An idea began to form. It would take a lot of work, but I had the tools for welding and machining, and I knew how to do it. In theory, I could convert the generator to steam power. It wouldn’t be the most efficient way to generate power, but we had wood and water to spare, unlike our stores of gas, diesel, and propane. Sure, coal would be better, but charcoal and wood could suffice.
I went to my workshop first and opened it up, then dragged the generator in to start the process. Maybe a project like this would help me clear my head, so I set to it.
By the time Angie came to find me, I had the frame dismantled and was working on detaching the engine from the alternator.
“Hey,” She said, poking her head in through the open door. “What the hell are you doing?”
I paused and looked back at her with a shrug, then checked my watch. There was still about a half-hour left before I needed to call Bruce.
“I had an idea,” I replied. “This is the easy part.”
“Aren’t you supposed to do the hard part, first?”
“Not if you need measurements you can only get from the easy part,” I explained. “I want to see if I can convert this generator to steam power.”
She nodded slowly.
“Whatever floats your boat, I guess,” she said. “Did you check on Jackie?”
“I took coffee and breakfast to her right after I got up,” I replied. “Have you gone to see her and Goldeneye?”
“Goldeneye, huh?” she mused. “Is that what we’re calling him now?”
“It’s as good a name as any,” I replied with a shrug of my shoulders.
“I’ll go say hi in a bit, then,” Angie said, then yawned behind her hand and leaned on the doorjamb. “Estelle is bustling around in that office we set up for her. I think she’s cataloging everything. At least she set Tommy to reading and Irene to sleeping.”
“She suggested we start looking for stuff for homeschooling him,” I said, rambling straight into that thought. “Also, I almost forgot. We need to go shopping. I’m waiting for a list from Bruce.”
“That mean you’re making a delivery?” she asked.
“A pickup, too, hopefully,” I replied. “Some of the newbies aren’t dealing well with living at the CDC. They might be what we’re looking for.”
“They probably don’t like Bruce yelling at them,” Angie muttered, then smiled sweetly. “I suspect you want me to help with shopping. Do you need me to come along to Atlanta?”
“No,” I shook my head. “It’s Estelle’s turn, this time.”
“Fine with me,” Angie said with a grin. “I’ll start subverting the kids.”
“You know Irene is too young to be a Marine, Angie,” I said, smirking.
“You’re never too young,” she shot back. “I’ll have her running fifteen miles in full kit by the time you get back.”
I snorted laughter at that as my mind’s eye showed me the gloriously hilarious image of a four-month-old baby jogging along in full camo and kit, M-16 over her shoulder, yelling out cadence.
Angie laughed as I finally broke down into gales of laughter. One of the dogs came to investigate, barked a couple of times at the crazy humans, and trotted off, content that they’d done their duty. That set me off again, and I dragged Angie down the path at last until we both leaned on whatever was close, laughing our hearts out.
I’m not sure who got themselves back under control first, but we finally broke out of our mirth as the alarm on my watch started to go off.
“Shit,” I swore. “Time to talk to Bruce.”
“Good luck!” Angie called after me as I hurried off to start my truck and fire up the radio.
“Homestead to Bug Town,” I said into the microphone. “Come in, Bug Town.”
“We hear you loud and clear, Homestead,” Bruce came back. “Are you ready to receive the list? Over.”
“One tick, Bug Town,” I replied, then fumbled around for a notepad and pen. Once I finally had my act together, I sent, “Go ahead.”
“Thought we’d have to send it by carrier pigeon,” Bruce grumbled. “Anyway, here goes. Read everything back to me when I say it. Over.”
“Copy that,” I said.
The list took a while to go through, but within about fifteen minutes or so, during which Angie came over and made faces at me through the window, I managed to write it all down to Bruce’s satisfaction.
Finally, we signed off, and I got out of the truck just to be latched on to by both Angie and Jackie.
“I hear you’re going shopping,” Jackie said brightly.
“I wonder where you heard that,” I said, glaring at Angie.
She just shrugged.
“Can you get more of the high-protein dog food?” Jackie asked. “And some chews?”
“I’ll see what we can salvage,” I replied.
“Thanks!” the young woman bounced up and kissed me, then dashed off to the house, leaving Angie and me staring after her.
“Stop,” I said, holding up a finger as the Marine started to giggle. “Just stop.”
11
List in hand, or rather, in pocket, Angie and I headed out. It wasn’t even noon yet, and I felt pretty good. If all went well, we’d have the supplies Bruce wanted, and what we needed for the homestead, all acquired and back at the house before dark.
“I think I want to make the rounds,” I said as we crossed the interstate, rather than turning onto the on-ramp. Making the rounds meant a drive by some of the stores and supply shops that were tucked away in the small towns East of Auburn and Opelika. We’d taken some pains to leave the places as secure as we could whenever we made runs for this or that. Even still, you could tell that the lack of regular traffic and attention didn’t do them much good.
“Something on your mind?” she asked. The former Marine hadn’t raised an eyebrow when I packed an AR-15 behind the seat as well as wearing my Les Baer. She’d just silently added her own combat rifle.
