Bug Out! Part 5: RV Flight from Terror (4 page)

“Well, home is home, I guess,” Frank said. “This one has our smells, and our stuff, and our memories…and then there’s the big bullet hole in the driver’s side.”

“It’s one more thing you don’t have to fix.”

“True, but I’m dreading that new coach shakedown. I wonder how things are in the civilized world now? What happens when we find things that aren’t right? I wonder if there are working service centers.”

“I hope so,” Jane said. “If it’s as bad as this out there, we’re in deep trouble.”

“At least I can do some of our own fixes if needed,” Frank said. “I can help the other folks too, at least with the electrical stuff.”

“She done?” Jane asked. “You done, Lucy?”

“I think so. Let’s go back.”

They got to the door, and Frank unlocked it and opened it up. Lucy jumped in. Frank turned to Jane and pulled her close. They hugged by the door.

“We do have each other,” Frank said. “We’ll get through everything. It shouldn’t be as bad as the trip from California to here, either. We might even be able to relax a little bit. So don’t worry, honey.”

Jane nodded, and they got into the coach.

“I’m going to go get my nightgown on,” Jane said as she walked back to the bedroom.

“Can I watch?” Frank asked.

“Why don’t we just cuddle tonight,” Jane said. “Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Frank said. “I’ll be there in a few minutes. I want to catch some news.”

“Turn it on back here,” Jane said. “I don’t mind if the bedroom TV is on for a while.”

“Okay.” He came into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.

Frank woke up early. Jane was still next to him, snoring softly. He got dressed and snuck out of the bedroom, going right to his laptop. He turned it on and waited for it to go through its startup while he got himself a cup of coffee. Then fired up his programming environment and got back to work. The coding for the surveillance system was going quicker than he expected. He worked for about an hour before Lucy started begging him to take her out.

“Alright, girl, I got the message,” Frank said. The morning was beautiful. Sunshine and tweeting birds. Lucy pranced about, happy to be outside. People were just starting to wake up around the park. Frank caught a glimpse of a couple of privates patrolling on the back fence as he was heading back towards his coach. That sent a twinge through him. He liked having the army here, but he would be glad to be away from the tension of another battle coming any second. He took Lucy back into the coach and took off her leash.

“Good girl,” Frank said to her. Mr. Wonderful came over, tail in the air. He looked up at Frank and meowed. “Oh, you too, huh?” he said. He leaned down and petted him, and the cat started to purr loudly.

Frank fed them and got back to work on his software. He worked for another hour before Jane started moving around in the bedroom. He was just finishing it up when she came walking out.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“I just got done,” Frank said. “It’s compiling now. Going to take a few minutes. I might have to fix an error or two, but it was simpler than I expected.”

“Good,” she said, as she got herself a cup of coffee.

“Pretty morning,” Frank said. “Ah, the compile is done already. No errors.”

“So what’s left?”

“Install it and test it,” Frank said. “Hilda had a PC in her office in the clubhouse. She told Jerry that he could take that into the tool shed and use it to serve up the video. I’m going to go over there in a few minutes and see if it’s set up yet. Shouldn’t take me very long to get this installed and tested. Then I can help you with the packing.”

“Great. Don’t forget to ask General Walker about the toads.”

“I won’t,” Frank said. “I’m going to go over there now, with the laptop.”

“Alright, good luck.” She went over to Frank and kissed his forehead as he was watching the laptop shut down. Then there was a soft knock on their door. Frank got up and looked out the window. It was Jerry. Frank opened the door and let him in.

“Good morning,” Jerry said. “I got the setup finished in the shed, so we’re ready for your software any time.”

“Great, I just finished it,” Frank said. “I’ll be ready to go as soon as the laptop shuts down.”

“Excellent,” Jerry said. “I’ll help you with the testing.”

“Good,” Frank said. He pulled the power cord for the laptop out of the wall. “Let’s go.”

“You don’t want another cup of coffee to take with you?” Jane asked.

“Don’t worry, there’s already coffee going in the clubhouse,” Jerry said.

The two men walked out the door and made their way over to the shed.

“Jasmine and I were thinking about something last night,” Jerry said.

“What’s that?”

“Our toad. Is Uncle Sam going to replace those too?”

