The Other Woman's Club

Millions upon millions died, and still it continued. Politically, it quickly became a nightmare of biblical proportions. No one knew what was going on; and worse, what was being done about it. Finally, a presidential address was announced, it would be carried on all networks at 9:00 PM EST.

The OWC gathered at Monique's house in order to watch the President. The six of them (they had made Dallas an honorary member) huddled in the large family room in front of the television waiting for the special event to begin. At nine o'clock sharp the programing switched to a large theater-like room. On the stage in front of the cameras sat five women, each dressed in the uniform of one of the five branches of the military. The woman in the middle of the group stood and began to speak.

"My fellow Americans, we are living through grave times indeed. Before you are the five highest ranked members of the United States Military. We represent the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, and the Coast Guard. I have been appointed to speak on behalf of the group. As of 9:00 this evening we are the Government of the United States of America. We have suspended the United States Constitution and have instituted martial law until further notice.

"We have taken this action because the vast majority of your elected officials, including the President, the Vice President and the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader are now dead. It is our opinion that the government cannot function in its present form at this time.

"How we got to this point is no longer subject to debate. The entire world has come under attack, hundreds of millions of people have already died and the number keeps growing. Undisputable evidence has come to light as to who is responsible for this heinous attack. We will now show you this evidence; a video began to play:

'Women of the world, my name is Dr. Lee Min Chen. I am the head virologist of the Wuhan Virology Institution. It was my task to re-engineer the SAR-CoV-2 virus into a much more contagious entity. The order came down to me directly from Beijing. I thought this was very unwise; but it is very unhealthy to disagree with our leaders in Beijing.

"I worked on the virus for over two years. When I felt the virus was ready, I informed my superiors. I was called to Beijing to give a first-hand oral report. Nothing was to be put in writing. I was forced to wait several days before I could give my report and again several more days before I could return to my lab. In that period of time, there was supposedly a leak and the virus escaped containment.

"I begged my superiors to request that Wuhan be completely shut down. No travel would be permitted to or from the city. To my horror, travel within the country was curtailed, but not international travel. It was as if they wanted the virus to escape and spread worldwide.

"For the next year I was shuttered in my lab, expecting at any moment to be forcibly removed and imprisoned or worse. When word came that the United States and others were working on a vaccine against the virus, I received a new task. I was to re-engineer the virus yet again. Only this time I was told that the reason for this was because our leaders felt that the Peoples Republic of China and the rest of the world could no longer continue to exist if the world's population continued its geometric growth. They wanted my virus to exterminate nearly a third of the world's population.

"I had to do something to stop these mad-men. What I decided was to kill them all. In my mind, the male of the specie was responsible for all of the heinous acts that have befallen mankind. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others throughout history were responsible for the deaths of millions of people. I had to do something to stop the madness.

"My newly engineered virus was the answer. In its simplest terms, the virus is a man killer. I have taught the virus to look for the hormones testosterone and estrogen. If the level of estrogen exceeds the level of testosterone by more than ten percent, the virus goes dormant and is expelled by the body. However, if the level of testosterone is greater than the level of estrogen by more than ten percent, the virus immediately begins to multiply and attack the respiratory system and the vascular system. Death is all but certain.

"One really heinous feature of the virus is that once it invades the body, even in a female, that person immediately becomes highly contagious, even before any symptoms appear. In the case of a female, we see a slight rise in temperature, a dull headache, or a day or two of body aches; then the symptoms disappear. In the males the same symptoms first appear, seem to disappear several days later, but then return again, escalating to high fevers, difficulty breathing, blinding headaches, and finally death.

"When I had completed my work I notified my superiors who informed me that they wanted to see a test of the virus. I gathered, with the help of the army, 'volunteers' off the streets of Wuhan. Five men and five women, all of various ages and degrees of health, were quarantined in an army facility. I introduced the virus and videotaped the results. Four of the men died and three of the women. What the videotape didn't show was that the one male who lived and had been previously injected with a massive dose of estrogen and that the women who died all had seriously compromised immune systems.

"The day before I was to testify before my superiors in Beijing I injected myself with the virus. The next day I was driven to the Wuhan International Airport. As I walked through the airport I passed by departure gates filled with passengers waiting to board planes with destinations all over the world. The same was true when we landed in Beijing. In addition, by the time we de-planed, nearly every passenger on my flight was also infected.

"In my meeting, I showed an edited video of the results of my test of the virus. All those who attended saw what they wanted to see. All of the elderly and less than healthy individuals had died during the fourteen day test period, while the healthy individuals survived. I was congratulated for my work; that evening I boarded a plane back to Wuhan after leaving a carefully packaged case of samples of the virus.

