Survivors

by Rich Goldhaber

  A man in the back yelled, “Kiss the bride.” Everyone took up the chant and Ralph finally kissed his blushing bride. They cut the cake and then danced together, and then as the party went on and on, they silently left to enjoy their special day privately.

  I walked back into the kitchen and talked to all of the helpers. “On behalf of the community, I just want to tell you all how important this evening is. Your efforts have allowed our citizens to enjoy themselves for the first time in many months. Beth demanded we do this; I failed to recognize the importance, but now I understand. This celebration gave us all a chance to remember what life was like in the best of times, and it brought comfort to us all. You have all done a wonderful job, and our community will long remember this night.”

  I walked over to Beth and gave her a hug. I whispered in her ear, “Thank you, and don’t you ever leave to go make pancakes for Major Connors.”

  “Not to worry Jim; why would I leave my family?” I danced with Jasmine, and Jessie danced with Hunter. The party went on and on. At ten o’clock I dragged the kids off the dance floor, and we walked back to the apartment. Jasmine said, “I’ve never been to a party like that. In our culture, we don’t celebrate this way.”

  I sat Hunter and Jasmine down on Jasmine’s bed. I knelt down so I was looking them in the eye. “Both of you listen to what I’m going to tell you; it’s very important. We are all living in a new world, but it’s important to remember where you came from. Your Native American heritage is something you must always remember. Never forget your roots. The wonder of our country is we are a mixture of many cultures, and each has much to offer our society. You both need to carry on the traditions your people have carried on for thousands of years.”

  They both gave me a family hug, and it really did feel like family.

  Chapter 41

  We took the Piper Cub over to MacDill and taxied over to the Delta 737 being prepped by Captain Stewart and one of Major Connor’s soldiers.

  Arnie Connors asked what Beth had prepared for box lunches. “Leftovers,” I said, “Beef Wellington; we can warm them up in the plane’s microwave oven.”

  It was clear he didn’t believe me. He would be pleasantly surprised by our in-flight food service. Arnie had packed several dozen satellite phones to give to the west coast survivors. Blaine, with my help, transferred a portable fuel-pumping system into the 737’s baggage compartment. After Ami and Blaine walked around the plane giving everything a final inspection, we boarded the aircraft. Blaine and Ami sat up front in the cockpit and Arnie, Jessie, Bill and I sat in the first class section.

  We were airborne a little after nine o’clock and began our cross-country flight. Jessie and I warmed up the lunches in the microwave oven over Texas, and we presented Major Connors with his surprise lunch. “Jim, I’m going to steal Beth from you. In the middle of the night I’m going to sneak in and make her an offer she can’t refuse.”

  Jessie asked, “And what might that offer be Major?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’ll think of something.” Captain Stewart was conserving fuel, and it took almost four hours before we were circling the military field in Arizona. This isolated military base was packed with a variety of military aircraft sent there by MacDill’s commanding officer.

  Ami lined our plane up with the main runway and lowered the flaps. The 737 touched down and taxied to an area of the airbase filled with refueling tankers. We didn’t want to deploy the inflatable escape ramps, so we lowered Blaine down to the ground with a rope and he found a truck with a built-in stairway that he maneuvered alongside our aircraft.

  We stepped out onto the hot tarmac and looked around the airbase. It was deserted. The disease should have left a few survivors, but it was clear they must have left after realizing they couldn’t survive here for an extended period of time.

  Ami checked out several KDC-10 refueling tankers grouped together. She picked one filled with jet-fuel; it looked new and in excellent shape. We transferred all our equipment and luggage into the sparsely appointed aircraft, boarded the plane, and closed the hatch.

  Ami and Blaine completed an extensive preflight check, and an hour later we were headed toward Meadows Field just north of Bakersfield. Ami estimated we had about an hour’s flight, and I spent the time looking out a window in the cockpit searching for any signs of civilization, but flying at 30,000 feet made spotting people difficult.

  We arrived over Bakersfield about noon. Ami extended the flaps and reduced our airspeed to just above stalling. We seemed to glide through the air as we headed for Corcoran. Captain Stewart passed over the city at an altitude of 500 feet. A group of people, surprised by the sudden appearance of an airplane, were jumping up and down in the streets.

  Blaine had rigged one of his parachute messages to a system he had built from a garage door opener. After Ami lowered the landing gear, Blaine pressed the remote control, and the parachute message was released from the landing gear. As we circled the group of survivors, I saw a man run over and pick up the message. We circled the group of people, and the guy reading the message gave us a thumbs up. I hoped it would mean they would be sending people to Meadows Field to pick us up.

  Not surprisingly, Meadows Field was deserted, and Ami taxied the plane up to the terminal. We began unloading our cargo and walked past an unmanned TSA checkpoint and out into a deserted arrival area. Thirty minutes later a caravan of cars sped toward our group and stopped in front of us.

