Just Trying To Stay Alive: A Prepper's Tale

by Michaels, Brian

  “We can’t just let them out there like that!” Emma said.

  “The National Guard has been called in to try and round everyone up and get them back to the hospitals,” I replied. “But I think this infection is already too far out of control if you ask me.”

  Just then a news report interrupted the news report in progress.

  “Let’s watch this,” I said when I saw presidential seal appear on the podium in the middle of the TV screen.

  The Press Secretary slowly walked over to the podium and began to speak.

  “The President today declared a state of emergency across our nation. We hope this drastic action will only have to remain in effect for no more than forty-eight hours,” he continued. “As you are all aware by now, we began a program last week to vaccinate school students against a particular nasty strain of the flu that we had predicted would strike our country this winter. The CDC had done extensive research and was able to isolate the particular variant that would be spreading across the country. They then put into action a plan to protect our country from what was described a particularly deadly virus.

  The drug company, Pfizer, was hired to produce and distribute the vaccine through their extensive nationwide network.

  As you are all aware, shortly after the program began to distribute the vaccine, it was reported that instead of the vaccine being distributed, samples of the actual flu virus were distributed across the country instead.

  Upon further investigation, Pfizer has admitted to an even more drastic error.”

  “Here it comes,” I said. “This is where the blame is shifted from the government on to Pfizer. Now we will hear how the government is coming to the rescue.”

  “Brian, shush,” Emma said. “I want to hear this.”

  The Press Secretary continued.

  “Pfizer has admitted that neither the vaccine nor the actual flu virus was ever distributed. A mix up had occurred in their warehouse, and instead of sending out the vaccine, a modified form of the Ebola virus was distributed. People infected with the Ebola virus within two to twenty days begin to display these signs: high fever, severe headaches, abdominal pain, discoloring of the skin, sores forming on the skin, vomiting and extreme disorientation.

  Many of these signs are showing up all across our country.

  Legal action is now pending against Pfizer.

  Pfizer had been working to develop a vaccine against Ebola for use in Africa where this disease frequently occurs.

  To date, they have been unsuccessful in their efforts to develop a vaccine.

  In order to defend against the problem we now face in our country, the CDC has begun to ship out across the country a universal serum that has been used in the past to combat this disease in Africa.

  They have employed the services of Abbot Laboratories to prepare and distribute the new serum.

  The serum is being distributed as I speak.

  The CDC feels confident that the worst of this situation will be behind us within forty-eight hours.

  We have dispatched the national guard to all the cities and towns to give the serum to anyone that is presently displaying symptoms of Ebola.

  For now, stay in your homes and do not attempt to go out to assist anyone you see that appears sick or is displaying any of the symptoms that I have described.

  Ebola is very contagious and is easily transmitted by touch.

  There is nothing you can do but avoid any possibility of getting infected.

  Are there any questions?”

  A reporter in the crowd raised his hand.

  The Press Secretary pointed at the reporter.

  “Who is going to pay to fight this outbreak?” he asked.

  “We expect that fines and penalties assessed against Pfizer will cover the expense,” the Press Secretary replied. “However, we feel for the future it may be advisable to increase the budget of the CDC so they can do more research and begin in-house development of vaccines instead of relying on outside companies so hopefully we can avoid these type of situations in the future.”

  “My God, the government started an Ebola epidemic,” I said. “Of course, you can’t believe a damn thing the government says, it probably isn’t even an Ebola epidemic. I wouldn’t even doubt that whatever it is, they did it on purpose, for our own good, of course.”

  “He said it was Pfizer’s fault,” Emma said.

  “Of course it wasn’t the government’s fault,” I sighed. “It is never the government’s fault.”

  “Well, whoever’s fault it is, what are we going to do?” Emma asked.

  “The only thing we can do for now and that is stay inside,” I replied. “We have enough food in the basement to last us for months, this wasn’t the reason we’ve been storing that food for, but it is close enough.”

  Katie came bouncing into the room.

  “I’m ready to start work Dad,” Katie smiled and looked around at everyone. “Why is everyone so glum, who died?”

  I was honestly afraid to even try to answer her.

  Chapter 10

  All day we sat in the house, not knowing what to do or to think.

  We kept the curtains closed and tried not to look outside, we didn’t want to see the suffering and agony that was on the streets outside our home.

  We knew there wasn’t anything we could do, but that did little to ease the guilty feeling we all felt for not trying to help those people.

  It was difficult to see kids Katie and Logan’s age stumbling around, large bloody cuts and scrapes on their bodies from running into trees, traffic signs, from getting their feet stuck in drainage grates and struggling to pull them free only to tear the skin away, from falling face first onto cold concrete, breaking teeth and noses, causing blood to run down their faces and over their bodies.

