we found Milo and another gunner escorting a short, sandy haired fellow wearing a long blue trench coat. I had never seen this guy before. Max was coming down the stairs from one of the upper office floors, having been retrieved by Sarah. Milo was calling out to Max even before he was completely down the stairs.
“Max, we found this guy in the cafeteria. You really need to hear what he has to say.”
April 28 - The Factory, Oklahoma
I'm nothing if not curious, so when Max headed off to a conference room with the stranger, I tagged along, as did Milo, Jack, Sarah, and a few other people.
The stranger dove right in. “My name is Thomas Reynolds. I work for.. worked for the CDC at the Kansas FEMA center near Colby.”
That grabbed Max's attention. “The FEMA center. Near Colby. So you know where it is? You could guide us there?”
“I could,” Thomas gave a long slow sigh before continuing, “but you wouldn't like what you found there. It was overrun several days ago. The infected breached the fences... just kept piling up until the chain link toppled over, then swarmed the national guard troops faster than they could shoot. The military loaded all us civilian CDC researchers on army trucks, used mortars to punched a hole in the lines of the infected and drove through. I was in the second truck, so we made it through before the lines closed back in.”
“So it's... totally gone. Is there anywhere safe?” Max seemed to address the question to the heavens more than Thomas, but Thomas answered anyway.
“You're sitting in the safest place I've found. As far as I know, all the populated areas have fallen. I had a friend in the guard that heard reports coming in over military communications. The coastal cities fell first, but it moved inland fast enough. Anywhere there was people. The higher the concentration of people, the harder the area was hit. The infection spread far and wide. It was everywhere before we knew what it was. We never had a chance to lock things down with a real quarantine.” He rested his head in his hands and rubbed his temples. “We never had a chance.”
“Nowhere safe.” Max whispered. It wasn't a question this time.
“I was trying to make my way south to the coast. The last I heard, the CDC still had a research lab set up on a nuclear air craft carrier stationed in the Gulf of Mexico. The Sargent driving our evacuation truck wanted to try for the McConnel Air Force Base near Wichita, but that's almost certainly overrun by now. I couldn't get him to listen to reason, so I slipped away, found a working car, and got this far before running out of gas. Probably a good thing. My idea wasn't any better really. The coast will be swarming with infected.”
April 28 - The Factory, Oklahoma
The revelation about the FEMA center really took the wind out of Max's sails. He ended the meeting with Thomas and just wandered off alone into the factory for a while. When he came back, he barely spoke, answering questions with one or two word replies. Sarah finally got a bit more out of him when she pressed him about what we should do next.
“How the hell should I know?” he yelled. “Why are you even asking me? It's not like I'm really any kind of leader. I don't have some god damn map to the promised land.”
“You've done alright so far.” Sarah replied quietly.
“Alright? I've lead us out into the middle of nowhere to starve to death instead of being eaten alive. Some leadership. You want a leader, hold a damn election. I'm sure you can find someone better at it than me.”
Sarah had no immediate reply, but Jack reacted. He started calling the rest of the group into the atrium. He even sent a few people running to collect those few still poking around the farther reaches of the factory. Once most of the group was there, he jumped up on a bench and called a group meeting to order.
“Max has called for an election, and I think that's a really good idea. I'll start out by nominating Max to continue leading our little band of merry men and women. Does anyone second?”
Max seemed about to object, but Sarah jumped in with, “I second that!” and it was quickly followed by several people offering “thirds” and “fourths”.
“OK, lets proceed to a vote.” Jack continued.
“I just said I didn't want this job.” Max finally interjected. “Besides, you can't have an election with just me on the ballot... I nominate... uh, you Jack” This was quickly seconded by several people. Then someone nominated Sarah, and we had a three way race.
