more I feel the same way. I’m a cubicle dweller. I manage servers all day long for a living. You can at least cook; what can I do? I don’t see a whole lot of server consolidation going on in the next couple of months, do you? I can’t see myself bringing up a ton of new web servers for the next killer app in time for the Christmas rush either.”

  “We like to camp--great, super. I’m 38 years old with a bad back and I’m bi-polar, which reminds me I haven’t taken my medication today and I think I forgot it last night, which probably explains my piss-poor outlook on life right now. What happens when the three-month supply of our daily meds run out if the power isn’t back up? Mail-Med isn’t delivering right now and I doubt they’ll be delivering without payment. Do we rob a pharmacy and do we do it today before everybody else thinks of it? What happens when I blow out my back lifting a…whatever…and I don’t have any more Lortab? What happens when your birth control expires?” Joel shook his head in frustration.

  “Hon, what’s going to happen to your mom and my dad, both of whom are diabetic? They’re practically to the point of insulin dependence--and needing to use those pens. Without refrigeration they’re good for what, three months? Then what? I know there’s power to be had, but there’s no way to get it to people.

  Joel slumped backwards in his chair and scrubbed his hands over his face. Rachael knew exactly how he felt; she just hadn’t put it into words yet. This was just a microcosm of what was going on or likely to happen. “Joel, that’s what you bring to the table. You are thinking big picture and you aren’t afraid to voice the concerns that the rest of us keep to ourselves. I’ve been stewing about some of those same things, especially the birth control, but didn’t know how to bring it up. Maybe try to be a bit more tactful but don’t keep it all inside.”

  “Ok, that’s fair. It’s just that the longer I sat here with nothing to contribute the more like a lump I felt.”

  “Just don’t let it rule your life, Joel; it’s still just the second day. I love you and I need you, in all your mood-swingy, sore back, receding-hairline glory.”

  “Is my hairline really receding?” Joel asked, a bit of a whine in his voice.

  “For heaven’s sake, you’re as bad as a woman--and I should know!” Rachael put her arm around Joel and her head on his shoulder as Karen and Sheri came back in.

  “You look to be in a slightly better mood, Joel. Rachael give you a pep talk?” Karen had a couple of Cokes and slid one over to Rachael as she sat down.

  “You could say that. I was starting to feel sorry for myself there near the end. I guess all these military types, and Sheri, you and Chuck, were making me feel superfluous.” Joel was eyeing Rachel’s Coke.

  “Open it before you drool on yourself, Og, just leave some for me. Never mind that you should have been a gentleman and gotten up and gotten one for me yourself,” Rachael cocked her head slightly to one side and ever so slightly down, looking ‘up’ at Joel and arching her left eyebrow. In other words, giving him what is known by men the world over as The Look.

  “Oh Lord, have mercy on my soul. Civilization as we know it may have come to an end at 3:14 yesterday morning and I’m sleeping on the couch because I didn’t get a Coke during our five minute break. I am so doomed!”

  “What’s this about civilization coming to an end when the power went out at 3:14 yesterday?”

  All eyes turned to the open door and it was all everyone present could do not to immediately stand up, just by reflex. First Sergeant Mallory Jensen had been in the Army for thirty-one years, and was one of the full time staff for the Tennessee National Guard stationed at the Nashville Armory. She had a presence about her that commanded not only respect, but immediate, absolute obedience.

  “Well, that went well. Now that we have the preliminaries out of the way maybe we can get to the details,” Kyle said as everyone continued to walk into the room.

  “Can it, Ramirez. I’ve been up since three-something yesterday morning. The coffee today is worse than usual and hit its peak effectiveness about three hours ago. Good to see you, Eric. I hope that continues to be a true statement.”

  “First Sergeant, it’s good to see you too, although I wish the circumstances were different,” Eric replied.

  “Wonderful, you’re IRR but you’re still calling me First Sergeant, not Mallory. What the fu…sorry, kids present, hell happened that has you showing up today and Ramirez coming to find me, then? Wait, before you begin, let’s get some introductions out of the way. I think you have all deduced by now that I’m First Sergeant Mallory Jensen. Right now I’m both the senior ranking enlisted staff, or NCO, which means Non-commissioned Officer for those of you who aren’t familiar with military jargon, and the senior ranking staff, because there are no Commissioned Officers present. Talk to me, Eric.”

  “It’s a long story, how much do you want and in what order?” Eric asked

  Before Mallory could respond, Joel interjected, “And there’s a whole lot more to discuss than we got through with just Staff Sergeant Ramirez.”

  Chuck and Eric both looked over at Joel-- relieved that he’d finally chimed in. “In that case, Eric, why don’t you see how much you can debrief me in fifteen minutes, with any additional input, and then we’ll get some chow, sorry, lunch. Afterwards, we can reconvene and go into the details.”

