NanoVirus by cmsix

Chapter 4

Switching on the tube as I sat on the couch, I saw they were still at it, though only women were on the air. From the awkward camera swings every now and then, I could see that women were manning all the cameras now too.

I wised up after a minute and put a blank tape in the VCR, pushing record for the longest lasting tape speed. It looked like the news wouldn't be around much longer, and I figured we might as well record the last of it, in case they said something that might be important to us later.

I got another flash and went over to my study, wiggling the mouse of my computer to kill the screen saver. I actually had four computers on a peer-to-peer network with a KVM switch, so I could just have one monitor, keyboard and mouse. I could then switch to the system I wanted to use at the moment. I usually stayed on the main Windows 98 machine for browsing though.

The screen popped up and I clicked on IE's icon, bringing up Google's advanced search page. I'll be damned; the cable modem was still connected. I did a couple of quick searches and then tried some of the resulting hits, and all those sites came up too.

I wondered for a few minutes who was spending their time keeping the Internet going through all that was happening. Then it hit me; most of it would just keep chugging along on it's own. They had backup generators and would probably still be running for hours even after the power went off.

I'd used this small desktop network of computers while I was still working for a living; doing it from home some of the time. I'd added to them and upgraded for something to do once the money rolled in. They probably wouldn't amount to more than expensive door stops for very much longer, but they might help out for a few days, if the power stayed on.

Karen came in about then, and I noticed she was dressed like Nancy, a T-shirt coming barely below her ass cheeks. I good morninged her, and then walked over to the kitchen, where she was getting a cup of coffee.

Curious about her panty situation, I slipped my hand under the T-shirt's hem when I got to her, squeezing her ass and rubbing around her hip for a feel.

I didn't find any, not even a thong. She faced me, smiled, and gave me a peck on the cheek. Nancy was close too since she'd just refilled her cup, so I slipped my hand under her shirt for another ass cheeks inspection. I didn't find any sign of panties on her either. She smiled and pecked me on the other cheek. This harem thing might not be all bad.

"You're getting frisky pretty early in the morning, Jack," Karen said, smiling.

"Not me, I just thought I'd inspect the troops," I said.

"Well, what did you find?" Nancy asked.

"Inspiration to carry on," I said, admitting it.

They both laughed, then Karen told me we needed to have a talk after she ate. I agreed, asking if she could listen to some things I had on my mind while she was eating. She said she could.

I told her I thought we were going to have to organize things a little, and I went over my thoughts on what we needed to do, to secure ourselves for right now. She agreed about the food, and the medicine, and other supplies, but she wondered why we would need weapons.

When I explained that sooner or later, we would be attacked or at least hassled, either for capture or to take any resources we had, she brought up the fact that all the criminals had died. I pointed out that new criminals could appear easily, especially since there was no longer any government to direct the police. I even told her my suspicions that the police could end up trying to take over, to our detriment. She yielded the point.

She'd finished eating by that time and she filled her cup, and asked me to sit in the living room for a chat. The way she said it, and her body language, reminded me of the time when I was thirteen and got The Talk about the birds and the bees. The chat turned out to be along those same lines.

She was about to start, and I grabbed the remote to turn the volume down, but the anchor woman said something that caught my attention. She was relating that many more of the military had been lost since midnight, and that also large numbers of the police had died.

She apologized for the sketchy reports and added that their best estimate said about eight to ten million more people had perished last night, in the United States, and that the total living population in this country was estimated at not over twenty million. I killed the volume after that, and we just sat silently for a few minutes.

"Jack, you know civilization can't cope with this. There isn't going to be any civilization left, even if the sickness stops now. You're right; we're going to have to feed, take care of and protect ourselves.

"You're the only one we know that can lead us, and we're not sure if you can, but you are the only hope the seven of us have. We'll help in any way we can, and we do have some skills, especially for health care, but we don't know the first thing about most anything else.

"If we learn anything, you'll have to teach us. Eventually we'll have to think about rebuilding the population, or at least doing our part. I trust you won't have any problems with your role in that," she said.

"I'd just about come to the same conclusions myself. I'd never considered having children before, but now I think it's my responsibility. It's one I'll try my best to enjoy," I said, smiling.

"I hope you're being serious Jack," she said.