Jack began to call for a show of hands for each candidate, but then someone suggested we should have a secret ballot. I donated a few blank pages from my journal notebook to be torn up into ballots and someone offered up a small empty duffel bag to be used as the ballot box. Pens and pencils were passed around as we all voted and dropped the folded scraps of paper into the bag. When it was all done and the votes counted, both Sarah and Jack had a respectable number of votes, but Max had taken it in a landslide. He didn't seem terribly happy with the result, but he at least seemed resigned to it.
“You are all crazy, you realize that, don't you?” Max let out an exasperated sigh, “You really want to be led by an old, overweight, air conditioner repairman?” But then he seemed to get back a bit of his old energy. “Alright then, since I don't have any bright ideas about what we do next, my first action as your officially elected grand potentate is to ask you all for opinions. The FEMA center is a bust. Our newcomer Thomas says it's gone, and he doesn't know of any other good options. Our food and ammunition is low. I want everyone to give our situation some thought then write down what you think we should do, what our priorities need to be. When you are done, give it to Sarah. We'll go over them all tomorrow and take it from there.” He turned to me and nodded at my notebook. “Can you spare... no, I see you scribbling in that thing all the time. I'm sure there has to be more paper around here somewhere. Someone find where the office supplies are stashed in this place.”
“Grand Potentate.” Jack chuckled. “Is that your official title then?”
“I think Mayor would fit the situation.” Sarah chimed in. “Mayor Max Reynolds. Sort of has a nice ring to it.”
“Anyone calling me Mayor is going to find themselves run out of here on a rail. It's just Max. Now go find something useful to do.”
And with that the meeting broke up. A few of us lingered with Max as he leaned back on the atrium park bench and stared up at the dimming sky through that massive skylight.
“Smart move, that whole asking people to write down their ideas.” Sarah said. “It will keep them occupied, more hopeful. I think morale was headed for a pretty steep dive without that.”
“I suppose so.” answered Max, “But that's not why I did it. I really am out of ideas.” He straightened up in the bench and looked at each of us in turn. “I mean, what do we do now? With the FEMA center I at least had a target to aim at. A goal that defined what each next step needed to be. Now what? You've seen what's out there. You've heard what Thomas had to say. What the hell is left out there that can offer us any hope?”
Jack seemed to think about this for a bit, then finally replied, “We have us. Everyone in our group. And all the other groups like us holed up out there somewhere. We have our basic human ingenuity. Our courage and drive and plain old stubbornness that allows people to overcome the impossible over and over again. We have us... and that's just going to have to be enough.”
April 30 - The Factory, Oklahoma
It's been a couple days since the election and things have been rather peaceful, all things considered. We buried the last of the quarantined sick and welcomed the two survivors back into the general population. Kalee discovered a bit more food in the cafeteria kitchen and immediately set about stretching it into another thin meal. Jack and I spent some time poking around in the factory floor, seeing if there was anything useful. It is a pretty cutting edge automated assembly line, with robotic arc welders and riveters and no end of other toys, but I couldn't get much of a good look at any of it with the electricity out
. A bit of light leaked in from a few windows, and I had a tiny LED flashlight, but most of the machinery was lost in shadow until you got right up to it.
I should have enjoyed poking around all that gadgetry, but if anything it made me a little sad. It made me miss MIT even more, the life I was working toward and would probably never see now. Who needs an electrical engineer in a world without electricity?
After our expedition to the factory floor, Jack and I went back to the offices and spent some time playing chess. We couldn't find an actual chess set, so we drew out a chess board on the back of a motivational poster and scared up a random assortment of bolts, nuts, and washers to designate as different pieces. Jack wrapped black electrical tape around his pieces and let me start. We speculated about the future as we played.
“Do you think things will ever return to normal?” I asked while I slid a washer/pawn forward.
“Not for a long time.” Jack answered, “According to Thomas, the epidemic was really bad. It's a pretty good bet that most of the world's population is walking around dead now.” He jumped a wingnut/knite out of his back row. “Even if all the undead were gone tomorrow, the remaining live people would still be left with a very different world.”
“So all that stuff you