Hannah said, “Because we share your concern about the government. I wasn’t much of a conspiracy theorist either until I saw first hand how Washington operates. They threatened to throw me in prison when I said I was going to tell the world what I knew. They said my actions would violate ‘national security' and that they’d lock me up and throw away the key.
“All they were doing was buying time. Delaying the inevitable so they’d be able to run their covert operation longer. They let millions die so they wouldn’t have to fix the problem. And maybe it wasn’t fixable. But they had time to at least try something.
“They wouldn’t even do that. They took care of their own instead, and wouldn’t even try.”
“When are you guys coming back here again?”
“I’m done. I appreciate all you guys have done for me. I love you both for it. But I’m healed enough now to get by on my own. I know that Sarah’s got a couple of follow-ups, and I know that Bryan will get her safely to and from here. I don’t have a reason to come back.”
Dr. Medley sounded disappointed.
“Well, then. I guess I’ll wish you goodbye. He shook Mark’s hand and offered to shake Hannah’s, but she hugged him and kissed him on the cheek instead.
She did the same to Dr. Wilcox.
“Thanks again for that whole ‘saving my life thingy. I’ll always love you guys for that. And for the record, nobody hopes I’m wrong about Cupid 23 more than I do. We just felt a need to warn you it could happen, that’s all.”
-21-
Within three days every man and woman on Marty’s work crew knew the real reason they were stocking the prison.
For that matter, everyone in the town of Eden knew as well, except for most of the children.
Not that there were a lot of the children left. Only eleven of the seventy surviving residents were under the age of eighteen.
Those parents lucky enough to still have children had generally grown much more protective since the thaw.
And since surviving children tended to have fragile psyches and some suffered from a form of PTSD, it was an easy decision for most parents to shield them from the latest bad news.
If there was indeed a second strike, they’d have to find out soon enough.
If there wasn’t, there was no need for them to ever know.
No harm, no foul. In that regard, it very closely followed Marty’s philosophy on the whole preparation thing. Most of the townsfolk needed something to do anyway in this post-apocalyptic world.
At least restocking the prison gave them a mission, a purpose in life.
Three weeks to the day after Marty had asked Tom and Charlie to head up the renovation of Cell Block B, Marty decided it was time to check up on them.
He’d steered clear of them on purpose. Nobody ever accused Marty Hankins of being a micromanager. The two men had convinced him they knew what they were doing.
In fact, their knowledge of the building game so far surpassed Marty’s he was afraid he’d embarrass himself by asking too many questions.
They understood what the block would be used for when the second strike occurred. They’d be among those living there.
He was relying on their expertise to make the area functional, survivable, and as comfortable as possible.
On this particular day, though, his curiosity had gotten the best of him.
In three weeks neither Tom nor Charlie had come to him with a single status report. Nor a single supply request. Nor a single problem they needed his advice or consent on.
Now, that could mean simply that they were masters of their craft.
Or, it had occurred to Marty that morning, it could mean they weren’t progressing. That they ere goofing off, maybe napping or playing cards with their men instead of getting the job done.
Maybe they thought the idea of a second meteorite striking the earth was so ludicrous they’d just decided not to play ball.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
“We were wondering when you were going to stop by,” Tom said as Marty walked through the cell block’s double wide doors and looked around in amazement.
The original cell block’s ceiling had stretched more than eighty feet into the air. It would have been almost impossible to heat with space heaters in the event the prison’s central heating units went out during a long freeze.
Now, though, the ceiling was less than half that. It extended just over the top of the second tier cells.
The entire block, from the new ceiling right down to the concrete floor, had been painted a brilliant white. New halogen flood lights now bathed the entire room in brilliant light.
It was no longer depressing. It now looked more like a club house than a cluster of prison cells.
“Let me give you a tour of the place so far,” Tom said.
Marty followed without a word.
“We started pulling the cell doors off their slides this morning. They’re sons-of-bitches, I don’t mind telling you. Over three hundred pounds apiece. I guess they had to be heavy duty to take the abuse by angry prisoners. But they won’t close anymore because the remote door system was destroyed. They’re all stuck in the full-open position.
“Our friends and neighbors won’t have any privacy.”
“So how are you gonna fix it?”
“One of the trucks you guys brought in the other day was full of framed doors. The openings are a bit larger than the doors, but that’s no problem. We can frame them to fit. Each of the residents will not only have a door to their cell, we can install keyed locks. They can lock their own cell when they’re not in it. And since the new doors don’t have that big ugly window in it, they’ll have a private place to bump uglies or whatever else they want to do in private.”
“Cool. How soon will you have those installed?”
“Charlie says by the end of next week. He’s working that project with one of our new helpers. I’ve got my own project I’m working on.”
“Which is?”
“Installing a working water system.”
“What? Really?”
“Yep. See, each of the cells has its own toilet. That’s good, now that people can use them in private.
