Fade to Grey (Book 1): Fade to Grey (13 page)

*click*

OK, I’m in my truck waiting for Michelle; we decided to only
take two vehicles, mine and Uncle Andy’s. Originally we were only going to take
my uncle’s truck, but something about being anywhere with only one vehicle made
us a little apprehensive. Max is riding in the front with me, although when
Michelle gets here she’s going to have to sit in the middle, Max won’t give up
shotgun for anybody. And so I guess that brings me to “the plan.” Let me see,
where did I leave off at, oh yeah, the body. A couple of things were strange
about that; not that having a mostly naked, red eyed, platinum blonde with half
of her head and neck blown away lying on your deck isn’t strange enough. The
strange thing, well things, are that in the daylight her color was way off,
kind of a sickly putty gray. None of us noticed it last night, but that might
have been because of the yellow bug lights that Walter and Bernice have around
their deck. The second thing is that Max flattened his ears back and growled
any time he saw her. Not a scared growl, I don’t think Max has ever made a
frightened growl in his life, but more of a “I’m a member of the Alpha pack in
this territory, and you’re an invasive predator” kind of growl. Speaking of
Max, I’ve got to leave him locked inside Walter’s store when we go to the
meeting, he doesn’t do good around large crowds of people, even if he was in my
truck, and I don’t want to risk some kid coming over and losing an arm. So
where was I . . . ah, the plan. A little before 9:00 AM we all sat down around
the coffee table. The blond was in the shed and Max hadn’t peed on the floor or
killed a chicken, so he and I were safe. Nobody said anything for a minute, and
then Uncle Andy spoke.

“I think we’ve all been giving this a little bit of thought,
and I imagine we all have some good ideas to share. Walter and I were talking
while we took care of the body, and there’s a few things that you need to know,
or rather it would be helpful if you knew. However, right now we don’t have the
time to go into great detail with some of the stuff, but during our planning a
lot of it may come up anyhow,” he nodded toward Walter, who took over.

“We are dealing with a lot of unknowns. We really don’t know exactly
what is making people sick, or how far it’s spread—just a few states, half of
the USA, the whole world?  We just don’t know. We also don’t know how it’s
spreading. We can draw some pretty likely conclusions, you know like getting
bit and everything, but are there other ways?  What if somebody who’s infected
sneezes in your face?  How about if you’re forced to shoot one of them and you
get splattered with blood, or even moving the body—are we risking contamination
. . . can whatever it is go through our gloves?  Will bleach even kill whatever
this is?  There is just so much we’re clueless about. And so one of the
priorities in our plan has to be information, as accurate as we can get it.”

Michelle had her Ipad perched on her lap; she was seated cross-legged
on the floor, typing as we went. “OK,” Michelle said, “priority one,
information. And let’s not forget that a lot of what you were talking about
with regards to this sickness has to do with medical issues, so I think medical
should be number two.”

“Yeah, information and medical, but can we agree that we’re
coming up with a list right now, not necessarily putting the list in order of
our actual priorities?” I said. Everybody nodded.

“Let’s hear some more,” said Michelle.

Uncle Andy said, “Security . . . we’re going to need to make
sure that if more of those things show up we’ll be able to defend ourselves,
preferably without coming in contact with them, at least until we know how it’s
spread. And then we’ve got transportation. Between us we have a lot of running
vehicles, mostly four wheel drive, as well as several utility vehicles,
tractors, boats, and snow machines.”

“Which brings us to a few topics that you’ll want to know,”
Walter said. “Eric, you know that your uncle has a lot of fuel stored up at his
cabin and . . .”

“How much?” Michelle asked.

I really wasn’t trying to withhold the information from her,
but I paused as I was thinking, trying to add up all the fuel we just moved. Apparently
I paused too long, because Michelle said, “Hey, if we’re coming up with a plan,
we need to know what we’re dealing with, and quantities of resources should be
a big part of the plan; now if you have a personal reason for keeping this
information from me, well then maybe I shouldn’t be here,” her reply seemed to
be a mixture of low anger and preparation for disappointment if she wasn’t
“picked for the team.”

