“Wow, Mark, you are going to make my head swell. I do have some ideas, though. Let me think this through out loud.” I noticed Mark pulled out a notepad and prepared to take notes. “Have you ever heard of Habitat for Humanity?” Both men shook their heads no. “This is an excellent organization that builds homes for people who otherwise could not afford it. The thing is, though, the new homeowners have to invest sweat equity in the home. They need to help in whatever capacity they can to build the house. I really like that idea because it is not a give-away program. Homeowners earn their home, and it helps them be more engaged and invested than if they were just handed the keys without any effort on their part. I think whatever we do, we need to avoid giveaways. People are going to be very needy, but we don’t need to strip them of their dignity and independence by providing everything. After all, we really need them to be as self-sufficient as possible. We’ll need to think of how we can set that up.”
“That is a great idea,” Mark interjected. “We could set up some kind of barter – they need a home, and these are the things they need to do to get one. Same for food, clothes, and other things.”
“Exactly! Get them in the habit from the beginning that we all work together and nothing comes for free.” I was happy that Mark understood what I meant.
“I have a few ideas about the actual work getting this place ready. First, we need to identify which homes are salvageable. Homes that are not salvageable can still be used for raw materials and anything inside that might have survived. I would suggest that we take down the unusable homes, as that will give more land to farm or to house animals. That will also give us more raw materials to use in homes we can fix. We will need to designate a place to store the things we remove from the homes we tear down. Construction materials can go outside, but things like dishes, clothes, and furniture will need to be stored out of the weather. It might be a good idea to use a few classrooms and designate one for kitchen supplies, one for linens and household equipment, one for food and pantry supplies we may find, and so on. That way, we can sort things as we put them away and it will make it easier to find them later on. We’ll also need to store things we find in the homes that may be special to the family like pictures and stuff. We can store them in boxes and if the family comes back, their special things will still be there.” I stopped for a minute to think and Mark kept writing.
“We’ll need to identify who the owners of each home are, so that if those people come back, they can have their own home back. We will also need to develop a registry of people who do move back here to know what kind of skills they have and also what kind of needs they have.
“We’ll need to think about setting up a medical clinic, because unless people were really prepared like we were, I think we will probably see a lot of poor health at first. We will probably also need to set up a community kitchen to begin with. Mark, has anyone checked the kitchen here in the school?”
Mark’s eyes got big. “No, other than making sure there was no-one back there, we didn’t really look.” He called over to one of the soldiers who was just watching the drone footage and had him go look to see what he could find in the kitchen.
“We’ll need to get a crew together to clean this building first. But, in order to clean, it would be nice to have power and water. Power we can get from a generator or solar, but we need to figure out water.
“I think we should empty out the houses we repair and put everything into the classrooms. When we move a family in, they can come get the supplies they need. That way, things won’t go to waste as much as if we left everything in the houses whether or not the family needed it.
“We need to get a group of us to go door to door checking to see if people are there, and to leave some kind of flyer or brochure telling them how to register with us so we know not to touch their house. We also need to start scavenging local unoccupied farms to see if there are cattle, horses, or other animals running loose that we can bring here. If that doesn’t work, we will have to try some of the local farms that are still in operation to see if anyone is willing to part with some. I know we can surely spare a couple of pigs, chickens, and rabbits to get them started.
“We also need to look at any building that is not a home – for example, the little strip mall across the street looks like it has been gone through, but we need to look closely to see if there are things that were missed.
“There is a big field out behind the school. We need to get Andrew or some of your farm-boy soldiers over here with a tractor to see if we can get a garden put in, sooner rather than later. I’m sure we have enough seeds to spare to get these people started.” I stopped to think for a minute. “I am sure there is more, but that’s what I have for now. We need to prioritize all of this, though, because we can’t do it all at once.”
Mark and Tom both chuckled. “Gee, I thought you’d have it all done by this afternoon.” Mark said. “Let’s take a walk through the school and identify what rooms we are going to use for storage and what rooms can be used to house people to begin with.” We started walking through the school. The halls were full of artwork done by the children, and as we walked past, I wondered about the children that drew each picture. Were they safe? Did they have enough to eat? I could feel my eyes welling up, and so I shook my head and kept walking. Thinking about that could drive me crazy, and I needed to focus on what we could do to help. I stopped as we passed the principal’s office. “Mark, this would make a good place for you to set up shop as the overall leadership of the community.” I turned the knob, expecting the door to be locked, but to my surprise, it opened. We walked into a spacious anteroom with several desks. One desk had a microphone and a panel for contacting each classroom, obviously non-functional without power. There were three doors in the anteroom. I opened one and found a large walk-in supply closet. There were shelves full of pencils, paper, crayons, and other school supplies. Several shelves were completely empty, and I assumed they once held some type of food or other useful items. The next door led to a rest room. I opened the third door and entered the principal’s private office. It was a very functional office with a desk in the middle, several large file cabinets taking up one wall, and a smaller file cabinet in the corner behind the desk. There were several stacks of paper on the desk, so I went behind the desk and sat down. Picking up the first stack, I saw it was a list of children with addresses and parent’s names. Many names on the list were lined through. A few names were circled, and there were other names with question marks. Next to the lined-out names were numbers. I asked Tom and Mark if they had any idea what these numbers meant.
