The Forgiven The Fallen The Forsaken (17 page)

MAY 21
^ST

They decided to
leave the truck and bus in place as an effective roadblock to any more traffic
and as a warning to all.  It was their second massacre in weeks and Jim felt
sick to his stomach. 

Rob reported
the incident to General Whitman’s staff and was told that some military bases
had been wiped out by the flu and military equipment had been misappropriated
by any number of groups and individuals.  He was also told that a vaccine was
expected soon.  Jim thought,
Now where have we heard that before?

Julio and Will
took a truck down to the destroyed vehicles the next morning and tossed two
incendiary grenades into the bus and ran like hell.  It effectively torched the
bodies and cooked off any remaining ammunition in the vehicle.  They had to put
out a couple of small fires in the nearby woods afterwards, but they were
prepared for that. 

Jim arranged
for as much of a day off as was possible for everyone and they had a mini
fishing tournament and fish fry.  From the laughs and joking around, it was
hard to imagine that they had killed who knew how many people just the day
before.
It’s more than a little creepy
, thought Jim.  Still, he worried
about Luke and Ricky. 
They are way too young for this crap, if you ask me. 

He talked with Robert
over drinks after dinner.  “This latest incident worries me.  If Helen and
Julie hadn’t seen those vehicles, we would have been in deep shit.  We were
beyond lucky that the idiots were so inept.”

Rob said, “I
would have liked to interrogate some of them, but it just wasn’t worth the
risk.  It may be worthwhile expanding our perimeter and recruiting some more people
who have had the disease and are immune.  We can set them up in surrounding
areas.”

Jim thought for
a moment and said, “We can talk to Jake and his boys.  I think they’ve been
hoping to do more to prove themselves.  I just want to make sure we can keep
them safe.

“More than
that, it’s time to start rebuilding.  Do we have the equipment to repair an AM
radio station?”

“I don’t know. 
Frank and Manny are our communications experts.”  Rob looked around, spotted
Manny, and waved him over.

Manny walked up
and asked, “What’s up?”

Jim answered,
“Can we get a radio station up and running?”

Manny said, “If
you want to reach far we need to take station, fix it, and run it on generators. 
We can do that.  It will be lot of work.   I won’t do it if you let those
fucking teenagers play that rap crap.”

Rob asked, “Can
you handle it?”

“Only if I get
my show, Blue Hawaii Mondays with Manny,” he said with a far away smile. But
everyone understood that he meant it.

Rob cringed,
and said, “I think we can manage that.”

Manny replied
in a poor Asian Elvis impression, “Thank you, thank you very much.”

Before long,
several of the adults were in the common room planning a radio station.  Jake
and Deepak were thrilled with the idea, and volunteered Zach who was busy
elsewhere. 
Probably entertaining one or another of the young ladies,
thought
Jim.
  Enjoy yourself you lucky dog, before you’re old and responsible like
the rest of us.

When asked for
suggestions, Jake said, “It’s FM, but what about KNAU?  You have a green energy
experimental site and a radio station.  It would seem to make sense.  The
campus was out when things went down, so there won’t be a lot of people there. 
I think it could work.”

“And that would
give us access to the library, said Susan.  That would be useful.”

Will asked,
“Can we defend it?”

“No need.  If
you have food, I can get you an army,” said Jake.

Jim said, “You
know, he’s right.  The flu survivors are the ones who have to start to rebuild
the country while the rest of us wait for the vaccine.  We restart radio,
internet, TV, smoke signals, whatever we have to do to communicate how to band
together and get the food production up and running.  Fifteen percent of
previous years’ production is more than enough because we don’t have as many
people.  Whoever saves the most lives and stops the inevitable takeover
attempts will influence everything.  It means we can keep it going.  It will
work.”

They talked
late into the night and had the beginnings of a reasonable plan by the time Jim
closed things down shortly after two in the morning. 
We’ll see if it still
looks as good by daylight,
he mused.

MAY 26
^th

Luke loved
flying in the Black Hawk with the side doors open.  When the doors were closed
it felt like riding an elevator, but with the doors open, it was an entirely
different experience.  It felt like he could see forever.

They flew high
over Flagstaff and directly to the Northern Arizona University campus.  When
they landed in an empty parking lot, his dad told everyone vulnerable to the
flu to keep their masks close.  Helen, Julio, Will, Samantha, Luke and Manny
all had the masks into place on their WEB gear.  Jake, Zach, and Deepak all
knew that the order wasn’t meant for them and left them off.

The flu had hit
after the fall semester finals were done, but still, they didn’t expect to find
the campus so empty.  When Luke asked about it, Helen told him, “Any place
without a supply of food and water will be empty by now.   The stores were
picked clean in the first few days, after that most people would have had just
a few days’ supply of food. Even most of the people who prepared well will only
have had a few months’ worth.” 

They found the
radio station locked, so had to use a lock pick gun to enter.  Manny quickly
went to work on evaluating the equipment.  Most of it had been fried by the
EMP, but the antennas were available for use, at the least.  Some of the others
explored the campus, looking for signs of recent habitation.  They were pleased
to find a garden that had been planted on one of the lawns, but whoever had
planted it was either hiding from them or was not around. 

After just a
few hours, they took to the air to look for survivors in the city.  Here and
there they would have people come out and wave.  Several times they hovered low
and dropped out a case of MRE’s with notes about their intention to set up a
camp at the NAU campus and a request to spread the word.  Overall, the day was
deeply disturbing. 

Before going
home, Rob made one more stop at the Airport.  He was pleased to see that there
were small planes and helicopters remaining.  With some luck, they should be
able to get some of them flying.  It would be good to have a plane for
reconnaissance. 

They returned
home in somber mood about an hour before dark.

