THE COLLAPSE: Seeking Refuge (4 page)

Stephen, Tarra and Fish began smiling uncontrollably.  They were in!  They were now officially residents of The Park!

Katrina asked as she looked around at all the leaders with their hands up from her chair, “Does that mean we get to stay here with you?”

“Yes, it does my dear,” Claudine affirmed with a smile.  “Welcome to The Park.”

“Hell yeah!” Fish shouted and ran over to Stephen to shake his hand.  Stephen gave Fish a quick brotherly hug and then hugged Tarra, who was still out of sorts from Stephen’s speeches.

Claudine interrupted the joyful chatter by saying, “We have some rules here, I’m sure you’re aware of that.  We’ll brief you on those later.  Now, for introductions.  We’ll start with you, Ox.”

“Jason Oxnard, day shift bridge team leader.”

“Ed Quentin, night shift bridge team leader.”

“Hal Hollingsworth, day shift gate team leader.”

“Ed Jones, night shift gate team leader.”

“Alexis Tillman, beach security team leader.”

“Gerty and Victor Martinez, provisions managers.”

“Carrie McDonald, resident nurse.”

“Lawrence Paulson, resource manager.” – AKA Mr. Grumpy.

After everyone had introduced themselves, Claudine assigned each of the adults with a responsibility.

“Fish, with your combat experience we are assigning you as the night shift beach security team leader.  Our previously assigned individual decided to leave the park to take his family elsewhere.  Please see Alexis tomorrow morning for your briefing,”  Claudine announced.  Fish initially had his heart set on being a member or even a team leader of the bridge team, but after he got a good look at Alexis Tillman….nope!  Screw the bridge, the beach it is!

“Tarra, we would like for you to work with Carrie.  Our community is certainly in need of anyone with health care training.”

Tarra shook her head in acknowledgement and then glanced at Carrie McDonald, who smiled at her.  Tarra smiled back, of course.

“Stephen, you are going to be our new resource manager,” Claudine declared, and then braced for shock.

“What?  Are you kidding me?” Larry screamed with disgust.

William said to Larry, “Nope.  You’ll be working for him effective tomorrow morning.”  He then stepped in front of his wife, Claudine.  Was he protecting her from Larry?  Why?  Maybe ol’ Larry had a temper.  Ya think?

Larry shouted angrily, “I have a god damn degree in ecology!  What the hell qualifications does this guy have?”

“He has a degree in common sense,” William answered with a chuckle.  “Now deal with it.”

Fish, out of nowhere, suddenly blurted toward Larry, “Yeah, he has a degree in shut-the-fuck-up, too!”

Stephen sensed confrontation and became nervous.  Larry was initially angry at William, but once Fish had yelled at him, he completely lost it.

“You better watch your mouth, navy boy,” Larry hissed, and balled his fists.  His upper lip was quivering.  Stephen noticed that the furious man was sweating, too.  It wasn’t even that warm out, maybe upper forties or lower fifties at best.  The guy was about to explode!

Fish laughed and said, “Yo, what are you gonna do?  Bleed on me?  Ha-ha!”

Tarra giggled, but then said, “Fish, don’t.”

Larry stepped forward, eyes trained on Fish, but Claudine stepped around her husband and got between the two men, saying, “Gentlemen, calm down!  Save your energy for something constructive.  For Christ’s sake, be responsible enough!”

Fish looked like scolded child as he replied, “Yes, ma’am.”

Larry said nothing to Claudine in response as he turned away from the group.  He huffed something under his breath and stomped away from site 137.

After Larry stormed away, the leadership dispersed as well.  Some of them were still on shift, and needed to get back to their posts.  Claudine and William informed Fish and the Alexanders that they could use the remainder of the day to get their camp set up, and that they could choose any of the vacant sites in The Park that they so desired.  Additionally, she made sure to emphasize that Fish and Stephen now had positions of leadership, and would need to be at every three o’clock meeting.  They would be notified of the meeting’s location every day at around one o’clock by their daughter Meghan, who would make a round-robin through The Park to notify all of the leaders of the day’s location. 

Before departing, Claudine called Fish back to her and William to speak with him privately.  Stephen and Tarra assumed that they were going to lecture him about the confrontation with Larry, so they collected the Kays and began walking back to site 62.

*****

Back at site 62, Stephen let Pharaoh out of the truck and the dog immediately watered a nearby tree.  When the dog was finished, the Kays took off with him over to the grassy area near the bathrooms to play, leaving Stephen and Tarra sitting alone at the picnic table.  They couldn’t leave the site yet, they had to wait for Fish.  Stephen asked Tarra, “Do you think Fish is getting his ass chewed?”

