Final Dawn: Escape From Armageddon (23 page)

     “Who are the elders?” asked Mark’s Uncle Marty.

     Mark answered “I’m glad you asked, Uncle Marty. The elders will always be the three oldest members of our group. You’ll be one of them. The others are my mom, Phyllis, and Helen
Kenney, Joe’s mom.

     “Are there any other questions or comments?”

     Mark looked around the room and didn’t see any more hands up.

     “Okay, then, I’d like to put this measure to a vote. All persons who are at least 18 years of age, who vote ‘yes’ please raise your hands. Okay, thank you. Now, all persons who are at least 18 years of age who vote ‘no’ please raise your hands.”

     Mark looked at his mom. “I counted 27 for and 3 against. Is that what you counted?”

     Phyllis Snyder shook her head yes. And Mark continued.

     “Very well, the proposal carries and is now our official form of government. Our next meeting will be right here, on Monday night, at 7:30 p.m.

     “Is anyone interested in taking over the job I’m doing now at future meetings?”

     No hands went up.

     “Okay, I will continue to do this for future meetings, unless one of you wants to relieve me in the future.

     “We’re going to let everybody take a few minutes to finish eating. Then we’d like to ask everyone to hang around if they can. We’ve got a lot of other things we need to discuss as well.”

-47-

     After everyone finished eating, Mark walked back to the front of the group.

     “
Looks like everyone’s done. For those of you who don’t know her already, I’d like to introduce my mom, Phyllis, who will explain our dietary stuff.”

     Phyllis Snyder walked out of the kitchen and faced the group
.

     “Hello. First, I’d like to make a pitch for two more volunteers for our kitchen staff. What we do isn’t hard, but we’d like to have enough people to
break into two shifts. Otherwise our days are going to be pretty long. If anyone is interested, please see me after the meeting.

     “W
e’re going to prepare meals three times a day for everyone. The breakfast meal will be done around 7 a.m., and we’ll ring our dinner bell when it’s ready to be served. Lunch will be around 1 p.m. and dinner around 7 p.m.

     “All of the
brown trays will be identical, and the portions will be as close to equal as possible. Just to keep us honest and make us try our best to make sure each tray contains the same amount, the kitchen staff will always take the leftover trays that no one else wants. If we mess up and give one tray a lot less than the others, we know it’ll be left behind and we’ll wind up eating it. So that’ll keep us straight.

     “When you take a tray, be sure to take a brown one. The three green trays are for those who are diabetics. They get the same number of calories as everyone else, but they are on restricted diets, so their food will be different than yours. We also have one person who is allergic to certain foods. Her tray will always be red. Please don’t take that one.

     “If any of you new folks have any dietary restrictions, please see me after the meeting and let me know, so we can alter your meals accordingly.

 
   “We are aiming for between 1900 and 2000 calories a day, split between three meals. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but doctors say it’s sufficient to keep us healthy. I can afford to lose a few pounds, and some of you may want to as well. I assure you that in the months ahead, we will all get skinny. But nobody is going to starve to death. I will promise you that.

     “We are going to have to use our foods in a certain order. Our canned goods have the shortest shelf life, then our frozen foods and then our dried foods. Because we have to use everything before it expires, it might make some rather odd food combinations.

     “For example, if we have several cases of canned ravioli and spinach that are getting close to their expiration dates, we may have ravioli and spinach for breakfast, lunch and dinner for two days in a row. Obviously, we will try to avoid that by planning ahead as much as possible. But if occasionally you get some strange things to eat, please don’t be angry with us.

     “The
only other option to that is letting food expire and having to throw it away. And in our situation, we’d consider that a cardinal sin.

     “Any questions about meals? Okay, then, I’m going to turn it over to Debbie, our house medic.”

     “Hello, everyone. Most of you know me. For those of you who don’t, my name is Debbie Bay, I’m married to that wonderful man over there named Mike, and Mark and Bryan are my little brothers.

     “I’ve been a paramedic with the San Angelo
Fire Department for the last seven years. I’m not a doctor, and would never claim to be. But I can treat you if you fall victim to some type of trauma. And for other medical issues, I will work with you to try to diagnose whatever is ailing you, and help you find a game plan for treatment.

     “We have brought with us a vast amount of medical research material to help guide us in this process, and I’m confident that we can provide the very best medical care possible under the circumstances.

     “As Mark said, I will be in the clinic from 8 a.m. until noon each day and would encourage you to walk in any time you want to talk. I’m also available at all other times. Just say the word.

     “I’d also like to discuss a program I’m setting up to augment the calorie intake of those of you who are carrying a few extra pounds. Don’t be embarrassed. I’m not talking to anyone in particular. You better than anyone know whether you fall into that category, so I won’t mention any names.

     “If you think this applies to you, please see me sometime in the next couple of days. This is very important, because we need to keep a close eye on your weight loss.

     “The American Medical Association recommends that those people who are dieting lose no more than four pounds per week. Losing too much weight too quickly can put stress on the heart, and can do
your body a lot of harm. And when dieting, people with extra weight tend to drop weight very quickly, at least initially.

     “None of us will be dieting, but the kitchen is going to restrict our calorie intake to only what we need to survive. So it pretty much boils down to the same thing.

     “The bottom line is this. We will all lose some weight, but we don’t want anyone to lose more than four pounds per week. So anyone who is at least thirty pounds overweight needs to enroll in the supplemental calorie program that I’ll be running. Anyone else is also welcome to sign up, if you feel like you’re shedding weight too quickly.