"I am, Karen; I do think we should postpone that until we've found a suitable place where we can be relatively safe, and where we're sure that we can support ourselves," I told her.

"What do you mean, Jack?"

"We can't expect to live here. Even if we salvage enough food and supplies to last us for years, we can't afford to stay. We have to find a place where we can produce food, and other supplies, for an increasing number of people. It also has to be a place we can fortify against others who may not attempt to produce food or who fail to.

"I'm not saying we have to banish everyone we come into contact with, but we must be prepared to turn away, or even fight off those that won't help," I told her.

"I can tell we've picked a good leader already. We didn't think of anything like that. We might have learned by experience eventually, but only if we lived through it. If you think the babies should be postponed, we'd better make a large supply of birth control pills one of our first priorities. I know we all want to start practicing for them right away," Karen told me.

"I hope some of you already have a few," I said, laughing sheepishly.

"We discussed this last night, and we're all using the pill already, except Jenna. Maybe the six of us can keep you entertained until we can get her a supply. That's assuming we're acceptable to you. We agreed that if you vetoed any of us, we'd accept you decision."

"I don't like to be crude, well most of the time I don't. There're no worries on that score, you've all pegged the peter meter."

We both laughed and so did Nancy, and now that we had that mostly out of the way, I wondered that no one else had shown themselves, so I asked about it. Karen told me they were waiting for an all clear, since they knew what was being discussed, and didn't want to appear to be ganging up on me.

She gave them a signal, and the rest of my new band came out for breakfast. I saw that the morning's uniform must have been agreed on last night.

They were all wearing T-shirts that came just below their ass cheeks. I quickly jumped up and intercepted the first new arrival, telling the rest they should all line up for a good morning kiss.

They giggled, but did it. I had pecked Nancy and Karen on the cheek, but starting with Jana, who was first in line, I gave them all a taste of my tongue and a double-handed ass groping.

I didn't see evidence of a bra anywhere, and no matter how I felt around, I couldn't find any panties. Jenna was last in line, and I gave her extra attention, causing her face to turn bright red, even though she was an active participant.

After they'd eaten and cleaned up the dishes, I asked them all to come sit in the living room. It was one of my best requests ever, since their morning uniform was a thing of beauty. No amount of tugging, on their part, could keep me from getting a glimpse of every beaver. I took a moment to ogle each one of them in turn as they giggled and squirmed and they all seemed to be great sports.

First thing, I asked if any of them knew how to surf the net and use a search engine. Most of them admitted to knowing a little, but I learned that Jenna was an old hand. I should have guessed.

I took a few minutes to show her how to work my system, and I asked her to start searching for web sites that dealt with survival and survival skills, especially those with instructions or tutorials. I showed her how to save web pages completely and explained how to dig down and save linked pages, instead of saving links that might disappear rapidly.

I also asked her to show Beverly what she was doing, and explain it to her. Beverly had been the one admitting to second best at web surfing, behind Jenna. I asked them to keep at it steadily, since there was no telling how long the Internet would stay up.

Nancy said she was familiar with rifles and shotguns when I asked if any of them had experience with firearms, she'd even used handguns, to a lesser extent. Janet said she'd had some training with a handgun in a self-defense course and she'd fired a shotgun a few times.

They were the only two that had even discharged any type of firearm. I asked Janet if she could teach the others how to handle a handgun safely and she thought she could. Digging up three Glocks, I asked her to begin at once, since I intended to take Nancy with me to look for more weapons.

I asked Beverly to keep and eye on the tape in the VCR, and change it when it ran out, and I told Janet that she was in charge of home security until I got back. I suggested she teach one woman all she could first, so someone could be on the lookout, while she was teaching the others.

I warned them that if they saw anyone they should go inside and get behind cover, telling them to leave. If whoever it was continued to approach, I told them to shoot to kill without further warning. Some of them thought that was too harsh, and I said I agreed, but it was necessary since we had no other protection.

"Believe me, it will be much better for us to be sorry we killed someone than to be sorry they killed us.

"You can tell them to come back later and talk to me if they persist, and if it's a woman that's unarmed or will surrender her arms, you can take her in temporarily. Lock her in the hall closet until I get back," I told them.

Reminding them that I loved the morning uniform, I suggested they put on jeans and shoes, and I waited while they did, asking Nancy to wear high top footwear if she had it. She had some hiking boots, and after they were all dressed, I warned them that vigilance was the order of the day until I got back.

