This story occurs within the Quaranteam universe created by CorruptingPower. He has granted permission to write this story. If you have not read the original, or any of the other spinoffs, I would highly recommend them. That is not required to understand this story, they're just good, and a lot of fun.
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Chapter 1
September 18, 2020
Dave Belsus sat on the floor of his hallway texturing the wall over the patch he'd installed a few days earlier. It had taken a sizable piece of sheetrock (from a layman's perspective) to repair the big gaping hole in his wall. There wasn't really a right or wrong pattern to the texturing and Dave was simultaneously restless and reluctant to move on to a different task. He finally stood, gathered his tools and materials, and hauled them down to the garage. There are still things to do. There are people depending on him.
He went out to his greenhouse and stopped, closed his eyes and smelled the green. Let it soak into him. He needed to feel life around him. He just stood there for . . . he wasn't sure how long. Not long enough. He still felt dead inside. But he had work to do.
David started harvesting some veggies to exchange with his neighbor, Lupe. Inspecting the cucumber plants, he could see two large ones were ready. He'd keep one for his own salads and send the other next door. Becca, Lupe's houseguest (once babysitter) had developed a taste for them after Dave offered one a few months ago. Several beefy tomatoes were ready, so he plucked them, keeping a few for himself. Maybe a tomato sandwich tonight or tomorrow. That'd be nice. Three heads of redleaf lettuce (he'd staggered his lettuce so a few heads were harvestable every week) were next, again, one for Dave, two for next door. Finally, a handful of strawberries were perfectly ripe. He'd let Lupe and the girls have all of those. Esme, Lupe's daughter loved strawberries. Well, who didn't? Cute little girl. Always gave Dave fierce, friendly hugs.
Dave missed the farmer's markets on the weekends where he could trade or buy/sell for other varieties and veggies he didn't have space or time for. Well, now he had all sorts of time, but he still didn't have the space.
Dave brought the harvested veggies into the house and sorted the veggies. Stuff for him went on the counter basket. Items for Lupe, Becca and Esme went back in the basket he'd carried into the greenhouse. Dave grabbed the basket and walked over to what had been a parlor just off his entryway. Now it was a decon area. Dave added a plasticized suit over the clothes he'd been wearing. Mid-September was still toasty in Texas, but fortunately not as bad as late August. That had been brutal. Hot enough Dave had thought about adding a water bottle with a straw to the inside of the suit. He hadn't come up with a way to attach it without breaching the suit's integrity, so he nixed the idea. He doubled down on pre-hydrating when it was absolutely necessary to go out in the damn thing.
Dave gathered up the basket in the clumsy gloves. He'd gotten fairly good at manipulating medium size items while wearing the gloves. The gloves were disposable dish gloves, tucked into the suit and duct taped to it for a seal. He opened his door and crossed the lawns over to Lupe's porch. He carefully transferred the veggies over to Lupe's porch pickup box, then gathered the dozen eggs she'd left him. Lupe had several hens in a large coop in her back yard. Dave had helped her install some anti-predator devices to the top of her fence and around the coop in the before times. Being that close to Lupe was a fond memory. Nothing romantic between them, just very comfortable. And it had paid off well too. He got a dozen eggs twice a week, and sometimes a whole chicken, plucked and dressed. Sometimes even separated into parts. If he was really lucky, after bringing her some good meat, he'd get homemade tamales. Lupe was a great cook.
Her cooking wasn't the only thing Dave appreciated about Lupe. Absolutely lovely inside and out. She wasn't beauty pageant pretty, she was normal girl pretty. What a lovely face to wake up to. A face that'd make a man want to come home. Nice figure too. She never wore anything too showy, but she wasn't one for baggy stuff either. Sure, she's in her early thirties and has a real job and a kid to keep track of, so she most certainly wouldn't have a washboard tummy under her shirts. Or dresses. God, Lupe looks fantastic in a dress. The way they billow around her calves always caught Dave's eye. And that hair. Long, lovely, raven black hair.
