Dark Road (6 page)

“It’s ok, Eric,” she said. “Quit looking for a window to jump out of—we’re on the ground floor and I’m a grown woman. I’m not totally over it, but
it’s
over. The people responsible, with very few exceptions, are either dead or not in the town anymore. I try not to go into the town and when,” she took a deep breath, “and when
he
comes onto the base I just stay away from him.” “Him” being the sole remaining person from the Meet and Greet that had led to Sheri’s abduction. “He didn’t lift a finger to help me, but he didn’t kidnap me either.
Pete
did, and he’s dead.”

“Ok,” Eric said. “Point being that the whole mini-grid thing, which I do know about, is for
us
…the town is just going to benefit from it.”

…

“Everyone benefits,” Chuck said. “We can run half the number of generators we are currently running as dedicated units in parallel, and we can use the others as spares or to grow the system. Everything is diesel so they can run on a mix of the soy and petro-diesel we have now.”

“What are we going to need that we don’t have now to make the system work?” Blake Lewis, one of the volunteers for the project, asked.

“Well,” Chuck said, “there’re a lot of things we’re going to need. We still have to make some decisions, too. We have to decide whether or not we’re going to stick with AC power or switch to DC. Everyone thinks we relied on AC for everything, but probably well over half of what you used on a daily basis actually ran on DC.”

Most of the group that was with Chuck made a questioning face so he explained. “Well, first of all, anything that used a battery ran on DC power—end of story.  Next, is just about any type of computer equipment. The power supply in a computer converts AC to DC internally. After that comes the wall wart—that huge square plug for your cordless phone charger or cable modem. Those converted AC to DC too.”

“About the only things in the house that really had to run on AC were the big appliances that used a lot of current.” Chuck said. “The refrigerator, dryer, air conditioner, that sort of thing—and we aren’t running those anymore for the most part.”

“What about power lines?” One of the other volunteers asked.

“If we can’t get the generators working together or transformers built then we don’t need to worry about power lines.” Chuck said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

…

“It’s a balancing act,” Sergeant Ramirez said. “Yes, we can cultivate more land.   All of the farmers we have talked to are willing to work with us on that.   The problem comes down to either manpower or fuel.”

“How so?” asked Sergeant Jordan Harris. “I thought we were growing our own biodiesel.”

Sergeant Ramirez shook his head. “Again, the balancing act,” he said. “For every acre we cultivate, we use so much fuel—fuel that we’ve already accounted for. If we’re going to cultivate more land then we need to grow more soybeans—on land which itself needs to be cultivated and irrigated. The wells are run by a generator, which is powered by…”

Ramirez prompted Harris for the answer.

“Diesel,” Harris answered, “which we’ve already accounted for.”

“Bingo,” Ramirez said. “Now, we’re planning on offsetting as much of that as we can with windmills and solar, but there’s only so much that we can do. The first two windmills won’t be ready for at least a couple of weeks, and solar doesn’t do much without batteries and a bunch of other electronic components that frankly I don’t understand. It also requires sun, which doesn’t shine at night or when it’s raining.”

“What about wood gasifiers?” Harris asked.

“I’ve heard of them, but know less-than-nothing about them.” Ramirez said. “I don’t like admitting that, but like getting called out for lying even less. If you know something about them, talk to Wilson. I don’t know if they’ve even been brought up. It would be great if we could use the scrap wood for something other than fires.”

…

“Ugh!” Joel yelled as Millie came into the tent and quickly shooed her back outside. “Out, OUT!”

Millie obeyed, just, and sat down right outside the tent flaps—looking up at him with her typical Golden Retriever “I love you
SO
much!” grin and panting.

“Where did you find a skunk?” He said as his eyes started to water and his nose began to run. “And how am I going to get you clean? It’s a good thing Rachael isn’t here or I’d be cleaning up after her too.” Joel shook his head, covered his mouth and nose, and dragged their Golden Retriever off to the showers to do his best to de-skunk man’s best friend.

