part0047

The next few weeks left Rick in a daze. Marsha and the children came through their quarantine period without any problems. His world was shaken up by two major events, the end of the world as he knew it, and the beginning of a new family .

Years later he would confess that he didn’t know which was more stressful. During the quarantine period, the two children had bonded with Marsha. Matt the two-year-old still missed his parents. Janet would never know any parents but them.

Matt took to Rick, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Matt was two years old, while Rick was over eighty going on sixty. Rick was in good health for a sixty-year-old; that was meaningless as he tried to keep up with the toddler.

He could keep up with the little girl as she was smart enough to take an afternoon nap just like him. Matt was a ball of energy from daybreak to lights out. The only mercy was when he fell asleep after dinner that was it. There was no dropping off gradually, the light switch went off and he was gone to the world. Until the sun came up then once again he was on a holy tear.

Rick only had to put up with this until after dinner for an hour or so, and it still pushed him to the end of his rope. It may have something to do with his being at the CSC command center twelve to fourteen hours a day seven days a week ever since events started.

Marsha was at home with the children. Janet was a little angel according to her, other than the fact she woke them both up every night wanting to be fed. Matt, however, came from somewhere else. She loved him to death and tried to keep up with him, but her age was against her .

Then after his first week there, he learned a new word, NO! Between hours at work, no sleep this was just about the last straw for Rick. He and Marsha were having their morning coffee along with a serious conversation about the children.

As they talked Marsha was giving Janet a bottle. As Rick continued his litany of complaints he didn’t notice young Matthew try to climb up on his lap. He didn’t even think about it as he lifted the youngster.

He continued on but came to a stop as he realized Marsha was smirking at him.

“What,” he said in exasperation.

Marsha tilted her head towards Matt. He was now sound asleep over Ricks's shoulder. Rick turned his head to look at the lad.

“It’s too late isn’t it,” he said plaintively.

“Yep,” replied Marsha as she cuddled the cutie in her arms. She continued, “We need to hire a Nanny, a Cook, and Housekeeper, and several Maids would be good also. Wayne and Paul have done a good job on the grounds, so that is okay.”

“What! Why the staff all of a sudden”

“Because if you haven’t noticed it dearly, you are now the leader of about fifteen thousand people, and probably the largest concentration of people left on the planet. After things settle down a bit, we will have to pay our social dues.”

This thought pleased Rick as much as a root canal, but he realized it was true. He got up to pour himself another coffee, carrying the sleeping Matt with him.

“You are right Marsha, and that brings up another subject. We need some security around here, at least controlled admission to the house, and even the whole farm. That is one nice thing about being the General, I can give orders and it will happen. I will take care of Security if you will hire the rest.”

“Yes dear, the staff starts tomorrow.”

When you are completely sandbagged sometimes it’s best to accept it and move on. That was Rick’s story and he was sticking to it.

After some thought, Rick decided to have the Military handle security on the perimeter of the Farm, and use civilian police set up in close contact with the family.

These were the easy problems facing Rick and Marsha. The bulk of the people who had come in at the recall were already residents of the Valley. However, they had picked up an additional four thousand people who had tagged along or were smart enough to show up on their own .

Apartments had been started and in many cases completed and were unoccupied. They had enough rooms for everyone. The problem was the apartments were truly empty, no furniture or furnishings of any sort. So while housing was being assigned it couldn’t really be lived in yet. Not that a few people camped out in them.

They were so tired of the quarantine quarters that anything was better.

At a staff meeting, this was the top of the agenda. The question was; where and how would they get everything that was needed. It was all out there somewhere they just had to go collect it.

A more pressing issue was to find survivors. They had to save everyone they could. While there was a world of food and shelter out there, there was the possibility that some of those left would be too young to care for themselves.

The hard fact was that most would die before they could find them, but that was no excuse to delay. It was the only human thing to do, plus the fact they needed all the genetic diversity they could find.

The preplanning from the think tanks addressed this issue. They would use drones for the initial search for human life. Many drones had been prepositioned for this purpose. These were the huge ones like the Predator versions. These were all about ten feet in length and had a long flying range and time .

Operators were easily trained for this mission. They would have rotating flight crews that would fly the drones twenty-four seven. The take from onboard cameras would be computer analyzed for active human signs, such as movement, fire, or any lighting. There would also be human observers to react to software alerts.