Frank chuckled. “Yeah, we thought of that too. I’m going to ask the General about that the next time I see him.”

“Good,” Jerry said. “Hopefully they at least give us some kind of allowance for that. My toad is almost new.”

“Mine is still in its prime too,” Frank said. “It’s getting a little old, though. Probably isn’t worth more than about ten grand.”

“Don’t forget the tow bar and plate and auxiliary brakes,” Jerry said. “That set me back over two grand.”

“Yep,” Frank said. They got to the shed and entered.

“Well, there it is,” Jerry said. “I fastened everything down. Probably overkill, but we don’t need anybody walking off with parts of it. I wish we had an uninterruptable power supply.”

“Well, can’t have everything,” Frank said. “We’ll train the Major on how to work this, and how to re-start it if something goes wrong.”

Frank put his laptop on the work bench and fired it up.

“What’s the network name of that desktop?” Frank asked.

“Clubhouse_1”, Jerry said. “Password is the same.”

“I should have guessed. We’ll have to change that password,” Frank said, laughing. “That’s a pretty new desktop machine. Nice big monitor.”

“Yeah, ought to do a good job of showing the multi-camera view,” Jerry said. “Nice DVRs too. Hilda’s late husband did his homework. It may be a few years old, but this is a good system.”

“Wish it was wireless, but oh well.” Frank said. “Okay, I’m in. Uploading the software now. When it gets there, go ahead and pick it up and run it. It’ll have a shortcut on the desktop.”

“OK,” Jerry said.

“Should be ready now,” Frank said.

“Yes, there it is,” Jerry said. He double clicked on the shortcut, and the installation started.

“Hope there aren’t any bugs, but if there are, at least I’ve got the laptop here.”

“What’d you write it in?” Jerry asked.

“C++,” Frank said.

“Nice. It’s done. I’ll fire it up.”

The program started up and displayed a viewing window with a menu across the top, and some other tool buttons along the side. The picture from camera number one popped up on the screen. Resolution was good.

“Yes!!” Jerry said. “Beautiful.”

“See the button with the arrow going round on it? That’s the cycle button. Push that.”

Jerry clicked on it, and the program started to cycle through the cameras one at a time, in sequence.”

“This is great,” Jerry said. “Maybe you ought to sell this.”

“Naw, the new wireless surveillance systems on the market come with software that’s better than this.”

“Does it have multi-camera view?” Jerry asked.

“Yeah, just push the button that has the little grid on it.”

Jerry clicked on that, and all of the cameras displayed in a grid. It was a bit small, but watchable.

“Excellent,” Jerry said. “They could post a private in here to simply watch this screen.”

“That’s the idea,” Frank said. “I’ll see if I can log on with the laptop.”

Frank input the IP address of the PC into his browser window. He was asked for a password, and he put in Clubhouse_1. Then the view of the PC showed up on his laptop.

“There it is,” Frank said. “Here’s the limitation, though. It can only see what is live on the PC screen.”

“You could take control of the PC remotely and change that, though, couldn’t you?”

“Yes, we could, but then that would mess things up a little for the person here who’s monitoring the system.”

“Oh,” Jerry said. “Duh.”

“I could program a client to put on PCs that will allow us to change the view. I’ll do that, but it’s not going to work on the tablets. I’ll work on that in my spare time.”

Jerry laughed. “Well, I hope we have plenty of that now that we are getting out of the hot zone.”

“Should we change the password?” Jerry asked.

“Actually, there’s no need to if we hide the network,” Frank said. “Outsiders aren’t going to guess where this machine was.”

“True. We just need to tell the people in this group that need to be able to monitor the system.”

Frank nodded. He shut down his laptop.

“Let’s go see if the General and the Major are around,” Frank said.

“Sounds like a plan,” Jerry said.

They left the shed and walked over to the barn. Major Hobbs and General Walker were sitting in front of their laptop.

“Good morning, men,” Frank said as they walked up. Jerry looked at them and nodded.

“Good morning to you, Frank,” the Major said.

“Good morning,” General Walker said.

“We’ve got the surveillance system working,” Jerry said. “Thanks to our genius programmer here.”

“Excellent,” Major Hobbs said. “How do we access it?”