  It was horrifying to watch such cruel mutilation and Emma broke into tears every time anyone looked outside.

  I kept beating myself up, and I’m sure Emma felt the same way, about how desperately we would want someone to help Katie or Logan if they were staggering around in front of someone else’s house.

  The only thing that stopped us from running outside to try and help someone was how we would feel if one of our family became like what we were seeing outside.

  Despite that possibility, the internal anguish we felt was barely enough to keep us from running outside.

  We turned off the TV, every channel was the same, each station had a different city but the same chaos and scenes of suffering and anguish.

  I turned on the TV for a few minutes every two hours to see if by chance something different was being reported, but the only thing that seemed to change was the growing death totals that scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

  Katie and Logan kept trying to call their friends, but no one was answering.

  Katie typed text message after text, then checked her phone every few minutes to see if she received a reply, but there were no replies coming back.

  I also never received a single call from the company’s customer service center.

  I tried to call Tom around midday, but again no one was answering.

  My mind kept drifting back to conversations I had with my dad, I’m sure if he was still alive, he would have plenty to say about what was going on around the country today.

  Over the years I often doubted a lot of what he told me, I thought a lot of what he said could have been embellished exaggerations to make a point.

  I did believe enough of what he told me and the things I saw when I began my job traveling around the country auditing different businesses and agencies to decide to prepare against what I felt was a coming financial collapse.

  Today and the coming weeks, I decided that not only didn’t my dad exaggerate, but he was probably holding back on the things he could have told me for fear of making me think he was crazy.

  The sight outside my house now told told me that whatever he was thinking back then, he had been a very wise man and I should have l
istened a lot more carefully.

  Around five o’clock we all ran to the front window when we heard the sound of an engine coming down our street.

  We were shocked to see how many people were now out on the streets and in the yards, it reminded me of quitting time in town when everyone came flooding out of the office buildings, pouring out on the streets and sidewalks excited to be going home for the day.

  Except there was no excitement or anyone in a hurry to go anywhere, today all I saw was sick, badly injured people staggering around and not knowing where they were or where they were going.

  We soon saw a tan Army truck slowly moving down the street, coming in our direction.

  Two blocks down the street the truck stopped and twenty people in bright yellow hazmat suits jumped out of the back of the truck.

  We figured the National Guard had finally arrived.

  The people in the hazmat suits disbursed and began running up to the staggering bodies.

  In their right hand they held a hypodermic jet gun and in their left hand they held a spray can of red paint.

  They quickly looked over each staggering individual, I guess to determine whether or not they were too far gone or were still salvageable, and then used the jet gun to inject the person with what I assumed was the new serum.

  The staggering people just continued to move around, not paying any attention to the men giving them the shots, as if they didn’t even know the men were there.

  After the men gave the serum shots, they would then spray a large red dot on the person’s chest before moving on to the next person.

  We watched this going on for about thirty minutes as the people in the hazmat suits moved down the streets and the yards to examine all the staggering people before they got back in their truck and moved on.

  After the truck moved on, about half of the staggering bodies out on the street had red dots on their chests.

  It was at this time Katie noticed the pattern.

  “Dad, why were they painting red dots on those people?” she asked.

  “It seems like they were marking the people that had been given shots,” I replied. “I think they are doing that so if another truck comes through, they will know that these people have received the new serum already and the truck will then leave and go look elsewhere.”

  “How come they didn’t give everyone a shot?” Katie asked.

  “I don’t know but there could be two reasons that I can think of,” I replied. “The national guard only has so much of the serum, so they are only giving shots to the people that appear to be in the best condition. The second reason I can think of is that they are only giving the serum to those that they think still have a chance to survive.”

  “You mean everyone that didn’t get a shot is going to die?” Katie asked.

  “That’s just my guess,” I replied. “Hopefully I’m wrong.”

  “Maybe they just gave the shots to the people that needed it the most?” Katie suggested.

  “Maybe,” I replied.

  “How did they decide who should get the shot and who they wouldn’t give a shot to?” Katie asked. “I really don’t see any difference between the people with the red dots and those without the red dots.”

  “Again, I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m sure they had a reason for who they gave shots to and who didn’t get the shots, but I agree that I don’t see any difference between the people with red dots and the others.”

  “Could their decision have just been random?” Katie asked again.

  “I feel the probability of what they were doing being random to be very low,” I replied. “I say that for a couple reasons: First the men seemed to have examined each of those people before deciding whether or not to give them a shot of the serum. I don’t know what they were looking for, but it appeared they were looking for something.