“Lots of things,” I replied. “Let’s start with whoever it is that’s roaming the woods not too far away from the farm. If there’s a survivor that close, who knows how many others we’ve got.”
“The whole mess with that Blake fellow and the Reverend has you spooked, too, doesn’t it?” She kept her eyes on me, the bangs of her brown hair falling partly over her eyes.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I hate it, too. We should be helping each other.”
“I know. We don’t know that Price is a bad person, though, do we?” she asked. “The radio stuff sounds just like your typical televangelist talk.”
“Plenty of people take that the wrong way,” I said. “I think we’ve both seen what happens when fanatics think they understand a message.”
Angie nodded silently.
“Nothing good,” she said. “But that’s fanatics of all kinds.”
“I know,” I said with a sigh, decelerating as we came upon the propane supplier. The yard was getting overgrown, and the big tank looked to have some rust spots. Still, it looked okay. The main building, though, had vines starting to creep up the sides. Leaves had piled up in the doorway, even though it had been less than a month since the last time we’d come by.
“Wow,” Angie observed.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think we need to start keeping a better eye on the places with stuff we need.”
“Too bad we can’t move that big tank,” she said thoughtfully, gazing out at the yard as we came to a stop. “Think it’s okay?”
“That’s what I mean to check,” I replied as I opened my door and got out.
She followed as I made my way to the gate, pulled it open, and went to inspect the big tank. Fortunately, the rust didn’t seem to be anything more than superficial, but we’d need to come clean and paint it. The storage tank itself still read a bit over half-full, and we had two, mostly full, truck tanks parked back at the farm. We were pretty good on propane, at least for now.
“Anything we need here?” she asked, watching me.
; “Not really. We’ve got more than enough for several months of constant use already, and this guy still has enough to refill the trucks a few times,” I answered. “Once we get back from Atlanta, though, I really think we need to make the rounds and start doing spot maintenance. This place looks a bit rough.”
“Who’d have thought man’s works would fall so quickly to nature,” she said, a kind of distant tone to her warm voice.
I gave Angie a sidelong look and caught her staring off into the distance, a sort of sad and wistful expression on her face.
“You okay?” I asked. “I thought I was supposed to be the brooding one.”
She shook her head, then looked at me and smiled.
“Sorry,” she said. “This just made me think, you know? About how things sometimes just end.”
Before I could say anything else, she barked a laugh and turned back to face me, then was in my arms. We just held each other tightly for a long moment, until I said, “Ready to get out of here?”
“I think so, yeah,” she said, pulling back and looking up at me.
I bent down and kissed her squarely on the lips as I moved my hands to cup her face. She stiffened a moment, then melted against me, her lips warm and soft and oh, so pleasant against mine.
Eventually, we parted and headed back to the truck without a word. Both of us wore faint smiles. It was nice to be able to take these little comforts in each other, and kind of drove home with me what might be going through Estelle’s head.
Like the other two women, she wanted a sense of love and belonging. I could offer that, on top of protection and know-how. Besides, I thought, I liked the doctor, and she was quite a looker, though different in build than either Jackie or Angie. Estelle was about my age, too.
As we headed away from the propane place, I glanced over at Angie, who had stretched out a bit in the passenger seat.
“So,” I said slowly. “You and Jackie are okay with bringing Estelle into our little family, yeah?”
She looked at me and smiled.
“Of course,” she replied. “Why wouldn’t we be? You are the best man in the apocalypse, after all. Keeping you entirely to ourselves would be a crime.”
“I’ll probably do that on this Atlanta trip,” I told her. “She asked about it.”
“I thought so,” Angie said with a smile. “That’s probably the best way to get away from the kids. Though we’ll really need to work on sleeping arrangements…”
“Huh,” I said. “Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Don’t let it stop you, though.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I said.
We cruised by a grocery store, then a Dollar General. Parking lots were starting to show a bit more growth of weeds and stray grass through the cracks, and everything just seemed to be older, verging on decrepit.
“Not stopping?” Angie asked.
I shook my head.
“No. I want to go by the feed store for Jackie’s new friend,” I replied. “Maybe the traps and all kept the rats from getting into everything.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said, sticking out her tongue. “The storage cages might have helped, too.”
Much of the feed that the Palmer Feed Store carried was kept stacked in large steel bins that opened at the top and front. We hadn’t broken into those when we’d raided the place for animal food, so if they were whole, there was a decent chance that nothing had been able to chew its way into them.
That was what I hoped, anyway.
I cut through some of the quiet neighborhoods as a shortcut. Here and there was a tree down, yards were significantly overgrown, and here and there a feral cat watched us pass by. We hadn’t gotten to this area, yet, in our forays. There might be useful stuff here, but now wasn’t the time.
“Henry,” Angie exclaimed suddenly. “Hold up!”
I put on the brakes, and she grabbed her rifle from the back seat and hopped out.
“What the hell,” I hissed as I did the same and followed. She hurried to the corner of a nearby house and pressed her back against the brick, watching around the corner while I trotted over to join her, AR-15 at the ready.
