Chapter 14: 6 Months Ago

6 months prior

Here we go again was probably the first thing I thought. I definitely didn’t think it would turn anywhere near the way it did. It started with talk of a revamped Covid 19. The symptoms were similar. People did try and distance themselves and return to wearing masks, but it couldn’t be a big deal really ... right? We’d collectively survived Covid and moved forward.

That was part of the problem though. Governments and people treated it as a mutated Covid. So as the first people started to die we were reminded that during Covid we had deaths as well. Sure, most were already compromised but we had them. I started to go into hermit mode, which for me was almost normal. But it means the things I had I made sure were topped off. Propane and gasoline tanks all filled up, grabbing a few more cases of MREs from the commissary, and even putting in an order from one of the prepper food source sites. They advertised their food as good for over 20 years, so it made sense. I had the cash and could tighten my belt a little with a big splurge and still be ok. Once the food got here, if money stayed tight ... it was food already paid for, after all. I just had to wait the month delivery time it had said it would take to process and ship my order. It made sense, I was ordering enough for what they advertised as feeding four people for a year.

Things seemed fairly normal among the media as well. The so called talking heads were giving recommendations on how to handle the spread of this new flu version. None of it seemed to be working though as it was still spreading. Antibiotics were only recommended for those who were truly sick. Experts seemed to be trying to pinpoint where it actually originated, but with modern technology and travel it seemed to have been in numerous countries at the same time. Here was probably another way our recent past hurt us: symptoms were so similar to Covid at first that you often couldn’t tell the difference until it was effectively too late.

Things started to really tip as the first responders started going essentially off line. Police, firemen, paramedics all getting too sick to be able to work or not coming to work in an attempt to protect their families. The worst in people started to rear its head here. Stores were looted, rioting occurred. Sadly, it wasn’t even the important things that were taken at first. Why bother stealing something important like food when you could loot the electronics store? Hell, at least then you’d have the latest and greatest big screen TV and computer to watch the end of the world on. Needed the newest Jordans but they aren’t in your budget? Pandemic economy: loot the nearest show store so you can die looking fancy.

With the looting came other crimes as well. Theft, murder, rape, and the like. The police weren’t around to stop them anymore. Plus this was Texas. It felt like just about everyone was armed and if they weren’t they quickly wished that they had been armed. Even the police stations were no longer secured. Some of the last Facebook posts were videos of people breaking into police stations and coming out with SWAT riot gear and rifles.

In those early days I thought about going out amongst the chaos to get the things I would need going forward. However, I quickly decided I had enough of a start point. I also had a bad feeling that things were going to get worse in the coming days, at least up until there weren’t enough still left to cause the chaos we were seeing.

A month into this new pandemic was the last major news story. The President, Vice President, and most of the senior staff were announced to have succumbed to the superflu as it was now being called. The new President was officially announced as some schmuck who had been the Secretary of Labor. The scary thing is that the line of succession had gone that far down the line. But there had been coughing caught over one of the microphones for the new President’s oath of office.

That cough might not have meant anything. But those of us away from the houses of government would never really know. It wasn’t long after the third new President was sworn in that the major TV networks went off the air for good. Some did play reruns for a while but the snowball was rolling down the hill and gathering speed. Network after network went off the air. Websites started going offline and unreachable. I ran an app on my computer that someone designed as a last ditch information grab: it went out and downloaded copies of as many websites as it could find. Thankfully they were smart enough to leave off the wasted media sites. No one wanted to focus on what the last of the Kardashians was doing. But how to sites, DIY, and educational sites were all ripe for the taking. If the internet really was going to die, who cared what some celebrity was doing? But some redneck describing how to wire your house for solar power or how to defend yourself ... now that could be important. Hard drive space I had, as a movie guy I had old external hard drives that I had upgraded from and never disposed of, so now the videos I downloaded from that app would get placed on them instead. Hermit time soent categorizing DIY videos based on areas of importance.