Survivors

by Rich Goldhaber

  “I’ll talk to Private Duncan. We’ll begin the search for electrical power tonight, and I’ll call you as soon as we have something. Captain Stewart, I’m assuming if we can locate one of our refueling tankers, it has very long range capability.”

  “Yes Sir, I’m sure we can find some at one of the military bases we transferred all of our assets to during the pandemic.”

  “Good, I’ll have Duncan look for a tanker this afternoon. Jim, let’s assume we locate some survivors tonight. If we do, let’s plan on meeting again tomorrow. How about if I come over to see you guys? You can show me around. I’ve heard some good things about what you’ve got going on.”

  Arnie, we’d like the opportunity to show you around. Why don’t you have Sammy fly you over in the helicopter? Then we can fly over to the dairy farm and the food center in Immokalee. I think you’ll be impressed.”

  I then spent a few minutes reviewing our long term plans for starting up the electrical grid and bringing power to his entire airbase.

  “That’s good news Jim,” Connors said. “Since we eliminated the thugs’ presence in Tampa, more survivors have been coming out of the woodwork. We’ve got about 140 people living on or near the airbase.”

  “We’ve increased our population too,” Jessie said, “mostly survivors from the Miami area. It seems everyone has abandoned the cities. They can only make it work in the countryside, close to sources of a food supply. We’ve got almost 800 residents now.”

  Blaine filled up his airplane with fuel, and we headed back to the campus. By the time we arrived in the parking lot, it was time for dinner. With the influx of new residents, Beth had now implemented early and late dining. She greeted us from behind the buffet line. The residents loved her, and she seemed able to make everyone happy. Her expanded crew always had a dessert the kids loved, and there was always an assortment of main courses and vegetables.

  Today their team was serving seafood pasta with fresh-caught shrimp and large chunks of Grouper. When I arrived at the end of the serving line I saw ice cream with fresh berries.

  We arrived near the end of the second seating and sat down at a table with Paul, Margaret, Jessie, and Blaine. I asked Beth to sit with us and relax, and she gladly joined us with a cup of tea.

  Halfway through dinner, Debbie and Ralph approached the table. They wanted to speak to Paul. “Paul, Debbie and I want to get married, and we want to make it official. We’d appreciate it if you could perform a ceremony sometime tomorrow?”

  Paul smiled and rose from his seat to congratulate both of them. “Of course I can. How about in the afternoon.”

  Before they could answer, Beth said, “Absolutely not; if you’re going to have a wedding, then we need to celebrate the occasion, and I’m going to need to meet with both of you to plan the party. I’m going to need at least two days to prepare everything, and don’t argue with me; there’s going to be a party.”

  I added, “You heard her; she’s the boss; we’re going to have a party in your honor.” Debbie was laughing; it was the first time I had seen her smile since she was raped. They both left our table holding hands and clearly in love. I looked at Jessie, and she had tears in her eyes; and I knew why. We needed to talk about our relationship, and I think I knew how the conversation was going to play out. I saw Patty at a nearby table and asked her to join us.

  I said, “Debbie and Ralph are going to get married. Can you work up a marriage license; something very official looking?”

  Patty looked delighted, “You bet I can; I’ll have it ready tomorrow.” Hunter was the next to arrive with a big bowl of ice cream and slices of strawberries. “Look what Beth made for me? She’s the greatest.”

  He leaned over and gave her a big kiss, and Beth’s smile would last for the next week. As he left the table I reminded him to finish his homework.

  After dinner, Jessie and I went for a walk along the lake. She surprised me as she was quite adept at doing. “We can’t get married, not now anyway.”

  I waited for a clarification. We walked another quarter-mile before she elaborated. It won’t look good for a husband and wife to both be governors. It will set a bad precedent, and there’re too many things happening for one of us to resign. I’ll be okay as long as you tell me you want to get married.”

  We stopped right there and I looked at her in the fading twilight. “When you’re ready, I’m ready; just tell me when, and I’ll have Beth start baking the cake.”

