Authors: Ken Benton
Chapter Four
In the days that followed, things got worse. Clint tried to avoid the news, but that was becoming impossible. There was simply nothing else going on in society. Try as he might to stay out of its path, it found ways of getting through to him and disrupting his work—be it from Jake, Harold, Jenny, or any radio station he listened to. Even his beloved jazz station.
The five million ferret flu cases grew to sixteen million seemingly overnight. The death toll skyrocketed into the millions just as fast. A rapidly growing number of Coloradans now claimed to know someone who was sick or already dead from the disease. The situation was even worse in Europe. About the only positive aspect was the fact that the number of infected U.S. states continued to stay at eighteen. All ten Great Plains states were still a safe haven. It was, as Tom had surmised, the remaining glimmer of hope.
Then the President died.
With an 80% mortality rate, it shouldn’t have been a shock. But it was. He was the ninth President to die in office, the fifth from natural causes. The country took it hard. Jenny, Clint’s coworkers, the neighbors; everyone Clint talked to was downright glum about it. Even Jake.
“You know why this is so bad?” Jake said on the phone.
“Why? Because the government is collapsing?”
“No. I knew that would happen. It’s because it robs the American people of hope. Think about it, brother. He had the absolute best doctors and medical staff money could buy. Even they couldn’t save him. What hope does that leave the average Schmoe who gets sick? Someone who gets ushered away from society and sealed in a special doom-ward, attended by unrecognizable bodies in hazmat suits who are stretched way too far with an unfathomable work overload. Hearing this news doesn’t figure to help the victims muster additional strength for fighting it.”
“One in five,” Clint said.
“What’s that?”
“You asked what hope the average sick person has. The answer is roughly one in five. Doesn’t seem to matter who your doctor is, what medicine you take, or how many Facebook likes you have.”
“Righteous observation,” Jake said. “When are you guys packing up and coming down here?”
“I’m still working, Jake. Too busy. And your internet connection probably won’t be reliable enough for me.”
“So when Oracle lays you off, then you’ll come?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Clint hung up knowing the grim possibility Jake so insensitively suggested was menacingly real. Businesses were closing offices across the country, and Oracle was no exception. Millions of healthy people were losing their jobs amidst the onslaught of vacancies being created by the pandemic. Instead of helping the job market, as one might think, it undermined it completely. Things had gotten too far out of hand. The missing population was made up of customers, too. The fewer customers there were, the less the demand for everything. The American public was in the process of readjusting their priorities. If your profession wasn’t one involved in the production and distribution of basic necessities, you had no job security and were day to day at best. Clint knew all too well that his projects were far from being considered essential.
The next day, the new President announced he was sick with ferret flu. He stepped down and the Speaker of the House was sworn in as acting President. The country’s reaction was not one of composure. Riots erupted. Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, and D.C. were the worst places to be. So were Chicago and Detroit, which Clint found odd—being as Michigan was still on the clean state list, and greater Chicago reported fewer than a thousand confirmed cases. Even in the Great Plains, big city incidents of looting occurred. Unfortunately, that included Denver.
Clint and Jenny were coming home from Sam’s Club when screaming fire trucks raced by them. They came across the firefighter’s destination before reaching home. The local Safeway was burning. Its windows were broken and no one was inside. It looked completely cleaned out.
“I don’t know what gets into the human mind,” Jenny said. She turned, reached to the back seat, and began fumbling with something, bumping Clint’s arm in the process.
“What are you doing, Jen?”
“Putting our grocery bag on the floor, a little more out of view.”
Clint pulled over on the next block.
“Honey, what are you doing?” Jenny looked around anxiously. “Is the car okay?”
“Yes. The car’s fine.”
“Why did you stop? This isn’t a good idea.”
“I just need to …I need a moment.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll be all right.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, honey. I forgot. You want me to drive?”
“No. Stay in the car. I’m fine.”
After a few minutes passed, Clint resumed driving and took them home. Jenny carried in their solitary grocery bag, mostly filled with pretzels and frozen burritos. They hadn’t drawn a good ticket today. But Clint was feeling better. The neighborhood was quiet and normal. That was one advantage of living in a gated community.
