“I believe God has given us this chance to start over, to work together to form a more perfect community, to create an environment where we value a person not by the color of their skin or their ethnicity but by their words and deeds.
“Now I would like for us all to share a moment of silence to honor all of those people in the world who have fallen to the pandemic. Let us silently pray to God, each in our own way.
There was absolute silence in the audience. After a minute Paul spoke again. “My fellow residents, I am here to serve the spiritual needs of this community. I am here to offer assistance to anyone at any time. As for getting together for some type of religious service, I’m open to your suggestions, but with the understanding that whatever we do will show deference to all religions.”
I looked around the meeting and every person old enough to understand Paul’s words were in tears. He had been able to encapsulate all of our feelings into just a few words, powerful words that would be long-remembered in our community.
“And now my fellow residents, let us go forth with new resolve; let us create a new community, a new country, and yes a new earth together and with mutual love for one another.”
As Paul ended his sermon, everyone stood up and clapped their hands. Everyone walked up to the front of the room and embraced the man. I waited at the back of the line behind Margaret. The little frail lady stood proudly in front of him. “Thank you Paul. You spoke from your heart tonight, and whatever the person’s religious views were, you touched us all. I think you’re right; God is giving us one last chance to get it right. I think all of us know that to be true thanks to your words.”
Margaret then embraced the man and kissed him once on each cheek. The emotion of the moment finally caught up to Paul, and they both held their embrace for a long time with tears in their eyes and hope in their hearts.
Margaret finally left, and I sat down next to Paul. We looked at each other and he finally asked, “How do you think it went?”
“You brought the house down my friend. You did something I thought was impossible. You appealed to every religious and non-religious person here, saying what most of us have been unable to put into words. I think you have created a new standard for religious leaders in our new world. Some people have the gift of being able to speak from the heart, but tonight you spoke from your soul.”
The two of us just sat there and watched the residents as they walked to their apartments. I wondered what the future of our little community would be like. I thought of my wife Gloria and my daughter Sarah. I thought of all the things we had accomplished in such a short period of time, and finally I thought of the people who had lost their lives here today and the frailty of man. I considered all these things, and then I left to tuck in Jasmine and Hunter and get some much-needed rest.
Part Two
Chapter 35
It was over four months since the battle to save our community, and I was making notes for our regular morning governor’s meeting. It was difficult to imagine, but the campus was in pretty good shape. The sewage treatment problem had been resolved, and things were back to normal, at least concerning our sanitary sewer. Manny’s people had been harvesting the first of the new crops requested by our residents. The dairy farm had expanded and several new farms in the area had become our suppliers of fresh meats, poultry, and many dairy products, the best of which was a delightful cheese. Stan had been managing a fleet of fishing boats out of Fort Myers Beach, and their weekly trips had been supplying the community with fresh fish.
The most noteworthy fact, however, was all the kids seemed to be enjoying their schoolwork. Most importantly, the older kids interacted well with the guest lecturers, who were imparting a love for each subject probably not possible in the traditional public education model.
Our daily meeting started as always with status reports on our major projects. Manny started things off. “I visited the dairy farm yesterday. Barbara insisted we plant our corn crop in the next few weeks. I found seeds for feed corn and sweet corn for the campus. We identified a great field for the corn, but it needs to be plowed and prepared before we plant the seeds. Bill, I’m going to need your help getting some of the farm equipment up and running.”
Bill answered, “One of Stan’s people is probably the best. I’ll talk to him.” Manny continued, “One more thing, Beth talked to me this morning. Some bugs got into her supply of flour in the warehouse. A one-year supply has been ruined. She estimates we have only six months of flour left. The problem is wheat won’t grow well in our climate, so if we can’t find a supply of flour, we’re going to have to switchover to cornbread.”
“Okay, I said, let’s come back to this after we get the updates. Bill, how’s the photovoltaic cell project coming?”
“We’ve got the cell efficiencies up to 70% of the Opti-Solar cells. The problem still appears to be the purity of the quartz. Greg thinks he knows what the problem is, and he thinks we’ll be good to go in the next month. He needs to solve the problem because we’re very low on solar arrays.”
“What’s the backup if he can’t fix the problem?” “We’ve identified another photovoltaic cell supplier in the Atlanta area. We could try to confiscate their inventory.”
It was George’s turn. “As you all know, Bill and I have formed a working group to figure out the long term solution to our energy needs. We’ve gotten it down to three possible solutions to the problem.”
“Let’s hear them,” I said. “Our first option is to activate the natural gas pipeline running south from Georgia. That means powering up several pumping stations along the route, and of course that will require more solar arrays. But the good news is the Fort Myers power plant uses natural gas.
“The second option is nuclear power. There’s a nuclear power plant in Saint Lucie, Florida. It’s northeast of Lake Okeechobee on the east coast. We’ll still need a solar array to start it up, and I don’t know the first thing about nuclear power, except it’s dangerous.