“The problem is that none of them flush, because we don’t have running water. The prison had its own well water system. Were you aware of that?”
Marty was taken aback. It was news to him.
“Really? Why?”
“I don’t know. I suppose the same reason they had their own power plant. I suppose they didn’t want to rely on the city to supply their utility needs. Or maybe they wanted the ability to easily turn off the water and electricity to quell prison riots without having to coordinate with the local utility companies. I don’t know. But it doesn’t really matter.”
-22-
“The well system… does it work?”
“No.”
“Oh. Thanks for getting my hopes up.”
“Relax. It doesn’t work now, but I’ve found a master plumber who’s working on it. I gave him the extra helper you gave me. So I’ll need another one.”
“I’ll tell the mayor.”
“Good. Thanks.”
“How will it work? The well water system, I mean?”
“Not much different than any other water system, except for its source. We’re going to move the pump house indoors, so we’ll have better access to it. All the pipes are below ground already so they won’t be subject to freezing. We’ve already got the boiler working again. Had to weld steel plates over it to patch the holes.”
“What holes?”
“The prisoners who squatted here to ride out the cold last time apparently got so desperate for water they busted it open with a sledge hammer. They drank very drop of it. Or maybe it evaporated. It doesn’t really matter. It’ll hold water now and it’s working. So there’ll be hot water.”
“How does it run?”
“On fuel oil or diesel. It’s designed to take either one. The generators ar
e diesel too, in case you’re wondering.”
“I knew that. I came down and cased the joint a couple of weeks ago.”
“I’ve got a team of guys installing a wind turbine outside too. To take the load off the generators. I told them to bill the city for it. I hope you don’t mind.”
Marty laughed.
“I don’t. But the mayor might.”
“Well, screw him if he does. They said they’d take land as payment. The city’s got plenty of it they grabbed when people started dying. So the mayor shouldn’t have any problem trading some of it for something we can use.”
“How big is the turbine?”
“Oh, she’s just a baby. It’s one of the small turbines farmers and ranchers install when they’re tired of paying money to their county electrical coop. She puts out about twenty thousand watts max. But that should be enough to provide our electricity needs.”
“But it only works when the wind’s blowing, right?”
“Technically, yes. But the crew says they think they know where they can get their hands on some industrial sized batteries to store the excess when the wind is blowing so it can be used when the wind is still. They’re going to wire it all in so that all of the output electricity will come from the batteries themselves. The turbine will put juice into the batteries when it’s blowing, and when the batteries get down to thirty percent of capacity one of your generators will kick in to juice them back up again.”
“So that’ll not only save wear and tear on the generators, but will save diesel as well.”
“Exactly.”
“Tom, you’re a genius. I could kiss you.”
“I’d rather you not.”
“What else you got going on?”
“You told me if I had any special requests to let one of your drivers know. So I talked to Tony yesterday. He’d just unloaded the lumber from a flatbed trailer into the yard and was getting ready to haul away the empty trailer. I asked him to use it to go on a couple of runs to a place I know on the eastern outskirts of Eden.”
Marty’s eyebrow went up.
“I told him to load up the new septic tanks they had in their storage yard. Sixty thousand gallons worth.”
“Okay. But why do you need them if we’re going to have running water?”
“Because if the world goes cold again and the entire city of Eden comes in here to ride it out, the water and waste department will shut down. The sewage lines will back up and we won’t be able to flush our toilets. That’s why we’re shifting to a septic system.”
“How in hell do you just convert to a septic system?”
“Simple. We’re gonna bury them in the exercise yard. I told the guys filling up the yard with all that lumber and crap to stay off the western third for two weeks. I’ve got guys coming in tomorrow with digging equipment, and they’re gonna make a big honking hole.”
“A big what?”
“A big honking hole.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought you said.”
“They’re gonna make a hole big enough for sixty thousand gallons worth of waste. We’ll tie the tanks together and then cover them up. They’ll be below ground and all the toilets will be a minimum of six feet above them. So they’ll make use of gravity.”
“Will sixty thousand gallons be enough?”
“I think so. The toilets in the cells have no standing water in them. I asked a guy who used to work here as a hack and he said they were that way on purpose. So an inmate couldn’t dump his contraband drugs into the toilet during a shakedown, for example. When an inmate peed, his toilet acted more or less as a urinal. The pee just flowed down into the pipes. When he deposited something more significant into the toilet he flushed it. But even then they’re all low flush toilets. They only use a gallon or so of water.”
“What about shower water?”
“The showers are located on the second tier. There are only ten of them, located in the same room. But gravity will once again be our friend. Plumber’s gonna run a long line of four inch pipe all the way out of the prison, and it’ll drain into the playa lake behind the prison. He says he’ll put enough of a drop on it to keep the draining water from standing long enough to freeze within the pipe.”
“I don’t know what you just said, but okay.”
