“There are some of the newcomers here,” Finley said, “Along with one of our own, who want to make the transition to a more rural lifestyle. The rest of us aren’t ready yet, but we are considering it. Henry pointed out that Auburn University is not far, and it has research facilities. We’d need to figure out power, but that may not be an insurmountable obstacle.”
“I’ve got a solar array powering the main house at the farm,” I spoke up. “Once I determine the degree of surplus, I mean to wire in the cottage, and maybe all of the outbuildings. Any further work on that depends on collecting all available panels, batteries, and controllers from here to Opelika. I’m also experimenting with a steam conversion for an old generator I’ve got, and who knows? I might even take a stab at wind.”
Gene let out a low whistle.
“What else have you got on your plate?” he asked, grinning through his beard.
“Too much, probably,” I replied. “Mostly, I’m looking to keep things we’ve already got working. You all probably know that gasoline is going to slowly go bad, followed a year or two later by diesel.”
“Unless we can get a small-scale refinery working,” the burly old biker said.
“I’m not a petroleum engineer, unfortunately,” I said with a smile. “You know any?”
“I wish,” he snorted. “I can ride a bike, fly a helicopter, and run a machine shop, though.”
“We need to talk,” I said seriously. All of those things were pretty damned useful skills, with the possible exception of riding a bike. Having a helicopter, though, would be incredibly useful. But fuel was a definite problem. I actually didn’t know how long stored JP-8 or Jet-A would last, although some helicopters could run on diesel.
Gene grinned.
“Probably,” he said.
“If you did look into refining your own gas,” Bill said thoughtfully. “As long as there was oil, you could make it work, and oil pretty much lasts forever, right?”
“That’s another question for a chemist,” I replied. “I think so, though.”
“The Strategic Petroleum Reserves,” Bruce recited, “are located at four sites along the gulf coast. Two in Texas and two in Louisiana. Each of them has a capacity of around two-hundred million barrels.” His eyes drifted around the table. “It’s a bit far, but it might be worth it if we did manage to put together refining capability.”
“Isn’t refining pretty much just boiling the oil to separate it?” Susan said quietly.
“That sounds about right,” I said. “There’s a lot more to it than that, but at the heart of it, yeah.” It had been a while since I’d thought anything of oil refining, and my knowledge of it was sparse, to begin with. Maybe I could start by making a small still and do an experiment. Someplace far from the house and using small amounts of fuel until I’d gotten a better grasp for doing it on a larger scale.
Estelle kicked me under the table, and I winced and looked at her with a pained expression.
“I saw that look,” she said. “No.”
I sighed.
“There are some petroleum storage and shipping around Atlanta,” Michelle said. “I’ve seen the tanks.”
“That may be something to investigate,” I said, wary of Estelle’s boot.
“I’m pretty sure there’s a refinery or two out west of here,” Bruce added. “There might even be one south.”
“Marathon, I think,” Bill offered. “I used to drive down 75, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it.”
“All we need,” I muttered to myself, “Is the manpower to do all these things.” With that, I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Let’s get this out of the way. Who all is going back to the farm with Doctor White and me?”
“Me!” Gwen’s hand shot up.
Susan followed suit, then Gene, Penny, and Michelle. After a moment’s thought, Bill raised his hand as well. I counted them in my head, four adults and one kid. Not too bad, but I did wish the rest of the CDC crew and Bruce would relocate.
“When are you planning to head back to Opelika?” Bruce asked.
“I’m flexible,” I replied. “Things are okay out there, and we’ve got communication. You need something?”
“I’d like to take a team to check the military bases,” he admitted. “Especially if there’s a chance that we can get a helicopter for Mean Gene here.”
The biker rolled his eyes and chuckled as he leaned back and folded his arms across his broad chest.
“The last thing I flew was a Huey, Bruce,” he said with a grin. “If you can find one of those that isn’t all newfangled, then I’ll happily take you on an air tour of greater Atlanta. If it’s not, then likely we’ll be taking a ground tour of the immediate area.”
Bruce waved a dismissive hand in the direction of his friend.
“If we can manage some kind of air superiority,” he said. “It’ll give us a much better way to search for survivors and recon for resources.”
“Why not a drone?” Penny asked.
Bruce stopped and looked at her for a long moment. We all could see some sort of tinfoil hat response percolating through his brain, but he just nodded in the end. “GPS seems operational, and we could charge it either here or from the solar back at the farm.”
“I’m game,” I said. “Might be fun.” Frankly, I was kind of embarrassed that I didn’t think about it. The idea of drones slipped my mind initially when I discovered that my cellphone didn’t have a connection. “Drones don’t need wi-fi or a cell connection, do they?”
“Only if you want to livestream,” the girl said. “Grandpa got me one last year for my birthday, and I learned a lot about them.”
“I did it to piss off my daughter,” Gene admitted. “She didn’t like me getting expensive shit for Penny.”
Michelle, the teacher, gave him an unreadable look. She probably didn’t approve, but I could have been wrong.
“Turned out that she played with it more than I did,” the teen grumbled.
“Do you have it?” Bruce asked.
