part0048

The next year flew by for Rick and Marsha. During that time, the Valley expanded to one-hundred and seventy-five thousand residents. That first year took a horrible toll on the outside survivors.

The population of Earth according to the best estimates went from seventy-five million during that first year to less than a million worldwide.

This was due to the last of influenza. No matter how remote a village was there was some communication with the outside world. When a person from the village visited the outside, there was a high probability they were bringing the disease back with them. This ranged from the Inuit’s of the Arctic Circle to the Indians of the Amazon, to the Pygmies of Africa.

Then there was the fact that the survivors, everywhere but the Valley didn’t have access to the Live pharmaceutical. So the remaining population went from robust health to that of pre-Live citizens.

The recovery program worked better than they ever hoped. Once cold weather set in the drones could spot smoke. The crew would then circle in and then sound an alarm siren to alert the residents they were above them.

A canister would be dropped with a bright streamer. It would contain a solid-state radio in its padded case. Once identities were exchanged the Operations Center would do an immediate check on the history of the identified individual or group.

Since it was all computerized it was done while the conversation was occurring. There were only several cases where the people weren’t invited to join the Valley. It would be explained why the individual couldn’t join them. Fortunately, there were no family groups involved; those not invited were all singles.

As people were found their name was put into a public database in the Valley. Sadly very few were lost loved ones or friends.

Once the individual was seen to take the vaccine on camera they were allowed into the self-driving car which had been sent for them. The car would have enough food and water for the journey.

There were several encounters that were memorial. One of those was a group of seven children. They were led by a ten-year-old girl. She brought the group together in the town of Springfield. Using a self-driving car programmed to hit every street in town with horn blaring she brought the other six kids together.

Her parents had owned and ran a pizzeria that made wood-fired pizza. This was their heat source. She taught herself how to run a forklift and brought in pallets of two-by-fours for fuel from the local lumber company.

One of the boys, a nine-year-old figured out how to start a portable generator from a home-improvement store. This was used to provide battery chargers power. They were siphoning gasoline from cars.

Their leader had them use a lithium battery-powered chain saw to cut up the winter's fuel supply. She remembered her grandfather telling her that gasoline couldn’t be stored for very long, so she wanted to be ready for the winter. She also required safety glasses to be worn when cutting the wood.

The local water plant lost pressure on the system for some reason. For restroom facilities, they had portable camping gear gleaned from a sporting goods store. The plastic bags were dumped through the broken window of a basement in a building several blocks down the street. A special note was made in the system about that building.

Clothes and food were plentiful for the group, so they were in very good shape when found. They used paper cups and plates, which ended up in that basement. Five-gallon water jugs were stacked up where they had scavenged them .

The backroom of the pizzeria was converted to a dormitory. Each child had a chest of draws for their clothes. She assembled a first-aid kit for cuts. They had a collection of games, both electronic and board. It was evident that they didn’t spend all their time playing.

A small armory of shotguns, rifles, and handguns along with cleaning supplies and ammunition was gathered. They had shooting practice three times a week and while not experts, they could use the weapons.

To top it all off, they were continuing their reading, writing, and arithmetic lessons, each helping the other.

Rick made note of Linda McDermott’s name and intended to keep track of how she performed in the future. This kid was a natural leader.

Each of the children when they came to the Valley was absorbed into a family group. The original families of the Valley had expanded as large as they could reasonably be. New families were being formed within weeks of the individuals coming to the Valley.

It wasn’t all sweetness and light on the recovery. The worse area was in Idaho. Most of the survivalists were just trying to do that. However, some of them had taken a page out of Major Watkins's playbook. Before the Fall, they had reconnoitered the other camps, caves, and tunnels in the area.

While many tried to maintain security and remain hidden it really was impossible with modern surveillance equipment. When it was evident that the big die-off was in progress they all remained in their bunkers. Once they came out, those that were going to die had.

This still left a population of almost one thousand in the area. The strongest immediately set themselves up as warlords. After a few fights, they were too small to call battles; the area came under the control of one strong man, James Bolton.

Bolton promptly reintroduced the practice of slavery and maintained a harem. He must have read too many post-apocalyptic stories. He and his thugs ruled with an iron hand.

Their footprint was so large that it was one of the earliest human centers that the drones picked up. Since it was big Rick had them go slow and scout the place out well. The Idaho group had light planes, so they stayed high and made no contact.

In Rick’s military staff meeting where they first discussed this group, there never was a question that they would let this stand. The only question was how. They called Judge O’Malley in, who reviewed all the facts. He suggested they turn it over to the District Attorney .

The DA’s office called a grand jury together who indicted the group in absentia. While under martial law there was no concern about posse comitatus violations. Actually, under his authority, Rick could have ordered them taken out, but he wanted to retain as much of the law and order of the old United States as possible.

This wouldn’t be a quick raid operation. The enemy had over two hundred armed men. Granted they weren’t a trained organized army, but two hundred weapons have a quality of their own.

His staff planned an operation that would occur in several phases. A scouting team was set in place fifty miles from the Idaho base. The slavers set up in Soda Springs, Idaho for some reason. It was a crossroads type of town.

