Chapter 6: Marco

When Dave arrived at the patio on Saturday morning to cook brunch for the Circle and guests, he found Nancy already there with the Weather Channel playing around the clock on the large television set in the core. The various meteorologists were having their own little on-screen orgasms regarding the progress of Hurricane Marco in the Atlantic as it headed westward. They speculated about where it would go, how bad it would be, whether it would or wouldn’t strengthen or lose its punch, and what would happen if it did. They also rehashed past hurricanes and the resulting impacts they’d had. On and on.

Nancy waddled up to him for a kiss and said, “We are going to get so fucking hammered, we just can’t imagine. That fucking storm is going to go right over us. I bet the eye goes right over the Circle.”

“What’s your bet?” Dave teased.

“That if it doesn’t, I’ll fuck you to near death’s doorway ... that is if I can ever get unpregnant! This is getting kind of nasty.”

“I’m sorry for your aches. As for the bet, you’d do that anyway.”

“Oh, why you’re right.” She laughed.

For its part, Hurricane Marco had ramped up to a category three storm, and it hadn’t even neared the warmer waters in the Gulf of Mexico. As Dave looked at the TV screen, he noted that the cone of uncertainty regarding the storm’s trajectory was as wide as ever. NOAA or whomever the channel used for their source information, basically couldn’t tell what the storm would do so all of Florida and a large part of the Gulf was covered in the cone, but that was four or five days out at the storm’s present speed before significant impact would be felt on the U.S.

Dave wondered how they managed to maintain the high level of hype and ballyhoo about the hurricane that was moving methodically at about ten miles an hour on a slight northwesterly track. Fortunately for the Weather Channel, the storm was about to make its first landfall on the island of St. Martin and that fact gave them fodder to chew on as they danced around the studio screaming about the potential disaster to islands, including Puerto Rico - again.

The breakfast went like it usually did. Jason and Robyn had stayed overnight, as did Jim and Lisa, Phil, Ron, Cindy, Sharon, Amanda, and Bjorn, Nathan, and Tan. Dave had started to just think of all of them as regular Circle members.

Over breakfast Dave asked Jason what he did to back-up all his legal papers and client files. Jason explained about how he had about a terabyte of cloud storage that held everything, and the servers were supposedly bomb proof and somewhere in Arkansas in a secret location. Dave’s office building was older and certainly not to Miami-Dade standards; he thought of what he’d lose if his office were destroyed and made a mental note to move his computer and some other things to a safer location away from windows.

The day promised to be scorching hot again, but in the mid morning the temperatures were comfortable and invited being outside. As they sat Dave did a survey of what would have to happen to make the patio area secure from high winds.

Dave sat with Scarlett, Nancy, and Erin. Both pregnant women were obviously uncomfortable and kept squirming trying to find a comfortable position.

Dave asked Nancy, “What makes you think we’re going to get hit hard?”

She nodded and laughed, “Gut feel.” She pointed at her pregnant bulge. “The critter is getting active. I figure he’s nervous so he just knows. He also has some inside track until he’s born.”

“Good and reliable news source,” Dave teased. “I like that.”

Nancy said, “While we were having breakfast, they updated everything. The storm is now moving fifteen or sixteen miles an hour and intensifying. It found some warmer water. On a straight-line path with a northerly jog over Cuba that’d put it here about Wednesday morning.”

“Do you see us not doing something we should be doing?”

“Not right now, but tomorrow if nothing changes, I’d get everybody to help clear the patio, take down stuff likely to blow down, and so on. I’d also either fly the planes out or have the hangar double-secured. As for the utility, you’ve got your plan; I’d make sure all the stuff up to Day Minus Four has been completed. I hope my replacement is doing her job.”

Dave said, “Sheri Seaton is doing a great job. She volunteered to replace me at the County Emergency Center. I think highly enough of her to let her do that. I made sure she knew it was mostly a big game of telephone tag with calls from all the county services out prowling the streets and finding downed wires, poles, trees on the lines, and other damage that’s in our purview. She still wanted to do it. She’s single, so this’ll let me be home with my intentional family. She told me that she’d probably have to evacuate where she lived anyway, so she planned to load up her car and leave it someplace on high ground or on the second or third floor of some multi-story parking garage.”

Sunday morning the news was not good regarding Hurricane Marco. The eye was over the Dominican Republic, the storm was six hundred miles across, and the projected track was right up the west coast of Florida after it plundered Cuba.

After breakfast, Dave mustered volunteers to help clear the patio. Everything that could be found that wasn’t highly secure was carried inside and piled up, mostly in the core living room. Fortunately the chaises stacked, so most of the room still remained intact and useable. Dev took several other men up on the roof and they checked the attachment points for the solar panels, antennas, and a few other rooftop fixtures. The group went down and secured the hangar next, putting the place on lockdown until after Marco passed.

Dave went into work on Sunday afternoon to check on the deployment of trucks and crews. His decision to widely distribute the trucks to safe locations had been overridden in favor of a single disbursement point in the center of each county. Dave cringed at what might happen, but he wasn’t the boss on that point at that stage. The CEO had spoken and even overridden Derek.

Sheri Seaton, Nancy’s replacement was working as though it was a regular business day. He suggested she might want to get some rest before the shit hit the fan, but she said she was having fun and feeling she was contributing to the preparedness of the utility for the coming disaster – not if it came, but when it came.

Dave got several cardboard boxes and put critical files and notebooks in them and put them in a storage room in the center of the building away from any of the windows. On Monday, he transferred a few critical files to his laptop, and then moved his desktop machine to the same storeroom as his files. He suggested that Sheri do the same thing and she did.