“I swear I saw something,” Angie explained, pointing between this house and the neighbor’s. “Maybe someone.”
“Why the rifle?” I asked.
She glanced at me.
“They were armed,” she said at last.
“Another survivor?” I murmured, as much a statement as it was a question.
“I’m pretty sure they’re gone now,” Angie grumbled. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine,” I told her. “You kind of surprised me when you grabbed your weapon and took off like that.”
I really had been caught by surprise, but I reacted faster than I had when Blake had run me off the road with a Kenmore semi-truck. Being out of the service and comfortable really had taken a bit of the edge off, and it was coming back a lot slower than I would have liked.
“What do you want to do?” she asked. “We could try to track them, but I’m pretty sure they’re long gone now.”
I shook my head.
“If this is their neighborhood, then we’re the intruders,” I said. “There are signs up, and we come through every now and then. Let’s give them a chance to say hi first.”
Angie nodded slowly and smiled up at me, but we both were careful returning to the truck, and she took a watchful posture as I started the Silverado and pulled back into the middle of the street to move on.
Eventually, we reached Palmer’s Feed, where it sat next to another tractor supply, this one a John Deere. Both seemed as undisturbed as we’d left them on our last foray through. Just a little worse for wear, really.
I parked in front of the door and walked up to unlock it. Whenever we found keys to these stores, we hung onto them and locked up every time we came through. It wasn’t so much of a concern over what people might be around, but one to ensure that the weather and larger animals didn’t invade.
Basically, we used these places as storehouses, and it worked reasonably well, too. I pulled out my headlamp and fired it up as we entered. Palmers had picked up a kind of musty, mildewy smell since the last time we were here, and I wondered if there was a leak somewhere.
Angie sneezed sharply and sniffled.
“Damn!” she hissed.
“Gesundheit,” I said.
“Danke,” she replied. “Do you smell that?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Hopefully, we didn’t get mold in the feed bags.”
Rows of canned goods and other stuff, like cages, leads, rope, saddles, and harnesses, loomed in the shadowy depths of the store. Our target was the storage rooms at the rear of the store.
“Go on ahead,” she said. “I’ll get a cart and meet you.”
“Grab some cans of dog food and maybe a muzzle sized for a German Shepherd,” I said as I walked off.
“Like Jackie would let you use that,” she called back.
“I’m not using it on her,” I retorted, then grinned as Angie broke out into giggles.
The storeroom of Palmers was an insulated steel warehouse that had been built onto the original wood and brick storefront. A locked roll-up door provided entry from the front, and there was a loading dock to the rear. I unlocked the door and lifted it, ducking a little to enter as the steel louvers ratcheted upwards.
I closed my eyes for a moment and focused on listening. Aside from the sound of Angie rattling around behind me, all was quiet. We’d set traps and such for rodents and done our best to seal up the feed that was stored here. The owners had been really careful sorts, too. It wouldn’t have done much for their reputation if someone found a rat in a bag of sour mash, or mice in the dog food.
I opened my eyes again, pulled out the rest of the keys, and paused. Which one of these damn things was the one with the dog food? I thought for a moment, then walked to the second large container and unlocked it, lifting the lid to see two pallets of plastic-wrap
ped fifty-pound bags of high protein dog kibble.
“Ha,” I muttered to myself.
“I got everything,” Angie said from behind me. She was back at the doorway with the cart. “How much more stuff do we need?”
“Just a bag of this,” I replied, hauling out one of the items in question and carrying it over to drop it in the cart with the goods she’d selected. “I think the goats and the horses are fine, and there’s still plenty of corn and grain to supplement the cows.”
“What about the pigs?” she asked.
“Right,” I muttered. Since we couldn’t let them free-range, we did need to get more. I closed up the dog food lockbox and looked around. “Do you remember which one of these bins was for swine rations?”
Angie snorted.
“I think you’re mistaking me for Jackie,” she said with a shake of her head.
“I guess we check each of them, then,” I sighed. “Do you remember if we had plenty of chicken feed, too?”
“That is something we’re okay on,” she replied. “Did Bruce need anything from here for the compound?”
I fished around in my pocket for the list, held it up in the light of my headlamp, and scanned through it. It was pretty short since Atlanta really had better choices for shopping than we did. However, varmint traps weren’t exactly easy to come by there, and neither was-
“Oh, goddammit,” I swore. “I think I blocked that out.”
“Blocked what out?” Angie craned her neck to look over my shoulder.
“Saddles and riding tack,” I answered. “Bruce rescued a couple of police horses, but he doesn’t like their saddles. We also need horseshoes if we can find them.”
“Oh, is that it?” she asked.
“That’s not everything,” I replied. “Pump parts for a well, too. At least he knows how to fix that sort of thing himself, so I don’t have to do it.”
“Aw, come on,” Angie said with a grin. “You love having people depend on you.”
“No,” I replied. “I really don’t.”
12
After The Virus (Book 2): Homesteading Page 8