While the scouts were doing their work, a series of supply depots were opened along the route to Idaho. They had hopes of bringing back almost eight hundred people. Even with self-driving cars and buses, there would have to be rest stops and overnight stops along the way.

It took two months to pre-position food, fuel and set up lodging along the way. One plus from the operation was that they found five more individuals along the way. Each was acceptable to the Valley, and all were overjoyed to join the community.

The whole time the scouts had been reporting back. By the time the last post was set up a battle plan was in place. The slavers had set up large inflatable huts for everyone except the leaders. They had the nicest housing in town for themselves.

They would send out units daily on scavenging trips using school buses and semi-trucks. They had gotten to the point that the scavenging teams would be out for several days. There would be twenty-five people on a team. Five of them would be armed guards; the rest slaves to do the actual work.

The slaves in the compound would do the work. They weren’t abused in the form of whippings, torture, or sexual abuse. They were just held against their will and forced to work. Their housing and food were the same as everyone but the leaders. The leaders definitely lived a better lifestyle in the form of food and housing. There was some evidence that some of the female slaves were trading sexual favors.

While the scouts were observing one of the slavers was brought out and executed. It was known that it was for the rape of a slave because they announced it on the small radio station they had set up, which the scouts were probably the most passionate listeners.

The execution gave Rick pause; it meant that the slavers weren’t totally evil, but what concerned him, it spoke of a high degree of organization and discipline .

While observing the scouts were taking pictures continuously of the area and especially the people. In the two months, they were able to build a database of the entire slaver army and the rest of the people. There would be no hiding in the general population for this group.

The attack plan was straight forward. One team would take out the groups that were away scavenging while the main body of troops took Soda Springs. There was no intention of allowing any of the slavers to live. They couldn’t afford to have these types loose in the world.

The slavers were careless in their setup. They had security on duty at all road entrances to the area. However, there were no walls or fencing around their quarters.

The guards were set up in nice guard shacks with heating and lighting. This made it easy to see that the night shift would mostly be asleep and would certainly have no night vision.

As much as Rick wanted to lead the attack, he knew he had larger responsibilities. The night of the raid he was in the command post with his staff. They would be listening to the commander on the ground, but wouldn’t try to do his job for him.

Each of the four-guard shacks had a four-man squad assigned to it. The two main huts the slaver soldiers slept in had ten men and a heavy weapons team. Each of the four houses had a five-man squad assigned .

At the designated hour of three a.m., the go signal was given. The fighting part of the operation took fifteen minutes. It was a simple butchery of the slaver army. The closest to having excitement was when the team who was taking the leader had to decide quickly who was bad and good, as he had several women in bed with him.

Loudspeakers were used to tell everyone to stay in their hut until daybreak. At first light, people started to come out of the huts. As they exited they were directed to an area that had been set up with temporary fencing. There were portable tables and chairs set up, along with a large field kitchen.

Before they were allowed in the area, a picture was taken, and computer comparison performed against the database they had built up. One man was identified as being a slaver. He was led away and kept with several others that had managed to surrender.

The three outside scavenging teams had been captured with no problems or losses. They weren’t returning to Soda Springs but heading towards the first depot along the route. They were bringing no slavers with them.

By noon, all the freed population was fed and clothed then boarded on travel buses. Very few of them had anything but the clothes on their backs. There were no family groupings .

After they left the last of the slavers were executed and left where they fell. A thorough search of the buildings had been conducted so they mounted up and left. They only went as far as the first depot and set up for several days.

A drone was left high up to see if anyone was missed. None were; they waited a week then surveillance was discontinued, and the rear guard came home.

The children with Linda McDermott and the slavers were the best and the worst of the stories to come out of the recovery phase in the old United States and Canada. Many individuals were found and brought back. There were dozens of small groups of ten or less.

None of the groups had any issues like the large slaver group. The fact was that people could walk off if they disagreed with the leaders.

While the people recovery operations were underway, the teams from the Valley were stripping the country like a plague of locust. There were now teams in place, which would move into an area and searched every house. They would mark the door of each house that had been searched with an X, using chalk. Many houses had died in them. They were left in place; there were too many millions to handle.

A special note was made of obvious antiques, but again they were left in place. They would be picked up by another team at a later date if at all. No effort was made to search out weapons, there were too many spots they could be hidden and too many to collect.

If there was something in particular, a member of the search team wanted them would show it to their team leader, and it would be recorded as theirs. A weight limit of fifty pounds per person was enforced. After the first few trips, most people never came close to this limit.

Towards the end of the second year of these efforts, the drones were flown south into Mexico. No life was found. There had been no attempts at controlling travel during the outbreak, so it had spread to the furthest corners.

Ham radio operators were the ones who really brought the world back together. The real enthusiast among them knew how to set up a solar power array to power their rigs. The Elmers among them were able to talk others through the process of setting up repeater networks. Soon most regions of the earth were in contact. In the Valley, they were able to make contact with several satellite arrays so worldwide signals were sent out.

By the fifth year, the Valley was self-sustaining with its farming and everyone was housed and integrated into the community. Rick and Marsha talked it over and decided it was time to end martial law .

From lying in bed with Alzheimer's to surviving a worldwide disaster they had come a long way. It remained to be seen how long they had to go.