  Second, when the government is involved, there is always a reason for what they do, even though I feel their reasons are often very misguided. As you know I am very skeptical of anything the government does, so if you ask me it looked like they were making a conscious decision about who would or should live and who would or should die. In a way I hope I’m wrong about that, but you know that’s just how I think.”

  “But you’re probably not wrong,” Katie added as a sad look spread over her face. “You’re not wrong very often.”

  I could see that the severity of what was happening was beginning to sink in with Katie and I knew she understood our situation only too well now.

  I also realized that Katie had been listening to me over the years more than I thought, I hope that was a good thing.

  As a parent you never know when you talk what they hear and what they ignore, and how that affects what kind of person they become.

  More than Logan, Katie was becoming more like me in how she thought and in the things she did.

  By the looks on everyone’s faces, I could tell that only Katie was beginning to question what we just saw happen outside.

  I had always been analytical in my thinking, I guess that was why when I went to college that I focused my studies on Economics and statistics. Katie was also that way.

  Logan was more like his mother, more emotional and free thinking. Logan and Emma were both deeply disturbed by what we had seen over the last twenty-four hours, only Katie was focused on what the National Guard had just done and why.

  For the rest of the day Logan and Emma talked and tried to play cards to pass the time, but it was impossible for them to focus with our present situation.

  Katie sat at the corner of the window, studying the activity outside, occasionally getting up to go in and look at the TV for a few minutes.

  Emma kept trying to get Katie to move away from the window, telling her she didn’t need to look at what was going on outside because it would give her nightmares for the rest of her life.

  Katie would move away from the window for a short time but always ended up back at the window before long.

  Late afternoon I went over and sat beside Katie.

  “Have you figured anything out?” I asked.

  “No, nothing seems to make sense,” she replied quietly.

  “What have you considered?” I asked to try and get her to talk instead of letting things build up inside her.

  “I’ve tried to see if there was any difference between the number of guys and girls, if giving the shot had anything to do with whether the person was old or young, black or white and I even looked at whether the person was tall or short as if that would have anything to do with it, but nothing seemed to stand out.”

  “Now that you mention it, did you know that the CDC only gave the flu shot to girls sixteen years old and older?” I asked.

  “No, I guess I never paid much attention to who was to get the shots,” she replied. “In fact, I never paid much attention to anything about the shots. As you know I just took the consent form and stuffed it in my backpack and forgot all about it until the day I found it and gave it to you to sign. Why would they only give it to girls, sounds sexist to me.”

  “Ms. Davis said it was because only girls were susceptible to this year’s strain of the flu, but I didn’t buy it,” I replied. “It just didn’t sound right to me.”

  “What do you think they were up to?” Katie asked.

  “Don’t get me started on that subject,” I smiled softly. “Besides we have bigger problems to think about now.”

  I looked out the windows at the pathetic crowd in front of the house, “I know there was a reason why only certain people received the serum, but what that reason is we will probably never know. We need to focus on keeping ourselves healthy for now. That’s all that matters now, why don’t you go and try to rest your mind for a bit before all of this makes you sick.”

  “Maybe later,” Katie replied. “I feel too nervous to relax.”

  I nodded, I knew the feeling.

  It was around eight o’clock that evening when Kattie called out to me.

&
nbsp; We had given up on checking the TV for news updates, the only thing that changed was the death totals and we were no longer interested in watching the totals climb.

  We were only interested in finding out what was happening in our area and what might help us.

  “Dad,” Katie called out. “Come here, something is happening outside.”

  Emma and Logan quickly followed me over to the window.

  “What do you see?” I asked as I anxiously looked outside.

  “I think they are starting to die or fall over or something,” Katie replied. At first, I saw a couple people fall over and not get back up, then more started to fall. “Look at them now, they seem to be falling all over the place.”

  As I watched the scene outside, I could see staggering people stop then fall over, landing on the street, in the yards, in my yard and on the neighbor’s porches.

  After fifteen minutes the crowd in front of the house was less intimidating than it was before since half of the crowd was now lying on the ground, no longer moving.

  The ones still standing began falling on top of the ones we had watched collapse moments ago, except the people that were falling now struggled and got back on their feet.

  I also noticed something else.

  “Only the people with the red dots on their chest have stopped moving,” I said.

  “The people that got the serum are dead?” Katie asked. “I thought the men in hazmat suits were trying to save them.”

  “I don’t know, maybe they were,” I replied. “The government always seems to get the opposite result from what they are trying to accomplish.”

  “So, what does this mean?” Emma asked.

  “For now all it means is that there are fewer people moving around outside,” I replied.