The Emerald Virus (34 page)

    
Others did the same and when they regrouped and looked like they were ready to
start again, Sam started by saying, “I forgot to mention this earlier but if
you’re with a group that needs to leave the park, catch a ride on the snow
equipment and pick up a decent four wheel drive vehicle in West Yellowstone. We
don’t need to be driving the RVs around during the winter. Fuel your vehicles
outside of the park please. We’ll use any fuel we bring to the park for the
RVs.

    
Next Sam asked for volunteers to search for fuel tankers they could bring to
the park. One of the men said he had been a driver for fuel trucks and he would
be willing to lead that group.

Saturday:
Yellowstone National Park, Old Faithful Inn, Wyoming.

    
Three days later Noah joined Sam and Ben for breakfast in what had become a
pleasant ritual for each of them. They talked while Sam cooked, while they ate,
and while Ben cleaned up. Noah had offered to either cook or clean but Sam and
Ben seemed to like things as they were. Noah didn’t know what had changed, and
he felt slightly guilty. He wasn’t used to being catered to, although he
realized he could get in the habit if he wasn’t careful.

    
Since the incident with Bob Turner things had moved along well. The group
continued to meet each evening and continued to talk about work assignments.
They now had a group of people responsible for snow removal from the Inn to the
town, and further if need be.

    
Ben was with the group caring for the horses and they all agreed he was both
enthusiastic and knowledgeable.  

    
They had found more pieces of snow removal equipment in the park and they now
had fourteen trucks, loaders and graders and a crew of eighteen prepared to use
them. If needed the group would ask for more volunteers.

    
Sam was thrilled that the group had decided to put Ben in charge of care for
the horses; it would be a great experience for him. She knew they had done so
because they knew he would spend most of his time with the horse and would do
most of the work. They couldn’t have slowed him down had they wanted to. She
almost hoped there would some kind of conflict of a minor type so he could
experience problem solving also.

    
The first thing Sam had told Ben was that if a conflict did come up he should
tell the group that he wanted to think about the options and they would decide
during the next evening meeting what the solution should be. She stressed that
if you weren’t absolutely sure of the fairness of a solution you’re better off
taking the time to think first, rather than shooting from hip and missing the
target. She knew this wasn’t always the right way, but it was the right way to
start as a leader.

    
She also advised him to take the time needed to find out all of the facts. No
matter what he thought he knew, it was almost inevitable that another side of
the story was lurking out there somewhere, waiting to trip him up if he didn’t
do his homework first.

    
All of the RVs were fully stocked and the food would last well into the next
year and everyone assumed they would continue to eat in their own RVs. However,
one of the men jokingly mentioned that he truly was going to miss fresh baked
biscuits each morning and the group murmured their agreement.

    
Lily told the group she had been a baker in Cheyenne, and that she had checked
out the kitchen in the Inn and found the commercial sized ovens were powered by
natural gas and it looked like the gas could be turned on and the ovens used
for baking. She would be willing to set up a baking schedule for the group, and
bake each morning. Everyone would have to register and she would collect
ingredients from each of them. The group would have to accept egg substitutes
and perhaps other modifications, but she’d do her best. By the end of the
discussion she was joined by two other cooks and four helpers. This team would
be responsible for all baked goods and everyone would contribute ingredients.

    
She mentioned that they might need more people since there was no electricity,
the bread would have to be kneaded by hand. This would be a hard job,
especially if the group continued to grow.

     
One of the men said he was an electrician and he would look into how to get the
power back on. Three other men had some experience with electricity and two
others volunteered to be on the electrical group if more help was needed. The
first priority would be to get the power back on for the entire area. The
second priority would be to use auxiliary generators for the kitchen and lobby
area.

    
There were two plumbers in the group who volunteered to check the gas lines and
get the ovens working. The woman was a master plumber and Sam could see that
the other craftsmen were impressed by that.

    
Sam was impressed that every craftsman had brought along a full complement of
tools. These people knew their skills would be critical in the future, and they
all seemed anxious to put them to use.

    
Two of the group said their heated horse trailers had also been equipped with
live chickens, just so they would have eggs. These two volunteered to maintain
one of the smaller heated horse trailers as a chicken coop and to use the
internet to figure out how to expand the number of chickens, and to harvest
eggs each day. Everyone agreed that the eggs would go to the baking group until
there were enough for the group to begin sharing. Sam thought this was really
generous of the two chicken owners and said so.

    
Noah thought it was interesting that in the past chicken farmers might be the
object of jokes of some sort. No one was thinking along those lines now. These
chickens were going to become precious commodities for the group.

    
This led to a discussion of how to keep up with who was in the park. Three volunteers
formed a welcoming committee and became responsible for finding out who was
currently in the group, and tracking the new residents. An accountant joined
this group and started to set up a spreadsheet. This group would welcome each
newcomer and explain the group’s rules to them.

    
The group decided that the registration spreadsheet would be an open
spreadsheet posted on the survivor web page so anyone in the country could see
at any time who the residents were. There turned out to be Forty Six adults,
each with an RV, and eleven children in the initial group, four of whom were
teenagers not yet sixteen. The expanded group agreed that by spring each of the
four teenagers would be taught how to drive and the group would find RVs for
them at the first opportunity.

    
Lily said she would use this spreadsheet to keep track of who should be
contributing ingredients on what day. Everyone could easily see when their turn
was due.