“Whoa there, you little fireball,” said Uncle Andy, “don’t
you think for a minute that you ain’t on our team. It’s just that my nephew,
well, he’s a little slow when it comes to doing math in his head, or even on
paper,” he winked at her and her face brightened.

“Seriously,” I said, “we’re all glad you’re here Michelle.”

Walter pointed at me and said, “Yeah, especially lipstick boy
over there.”

Even Bernice smiled at that one. The math done, I said, “This
is ballpark OK, but at the cabin there should be a grand total of about 900
gallons of gasoline and 650 gallons of diesel. We had another hundred or so
gallons of gas, but between filling up the state trooper, your Tahoe, and the hippie
van, there’s not much left in the transfer tank.”

“And now for a surprise,” Walter said. “There is a 2,400
gallon fuel tank buried in the back parking lot of the marina. It’s got a
little over 2,100 gallons of fresh mid-grade gasoline in it.” My eyes widened
with surprise. He continued, “Eric, you may remember that a few years back, the
gas pumps were out back near the propane filling shed. When I decided to put in
the new pumps out front, the EPA wouldn’t let me use the old tank, even though it
was still in good shape. So I’ve kept it out there, and every September your
uncle and I get it filled up with fresh gas, add a bunch of stabilizer, and
save it for a rainy day. I’d say it’s pouring right now. Anyhow, we have a deal
worked out with a small taxi company in Bismarck. Every year around August they
buy the fuel that we have in that tank for a reduced price. They save money
that way, we don’t lose very much, and in the process we end up getting another
year’s supply of fresh gasoline. Heck, the way the gas prices have been jumping,
we’ve actually made money the last two years”

Michelle was in her business mode and asked, “What about
diesel?”

“Well, you know what Andy’s got at the cabin already, and my
diesel tank has around 1,200 gallons left in it.”

“You know,” I said, “I think we’re starting to get a little
too deep, not that we don’t need to talk about this—we do—but we’ve also got to
leave for the campground in just a short time, and I’m just throwing this out
there, but maybe we’re going to want other people in our little club as well,
like maybe Doc Collins.”

The nods were immediate—most of them had probably considered
that prospect already.

Michelle said, “What about food and water?”

Walter and Uncle Andy looked at each other, then Walter said,
“Food is either going to be no problem, or all kinds of problems.” We waited
for him to explain. “The wildcard is how many. How many mouths are we gonna
have to feed, and for how long.” He turned to look at Uncle Andy and asked, “Have
you taken Eric to Australia yet?”

My look of confusion made my uncle grin. He said, “It’s kind
of a joke . . . Australia—as in down under. Something you haven’t seen yet. I
was going to give you the grand tour sometime during your vacation, but as you
know we’ve been a little sidetracked so far. The short version is that my new
pole building/workshop has a concealed basement underneath it, and that
basement has a lot of supplies in it.”

To be honest, I wasn’t really surprised. My uncle has always
been a pack rat with a be-prepared attitude.

The queen of staying focused said, “What about water?”

“Water shouldn’t be a problem. Probably some details we’d
have to work out, again, based on how many people for how long; but overall,
water shouldn’t be a problem.”

“What about communication?” asked Michelle.

“Actually,” I said, “right now the coms that you’ve provided
are probably the best case scenario for us.”

“And there are a half dozen more portables at my office. They
all have rechargeable battery packs and chargers, although they’ll run fine on
eight AA batteries. They’ll actually run on four, but eight will allow you to
transmit at maximum power.”

“Those would be awful handy,” said Walter.

Bernice, who had been quietly watching the exchanges, spoke
up. “I think we’re missing the big picture, the big decision if you will.”

“Which is . . . ?” said Uncle Andy and Walter in stereo.

