scrawled on them with colorful markers, and they were floating like they were filled with helium. They were tethered to a spiky looking plant poking out of an old coffee tin. Its long leaves were mostly green but faded to deep red toward the center of the plant. I got up, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and staggered into the hallway outside the office I had crashed in. I ran into Kalee almost immediately.
“Oh good, you're up,” she exclaimed. “If you had slept any longer, I was ready to ask Miguel if we should wake you.”
“Balloons?” I inquired.
“Oh that was Jack's idea. He found a tank of helium in the basement when they were... cleaning up. Oh, and he says thanks for finding the acetone or whatever it was you were looking for.” I wasn't entirely awake yet, so I didn't know how to respond. She continued. “The plant was from me. It's a bromeliad. I rescued it from the atrium. Close as I could come to flowers. It's easy to take care of, just be sure to water the leaves, not the soil.”
“Thanks.” was all I could manage. I felt a sudden an unexpected rush of emotion, but I honestly wasn't sure what I was feeling. Maybe the impact of what had happened was finally hitting me.
“Well, I had to find a new home for it anyway, so it was no trouble.”
Kalee informed me I'd slept for nearly a full day. Yesterday Miguel checked my pupils, asked if I was feeling nauseous or disoriented, then finally sent me off to bed. I feel worlds better now, though I still have a bit of a headache and one heck of knot on my head. I haven't shown any signs of yellow eye, so I think I dodged a bullet in the zombification department. A bunch of stuff has happened while I snoozed away. Kalee gave me all the news over a lunch of vegetable beef soup. I hadn't eaten in a while, so it tasted fabulous even if it was pretty heavy with soybeans and barley and not much vegetables.
The scavenge teams had made their first run, checking out area farms and rural houses but steering clear of more populated areas. There had been some encounters with a few scattered undead, but nothing overwhelming. We used up ammo, but also found some while scavenging, along with additional food and a few other treasures. An additional CB was found in an abandoned truck as well as a couple of smaller walkie-talkies that work on a single CB channel. Jack fixed up an antenna on the roof of the office and a ran cable down to a third floor office where the truck CB now sits. Someone even used markers and a piece of copy paper to make a colorful 'Radio Room' sign for the door.
Our group has increased by six members; survivors that one of the scavenge teams found holed up in a boarded up house. We also briefly heard someone on the CB shortly after Jack got the antenna up, but they were lost to static after a few minutes. They claimed to be somewhere south of Medford, which is a few miles west of here on highway 11. Jack is already talking about building a better antenna and boosting the power somehow. Right now the CB is running off of an old car battery that we keep charged with the generator. Jack says he's made good progress on his wind turbine, and I can help him assemble and install it if I'm feeling up to it. Assuming it works as planned, that should give us enough power to use the CB a lot more without burning up all our gas in the generator. He's also really excited about building another windmill, not for power but to drive our well pump directly.
The most welcome finds, however, were definitely in the food department. They came across a feed-n-seed store just outside of Deer Creek. It offered up a bounty of seed corn and soybeans and even some sacks of barley and oats and the like. Barley/Soybean soup is now a prominent item on our improving cafeteria menu. Kaylee also thinks we can make corn bread as soon as she works out how to mill the corn. I expect Jack has some ideas that can help. Kalee estimates all that grain will last a few weeks at least, maybe a couple months if we find other supplies to stretch it with.
It was the beef that was the biggest hit though. Milo's team stumbled across a lone steer while driving back from their first scavenge run, just wandering in the road. They stopped to look at it, and one of the team, with visions of sizzling steaks in his head no doubt, shot it. Milo cussed him out, reminding him that the SUV was not exactly suited to hauling the huge thing, but they managed to squeeze it into the back none the less. On the way back they must have been riding so low the wheel wells were probably scraping the tires. Without any refrigeration, they had to set about butchering and cooking it right away. Kalee hit upon the idea of reusing the mason jars from the farm to can a bunch of it. I'm not sure what they used for a pressure cooker, but they evidently figured something out.