Tom took the list from me and started reading. “I wonder if this list is of students who the principal knew left or who were safe? But what is with the numbers after some of the names?” He paused, and suddenly, his head shot up. “There is one thing that I would expect to see at a school when the school is closed – school buses. But, I didn’t see a single one. The parking lot for the buses is empty. Look, some of the numbers are repeated several times. I wonder if they loaded the kids up and took them somewhere, and these numbers are either the bus number or else the location of where the kids went.” Mark and I both nodded agreement.
“You are brilliant” I said. “At least, you are if that’s what the numbers mean!” I grinned at Tom, and then continued. “But look, there is an address for each child on the list. We could add that to the map and know who the owners were of each home.” I stood up and walked over to the smaller file cabinet. “I am betting in one of the file cabinets, we will find a folder for each child that lists age, siblings, parents’ names and other helpful information. I wonder if the general might have a couple of clerks with laptops who could come gather all that data into one file? That would certainly help resettling people.”
Mark nodded. “Yes, I am sure we can get the general to send us a couple of his clerks to help out.”
I looked at the list in my hand. “I wonder what the circles and question marks mean? Ther
e is no number so maybe it means the principal did not know about some people or they chose to stay here.” I started opening file drawers, and Tom and Mark did the same to the other file cabinets in the room.
“Bingo!” exclaimed Mark. “Here we go, folders labeled ‘current students’. I’ll call the general and see about those clerks. Meanwhile, let’s continue looking at rooms.” We left the office and headed down the halls. We must have been in the upper grade hallway, because the rooms looked like they were set up for older kids. We identified a number of rooms as storage and picked out several of the larger ones to house temporary residents. We put handwritten signs on each door indicating the planned use of each room. We then started down the next hallway. This was obviously kindergarten territory. The rooms were large with a lot of windows. Each room had a stack of mats for nap time, and there were areas set aside for reading, blocks, and other activities. I commented that this area would make a great place for a day care area while we are building. Watching kids while parents were working could be one way to work in exchange for supplies and stuff.
When we had been down all four hallways, we returned to the cafeteria. The soldier we sent to check the kitchen was waiting for us with a list of all the items he found. Mark took the list, thanked the soldier, and quickly skimmed through to see what he found. “We’re in luck. It seems that whoever cleaned out the majority of the food in the kitchen left some big things behind. It looks like he found some large tubs of large tubs of flour, rice, and sugar. He also found several large jugs of cooking oil, several large cans of vegetables, a big can of salt, two jars of yeast, a case of individual ketchup packets, and three cases of bottled water. I suppose these were things that were missed when they cleaned out the food from the kitchen or else they ran out of room. There are also industrial sized pots and pans, and a gas stove and fryer. Not a lot of stuff, but more than we had when we got here.”
Mark walked over to where the troops were watching the drone video and marking the maps. “Hey, Gibson, are you guys almost done?”
Sergeant Gibson looked up, and answered, “Yes, sir. They are bringing the drones in now. We just finished marking the maps with what we saw.” Tom and I crowded in next to Mark to look at the maps. There were more homes destroyed than I anticipated, and a lot of smaller outbuildings marked. The two churches were also shown. The one on the far side of the development looked like it had burned, but the other looked to be in pretty good condition. Mark asked if we were ready to go driving and called one of the soldiers over to accompany us. Private Cooper barely looked old enough to be in the army and seemed excited to be selected for the ride.
As we headed out to the MRAP I realized I still had the list of children in my hand. I suggested we ought to check the houses that were either circled or had a question mark to see if there was anyone there. The guys thought that was a good idea and so we headed out. As we came to a street, Tom would call out the name of the street, and I would search the list for a circle or a question mark. The first home on the list was a question mark. We pulled into the driveway and noticed there was a lot of damage to the home, including broken windows and the front door hanging open. As we looked closer, we could see bullet holes in the front walls of the house. We waited a few minutes to see if we saw any movement from the house. After about five minutes, Mark and Private Cooper got out of the MRAP and approached the house. They carefully cleared the area around the house, and then went in. Ten long minutes later, both exited the house. The younger soldier looked very pale. Mark just looked angry as they both got back into the MRAP.
“The house is probably salvageable, but we will need a burial detail before we can work here. The family must have been attacked by raiders of some sort. There are two adults and three children in the master bedroom, and all were shot execution style.” Mark balled his fists up and took a deep breath.
