“What the hell does that mean,” John whoever asked.
“You know, I hate to admit it, but I don't know your last name, John,” Conner said.
“Sanders,” he said, looking more than a little disconcerted.
“Okay, John Sanders. You know what I don't like? I don't like it when someone takes the time to explain something and somebody else takes the time to keep an argument going based on air. Did anyone here not answer your questions?” Aaron asked.
“I can ask what I want to ask, can't I?” he asked.
Conner interjected. “You can... I think what Aaron is pointing out is that you have an attitude that says we're hiding something from you... An air of antagonism... That's not necessary, no one here is hiding anything from you. We don't live that way.”
“You messed up... I think that is clear... Not only did you mess up, but you are shifting the blame to Jessie Stone. She isn't here to answer back,” John Sanders said.
“Jesus... You just called her a bitch five minutes ago, didn't you?” Chloe asked.
“All right... We are not going to do this... I'll shut this down,” Conner said loudly. The comments quieted down immediately to a low rumble of ascent.
“She doesn't need to answer back,” Katie said.
“Why not,” Sanders asked much more quietly.
“Because she was given a set of instructions and she ignored them. She decided, on her own, to ignore the safety of the entire Nation, because she didn't want to do what she was told to do... That's the truth. She doesn't need to be here to speak to that. It speaks for itself, doesn't it,” Katie asked.
“It damn well does,” Craig said. Several in the crowd echoed his remarks and then the crowd quieted down again.
Conner waited a few seconds until near silence had descended once more. “Anything else?” he asked. He waited for a full minute. “This meeting is adjourned,” he said quietly.
FIFTEEN
January 21st
“Hold the flame close to the joint and keep it moving backwards, into the joint... Don't stay too long... Keep it moving, you don't want the heat to build up too high, because that is where the solder will flow to, the heat,” Josh told her.
Chloe let the flame from the torch play over the copper fittings as she fed a thin strand of solder into the joint and watched it ring the lip of the joint as it was sucked inward from the heat. It seemed to be melting down into the joint.
“That's good... Now, move the flame away, the solder will follow the heat. Draw it around the joint, in a circle... Good,” Josh said. “Excellent.”
Chloe laughed.
“You really are doing good. Take the torch off the joint, wipe the joint surface with the wet cloth to get the excess flux and solder. Hit it briefly with the torch after that to gloss it up and dry it off and your done... Just like that,” Josh said.
Chloe grinned, turned the knob on the torch and the flame disappeared with a soft pop.
They had spent a week building the bathroom in Chloe and Debbie's home. They had widened a natural crack in the stone floor to run the plumbing in. It meant they had to work in the direction of the crack, but that turned out not to be that hard to do.
They ran copper water feeds and drain pipe through the crack so that it remained below floor level. The large shower tub was made the same way the walls were, wood framing, chicken wire and cement to make the shape they had wanted. The toilet was the only thing missing. Rollie had taken a large order for toilets. The drain pipe was in for it as well as the water supply: When it came they could easily set it in.
The sink was concrete as well. They had constructed a large outhouse into the side of the mountain, making use of a natural ravine there. It would do until spring when they could build something better. That would start with several long leech fields for drainage, and then the toilets could be moved inside permanently.
The leech fields would take time because they would have to be dug by hand. Massive amounts of rock would have to be moved, and fill carted in, but by summer they felt they would have it ready to go.
“That's it, Chloe,” Josh told her. “Not so tough to do, right?” He reached behind the tub and turned on the two shut off valves. The line hissed as it pushed out the air, then rattled as the water came up and rushed from the spigot that emptied into the tub. The water took about thirty seconds to go from cold to hot. Chloe opened the cold side and let that run too.
She smiled and looked at Josh as she pushed down the lever that shifted the water to the shower head. The pipe hissed and then water sprayed from the shower head.
“All right,” Chloe said as she high-fived Josh. She shut down the tub. “Thanks, Josh. I really appreciate it. I mean it.”
“No trouble. I wish James could have been here to see it finished.” He sighed deeply, but pushed a smile back up on his face.
Chloe nodded. Her own smile had fallen, but she had pushed it back onto her face just as quickly. “I can't wait for Debbie to get home so I can show her.”
“What are you going to do about the floor?” Josh asked.
“I think mortar and some stone tile... Another thing that Rollie is going to find for us... Should work, right?”
“It will... Where to end it would be the thing,” Josh said.
“I think it will end where it runs out,” Chloe said. She looked up, met Josh's eyes and they both burst into laughter.
“No doubt,” Josh agreed as he laughed. He looked around the bathroom. It didn't look much like a bathroom in the old world would have looked. The tub was built right into the rock wall, the shower extension as well. The sink base was a pedestal and stood slightly away from the wall. Where the tub-shower entered the corner there was a gap of about six inches to allow access to the water controls and a drain clean-out. He helped move the shelving unit Chloe had built into place to hide the gap and the plumbing behind it. It fit perfectly. Once a couple of screws had been set, it was stable and they both stepped back to look it over. The wood of the shelving unit, like the walls in the bathroom, had been sealed to help prevent problems from water damage.