  Fifteen minutes later, give or take twenty seconds, Eric wrapped up his debrief.

  Mallory had sat with her elbows on the table and steepled index fingers at her lips for the entire fifteen minutes, except to ask the occasional question for clarification. When Eric finished, she sat there for a full minute with her lips pursed, eyes squinted just a bit, and a thousand-meter stare. “Ok, clearly I’m going to need more coffee. Let’s get fed.”

  As they walked out of the conference room, Chuck smelled lunch cooking and realized just how hungry he was. He was a snacker and this three meal a day business was going to kill him. It smelled like chicken, potatoes, green beans, okra, cornbread and rolls. He thought maybe he even smelled brownies? As it turned out, there were both chicken and roast bee
f, green beans, peas, fried okra, cornbread, fresh yeast rolls, fresh mashed potatoes (not instant, no sir), fresh baked macaroni and cheese and yes, brownies for desert.

  The head cook was a chef and part owner of a restaurant--hence the fresh mashed potatoes and from-scratch yeast rolls. One of the benefits of serving in the guard was that those you served with, many times, did what they did in the guard for a living. The diesel mechanics actually did it as a day job; so they were intimately familiar with the engines on the weekends as well. The cooks were chefs, and made really good food. The communications guys were computer geeks and electrical engineers who could fix and make stuff up on the fly that would blow your mind.

  “Excuse me, First Sergeant Jensen, does the Army always eat like this?” Josh asked Mallory.

  “No son,” Mallory chuckled. “This is one of the perks of being in the guard. Our head cook is part owner of a restaurant. Out in the field we’d be eating MREs, meals in a box, and unfortunately they aren’t like Lunchables. They aren’t horrible but we miss Sergeant Walker something fierce.”

  Joel excused himself and went out to the Suburban to dig through the duffle bag Rachael had packed with their immediate necessities until he found the pocket with their medications. Coming down off of most bi-polar and anti-depressant medications was murder--sometimes literally--especially those that you took twice a day. Missing two in a row would make him, and everyone around him, miserable, right up until they tied him to a chair and gagged him. He took one dose with him and headed back inside. What are we going to do in a couple of months when our supplies of these run out? He wondered.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Back inside, conversations in the mess hall ranged from guardsmen wondering what was going on, to when the Governor would call to officially activate everyone, to how long it would last, to whether or not it would affect this or that sporting event. It was nice to hear normal conversation interspersed with the speculation. The First Sergeant was sitting at their table, but the conversation remained completely casual.

  “So you still haven’t decided between Sprint and AT&T huh? I’d heard that they both want you, but you keep pitting them against each other. How long do you thing that’s going to work, Tripp?” Kyle was giving Eric a hard time about still not having a full-time job.

  “I swear, worm poop, that’s what it says right on the bottle. No kidding, liquefied worm poop. I might never know how well it works but there are whole discussion boards on the Internet that swear by it. Smells to high heaven though.” Karen was telling Sheri and Rachael about her latest foray into home gardening.

  “Actually, there are quite a few Sergeants in the Army. You start as a Private, and you have no insignia on your uniform at all. Your goal is to become a Private 2 as quickly as possible because frankly, a Private, or Buck Private is lower than whale crap and that’s on the bottom of the ocean, son.” It was obvious that Mallory had had this talk more times than she could count but she was still giving Josh and Maya her attention while taking in the conversations around her.

  At 12:15 everyone headed back to the conference room. On the way there the First Sergeant disappeared, and when she showed back up she had was joined by three more guardsmen. “I need my platoon leaders up to speed. Gentlemen, please have a seat. I had Staff Sergeant Ramirez brief them at the end of lunch so they may actually be further along than I am.

  “Mr. Taylor, you mentioned that there were more things to discuss than just the initial power going out via the grid going down and the collapse surrounding that. The floor is yours, Sir.”

  “The specifics that need to be addressed that I’ve come up with begin with medications.” Joel looked around the table because he didn’t want to appear to just be talking to the First Sergeant. “People, like myself, for example, who are on anti-depressants or who are in chronic pain and on pain killers or who are, and this is where it gets really serious, diabetic or on chemotherapy or immune-compromised and in need of constant antibiotics. In some cases, there is a vast store of those medications sitting in warehouses or even in pharmacies that can simply be given out manually if people present their expired bottle.

  “A lot of those drugs--like insulin and chemotherapy drugs--need refrigeration, at least some of the time. Without it we are going to start losing people. Just insulin-dependent diabetics are between two and three million people. That’s a ballpark figure off the top of my head from research when we found out my dad was diabetic. Both Rachael’s mom and my dad are type 2, but type 1’s need insulin.”