Chapter Seven

“Day 69 – We have a problem. Two of the children that came into the hospital yesterday are showing symptoms of the same thing that Danny had the night he died. Both are older but are still under ten. The girl looks to be in a coma…can’t tell for sure. If she survives, she might have brain damage from the high fever. Both are having the same trouble breathing. Propping them up helped a bit, but we can’t do much else. Fevers are running away with them and we can’t do a thing to help. I hate feeling so helpless!”

Dan put the diary away and crawled into bed after blowing out the candle. This was the latest he’d been up in a while and it was already full dark outside. He was going to pay for it in the morning, especially since he wasn’t actually tired yet.

“Our biggest issue is going to be food and that’s only going to get worse,” Marissa said. The girls were asleep and they were making plans while lying in bed.

“What are the chances of being able to hunt once we get out of downtown Nashville?” Dan asked.

“Six weeks or more into it by the time we leave? Probably pretty slim,” Marissa replied. “I’d imagine that most, if not all, of the wildlife in the surrounding area has been pretty well picked clean, or headed for the hills. It’s possible that we might run into something, but you’re probably putting a lot more stock into my abilities than you should.” Marissa grinned in the dark. “I’d think that fishing would be more productive, but that depends on which direction we head.”

“Well, fishing hasn’t been real productive here when we’ve tried” Dan said.

“True, but then again look who was in charge of the effort.”

“You’ve got a point there.” Dan said. “I don’t know if I’ll have a chance to try to scrounge for gas for our car in the next couple of weeks or not, or if I should even try. I keep coming back to that gas station out on Gallatin Rd.  I don’t know if we’ll be able to find much, if any, gas.”

“We could take more in the car of course, and get wherever we’re going quicker, but what if the car breaks down or we run out of gas?” Marissa was only bringing up what they had already discussed several times before and were just rehashing yet again. “We’re stuck going the rest of the way on foot. If we leave on the bikes then we just have to worry about
us
running out of steam.”

“We won’t be able to take nearly as much with us, though.” Dan countered.

“Like we have a lot to take in the first place.” Marissa replied.

“I think when it comes down to it, you’ll be surprised how much we try to pack into the pull-behind and stack in the old toddler seats.” Dan said.

Marissa sighed. “So do we steal an SUV and put the bikes on the roof?”

Dan was silent for long enough that Marissa rolled over to see if he’d heard her, and was surprised to see a tear creeping down from the corner of his eye.

“Dan? What is it? What’s the matter?”

Dan sniffed and rubbed his nose, then wiped his eyes, and then tried to laugh. It came out more like a dusty cough. “I’ve been trying for days—weeks actually—but more so for the last couple of days, to convince myself that what I’ve been doing has been for the good of my family and hasn’t been hurting anyone else. The pistol from the Taylor’s safe wasn’t stealing because they were gone. The book from the library wasn’t stealing because the library isn’t really the library anymore. I made the conscious decision to
not
look through whatever was gathered there by whoever was living there, including books from the library, because they were still using it. I didn’t want to steal it from them.”

“Honey, I didn’t mean…” Marissa started.

“No, you’re right, let me finish.” Dan interrupted. “Maybe the pistol and the book weren’t technically stealing, but we are living in a different world than we were before the power went out.   The rules have changed. Carey and his people can come into our house whenever they damned well feel like it, to take whatever they like, for ‘the good of the community’, and we’re lucky to get even a little of it back!”

Marissa reached over and took Dan’s hand, but he wasn’t quite finished. “I’m not a looter, I’m not going to go around just taking what I want because it’s ‘us or them’. That’s not how I work and I couldn’t live with myself afterwards, Rissa, I think you know that.” Dan snorted, “Then again, we kept stuff hidden in the first place, for ourselves, in case the food collections began in earnest; so I shouldn’t set myself on too high a pedestal, now, should I?”

“Dan, you are a good man, and a wonderful father and husband. What you’ve done for this community more than makes up for anything that we’ve kept back. No, neither of us is justifying, at least no more than anyone else in the neighborhood, and a lot less than some.” Dan squeezed his wife’s hand but continued looking at the ceiling. He was having a bit of a crisis of conscience at the moment.

