“Sounds like Amy’s pulling you guys together,” Michelle said.
“Yeah, but the thing that most impresses me about her is that she’s not an ‘all talk-no action’ person; everything that she’s come up with so far, she’s always been willing to be a part of as well,” he said.
They talked with Dave for a few more minutes and then went to find Doc. He was at the campground office building, directing what appeared to be several projects at once. When he saw them he gave a quick wave and held up his index finger, the universal signal for “be with you in a moment.” The short time later he waved them over, indicating that Michelle and Andy should follow him. They did so, ending up a short walk later at his RV. Once inside, everybody sat down. The sigh Doc let out immediately convinced Michelle that he’d probably been on his feet and awake for quite some time.
She took advantage of the pause, hoping to give him a little down time as she asked, “Do you mind if I make us some coffee or tea?”
“That would be wonderful,” he said while rubbing his eyes and yawning.
Michelle poked around in the kitchen area and came up with a small, four cup “Mr. Coffee” machine; some packs of expensive looking Peruvian blend dark roast, and the other necessities like filters and mugs.
“Does the campground still have power?” she asked.
He nodded, “For now.”
Michelle added water to the reservoir, emptied a packet of the coffee onto a filter in the pullout tray, and plugged the unit in. A few minutes later the percolating sounds of the steam bubbling through water accompanied the fragrance of fresh coffee . . . good coffee.
“Any news from Eric yet?” Doc asked.
“Hey Doc,” Andy said sympathetically, “I know you’re worried, we all are. But it’s going to take Eric at least two days just to get up there, then he’s got to find her.”
“I know, I know . . . I just . . . well, like you said I’m just worried,” Doc answered.
There was a knock on the door. Andy and Michelle looked at Doc Collins; he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Come in.”
It was Amy. She looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. It almost made Michelle wonder if she was supplementing her energy levels . . . chemically. The cop side of her made a mental note to pursue it later. Maybe.
“Hey guys, I’m glad I caught up with you, if you’ve got a few minutes there are some things I’d like to go over,” Amy said.
They spent the next several hours talking to Amy and Doc. Sally came by to say ‘hi’ as well, but got called out again a short time later to put some band-aids on one of the kids who fell at the playground. It appeared to Michelle that Amy and Doc had been burning the candle at both ends. They’d come up with several plans, and started implementing the ones that were the highest priority—security, medical, food and water, comfort, and entertainment. Security was pretty much the guard team’s for now. Food and water teams were responsible for coordinating food gathering and sharing, water collection and purification, and group meal planning if possible. What they called the comfort teams were basically responsible for gathering as much firewood as they could. Michelle found it interesting that all collected firewood from the comfort teams was going to be kept in a central location and distributed as needed each day. Campers were also encouraged to gather their own, but some, due to age or other prohibitive circumstances, were going to depend entirely on the comfort teams for firewood. The entertainment team, led by Amy, was in charge of morale boosting activities. They were already planning a night of funny stories followed by a talent contest. Medical was the most interesting to Michelle and Andy though. The camp office was being converted into a functional medical facility, limited only by the equipment on hand—which right now was pretty much everything more complex than a tube of Neosporin and a band-aid. The good news was that the medical team had gone through every empty RV, tent, and vehicle, scouring them for any supplies that might be of use. Hand soap, paper towels, gauze—anything at all that would come in handy. They hit the jackpot in the tent where the zombie fat guy had come out after Andy’s group. A large duffel bag was inside, filled with a hodgepodge of prescription medicine—antibiotics, painkillers, blood pressure medicine—you name it, it was in there. They found an ID tag inside a coat pocket that indicated the fat guy had worked at an assisted living community south of Fargo. Assumptions were made that he cleaned out the resident’s medicine cabinets before he took off. Michelle hoped it was one of the elderly residents who bit him, it would serve the bastard right. Someone on the medical team came up with the idea of having a quarantine location, someplace that could be segregated from the rest of the camp. Anybody who showed signs of the sickness, or any new people that the residents may decide to let in would have to go through a quarantine. The team’s solution was to use half of the combination bathhouse/restroom, the male side. Their reasoning was that it would be easy to clean, nothing but tile walls and cement floors, only had one small window located up high, and the door was a solid metal one that could be locked from the outside. They grabbed some fold-out cots and blankets from the little storage room in the camp office, moved them into the bathroom, and then locked the door, hanging a quaint little sign that said “hospitality suite” on the doorknob.
Even though she’d been on the job less than twelve hours, Amy had already come up with an updated list of the campgrounds “top ten most wanted” items, complete with a current inventory. Her number one item was gasoline.
Amy said, “Chainsaw, generator for the water supply and purification, another generator for emergency power at the medical clinic, they all use gas. Right now we’re only running the chainsaw.” Michelle remembered hearing it in the distance as they walked to the RV. “But we had another power outage this morning that lasted almost an hour.”
Michelle knew about the large amount of gas that Walter and Andy had, but they hadn’t decided, or even talked about adding Amy to the core team. Doc had accepted the offer but still hadn’t been brought up to speed, so he didn’t know about it either. It was going to have to wait, Michelle thought. Andy didn’t say anything either.