Hopping back onto his own porch, Dave put the basket down and flipped on the UV lights he'd installed in the porch awning. Step one in his decontamination process. Arms straight out from his shoulders, he turned slowly. One full circle palms down, another palms up. He flipped off the light, opened the door and grabbed the basket. Inside, he stripped off the outer suit, hanging it on hooks in the entryway, set the basket in the kitchen, then went straight to the upstairs shower, the one near the unused bedrooms.
Excessive? Possibly. But Dave wasn't going to be another statistic. Viruses don't negotiate. Dave didn't either. That's what Lysol was for. Not that the average person could get much of that anymore. Still, if you weed out the essential oils nuts, there were some good recipes for home sanitizers online. You just had to pay attention to the recommended duration. Some were stronger than others and didn't need to be left on a surface as long.
After toweling off and tossing the towel in the hamper, Dave went to the master bedroom to put on fresh clothes. Then he went back down to wash the lettuce and cucumber and started making a small salad. Dave didn't like eating right before exertion, but he hadn't eaten in a day and a half. He need to workout the anger surging through him too. So he compromised - a small salad, then beat the crap out of imaginary opponents.
Lettuce base, quartered tomato, quartered boiled egg, diced cucumber, and balsamic vinaigrette. Tasty enough that he'd finish it. Small enough he wouldn't blow chunks while he's exercising. Kitchen cleanup gave the food a little time to settle.
Dave walked across the house to get his staff from the gym, then went back to the sliding glass door separating the living room from the backyard. He walked to the large flat platform in the middle of the yard, stretching his arms as he went. He stretched his legs when he got there. Then he took a several minutes with warm up motions. He ran through each of the basic strikes and defenses in a pattern he practiced at least three times a week. He repeated the sequence five times. Then he launched into a series of combination motions. Half-staff upper hand strike on the right, followed by the left. A horizontal block leading into a full staff strike starting from the lower left into the upper right. On and on. Each pattern repeated. Each repetition faster. Turning. Striking. Blocking. Faster.
Dave's face, initially a blank mask, grew pained, then angry. Anger flowed into rage. In his rage, Dave lost track of his position on the platform. He unknowingly stepped off the platform. It was only two or three inches high, but that was enough. He caught his fall with his staff and avoided an unceremonious face plant. Still, the interruption pulled him out of the mental space he'd been in. His breathing was ragged. Sweat soaked his clothes, dripped from every part of his body. The air was no longer flinty, but it was still too hot for heavy, continuous exertion. He felt a small wave of nausea roll through his belly. Time to pack it in. He cleaned off the end of the staff he'd use to stop his fall, then walked inside, stowed the staff back in the gym, and went up to the master suite shower stall.
The shower refreshed Dave's body. Time to give his mind something to do. Eastfield College had only partially re-opened, just a few online classes. He had one section of astronomy to teach for the folks that wanted something more exciting than physical science for their science core requirement. No one was taking chemistry or physics this semester. The chemistry instructor was still alive. She'd laid down the law in her house and they had taken lockdown seriously. They just didn't have a good substitute for teaching the lab part of the class yet. The full-time physics guy had inexplicably taken the same attitude as too many in the county. He died before the spring semester ended. The guy had a doctorate in physics, twelve published papers to his name and spent twenty years living in scientific circles. You'd think he'd know better than to fall in with the idiot brigade. Hell, maybe the college would take Dave on full time to cover the physics courses once they opened up for real.
Dave logged into to the course website, checking grades in the online homework column and looking for any labs submitted by the faster, more diligent (or just bored) students. No new work since yesterday. Maybe the rest would wait until last minute on Sunday night. On no, a procrastinating college student. What a surprise!
A text message notification pulled him out of his reverie. It was from Lupe. "
Please say yes
." He was about to reply, asking her what he was supposed to say yes to, when he heard the doorbell. Crap. Dave rushed downstairs to the door, hearing a second ring on the way down. He grabbed a mask and slipped it on quickly just before opening the door a crack with his shoulder braced against it if he needed to slam it shut again. A man in a hazmat suit stood on Dave's porch, carrying a small case and wearing what appeared to be a watch on his right wrist.
"Good morning sir, my name is Arthur Samuelson, I'm with the CDC. May I come in?"
"You ain't a vampire are you?" The grin on Dave's face indicated he was joking.
