Vaxdemic Book 2 Chapter 10
Chapter 10
It’s finally and truly winter, and I now have a different kind of appreciation for a home on the water. Mostly that they get colder. Matt had three wood stoves brought in before the snows started and they’ve been a godsend. One is in the new bunk house that is the first concrete room on the dam. The second was offered to Garv, partly as a gift, and partly to keep him from running his electric heater and putting more stress on the electric system. The dispute came when deciding where to put the third.
The first option was the generator room. It’s ungodly cold in there. Matt, Garv, and myself have to wear several layers to venture down there for even a short time. The second option is the green house. I've spent a good portion of my free time over the last month working on the walls and room, filling in cracks, and replacing windows and doors that had inferior insulation. The result is the green house is at least thirty degrees warmer than the outside if unheated. Unfortunately, temperature outside isn’t climbing above the single digits. Without a source of heat all the plants would die.
We ended up with a compromise. The wood stove is kept in the greenhouse, but we have set up work tables for fixing the parts of the generator we can salvage. Over the last month that has translated into every piece that can be carried into the greenhouse. We have to be careful; we have no manual on how to put the generator back together. I’ve been taking pictures, and documenting where every piece has come from. This is a bigger undertaking than it sounds. The generator is simple in its construction, but it still has well over 100 parts we’ve taken off so far. Everything including the screws we take off must be documented, because replacing them will be a costly ordeal.
Not everything is salvageable. Some of the steel parts have rusted through, so detailed measurements must be taken as well as pictures so we can send the details to Matt’s son. We hope he can find replacements among the piles of equipment we had a team salvage from the industrial park earlier in the year. If he can’t find a replacement, we’re hoping he can find something he can modify to do the job. Outside of that he will have to make something, and that will involve a lot more guess work than I can put here.
Garv strangely, has become a greater presence around our work tables. At first he pretended to be admiring the continued growth of the plants, and asking off handed questions about what we were working on. After the first week, he was actively taking part in the measurements and cleaning of the components. The task is grueling. Almost every steel part is rusted in some way. Some just have a few spots which can be taken care of with a file, some elbow grease, and actual grease. Others are practically caked in rust, requiring days of both careful and strenuous work. Matt had to instruct both Garv and myself on how to work around things like threads, bolt holes, and various spots I never would have guessed how to reach. We have some powered tools, but use them sparingly. Partly to avoid taxing our electrical system, and partly to preserve as much of the parts as we can.
Then there’s the parts we can’t haul to the green house. This involves the turbine and shaft that it’s connected too. These are so heavy it takes two of us just to turn, picking it up is completely out of the question for now. There’s also the problem that while the turbine is heavy, it is also rather delicate given its weight. We can not take the chance of resting it on its blades, incase they bend. They are too large and thin for us to arcuately manufacture with out powered machines. They’re also really close together and have supporting structures that would have to be cut in order to remove.
Then there’s the frame and support structure for the turbine and it’s shaft. The farther down you go in the generator, the more rust you see. Since we aren't removing the turbine until we have support for it, we're having to do our best to file the rust away everywhere else. Matt, Garv, and myself each dedicate an hour a day to removing as much rust from the larger parts as we can. We have made an exception for a battery-operated hand sander to speed up the process. This requires Garv to turn his computers off, which he was resistant to at first, until he had to try to file by hand in the bitter cold two days in a row. The generator sits on an elevated concrete platform about two feet off the floor, and there are paths to get under it. We’ve become very familiar with these paths as we work to remove the layers of rust and grime.
It was during one of these hours that it happened. Garv was helping me sand the rust off a supporting beam when we heard a bang and the wall gave a violent shake. Garv jumped banging his head against a higher metal beam. He ran around the room cursing and holding his head, while I checked the wall. It was the one on the lake side. I saw no cracks or water leaking through. After checking that Garv had not actually injured himself, I ran upstairs to look over the side.
Matt’s men were running everywhere. All of them had their rifles. I ran to the green house and out a door Matt helped me hang so we could check on the lake side of the dam. Three other men were already here scanning the lake and shore line with the scopes on their rifles. I looked down to inspect the wall. Large black scorch marks expanded out from a small area of broken concrete. The damage looked superficial at best. Looking in the water I saw shattered bits of wood. It looked as if a small wooden something had floated close to the dam and exploded.
“I see another one,” shouted one of the men with a rifle.
“Shoot it,” another said. Shots erupted around me. I could barely see what they were shooting at. It looked like a wooden box, or barrel.
“It’s not working. I’m going to try a tracer,” the man changed out his ammunition. This time when he fired a bright trail followed the bullet. He apparently hit what he was aiming for because a second explosion sounded as the object detonated.
“I see movement on the west shore. Looks like people,” another man said. Matt had shown up with the biggest gun he brought. He told me what it was but all I can remember is it’s fifty caliber.
“Where are they?” Matt yelled. The man pointed in the direction of the people.
Matt raised a pair of binoculars and cursed, “They’re from the iron works. Looks like they’ve got another one of those bombs.” He raised the giant rifle, resting it on the recently reinforced railing. Before I could stop him he fired. I felt the shot more than heard it, like something had hit my entire body at one time. Then another explosion from the shore. What ever the men were putting in the water Matt had detonated one on the shore. That’s when I noticed that Matt was yelling orders that I couldn’t hear. I blinked and the thought crossed my mind I might have been deafened. After a moment sound started coming back slowly as Matt was pushing me inside. It would take a while before I could hear properly again.
Matt stationed two of his men at the railing that night to make sure no more of the bombs made it to the dam. The next day he drug me and two others the investigate what was left at the shore. We had to proceed on foot since we weren’t sure what roads lead to that spot, and we also didn’t want to open the gates wide enough to allow a vehicle through. It took two hours to reach.
I know people used to say that video games over hype gore, that nothing in real life could be as gruesome as a video game. They’ve apparently never seen the remains of two people blown up by their own bomb. We’re assuming it was two because we found four shoes with feet still in them. The rest of the people who had been bombing the dam were scattered among the nearby trees with little bits of viscera dappling the bark, all radiating outward from a single blackened spot on the beach. It all seemed a bit too extreme to be real. Not to the crows of course, who were enjoying a grisly buffet.
Then we found the truck. There were two more barrels in the back. This was apparently what these people had been sending toward the dam. I couldn’t figure out how they were steering these things. Matt explained that the lake wasn’t entirely still and water still flowed toward the dam. There was also the problem that the wind did the same as the water and, blew to the south. Anything launched close enough would eventually drift to the dam.
The truck had no marks to suggest where it came from. Eventually Matt pilled us into it and drove it back to the dam. He parked the truck among the trees and started taking one of the bombs apart. I felt very uncomfortable as I remembered the human confetti, I had witnessed earlier so I decided to be anywhere else. I went to explain what happened to Garv.
I found him at the railing overlooking the lake side of the dam. He was screaming, “Who would dare attack my dam! What blithering idiot would attack the home of Lord Garv Farkas! This will not stand. I will find and tazze this man till he wets himself. I won’t stand for this injustice.” I watched as he ranted and stamped his feet. Finally, he noticed me. “Do you know who did this? Where are they?”
I grimaced and said, “Several places. They’re not really capable of doing it again.” I started to feel queasy at the thought.
“Good, my home and honor are still intact.” Garv turned his attention back to the damage. “Get me a rope and some concrete. I have to fix my home.”
Bob Stackey
December 20, 2023