The Neighborhood » Carl

“Well, he hinted he might somehow have ten thousand vampires within his organization… if that is the case, and they are scattered across the US, I suspect he has pretty good access to almost everyone. Unless we all hide in a bunker for the next decade or so.”

This was going to take a while.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD » CARL

Hod and I parked the LV and SUV — a bit North of Oroville on a dirt pullout about a mile beyond a fire station. At this point in the road it looked like almost no one came up this far, but we moved up here late Saturday night after the last dialysis shift, so we couldn’t see what traffic was normally like. It was also hard to see the road, although I could see lots of fauna around it in the bushes. We were definitely in some nice woods, but our goal was to hide and blend in… at the same time. To “look casual”.

Being in Oroville is a new experience for both Hod and me: the foothills of mountains are very different from the beaches of Santa Barbara and Southern California, and Hod is from Hawaii. Hawaii has mountains (or really volcanos) but they are pretty warm. We both seem to be surviving in spite of the climate change.

We picked going to Oroville because no one else raised their hand during the very rushed meeting. I would normally have preferred being back in Santa Barbara, but my wife and children left for her parents’ home (in Zurich) at the end of the school year, so I had nothing to go back to. She had done this before when Covid was causing havoc with elementary school education, and Mark’s plan seemed like it could cause similar levels of havoc in California. And this is based on the little I know.

We unhooked the 450 — leveled the RV, and simply laid back for the next 48 or so hours reminiscing about glory days in school and beyond. Hod recently started working with Google, but it has been so recent that he doesn’t have any impressions other than the grueling interviews. My company may be gone by the time I get back to Santa Barbara, but that is not unusual in Silicon Valley, and Santa Barbara isn’t that different… other than having much nicer beaches.

Hod had recruited intensely with the local Beloved dialysis clinics: he posed as a short-term visiting patient, and shift-by-shift he convinced both the vampire (easily recognized when you know what to look for) and patients to try out a new ‘free clinic’. Within two weeks we had a total of eight vampires including me, sixty patients, and could run every shift.

Beloved has so many clinics in the area that they shouldn’t have any service-delivery issues: they can just get other vampires to double-up and substitute a day a week for the missing vampire. It would take a lot of vampires if they each only took a single shift, but Beloved had a lot of vampires in the area.

The loss of sixty dialysis patients might be a bit of a shock: that equals about $3M per year.

The neighbors found our LV cave — which I found out by hearing the doorbell ring. I don’t scare easily, but I can be startled, and if I could fly I would have hit the ceiling. Hod is out picking up patients with SUV, so I am alone. I go to the door and look through the peep hole. There is a camouflaged golf cart blocking the 450 (gutsy, given the size differential). There are also two guys armed with AR-15s or something over their shoulders.

Not wanting to be discourteous, I open the door. “Hello?”

The taller of the two starts out: “Hi neighbor, this is Butthead & I am Beavis [not their real names]… and you are?”

“Standing here. This is a free country right?”

“Less than we want, but let me try again. We are here to welcome you into the neighborhood.”

“You brought me a cake? Or a fruit basket?”

Butthead chimes in with “Can people on dialysis eat cake?”

“I can eat all the cake I want. Why do you bring up dialysis?”

“We, as in the town, are pretty sure you are one of the satellite dialysis clinics. So we are here to find out what is up with that. ”

“Well, again, I thought this was a free country. So I am not sure why you care.”

“Welllll… we think there is a good chance ‘the man’ knows where you are. And they might come visiting. ”

“That might be unpleasant. I would very much like ‘the man’ not to visit me and my friends. I am Carl by the way.”

“Thanks Carl. We would like ‘the man’ not to visit you either. At least not while you are in our territory.”

“You want us to leave?”

“No, you are free to stay as long as you like. Especially if you are doing free dialysis for some of our residents. In that case, we actually invite you to stay. With us. ”

“I need to stay with this RV. It is a bit large to move into someone’s driveway”

“You should see our driveway!”

So we moved in — with Beavis and Butthead — who are actually not at all like the TV characters — in a secluded compound a bit closer to the dam. Getting the LV up the dirt driveway going fairly vertically into the hills was a notable undertaking, but we offloaded most of the provisions and transported them with the trucks after getting the LV in place. We ultimately had a very scenic view overlooking the valley, which the patients enjoyed in spite of having very little idea where they were.