"The next day I visited a friend of mine who is one of the best hackers in the world. She prepared an email to the various health organizations around the world which would by computer magic appear to have their origin somewhere in South America. This video was an attachment to each of those emails. The date that the emails would be sent was four weeks in the future. Only I could prevent its sending. If you are reading the email or watching this video that means I, am more likely than not, dead.

"Women of the world, I have given you an opportunity to correct most of the wrongs of this world. We are the nurturers of life. Most evils have been committed by males. If my calculations are correct, by the time you view this video more than half of the world's males have already died. The eventual final number should be somewhere near eighty percent. Only those males who live in the most remote areas and have very little contact with the outside world will survive. In addition, most male children will survive and pre-puberty adolescents as well. There will be some outliers; some women will also die, especially those women who routinely lift extremely heavy weights and those who take massive doses of steroids. This could not be helped.

"One more thing; don't bother trying to develop a vaccine for this virus. By the time you do, the virus will already have done its work and will die a natural death. Instead use the money to help your people cope with their new normal.

"In closing, I don't know how history will look upon me. Will they see me as the worst of all of the mass murders I have previously mentioned; or will they consider me the savoir of the world. I don't really care one way or the other. I just hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity. I believe you will be running the world for the next fifty years at least. It all depends on what you do from this moment on.

The screen went black for one moment and then reverted back to the military tribune. The Air Force Lt. Colonel continued to speak.

"As you can imagine, we have verified that what Dr. Chen said is accurate. It appears that nearly every nation in the world is trying to deal with this crisis. We have been on the phone with the leaders of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran; all are saying the same thing; all of the former leaders are now dead, and the countries are being run by women in the military. All of Europe, Asia, North, and South America are infected with the virus. Only a few small Pacific Islands appear to have been able to shut down all outside contact before becoming infected.

"We fear that before this is over nearly ninety percent of the male population of the world will be dead. Our primary concern now is for the living. We have to make sure that our infrastructure remains intact, that essential services are maintained, and that the flow of goods and services is fully restored.

"Our first executive order is that we will use our Constitution as a guide in how we govern. We will, therefore, use a literal reading of the document, especially the Tenth Amendment which says: The Federal Government only has those powers delegated in the constitution. If it isn't listed, it belongs to the states or to the people. Therefore, the states will determine how they are to be governed. We will help in any way we can, supplying manpower and financial assistance as needed; but the states will decide when and how those resources are used.

"The Federal Government will provide for the national defense, we will provide for secure borders, immigration will be halted until further notice. We have to determine who will be allowed to immigrate, when, and how many immigrants will be allowed in. Immigration will only happen if it benefits the United States. And finally we will have the power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the states, and with the Indian tribes.

"In the next week we will be in contact with all of the state governments in order to help as needed, and to determine how each state is coping with this new pandemic. We will speak again next week at the same time and on the same day.

"Good Luck and May God Bless the United States".

The screen went blank once again and a moment later the regularly scheduled programing resumed. What was clearly missing was the fact that there were no 'talking heads' giving us interpretations of what was said or any types of rebuttals. We knew we were in deep shit and only a united effort by all those who remained would get us out of it.

Chapter Seven:

In one sense, the Phoenix Metro area is ideally set up to handle the new normal. It is said that the area is not a true city like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago; it is more like an association of hundreds of individual walled in communities, each with governing laws and regulations. Such was true about our community of nearly twenty four hundred houses, with its Home Owners Association and its Executive Committee, and its By-Laws.

What was left of the Executive Committee immediately after the Presidential address, suspended several of the Associations By-Laws. Ownership would not be limited by age, meaning that it was not necessary to have at least one owner aged fifty-five or older. In addition, a grown child of an owner could move in with that owner even if the grown child had young children. Businesses could be run from a home in the community as long as it did not compete with any of the commercial business properties within the community, and finally, the minimum age for being in the pool areas after three o'clock was lowered to thirteen.

The immediate problem at hand was how the community was going to provide food and services to the owners. Food was most critical of their wants. The women of the Executive Committee at a town hall meeting the following day asked for volunteers to help provide meals for the members of the community. The community's banquet hall, which in the past had been used for weddings and large socials and fundraisers, would be turned into a 'soup kitchen', until such time that grocery stores and restaurants in the immediate area re-opened for business.

An older woman volunteered to run the operation and supervise the cooks; if she could get enough servers and kitchen staff. Monique, Daria, Helen, and my Mom volunteered. The older woman had been an Army cook during the Vietnam War and therefore immediately took charge. They served two meals a day, a mid-morning breakfast and an early dinner. The menus would be limited based upon the availability of supplies.

