Monte Vista Village (The Survivor Diaries, Book 1)

by Lynn Lamb

  And what about all of the people who are left? We are alive, so maybe a lot more people are alive too. At least the people around here might be okay, right?

  I guess this is why Katie told us to not to think too much about it. I am going to get the Monopoly box. I don’t really like cards.

  ~~~

  So, I won in Monopoly, sort of. We all just gave up. At least some things never change.

  But it’s almost time to have our group meeting. It’s weird, but I am nervous. I have always been shy in group situations, but I would really like to put out my ideas. I’ll see how I feel and if there is an opening.

  I will take the minutes of the meeting again. The short hand my grandmother taught me has been coming in handy. I miss my grandmother, but I am glad that she didn’t have to see what has happened to our world.

  Malcom was the first to speak. “I hope everyone is here. Let’s go through the roll call that we practiced this morning.”

  “Number One: Graham.”

  “Number Two: Sheraton”

  “Number Three: Burgess”

  “Number Four: Estrada”

  “Number Five: Santos”

  “Number Six: O’Malley”

  “Number Seven: Raja”

  “Number Eight: Gianluca”

  “And today we have some more new people,” said Malcolm. “Mark, Laura and Annie, you are number nine. Jill and Joseph, you are number ten. Just this morning we came up with this way of quickly identifying that we are all here. Great job, everyone. As I said, we have two more families and five more people to add to our group. First, Lizzie Burgess, will you give a little background as to how we came about and what we have discussed in our brief time together?”

  “Um, okay, sure,” said Lizzie. “Well, we only started talking as a group yesterday. Before that we would talk to whoever answered, and usually it was to just talk about our injuries and if it was okay to go out now. Which it isn’t, as the Doc has told us in no uncertain terms. We decided to meet at 7:30 P.M., nightly. That’s all I can think of at the moment.

  “Great. Laura, can you introduce your family?” Malcolm asked.

  “Sure. Well my name is Laura, my husband is Mark, and my mother’s name is Annie. We live on Ocean View Drive. I am a filmmaker. My husband has done many things, including construction. He was a soldier in Operation Enduring Freedom, and he’s also a translator in Japanese and Arabic. My mother, Annie, is a retired teacher. I guess that’s our introduction. I am so happy to hear you all out there. You don’t know how good it is to know more people have survived.”

  “Thanks, Laura,” Katie said. “We actually do know the feeling. That’s why we need to keep this going. As you all know, Laura started going house to house getting information about the neighbors before the bombs. A lot of you have said that the information she spread actually saved your lives. And I agree. We owe her quite a debt.”

  Oh no, she’s throwing me out there in front of all of those people. Talk, Laura, talk. “No, all of you who I spoke to helped. I know that you were a little suspicious, which is totally understandable, but so many of the ideas came from all those who would speak to us. So, thank you all.”

  “Laura, I suspect that you have more to share with us,” Katie said. “From our brief encounter when you came to the door, it seems like you are full of ideas.”

  “Well, I do have some things I would like to put out there; things we can do before we can leave our homes and some more things we can do once we are free to leave. The latter are things I need to formulate a little better in my mind, but may I bring up one idea I have about what we can do right now?”

  A male voice that I didn’t recognize spoke. “You sure can. We don’t have any formal rules. At least not yet. So the floor is all yours.”

  Did I really want the floor? “Thank you. First, I want you all to know that I am taking notes on all that we are saying. When I am talking, my mother is taking the notes. I hope that’s okay. I just thought that we might want to refer to them later.”

  There was a long pause that I had to fill. “Okay, I got this idea from Katie, actually. She said that we have to try to occupy our time, so I thought that we could start a few clubs. For instance, maybe we could have a book club for readers. We would all have to have the same book, but I think we could figure it out. After we read the book, we could get together at a certain time and discuss it for a half hour.”

  A female voice responded this time. “Oh my gosh, I love that idea. We have kids here, maybe we could do something like that for them. They are getting very antsy.”

  A different female spoke with enthusiasm. “Me, too. What about a book like Pride and Prejudice? Everyone has that one.”

  About three people said they did.

  “Great, I love that one,” I said. “How about a three o’clock meeting of the book club in four days. Before we agree, would you say your name before you speak? That is a good practice until we get used to each other’s voices.”

  “This is Katie, and, yes, we should say our names every time we speak. And I would love to be in the book club. That’s a great idea, Laura.”

  “Laura speaking. I had a few other ideas. How about we have a few clubs having to do with how we are making do with the basic day-to-day living. What ideas you have for, let’s say, cooking. We don’t have a camp stove, so I have a great tip for making one with a can of beer and rubbing alcohol.”

  “Hi, I’m Shelby, and I really could use some help and ideas. We aren’t doing too well.”

  “Laura again, and that leads me to my final idea. I think that a support group would be helpful. Katie, if you could lead it…”

  “Katie here. Laura, when I meet you, I am going to give you a big, fat kiss. YES, I will absolutely lead a support group. Several, if we need to break up different problems. I will get started figuring out exactly how it can work and will give you the information at tomorrow night’s meeting. I am going to change the topic now. Laura, would you be able to lead the nightly meetings?”

  “Laura here. Yeah I can do that.”

  I really wanted to say no, I’m not qualified, but who is qualified to organize the post-apocalypse?

