Vince couldn’t stop thinking about Travis’s lackluster performance today and the fact that, regardless of his effort, he would be eating their food tonight. But more than that was bothering him. Travis and his friends wouldn’t be the last group of people to show up at their doorstep. Even if these new people did work and earn their place at the table, Cloverdale couldn’t sustain too many more without reducing portions and rationing food.
They couldn’t continue to take in and feed anyone who wandered into town off the interstate, could they? Mary would certainly want to. He would, too, if they were good people and they had enough supplies to take care of them, but they didn’t. Eventually, Vince and the others would reach a limit, and they would have no choice but to turn people away or risk their own survival. Things hadn’t even gotten tough yet. Sure, it was plenty difficult right now, but Vince feared that the hardest times lay ahead still. He was primarily concerned about winter. It was hard to picture the bitter cold of winter as the hot, dry air rushed in through the car window and blew the sweat from his face, but it was coming.
The supplies they had on hand would be running thin by the time cooler weather arrived. The fall would be refreshing at first, but as the nights grew cooler and the days became shorter, reality would set in. That was why they needed to conserve now. That was why they needed to limit who they helped, unfortunately. It wouldn’t be easy to turn people away, but the time was coming when they might have to do just that. Vince tried to shake the thought from his mind. There was still time before it came to that. As usual, he was getting ahead of himself and worrying about things that hadn’t happened yet. And he certainly didn’t have any control over any of it other than to keep doing what they were doing. All he could do was continue forging ahead with this new life.
He had given some thought to investing a little of their working hours into searching for supplies. In small teams, maybe they could venture out to some of the other towns nearby. Maybe some places had fared better than Cloverdale and hadn’t suffered an almost total loss like they had. He figured that west would be a better direction to go if he hoped to find anything of use.
The devastation and chaos that he and Cy had witnessed in Indianapolis, and on the way back from the airport, made him doubt that anything much closer to the city had survived. From what he could tell, Cloverdale was most likely at the surviving edge of the EMP’s radius of destruction.
Vince was willing to bet that everything east of them was in worse shape than Cloverdale and that the level of damage would increase with every mile closer to the city. Their best opportunities would be found farthest from ground zero. He wasn’t sure what other places had been hit, but based on the darkened skies and plumes of smoke that were visible for days after the attack, there had been many more. Where, exactly, was anybody’s guess. St. Louis? Kansas City? They couldn’t hit all the major cities, could they? Vince didn’t even know who “they” were.
He would have liked to know some more details about who did this and what happened. How much of the United States had been affected? He’d have to go on guessing, though, because there was no way he could find out.
Chapter Thirteen
Vince wanted to turn into the motel parking lot and check in with Mary, but he drove the wagon into the garage’s lot instead so Bill could get his truck. But the real reason he went to the garage first was that he wanted to see how Tom was coming along. He had high hopes but tried to temper his expectations in regard to having power, and in turn running water, at the motel.
Vince wasn’t disappointed as he and Bill approached the garage. The spool of cable was immediately visible and sat out front of the main garage bay. It had been run through with a piece of steel pipe Vince recognized from the scrap metal pile in his yard. Tom and Cy must have set it up this way when Cy first brought Tom back with the wire. They had it rigged up with cinder blocks on either side so the spool hung freely and could be turned on the pipe, making it possible to unravel the wire without much effort.
A length of wire already ran from the spool and snaked its way into the shop. Vince parked the wagon, and he and Bill followed the wire inside and to the back room, where they found Tom hard at it.
“How’s it going?” Vince asked.
Tom leaned back on his knees, screwdriver in hand, and paused for a moment as he studied the panel box. It was mounted under the inverter for the solar electric system, and it wasn’t there when Vince was last in this room.
“I think I’ve done everything right.” Tom studied the box some more as he traced the wires in the air with his finger.
“I have confidence in you, Tom,” Vince said.
“Me too,” Bill added.
“It’s ready on this end.” Tom stood up and looked at Vince. “It’s ready, Major.”
All they had to do now was run the wire straight across the street. The meter happened to be on the corner of the motel closest to the garage. It wouldn’t take much to get the wire laid out, and as soon as Cy arrived with the loader, they did just that.
With the loader doing the heavy lifting, they made short work of the task by putting the spool and pipe between their homemade forks on the bucket. Running the wire was only a matter of Cy backing the loader across the street. He kept going straight down the side of the motel property line until he was about ten feet past the meter.
* * *
Cy noticed Tom giving him hand signals and brought the loader to a stop on cue. He sat there for a second and decided to turn the machine off. It was the first time he’d done that all day. The silence was deafening, and the prattle of the diesel was replaced with a slight ringing in his ear. He stretched as he climbed out of the cab and stood fully upright on the top of the steps. It had been a while since he’d done that, too.