    
When Sam looked around the group, she realized that some members were ready to
talk all day and others were anxious to get started. She could see that some of
them were deep in thought and were coming up with more ideas.

    
She decided that any more than an hour or so each morning would be overwhelming
for some of the group and she didn’t want to lose anyone.

    
She thanked everyone for their ideas at each meeting and encouraged them to be
prepared to raise any issue they thought needed to be addressed in any of the
meetings.

    
Noah had kept good notes from the initial meetings, but by the third morning
the welcoming committee thought they should be the ones to keep track of
minutes. This, in essence, was going to be a history of the Yellowstone group.

    
The lobby was large, with a huge stone fireplace in the middle. It had two
floors above the lobby with rails around the central opening, which was seven
stories high. It was way too large to heat with just the fireplace, but a large
fire would keep the area near the center warm enough for the group to gather.

    
She also noticed that there were new faces in the group. She asked how many
folks had joined the group since yesterday’s meeting. Nine hands were raised.

    
As soon as she started the Saturday morning meeting a dozen hands were raised.
She pointed at one of the newcomers who raised the question of medical
assistance. Sam found that the group had two Registered Nurses and three
Nursing Assistants. They agree to set up a clinic of sorts. They started by
asking everyone in the group to give them an inventory of all medicines and
medical equipment they had brought with them.

    
Like the craftsmen, all five of these people had brought their own tools with
them, including a ton of bandages, medicines, books on medicine, antibiotics
and so on. The group was disappointed that there were no doctors but seemed
really pleased with the five trained people.

    
The older of the two nurses ensured the group that short of surgeries the
nurses could take care of almost any problem. She also told the group that she
would search for Doctors amongst the survivors gathered elsewhere, so if they
did have a major issue they could get advice from a Doctor. 

    
She then said that she and her colleagues would want to conduct a medical interview
with everyone in the group. She explained that they needed to know about all
existing conditions in order to prepare to deal with them. During these
interviews they would collect the information about who had brought what
medicines.

    
Sam noted that the medical group had come prepared for this. They weren’t being
drafted; they wanted to use their skills to help the group.

    
The fuel problem was raised again. Sam explained that they had formed a group
who would bring tankers to the park, and failing that they would use fifty
gallon drums to transport fuel. As soon as she mentioned the drums a half dozen
people volunteered to go into nearby towns and try to find as many drums as
they could, and trucks to transport them. Sam agreed that having a backup plan
was a good idea. The group understood this was a high priority item because if
they got snowed in and ran out of fuel, they would have real survival problems.

    
The fuel group informed everyone that they had been searching nearby towns for
tankers and yesterday had found two full tankers. They would start bringing
them to the park today.  

    
Sam looked at Noah with raised eyebrows and Noah told her that almost all
members were assigned. She asked the group about remaining skills.

    
A young man in the back of the room raised his hand and timidly told the group
he was a geek. He knew he wasn’t too good with people but he knew computers
intimately. A young woman added that she wasn’t ‘intimate’ with computers, but
she was pretty good. The group laughed.

    
The geeks told the group that they would want to interview each person and find
out what automated equipment they had in their RVs. The woman smiled and told
the group not to worry, if they didn’t know she or her colleague would simply
look for themselves.

    
Next they told the group to be careful with printing documents or spreadsheets.
They weren’t sure how many extra ink cartridges the group owned and for some of
them, once the current one was empty they wouldn’t be able to print until the
spring when they could get out of the park.

    
Sam looked around the room and saw relief on a lot of faces. She smiled and
told the two that they were now the lead geeks in the community and everything
about automation would go to them. She asked if there were any other computer
experts and while a number of people said they were good users, no one else
wanted to open a box or a laptop.

    
The group decided that once they settled in, the computer experts should put on
training classes and the geeks were happy to agree.

    
Sam told the group that since almost everyone had jobs they would adjourn now.
She asked that everyone meet her back in the lobby after dinner that evening.
She smiled when she set the time for seven o’clock and told the group that she
wanted to talk about some lighter topics this evening.

    
Sam then asked those who did not yet have assignments to stay after the
meeting. Everyone but her and Noah left.

    
She looked at Noah who said, “I’m sure we still have a couple of folks
unassigned, and obviously they’re planning on staying that way. But I want to
meet with the men bringing in the tankers before they get started, so maybe we
can talk later today about what you want to do about slackers.”

    
Sam agreed and they went their separate ways. Noah had turned himself into what
Sam called the ‘Trail Boss’, and she was still contacting people on the list
from Jack. They had tried to talk to everyone on the list once they got settled
in, and they were now down to thirty people she had not yet talked to or traded
emails with. She had told both Noah and Ben she would continue the effort. By
the end of the day anyone who had not yet answered she would count as not
interested.

    
Sam didn’t see Noah until that evening. He came into the lobby right after the
meeting started. He looked out of breath and she knew he had not eaten since
breakfast, unless it had been somewhere else.

    
Sam started the meeting by thanking the group for coming and then asked for a
show of hands from those that had arrived during the day. She knew from the
welcoming committee that she should see twelve hands, and she did. She thought
that was a great start. She also knew the skills of each person and she told
them that as a group she would meet with them in the lobby at seven in the
morning to talk about work assignments. This was not a surprise to any of them,
so again the committee had done its job.

    
Sam asked any group leaders who needed additional help to join them for the
morning meeting and told all of the others to plan on meeting when and where
the various leaders asked them to meet, although they were all welcome at the
morning meeting if they so wanted.