  ~~~

  The rest of the meeting was setting up the sub-groups and meeting times. Annie stopped taking notes because it was getting confusing, but I will work to make sure the next meetings go smoother.

  I am not exactly sure how this came about, but I am sort of looking forward to leading the meetings now that I think about it. Go figure.

  I am excited to reread Pride and Prejudice. It will keep me from thinking about what is going on. Yes, I want to figure out ways to make our lives work, but I know that I need to think of other things, too. Katie was right, and it’s something I have to work on about myself.

  So, good night, dear diary. I am about to enter the world of Miss Bennet and Mr. Darcy, as it is much more pleasant than my present one.

  July 21

  After our morning coffee, hot this time thanks to the internet that is no longer working, we decided to clean up the mess in our house that was left in the wake of the attack. It has been so dirty and dusty that I think it is adding to our listless moods and bouts of coughing fits. Even Hershey is coughing and sneezing.

  Thank goodness for the fake grass patch we found at the pet store for Hershey. He is confused why he is going “potty” in the house now, but it is doing the trick. Mark said that it is starting to smell some but he is able to clean it when he cleans our buckets.

  It was time. I took a deep breath and opened the doors that lead to the stairs. I needed to know the severity of how badly we were hit in other parts of the house. In the downstairs level, I have spent all of my time in the living room and bathroom. On the second day, I peeked into one of the bedrooms, but it really was too dark to tell. I thought better of grabbing a flashlight and taking a good look at the time.

  I am fully mobile again. My rib area still hurts, but it is not as debilitating as it was a
t first. I am getting better every day, but I fear that my poor Annie’s wrist is getting worse. I wish we could at least ice it. For the first few days, Mark had her putting the ice packs from the first aid kits on it, but those are only one time use items. She did try to keep them on, even after they were no longer cold, but she finally saw the futility in it and settled on just keeping the wrist wrapped.

  But it’s not just Mom’s wrist that is worrying me. She looks so exhausted, and she is having trouble catching her breath. She didn’t mention this to Malcom when he asked, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to say anything at the time. I have decided that I will talk to the Doc about it privately, if and when a time presents itself.

  I braced myself to inspect the house. First, I checked the three downstairs bedrooms, and then on to the upstairs.

  “I need you to stay calm when you do this, Laura,” Mark said in his typical fashion. “I know how you get.” Errrr. I felt like blasting out a reply, but we have actually been getting along well since that day when life as we knew it disappeared in a mass of explosions. Maybe that is our silver lining in this horrific catastrophe. We can start again fresh now. We don’t need to make the same mistakes we did before.

  “I’ll keep it together,” I said.

  He brought over my tennis shoes. “Here, put these on.”

  I picked up the lantern and turned it up to its brightest setting.

  When I tried to open the door, the first thing I noticed was how hard it was. The debris that had settled in the carpeting was fairly thick. I pushed the door completely open. I heard a gasp coming from Annie, who was standing behind me.

  One of our family jokes has always been about my mother, the neat freak. The girls and I would laugh at her obsessive cleaning of the kitchen counters and sweeping of the floors. We poked fun at the way she would re-sweep the entire floor if she found even a small speck. She always said that she enjoyed cleaning. I sure hope she wasn’t kidding.

  Our room looked like a hurricane hit it. Ha, ha. I guess that expression will now be passé. So, I will correct myself for this new world we live in. It looked like a bomb exploded in there.

  The bed was turned over and there was glass on the floor from the television and the full sized mirror we once admired ourselves in. Maybe it’s good that it is gone because I know I am a disheveled, dirty mess now.

  I shut the door and moved on to inspect the other two bedrooms. It was more of the same.

  I took a deep breath and opened the doors that led to the stairs. I was surprised to see that some of the wooden stairs were split and others were just gone. I made my way up carefully, skipping those that I could tell, even in the dim lantern light, would not be able to hold my weight. I stopped midway through. “Annie, you can’t attempt this. It’s too dangerous. Please, stay down there,” I implored.

  “This is my house. I need to see the damage,” she argued.

  “No,” I yelled. “You really don’t. At least, not now.”

  I guess that she was not used to her mild-mannered daughter using that tone with her. I heard a “humph” and saw her go back behind the doors.

  Poor Annie. I know this is devastating for her. She worked her whole life selflessly, and all she ever wanted was a beautiful home for her kids and grandkids. Now she doesn’t even know if the rest of her family is still alive.

  Mark came from out of nowhere and grabbed me by my arm to support me, and a look passed between us. We both knew the severity of the damage. In that instance, I think we both knew that we were in this thing together for the long haul, despite our problems in the past.

  When I got to the top of the stairs, I held up my lantern. Our house looked like a warehouse with rows of the plastic tubs that contained our food and water. We had moved most of the furniture from the kitchen into the formal dining room and the living room when we started to stock up. The containers of water were so heavy that they looked like they had stayed put pretty well during the shaking and the rolling.