“Sure do,” Penny said with a grin. “I’ve flown it a couple of times around the complex, too, since we got here.”
“I thought I saw a drone,” Jeremy exclaimed with a grin. “It was gone by the time I got outside to look, though.”
“That was me,” the girl admitted. “I was trying to look into windows to see if I could find anything weird. Instead, I found you peeling potatoes.”
We all laughed at that, and the meal broke up into general conversation and small talk. After a bit of this, I made my excuses and headed off to check on and move the truck. I hoped Bruce would get the hint and follow.
He did, but I had the Silverado’s hood up and was checking the ultramodern diesel engine over when the old survivalist sauntered up.
“I expect that you want to talk,” he said.
“Yeah,” I looked up and smiled faintly. “I like the idea of hitting the bases. Maybe we can find Gene a helicopter. Especially since there’s not much in the Army’s arsenal of vehicles that I can’t at least perform basic maintenance on.”
“Good,” he said. “Maybe you, me, and Gene can do that tomorrow.”
I nodded. “I’m game. What do you mean to do about the skulkers?”
Bruce pointed towards the gate where Phil sat in the little guardhouse in full kit.
“That,” he said. “I’ve also set up some covered emplacements on the roofs.”
I just eyed him with a flat expression on my face.
“What?” he demanded. “I would’ve done the same at my own home.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said, smirking a bit. “So, what can you tell me about them?” Apparently, I had picked up the position of ‘problem solver’ with Bruce, too. If Estelle knew, she’d probably give the pair of us an earful, but at least I wasn’t running around with a half-dozen projects while a dozen more languished incomplete.
“There seem to be three,” he reported. “Armed and good at keeping out of sig
ht. Makes me miss the desert, let me tell you. Still, I’d worked up a perimeter for this place out there. It wasn’t hard to put up motion sensors and the occasional camera.”
“I wait for them to trip another set of motion sensors, then go on an expedition and swap SD cards and batteries,” he said. “Easy peasy.”
“And you’re sure they haven’t seen you or your cameras?” I asked.
“Fairly,” Bruce admitted with a shrug. “If they’ve noticed, they haven’t made any indication.”
“Okay,” I went back to working under the hood. “So there’s three of them, well-armed. Do they have a vehicle?”
“Not that I’ve seen. They always seem to be on foot.”
“That’s interesting,” I mused, then leaned over and pulled some leaves out of a cranny in the Silverado’s engine. “Their transportation is probably a mile or so out past their observation point.”
“If they’ve got one,” he maintained stubbornly.
“I’ll bet they do.”
Bruce stopped for a moment, his brow crinkled, then he nodded slowly.
“Right,” he said. “No soldier likes to walk any further than he has to.”
“Exactly,” I said, grinning as I hid my face.
“They’ve made no move to contact us, or approach closer than those buildings over there,” he pointed off towards some brown brick buildings that could have been apartments. “That’s the only side they really can get a good view of the campus.”
I stared off in that direction for a long moment.
“When was the last time you picked them up?” I asked.
“Yesterday,” he said. “At least I’m assuming it was them. Probably the safest option at this point.”
“Yeah, probably,” I muttered, then went around to the passengers side and fished a pair of binoculars from behind the seat. I opened the case and lifted the glasses to my eyes, staring off at the building while I fiddled with the focus.
Everything looked as dead as normal, but there was something that struck me as out of place. The longer I looked, the more it just didn’t seem quite right. I handed the binoculars over to Bruce.
“Center building, fifth floor,” I said. “Take a look at the window immediately left of the center-most one.”
Bruce took them and lifted his sunglasses before fitting the lenses to his eyes. For a long moment, he stood silent, adjusting the focus every now and then as he shifted his head and the field of view a bit.
“Well,” he said. “Is that what I think it is?”
“What do you think it is?”
“A camera,” he said. “Right at the bottom corner of the window, aimed at the gate.”
“That’s more than I got,” I said. “I wonder how many they’ve planted.”
“There’s no telling,” he said softly. “I noticed them about two weeks ago when my motion sensors over there went off after a month of nothing. It was night, and I saw the lights. After a couple of days, a motion sensor on the other side of the campus tripped, so I hurried out and did camera maintenance.”
“You were going to show me the pictures, weren’t you?” I said, glancing over at the older man.
“Yeah,” he replied distractedly. “Follow me.”
24
Bruce had a ten-inch or so tablet in the cab of his truck. He got in behind the wheel, and I took the passenger seat while he flipped through the pictures on the SD card. Most of the pictures were blurry night-vision shots of three men in urban military camouflage, with low-light gear of their own, as well as light packs.
With that kit, they weren’t staying long, nor were they far from their transportation. None of them wore any insignias, which struck me as deliberate. Were these three some rogue unit of survivors? If so, why were they here?
“Dangerous looking bastards,” Bruce surmised. “Aren’t they?”
I just nodded. Their gear looked modern, as best I could tell, much like Angie’s kit. The low-light gear meant they had a charging unit, but that could be installed in a truck or a car.
“Modern gear,” I said. “Electronics, too. It feels to me like these guys are pretty together and are trying not to be seen. Still, though, I don’t think they care too much if they are or not.”