“I didn’t understand him either, but he seemed to know what he was talking about.”
-23-
As they walked through Cellblock B, Marty noticed a man painting something on the top of one of the metal tables in the common area.
Tom seemed to read the question on Marty’s face.
“That was your friend Lenny’s idea.”
“What was? What’s he doing?”
“He’s painting a Monopoly board on that table. Marty told me you guys had friends who sheltered from the first freeze, and that one of the ways they kept from getting bored was to play a lot of games and stuff. He said they had tables in their dining room with all kinds of board games and other activities painted on them.”
Marty thought of the dining room tables in the mine and in Mark and Hannah’s “big house.” He merely nodded.
“I thought it was a great idea and decided to copy it. The mayor came by when you were on a run to check on our progress and asked if I needed anything.
“I said ‘Yeah. An artist.’”
They walked over to the man and Tom introduced them.
“Tom, this is Kelton. He was a portrait artist before the world froze over and people decided they didn’t need portraits anymore. He’s damn good at drawing and painting other things as well”
Kelton nodded to Tom, the classic “man nod” which took the place of a handshake.
“Kelton has a list of things to paint on the table tops. When he’s done, each one will have a different theme. Every board game you can think of, including checkers and chess. Three different poker tables. A blackjack table. Even a graffiti table, where people can doodle over the top of each other with a variety of colored markers.”
Kelton said, “Tell him about the murals, Tom.”
“Oh, yeah. The murals. He took digital photos all over town. The town square, the cemetery, the parks. Even the schools. If the world does freeze over again he’s going to bring his paints in with him. The way he’s gonna pass his own time while we’re waiting for the thaw is to paint huge murals on the walls. Murals of what Eden looks like when it’s warm outside, and the sun is high in the sky, and everything is blooming.
“Just to remind people what awaits them when they finally get out.”
They were interrupted by a man yelling from the far corner of the room, near the double doors.
“Hey Tom! Where do you want these microwaves?”
The men turned to see the man, dolly in hand, four brand new microwave ovens stacked atop the dolly.
Tom yelled back, “How many you got?”
“These and four more.”
Tom pointed to a room off the corner of the cellblock.
“Put them over there in the kitchen.”
Marty’s eyebrow went up again. It was something his body did involuntarily when he was confused.
Or surprised.
“Kitchen?” he said.
“Oh, yeah. More accurately a prison kitchen. We’ll be eating mostly prison food, so we’ll need a prison kitchen to cook it in.”
Tom could see the puzzled look on Marty’s face. So he elaborated.
“Look. I haven’t always been the distinguished and upstanding member of the community I am today. In my youth I was kind of a wild guy. Ran with a motorcycle gang. Got into a lot of fights. I did a stint in a prison in east Texas. Two years for holding up a 7-Eleven when I was doing dope and was short on cash. It’s not something I’m proud of, but in recent years I haven’t tried to hide it. Before the freeze I helped run a program at the Baptist church. A kind of here’s what happened to me, don’t let it happen to you program for the youth.
“Anyway, like I said, it’s part of my past, b
ut it gave me an insight into how this place is gonna run that you probably don’t have.”
“Like what?”
“Like the foods we’re going to be eating. Shelf stable foods. No fresh meat or vegetables. Ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese and stuff like that. I noticed there’s a lot of pallets of that kind of stuff coming in from the receiving dock and being stacked high in Cellblocks A and C.”
“Yeah. Plus, I talked to the mayor this morning. Now that the secret is out all over town he’s drumming up women volunteers who know how to can food. They’re going to start canning mass quantities of fruits and vegetables to store here.”
“Why do they call it canning when they put the stuff in jars?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Wasn’t my doing.”
“Well, anyway, my point is that we don’t need a huge kitchen to feed everybody. We’ll eat like I ate in prison. The people will fend for themselves, and heat up a bowl of Ramen noodles or something in a microwave. So we took one of those storage rooms over there and I built a wrap-around counter. All the way around the room. It’s got cabinets underneath the counter for dry food storage. Even more cabinets overhead. The plumber installed a small sink in there this morning with a garbage disposal.
“The final step is to put eight microwaves on the counter for folks to cook their stuff in.
“After that I’m gonna have somebody stock it, with cases and cases of dry stock. Dried beans, dried soups, in addition to the Ramen noodles and Macaroni and cheese. Oh, and plenty of Tabasco sauce.”
“Tabasco sauce? Why plenty of Tabasco sauce?”
“Trust me. Marty. When you’ve had Ramen noodles in your diet every day for six months, you’ll be looking for a way to spice it up.
“Oh, and we’ll stock the upper cupboards with disposable plates, bowls, spoons and forks. It’s all burnable in our wood stoves, so we’ll have practically no waste. And not having to wash dishes from seventy people will keep the septic tanks from filling up.”
A New Start: Final Dawn: Book 9 (Volume 9) Page 8