  She was crying now, and she wrapped her arms around my neck and enveloped me with a special kiss. “I love you!” she said.

  I kissed her again and said, “I love you too; you’re one very special lady.”

  Chapter 39

  Arnie Connors called me a little after eight o’clock. “We found two areas with electricity. One is out in California in a place called Corcoran. It’s about thirty miles north of Bakersfield. The second is in Massachusetts, a place called Rutland. It’s in dairy farm country about forty miles west of Boston. It looks like about a couple hundred people are living there. Duncan will be assessing the size of both communities as soon as it gets light.”

  “So are you flying over today?” “You bet. We’ll be there in about an hour.”

  “Okay, have Sammy land in the parking lot. We’ll be waiting for you.” I gathered the governors together, and we were waiting in the parking lot just as Sammy Lafayette circled over the campus. With some fairly obvious hand signals we directed him to a vacant corner. A crowd had gathered out of curiosity. Most of the residents recognized Sammy and Ami, and they had heard of Major Connors but had never met him.

  We started out in the dining tent, and Beth treated Arnie, Beth, and Sammy to a batch of blueberry pancakes and fresh squeezed orange juice. Arnie thanked her. “Beth, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  Beth smiled and answered, “You haven’t died Major; you’ve just come to the campus.” It was a beautiful day, so we decided to meet in the shade of the tent, close to Beth’s endless supply of freshly-baked sweet rolls. Arnie told the other governors what he had told me earlier in the morning. Ami added, “We’ve located a tanker at a military airfield in Arizona. The base will have plenty of jet fuel. I’ll want to have Blaine fly as copilot.”

  I called Blaine, who was working on his Piper Cub, and asked him to join us. He arrived a few minutes later, and we continued planning our trip to the west coast.

  Manny asked, “Should we bring them some fresh produce?” I answered, “They probably don’t have any problems with fresh produce. The area they’ve settled in is a big agricultural section of the state.”

  Major Connors said, “We’ll bring them satellite phones. That might mean more to them than anything else, and we’ll give them phone directories with all of our telephone numbers.”

  I asked, “Does that mean you’re going along Arnie?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Just make sure Beth fixes us box lunches.” “Arnie,” I said, “why don’t we let Blaine and Ami plan our trip while the rest of us show you around?”

  We took Arnie Connors everywhere. We spent extra time visiting the classrooms where the teachers stopped their daily lessons to introduce the major. Greg was teaching organic chemistry to the oldest kids, and the major stopped to give them all a pep-talk about the importance of their studies to the future of our country. They all listened intently.

  By far, the most impressive part of the tour was the visit to Mary’s emergency operating room. She explained how her medical team was operating on dogs to learn various surgical techniques. She insisted the major fly over any of his people who needed medical care. He seemed genuinely appreciative and told her he would have Sammy Lafayette set up a medivac transport service with his helicopter.

  Sammy flew Jessie, Manny, Arnie, and me over to Immokalee and Manny took our guests on a tour of the fields of fruits and vegetables growing and the irrigation system powered by our solar arrays. There were over fifty people now helping Manny out and they al
l seemed to be enjoying their work. I tried to say thank you to each person I met along the tour.

  We ate lunch with Manny’s people, and once again Major Connors thanked all of the workers for their efforts. He spoke about how many of his people were suffering from malnutrition until they began receiving food from Immokalee. The major received a standing ovation and everyone went back to work with renewed enthusiasm.

  After lunch we got back in the helicopter and flew over to the dairy farm. Barbara met us as we landed, and I introduced Major Connors, and Sammy Lafayette. She led her guests over to an electric golf cart. Jessie and I decided to stay at the farmhouse and talk to some of our people.

  Connie Field was in the barn running the electric milking machines. She was one of the Marco Island survivors. She greeted us and explained how the milking machine worked. I asked her how she liked working at the farm.