Then he checked his email. A message from human resources waited in his inbox like a landmine. He hesitated to open it. Conference call at 4:00. Clint knew that couldn’t be good.
It wasn’t. A hundred employees were being laid off, including Clint. The company had every desire for the situation to be temporary, and everyone on this call was considered a valuable asset. They would be among the first to be offered new positions when things returned to normal.
Temporary. Returning to normal. Were these reasonable things to hope for? Would things ever return to normal? How could they? The population of the western world was being decimated. How many would be left? Would the survivors need software engineers?
Every day some drug company or another announced hopeful progress on vaccine development, but then the next day retracted the statement and admitted they were starting over at square one. The stock market had given up on making hopeful bounces on those kinds of announcements, and now just sold off continually. At this point it was down more than 65%, cut by two-thirds. It was officially the biggest decline in history, second only in percentage-loss to the beginning of the depression after the 1929 crash. Clint didn’t even want to know what his 401K looked like. He refused to check it.
Jenny’s pet maintenance business was now also gone. They suddenly had no income. Clint suspected his severance package wouldn’t be all that spectacular under the circumstances. He knew he needed to do something.
But what? Forget about computer programming. There must be something else. What was needed in Denver right now? Clint realized they were hardly alone in their predicament. What was everyone going to do to make a living?
What about Jake’s invitation? Should Clint seriously consider that? Jake’s home near La Junta was, no doubt, an impressively-stocked survival retreat despite being a bit of a hillbilly shack. And it was less than a 2-hour drive from Clint’s hunting cabin further south. It might be easier to find work in a rural area now than a big city. Plus, they figured to be safer from any further incidents of civil unrest.
Clint shivered. Was he actually thinking about living with his brother? No, no. The situation wasn’t that bad yet. God forbid it should ever get that bad. Denver was holding together well enough. They were going through a rough patch, that’s all. Still much better off than most of the rest of the country. Everyone was in the same boat, after all. They just needed to wait it out. Things would eventually get back to normal. In the meantime they had savings, and the banks weren’t about to start foreclosing on properties. Food could now be gotten free if necessary.
The next day was the day of the President’s funeral. Clint and Jenny watched it on television.
“This is incredibly sad,” Jenny said.
Clint nodded. “I’m glad it’s closed casket.”
“Makes you wonder if his body is really in there.”
“I’m sure it is,” Clint said. “Being President affords you special privileges.”
Jenny shook her head. “I hate to think about all the other poor families who are losing loved ones. So many funerals happening that are so impersonal. Forced cremations and services held for multiple victims. There was one in New York yesterday for a thousand people. A thousand! Your name gets lost in the mix, and who knows if the ashes they give the family are even the right ones.”
“Does it matter?” Clint asked.
“I suppose not. But I’m against cremation, anyway.”
Clint chuckled and kissed her on the head. “I know, honey. You’re worried God won’t be able to find all your molecules to put you back together again.”
After the funeral service they drove to Sam’s Club.
“I’m feeling lucky,” Clint said in the car. “Cereal and beans. Or maybe frozen vegetables and rice.”
But as soon as the store came into view, Clint saw that his luck today was panning out no better than at the last poker game. Something was definitely wrong.
“Are they having a parking lot sale?” Jenny asked.
“No,” Clint moaned. “They’re obviously closing.”
Half the parking lot was roped off. Clint had to park on the street. National Guardsmen and employees patrolled the perimeter of the rope. Only card-carrying Sam’s Club members could get past it. The store had the remainder of its goods arranged in piles outside. No perishable food items appeared to be left. You had to get a ticket and wait for the next drawing, as usual. Only there didn’t appear to be much left worth waiting for.
The good news was Sam’s Club was giving the rest of it away. Clint and Jenny got there just in time for the first free drawing. The last group before them still had to pay.
The bad news was they didn’t need pet food or diapers, which is what they wound up with. These were somewhat valuable products, though, so they found they were able to trade for paper towels, cooking spray, and a couple cans of vegetable broth. At least those were usable items.