“The third option is kind of crazy, but also novel. Stan came up with the idea. He says there’s a strong water current in the Gulf of Mexico just a mile off shore. He wants to put something like wind turbines underwater. The water current would power the water turbines and high voltage electrical towers above the water would bring the power here. What’s interesting about the concept is the water is much denser than air, so one water turbine can generate maybe twenty times the power of a wind turbine.”
Jessie asked, “What more information do we need to be able to make a decision?” George answered, “We’ve got the plans of the gas pipeline from Teco, the natural gas utility. We need to figure out how to startup the pumping stations.”
I asked, “Where’s the closest pumping station?”
“Just north of Fort Myers and alongside Interstate 75.” “So why don’t you try to start one pumping station,” I said. “At least you’ll get an idea of the magnitude of the project.”
George and Bill both agreed, and we moved along to Jessie. “We did surgery on a wild dog yesterday. We removed both kidneys and then sewed them back in place. The dog lived; at least he was alive this morning.”
“Where did you get the dog?” I asked. “He was bothering the children when they were playing outside. He looked dangerous so we trapped it and brought it to the Science Building. Right now our goal is to do one operation each week, and by the end of the year we hope to be able to place a stent or do simple open heart surgery. We figure heart disease is the biggest potential risk in our population.”
“So let’s go back to the flour problem. What should we do?” Jessie spoke up first. “Growing wheat is a Midwestern skill. I think we go see Major Connors and train his spy satellite on Kansas. I know there’s a lot of wheat grown there. We can search for survivors in the farm belt. Then we can take a trip there in Blaine’s airplane and trade flour for electrical power and citrus.”
“Does Blaine’s airplane have the range?” I asked. Jessie was ready with the
answer. “I talked to him as soon as I heard about the bugs in the flour. We can make it one-way without refueling, but we’ll need to refuel wherever we land, but Blaine thinks that won’t be a problem as long as he brings a generator and pump along with us.”
We talked through the issue and then Jessie clinched the deal. “Look guys, we’re going to have to expand our contacts, and we have the energy technology everyone will need. It will be a winwin situation.”
Our morning meeting was over and Jessie stayed for a one on one. “What are you doing the rest of the day?”
“Nothing planned. Why?”
“Let’s go hunting; I want to talk to you.”
“Something serious?” “Maybe.”
Chapter 36
We took a U-Haul and headed for a heavily wooded area just east of the campus. Jessie had her bow and arrows, and I was carrying my Remington 740 Classic with a telescopic site. Jessie said, “Marco told me he saw a herd of deer here last week.”
I let Jessie choose the spot where we sat down on the grass against a tree and waited for an unsuspecting Bambi to arrive. Somehow I understood hunting for our dinner was not the real reason for our little adventure.
Jessie was silent for a long time, and then she suddenly turned her head and kissed me on the lips. “Why did you do that?” I asked.
“Because I love you stupid. I have since the first day when we were in your swimming pool together.”
I didn’t know how to respond, and Jessie didn’t give me time to think about what had just happened. She pushed me back onto the ground and kissed me again. My lips and tongue screamed of an urgent desire I hadn’t felt for a long time. I loved her like a sister, and I hadn’t considered sex as part of that love. I reacted by wrapping her in my arms and squeezing her almost to the point of pain.
Her hands were on my face caressing my cheeks. Without a spoken word, she unbuckled my belt and pulled down my pants and briefs. She stood up and pulled down her shorts and underwear and then straddled my waist. It was all happening too fast; it was raw emotion.
When it was all over I thought about the first time Gloria and I had sex. It had been just like this, not a conscious decision to do it, but rather an impulsive reaction to a romantic moment in a movie we were watching in her apartment.
You’d think I would feel guilt, or maybe I should have waited longer to respect my wife’s memory; but you know what, love doesn’t work like that. This certainly wasn’t planned on my part, and after so many years of marriage to Gloria, I knew she would understand; and if she was looking down from heaven at what had just happened, she might be laughing and asking why it had taken so long for me to see the obvious.
We just lay there for a long time. Jessie was cradled in my arms with her head resting on my chest. I could feel her heart beating against mine. I looked up at the cloudless blue sky. A bird was circling overhead, seemingly floating in space. I kissed her again on the lips. “You taste like strawberries.”
She laughed, “It’s my lipstick; I found it at a beauty shop; they have all kinds of flavors. It was a toss-up between the strawberry and the chocolate.”
“What are you going to do when it’s all gone?” I asked. “I’ll put it on our priority list, and it will be right near the top. I’m thinking just above a new telephone system.”
I laughed at the nonsense of her banter, and I didn’t have a care in the world until something bit me in the ass.
I tossed Jessie unceremoniously to the ground and jumped up. I swatted away a large spider and saw a huge red welt growing larger on my butt. Jessie couldn’t stop laughing. I turned around, and Jessie inspected the damage. I think Mary needs to look at this. It’s really swelling up.
We got dressed, and Jessie put her arm around my neck and kissed me again. The kiss wasn’t passionate, just filled with love. I looked her in the eyes. “What does this mean?” I asked.