“What about food? Eric said he might be able to get us some help in that department. Most of the people up here have fishing rods, apparently they issue one to you at birth in North Dakota,” Amy said with a laugh, “but I’m still trying to work out the logistics of supplying a campground day to day with fish.”
Andy said, “There’s a dozen five gallon buckets filled with rice in the back of my truck for you. It ain’t gonna be like eaten’ prime rib and blueberry pie, but it will prevent you from starving. I guess I don’t need to tell ya that it will have to be rationed like everything else.”
Michelle could see Amy doing the math in her head. Whatever figures she came up with seemed to make her happy though. “That’s great, thank you very much!” Her face took on a serious tone and she said, “I know you have other projects to get to today, but I’m a little out of my element . . . a little unsure how to handle the next item on my list. Guns. By my count there are six guns . . . that I . . . ‘officially know of’ . . . in the campground.” She looked at Walter and Michelle, “Present company excluded. VW and Brenda each have a shotgun—I don’t think they use the same bullets though. Jason Lambert has that deer rifle and a little pistol, I think it’s a thirty-eight. Another lady—I’m sorry but I can’t think of her name right now—has an old double barrel ‘squirrel gun’ as she called it, so I guess that’s another shotgun, right?” Andy nodded. “Number six is one of those black guns like the army uses. A guy named William Andrews has it. He’s kind of a strange bird though, didn’t volunteer for any of the security teams, stays in an RV at site twenty-six and pretty much keeps to himself, although to be fair, it’s really only been about twenty-four hours since the poop hit the fan, and I’ve been really busy with other things, but as far as I know, and I’d know, he’s not on any of the teams—security or otherwise.”
Michelle replied, “I’m not sure
how we need to handle this. To me it’s the same as food. And admittedly, this whole ‘situation’ that we’re all in right now is kind of making everybody fly by the seat of their pants, figuring out things as you go. As of right now—if I understand it correctly—food sharing is an encouraged but not enforced issue. I think the same needs to go for all of the other concerns. We can’t force him to join a security team, the same as we can’t, or rather shouldn’t in my opinion, kick open the door of every tent and RV, confiscating every scrap and can of food for a community supply. Off the top of my head—and again, this is without me really thinking too much about it—I’d say that the biggest effort should be applied toward the ‘encouraging’ aspect.”
Andy waited for Michelle to finish then added, “Yeah, hold out the hoop and let them jump through, don’t slam it over their head. Besides, a lot of these folks are totally lost. They’re scared and confused about what’s going on in the world. Heck, so am I. Until we get a grip on the ‘big picture’ I’d just keep doing the fine job that you are, organizing these people into some type of, I don’t know, ‘self supporting and mutually dependent . . . group.’ Remember though, just yesterday they all got the speech about ‘everybody needs to help,’ so if you see folks intentionally ducking out of stuff that they need to be doing, that needs to be handled before it becomes a major problem. But I guess you already know that.”
Amy smiled and said, “Been there—done that.”
Michelle took another refill of coffee and asked Amy to explain the “officially know about” remark. Amy replied, “Again, I’m sure that there are a lot of things that we don’t know about our Ravenwood residents. We don’t even know if the names they’ve given us are their real names. We could have doctors here, engineers . . . police officers—whatever. But if they don’t share that with us we may never know. Like you said Andy, a lot of people are in shock about what’s happened. They’re in denial—like it’s only a movie and in a few hours they’ll get up, throw away their empty popcorn bucket and walk out into the bright sunshine of the movie theater’s parking lot on the way to their BMW.” Amy leaned her forehead against her upraised palms, the first sign of weariness that Michelle had noticed in her. “Anyhow,” she continued, “as I said, right now we’ve got those six guns officially, but there is at least one more that I personally know about. VW has it. It’s a handgun, black metal with what looks to me like rubber…uh . . .” She made a ‘squeezy’ motion with her hand.
“Grips,” Andy interjected.
“Yeah, I guess. I know next to nothing about guns. Anyway, he keeps it in the back of his waistband in some kind of holster. I saw it poking out when he leaned down to tie his boot laces. I can’t get a read on him. He’s been nothing but cordial to everybody as far as I know. He’s on the team night security patrol, and he let the team day people take his shotgun with them. Last night he was a major factor in convincing those people in the RV they weren’t welcome, and we know he probably saved Doc and Jason’s lives with his axe. It’s just, I don’t know . . . something that I’m missing. My gut tells me there’s more to him than what we’ve seen or know about so far, a lot more.”