A lot had been accomplished while I was sleeping, and a lot more had been planned. I learned about some of it at the daily senior staff meeting. Kalee gave a detailed report about her plans to do container gardening on the roof as well as convert the atrium into a hydroponic farm. She talked a bit about aquaculture and composting and ended with a wish list of supplies that the scavenge teams could look out for. Jack gave updates on the efforts to reinforce the first floor windows and on his wind turbine. Sarah warned that the ammunition supplies were dwindling faster than the scavenge teams were replacing it. Scattered undead continued to wander up to the factory, and nearly every scavenge run involved a skirmish with a few zombies. Max asked if there was a way to make our own bullets, glancing at Jack as he said it.
“Casting the bullets themselves is possible”, Jack answered, “but I don't know what we'd do for propellant. I don't think we have the raw materials for gun cotton even if I knew how to make it, and even basic black powder requires stuff we don't have. Maybe someone with a better chemistry background could come up with something.” He looked at Kalee as he said it.
She shook her head. “Sorry, I've studied organic chem, but nothing relevant to this. What about you, Isaac? Study any chemistry at MIT?”
“No, I'm an electrical engineer. If you need someone to fix the radio, I'm your guy, but I'm clueless about guns or chemistry.”
Max suggested we bring the issue up at the next full group meeting. Someone might have the chemistry background we needed or at least have ideas to offer. We then moved on to Miguel's report on health issues.
“Our general first aid supplies are not bad, but we have several people on prescription medications that are running out. I would also be happier if we had a bigger supply of antibiotics. The most urgent issue, though, is insulin. It turns out we have two people using it, Susan Anderson and Peter Decker. I think we can handle Susan's diabetes mostly by managing her diet carefully, but Peter's is tougher. He needs medication.”
“So we need to find him more insulin?” Max asked.
“It would be great if we could,” Miguel answered, “and in the short term we might even be able to do it, but insulin begins to lose potency after a month or so, especially when not refrigerated, and I'm guessing there's nobody making new insulin out there any more.”
“So, what's the alternative?”
“There's some oral medications like glipizide that could help. That, combined with proper diet could be enough. Oh, and test strips. If we are going to manage with diet, it's going to take very careful monitoring of glucose levels, so we need plenty of test strips. Fortunately both those things are something any real pharmacy should have plenty of, and they'll stay good a long time.”
“So we need to raid a pharmacy.” Max mused, “You know what that means.”
“Blackwell.” Susan responded immediately, “It's the closest town large enough to have a pharmacy. Unfortunately, that means it's also large enough to be heavily infested.”
“What about Medford?” Jack suggested, “It's not as big, but might have something.”
“No,” Miguel answered, “I dug up a local phone book, and I've found nothing listed in Medford. Blackwell has two pharmacies and the regional hospital, we definitely can find what we need there.
“Yeah, but it might as well be in Fort Knox for all the good it will do us.” Jack retorted, “Blackwell had thousands of people living in it, and most of them
are probably still walking around there, just not alive anymore.”
“It will have to be a smash-and-grab operation,” Sarah suggested. “My gunners are up for it. We pick the target closest to the edge of town. We go in hard and fast with a big enough team to get it done quickly.”
Max furrowed his brow. “It's risky. And we'll probably burn through a lot of ammo.”
“The alternative,” argued Miguel, “is to watch some of your people die from lack of medication. It's a near certainty the first time someone gets a staph infection that needs antibiotics.”
Max turned to Sarah. “You and Milo work up a plan. I'm not yet convinced we should do it, but I want to see what you come up with.” He leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I just wish we had access to spy satellites or something. I want to see what condition Blackwell is in before we go in there.... find out where the dead are concentrated.”
Gears started turning in my head. It was probably a crazy idea, so I kept silent. The meeting ground on for a bit longer, but I don't remember what was said. As soon as it broke up, I headed for one of the factory machine shops.
May 10 - The Factory, Oklahoma
Today, I helped Jack assemble his wind turbine. We first