“You really do nice work, Chloe. And I'm not just saying that either. I mean it,” Josh told her.
“I'll tell you... You, Jake, Aaron and James taught me how to do it. I had never done anything like this before,” Chloe told him.
“You would never know it. It really is nice work, Chloe.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it coming from you, Josh.” She hugged him quickly and then kissed his cheek. “I don't know where things would have taken me if you hadn't found me... Taken me in.”
“That's behind you... This is your life now, Chloe,” Josh said.
They walked out through the open living area where a kitchen occupied one corner. The sink was in, again concrete with a nicely done stone counter-top. An island made of polished pine, and one of the huge cast iron cook-stoves. The stools for the island were in pieces on the living room floor where Chloe had been working at putting them together. She had cut all the pieces from design measurements in a woodworking book. Once they were glued and clamped they would compliment the island nicely, Josh thought.
There was a large leather and wood sofa with a matching chair. An oval coffee table topped with a slab of polished pine finished off the open living area.
“You got all of this from books, Chloe?” Josh asked.
“Most of it. Aaron gave me the idea for the coffee table and helped to get that slab cut for it. And you know I picked your brain for the couch and chair frame. Sharon showed me how to fit the leather I got from Lillie's class on tanning hides. Jake showed me how to join the pieces of hide together, and I hit the books with Dustin's help to figure out how to do the island and the cabinets.”
“I've worked with people with years of experience that can't do work like this,” Josh told her. “You know Bonny?”
Chloe nodded.
“Well, she wants to build guitars... Musical instruments... It's really a form of c
abinet making... Joinery techniques. A guitar is really just a box, a fancy box, but a box. I can do cabinet work, Aaron is better, but I can't see anything in the work you've done that says that anyone is better at it than you are, or even equal to you,” Josh said.
Chloe blushed.
“I bring it up because what Bonny wants to build she will end up selling or trading for other goods and supplies for the Nation... I thought, maybe...” He left off.
“Absolutely. I'll talk to her tonight, because she and Bobbie are coming over to have dinner with Debbie and I. I didn't know about the guitar interest, but I think I would enjoy that too,” Chloe said.
Josh smiled. He slipped the solder into one pocket along with a small copper pipe cutting tool. He picked up the torch and a leftover length of copper pipe.
“Okay,” he said. “I'm off to finish up the plumbing for the showers. That turned out nice too,” Josh said. “Two pipes and both sides will be open and ready for tonight.”
“Thank you, Josh,” Chloe said.
“Think nothing of it,” Josh said. He whistled as he stepped out into the tunnel and walked off towards the shower area.
~
They had broken through the tunnel wall and into the second chamber to find that the area was much larger than they had thought it would be from the glimpse they had gotten through the fissure.
A second hot water source fed into a third room that was off the large open area. The water in that room was much too hot for bathing. The middle room, which was just on the other side of the fissure, stored water from the first room, its own cold water source mixed with the hot water: The flow of cold water was so much heavier that it cooled the water far below a comfortable temperature for bathing.
A little creative hole widening had solved the problem, allowing more hot water to pass into the room and mix with the cold water, creating a reasonable temperature for bathing. They had spent time examining the hot water source where it first entered in the third cavern and then flowed into the other caverns where it was mixed with the cold water source.
At the source, the hot water was near boiling, at times it did boil. They were already using some of that water as a heating source. So far it was only the area in the three caves that it was used for heat, but they had plans in the spring to use it much more extensively. When the ground thawed they would run pipe below the freeze line and into the area where they planned to build the community building.
The showers were built eight to a side: Taken from the second room space. An entrance from the women's side took advantage of the existing fissure that had been in evidence when they had discovered the rooms. They had widened it and made it into a proper entrance.
The showers themselves were concrete formed and each individual shower had its own walls for privacy.
In the third room they had once again tunneled to the outside tunnel, a distance of only inches, and made a separate entrance. They had built several concrete washing containers and an area for hanging clothes to dry. That area had taken the longest to build.
They had cut the room into the rock wall. There had been a fairly deep depression there to start with, but their work had still been cut out for them. They had run piping in a grid under the concrete poured floor and the heat from that water kept the room dry and hot, helping the clothes to dry.
Josh had taken over the job of running most of the projects that James had been supervising. He couldn't do it much longer and continue to run the farm buildings as well. Something would have to give. The council was looking into it. He hoped they would find someone to take over the carpentry work soon.
He had two more joints to sweat and then he could turn on the water for the showers. One main feed that delivered hot water to both shower areas and the laundry area, and another that delivered cold water to the same areas. They had learned a great deal building the two shower areas and the laundry area, and it would come in handy in the spring when they began to build the big laundry and heating facilities down near the power house.
Josh sweated the two joints, checked the pressure, then bled all the shower and laundry lines. He collected up his torch and the pipe he had bought along and walked off down the tunnel toward the main cave.
~
“Whoa,” Conner said. “That's strong.”
