SurviRal by Ken Benton Read Free Book Online Page A

and distribution of basic necessities, you had no job security and were day to day at best. Clint knew all too well that his projects were far from being considered essential.
    The next day, the new President announced he was sick with ferret flu. He stepped down and the Speaker of the House was sworn in as acting President. The country’s reaction was not one of composure. Riots erupted. Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, and D.C. were the worst places to be. So were Chicago and Detroit, which Clint found odd—being as Michigan was still on the clean state list, and greater Chicago reported fewer than a thousand confirmed cases. Even in the Great Plains, big city incidents of looting occurred. Unfortunately, that included Denver.
    Clint and Jenny were coming home from Sam’s Club when screaming fire trucks raced by them. They came across the firefighter’s destination before reaching home. The local Safeway was burning. Its windows were broken and no one was inside. It looked completely cleaned out.
    “I don’t know what gets into the human mind,” Jenny said. She turned, reached to the back seat, and began fumbling with something, bumping Clint’s arm in the process.
    “What are you doing, Jen?”
    “Putting our grocery bag on the floor, a little more out of view.”
    Clint pulled over on the next block.
    “Honey, what are you doing?” Jenny looked around anxiously. “Is the car okay?”
    “Yes. The car’s fine.”
    “Why did you stop? This isn’t a good idea.”
    “I just need to …I need a moment.”
    “Are you okay?”
    “I’ll be all right.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry, honey. I forgot. You want me to drive?”
    “No. Stay in the car. I’m fine.”
    After a few minutes passed, Clint resumed driving and took them home. Jenny carried in their solitary grocery bag, mostly filled with pretzels and frozen burritos. They hadn’t drawn a good ticket today. But Clint was feeling better. The neighborhood was quiet and normal. That was one advantage of living in a gated community.
    Then he checked his email. A message from human resources waited in his inbox like a landmine. He hesitated to open it. Conference call at 4:00. Clint knew that couldn’t be good.
    It wasn’t. A hundred employees were being laid off, including Clint. The company had every desire for the situation to be temporary, and everyone on this call was considered a valuable asset. They would be among the first to be offered new positions when things returned to normal.
    Temporary. Returning to normal. Were these reasonable things to hope for? Would things ever return to normal? How could they? The population of the western world was being decimated. How many would be left? Would the survivors need software engineers?
    Every day some drug company or another announced hopeful progress on vaccine development, but then the next day retracted the statement and admitted they were starting over at square one. The stock market had given up on making hopeful bounces on those kinds of announcements, and now just sold off continually. At this point it was down more than 65%, cut by two-thirds. It was officially the biggest decline in history, second only in percentage-loss to the beginning of the depression after the 1929 crash. Clint didn’t even want to know what his 401K looked like. He refused to check it.
    Jenny’s pet maintenance business was now also gone. They suddenly had no income. Clint suspected his severance package wouldn’t be all that spectacular under the circumstances. He knew he needed to do something.
    But what? Forget about computer programming. There must be something else. What was needed in Denver right now? Clint realized they were hardly alone in their predicament. What was everyone going to do to make a living?
    What about Jake’s invitation? Should Clint seriously consider that? Jake’s home near La Junta was, no doubt, an impressively-stocked survival retreat despite being a bit of a hillbilly shack. And it was less