Sunrise

Once we were well away from the warehouse and its guards, I whispered to Darla, “I want to go downtown. Look for something.”

“You crazy?” she whispered back. “That’s where their troops are headquartered, where Red’s mansion is. You didn’t want to come creeping around the lion’s tail, and now you’re going to stick your head in his maw?”

“Yeah. You’re right, I guess.” I had wanted to check out the jewelry store I’d seen downtown—see if there were any engagement rings left, but no way was I going to tell her that.

We slipped back over the wall and returned to the homestead in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

It took more than two months to build the second greenhouse. The guts of the first one—the tank with its heating elements—were finished before we arrived at our new homestead, and we had all the glass and building materials salvaged from the old farmhouse. Now we were in the process of tearing down the three nearest abandoned farmhouses and taking the glass, lumber, pipe, and wire we needed.

The unmoldy corn and soy improved our diet immensely, and we quit eating pine bark. Two wind turbines turned out to be more than enough to heat both our greenhouses. In high wind we shut down the turbines so they wouldn’t be damaged. They weren’t designed to spin all that fast, Uncle Paul said. They were geared for slow and steady operation—that was more efficient and also safer for birds. Not that we’d seen any birds since the eruption. Those that weren’t killed by breathing in the ash had no doubt fled south to try to survive the volcanic winter. We also had to shut down the wind turbines if the wind blew steadily for several days. The greenhouses would overheat otherwise.

Chapter 31

It took more than two months to build the second greenhouse. The guts of the first one—the tank with its heating elements—were finished before we arrived at our new homestead, and we had all the glass and building materials salvaged from the old farmhouse. Now we were in the process of tearing down the three nearest abandoned farmhouses and taking the glass, lumber, pipe, and wire we needed.

The unmoldy corn and soy improved our diet immensely, and we quit eating pine bark. Two wind turbines turned out to be more than enough to heat both our greenhouses. In high wind we shut down the turbines so they wouldn’t be damaged. They weren’t designed to spin all that fast, Uncle Paul said. They were geared for slow and steady operation—that was more efficient and also safer for birds. Not that we’d seen any birds since the eruption. Those that weren’t killed by breathing in the ash had no doubt fled south to try to survive the volcanic winter. We also had to shut down the wind turbines if the wind blew steadily for several days. The greenhouses would overheat otherwise.

Once we had two greenhouses and two turbines online—giving us some hope of surviving even if something failed—we started building the longhouse. It would be a simple, one-room structure, about forty feet long and twenty feet wide. We had saved exactly enough space for it between the two greenhouses, so it would be bordered on its two long sides by a greenhouse, and one of the short sides would butt directly against the base of the wind turbine. That way, residual heat from the greenhouses would warm our living quarters, and we could enter the turbine tower or either of the greenhouses without going outside.

We pla

Darla fired each of our guns at her test walls. None of them would stand up to short-range fire from the AR-l5s. The bullets blew through ice and snow as if they weren’t there and blasted splintered holes in any board in their path. A double layer of logs would usually stop them, but we didn’t have the time or materials to build a wall that heavy. We settled on an A-frame log structure with board walls and corrugated metal roofing, covered with three feet of snow and ice for insulation. That would stop pistol fire just fine.

It seemed to take forever to build the longhouse. We cut huge logs for the support beams, and all eight of us working together couldn’t drag them up the slope to our homestead. Darla and I returned to Stockton to steal aircraft wire and pulleys to construct a system for lifting and dragging logs.

Nothing had changed in Stockton except the semitrucks where Stocktonites stored their food. Both trucks were empty. “What is everyone here eating?” I whispered to Darla.

She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.

We slipped around to the back of the warehouse and wormed our way inside through the metal panels we had separated. Nothing had changed inside either, except that everything was coated in a thicker layer of dust. Darla put two heavy spools of aircraft wire in my backpack and followed them with more than a dozen metal pulleys. Then she loaded her backpack with nails, silicone caulk, plumber’s putty, brass plumbing joints, electrical nuts, circuit breakers, and electrical tape.

It was impossible to walk with a backpack full of metal pulleys without jingling a little. I was afraid we’d get caught. But no alarms were raised, so either no one heard us, or they attributed the noises to one of their own patrols.

The next day Darla used the material we had liberated to rig a pulley system so efficient that A

That evening, Darla and I knocked off work early and snuck into Warren. We visited Nylce first, both to catch up and to find out where Mom and Rebecca were living. Evidently Mayor Petty had given them an empty house right next door to his and just down the street from the mayor’s office.

Mom wasn’t home, but we found Rebecca in the kitchen, sitting on the floor, washing clothes by the light of an oil lamp. I tapped on the back window.

She startled, groping quickly around the chair beside her and coming up with a small pistol. I waved and smiled, hoping she would recognize me before she shot me. She set the pistol back down, got up, and opened the back door.

“Just about nailed you,” she said.

“Good to see you too, Sis.” I walked through the doorway and stamped my feet on the rug. “Mom around?”

Rebecca gave me a quick hug. “No, she’s out with a friend.”

“Who?”

“You don’t want to know,” Rebecca said as she hugged Darla, who had come in behind me.

“If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked.” Rebecca rubbed her forehead as if she were getting a headache. “Mayor Petty. Or Bob, as she calls him.”

“Oh . . .” I fell into a chair.

“Told you, you didn’t want to know.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“It’s actually helping some. I don’t get the evil eye from the other Warrenites as much as I used to.”

“Well, that’s something. Look, I came to talk to you about . . . where’s your go-bag?”

“Right there.” She pointed at a backpack sitting on one of the unused chairs around the kitchen table.

“And Mom keeps hers close too?”

“No. We’ve had that fight—I’m not going to win it. There’s her bag.” Rebecca grabbed the strap of a bag on another chair and then let it slip from her hands.

I groaned inwardly—the point of a go-bag was to have it at hand at all times—wherever Mom was, she should have taken it with her.