“One of two ways,” Frank said. “There’s a desktop machine with a big monitor in the shed. That’s the main place, and you can select the view in there, as well as go back and look at history on the DVRs.”

“How long does the history go back?” the General asked.

“About a week, then it overwrites,” Jerry said.

“Can we access it from other machines?”

“Yes,” Frank said. “I’ll show you.” He got in front of the army laptop and brought up a browser. He put the IP address into the window and then input the password. The multi-camera view came up.

“Wow, very nice,” the General said.

“Can you change the view?” the Major asked.

“Well, for right now you need to do that from the PC in the shed,” Frank said. “But I’ll write a client for PCs that will allow that. I’ll send it to you guys if I don’t get it done before we’re out of here.”

“What views can you get on the PC in the shed?” Major Hobbs asked.

“This one with all of the cameras in a grid, and it looks really good in there because of the nice big monitor that Hilda gave us. Also a cycle view that displays each camera, one after the other, in order, and a view where you can select by camera number.”

“And the DVR view, if you need to look back at history,” Jerry said.

“Excellent,” Major Hobbs said. “So we can put a private into the shed to monitor if we desire.”

“Yes, Major,” Frank said. “One thing you might want to think about is getting an uninterruptable power supply.”

“We can do that,” General Walker said. “Could I have you guys brief the Major and several of our privates on this thing?”

“Of course,” Frank said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Thanks very much,” Major Hobbs said.

“Any idea when we’re leaving yet?” asked Jerry.

“Yes, tomorrow morning,” General Walker said. “We’ll be bringing a Chinook chopper in to pick you guys up and take you to our base. You all ought to be able to get quite a bit of stuff into that – several boxes at least. Then we’ll send you off in a C-17 for the rest of the trip.”

“Still going to Oklahoma City?” Jerry asked.

“Yes, that’s still the plan. You’ll be taken to a base there. We’re trying to get all of the Motorhomes there before you arrive, but if that doesn’t happen, you can hang out there in the barracks for a few days.”

“One other thing, General,” Frank said. “All of us had toad vehicles. Are we going to get an allowance for those? And for the Tow Bar setup?”

“Yes,” Major Hobbs said. “I already mentioned that to the General.”

“Excellent,” Frank said. “Thanks so much.”

“Don’t mention it,” General Walker said. “You folks are doing us a big favor.”

“Did you ever find out about the rest of the group?” Jerry asked.

“Not yet,” General Walker said. “I think that’s going to be moot anyway, though. We‘ve already chatted with all of them. None of them really want to go. They’re hoping that they can just ride things out here.”

“Interesting,” Frank said. “I can’t say I’m all that surprised, though. It’s nice here.”

“What time do you want to hold the training session?” Jerry asked.

“How about right after lunch time?” Major Hobbs asked.

“Perfect,” Frank said. “We’ll be in the shed at 1:00.”

“Sounds great,” Major Hobbs said.

Frank and Jerry left, and walked back to their rigs, Frank carrying the laptop.

“Why didn’t they let us know they were talking to the others?” Jerry asked.

“Good question,” Frank said. “See you at 1:00.” Frank opened the door of the coach and stepped in.

“How did it go?” Jane asked. Frank updated her and, before she asked, confirmed they’d be getting an allowance for a toad.

It looks like we’re leaving in the morning. They are sending a Chinook over for us. He told us we can take quite a bit of stuff. They’ll transfer us into a C-17 after we get to base.”

“Good,” Jane said. Her phone rang. She looked at it, and got a puzzled look on her face. “I don’t recognize this number.”

“Answer it,” Frank said. She did.

“Hello?” Jane said.

“Mom?”

“Robbie, I’m glad you called.”

“I’m going to put you on speaker,
” Jane said.

“Alright, Mom. I can only stay on for a minute.”

Jane looked at her phone, and pushed a button on the screen. She put it down on the counter in front of her.

“Can you still hear me?” Jane asked.

“Yeah, mom.”

“Good. Your father is right here too.”

“Hi, Robbie,” Frank said. “Where are you?”

“I’m on a pay phone in a hotel lobby. It’s really hard to find these things now.”

“What did you want to tell us?” Frank asked.