The software was set to high alerts, so there would be many false positives for the observers to sort out. It was felt that rather than take the chance on missing someone they would overreact.

Once an individual or group was identified the drone would fly low and sound a siren. The operators would then drop a padded canister with a long ribbon flag. The canister would contain a radio which could reach the drone’s radio equipment. The drone would then act as a repeater station back to the drone center. As they spread further across the United States they would have to have an airborne system of relay stations.

While they could use the military satellites overhead, none of the portable equipment they had available could reach it yet. This was one item that hadn’t been completed on time.

Once they found the needs of the group and found out if they wanted to be brought in, or that the Valley would let them in, a car or cars would be sent. The self-driving cars had oversized gas tanks with a cruising range of a thousand miles. They were communication equipped and each had their own crew, like the drones there were operators and communicators/observers.

While the vehicles were in transit there would be ongoing scanning for active human presence.

As in any group human endeavor, a specific language was developed. Along with the special terms came clothing with patches and badges for accomplishments and rank. Those that worked with drones were in drone ops, the pilots were drone operators or ops, and the observers were called drone eyes or just plain eyes.

The auto flight was car ops, and the drivers were car operators which became cops, and the observers were call talkies. Of course, the car operators were never allowed to forget that they were driving self-driving cars. This led to several friendly barroom conversations and a black eye or two.

The entire country was gridded out and the process had started. It was estimated that it would take six months to give a quick look at everything and then another year for a refined search for survivors. This required two fleets of drones, one high flying looking for large signs of life and then the lower more refined search. So now there were LDO’s and HDO’s, high and low drone operators.

Rick had to wonder if there was an acronym for acronyms. He asked and regretted doing so when he was told there were TLA’s and FLA’s, three, and four-letter acronyms. More than that was called a TML’s, too many letters.

In meetings, they refined the plans for providing employment for the new people and furnishings for the apartments. This was one of those lucky times that one problem would solve another. People who had no employment and were able-bodied would be hired to collect furniture, clothes, food, and other needs from the outside.

Anywhere outside of the Valley was now called the outside. Teams would go out in convoys with tractor-trailers. They would move into a shopping center and load up all the packaged items. Anything open would be left on the shelf. They didn’t want to strip any place as loners may show up with needs.

Each box loaded would be given an RFID tag that could be read remotely. While cleaning out a store there would be a team of photographers taking digital pictures for a catalog.

The trailers would be returned fully to the Valley. They would be parked, current high need items such as beds and bedding would be unloaded. Samples would be set up in a store. In this case, the store was a series of one hundred thousand square foot warehouses that had been erected for this type of need .

When someone needed a bed and mattress they would go to the store. After picking out the items they wanted a team would retrieve the order from the identified trailers.

The cost of each item would be about one cent on the true dollar cost of the item. The only reason there was any charge was to prevent people from getting new furniture or clothes every week.

The hope was the charges would meet the costs or come close for the retrieval crews.

Food would be free, go to the store and pick it up.

When someone mentioned to Rick that he was setting up a communistic society he went ballistic.

Leaving out all the swear words involved it came down to, “We are redefining the social safety net. There will be no retirement funds or food stamps!”

Rightly or wrongly Rick believed that the food stamp or EBT card program was a national disgrace. If the money being spent on this program was redirected they could have provided American made and grown food to everyone legally in America for free.

Since about everyone coming in now would be undocumented he wasn’t worried about that point anymore. More importantly, they needed every human alive if possible .

He would like to see the safety net include basic food, clothing, health care, and shelter. After that, you were on your own. What would have been completely unworkable before the Fall was now a possibility? In his mind, the only reason it was unworkable previously was the special interest groups. Free public housing when there was a buck to be made, come on! As far as health care, little was needed now, and the insurance companies and big pharma were out of the picture.

Ricks's idea of gun control was proper aiming. It had already been decided that there would be almost no standing army. They would use the Swiss model where everyone had a time of service and took their weapon home with them.

The tradeoff would be the use of weapons in domestic violence versus an armed citizenry that would never fall under Hitler or Stalin which were the two political extremes. Radical Islam was no longer a fear, but Rick hoped that there wouldn’t be a rise of Radical Christianity. It had happened before and could again.

He was prepared to stomp on it hard if it started.

All these thoughts were part of the free-flowing conversation he and Marsha were having while holding the young children they were building a new world for. Not bad for a couple of old geezers.