“Probably,” Tarra replied.  “That was kind of funny, though.  ‘What are you gonna do, bleed on me?’”  Tarra did a perfect impression of Fish.

“That Larry guy is a real piece of work,” Stephen muttered.  “I really don’t want to work with him at all!”

“Then don’t.  What do you need him for, anyway?”

“He knows what’s going on, he knows what people are assigned to what tasks.  I have no idea.  I need information,” Stephen answered.

“Stephen, c’mon.  You’re a smart man, you can figure it out.  Don’t worry so much about it, just take a walk-about through The Park tomorrow morning and you’ll know who’s doing what.  You don’t need to adhere to his messed up procedures anyway.  Start your own,” Tarra consoled.

“Right.  I’ll try.”

“No, babe.  You won’t
try
, you’ll
do
,”  Then she tried to cheer him up with her Yoda voice by saying,
“Do or do not, there is no try.”

Stephen laughed and playfully pushed her shoulder and said, “Whatever!  Hey, are you nervous about working with that butch-looking nurse?”

“Nope.” 

“I didn’t think you were,” Stephen acknowledged.  Then he grinned and said, “I’ll bet ya my last dollar that she’s a lesbian.”

Tarra laughed, “So what?  Big deal.”

“I know, I know.  I’m just joking around,” Stephen explained.  He then changed the subject by asking, “Where the heck is Fish?”

Then, as if Fish had known they were talking about him, he arrived.

“Speaking of the devil…” Tarra joked.

Fish said as he walked up to the picnic table, “Devil’s in the house.  Are we out of here, or what?”

“Wait,” Stephen asked.  “What did ol’ Claudine and William have to say to you?  Did they yell at you about the Larry thing?”

“No, they never even mentioned that douchebag,” Fish explained.  “They told me that the beach security chick, Alexis, is like a daughter to them.  I guess that she was a police officer, and the only cop in Oak Harbor to stick around after the shit hit the fan.  She guarded the Probst family until they made it here.  She also helped them set this place up to the way it is now.”

Tarra immediately laughed, “So, they have
you
working side-by-side with a hot cop?  I guess they didn’t really think that one out, did they!”

Fish grinned his toothy trademark smile from ear to ear and said, “Nope.  They sure didn’t!”

Stephen said, “Let’s get out of here and find a site.  I say we put up the tents and worry about the rest of the stuff tomorrow.  Tarra and I haven’t slept yet.”

“Agreed,” Tarra answered.  She and Stephen had been running on fumes.  They needed rest.

Chapter 3

Stephen was the first one up the next morning.  He hadn’t slept well, he was too worried about his new responsibility and position of leadership.  Even though there wasn’t much light at that early hour, he managed to dig through the food bags in the back of the truck until he had found the instant coffee and vanilla flavored dry creamer. 

Stephen thought about setting up the propane camp stove to heat up some water for his coffee, but then decided against it.  They only had two bottles of Coleman propane left, and one was already depleted a bit from a previous camping trip.  They needed to conserve the propane for a rainy day (literally).  Instead, Stephen walked into the forest adjacent to the site they had chosen and gathered up some deadfall to build a fire.  He needed to warm up, anyway.  It was a very chilly morning indeed.

Once the fire was blazing away sufficiently, Stephen used his fire stick to push the burning deadfall under the steel cooking grates of the fire ring and set his pan of water upon them.

“Now, that’s what I’m talking about!” Stephen announced joyfully to himself as his hands began to thaw.  But then his peaceful coffee making time was disrupted.

A gunshot.  Then another one.  Stephen’s heart began to race in his chest.  He surmised that the blasts had come from the west beach area or somewhere thereabouts, but it’s very hard to tell which direction gunshots come from when a person is surrounded by trees.

The tent’s zipper sounded behind him, and Tarra poked her head out. 

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

“Yeah, I did.  Sounded like they were coming from the beach, I think.”

“Are you making coffee?” Tarra asked, excitedly.

“Yupper,” Stephen replied proudly.

“Hell yeah, give me a second, I’m coming out!” Tarra exclaimed quietly and disappeared back into the tent.

Stephen and Tarra chatted the rest of the morning away until the sun had illuminated The Park.  There were hardly any clouds in the sky, which was probably why it had been so chilly the night before.

Stephen had asked Tarra what she planned on doing with the Kays while she was working with Carrie McDonald.

“I’ll just take them with me, I guess,” she responded.  She couldn’t leave them alone at the campsite.  Fish couldn’t watch them, since he was assigned a night shift and would likely be sleeping most of the day.

As the fire dwindled down to nothing more than a few smoldering coals, Stephen got up and sighed.  He said, “I guess it’s time for me to go to work.  I’m going to steer clear of the beach for a while, at least until I find out what happened.”

