Curtain Fall: Second Edition, Disaster, Preparedness, Survival, Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 1) (9 page)

“I’m impressed,” replied John, with complete sincerity.

“You should be,” said Terry. “I . . not . . as . . dumb . . as . . you . . think . . I . . are,” he added, while using a very dopey sounding voice.

John smiled. “What do you think will happen to society, American society, when there’s no food and water to be had?”

“It will be every man for himself,” nodded Terry.

“Right! And then some,” added John.

“Do you really think it will come to that?” asked Terry.

“I hope not. But I’m not willing to bet my life on it.”

“So you have food and water stored?”

John wasn’t sure how to answer that question. He wasn’t willing to openly volunteer the status of his preparedness to anyone, not even to a member of his extended family. An important element of preparedness was in keeping a low profile. You would never catch John on the
National Geographic Channel, and the “Doomsday Prepper” show. He wasn’t one to willingly expose his preparedness status to anyone, especially if it meant putting his family’s survival at risk.

Not that Terry was a risk, he lived on the other side of the city, but security, operational security, or OPSEC, as it was called in the Army, was a fundamental element of mission success. It was stressed down to the lowest private, and for a reason, because loose lips really did sink ships.

However, John also realized that if he didn’t reveal something about his preparedness status to Terry, his entire argument would appear hollow. He was the one who brought up the subject of preparedness in the first place, so he answered, “I do. I’ve got enough to last us a couple of months, if I’m careful.”

John had much more than that, but he felt it was enough to justify his convictions without entirely exposing his capabilities.

“Really?” replied Terry. “Is it hard to store that much food?”

John shook his head and said, “Not really.”

He was glad Terry didn’t say, “I know where I’m going after a disaster,” which was a familiar comment he heard from unprepared people whenever he opened a discussion about preparedness. When he heard such a comment, John usually replied with, “That’s fine, but I also have a gun, and know how to use it.” That response usually had the desired effect, but Terry already knew John had a gun, or more than one, actually.

“It requires space, and a commitment to rotate the food, but maintaining a food and water storage isn’t that hard,” said John. “The biggest challenge is avoiding heat, light and pests.”

They discussed preparedness for another ten minutes before getting up to walk back to work. When John began to walk toward the nearest park garbage can, he noticed a woman walking through the park. She was leading a little girl by the hand, and it looked like she was in a hurry. She was obviously frustrated that the little girl wasn’t willing to keep up with her, and the girl tugged deliberately at the woman’s arm to break away.

John watched the scene, transfixed, as the little girl managed to break loose from the woman’s grip. Apparently surprised at her success, she stopped and looked around. When the little girl looked in John’s direction, she met his eyes and smiled. John was so surprised by her attention that he dropped the balled up paper sack that was in his hand.

A feeling of Deja Vu swept over him so completely that he actually felt light-headed. There was something strangely familiar about the little girl - dressed in her yellow sweater and short denim skirt - that grabbed and held John’s attention. He was about to wave to her, but before he could communicate the move to his brain, the woman returned, grabbed the little girls hand, and led her away in a huff. He watched until the two disappeared behind an adjacent building, but he remained hypnotized by the exchange, and stared off in the direction they traveled.

“Are you alright, John?” asked Terry, as he reached down and picked up John’s crumpled lunch bag. He completed the trip to the trash receptacle and said, “It looks like you just saw a ghost. Did you know that kid, or something?”

“I don’t know? I think so. Maybe. Something?” said John, as he tried to clear his throat, which now seemed too tight for words, let alone conversation. He removed the cap and drank the last of his water before walking to the trash barrel and tossing it in.

He turned to look at the park bench, wanting to sit for a moment. It was only a few feet away, but it looked farther, miles away. However, sitting again wasn’t an option. John knew that to do so would set off alarms in Terry’s head, alarms that would raise even more questions about his mental state, and bring more questions he didn’t want to answer.

John turned and silently began walking out of the park, back toward their office building. Terry quietly followed at his side, unsure of what to think about his friend and co-worker’s strange behavior. He was about to comment on it when John stopped at the entrance of a narrow alley and began to stare blankly into it.

“John?” said Terry, as he lightly rested a hand on John’s left shoulder. “Are you sure you’re feeling OK?”

But John didn’t hear him. He was lost in his thoughts, taken back to a feeling, an experience so real that he could no longer deny it. The reverse angle did not diminish the effect, he was in the dream, the dream he had back in 2008 - the dream about the alley.

He looked down and saw that he was wearing the black sports coat, and the dark gray slacks, the man on the street was wearing - the man he threw a rock through. John turned to face Terry and said, “I’ve . . .” and paused.

“I’ve, what, John?” asked Terry.

John saw the concern on Terry’s face, more than he should have had anyway, and he knew he had to do something to recover his wits, as well as assuage Terry’s concern. “I just realized my mom’s been lying to me,” said John. “I just put it all together, all the little pieces. The appointments, the lab work, everything. My mom’s got cancer.”

The irony of the metaphor wasn’t lost on John, for in that same moment he realized the Caldera really was going to erupt, and soon. Reliving the dream had completed the mental connection for him. It was the missing piece of the puzzle. Everything seemed to fall into place during those last few moments of his lunch break. From the little girl, to the alley, and finally his suit, he just relived the end segment of his dream. He thought it was a little boy in his dream, but he knew it didn’t matter. She was wearing practically the same outfit, and doing the same thing.

