Karl's hands gripped the armrests of his expensive chair to stand. They lacked the star crested ring that Frank and Melinda had. Karl's heavy footsteps led to the large glass windows. Gunnar followed him to gaze over the wreckage.
"This all started as an idea, a reaction to all the notices we kept getting about superstorms and a changing climate," Karl said.
Gunnar nodded remembering the flyers that would go up around the neighbourhood, the messages they'd broadcast at the community center when he walked Vita to her dance lessons. They'd flash across the screen of his cheap cell as he tried to check his messages too. The first ones had scared him enough to keep Aida home and to spend a little getting extra food for the house. But after five urgent warnings, it had been just another ad to scroll past.
"No one was taking them seriously. But we knew something was coming and we needed to fight the apathy, to find people of all ages who had the vision to create and strive for something better. We needed to make change even if the rest of society wouldn't."
It was easy to talk about change when you had the money to change something. His family couldn't even make it a month without the food bank, so he wasn't about to drop cash on solar panels, fancy lights, or eco-bullshit. It didn't matter if you saved cash in the future if you didn't live to see it.
"That's why we recruited people like your sister to help us."
"And Rob Wells?" Gunnar asked.
"Rob is part of a rehabilitation project to take in those who've lived through the storms and give them a safe space to live. We realized that we needed a bit more help to maintain our facility than we anticipated. Your incident with him has launched an investigation into how we've chosen to integrate them into this facility."
"Am I part of the same rehabilitation project?"
Karl looked back at Gunnar with steel-blue eyes that gave him the chills. "We went to Rob, whereas you have found a way to come to us. That puts you in a category we hadn't quite accounted for."
Likely a dangerous category that they hadn't fully decided if they wanted quite yet.
"I wouldn't have come if it weren't for Aida."
"If the two of you had been together during the storms, we could have kept you together."
Karl's tone reminded Gunnar of his teachers back at school. But the man couldn't be telling the truth. Gunnar wasn't one of those people who knew how to make something better and smarter. He just got by with what he had. But he wondered, if someone offered a safe space for the two of them at that moment, would he really have turned it down, even if the people seemed a bit off? Mr. M didn't have his head screwed on all the way, but Gunnar had joined the group. Though looking back on it all, Vita had probably drawn him in the most.
Crap, he had stopped listening ages ago. He had to start doing a better job of looking interested or else he wouldn't get to talk to Aida. Karl was just staring at him.
"How many people has this facility saved?" Gunnar asked.
"Nearly three hundred."
Gunnar's eyes swept back over Vegas' toppled hotels. They'd stolen people from Vegas to Albuquerque that he knew of, and there were maybe three hundred in here? That left so many people dead or if they were lucky, surviving in little groups.
"That's hardly anyone."
Karl returned to his private bar to pour himself another drink. "Keep in mind we are a group of private citizens doing the best we can. Did you see the government step in to help? Did you see any other international help while you were out there?" Karl tried to make eye contact, but Gunnar kept his eyes on the horizon.