  It felt a little bit like they were welcoming aliens from a flying saucer, and perhaps it was actually pretty close to that. I walked up to the person in the group who was out in front and extended my hand. “Hi, I’m Jim Reed. We’re from Florida, and we thought it was time to make contact with another group of survivors.”

  The middle aged man shook my hand, “I’m Floyd Manning; I guess I’m in charge of our little group. Welcome to Corcoran.”

  Then he pulled me toward him and gave me a manly bear hug. It took us almost ten minutes to make all of the introductions. It was as if two groups each isolated on a deserted island had suddenly come across the other, and realized they were not alone in the world.

  We split up and the Corcoran people drove us back to their little community of survivors. I drove with Floyd, and I told him briefly about how we located his community from the lights during the night. When we arrived in their small town, he led us into a small building he said was their town hall, but not before he stopped and addressed a group of about two-hundred residents who had heard the airplane overhead and naturally wanted to know what was happening.

  Floyd said, “These people are from Florida. There’s another community of survivors there, and they wanted to make contact with us. We’ll keep everyone informed with a town hall meeting later in the day. We’ll ring the bell when we’re ready to meet.”

  Of course they weren’t prepared to meet us, and Floyd set up an impromptu meeting in his conference room. He asked one of his people to see if he could find some refreshments for their guests.

  There were six of us, and with their leadership team of eight, we filled the conference room. After settling in, I began the conversation. “Let me first give you a little history of our community, and then we’d certainly like to hear about what you’ve been doing.”

  Between the six of us, we spent the better part of two hours telling the Corcoran people all about how our community started. Major Connors did the same for the MacDill airbase.

  When we talked about our run in with the thugs from Tampa, Floyd interrupted. “We’ve got the same problem here. We’ve had to arm everyone to protect the community.”

  The history of the Corcoran survivors was similar to ours. Corcoran was in the center of a massive agricultural area specializing in growing fresh fruits and vegetables. The people living within the cities of California soon realized surviving meant they needed to move into rural areas. Their community had now grown to almost 1200, and had been drawing survivors from as far away as Los Angles.
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  Jessie asked, “How did you get electricity?”

  Floyd said, “Luis, tell them what you did.” Luis Lopez said, “I was a technician at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. It was shut down of course just after the Federal Government stopped functioning. We’ve got some electrical engineers here, and with their help, we were able to restart the reactor and generate electricity. The plant’s located about fifty miles west of here along the coast. We keep a team of ten there 24/7 to monitor things.”

  Bill then described the work we had done using solar arrays. The Corcoran people were impressed. One of them asked, “If you go solar, aren’t you going to need millions of photovoltaic cells? Where are you going to get them?”

  “I pulled out the sample of pure quartz Greg had given me. “We’ve been able to duplicate the efficiencies of the solar companies with our own manufacturing process. We have a great chemist who figured out how to make pure quartz glass. Now he assures us the rest is pretty easy. We’ll be setting up mass production in a few weeks.” I handed Floyd a copy of our latest spreadsheet listing all of our skills. He scanned the document with a certain degree of envy. “We need to do something like this,” he said, “I can see the value.”

  He passed the sheet around to his colleagues, each of whom spent a considerable amount of time scanning the skills list.

  I finally got to the point of our trip. “Floyd, the reason we’re here is groups like ours have to figure out a way to put the country back together again. We’ve been preoccupied with just surviving. Jessie, why don’t you brief them on your assessment of what’s happening.”

  Jessie began lecturing to a group of middleaged men who clearly viewed this young woman with a high degree of skepticism. That was all about to change.

  Jessie had their attention. “The CDC estimated perhaps one in a thousand people would survive. If their estimates were correct, then a little over 300,000 people are alive. There’re distributed randomly across the nation; old and young, rich and poor, no favorites based on race or anything else.

  “The vast majorities were obviously located in the cities, but just like with both of our communities, the survivors in the city knew they couldn’t stay there. They could certainly scavenge for food, but there was no fresh water or working sanitary sewers. They all knew they would have to move to rural areas.

  “I believe there are two groups of survivors; most are people like us who know they have to work together. But there’re other groups, people who want to take from others and rape and pillage. There’s a group in Georgia who are like this, and you indicated you face a similar problem here.

  “If we’re going to put this country back together, we’re going to have to accomplish two major tasks. The first is to locate the surviving technocrats and get them to work together to reestablish our infrastructure, not just for our two communities, but for the whole country.

  “The second task is perhaps the more difficult. We need to rid ourselves of these thugs who are destructive. In other words, we need to restore law and order to our country.

  “To make these two things happen, we’re going to have to establish contact with all the communities like ours and yours and get them to work together. Major Connors’ people have identified another community near Boston with electricity, and we’re going to visit them next. Together, we’ve got to figure out how to rebuild the country.”

  The Corcoran people were thinking about Jessie’s analysis of what our new world was all about, and what we needed to do to make the country whole again. I added to Jessie’s thoughts, “I think the first step is to figure out how our two groups can work together. Then we can add the group in Boston and other groups we can identify. This process is going to take years, but it can start with our two communities.”