With a shake of his head, John turned to face Terry and said, “I’m going to lose my mother.” He loathed building upon his lie, but he knew he couldn’t tell Terry the truth, that the dream, a dream he had some eight years ago, had just come true. That would never work, not for him, or for Terry.

Terry was a man of very practical means. John knew he had no appreciation, or sensitivity, for things intangible. John put a hand on Terry shoulder, held it there for a moment, and then turned and walked away without another word.

A
s they walked back to the office building, John worked extremely hard to maintain his detachment from Terry. He was actually more excited than detached, but if Terry saw a shift in his demeanor, he would likely open with more questions, possibly even think it was his duty to comfort John in his time of emotional distress.

John’s excitement wasn’t one of joy, but rather concern. Now that he knew what was coming, what was about to happen, he wanted to act. Going back to work was the last thing he wanted. He had work to do, preparations to make, before he could hope to relax enough to work again.

When they hit the lobby, John parted company with a simple “Goodbye,” to Terry, and then headed for the stairwell. John couldn’t help but notice Terry’s look of concern when he left, but his friend seemed comfortable with John’s explanation about his mother’s health, even if he didn’t know what to say about it. Cancer was a strange thing to talk about to people who never experienced such a family crisis. Not that John had such experience, but he remembered his reaction to news that Abby was diabetic. Like cancer, diabetes is a life changing illness with no known cure.

John reached his floor and stopped at Tony’s desk on the way back to his office. They agreed to meet in John’s office after two o’clock and discuss the workload for the next couple of days. He confirmed the meeting that was to begin in thirty minutes, grateful that Tony seemed eager to cover for John, and once again prove his value to the firm as John’s second.

As soon as he entered his office, John scanned for anything that looked to be out of place. Everything was as he left it, so he quickly slipped his pistol into the gun safe and leaned back in his chair. He rubbed his temples with his fingers for a moment, and then dropped his elbows to the desk and rested his face into his hands. Try as he might, he couldn’t clear his mind of the dream, or the Caldera.

Hoping the computer would distract him, he logged on and studied his long list of unopened emails. But before he addressed any email, he activated his “out-of-office reply” and set it for the remainder of the week. It was set for more than two days, but he wasn’t concerned about that raising any red flags in the firm.

If the cancer story got out, which he was sure it would, then John could expect more sympathy than he could handle, which is another reason he wanted to leave. It made him feel sick to propagate such a lie, but after what happened at lunch, it took all his will-power just to sit at his desk for this long.

He wanted to run from his office and head straight home, but knew he couldn’t. It was important to let the rest of the day play out, to not react to panic and bring more attention to the issue at hand. John sighed, flipped on the TV, and returned to his email.

After replying to a few priority messages, John glanced up to the TV and was surprised to see six news channels running simultaneously. He studied the remote, and with the push of a few buttons, he managed to drop all but one channel, the one covering the seismic activity at Yellowstone. When John saw that it was a rerun of the previous news report, he ignored it and turned back to his computer monitor.

While working, John managed to catch a follow-up story on the Caldera, but there was nothing significant about it. It seemed national interest in the story was already drying, and it was getting less and less coverage time.

Everything was about ratings, even with the news. It didn’t matter that America was facing the single most devastating natural disaster in
its more than two-hundred year history. It made John think of his dad, who liked to say, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

People just didn’t want to think about disasters of any kind, let alone a super volcano. It didn’t help that normalcy could exert itself so easily. He assumed popular opinion would be something like, “What’s there to worry about? It’s been dormant for this long, and it will probably stay dormant longer.” Complacency was the norm in the American mindset, thought John.

People liked to believe that if something didn’t happen before, it won’t happen at all. No matter how much information was available about past Caldera eruptions, he knew people just didn’t want to believe they lived in a time when such a catastrophic natural disaster could happen.

John’s inner monologue tracked what he believed to be the popular consensus regarding national disaster perceptions. “That’s the stuff of ancient times – biblical times. We live in a modern age. Besides, the government would let us know if we were in any real danger,” said the phantom voice of America.

That was another thing that bothered John about the earlier news report. He didn’t think the government
would
say anything to the American people if the Caldera was about to erupt.

He sat forward in his chair and tapped out a few commands on the keyboard to open the Google search-engine. In the text box, John typed the words, “Yellowstone Caldera.” He received forty-two pages of hits. With about ten hits per page, that was close to about five-hundred hits altogether. John nodded and continued, his mouse clicking away as he searched.

The top hit was on Wikipedia. But John, uncomfortable with their established monopoly on information, only tended to use them as a source reference. He was more interested in seeing an official government site, so he scanned until he found one.

John clicked the mouse on the United States Geologic Survey, or USGS, site to open their home-page. He found their link to the “Volcano
Hazards Program” and followed it to a new page. He saw that the link offered current and supposedly up to date information on the status of the Yellowstone Caldera.

John was surprised to see that the “Current Volcano Alert Level” was “Normal,” and that the “Current Aviation Color Code” was “Green.” He understood the relevance of the aviation code being green because nothing was being released into the air, but he was surprised they held the volcano alert level at normal.

He saw that there were three levels of alert; green, yellow and red, but he couldn’t find anything to explain what the colors represented in terms of activity. Given the recent news, he figured the Caldera activity level should at least be “yellow.” And if “red” meant an eruption was imminent, if the USGS would even admit such a thing, then “yellow” should probably represent something about increased seismic activity. Perhaps, thought John, “yellow” was a noticeable earthquake, something around the magnitude of 5.0 or greater.