R. Ruggiero - Brushfire Plague

Calvin pushed his way in, his face inches from Cooper’s, “What the hell is going on here,” he yelled.

Cooper took a step back and waved his hands in front of himself, open-palmed, “Whoa, wait a second. What are you talking about?”

“What are you doing is the real question, Cooper. I’m the President of our Neighborhood Association. Where do you get off sending out Gestapo teams to invade people’s privacy?”

Cooper’s face flushed crimson, “Are you joking? That’s what has your panties in a bunch?” He immediately realized his mistake in saying that.

Calvin stepped forward and poked Cooper hard in the chest with his middle fingers, “Don’t you dare patronize me like that! I ain’t takin’ that from you!” He had never seen Calvin get physical in anger or use anything less than proper English. Damn, he’s angry! His mind whirred, seeking a way to defuse him.

Cooper disengaged his eyes and looked downward for a moment, “Look, I didn’t send out any Gestapo teams for Chrissakes. I just thought we needed to gather some information to organize the defense of our neighborhood.”

“Defense? From what?” Calvin asked this as he took a step backward.

“Haven’t you been watching the news? Have you gone outside the neighborhood? There’s chaos. People being shot.”

Calvin shook his head in disbelief, “Well, of course, I have seen the news. But that has been in other cities and certainly nowhere near our neighborhood.” Cooper heard his pride shine through as he pronounced “our.”

Cooper brokered a smile, “Calvin, there was a family massacred in their car less than a mile from here. Including three children.” He paused to let the words sink in and watched some of the color drain from Calvin’s face. “Look, our middle-class neighborhood doesn’t give us the security it used to. Before, most criminals would stay away, knowing we had good police patrols around here. It’s different now.”

Calvin recovered, “OK. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we need to get ready. But, we have a structure here. We have an Association. We have meetings to decide things. I am the President of it. I, and the other officers, have worked hard for years to keep this neighborhood in order. I…I mean we can handle the job now.”

Cooper kicked himself, I should have thought about this. The Association is Calvin’s life. He has always taken it too seriously. It is a large part of his identity. I hate politics and I hate ego more than that, but I need to be smart and deal with it. He swallowed hard and tasted the dryness of compromise, “You’re right. I should have called you and talked to you about this.”

Calvin’s body loosened, “It’s more than that. We could have helped. I could have helped. I have already received several phone calls from people who were freaked out when the teams knocked on their door. If I had known what was going on, I could have calmed them down.”

Cooper bobbed his head up and down, “I got it. It won’t happen again. Can we sit down so I can fill you in on what’s been happening and what I’ve seen so far?”

Calvin let loose a palpable exhale of relief and smiled, “That would be great.”

When the teams reunited a few hours later and finished their debriefing, the news was sobering. Most of the homes had someone who had died from the plague or someone who was seriously ill. This was especially true of the homes with three or more people living there. They had encountered a few homes where no one answered and, upon entering, found the sole resident dead. In some cases, they found a couple both having died. Cooper’s rough estimate was that approximately one in six people had died, with that number likely to grow. He was staggered by the figures staring back at him and the pencil slipped from his fingers. He closed his eyes to steady himself.

Their survey also revealed that several dozen bodies needed to be buried. Cooper knew that would take a lot of manpower. He was tempted to suggest the much simpler method of wrapping the bodies in blankets and putting them in a closed-up room, but he recalled from his talk with Mark how that could erode people’s spirits too much.

When he turned to look toward the future, the worst news was the lack of weapons available for defense. Between all the homes, they had scarcely a dozen hunting rifles and shotguns and that number again in handguns. Worse, there was very little ammunition available and a few of the firearms had none available at all. Several of the rifles and handguns were small caliber .22s, which had limited value from a defensive standpoint. The one bright spot in the weapons report was that Mr. Hutchison unearthed a World War Two era Browning Automatic Rifle, also known as a BAR, which he had brought back from the war. This was a portable, light machine gun. He had a dozen magazines for it and a few hundred rounds of ammunition. Lisa had mentioned this at the end of the report and this news lifted Cooper’s spirits.

Thinking to himself he muttered out loud without realizing it, “That can be our force multiplier.”

Freddie asked the question on everyone else’s mind, “A what?”

Cooper shook his head, “Sorry. Just thinking to myself. A force multiplier is a weapon that increases the strength of your force in excess of the weapon itself.”

Lisa wagged her finger at him, “In English, please.”

“It means that the BAR will be extremely effective. Any bad guys hearing a fully automatic weapon shooting bursts of high-powered bullets will think twice before continuing their attack. Just the sound of machine gun fire is psychologically intimidating, especially to people who have never been around it before. It sounds like the air is just full of bullets. Machine guns are also very effective at controlling lines of fire…in our case…the streets. In short, we’ll need to keep the BAR at an intersection to control as much street territory as possible and keep it mobile in the event of an attack so it can move quickly to the point of engagement.”

“Got it,” Calvin responded for the group.

“Alright, this is great work, everyone. Why doesn’t everyone go home, get some rest before tonight’s meeting, and come back a little before five to help me set up?”

As everyone started to leave, Cooper remembered the lesson from earlier.

“Calvin, can you stay behind a minute? You and I need to make a game plan for the meeting tonight.”

“Of course.”

After the others had left, Cooper motioned Calvin to the table and grabbed two cups of coffee from the kitchen.

“I wanted to run by you some ideas I had for tonight’s meeting.”

“Go ahead,” Calvin said measuredly.

“Well, the first thing is to make plans to bury the dead over the next few days. Digging graves is hard work, but I figure that each two man crew could finish two to three a day without overexertion. They’ll have to be shallow. How many crews do you think we could pull together?”

“It depends on who shows up. But, I would estimate that we could have four or five crews out of tonight’s meeting.”

“That would be good. This would take three or so days then.”

“Except more will keep dying,” Calvin said glumly.

“True, but at least we’ll have started. That should lift spirits.” Calvin nodded in agreement. Cooper continued, “The next thing, the big topic, is organizing a neighborhood defense.”

“Yes, tell me what you had in mind for that,” Calvin asked, stroking his chin.

“It’s fairly simple. We need to organize a group of volunteers and then arm them with whatever we have. We’ll first take anyone who has military, police, or simply firearms training. After that, we’ll just take any able-bodied adult who’s willing. Then, we’ll establish a checkpoint and patrol schedule.”