  Joel held up his hand and two fingers. “Next, we have hospitals--which may or may not be on generator power--but even if by some chance the generators are working, and the equipment inside wasn’t damaged, and is online and functional, are only going to last as long as the fuel. How long is that rated for? Anyone know? I know our datacenter at work was rated for eighteen hours before we needed to have diesel standing by and constantly coming in thereafter. If it was natural gas, that’s great, as long as the pressure stays up, which it won’t because there’s…dramatic reverb…no power.” Joel took a drink of the warming Coke.

  “But back to people and medicines. People on chemo won’t be able to get it anymore. I have no idea what the long term outlook for those people is but it’s obviously not good or they wouldn’t be on chemo. Same for the folks needing to be on antibiotics; you don’t do that to yourself if you don’t need to.

  “Like I said, I’ve been diagnosed as needing anti-depressants and being bi-polar. Maybe if I just exhaust myself with physical labor every day I’ll be so tired I’ll be fine but there’s a bunch of folks out there that are pretty messed up. I’m on a pretty low dose of the stuff I take but there are people out there that take lithium every day. I personally don’t want them to miss a dose because when they do they’re going to have a psychotic episode.”

  Nobody was saying anything because everyone seemed fascinated by what Joel was saying, and he was just getting warmed up.

  “I would guess that within a couple of weeks pharmacies will be raided for anything they have. It will start with narcotics, dare I say obviously, and in the rush for the good stuff a lot of useful stuff will get ruined. Within a month the remains will have been picked over fairly thoroughly by people who got desperate when their thirty-day supply ran out. Two weeks after that, if not sooner, if it was a life-sustaining medication, those people will have died. The exception will be people like me and my family who get ours through the mail and have a ninety-day supply, but the end result is the same without the picking over window at the end.”

  The only noise in the room was the electronic ticking of the battery powered clock on the wall next to the door for a good fifteen seconds. It was, not surprisingly, the First Sergeant who spoke first. “And you don’t write horror stories for a living, correct Mr. Taylor? You’ve been thinking about this for how long? A couple of hours? A day and a half tops? With all due respect, Sir, please remind me never to get you drunk. You have a scary, scary mind.”

  “First Sergeant,” Kyle started.

  “No, Ramirez, there is no way out of this Mickey Mouse outfit, don’t even ask,” Mallory didn’t even turn to look at him.

  “Right,” Kyle said.

  Everyone laughed, which was the point.

  “Mr. Taylor, you said the specifics begin with medications, what did you mean by that?”

  “Well, that was what I was originally focused on when I started down this train of thought but the more I thought about it the more things came to mind. For instance, this Armory doesn’t seem to be the most secure base in the world--not that you all wouldn’t do a fine job defending it but the location just sucks. I mean it’s in downtown Nashville for crying out loud!”

  “Like the old saying goes: When seconds count, the police are just minutes away, and that’s only going to get worse. I think people are going to start counting on the military for protection and this is where they’ll turn. If they can’t get refuge or relief or whatever i
t is they think they need here, it might turn ugly; and that’s a big perimeter out there to defend against an armed populace.

  “Then, going back to the first point I made; well, it’s June. We’re in the South. If my calculations are right, the first large waves of dead bodies could be in six weeks or so, which would be the end of July. In the South--in the middle of the summer. We’re going to have a major health problem on our hands in very short order.” Joel looked around the room again. “People who aren’t used to the heat without air conditioning are going to succumb like they do every time there is a blackout for more than twelve hours or so, except this is going to last for months, potentially. And this is nationwide. The entire country is going through this. Everywhere. Even the people who have windmills and solar power are going to be victims of this, because as soon as the rest of the neighborhood sees the lights on they will become victims of a different kind. It’s that old ‘Twilight Zone’ episode where the only guy in the neighborhood to build a bomb shelter gets it torn down by everybody trying to get inside.” Joel had to stop again, his throat was getting dry and he finished the Coke.

  “Ok, Mr. Taylor, all good points. I’m going to ask you to stop at this point, not because they aren’t valid points, not because they aren’t things that need to be thought about or even acted on. We can, however, only do so much at one time and the human mind can only assimilate so much in one sitting. There is a reason that there is a Joint Chiefs of Staff after all, we don’t leave it ALL up to one person, really we don’t. Yes the President has the football but even he doesn’t go around issuing orders just because.

  “I would like to continue picking your brain and have you continue to think about it because you are, frankly, quite good at coming up with these things, scary as that is. I would be surprised to find out that all of this hasn’t been thought of in infinite, gory detail by some group of eggheads in DC. We may even have an OP Plan here that tells us how to deal with it. It’s also probably on the one computer that wasn’t on the UPS or it’s backed up on a tape drive that will take us two weeks to track down and get access to and print out.