  “It’s funny,” she said. “I thought I’d give it a try because I’d never been on a farm. I’m a city girl. Working on a farm sounded romantic, and I liked Barbara. Let me tell you, it’s hard work here, but I love it. I think I’m going to stay here after my month’s up.”

  As Jessie and I wandered around, we heard the same story from many of the volunteers. A couple of our people said they would not stay after their tour was up, but the vast majority loved the experience.

  After visiting the cattle ranch, the tour returned, and each of her guests was carrying small containers filled with fresh eggs. Barbara took us inside the farmhouse and served us wine and some of her now-famous cheese. Arnie sampled the cheese and smiled, “I’m not sure whether I’m going to miss Beth’s pancakes or this cheese more; it’s delicious Barbara.”

  It was almost three o’clock before we made it back to the campus. Blaine and Ami were still sitting at the same table planning our trip. We sat down, and Beth immediately showed up with some freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies.

  Margaret came up to our table and showed me the latest spreadsheet. “We had four people come in from Miami today, she said. “They said it’s been chaos. They finally ran out of food and decided to leave in the middle of the night. There are a lot of gangs still prowling the city looking for drugs and abducting women.”

  Margaret looked very tired, and she said she was getting over a cold. It didn’t look like a cold to me; she just looked very tired. I turned my attention back to our planning. Captain Stewart and Blaine would be ready to leave the day after tomorrow. Blaine wanted to assemble a pump we could use to transfer jet fuel from underground storage tanks. We might need it if the military field in Arizona didn’t have a working fuel pumping system.

  We agreed to meet at the MacDill airbase in two days at nine o’clock. Our visitors from MacDill then left. We walked them out to Sammy’s helicopter and waved to them as the chopper rose up into the sky.

  Chapter 40

  During breakfast, everyone was talking about the wedding. People at the dairy farm were all planning on driving in and spending the night. Beth, who seemed to be the self-appointed wedding planner, said the ceremony would be conducted on the beach. She and Debbie along with Ralph had driven into downtown Naples yesterday and found a beautiful wedding gown and tuxedo for the groom.

  People were already setting up extra tables to allow everyone in the community to eat their dinners at the same time. Beth had found a dozen willing volunteers to help prepare the special dinner for the almost nine-hundred residents. The kitchens in many apartments were being utilized. I finally realized it was the first true celebration in our community since the beginning of the pandemic. I knew there would be very little work completed today, and I certainly approved.

  Then, as if to prove me wrong, Greg sat down at our table with a broad grin on his face. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a square sheet of clear glass. “We did it!” he said, “It has the same physical properties as the Opti-Solar supplier’s photovoltaic cell.”

  “How did you do it?” I asked. “We heated quartz crystals to over 900 degrees in the presence of gaseous hydrochloric acid. The acid formed a salt with the impurities, and then we filtered out the salt.”

  “So what’s the next step?” I asked. “We just finished the hardest part. Now we take the molten pure quartz and dope it with boron and phosphorous. The cooled glass, when exposed to sunlight, produces a movement of electrons which creates the electricity.”

  I barely understood a word he was saying. “Wow, that’s great Greg. Can I borrow the sample of glass?”

  He handed it to me in exchange for my pledge not to break it. He wanted to keep it as a memento. I placed it carefully in my pocket.

  I spent the morning with Jessie planning what we would talk about at our meeting with the west coast survivors. I wanted it to be much more than a social visit. The highest priority was to see if both groups could exchange some experts to solve some of our common problems, and of course there was the bigger issue of how to put the country back together again.

  Lunch was just plates of cold cuts and bread with a request to make our own sandwiches. We all understood the kitchen staff had higher priorities than our lunch. Mary was eating lunch, and I asked her to take a look at Margaret.

  The wedding ceremony was scheduled to begin at 4:00 p.m. By 3:30 p.m., the designated area on the beach was filled with adults and children. A beautiful white canopy with pots of multicolored flowers had been placed near the water. It was the perfect location for the service. People had brought blankets and towels to sit on. Jessie and I sat in the middle of the crowd.