“So, yeah, maybe we…appropriate something that we can put the bikes on. If we can find one;
if
we can get gas for it; if we can find a way to secure it; if we can find a way to pack it without anyone noticing. If, if, if.”

“If, if is good,” Marissa said. They both laughed. That had been one of their favorite lines from Disney’s ‘Hercules’.

…

“We need to think about when and how we’re going to get the rest of the guns out of the Taylor’s safe,” Marissa said when she realized that Dan was awake.

“How long have you been up?”

“I have no idea; my nightstand clock stopped working a little over a month ago.”

“Ok, how’s this, have you gotten
any
sleep?” Dan asked.

Marissa considered for a second and then yawned. “I think so. If I hadn’t I would have woken you up a couple of hours ago. The sun actually woke me up. This is when I usually come downstairs and sleep on the couch for a couple of hours anyway, remember? The fibro, or RA, or whatever it is, won’t let me be comfortable for more than about four hours straight in the same place.”

“Right, sorry. So, the Taylor’s guns,” Dan said.

“The Taylor’s
abandoned
guns,” Marissa corrected. “Assuage your conscience, oh husband of mine, at least in this instance, ok? If nothing else, we may even be able to reunite them with their owner.”

Dan smiled and said, “Ok, deal. So, there are three more to get and two of them are not going to be trivial—they’re fairly long. Plus, there is all the ammo.” Dan made sure to use the correct word this time.

“Well, ok, first of all the ammo. We don’t have to take it all. We won’t be able to use it all, so we only take what we can reasonably use. Two or three boxes for each handgun, rifle, and shotgun should be fine.”

Dan nodded.

“Second, if we absolutely had to, we could just walk in on our last day and waltz out with the weapons. After all, who’s going to stop us when we have a rifle, a shotgun, and two pistols?”

Dan winced at that. “Really, Rissa?”

Marissa shook her head, “No, I said if we absolutely had to. It would be a worst-case last-resort plan. Pretty much everyone else has firearms in the neighborhood and we really don’t want a firefight. We still have two children to look out for.”

Dan let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Thank you.”

“I’m not completely insane; I got a D in crazy for your information.” Marissa grinned.

“You are tired.”

“Yes, I am, but that really doesn’t matter, we’re running out of time.” Marissa stretched and cracked her back. It sounded like the world’s biggest zipper.

Dan winced again. “After all this time, I still can’t believe that doesn’t hurt when you do that!”

“Sometimes it does, usually it doesn’t. It’s probably going to rain in a couple of days—maybe tomorrow night.” Marissa said.

“Bad?” Dan asked.

Marissa flexed her fingers, because it wasn’t light enough to see if they were red or not. “Not horrible, but bad enough that I can feel it a couple days ahead of time.”

This was why Dan had first changed his major from Computer Science to Pre-Med. He’d wanted to become a doctor so he could discover what was wrong with, and cure, his girlfriend. It became clear very early on though that things didn’t work that way, so he quickly switched to Nursing and then became an EMT. The hours were worse, initially, as an EMT, but he’d made much more in the long run and eventually worked 7-4, five days a week. Dan still hated the fact that he could do nothing for his wife, that after fifteen years of tests the best they could come up with was
either
Fibromyalgia,
or
sero-negative Rheumatoid Arthritis, or
maybe
both…or possibly something else altogether. It was so frustrating for someone on the outside to watch and he could only imagine how it was for Marissa to actually experience.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Marissa said. “I know what you’re thinking, Mr. ‘I should have become a doctor and discovered a cure.’ We’ve been over this so many times it’s not funny. I love you, and I appreciate the sentiment, but it doesn’t work that way. If wishes were kisses then fish would have wings. I’m not crippled. I still function. Don’t pity me, just help me deal when I need the help and, well, let’s move along the rest of the time, ok?”

“Ok,” Dan said.

“I’m thinking sooner rather than later,” Marissa said.

“Huh?”

“The guns,” Marissa said, eyebrows raised.

“Right, sorry. I don’t think we should make more than one more visit to the house. We need to do it all at once.”

“We need to do it
soon,
too,” Marissa said. “I don’t think we can put it off too much longer, I just have a bad feeling about it.”