“I called the propane company today, they said they should get out here tomorrow to top off the tank for us, even with the 'stay at home order'. I figure that will get us through the winter easy with the geo-thermal and solar array.” Bill said.
“Did you get ahold of Sun Brothers?” Trisha answered.
“No. I tried, and tried, no one picked up.” The land phone lines were still working. Bill had constructed his house four years ago and had installed geo-thermal heating when he put it up. Last year he had finally gotten enough money to put in a solar array on the south side of his property, it cost over twelve thousand dollars and had cut their electric bill in half. It also guaranteed that their house would almost never be without heat or cooling. Bill had ordered another panel to be installed this summer, it was due to in a week and Bill had tried to get in touch with someone at the company to see if it had shipped yet. He had already put in the wiring and a cement pad for the thing and the array was designed so it could be plugged into the existing power supply he had put in last year. Once it arrived he could assemble it, with the families help, and have it plugged in and working after a day or two. The idea had been to start selling the electricity back to the power company during the summer and effectively decrease their net electrical costs to zero. Most people would not spend that kind of money on something that would take about twenty five years to pay off, but Bill had a dream to live off the grid and Trisha loved the idea too. Now, worst case, they could disconnect everything except the freezer and refrigerator and still have a little juice left over for another device or two. Still having both arrays would be better.
“We'll go black out at night when the neighbors lose their power right dad?” asked John.
Bill nodded, “Yeah, no sense advertising what we got. The basement should be okay for lights and stuff. Hey Max what'd you and Trudy decide about the dog?”
“I like 'Rolf', Trudy says 'Setsu'. 'Setsu' is a stupid name.”
“Is not! It's the warrior prince from 'Legends of Lotus Blossom', it's a great name!” said Trudy, raising her voice. “What is a 'Rolf'? Just a stupid noise sound, not a warrior at all!”
The family then debated on what to name the mutt Max and Trudy had brought back from the Olson's farm that afternoon. The mutt in question, cradled in Trudy's arms, lifted his head wearily, took them all in and then lowered it to go back to sleep.
“He looks more like a 'Sleepy' to me.” said Trisha, which brought a chorus of moans from the family. They already had two dogs, named Dopey and Fargo, both names Trisha had given them, the rest of the family was united behind not giving her naming privileges on the new dog. “Hey, I'm just saying. We are all out here arguing and he is sleeping. That makes him wise, maybe 'Buddha' would be better?”
“No!” the family yelled together.
Bill reached into the cooler to pull out another beer, while the family debated the dog names, eventually deciding a warrior prince was better than a random sound and settling on 'Setsu' of Manga fame. John and Claire shuffled the younger kids to bed around ten, as Bill had warned them all that they had a lot of work to do the next day. Trisha leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder.
'You scared?' she asked.
'We haven't seen anything yet, we don't know what is going on. There is talk of a disease somewhere, I don't like that no. A man can't fight a disease with guns, canned food and toothpaste.'
'No, not that. It's Max and Sarah. I've seen you checking your phone ten times an hour. I heard you try and call them last night. And now the cell phones are all out. I know you must be thinking about going out there after him…' Bill put his finger on her lips, stopping her.
'I can't. Max would understand that I can't do that.' Trisha made to protest, 'No Trisha I've known him for a long time, and I know he would tell me to look after my family, just like I would tell him to take care of Sarah. I won't deny I had thoughts of heading out to Colorado, thoughts of going to get him. Now.' Bill shrugged his shoulders, 'Well we don't know anything do we? For all I know he is already dead.'
'Oh Bill!' Trisha leaned over and embraced her husband, 'I wish I could say he is okay, that everything will be fine. I can't. I will pray for him and his family.'
'Yeah, me too. Hopefully they are on their way here. We better go catch the news, if there is any.'