“I figured we might be here a while, cutting the wire and hooking things up, so I thought we could at least take a break from the loader running.” Cy jumped to the ground, skipping the last step.
“Good idea,” Tom agreed as he approached the cable near the spool, carrying the biggest pair of bolt cutters he’d been able to find. He didn’t waste any time and began gnawing away at the cable with the bolt cutter until finally it gave way and fell to the ground.
As soon as Tom caught his breath, they all pitched in and took a section of the wire. Working together, they managed to drag it over to the motel’s electrical meter. Cy felt guilty as they all stood around and watched Tom do his thing, but this was his baby, and it was over Cy’s head. This was the first time that he had stood still for more time than it took to swallow a few gulps of water. He felt like the ground was shaking and realized that he could still feel the vibrations of the loader through his muscles.
It had been a long day, and a dangerous one, but they had accomplished more than he thought they would. For the first time, he felt like he could see a little light at the end of the tunnel. With the road blocked off at both ends, they would be safer now, and that meant less to worry about.
They also had a few extra people who could help with things, and one of them was an attractive girl around his age. To say that he hadn’t noticed Jackie’s long dark hair and emerald-green eyes would be an outright lie. He had also noticed that she and Dalton seemed to be a thing, although he wasn’t sure. They acted like a couple but certainly not a close one. And if Cy wasn’t mistaken, he noticed a few looks coming his way from Jackie as well.
Then he thought of Kate and felt a sudden twinge of guilt. He was allowed, wasn’t he? They were broken up. Taking care of her wasn’t his job, so why did he feel so bad for thinking this way. He needed to cut himself some slack; after all, he’d almost been shot today. Again.
A few of the others who had gathered to watch Tom work on the connections had started to back away from the meter box.
“What’s going on?” Cy asked.
John stopped backing up when he was even with Cy and gave him a hopeful look. “I think he’s got it.”
* * *
Tom moved away last and turned to face the small group. “It’s ready to test.”
He had explained the design and function of his creation in great detail when they were over at the garage, so Vince was well aware of what to do when the time came. He headed out as soon as Tom gave him the nod.
Once he reached the electrical room in the garage, which was his new name for the storage room, he went through the steps Tom had shown him by throwing a couple of levers and switching on the main breaker to the newly added panel box. He felt and heard the instant hum of electricity as it coursed through the components.
Vince flipped the light switch in the room, and the old fluorescents flickered to life. Although he was glad to see them come on, working lights here didn’t mean that Tom’s new system as a whole was working. These lights worked before the modifications, but at least he knew their science project hadn’t damaged anything.
He made his way to the storefront and was both pleased and terrified when he saw the motel’s oversized neon sign light up with an intensity he had forgotten was possible. The bright blue and red letters illuminated the parking lot and washed the surrounding area in a neon glow.
The sign was meant to draw the attention of travelers on the interstate, exactly what they didn’t want to do at the moment. Tom would have to go through the panel box at the motel and isolate what they needed and what they didn’t want to run. Not only would things like the sign be an unnecessary drain on the power supply, but they would also be dangerous. The last thing they wanted to do was draw any unwanted attention to themselves or the motel.
Maybe someday down the road—a long way down the road—they could take people in and be prepared to handle them. Someday, that motel sign might be a beacon of hope for weary travelers. Would they ever be that strong?
Vince hated to do it, but he ran back to the electrical room and killed the power to the motel. The lights felt like a little slice of their old life, but they couldn’t risk running them for another second. He imagined the groans of disappointment from the others as the sign went dark once more and reality set back in.
Vince didn’t even make it all the way back across the street before the questions started. Bill met him halfway.
“What happened?” he asked.
“The system works fine. I turned it off until we can shut the breakers off to all the things we don’t need or want.” Vince looked up at the motel sign. “We need to be careful.”
Bill nodded. “Yeah, I agree. Glad to hear there’s nothing wrong.”
Tom and a few others joined the conversation as an impromptu meeting came together in the motel parking lot.
Vince was too tired to do this right now. He just wanted to work with Tom and turn off the breakers they didn’t need, then get on with the next thing. He was hoping to capitalize on their time together at dinner and catch everyone up on the day’s accomplishments. It had been a long day already, and Vince saw it growing longer by the second as pretty much everyone else came out of the woodwork and joined in.
Chapter Fourteen
Once Vince realized that they were having this meeting right here and right now, he gave up on the idea of an early night. Looking around at everyone and seeing them all at the same time, he realized just how many of them there were. There were more than twenty of them now—twenty-four, to be exact.
Vince wasn’t comfortable having that many people relying on him as a leader. Sure, as an operations officer, he’d been in charge of whole battalions of men toward the end of his army career, but this was different. There was no playbook for the apocalypse. He was making it up as he went along. Plus, these were friends, for the most part, so it was more difficult to make some of the decisions that needed to be made when it came to rationing food and resources.