“Good idea,” Tarra agreed.

“Once Fish wakes up, let him know what we heard so he has a heads-up.  He’s assigned to the beach,” Stephen said, worriedly.  “Let’s meet back here for lunch at noon?”

“Sounds good, babe,” Tarra replied.  Stephen thought about taking his M-4 rifle with him before he departed, but decided against it.  He didn’t want to intimidate any of the folks that would be working for him.  He still had Eddie’s .38 special in his shoulder holster under his light jacket.  That should be enough, right?

*****

Stephen’s first order of business that morning was to do exactly what Tarra had suggested; take a walk through The Park to determine who’s-who-in-the-zoo.  He intended on introducing himself and speaking with as many people as he could.  He needed to get his teams working on new projects as soon as possible, but not until after he identified who was actually going to be working for him.  But, it was only his first day, how much could he actually accomplish?  Especially on foot.  It was a big park, after all.

As he walked, Stephen noticed that there weren’t any of the familiar smells of breakfast cooking as there normally would have been any other time prior to The Collapse.  No bacon, no eggs, no sausage, no hash browns.  He thought he might have smelled some Spam frying at one site.  Possibly.  What he did notice, however, was the smell of fish on the grill.  “
Hmmm, let me guess….trout?”
Stephen thought about Larry’s idiotic defense of fishing in the lake versus the Puget Sound.  What a dumbass!

Stephen crossed from Lower Loop into Forest Loop, and came across the group of teenage boys with hand saws.  It was Stephen’s woodcutting team, hard at work.  They were in a different location from the day before.  One tree was already on the ground, and a boy was in the process of cutting down another as his buddies stripped the branches and sawed apart the fallen one.

“Hey guys, hold up a second,” Stephen said with a friendly tone.  All of the boys stopped what they were doing and turned toward Stephen.

“Yeah?  What’s up?” one of the older boys asked, as if Stephen was interrupting something extremely important.

“My name is Stephen Alexander, and I’ve been assigned by Claudine and William as your new resource manager.”

The boys looked at each other, some looked confused, and some looked either happy or relieved.  Stephen continued, “You guys have been doing a great job so far, but as of today, I’m going to make your job both easier and harder at the same time.”

Stephen knew that as young men, all of their minds were probably focused on the “harder” portion of Stephen’s announcement, so he added with a smile, “Mostly easier, though.”

*****

Tarra woke up the girls and got them ready for the day as Fish continued to sleep.  He had hastily set up his little two-man tent the night before in an area that would soon become a sun patch.  Tarra laughed as she thought about him angrily trying to sleep in the impending brightness.  She needed to wake him up and tell him about the gunshots they had heard earlier in the morning.

Tarra unzipped his tent door just enough to be able to reach in and shake his feet.  She said, “Fish, honey, wake up for a second.”

“Wha-? Dude, what?” he said, groggily.

“Stephen and I just wanted to let you know that we heard gunshots earlier this morning, and he was pretty confident that they had come from the beach.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Gunshots.  Got it.  Close the door, please,” Fish replied to her and rolled onto his side, flipping his sleeping bag over his head to block out the morning sunlight.  Tarra chuckled and zipped him back up. 

The Kays were excited to go with their mommy on an “adventure” that day, and tugged at her jacket.  After all, the children had been cooped up inside their home on Swantown Road for weeks up until the day before.  Tarra thought that it was nice to finally get them out and about.  She was, however, a bit worried about what the resident nurse might have to say about her bringing the children with her to work.  But, was it really
work
, though?  It’s not like it was a real job with a paycheck and social security deductions.  It was just a means to “earn their keep”, as Stephen had described it. 

Before departing on the journey, Tarra briefly considered bringing her shotgun.  She felt comfortable with it, but would others?  What could happen during the day that she would need it?  She was supposed to be a medical assistant, not a security guard.  After a quick debate with herself, Tarra decided that she, just like her husband, did not wish to intimidate the other residents.  She left the gun next to Stephen’s M-4 in the back of Fish’s truck, locked the door, and tossed the keys next to the snoring Fish in his tent.

Tarra and her girls left site 199 in Lower Loop and headed toward Forest Loop.  It would be somewhat of a long walk.  Carrie’s nursing station was set up at site 72, which was just about as dead center in the campground as it could get, considering the distance between the northwestern corner of Lower Loop and the southeastern edge of Quarry Pond.

Fish and the Alexanders had chosen site 199 because they had camped at that site in the past.  Tarra remembered that it had been somewhat noisy at times due to the pedestrian traffic, but that was to be expected.  Site 199 was located smack dab next to a trailhead that led to one of the main trails in the Deception Pass area trail system.  Using the trail, they could cut across the woods and hike to Cranberry Lake or the Puget Sound within minutes, instead of walking all the way through Lower Loop and then backtracking along the road that skirted Cranberry Lake.  It would be ultra-convenient for both Stephen and Fish to get to their jobs in The Park.  A long walk for Tarra, but a short one for the boys.