“It means it was a good start,” she said.
“I guess this hunting trip is over,” I said. Jessie took out her phone and called Mary. “Hi Mary, Jim and I were hunting, and he just got bitten by a spider. It’s really swollen. Can we meet you at the emergency room?”
Chapter 37
Mary was waiting for us in the Science Building. We walked into the operating room, and with some embarrassment, I pulled down my pants. “Wow,” she said, “that’s about the worst spider bite I’ve ever seen.”
“So what can you give me to relieve the pain? It really hurts.” Mary looked at me with a very serious face. “I checked in the medical books before you got here, and they said the venom should be sucked out, but I can tell you right now, I’m not going to do it.”
Jessie was laughing. “Don’t look at me; I’m not going to suck it out.” They were both laughing now. “Well the next best thing I can do is give you some epinephrine.” She got an EpiPen from a cabinet and stuck me in the ass with the drug. Then she gave me two Tylenol and told me to go home and relax. As we left, I could see Mary and Jessie exchanging a knowing glance. What the hell, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what had happened.
We drove back to the village, and we sat down in lounge chairs outside my apartment. Our two chairs were closer than necessary. Jessie held my hand in hers and said, “That’s not why I took you hunting. I wanted to talk to you about our future; not about you and me, but about our country; and then I don’t know, something just came over me, and I wanted you so much, and I wanted to let you know how I felt. I’ve been holding it in for too long.”
“Jessie, that spider interrupted a very special moment. I knew I had special feelings for you, but I couldn’t bring myself to think of it as a sexual attraction; but it was, and in hindsight, I guess I should have seen the obvious.”
Jessie left to get us both some water. She returned with two cups filled with ice and a pitcher. She poured and I sat back on the lounge chair not knowing what she would say.
I could see her composing her thoughts. This was going to be a very serious discussion. “I’m going to ramble a bit, but I know you’ll understand what I’m getting at.”
“It’s okay; I can tell it’s important to you, and you’ll get it right.” “Okay, think big picture, I mean really big picture. As best as we can tell, there’re a little over 300,000 survivors left in the country. We think they’ve left the large cities because just like us, they realized their survival would depend on being able to live off the land. We instantly became an agricultural community, and other groups of survivors probably did the same thing.
“So we have many pockets of survivors coming together in small communities. Let’s say the average size is 500 people. That means there are 600 communities, mostly just like ours, spread across the country. Unfortunately some of these groups are like the thugs who were killing and raping outside Tampa. Here’s the thing; these bad guys aren’t settling down in an area trying to survive. They’re like nomads, moving around the country taking what they want, living off the work of others, and then moving onto the next victims.
“Long term we’ve got to put this country back together, and it’s going to take decades. How do we do this with all the communities spread all around the country, and more importantly, how do we do it with these bad guys creating havoc?”
“I haven’t thought about it Jessie, but I know you have. What’s your take on it?” “We’ve got to make contact with all the good groups, at least the ones that are thriving? We can’t ever hope to put the country back together unless we have tens of thousands of people working together. There are just too many specialized skills we’ll need. Look at the meeting today. We don’t have a nuclear engineer; we don’t have any experts on the electrical transmission grid; we don’t have a material science expert to make pure quartz for the photovoltaic cells; and we don’t have experts in software programming or solid state devices. They must be out there somewhere, and we need to find them.”
“And how do we do that?” “Okay, here’s my plan. We go talk to Major
Connors. We look for places in the country where they’ve reestablished electrical power. We’ll be able to see lights at night. I’m guessing we should look in the Southwest because they probably use solar power out there, and it’s the easiest way to start things up.”
“So what do we do when we find these places?” “We get Captain Stewart to fly us there. I’ll bet we can find long range military planes, maybe those big refueling tankers. They must be able to fly for days on the fuel they carry. Some of us will make the trip, and we’ll talk to the other groups. We can give them some of those military satellite phones so we can stay in communication with each other. We’ll divide up the work between the groups, and working together we’ll put the country back together one piece at a time.”
I thought about her action plan, and I liked it. “Maybe we form a loose confederation so we can develop a political infrastructure,” I said. “At the end of all this, we’re going to need some legitimate form of government. Let’s visit MacDill tomorrow.”
Chapter 38
Blaine flew us over to MacDill after breakfast. I called them after talking with Jessie, so they were expecting us. We started out in the general’s now air-conditioned conference room. We briefed them on our need for flour and made a list of their needs. Then we got down to the main topic, Jessie’s plan to make contact with other groups.
Major Connors listened to her while asking a few clarifying questions. He thought for a few moments, trying to digest Jessie’s proposal and then spoke. “Jessie, you’re right of course; we’ve been so focused on today’s issues we’ve neglected the long term strategy. We do need to eventually put the country back together; otherwise we’ll wind up as a band of tribes, each with leaders, each competing for vital resources, and that’s a recipe for disaster.
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