Chapter 9

After breakfast Brandy and Brenda left. Brandy had to get ready for work.

I asked Sandy and Beth to sit down. "I have been thinking." It was a good idea to continue contacting girls and doing what we are doing, but I think we need more than that. It occurs to me that many of them have no idea how to handle a baby."

"That's true." Beth said. "I am not sure I know how to fix that. I have not had any babies so my experience is lacking." She grinned. "I guess we could look it up on the Internet or something."

"We need more than that." I said. "They could look up the same stuff. Just reading something is rarely the same as actually doing something. This isn't learning to bake bread from the internet."

"We need someone older that has at least a suggestion of experience or knowledge. The closest person I know of would be Mrs. Owens, but she hasn't had a baby yet." Sandy said.

"True, but there are few women left and most of them are busy, not to mention possibly dangerous to be around. She is the one we need for this because she already is an insider to our secret." I said. "Besides handling a baby, how are these girls going to handle being pregnant?" Sandy said.

"They have to handle being pregnant, still get food and stuff and they have to hide out because if anyone sees them, my goose is cooked." Beth said.

"Obviously we have not thought far enough in advance. If any of these girls is discovered pregnant it could get me in trouble." I said. "The simplest way to take care of them and keep them out of sight would be to gather them all in one place." Beth said.

"I am not sure how that would work." I said.

"It's simple really. We don't have the room here even if we double up in the bedrooms. This house is too small. We need to have a big place because six months from now we need to house lots of girls." Sandy said.

"We need to house them, feed them, and take care of them. I think this just got a lot bigger than the three of us." I said.

"Not really. They are not all going to be nine months pregnant at the exact same time. We just need to rotate girls in, not get them all pregnant right away, and rotate girls out when we run out of room." Beth said.

"No, they can't rotate out with children. They have to stay. We have to create a hidden society. I have no idea how we go about finding a place and paying for it, let alone taking care of dozens of girls. This is getting very depressing." I said.

"OK, NOW we need to talk to Mrs. Owens. I am sure since she has an interest in this, that she would help us." Beth said.

"Let me call her. I think she's home." I said.

I made the call and asked her to come over. She arrived a few minutes later and we brought her up to speed on our thinking and problems. "I was wondering what I was going to do in a few months when I really started to show. Your idea of getting everyone together has merit if we are careful. We just need to be very careful with the details.

With any problem, you start at the beginning and solve each problem as it comes or in order of urgency. I would think first up would be where we all go. Once that is solved, we have a better idea of where we are going with this." Mrs. Owens said.

"How about an empty hotel or motel, Mrs. Owens?" Beth said.

"Call me Jinny, that's my nickname." Mrs. Owens said. "The hotel is a good idea, but I am not sure how we could legally stay there. A place of business has lots of natural entanglements. Even if most of the country is dead, we still have a functioning government of sorts and it's not so much the morality or law that concerns me, it's drawing attention to what you are doing. If a bunch of people all of a sudden took over a hotel, it would bring unwanted attention. No, we need to be much more subtle to keep a low profile."

"We will need a hospital eventually. Is there an empty clinic or something like that we could use, maybe something in the sticks." Beth said.

"We don't need a whole hospital, just a delivery room, but you have hit on another future problem. We will need a doctor. We need to bring one into our conspiracy so that she can deliver the babies."

"There are many doctors and lawyers still alive. We should have little trouble attracting one, preferably an OB/GYN, but that doesn't solve the problem of where to live." Jinny said.

Beth said, "Umm, how about the Adams estate? It's huge, and Sherrie Adams is a classmate of ours, she is probably still OK cause she was our age. If she is alone there by herself, that could be an ideal situation." "That would solve lots of problems, like security and money too." I said, trying to add to the conversation.

"We don't want to appear greedy, but what you say has some merit. A place to stay is much more important than money, but first things first, why don't you give her a call Beth?" Jinny said.

"It would be better of Sandy called her. They were not close friends, but at least they knew each other a little from school. I hardly knew Sherrie." Beth said.

"I guess I get to hide out here until we have this solved, huh? I am starting to get real tired of hiding out. Where is it by the way?" I asked.

"Well, It beats the alternative. It's out north of Ormand Beach just off U.S. 1. It sits atop a small hill and there is a large lake at the edge of the property" Sandy said.

"If and when we find a place, we will need to take you there at night so you are not seen. There are few cops left so it should be safe to move you if we are careful." Jinny said.

"Let me call Sherrie in the kitchen." Sandy said.

"We'll wait here." I said.

We sat quietly as she talked in the next room. There was little reason to speculate further until we had decided where we were going.

"Sherrie's on her way over now. Her mother died, but her Aunt is only 20 and she survived, she is driving her over. I did not give her any details, but made it mysterious enough that she had to come over. I told her we had very important information and I thought only she could do something with it." Sandy said.

"Good, the easiest way to get her involved in our conspiracy, is to introduce it as a secret. Gets them every time." Jinny said.

"What's this conspiracy thing? I said. That's twice you have said that."

"Well, that's the lawyer in me. This is not a mere secret. We are attempting to keep something important from the government. If that's not a conspiracy, I don't know what is. Jinny said.

"Are we breaking the law somehow?" I said.

"Well, I don't think they passed any law about this, they have probably been too busy trying to keep vital services running and protect survivors, but they will still be plenty pissed if they ever find out about you. Governments always want to control anything important. It's a natural condition. There will be hell to pay if you are found eventually." Jinny said.

"Just great, we are now co-conspirators hiding possibly the most important information or person today from our government." Beth said.