As Tarra and the Kays reached the first fork in the road at Forest Loop, she spotted Stephen in the distance.  He was with the same teenage woodcutters they had drove past the day before.  She could see that they were loading fresh cut wood into a small flatbed trailer.  Were they moving it?  Tarra remembered Stephen’s plan to set up two wood stations in The Park, and he must have caught those guys in the process of knocking down some trees. 

Tarra pointed at her sweaty husband in the distance and said to the Kays, “Look, there’s daddy.”

“Can we go over there, mommy?” asked Katrina.

“No, sweet pea, we can’t.  He’s really busy right now.  Besides, we need to go left here instead of right,” Tarra answered, pointing at the fork in the road.

“Awwww,” the Kays both whined, simultaneously.

“Don’t worry, we’ll see daddy for lunch in a few hours, okay?” Tarra consoled as they marched forward.

*****

“You’re pretty cool, Mr. A,” the oldest of the boys said to Stephen.  The teenager’s name was Prince.  Yes, it was Prince, as in,
Pur-ple Rain…Purple Rain
.

“Oh yeah?  Why is that?” Stephen asked Prince as he dropped another armload of pine rounds into the little trailer that they had borrowed.

“Because Larry never helped us with this kind of stuff.  He just bossed us around all the time.”

Another boy, named Craig (the other boys had kept calling him “Craigger” all morning), had added, “Yeah, he got angry super easy, too.  He yelled at us a lot.”

“Is that right?” Stephen asked.  He noted the rusty and bent handsaw that Craigger had been using.  He then continued with, “I’m going to look into getting you guys some better tools.”

“Sweet!” Prince cheered.

“You gentlemen have one of the most important jobs in this park.  Everyone needs wood.  If you weren’t providing it for the residents, they’d take the matter into their own hands and knock down every single tree near their campsites.  People could get hurt.”

Another boy sadly said, “Larry never told us that.”  The kid had looked at Prince when he made the Larry comment, and Prince nodded in agreement. 

Stephen knocked the bark and sawdust off his jacket with his hands, and then said, “I’d love to hang out with you fellas all morning, but I need to get going.  Once you guys get this wood over to the place I showed you, take a break.  I’ll catch up with you again in about an hour or so.”

The boys all acknowledged Stephen’s orders, and then he left the woodcutters to their business.  Stephen still had a lot to accomplish, he couldn’t spend his entire day helping the woodcutting team.  Besides, those boys had it all under control.  Although, Stephen
did
feel pretty good about making a difference to them.  Apparently, they had quite a bit of disdain for his predecessor, Lawrence Paulson.

*****

Tarra and the Kays arrived at site 72 at the same time as a man in his late twenties.  He was carrying two buckets of water.  Carrie exited her RV that was parked on the gravel pad and hustled over to the man, taking the buckets from him.  She smiled at him and said, “Thanks, Kurt!”

“No prob!  See ya at noon,” Kurt said, and walked past Tarra and the Kays.  He had waved courteously to them as he left the site.  “
Nice guy
,” Tarra thought. 

Carrie took the buckets into the RV and quickly returned, cheerfully saying, “Good morning, Tarra!”  Then she looked down at the Kays and said, “And good morning to you ladies, too!  My name is Nurse Carrie, what are your names?”

The Kays gave their names to the tall, friendly nurse.  Judging by Carrie’s actions, Tarra guessed that she wasn’t upset about her bringing the kids.  Just then, they heard a man shouting.

“Carrie!  Carrie!  Help me!” a disheveled guy in his early thirties wearing a filthy flannel hoody was running up the road towards Carrie’s site.  He had what looked like a dirty old t-shirt wrapped around his right hand.

Carrie and Tarra looked at each other and immediately put on their war faces.  They both ran to the man, who was making indistinguishable noises from the pain.

Carrie said, “Cole!  What did you do this time?”

“I burnt the shit out of my fuckin’ hand!” Cole hollered.

“Language!” Carrie scolded, and pointed at the Kays, who were still standing on the gravel pad next to Carrie’s RV.

“Oh, sorry.  It just hurts like a motherfu-, I mean, son-of-a-gun,” Cole half laughed, half cried.

“How’d this happen?” Carrie asked, as she and Tarra escorted Cole toward the RV.

“I was makin’ breakfast on the fire, ya know?  My chair gave out as I was leanin’ forward and I damn near fell into the fire pit!” Cole explained as he removed the t-shirt bandage.