Clint glanced inside the store before he left. The doors were left wide open, with no one bothering to guard them. The shelves and isles had been cleaned out. Sam’s Club didn’t appear to be planning on locking the place up, or taking any measures to secure the property. It probably wasn’t worth the effort.
“How many markets are still operating?” Jenny asked on their way home.
“It doesn’t matter, honey. We can’t afford the prices anymore. I talked to Roy the other day. He managed to score some frozen fish and carrots at a market across town. Roy’s a savvy guy, but even he paid a ridiculous amount for those groceries. It’ll be even worse now. We’ll just have to go downtown and wait in line for the government handouts. I’ll take us there tomorrow. We’ve got nothing else to do, right?”
Jenny didn’t return the smile, but she agreed.
Back home, Harold’s garage was open. Clint wandered over. When he saw that Harold was watching a portable television, he turned around to go home. But Harold caught him first and called him inside.
“I can offer you a light beer,” Harold said. “That’s all I have.”
“Sounds good right now, actually.”
Harold went in to fetch the beers, leaving the Remington 25-06 he was cleaning on his workbench. That was the same rifle Clint and Jake usually hunted deer with down on the paid canyon ranch. The thought crossed Clint’s mind that Harold must trust him like a brother to leave him alone with it. But he did note the gun cabinet was locked.
When Harold came back, Clint noticed the small TV set was tuned to a business news station.
“What, do you enjoy watching your wealth diminish?” Clint asked.
Harold laughed. “I’m not in the market. But you’re right. My wealth is diminishing nonetheless.”
“How’s that? Is the price of ammunition falling?”
“No. Quite the opposite, in fact. Now that you mention it, maybe I’m all right after all. I was referring to the dollar.”
“They say the inflation is artificial,” Clint said taking a sip. Man, this light beer really was awful stuff.
“Did say that. Now they admit it’s real. No one apparently realized it until today, but the eastern countries have been dumping their western-world bonds. We thought the inflation numbers were because of food prices and flu panic, but now the economists have discovered the dollar and euro have in fact tanked at a fundamental level. It’s seriously alarming.”
“Why does it matter?” Clint asked. “My mortgage contract says the lender has to accept fixed payments in U.S. dollars, whatever those dollars may be worth. That alone should serve to keep the dollar valuable.”
“Your mortgage is fixed to the USD, yes. But new mortgages going forward might not be, assuming lending resumes after the pandemic ends. The problem is the eastern world no longer thinks our money is worth the paper it’s printed on, and they produce most of the planet’s trade goods. Everyone knows all modern currency is faith-based, with nothing valuable to back it. When faith in a currency dies, so will the currency. The U.S. Dollar might go the way of the Confederate Dollar.”
“What would they replace it with?”
“Hopefully something with intrinsic value.”
“Well,” Clint mused, “if the dollar completely fails, and I can sell, say, all my tools for a couple hundred grand in USD, I’ll use it to pay off my house.”
“I wouldn’t count on being able to do that. Especially if you get behind in your house payments, which will give your lender the right to renegotiate your terms however they see fit.”
The next day, Clint took Jenny downtown to the food lines. They had to park a long ways away. And they discovered it wasn’t such a great idea to go in the middle of the day. The lines were long by then, and some of the items ran out. So they made do with a loaf of bread, a can of beans, and a small bag of apples that were too soft. While driving home, Clint was dismayed at how many storefronts had closed their doors. This was a difficult time to be an American.
Finding sources of hope became more difficult as the days of late April yielded to the days of early May. Clint tried not to let it all bother him. He and Jenny got themselves to the food lines earlier and earlier in the morning in an effort to beat the crowds. Unfortunately, everybody else seemed to adopt the same plan. And the selection was getting worse. By the end of the second week of this, all anyone was getting was bread. The government was somehow able to keep an army of bakers working somewhere. It was white bread, and not that good. Clint decided he didn’t want to deal with it anymore, so Jenny started going by herself, “just in case” a shipment of some other kind of food came in.