Sunrise

The next day, Darla and Uncle Paul worked on bringing another wind turbine online. Max and A

When Ed and I finished procuring the tank, we started disassembling another farmhouse, collecting glass, pipes, wire, and lumber to build the second greenhouse.

I wanted to start our new living quarters—the longhouse, as we were calling it—but Darla had a point. With only one greenhouse, any failure could cripple our homestead. With two, we had a chance to survive a disaster.

For a few weeks, we teetered on the edge of starvation. Pine bark was filling but not very caloric. We had eaten all the food Dr. McCarthy and Rebecca had given us—even the cans of dog food. (If I ever have to eat pet food again, I hope it’s dry cat food. Alpo is absolutely disgusting.) And I found out why Darla had taken the leather belts. Cut into small pieces and boiled, they were edible. Sort of.

Just when I thought I would have to go back to Warren to beg for more food, Alyssa and Ben got lucky. Along the top of a high ridge about a mile east of our camp, they found a field with corn that hadn’t yet molded. I sent half our group to dig corn but told Alyssa and Ben to keep prospecting for soybeans. Two days later they returned to camp again triumphant, carrying a bag stuffed with fuzzy seedpods containing soybeans. I wasn’t sure how to process or cook them, but Darla knew. Our food situation got better.

It was easier not to worry as we watched the plants in our greenhouses sprout. Those tiny green shoots meant life and hope. When the largest kale plants hit two inches, I plucked one leaf from each of the best-looking plants and shared them with everyone. If pine bark had vitamin C, then it’d prevent scurvy, but I had no idea what its nutritional content was. I figured we had better add kale back into our diets as soon as possible.

After di

Well, crap. At least she wasn’t pulling away from the hug.

“The kale at the lowest side of the greenhouse isn’t sprouting,” she said.

“I noticed that,” I said.

“It’s too cold over there, too far from the tank.”

I nodded. “What do we do?” If there was one thing I was certain of with Darla and a technical problem, it was that she wasn’t bringing me just the problem. She would have a solution in mind, and it would be something that required my help, or she would have already done it.

“I want some flexible tubing and a pump. We’ll bury the tubing out around the perimeter of the greenhouse and use the pump to circulate hot water through it.” “Sounds good. Let’s do it.”

“There was a full roll of flexible tubing in the warehouse in Stockton.”

“No! Absolutely not.” I let my arms drop from her sides. Darla, however, kept her hold on me. “And there were a couple of pumps that might work.”

“Can’t we raid one of the abandoned farmhouses around here? They have tubes, right?”

“They’re called pipes. And they’re not flexible. Yes, I might make that work—the pump would be a bigger problem, but maybe we could find a sump pump that I could make work.”

“Fine. Do that.”

“I’ll need co

“Forget it. If we keep going back, we’re going to get caught.”

“How? We’ve been over that wall twice now. It’s easy.” “How would I know? Bad luck is usually something you aren’t expecting. And anyway, it’s stealing.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “I mean, a little wire we can’t get anywhere else, I can live with. But we can’t keep looting their supplies.”

“Like Red cares? He steals all our food, and you’re going to get squeamish over a few plumbing and electrical parts he’s not even using and will probably never miss?” “What Red does is his business. What I do is mine. Theft is theft—”

“We need—”

“Maybe it’s excusable when it’s done to survive and no one is hurt by the loss of the goods. But we’ll survive without the flexible tubing or pump.”

“Maybe,” Darla said thoughtfully. “But if we’re going to get the first greenhouse producing as much as it should, build the second, and a longhouse? We’re going to need access to supplies. If not Stockton’s, then someone else’s.” “We’re not. Going. Back. To Stockton.” I lifted her hands from my shoulders and left the greenhouse. Darla could usually talk me into anything. But not this time.

Two nights later we were back in Stockton. Darla had sworn we would play it safe, she would do everything I asked her to, we would take our time getting back in, and blah, blah, blah. So I made us wait in the snow outside the wall for two hours, making sure the guards hadn’t changed their patterns. They hadn’t.

We slipped over the wall fast and easily, two black-clad ghosts flitting into the city. The seam at the back of the building was exactly as we had left it. We wormed our way inside where it was dark and quiet. Nothing had changed. The shelves of hardware were the same as we’d left them, except for a thicker layer of dust.

Chapter 30

Two nights later we were back in Stockton. Darla had sworn we would play it safe, she would do everything I asked her to, we would take our time getting back in, and blah, blah, blah. So I made us wait in the snow outside the wall for two hours, making sure the guards hadn’t changed their patterns. They hadn’t.

We slipped over the wall fast and easily, two black-clad ghosts flitting into the city. The seam at the back of the building was exactly as we had left it. We wormed our way inside where it was dark and quiet. Nothing had changed. The shelves of hardware were the same as we’d left them, except for a thicker layer of dust.

Darla cut two massive coils of black, flexible pipe that were designed to be used with irrigation equipment. The coils were much lighter than the collars of electrical wire. We took two pumps out of their boxes and stowed one in each of our backpacks. We closed up the empty boxes and left them on the shelf so it would look like nothing had changed—at least if no one ever opened the boxes.

It was difficult to make the panel at the back of the warehouse open wide enough to push through the huge coils of tubing. I put my feet against one side of the slit and grabbed the other side with both gloved hands, pushing with my legs and straining to make it open wide enough that Darla could get the rolls of tubing through. A rivet above the ones we had cut broke with an atrociously loud ping. Darla blew out the candle, and we froze in the darkness, waiting, listening, praying that no one would come investigate. No one came.

Working by feel now that the candle was extinguished, we finally got the tubing through and slipped out ourselves. I’d bent the panel so much that I couldn’t get it to reclose correctly. I worked on it for a while and then settled for camouflaging the hole with dead bushes and snow.