That night at
dinner, Rob addressed the group grimly.  “From what we saw today, the loss of
life over the past four months has been severe.  I’m guessing that we are over
the 90% that we expected.  We will have to remain diligent, but I believe that
it is likely that the flu has burned itself out in our area and starvation is
now the larger problem.

“Tomorrow we
will go back and start work on a camp on the college campus.  The dorms will
provide all the living quarters we could need. We’ll take in the survivors we
can handle and put them to work growing food and rebuilding.  A second team
will secure the airport and evaluate the possibility of using some of the
aircraft.

“General Whitman
has promised a few planeloads of food and equipment, including what we need to
run a radio station, so we will have enough to work with shortly. 

“There is still
not a vaccine, but we haven’t hit the six month estimate yet.  We’ll take all
necessary precautions, but it is time to start rebuilding.”

A work crew
tackled rerouting the private road, then clearing the hardtop in the morning. 
The semi and bus were not much a problem.  By using two of the big rigs and a
lot of chain, they were able to drag the wreckage to one side of the road. 
They left the remains inside. 

The two teams
took trucks loaded with supplies to the university and the airport.  A third
team was on standby with the chopper to provide security reinforcements.  Rob
planned to fly to the airport and remain there unless needed at the campus. 

By midday, the
teams were well into their work.  Deepak and Jake were there to greet the first
survivors who rode up to the NAU camp on bicycles.  There were five of them,
all college aged and all were gaunt. They pounced on the food that was offered. 
The two men and three women all had survived the flu so would be immune. 

  Helen had coined
terms for the people who had survived the illness: 
The forgiven
and
the
fallen.
  The ones who acted half way civilized were the
forgiven
and
those who threw away their incredible luck to act like criminals were the
fallen
. 
She also came up with a name for those who had not caught the disease,
the forsaken.
 
The titles worked to remind people of the role of luck and choice in their
current status and gave those who had suffered the most the benefit of having
that fact recognized, small comfort that would be. 

Deepak called
in that they had found their first group of
forgiven. 
Everyone was
delighted.

The NAU team
had decided to use the massive student union building for their commons area,
and had opened up several of the nearby dorms to house people.  The plan called
for 10 days of quarantine before mixing the groups, but that also allowed for a
rest period for the new folks to build strength before starting work.

By the end of
the day, Manny had installed the radio equipment and KNAU was back on the air
as an FM station, powered by a generator and blasting tunes off of his MP4
player.  Somehow it seemed completely appropriate that he started with Elvis
singing
America the Beautiful
.

He set up a
playlist on a laptop and programmed in the prerecorded messages the group had
made over the past week about who they were and where to come for help. 
Hopefully people would find the stations soon quickly, if anyone still had a
working radio.

At the airport,
Rob found two older small planes that were functional.  It looked as though
someone had flown them into Flagstaff and left them there after the EMP event. 
It was a good find.  The runways were clear, so he had Julie and Helen fly the
Piper into the airport.  They refueled the plane and Helen and Julie were soon
flying around the area pulling a sky banner that said, “FOOD AT NAU.”  With a
little luck, that should pull in more people. 

Rob called
General Whitman and told him that they were ready for supplies.  A delivery by a
C130 was scheduled for the next day. 
It can’t be this easy,
thought Jim. 

Jim had
remained back at the village and had everyone there working to harvest and box
as much of the food as was ready in order to deliver it at the NAU campus the
next day.  It was good to finally be working at something for those beyond the
village.  By the end of the day they had a truck loaded ready for delivery for
the next morning's run.

MAY 28
^th

Julie and Helen
took the plane out with the banner again the next morning, this time going out
farther looking for suitable farmland.  Samantha tagged along with her cameras
to get some good shots of the surrounding area. They identified several
possibilities and had a few people here and there come out and wave at them. 
Each time they would wiggle the wings and drop a small care package of an MRE
with a letter attached to it on a makeshift parachute.   Julie marked each
location of survivors on the map for later visits with the chopper.

Helen asked
Samantha, "What's up with Manny and the Elvis stuff?  Is that a Filipino
thing or what?"

Samantha
answered, "Are you kidding me?  That’s and old dude geek thing.  He's the
only Elvis nut I know.  What's up with Frank and
The Lord of the Rings
?" 
 

Julie said,
"Oh, that's a white guy thing.  They're either into that or getting
laid."

Laughing,
Samantha said, "Now that explains a lot!"

They flew over
Sedona before heading back to Flagstaff.  Again they saw some people, but
nowhere near as many as they would have expected.  They also saw some signs of
fighting here and there.  Julie wondered if the group with the tank had stopped
there first. 

They arrived
back in Flagstaff right after the first C130 landed.  The crew unloaded palates
of food next to a hangar and was back in the air 20 minutes later.  Three more
plane loads of food arrived that afternoon along with a courier form the
General. 

Rob was
directing the loading of supplies onto trucks when he saw Albert Medina walk
up.  “Al, you useless son of a bitch, it’s good to see you!”  

Al shook his
hand briskly and replied, “It’s been a while, boss.” 

“Let’s go
inside and talk,” said Rob, leading the way into a nearby hanger.  Once inside,
Rob tossed Al a bottle of water and asked, “So what’s the word from upstairs?” 

“It’s not
good.  Most of the people you ever knew are now dead or dying.  There are fewer
humans left alive than since about 1820.”

Rob sat down on
a bench, stunned.  “Jesus.”

“We took out the
infrastructure and large cities in China, North Korea, and throughout the
middle east.  We left Russia alone, but they know we still have significant
military assets and they’re way too devastated by the disease to bother anyone
else any time soon.  There were a few nukes used by Israel and China, but we
used kinetic and conventional weapons to do most of the damage.