“So, they’re trouble?” Bruce said flatly.
“Maybe,” I said slowly. “I don’t want to assume anything, though.”
“Look,” Bruce said. “They’re reconnoitering. They’ve set up a camera to observe our comings and goings. They move around quietly and on foot. If they were above board, they would have made some attempt to contact us.”
“Damn it,” I swore. “I hate it when you’re right.”
“The question is,” he said, looking at me through his mirrored glasses. “What do we do about them?”
“Watch for them picking up friends,” I said firmly. “Until then, business as usual, but I think you need to tell everyone that’s staying here about them.”
“You just want all of us to move to Opelika,” the old man said, amusement leaking into his voice.
“I won’t lie and say I don’t,” I told him. “I just don’t want to risk anyone. There’s too few of us as it is.”
“The thing is,” Bruce asserted, “is that this place is resource-rich. Fuel, electronics, nuclear power, weapons, armor, bullets. There’s even food to last for years.”
“I’d make an argument about fresh food,” I said wryly, “But you actually like MREs.”
“Damn skippy,” he said. “My biggest problem here is a lack of visibility. Your farm has that issue, too. Put me on the top of a hill with open territory all around, so I have a clear field of view, and I’d be right there.”
He didn’t have to say “field of fire,” but I knew what he was talking about.
“Most of the farms have pretty open fields,” I suggested. It was probably futile, but hey, why not?
“I want to go home,” Bruce said at last. “I miss the desert and my home. Hopefully, no one’s found it and decided to break in. That would be bad.”
“Did you set a bomb?” I asked, knowing what the answer would be.
“Yes,” he admitted, a bit sheepishly. “Old habits die hard.”
I sighed.
“Okay, then,” I said. “Here’s what I think we should do. First, you need to tell everyone about the skulkers. Second, you, me, Bill, and Gene go and hit one of these bases. If we can get a helicopter going in a day or so, we bring that in and really give them something to think about.”
“Gene’s our only pilot, though,” Bruce pointed out. “If he goes with you, then we won’t have anyone to fly it.”
“We’ll talk to him. I’m sure if he’s able to shuttle back and forth, he will, or maybe he can teach someone. Six months and we could have another pilot or two, possibly.”
Bruce nodded and made a funny face.
“I’m too old to learn new tricks,” he grumbled. “Okay, I’m going to go talk to Phil and Bob, then see what they think. You mind sticking around a few days to help get all this sorted?”
I sighed inwardly. While I did want to get back home, both to be with my family and to get back to work on the homestead, I couldn’t really justify saying no. We all had to stick together, even if it was inconvenient.
“I don’t mind,” I told him, smiling. “Happy to help.”
“Good,” Bruce said, reaching out and clapping me on the shoulder. “I can always count on you, Henry. You’re a good man.”
I nodded as I watched him walk off, then sighed and looked back off in the direction of the camera before I started back towards my truck. Some suspicious part of me suggested that these guys were most likely from Reverend Price’s group, here to check us out and maybe even test our defenses.
At least Bruce had done something with that, not that I was surprised.
Gwen Markovski leaned against the side of my truck and watched me come walking up.
“Hot date?” she asked with a grin.
“I do
n’t think I’d ever call Bruce ‘hot’ in any circumstance outside of temperature,” I replied. “What brings you outside?”
She looked up and squinted at the sky.
“Controlled dosage of Vitamin D,” she answered. “What were you two talking about? You sat in the cab of his environmental disaster, and then he rushed past me and into the building like he had someplace to be.”
Since there wasn’t any reason to hide it so long as Bruce did what he said he’d do, I signed in resignation and said, “Bruce has seen some people prowling around nearby. We both suspect they’re trouble.”
“That explains a few things,” she said, tapping a finger to her lips. “He started putting things on the roof, then talked Phil into wearing camouflage and armor. We all just thought it was Bruce being weird, but he had a reason for it.”
“Yep,” I said. “I don’t think he did y’all any favors by not saying anything, but he had his reasons.”
“I suspect a few of them are psychiatric in nature,” she said with a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head. “I guess he’s going to fix this?”
I nodded.
“We’re going to make a run to the National Guard base, I reckon,” I told her. “Since Gene can fly helicopters, we might as well see about getting him one, and maybe a tanker truck full of JP-8 or something.”
“Cool,” she said with a thoughtful look on her face. “You were talking about refining oil, right?”
I nodded.
“It’ll be more complex to make gas for the newer cars, obviously,” she said. “But I think there should be books on it, including maybe some crazy idiot talking about how to do it yourself. In addition, most of us have had high-end organic chemistry, so there’s not much we can’t puzzle out when it comes to chemical reactions. Sure, we have more practice on the pharmacology end and how various compounds alter human biochemistry and attack pathogens, but in the end, it’s all molecular structures and formulae.”
I laughed and nodded.
“You know,” I said. “I could follow about half of that. Chemistry and physics were what I took to get my engineering degree. Admittedly, I was more interested in physics, but I understand the basics.”
After The Virus (Book 2): Homesteading Page 17