The couple went in off the deck arm in arm and into their living room. John was there and they could hear Claire yelling at Max to stay in bed and for Will to stop pestering him. The house had six bedrooms, Max and Will shared one room in the basement, John and each girl had their own rooms, which left one room free for guests. The two younger boys fought like all siblings, but Trisha's attempts to move them into separate rooms always ended in dismal failure. Bill had the tv on and tuned to a local station by the time Claire came upstairs.
'Thanks Claire.' Trisha said to her daughter, 'I appreciate it. Those boys! I never understand why they won't move into different rooms.'
“Well they like to complain. Living with each other is easier than living without each other. When Max hits fourteen, I bet they won't be together. Right now they would rather fight like some old married couple than cower under their covers alone.” said Claire.
The sounds of renewed yelling from the younger boys drifted up the stairs. Bill raised his eyebrows to Trisha, who nodded her head and said, “Let's see if the boys can work this one out on their own, if they are not quiet in five minutes I'll go down there and put Will on the futon for the night, or threaten to.”
The four of them settled in to watch the local news. There were no national feeds, the local news said that cell phone coverage was sporadic now, but some towers had been taken by the state government for police and military use. All citizens, except those with critical job functions, were to stay home and use their land lines to call in any suspicious activity. Suspicious activity really boiled down to anyone stumbling around like they were on drugs. The chilling part was the announcer said if the person did not respond to verbal commands, like to 'stop' or answer simple questions the order was to shoot first and ask questions later. As horrible as that sounded the news that Denver had been bombed, using a nuclear weapons was devastating. Trisha pulled Bill in closely, watching his eyes as they watched the television. Something in his face seemed to flicker for a moment, a sort of recognition that things were worse than he feared. Bill's eyes grew watery, but he didn't turn from the television screen, he just wiped his arm over his face once and continued watching, his face growing harder as the news ticked by. There was news footage from an affiliate station in Kansas City, which had a helicopter fly towards Denver, it did not get close enough to see any damage. To Bill's eyes it looked like quite a large part of the city was intact, there were smoke plumes everywhere, and piles upon piles of auto wrecks as well. Then the footage showed a small town called 'Limon' Colorado. There was a mob of people there, tens of thousands, they were ambling slowly down highway seventy, when the crew got a close up the family could see the damage the people had taken, some of them looked dead. The camera lingered on the mob with the commentator pointing out that none of the people had packs or water bottles or food of any sort. Some footage later in the day showed the mob thirty miles east of Limon, still moving slowly, inexorably onward towards the Kansas border.
Parts of the internet were amazingly still working. The local news desk said that Iowa's server farms, built specifically to house two of the powerhouses in the computer industry were able to keep much of the internet up and running. The newscaster warned that most of the external websites were outdated copies from up to a week ago. The largest websites may have housed their data in Iowa, but the news still came from New York or San Diego or London. After mentioning this last location he said that London was not infected as was previously thought, the last update from Europe was that the United Kingdom had grounded all flights and closed all ports until the current wave of civil unrest had passed. The Britts had apparently used draconian measures to put down their own plague, including the 'shoot any suspicious people on sight' method, to eliminate suspicious people. The governor of Iowa was taking no chances, hence he issued the same order to all Iowans.
The Iowa National Guard was out in full force. All police, fire and medical personal were required to not only report for duty but to stay at their work locations for the duration of the emergency. Also the governor was calling for anyone with any military service to report to the nearest Guard compound immediately. To not do so would be grounds for arrest. A state of emergency had been declared and all non essential personal were ordered to stay in their houses until told otherwise. Anyone one leaving their home could be detained and or even shot on sight.
The news went on to repeat the earlier stories and Bill shut the television down and turned towards his family. “Tomorrow we are going out. I doubt the sheriff will be by every house in the county and we should be able to get the basement windows barred and fortify a few of the upstairs ones as well. I think we should all carry a pistol with us, at all times, just in case. Us four I mean, not the younger kids, though Will could carry a twenty two rifle if he wanted to. We got a couple months until it freezes, so we have to check to see if any vegetables we have could be grown and harvested in that timeframe. I think we might need all the food we can get before