Tuesday morning as Dave went out to get into his car to go to work, he looked up and saw the high thin clouds that announced the ultimate arrival of some part of Marco the following morning. A lot could happen in twenty-four hours. The morning report on the storm noted that the speed had increased to category four winds and it was moving at nearly twenty miles an hour. The trackers now agreed that the storm would enter the Gulf of Mexico and hook north with landfall between Naples and Tampa. Sarasota looked like ground zero.

The County Emergency Center got fully activated that day. Sheri went over and reported that there was little to do except test phone circuits and get to know the other people in the CEC. She said she was happy and even had a cot to use during her stay in the hardened county facility.

The noon update on the storm had narrowed down the expected track. The storm would turn into a category five storm – winds near one hundred sixty miles an hour, slow slightly in forward momentum, and turn into the Gulf of Mexico and the eye would ride right up parallel to the west coast of the state. From Key West to Marco Island to Naples, Fort Meyers, Charlotte Harbor, Sarasota, St. Pete, Tampa, Dustin and into Panama City, the west coast of the state would be ravaged by the storm. This was a worst-case scenario playing out.

By five o’clock, Dave didn’t know what else he could do to salvage the state. He made sure that the guys in PR had put out public bulletins to expect long and widespread power outages. He estimated that some homes might be without electric service for months – not weeks or days. He was talking to Sheri every couple of hours, mostly to keep her morale up. She was hyped about her ability to contribute and had met some great colleagues.

Key West was already reporting winds over forty-five and bands of heavy rain. Sarasota, where Dave sat, was cloudy with a few stray showers. The winds were still less than twenty miles per hour. Dave headed home. Leaving a very sparse office behind and a nearly empty but locked desk. When he checked the parking lot, he realized that he was perhaps the last executive to leave the building. Everyone had been told not to come to work for the next two days or more. Many of the executives had duties to attend to on behalf of the utility, but with Sheri handling the CEC, Dave was off the hook except to keep her spirits up and to be on stand-by.

The Circle dinner was inside and people were nervous. After the well-attended community meal people scurried back to their homes. Dave had been on cleanup, so came into the core living room when the kitchen had been restored to its pristine condition.

Waiting for him were eight women and two babies: Joan holding Lauren Jade, Christie, Bobbie, Maddy, Donna, Holly holding Zoe Faith, and the very pregnant Erin and Nancy. He came to a stop.

Joan stepped forward, “We are the Townhouse 1 residents, and none of us want to stay there tonight or into tomorrow. Can we stay with you?”

Dave led the contingent of refugees into his home. He got those unencumbered with child to carry in some of the cushions from the stacked patio chaises. In his home’s living room, he pushed and piled furniture out of the way, and established makeshift beds for some of them. The women with children went to his guest room. The pregnant women went to Ken and Patti’s bedroom where there was a king-size bed. Ken had texted that they were overnighting in Salt Lake City and not to worry about them. Dave had already heard that the nearby airports expected to close momentarily.

Dave and Nancy stayed up late to watch the midnight update on the storm. It was on track as predicted. Sarasota and The Circle would be on the eastern edge of the eye, getting the full force of the winds as the storm motored north up the west coast of Florida. Outside the winds were now up to around fifty or sixty miles an hour and seemed to be ramping up pretty quickly.

Dave had other outsiders clustered in his house, too, and he got reports from most of the other homes that they were also harboring friendly immigrants from Flood Zones A or B, which had been declared as mandatory evacuation zones just after one p.m. Lisa had joined the refugee list coming to Dave’s home.

Dave tried to settle down to sleep, but the howling wind was unsettling and keeping many people awake. He’d just dozed off when a very excited Cricket woke him up. “Dave. Dave. Get up. We need you.”

“Huh? What’s going on? The storm?”

“No. Not the storm. Nancy. She’s in Ken and Patti’s bed. Her water broke. She’s having the baby.”

Dave found Nancy sitting on the edge of the wet bed. She said, “Sorry. I promise I’ll buy you a new mattress.”

On the other side of the bed, Erin lay dozing. She cranked one eye open and said loudly, “My labor started, too.”

Dave cursed. There was no way to get them to the hospital. The winds were too high and the fire and police in the area stopped responding to 9-1-1 calls when the winds topped fifty miles an hour. They were obviously more than that and increasing. From the howling sounds, Dave guessed the winds were up near ninety miles per hour.

Dave took a deep breath. “Cricket, wake up Lisa and get her up here. Call Grace and see if she can get over here. Get Jack to help her if she feels she can’t do it without help. We need nurses. See if any of guests in the other homes are medically rated – doctors, nurses, or whatever.”

Alice and Julie had come to the door of the room because they could hear the commotion. Alice chimed in, “We need towels, lots of them. Tell Grace to bring all she can.” The two women hurried off to gather other help and to prepare for two births in their guest room. Alice ran off to the core to bring a stack of pool towels to the delivery room.

Lisa and Grace both arrived in a hustle. Grace checked Erin as Lisa did Nancy.

Grace announced, “Five centimeters. Water broke.”

Lisa said, “We’re at about eight over here. Nancy you’re getting near.”

One or the other or both of the women were panting through various labor pains by that point. Things were moving quickly.

Grace ‘assigned’ Alice to help her, and Julie to work with Lisa. Dave was asked to prepare two areas in the hallway for the babies to be cleaned and prepped after birth, and also to bring up a supply of warm water and various wastebaskets, pots, and pans to catch placentas and other waste from the birth.