“Pure grain alcohol,” Aaron said. “We ended up with over three hundred gallons of the stuff. Dustin built us an industrial grade still.”
“And that will run in a gasoline engine?” Conner asked.
Aaron nodded. “Also the big generator at the main cave that charges the main battery banks if everything else falls off.”
“Like the back-up, for the back-up, for the back-up?”
“Exactly,” Aaron agreed with a smile. “And it will also knock your socks off if you drink it.” He laughed and Conner joined in.
“I imagine it would. The fumes alone are threatening to send me over the edge. I was never a hard drinker... Beer. We don't have many drinkers here either... I don't anymore,” Conner said.
“A few,” Aaron said. “Craig and Cindy made some dandelion-wine, some with some wild fruit too... Berries I think. I know that Sharon likes brandy. She and Josh figured out how to distill wine into brandy from a book... Maybe a few others.”
“I guess I would figure out how to make beer,” Conner said. He sipped at the fiery liquid, liking the way it seemed to warm him from the inside out.
“You could probably trade that,” Aaron said.
“Yeah,” Conner agreed. “But we could plant a couple fields of pot and make more money with that.”
Aaron raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“What?” Conner asked.
“Well, someone did last summer. I don't know who. Not a whole field either, but a dozen or so big plants,” Aaron said.
“Huh,” Conner said. “I didn't know about that.”
“Sorry... Thought you did or I would have told you,” Aaron said. “Yeah, so we aren't perfect, I guess... We have our vices,” Aaron added.
“Yeah... Well, it's not the really bad stuff anyway. Not like someone is manufacturing Heroin or something...”
“Yeah,” Aaron agreed. “Next year we we're thinking to make the alcohol with wood. Can't drink it. We were going to this year, but James was afraid someone might drink it anyway... Shit will kill you, blind you at the least. Bad stuff... But the thing is we have so much wood scrap that could be converted to making wood alcohol and wood alcohol can be used to run generators, vehicles.”
“Why chance it though. We can turn the wood scrap into mulch just as easily, and mulch becomes nutriments right back into the ground,” Conner said.
“Either way, the idea is to use it instead of letting it go... You might be right though,” Aaron said.
“You have got me thinking about beer. A nice cold beer. Hey, you think Lilly's got a book on how to do it?” Conner asked.
“Probably,” Aaron asked. “Why, what are you thinking? Making it yourself?”
“Yeah. I'm thinking we could make it and have a couple of cold beers,” Conner said.
Aaron laughed. “A couple of beers would probably knock the snot right out of both of us.”
“That's for sure,” Conner laughed.
January 22nd
Katie held one baby to each breast. Amy sat across from her nursing little Aaron. Lilly in another chair nursing baby Jake.
“I can't tell them apart,” Lilly said.
Both babies had big, dark, eyes. Tiny, little light-brown hands lay curled against Katie's breasts. Occasional they clutched at each others hands, released a nipple and smiled.
They both had curly dark-brown hair, almost black. And they both looked around at Lilly as she spoke.
“It's easy,” Amy said. “The one on the left is Katie, the one on the right is Michael.”
“But how can you tell?” Lilly asked.
“They each have different personalities,” Katie said. “Kate is already sleeping t
hrough the night, Michael wont. And it seems like they are both interested in everything, but they aren't. Michael watches more, all the time, he doesn't miss anything at all. Katie, on the other hand is already gearing up to be a heart-breaker. She will smile at you for free all day long. All you have to do is look at her.”
As if to prove Amy's point Michael stared at Lilly while Katie released her nipple, offered a wide toothless smile and then went back to nursing.
“They're so beautiful. And, Amy, Aaron looks just like his dad only lighter.” Aaron had his father's curly brown hair and his mothers coloring. His father's eyes and nose, and his mothers mouth. Jake was all Lilly, and the twins looked like neither Conner nor Katie, but a blend of both of their features.
“Little Jake looks exactly like you,” Katie said.
“Yeah. He's going to be a heart-breaker with those blue eyes and blond hair,” Amy said.
They sat on the wooden benches that had been built into the shower area. The water was a little too hot for the newborns, so they had held each others babies while the others had bathed, then used large plastic pans to bathe the babies in luke-warm water. There was little sense in getting dressed until it was time to leave as the room was perpetually hot and steamy.
“We'll have our own showers by summer,” Lilly said.
“Yeah,” Katie agreed. “Conner and I are building a huge addition to use as a bathroom and a real kitchen.”
“Did you see what Chloe and Debbie did?” Amy asked.
“Loved it,” Lilly agreed.
“Those big old wood-stoves are so beautiful... Have to be really careful of the babies though, around a stove like that,” Katie said.
“Jake wants to do the same thing, but keep everything in stone so it all looks the same,” Lilly said.
“Aaron wants to put up a second story in wood and the new bath and kitchen in stone. He wants to cover the entire second story in shakes,” Amy said.
“Shakes?” Lilly asked.
Earth's Survivors Box Set [Books 1-7] Page 215