  “I got the food and other items back into place,” Mark told me. “Right there are the potty patches for Hershey. I used the baggies to clean his poop but there isn’t much we can do about his pee. I was going to use a cleanser on it, but I realized I can’t, because the smell would throw him off.”

  “It’s okay, honey.” I wrapped my arms around his big chest and held on for a long time while I took in the scene. “You have done an amazing job here. I am sorry if I haven’t seemed grateful enough. Thank you. And from now on we will do it together.”

  “You have been too hurt, Laura. I need to tell you how thankful I am that you are alright. When the rumbling stopped, I went over to you, and it was really bad. Sit down, Laura,” he pointed to one of the chairs that had weathered the storm.

  “I didn’t tell you this because I didn’t want to completely freak you and Annie out, but when I lifted the table from you, you were lifeless. Annie was unconscious, but breathing.” He kneeled on the ground next to me. “Laura, you weren’t breathing.” He stopped speaking, and looked as if he was reliving it in his mind. “I started CPR, but I wasn’t getting a pulse. I just kept going, I don’t know how long for. It was like I was floating above us, looking down at myself, pumping your chest and breathing into your mouth. All of a sudden, you took a deep breath on your own. I checked and found your pulse. Then, I sat back and just crumpled into a ball next to you and cried. I cried like a baby, Laura.”

  I knelt down with him, and we held each other, silently rocking, while the tears rolled down both of our faces.

  “Laura, I am so sorry for everything from before…”

  “Shh. I know,” I interrupted. He didn’t have to say another word.

  Has the blast really wiped clean our past sins or are we just willing to ignore them?

  ~~~

  We went back downstairs and started to clean. We made piles of things that were too broken to bring back to life to store in the guest room to take care of later. One pile would be for things we could burn in the fire place when we were able use it again. The other was just trash.

  I wonder where we are going to put the trash now. Certainly, it would be sometime before we had an official garbage collector again.

  I have mixed feelings about all of the things we lost. On one hand, we have our lives and our home. That’s really a lot if you think about what we went through. But what about the things that meant a lot to us? Most of our things that bring back treasured memories are now thrown about the house, mangled and shattered. Will we lose those memories in the future without the reminders?

  I found our wedding album, ripped and dirty, but I think some of it can be saved. I wrapped it in a towel, placed it in an empty box, and stowed it away on a high shelf in the closest. This is going to be a sad process, but I wouldn’t let Mark see it on my face. How much more can he take?

  I have begun to wonder what is left of our city. I sure hope that the furniture stores are okay. We are going to need a lot of new things, including a whole new set of china.

  Mom has been trying to clean, but we have to keep stopping her. We ask her what kind of help she will be if her wrist does not heal properly. The questioning stops her for a little while, but then she is back up at it again. I wish she would just listen. I am worried about her.

  ~~~

  When our meeting started, I realized I was the one who need to keep it on course.

  “Hi, everyone. This is Laura. Can we do a roll call?”

  Everyone was present.

  “Thanks. How is everyone this evening?” I wasn’t sure why I asked. We were all the same; sad, terrified and facing the aftermath of probable global destruction.

  “I hope you have all been considering what kinds of groups and clubs you are interested in joining. Lizzie and I spoke, and she has a great idea. She wants to add a teen’s club and kid’s club. Neither of us was sure how many younger people we have. Lizzie has three kids; Pete is seventeen, Kristi is seventeen, and Ronnie who is nine. Do we have any o
ther kids in our group?”

  “Hello, my name is Veda and my husband’s name is Pranav. We have three children, two girls and one boy: Chandra is sixteen years old, Gita fourteen years old, and Padma, who we call Paddy, is our thirteen month old baby boy.

  “Hi, I am Tiffany and my husband’s Robert. We have two kids: Jayden, twelve and Tommy, nine.”

  “Hey, Shelby and Matt here, and we have a two-year-old girl, Camella.”

  “Anyone else? Okay, I think that sounds like enough kids to start off some groups. Lizzie and I were talking, and we see some of these clubs lasting after we get out in a couple of weeks. I feel certain there will be plenty of people out there who don’t have walkies and will be ready for some new company. Lizzie has been helping me figure out schedules, so I hope you all have pens and papers, because she is going to give you the list and schedules. At the end of the meeting, stay on and you can sign up for the different groups.”

  “Here it is,” said Lizzie. She read off our list of clubs that were meant to keep our minds on things that were productive, enjoyable and/or positive.

  “Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 9:00 A.M., channel one: Kid’s Club, to discuss video games, TV shows, movies and books. Those are just suggestions you guys. You can talk about whatever you want, and no one will listen in unless they make their selves known. And that’s a rule for all of the clubs.

  “Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 8:00 P.M., channel three: Teen’s Club, to discuss whatever they want to talk about.

  “Daily at 10:30 A.M., channel four: Survival Talk for anyone fourteen and up. This is where we will discuss survival tips, ideas and education, for now and when we get outside. We decided that this might be a little too much for the younger ones, but the teens could have some good ideas, so we hope they join too. In fact, we hope everyone fourteen and up joins. We think that the discussions we have in this group will be imperative for our survival.