R. Ruggiero - Brushfire Plague

Cooper scratched his chin for a moment and then strode over to address the group. He held his hand high until silence overtook the group.

“Good afternoon! My name is Cooper Adams. I am very sorry for what has happened to you. We would…”

“You gonna let us in or not?” A deep, rumbling voice shouted from the group. It belonged to a large man wearing a gray sweatshirt that barely covered his enormous pot belly. A few others joined him in catcalls of affirmation.

Cooper stared at the man for a long moment. Silence regained control of the group. The man dropped his eyes. Finally, deliberately, Cooper turned back towards the group.

“We will do two things for you. We are not the police, nor the government. So, we don’t owe you anything. So, we do these things from kindness, not from obligation. If there is a peep,” Cooper shot the man who had shouted a stern look, “from anyone, then the offer I am about to make will be withdrawn completely. Is that understood?”

The group nodded and grunted reluctant affirmations.

“We will interview each and every one of you. If we determine you will add a benefit to our community, you will be allowed in; at least temporarily. If we determine you will not, we will give you a small ration of food, taken from our own cupboards, and send you on your way. Any problems with this?”

The reaction was immediate and diverse. A handful glared at him. The man in the gray sweatshirt spat at the ground in disgust, but a neighbor elbowed him in the stomach and he held his tongue. The majority stared blankly at him, without response. He noticed a significant number of eyes light up with a glimmer of hope. Some began to straighten the collars on their shirt or realign the hem of their coat. This group began nodding their heads and saying, “Yes.” Slowly, this response spread throughout the entire group. When the nods had reached consensus, Cooper turned to the guards gathered about him.

He pointed at the two that looked to be the fastest, “Go house to house and gather portable food for two dozen people. Be back no later than thirty minutes.”

A young woman dressed in a red Columbia jacket and neat black synthetic jogging pants and a young man wearing a red flannel coat with dark blue jeans ran off down the street. I must remember to put out some guidelines about the best clothing to wear to the guard stations. Red? He asked three of the guards to maintain the position and had Mark bring each refugee behind the barricade one person at a time for the interviews.

Cooper leaned against a black Volkswagen Jetta that was parked just behind the barricade on the side of the street. He wished he had a chair to sit in, as he knew what he was about to do would be tedious and tiring.

The first person that Mark brought back was in her twenties, blond, and undeniably attractive. Her red wool sweater was unbuttoned halfway down, revealing a black bra that cradled two full breasts. She sauntered over to Cooper, whisking her hips back and forth. She wore a tight fitting pair of ski pants and carried a red parka in her arms. Cooper glared at Mark, who smiled sheepishly back at him as if to say, “I couldn’t help it.”

“Good afternoon, ma’am.”

She deftly tilted her head and looked up at him with full eyes, “Good afternoon to you. But please call me Rachel.”

“I just have a few questions for you. Please answer honestly as I don’t like BS and if we determine that you’ve lied to us later, you will be turned out of here…or worse. Understand?”

Her coy smile disappeared for a second as the blunt force of his words hit her, but quickly returned, “Yes, sir.”

“Rachel, do you have any experience with firearms?”

“No,” a furrow of concern knitted her manicured eyebrows together.

“Do you have any experience fixing things? Mechanical or carpentry, stuff like that?”

“No, but…”

Cooper wouldn’t let her continue, “Do you have any military experience or background?”

“No,” her smile had disappeared and been replaced by a grim mouth and drooping eyes.

“Do you have any medical experience?”

Her eyes lit up and she blurted out, “Oh, yes. Considerable experience!”

Cooper’s eyebrow cocked in surprise, “Great, where was this and what did you do?”

“I worked with Dr. Sanders, one of Portland’s best cosmetic dentists. I worked the front desk in reception,” she said proudly.

Cooper’s eyebrows deflated as he forced the smile from his face and tamped the laughter in his belly. “Great. Are there any other skills you can bring to our neighborhood?”

Her instant transformation startled him. She took a step closer and leaned in so that she whispered softly in his ear, “I know how to keep a man happy.” He felt her hand squeeze his hip. “The right man would be very happy.” Her words dripped with lust. She tilted her head back just enough so that he had full view of her cleavage. He caught a whiff of her perfume, which was sweet and smelled of lavender.

He took his right hand and firmly moved her back a step. “Thank you for your time, Rachel. You’re a number ‘one’, please remember that, OK?”

She smiled and clapped her hands lightly together. “Thank you! You won’t regret this.”

“I haven’t said you’re accepted, just that your number is One, OK?”

She smiled at him knowingly, “Yeah, sure. I got it,” and winked at him.

She walked back towards the rest of the group, looking back once to catch his eye and winking again. He waved uncomfortably at her. He couldn’t deny that she looked as good leaving as she had on the approach.

He shook his head, “Next!”

A nervous man claiming to be an auto mechanic was next. Cooper looked at his fingernails. Clean. Well-kept. Thin fingers. Cooper frowned, dismissed him quickly, and assigned him the number ‘three’.

When Cooper looked back up after calling for the next person, another woman was walking towards him. She had an open, friendly face with her dark hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She wore baggy khaki-colored hiking pants, a brown long-sleeved shirt, and a bright blue jacket. He noticed she was also wearing sturdy hiking boots and she walked confidently in them. At least she dressed for the exodus.

He learned that her name was Angela. Angela McIntosh. Cooper then repeated his opening mantra about telling the truth and then dove into the questions.

“Do you have any experience with firearms?”

“I was a good shot when I was a kid, but it’s been years since I’ve fired one.”

“Where’d you learn?”

“I grew up on a farm. My father didn’t have any boys, so it was my job to deal with the coyotes,” Angela answered, pronouncing it as “kay-otes.”

“So, you could shoot some distance?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said nonchalantly.

“What kind of farm did you grow up on?”

“The drowning kind,” a sardonic grin crossed her face.

Cooper cocked an eyebrow, “The drowning kind?”

“Sure. Drowning in debt, drowning in water, or drowning in the foreign markets, that’s the fate of any family farm these days. Take your pick. On a good year, it was only one of the three,” she laughed heartily at her own joke. Her deep, solid, joyful laugh drew him in and he couldn’t resist chuckling with her.

“Can you fix or repair things?”

“I restored my 1903 house that I live in myself, so I’m handy in a general sort of way,” her cavalier confidence oozed out.

“Can you work on cars?”

“No, not really.”

“What about medical experience, do you have any?”

“I’m an ER nurse. I’ve seen it all.”

He didn’t doubt her for a second, “Can you work without your hospital equipment?” Cooper knew enough that modern medicine was heavily reliant upon technology, which they didn’t have.