They were all silent for a while, digesting her observations about VW, adding it to the rapidly growing list of potential problems. Eventually Doc chimed in. “Well, for right now let’s let sleeping dogs lay. On the medical side, I’m . . . I guess ‘happy’ . . . that as of this morning at 6:00 AM I can now report that our total campground population is down to 161 people. That’s a big drop from two days ago. Of course that number reflects the thirty odd people who moved on to greener pastures this morning. I expect that number to drop even further as the days go on. What I’m hoping for is that we end up with a condensed community of go-getters and team players. What I dread happening is that we end up with a bunch of dependents and freeloaders who will only be here as long as they perceive that ‘here’ is better than ‘there’—wherever ‘there’ is. I do have one request, well, I have a lot of requests but we’ll get to them later, I know you have to get going. My one immediate request however, is some way to prevent or at least make it more difficult for people to drive up Ravenwood Campground Road. Right now it’s only that rope out at the end. If there was some way we could replace that rope with a chain or steel cable, it may prevent future incidents like we had last night. Of course, anybody who wanted to leave would have to be escorted down and the chain unlocked for them. Small price to pay for the added security it might provide.”
Andy said he’d talk to Walter about it and see what could be worked out. Amy and Michelle started to say something at the same time, both paused to give the other one a chance, then both continued at the same time again. Amy held up her hands, laughing, “You first.”
Michelle chuckled along with her and said, “The preacher . . . Dave . . . said you were going to get a third security team together, right?”
“Yeah, but it may take a little time for us to figure out everybody’s skill sets and who would work out best. Remember, I’ve only been on the job for about . . .” Amy stole a glance at a small silver watch on her wrist before continuing, “fourteen hours.” She paused, grinned, and then finished. “And most of my ‘work force volunteers’ have been sleeping for the majority of that time.”
Michelle nodded and said, “I was just curious what you’d name them. You’ve got ‘team day’ and ‘team night’ . . . is the next one ‘team afternoon’?”
Amy laughed again and shook her head. “No. When we add a third team all of the names will change, probably to colors: red—blue—green . . . or something like that.”
Andy asked, “Why not teams one, two, and three?”
Amy answered, “Think back to gym class, how would it make you feel to be placed on ‘team two’ . . . or worse yet, ‘team three’? We may have the best of intentions in mind, but how people perceive of their net worth influences everything about how they act, and interact with others.”
Doc was nodding, agreeing with Amy. After a few more moments of silence, they all stood up to stretch out the kinks in their assorted backs and necks, and then said their goodbyes. Amy turned and headed for the door, but stopped after only two steps.
Turning around she said, “One more thing; there is a young lady here. Samantha—I don’t know her last name—but she came up to me late last night and we chatted for a bit. She said she’s some kind of ‘information and network systems engineer’ . . . something to do with computers. Anyhow, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with her, but she seems to think that if she had access to certain equipment, and here’s the kicker . . . ‘and power’ she might be able to pick up Internet traffic from satellites that might still be active. She specifically mentioned Canadian satellites. Again, I don’t know all the technical details—or even if it’s possible—but if there are sources of information we can exploit outside of the U.S., it might be well worth the time and effort. She’s got a tent set up on Blue Heron loop, space number thirteen if you want to talk to her.”
Andy said they would, then thanked Amy again for everything she’d done so far. Michelle gathered up all of the coffee mugs and washed them in the small sink as Amy left. As she was doing that, Andy gave Doc the gun from Walter.
“You know how one of these things work Doc?”
“Yes.” Doc’s reply was short . . . intense.
“Somethin’ wrong, Doc?” Andy asked.
After a short pause Doc shook his head and said, “No . . . no problem. I just . . . it’s just . . .”
Michelle could see him reaching for the words, coming up empty though. He looked really tired. She was sure that they all did.
After another minute of silence he took the gun, loaded a magazine and inserted it, pulled the slide back, and let it go—chambering a round. Andy and Michelle watched as he fitted the holster through his belt, placed the gun inside and covered it with his shirt. He looked up, switching his gaze between both of them like he was watching a very slow tennis match. “The las
t patient I operated on before I retired was a nine year old boy who got caught in a drive by shooting. One of the bullets smashed into his femur. Bone fragments were everywhere, and he had lost a lot of blood by the time they got him to the table. Our surgical team managed to stabilize him, but he died later that night—one of the bone fragments had worked its way into his heart. A few days later the gang unit caught the shooter—apparently one of their informants ratted him out for a walk on another charge. They recovered the gun as well. It was just like this one; a Glock model 17, 9mm.”
Michelle was about to say something, anything she could think of to sympathize with Doc’s situation, but Andy beat her to it.
“Hey Doc,” Andy said, a little fire coming through in his voice, “take a look around you, we’re not in Kansas anymore Toto. We got people with red eyes walking around trying to eat you. We’ve got infected SOB’s dragging Michelle here underneath a car trying to rip her leg off. We’ve got people that aren’t infected, at least not yet, who according to Sam Ironfeather have been shooting at each other for days now down in the cities. Hell, the list goes on and on and it’s only been, what . . . three days since all this crap started.” Doc started to say, “I know, I know . . .” but Andy cut him off.
“You’re tired Doc, you need to get some rest. But you also need to get your head out of the sand and come to the realization that it’s going to be very likely . . . VERY LIKELY, that at some point in the future you’re going to need this gun. And when that time comes, you need to be prepared—mentally, spiritually, and emotionally—to drop the hammer. I don’t wish this situation on anybody, but it’s where we’re at right now, so suck it up . . . and get some rest, OK?”
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