  A few minutes before the appointed hour, a middle-aged woman from Cape Coral walked up to the front and began playing the violin. She was excellent; I had forgotten about the importance of music in a society. She played a variety of famous classical pieces and then stopped momentarily.

  She began playing again, and I recognized the love song from Romeo and Juliet. Suddenly Paul appeared at the podium and a moment later Ralph dressed in his tuxedo walked slowly up the center aisle to the front of the gathered crowd. He looked very nervous.

  One of the little girls, she was about three years old, followed Ralph. She was dressed in a beautiful pink dress and had some white flowers in her hair. She was carrying the rings on a pillow, and when she reached the front, she stood next to Ralph.

  The violinist then began playing here comes the bride. Everyone looked back at Debbie who had suddenly appeared at the rear. She looked absolutely beautiful in a long white traditional bridal gown, and I guessed her female friends had spent hours getting her ready.

  Debbie walked slowly up the aisle dazzling the guests. All of us had been working so hard we’d forgotten what well-dressed people looked like. Finally Paul started the service.

  “Residents, we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of two very special people. Our community has suffered much sadness over the last six months, and it feels wonderful to be able to celebrate something as a community. The bride and the groom have requested a very simple service so I will save all of you from hearing a long sermon or readings from scriptures.

  “I would just like to tell the lovely bride and groom how much the community has grown to love both of you since you arrived, and I know you will both continue to make us proud.”

  Paul then held up a document and prepared to read it. This, I am happy to say, is the first Marriage Certificate for our community. I know it is official because Patty prepared it, and the new official seal of our community has been embossed on it. Let me read it to you.

  “It is hereby certified that on the onehundred-sixty-third day of the beginning of our community, Ralph Emory Becker and Debbie Ann Foster have come together in the sight of the residents and have been enjoined into matrimony before witnesses, and we have set our seal and signature hereupon this certificate as proof that such union and ceremony did take place at the location known as the Campus in the state of Florida.

  “This contract has been signed by both parties and witnessed by Patty and me. Judy
, may I please have the rings.”

  Little Judy handed Paul the pillow with the rings, and Paul handed one ring to Debbie and the other to Ralph. They both took turns placing the rings on each other.

  “Now, therefore, by the power vested in me by myself, and the exchanging of rings, and the signing of the marriage certificate, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Ralph, you may kiss the bride.”

  To shouts of approval and a standing ovation, Ralph kissed Debbie and they walked back down the aisle hand in hand and disappeared into the apartment Debbie had left. Beth stood up and announced dinner would be served in thirty minutes.

  Jessie was crying and I squeezed her hand as we both walked back to our apartments. Jasmine and Hunter had loved the ceremony. Janet and the other teachers had found new clothes for all the kids, and they were all dressed up for the special occasion. Debbie and Ralph were waiting in a receiving line to greet all of the guests.

  Beth and her expanded staff had prepared Beef Wellington and huge Red Snappers as the main course, and a group of four musicians were playing in the background. When Beth’s staff rolled out the wedding cake, the guests were in shock. It was one of the most beautiful wedding cakes I had ever seen. It would have been fitting for royalty. Everyone chanted Beth, Beth, Beth…. Beth walked out from the kitchen with a woman named Irene. Beth motioned for silence and then explained the cake was Irene’s project. The crowd rose to their feet and Irene turned beet red. Then the residents were demanding a speech from the bride and groom. They finally walked up to the front, hand in hand, and the guests became very quiet.

  They were both crying and then Ralph spoke, “Debbie and I don’t really know what to say. We are both overwhelmed. Two days ago we asked Paul if he would marry us. We were ready that day, but Beth wouldn’t allow it. She demanded we all celebrate, and she with her helpers have created the happiest day of our lives. I know there were so many people who helped make this celebration possible, and Debbie and I want to thank you all.”