He was glad for the level heads he had been blessed to endure these times with. Mary and John backing him up with the tough decisions was the confidence booster he needed. It was also a big comfort to have his son here. It gave him confidence that he was doing the right thing. Vince also knew that even tougher decisions lay ahead, and he needed them to be there for that, too, so it was good to know that John was coming back around. Vince hoped it would last.
Beverly was the first to speak up over the drone of voices emanating from the group and the laughter of the kids as they played a game of fetch with Buster and Nugget. “What happened to the power? We had it there for a minute.”
“It’s working fine. I turned it off so we could isolate the things we need to run from the things we don’t need to run. Tom here knows what he’s doing, and we’re all lucky to have him.” Vince patted Tom on the shoulder.
“Thanks.” Tom pulled at the brim of his ball cap as the crowd thanked him with some applause and shouts.
“But when will we have power permanently?” Travis asked.
Vince wasn’t sure what surprised him more: the fact that Travis felt entitled enough to ask questions, given the short amount of time he’d been here and the small amount of work he’d contributed, or the fact that he had included himself as part of the group. In Vince’s opinion, it was a bold move for someone who hadn’t said more than a dozen words all day. It was a stupid question anyway.
“There will probably never be permanent power as long as we’re running off the garage solar panels,” Vince answered.
“What? I thought it would be on all the time. We can’t live like that,” somebody said loudly. Vince didn’t see who it was and didn’t recognize the voice.
“We have to conserve energy for now until we can add more batteries to the reserve bank. We also need to leave a little power in reserve for emergencies.”
“Like what?” This time, Vince saw that it was Brooke Meyer asking the question.
John spoke up. “The looters, for one.”
“I thought you took care of them,” a voice from the back asked.
John laughed sarcastically. “We disabled their vehicles temporarily and got Ryan back. That’s about all we did. They’ll be back.” He stepped up to lead the conversation, and Vince was more than happy to let him take the reins. “In fact, today, over at the substation…” John paused and looked at Vince. Suddenly, Vince wasn’t so happy about John fielding questions on his behalf. “Cy and Tom came under fire and we had to go in and get them.”
Vince hadn’t planned on keeping what happened today a secret. In fact, quite the opposite. He was going to use it as a selling point for the police station and the extra security measures he wanted to implement. But he was going to bring it up for discussion after dinner. All that information would do right now was cause panic and eat away precious minutes from their day.
“You mean they’re back?” Vince recognized the panic in Beverly’s voice, and who could blame her? They were lucky to get her boy back from those animals.
“Calm down. We don’t think it was one of the looter gang. He looked like just some random guy. Maybe lost it a little.” John twirled his finger around the side of his head while everyone whispered among themselves.
Vince checked his watch. “Look, we can get into all this later, after dinner. Let’s push through another hour or so and finish strong today. We’re on the verge of some major improvements here. We completed blocking off the other end of Main Street like this end up here, and we are almost totally surrounded now except for a few locations. Having electricity to run things a couple hours a night looks like it’s going to be a reality soon, and…” Vince glanced over at the Meyer brothers and raised his brow.
“If you give us power, we can get the water running. We’re ready.” The Meyer brothers nodded in unison.
“All right then. Let’s get back to work, people. Oh, and one more thing, everybody. I want you all to go to your rooms and make sure that everything is turned off that can be. Unplug TVs, alarm clocks, anything that uses power. When we get the electricity working, we need to use it wisely.” Vince looked at the faces in the group and expected a little pushback but got none. That was the end of i
t except for the chatter he overheard as the onlookers broke up and went their separate ways. He hoped it was positive chatter, but there were a few discernible groans about the power usage.
“I wasn’t too hard-nosed, was I?” Vince pulled Mary aside for her opinion and a quick update on how her day was going.
“No, you?” She laughed. “No, seriously, that was needed. Besides, they’ll stand around talking for an hour and then expect dinner to magically appear when they’re done.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not going to solve the world’s problems by standing here in the parking lot. I don’t have answers to most of the questions they’re asking anyway.” Vince wiped the back of his neck with a rag.
“You’re doing fine, Vince.” Mary put her arm around his shoulder and pulled him close. “You’re doing great.”
Vince had never quite figured out how to take a compliment without feeling awkward, and he was eager to change the subject, although her touch calmed him.
“How are things going back here? How was your day?” he asked.
She smiled. “It was decent. Hauled lots of water. Hopefully those days are over.”
Vince smiled back. “Today may have been your last day hauling water from the garage.” He paused for a moment and then continued. “Hey, listen, the things that need to be done around the motel won’t always fall on your shoulders. Once we knock out some of these big jobs, there will be more hands on deck to help with food prep and just about everything else.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about it. The ladies have been helping out, and even the kids are doing their share. We’ve got things under control here.”
Cloverdale (Book 4): Confrontation Page 7