“We’re all passing back and forth some preliminary ideas on
how long food, water, gas, and other things are going to last, and it always
goes back to the ‘how many for our long’ equation. You say there’s about 400
people at the campground, maybe another 50 to 100 pulled off in various spots
along the road, and others driving by every hour. Well, I think that the first
decision that needs to be made is where does our moral compass point to? Are we
going to circle our wagons and try to block out society and all of its
problems, or are we going to actively integrate ourselves no matter what the
cost? Do we take the five of us, and maybe Doc and Sally too, and head up to
Andy’s cabin until whatever this is goes away or straightens itself out, or do
we direct our efforts and compassion to the 400 people at Ravenwood?” We
silently considered her words. Finally my uncle spoke.

“I can’t speak for the rest of you, although I think I have a
pretty good idea of where you stand. As for myself, I think that there is a way
to do both. We can keep our core group . . . maybe add to and expand it if we
need, and we can do our best to keep that group safe and secure. Then we can
use our group to help others. So really, what I’m saying is that we need to try
and help the campers at a Ravenwood—and others as we can—all the while keeping
our central group protected. Does that make sense?  Anybody have a different
philosophy?” Nobody did.

“Do we vote on this or something?” Michelle asked.

Bernice spoke again, “I’ve nothin’ against taken’ a vote, and
there may well be times when we got to, but I think that for the most part, we
should go with the open/shut system.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

Walter answered, “It means that any time we’re talking about
anything, trying to make decisions or come up with plans and ideas and you got
something to say or add, then OPEN your mouth and say it, if you don’t have anything
constructive to say, then SHUT your mouth and listen. Nobody in this room out-ranks
anybody else, and I think that that should be an ironclad rule if we add
anybody else to our group. They’re either in one hundred percent, or out one
hundred percent.”

We all nodded our heads in agreement.

Michelle typed for a few seconds and then said, “So far we
have, in no particular order, information, medical, security, transportation
and fuel, food, water, communication . . . what about shelter, and ways to heat
or cool the shelter?”

Uncle Andy said, “Good points, young lady. Maybe some of your
smarts will rub off on the boy here.”

A thought had been building in my mind and that kind of
triggered it. “Speaking of boys, just on first impressions, I think Doc Collins
would make a good addition to a group. You and Bernice have known him a lot
longer and might have a different opinion.”

“We don’t; he’d make a fine addition to our team, especially
considering the skills he has medically,” Walter said.

“OK, if nobody has anything negative to say about it, then
we’ll make the offer today. But that’s not really where I was going with this. What
I started to say is that if we end up with Doc in our group, what do we do with
Sally, Francis, and Marty?  Are they by default automatically granted one
hundred percent ‘in’ status if Doc accepts our offer?”

Again, nobody said anything. It seems as if we had hit our
first bump in the road. After a minute or so Michelle said, “Look, we’re really
don’t know what’s going on, although I think the general consensus is that
we’re only seeing the beginnings of our troubles right now. The facts are—like
Andy and Walter already pointed out—we don’t know jack shit. I think our main
focus should be our safety and security while we try and figure out exactly
what is going on. I don’t expect somebody’s just going to drop a FedEx package
on our doorstep filled with all the information we need; we’re gonna have to do
it ourselves, however we can. In the meantime, during our transition from point
A to point B, I recommend that we adopt some type of group . . . I don’t know .
. . ‘policy’ that nobody goes anywhere alone, or unarmed.”

“I think that’s a very wise decision young lady,” said
Walter.

I stood up, stretched a bit, and said, “All right, if I
understand this so far, Michelle, Uncle Andy and I are going to head over to
Ravenwood; Walter and Bernice will stay here at the house. At the campground
the three of us will give Doc a rundown on what we’re thinking about and see if
he wants to get involved. He may not, but we’ll cross that bridge if and when
we come to it. While we’re there, we need to get some kind of semi-accurate
count of how many people are actually at the campground, and I guess we need to
see if anybody there is . . . sick.”