  Floyd asked, “How will we be able to communicate with each other? The phone system is down.”

  Arnie opened a cardboard carton he had been carrying and said, “We come bearing gifts.” He handed out eight satellite phones and explained how the phones operated independently of the land based system.

  Ami then added, “Blaine and I have been talking about another way to work together. He and I can train a number of people how to fly. We can confiscate any aircraft we want. Today we flew a 737 to a military base in Arizona and took one of their refueling tankers. We did that because we didn’t know if we could get any jet fuel at Meadows Field. Give us six months and between the two of us we can train a dozen pilots. We can make weekly runs between our two communities.”

  A guy named Harvey Black said, “I was looking at your skills list. We need mechanical engineers here to work on our desalination plant. It’s always breaking down. We have two doctors here. Maybe one of them would be willing to move to Florida.”

  I brought up another subject. “I forgot to mention; because we’re at a university campus, we’ve set up a school system, and we’re committed to train our young people in the applied sciences. How are you teaching your children?”

  Floyd answered, “Nothing formal yet. We’ve got about ninety kids who are living here without their parents. They all have foster families, but they’ve mostly been helping out at the local farms growing food.

  We stopped for the day. Floyd’s people had found us a place to stay, two ranch houses on the edge of town, but Floyd wanted to first introduce us to the community at the town hall meeting. He asked one of his people to ring a large bell to call the residents together, and within twenty minutes several hundred people were assembled outside city hall sitting in a square on the grass.

  Floyd spoke to the group and explained what we had been discussing. He talked about the need for cooperation between the two communities, and much to my surprise reiterated many of the elements of the speech Jessie had given earlier in the afternoon. He explained the need to exchange skills so both communities could solve our common problems. Finally, he talked about training people to fly so regular trips could be made between the two communities.

  After the community meeting, we were brought to the two houses where we would spend the night. Floyd asked our group to join his team for dinner, and we were driven to his house after we had a chance to freshen up. We were served some fine California wines with roasted chicken and fresh vegetables.

  There were several toasts and then as we were drinking coffee after dinner, Floyd asked, “Major, what are we going to do about these thugs?”

  Arnie asked, “Tell me about where they’re located. How many of them do you think there are? What are their actions?”

  Floyd explained there were about onehundred of them, mostly men but some women. “They’re mostly holed up in Fresno, but they send out raiding parties a couple times each month. They abduct our women and steal our food. They’ve killed a couple dozen of our men. They’re always high on drugs. We tried to talk to them once, but they killed the people we sent. Almost half of our men spend their time guarding the fields now.”

  “Floyd, I’m going to send Lieutenant Monroe here with a few of his men. I’m going to have him solve your problem. Do you have enough weapons here?”

  Floyd answered, “We’ve got a lot of hunting rifles we took from a few gun stores and enough ammunition, but nothing more.”

  “Okay, I’ll have Lieutenant Monroe bring some heavier weapons with him. We’ll provide some training and help you get rid of these guys.”

  On that somber note we ended our evening discussions and were driven back to our homes. Ami, Jessie and I stayed in one house and Blaine, Bill, and Arnie spent the night in the other. Each was a three bedroom home, and we split up for the night.

  About an hour after we said goodnight, my bedroom door squeaked open and Jessie appeared. I lifted my covers and let her in. It was the first time we were really alone since the day in the woods. At first we just looked at each other in the darkened room. I guess we were both thinking about the implications. The first time might have been a mistake, but a second time delivered a strong message. Jessie ended the stal
emate. “During the wedding ceremony, I kept on thinking about us. Our people were so happy. We’ve made a mistake not understanding the importance of celebrating the joys in life. We can’t let that ever happen again.”

  “Does that mean what I think it does?” Jessie never answered me; she just wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me on the lips. I had little doubt where the night was heading, and I offered zero resistance.

  Somewhere around dawn, Jessie left my bed and snuck back into her bedroom. We were adults; why should we worry about what others might think? Then of course I realized we most definitely needed to worry about what others might think. We’d just have to wait and see how things played out before Jessie and I made it official.

  Chapter 42

  The morning discussions were highly technical, but we finally agreed on a few important priorities. First, we needed to rid the countryside of the people creating terror in our land.

  Second, to put the country back together, we needed to bring infrastructure to all of the isolated communities scattered around the country. Major Connor’s group at MacDill would continue to identify clusters of survivors using their spy satellite, and we would set up a technical working group to make recommendations.

  Third, as Jessie pointed out at the meeting, both communities had a need for flour, and therefore a trip to the heartlands to trade infrastructure for wheat and corn was important for both of our communities.

  And finally, our group would make contact with the Boston area survivors and take steps for them to join our expanding alliance.

  Floyd had put together a list of ten residents who wanted to learn to fly, and Blaine and Ami promised they would return next week to set up a training program out of Meadows Field. Blaine had already identified a number of single engine aircraft and a few private aviation jets perfect for working students up to the larger multiengine commercial jets.