     “Here’s how the program will work. You will have a standing appointment at the clinic every Sunday afternoon for your weekly weigh-in.

     “Say your weekly appointment is at 2:15, and you come in and get weighed. That will be your benchmark for the week.

     “You’ll come back in on Wednesday for your first check. If you’ve lost fewer than three pounds, then that’s great. If you’ve lost three or four pounds, I’m going to send you to the kitchen with a prescription for a couple of sandwiches, or some cookies, or something that’s going to add a thousand calories to your diet.

     “We’ll repeat the process on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

     “The purpose of al
l this is to slow down your weight loss if it starts to run away. We don’t want you to lose more than four pounds a week.

     “A couple of tips for all of you, whether you fall under this program or not. You’ve noticed that there are pallets of bottled water and canned sodas everywhere you look. Hannah thought to buy as much as she could so that no one would get thirsty.

     “Please take some of both of these items back to your RVs and put them into your refrigerators. It is important that you stay hydrated. Drinking several bottles of water a day will help keep the hunger pangs at bay.

     “Also, for those of you wi
th a sweet tooth, a can of soda will temporarily satisfy the urge for sugar, and it’ll also add calories to your diet and slow down your weight loss a bit.

     “Just be sure you don’t drink too much soda. Most of your fluid intake should be water.

     “Does anyone have any questions of me before I turn it over to David?”

     Mike’s brother in law John stood up.

     “I’m a smoker. I brought four cartons of cigarettes in with me, but I know they won’t last forever. Do you have any nicotine patches for when I run out?”

     “I have a few nicotine patches, and a lot of nicotine gum. If you’ll follow me to the clinic after we’re done here, I’ll give you some.

     “I would encourage you to try to slow down your smoking as much as possible. If you smoke a pack a day, try your best to cut it to half a pack, then to a quarter of a pack. The less you’re smoking when you run out of cigarettes, the easier it’ll be when you have to stop cold turkey.

     “Any other questions? Okay, good. Because I see David chomping at the bits over there to get a chance to talk.”

     David came to the front of the room, and then turned back to Debbie.

     “Chomping at the bits, huh? Oh, I get it. A tooth joke. To introduce the dentist. Not a funny joke, but a joke nonetheless.”

     Debbie laughed and took a bow and said “I’ll be here all week…”

     David addressed the crowd.

     “You’ve probably heard this all before, but poor dental health can lead to other health issues. I have a full dental clinic, and even have the ability to take dental x-rays with a portable x-ray machine. I encourage each of you to get with me and schedule a cleaning and checkup, so that we can take care of whatever your dental needs may be.”

     “Can you replace my dentures if they break or wear out?”

     “Yes indeed I can, and if you want to come and see me, I’ll make a mold and make you another pair so that you have a spare.”

     “Anything else for me? No? Okay, I’ll give you back to Mark.”

     Mark came back to the front to add a few things.

     “You’ll notice that we’re very big on conservation. The reason we use paper products for dishes is to save dishwater. The reason we recycle our shower water is to preserve more water for drinking. The reason we’re conserving our food by limiting our calorie intake is to stretch our food as long as possible.

     “The reason we do this is because there are three essentials we need to survive until breakout. Water and food are the first two. The third is diesel fuel. We’re pretty confident that we have enough diesel to power our lights and heat our RVs and cook our food. But just to be safe, we’re conserving where possible.

     “The main way we’re doing this in by turning off all the lights to the common areas at 10 p.m. The RV areas will continue to be lighted all night long
, and each of your RVs will have power 24 hours a day. But all other bays will go black at 10 p.m. and will stay that way until 6 a.m.

     “We hope that this will be a temporary measure. We will monitor our fuel use closely, and if it becomes apparent at some point that we won’t run low, then we’ll look at changing this policy.

     “Speaking of diesel, you’ll hear one of our diesel generators kick in occasionally to recharge our batteries. This might happen at any time, night or day, and it may run from five minutes to half an hour.

     “When the generator kicks in, it can be quite noisy. It will sound like a large truck gunning its engine. In fact, that’s essentially what it is. The same Kenworth
truck engine that you see carrying a heavy load up a steep mountain road is the generator that will provide our electrical needs. We apologize in advance for the noise the generator will make. But it’s a necessary evil.

     “The water crew will have a list of who lives in each RV, and will ration fifty gallons of water per week per person. The way it will work is like this. Your RV has a 100 gallon water tank. If there are two people living in that RV, the water crew will fill it up
once a week. If there are three people living there, they’ll come back a second time later in the week and add another fifty gallons.

     “They’ll also keep your gray water tank drained of used water.

     “Fifty gallons of water a week isn’t a lot, but it will provide a daily shower if you do it right.

     “What we recommend is that you take a military-style shower. The military, when they deploy to a desert environment, do
esn’t have a lot of spare water for niceties such as showers. So they’ve developed a technique for getting a shower with a minimal amount of water.

     “What we recommend is that you turn the water on for about twenty seconds or so
, just to get your hair and body wet. Then turn it off.

     “Then take as long as you like soaping up your body and applying shampoo to your hair. Once you’re covered from head to toe in suds, turn the water back o
n. Rinse your hair and body completely, then turn the water off again.

     “The four of us- Hannah and I and Bryan and Sarah, have been experimenting with this method for the last few weeks. By using this method, you can shower every day and still use less than fifty gallons
a week.