Taking the dually, Nancy and I drove to my favorite gun shop first. It was over sixty blocks away, but the streets were clear, and deserted, and we didn't see one other person during the trip.

It was a fairly small shop in a strip mall, and even though the place was deserted, I drove around to the back door and forced it open with a wrecking bar I'd brought. I didn't want to advertise what I was doing by being parked out front in an empty lot.

I'd intended to only select what I thought were our most pressing needs, but I decided to take all the firearms and ammunition we could carry, and discard any we couldn't use later. The shop had nearly a hundred rifles and shotguns and about seventy-five handguns.

Getting blankets from the camping section, I laid one in the bed of the pickup. We put a layer of long guns on it, and spread another blanket and continued until all the guns were loaded. Next, we took a shopping cart and began moving the ammunition to the truck. It took nearly an hour to load and move it all.

Having taken the main stock, I looked around in the back room and noticed a steel safe-type closet. Thankfully it didn't have a real vault door, just sheet steel covering a normal solid core door with three large padlocks to secure it.

I managed to break them all with the wrecking bar and inside I found what must have been the owner's personal guns. There were two M16s with ten thirty round clips for each. These couldn't have been for legal sale, since fully automatic weapons were nearly impossible for a citizen to buy legally.

There was also a Cobray Street Sweeper (a 12-gauge shotgun with a twelve shot rotary magazine) and a Colt M4 Tactical Carbine, with the M203 Grenade Launcher attached. I found two ammunition containers with twenty-five grenades each. I doubted we would ever need this kind of firepower, but it was there so we took it.

Back in the store we loaded hunting knives and pocketknives in the cart. There were about three hundred of all shapes and sizes and it took two trips to take them all. Then we started on flashlights and lanterns and all the batteries, all of the propane fueled camping stoves and heaters, and all the propane canisters.

We had a full load in my pickup bed by now but we went back for top of the line sleeping bags and crammed them into the rear seat. We'd been gone a little over four hours and it was time to head home.

Janet had finished showing everyone all she could about handling a handgun by the time we got back, but none of them had fired one yet. They hadn't seen anyone, and I decided that we really needed to go out to my range for some live fire practice.

Everyone helped unload the truck and we carried the booty into the living room, where I asked them to try and sort out the ammunition and guns into their various types.

Nancy and I had more shopping to do. I didn't have any vehicle that would carry all of us comfortably, and I didn't intend to get separated very far from any of them. We needed to get something that could take us all.

I was looking for a small school bus or something similar when I passed an RV dealership. Doubling back, we drove into the lot and spotted a large Bluebird. Its door handle had one of those lock boxes hanging off it, the kind that held the keys. Breaking it loose without damage was a trick, but I was up to the job and smashing the box to bits on the ground was easier.

Keys in hand, I unlocked the RV and we entered. When I tried the ignition, it fired right up. It was diesel powered and the fuel gauge showed a quarter of a tank.

Nancy moved the dually and then watched and signaled to me as I backed up and pulled forward about a dozen times, trying to get headed out. Finally, we had to break into, and move, two smaller RVs, to get the big one to the street. Nancy followed in the dually as I drove it home - what a way to shop.

At home, after cooking and eating, we spent several hours sorting through and assigning weapons, ammo, and the other things Nancy and I had acquired. While we were at the gun shop I'd forgotten about holsters for the handguns and we'd need to go back for some tomorrow.

CNN was still struggling on, but nothing new would probably be important until after eleven PM, and it was only nine now. I suggested we get some rest, since we'd accomplish more with an early start than by waiting around for more bad news. As we were heading off toward the bedrooms, Nancy sidled up to me.

"Unless you're too tired, I'm the lucky winner," she said, giggling, almost shyly.

"What?" I asked, not understanding.

"Earth to Jack; our watches are officially synchronized. We drew straws and I won, dummy," she said, giggling again.

"Damn, I've wasted all this time chasing you, and all I ever had to do was kill two hundred and ten million people to get in your panties," I said, trying to laugh, but not quite getting it done.

"Why don't we just slip into your bedroom and try to make each other forget all that, Jack?" she asked, seriously.

"That's the best idea I've heard in weeks."