“The youngest child didn’t look much older than a toddler. We still don’t know if the question mark means the principal didn’t know or if the students are dead. Let’s check out the next one.” The next student on the list was circled and was four houses down from the first one. As we pulled into the driveway, we could see that this home was far worse than the first, also with bullet holes across the front wall of the house.
All of the windows seemed to be broken, and tattered curtains fluttered out of one of the upstairs window openings. Mark and Private Cooper again approached the house and carefully entered. This time, they were back out in less than five minutes. Private Cooper rushed to the side of the house where he bent over and vomited. When finished, he stood, rinsed his mouth with water from his canteen, and wiped his mouth with a bandanna. He began to apologize, but Mark stopped him. Getting into the MRAP, Mark explained to us that the family here was also dead, but rather than being executed, this family was tortured first. “I’m not going to describe it to you because I don’t want you having that picture in your head. It was terrible.”
Private Cooper looked like he was about to cry. “How could they do things like that to women and especially to little kids like that?” Mark reached over and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Son, there are all kinds of animals in the world who took this collapse to mean they could do all of the evil, perverted things they could only dream about before. If we catch people who did things like that, we can make sure they suffer just like that family did.” Our ride was silent as we found houses matching circled names on the list. Each of these had the same results – bodies of families found dead. We concluded that circled homes meant the family was dead, and question marks meant the principal just did not know. We checked a few of the homes with question marks, and a couple still held the bodies of families, but most were empty. Several had evidence the family left, and one even had a note on the kitchen table indicating they left to go to “Grampa’s farm.” I hope they made it there safely.
We had a pleasant surprise at the first church we came to. Several men, all armed, were out in the back of the church working on a garden. Mark and PVT Cooper carefully approached them, only to learn there were five families living in the church basement. Once everyone decided we were all friendly, the men called others out of the church. Several ladies and a handful of kids came out to meet us. We quickly explained what we were doing, and all of the families seemed very excited. They explained they heard gunshots on the far side of the community and decided to hide in the church.
They gathered as much food and supplies as they could and moved into the basement. Luckily, the church had a food bank, and so they had enough food to get through the winter. Now that it was getting on to spring, they decided to plant a garden to supplement what was left. While the men were talking, I spoke with the ladies. Everyone seemed really healthy, and one of the women attributed that to vitamins and making sure they ate regularly.
During the winter, the men shot two deer, and that gave them enough meat for everyone for the winter. They said they had a lot of rice and beans to eat, but it beat the alternative of starving. I asked if kids used to go to the local elementary school, and three of the moms said they did. I found their names on my list with a question mark after each one, and happily crossed out the question marks.
All five families indicated they would like to be able to move back to their homes, but not until they made repairs and they felt the neighborhood was safe. They also said they would be willing to move to other homes closer to the school if they could get personal things from their homes, which were farther away from the school. I asked about the minister for the church and was told that he died over the winter of what they think was pneumonia and heart failure and was buried in the prayer garden on the other side of the church.
We stayed to chat for about a half an hour, until Tom remarked it was getting late and we needed to get back. The four of us said goodbye to our new friends with promises to be back soon and headed back to the school. We dropped Private Cooper off at the school, as he was one of the soldiers who would be staying. M
ark went in to get the soldiers coming back with us but came out by himself. He explained the guys wanted to put the drones up in the dark to see if they could see light in any of the houses. I thought that was a pretty good idea.
We sat in the MRAP for a few minutes going over the lists of tasks Mark had assembled over the day, and then headed for the farm. The ride back was fairly quiet. Mark was obviously preoccupied with something, and Tom and I were just tired. Finally, I asked Mark if he was okay since he was so quiet. I could see him clenching his jaws as he considered what to say.
“I’ve been in the military for a long time. I’ve been a lot of places and seen a lot of things that I would not ever want to see again. That one house, though, the torture that was inflicted on that young family, well, it was beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. If I could catch the scum who did that…” His voice faded off. “Unfortunately, I suspect it will not be the last time we see evidence of how evil some people can be. It motivates me, though, to try to get this development up and running and do what we can to help people. I mean, people did not ask for all of this to happen. I want to be able to help the good people out there, and to protect them from the monsters who would hurt them.”
We got back to the farm right before dinner. After a quick meal, we called everyone together to give them the details of our trip. We skimmed lightly over the bodies we found, although most people could tell there was more than we were willing to say.
“On the ride home, Tom, Mark, and I went over the long list of things to be done and we established some priorities. The first priority will be to get the school cleaned up, inside and out. We plan to use the school as the headquarters for this operation. We’ll use some of the rooms for storage, some for a day care area, and some to house people who are working on their homes until the homes are ready. We’ll also have an area for the soldiers who are providing security until we can find a proper home for them, too.
Premonitions: Book 2: War Page 6