In the meantime, the President of the Association cornered Maria and I. "I need two individuals to prepare a census of the community. I want you to visit each house and obtain the information needed; who's living there, and their ages. I'll have a form that you can use for each address. We'll cross reference that information with our lot number information"

The next morning Maria and I began our task with lot number 0001. I asked the questions and she wrote down the answers. We worked as a team so that we would not skip any of the lot numbers. Most people were cooperative, but some were reluctant to give the information. 'Why do you need that information?' was their common question. I could see the steam building within Maria. 'Because I need it, that's why!' Before that burst out of her mouth, I replied. "We need this information so that we can determine how many people are left in the community. We need it so we can determine what we can provide for our members."

In some cases, no one answered the door. In that case we checked the garage. If there was a car in the garage we tried the door again. If we still didn't get a response, we noted it for a follow up on another day. If, according to the membership information available, there was only one owner and that owner was a male; we used the Grand Master Key supplied to the HOA by the builder. Most of the time when we entered a house we found it empty and that there was nothing perishable in the refrigerator. We would note that on the form, relock the door and move on. In some cases, however, we opened the door and were greeted by an overwhelming blast of putrid air; a stinker. That was the term we used to describe someone, most of the time a male, who had died alone in the house. After verifying that we did have a dead body, we left the door unlocked, and tied a red banner on one of the outdoor lamps over the garage door. We called a special number, gave the address, and moved on. Within twenty-four hours, a pickup truck from the police department picked up the body.

There were four other teams working different parts of the community. When we reported back at the community center at the end of the day, the question was asked. 'Did you have any stinkers today?' The team with the lowest number of stinkers for the day bought the first round of beers. It was a crummy job, a free beer helped.

Life changed drastically with the new pandemic. We went from the 21^st century to the 1950s in the blink of an eye. The population of the United States dropped from nearly three hundred forty million people to just over one hundred eighty million. The huge drop in population took its toll on the entire economy. An economy built to support a 21^st century society cannot survive when the population is suddenly cut in half. Businesses were closing one after another. Whole sectors of the economy nearly collapsed. Nearly all of the professional sports teams vanished overnight, along with the ancillary businesses and jobs disappeared. Only the established women's sports of basketball and soccer survived.

Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and auto mechanics all became endangered species. Home construction came to a standstill due to the fact that there was suddenly a glut of single family homes on the market. Supply chain issues, which had already had an effect on inventory levels for many businesses, were now a major problem because there were only a limited number of female truckers. These and so many other shortages contributed to a very deep economic recession.

The good news, if you could call it good, was that the demand for electricity dropped dramatically, thus the power grid of the country was saved. The number of cars on the nation's roads dropped to levels not seen in over sixty years, the supply of gasoline far exceeded demand which dropped the price of a gallon of gas to less than a dollar; a level not seen since the early seventies. Pollution levels dropped and for the first time in recent history, there was a considerable drop in the levels of all greenhouse gases that scientists blamed for causing global warming and climate change.

Colleges and University enrollments dropped so much that for the first time in anyone's memory, instructors were being laid off and schools were fighting each other for the limited number of students that remained by cutting tuition rates.

It took nearly two years for the economy to begin its slow recovery. During this period, the joint chiefs as the military tribune became known as provided weekly updates on the state of the union, the state of the economy, and the state of the world. In the beginning, the updates were very depressing. Religion would normally have played an important part in the lives of those hit the hardest by the pandemic. However, the news was extremely discouraging.

The Jewish and Christian religions were hit hard; each suffered high numbers of losses of devotees and leaders. For Islam it was much the same, except that nearly all teachers of the faith were lost. It was the Roman Catholics, however, who lost the most. Due to the restrictions on women serving as priests, nearly the entire clergy was lost. Only those priests serving in isolated monasteries were spared. Nearly all of the population of the Vatican was lost. Now only a handful of nuns occupied the tiny country within the city of Rome.

It was during one of these weekly updates that the joint chiefs put forth an edict that would, at some time in the future, affect every living male in the country.

"My fellow Americans, as we have previously informed you, we have recently, along with all the leaders of the major countries of the world, reactivated the United Nations. Every country in the world has sent a representative to this esteemed body to help organize relief efforts around the world. One of the future problems that the world will have to deal with is the repopulation of the planet. Procreation of the human race is paramount. Another problem is going to be the sexual abuse and exploitation of the surviving male population.

"The UN has suggested that as many males as possible be segregated from the rest of the population. As you are undoubtedly aware, many pre-adolescent males have survived the virus attack. These young males are going to have to be handled very carefully. They will be entering adulthood with no male role model to provide guidance, instruction, and encouragement.

"We, therefore, have decided that all surviving males will be relocated to an undisclosed location. If they are married, their entire family will join them. The Navy has numerous submarine crews that were deployed during the attack which for obvious reasons have remained at sea. There was also one carrier fleet that was also on maneuvers during this period. They will also be relocated. Sperm banks will be set up around the country and the call for volunteers will be made when everything is ready.