Vaxdemic Book 2 Chapter 11
Chapter 11
There’s something kind of therapeutic about working alone, you can set your own pace, you don’t have to answer to anyone, and your generally free of distraction. I’m trying to focus on the positives of working by myself because it’s better than dwelling on the monstrous pile of work I have ahead of me. Things have changed since the attack on the dam.
It took a little time to figure out how to lower him down, but eventually Garv got his cement and trowel and patched the damage. Matt walked him through it from the top of the railing. I left the two alone to finish the job and started working on the parts for the generator. I think this was a mistake. The two now have a secret project they refuse to tell anyone about. Garv has locked himself in his room with some of the material from the bombs we salvaged and only comes out for meals. I’m concerned about having that stuff so close by, but when I ask him about what he’s doing he just laughs like a comic book villain and refuses to elaborate further.
Matt has been similarly elusive, but where Garv has been secretive Matt has just been busy. After the attack he put all his efforts in to building up the dam’s defenses. He and his men have spent the last few weeks removing trees from outside the fence to build palisades thick enough to stop a truck. They even have a walkway between the different guard towers complete with firing step. There’s now a constant watch over the lake and the roads leading up to the dam. I imagine it's cold boring work.
It has certainly gotten colder. I don’t remember last winter being quite this bad. Snow started falling in early January and since then the ground has constantly been covered in a blindingly white blanket. We’re higher in the mountains, but I didn’t think the change in elevation was that much. Maybe the weather is just different out here, or maybe the lack of people has changed the weather. I remember arguments about climate change on the internet years ago. Weather is weather as far as I was concerned. Maybe without people to politicize everything I can finally notice differences in stuff like this for myself. I might look for a book on the subject, if I ever get time.
I’m looking forward to March. That’s when we think the snow will clear from the roads and we can head home for a little while. I’ve got plenty to keep myself busy for now. We’ve cleaned about half the parts we can of rust. We’re going to need to get the replacements for those we can’t before we can put the generator back together. Then there’s the big issue, the turbine. We’ve gotten almost all the rust we can reach off the frame, but there are areas we can’t reach or examine without lifting the turbine out of its housing. Matt wants to rig something up. We’re planning for that in June.
I’m looking forward to going home, even if it’s just for a short time. I miss Claire more than I thought I would. She’s been weird ever since I’ve known her, but then I can’t really say much. You also never miss sleeping next to another warm human being as much as when you’re freezing your butt off in a concrete bunkhouse on a dam in the middle of winter. I also want to spend some time with my son. I know next to nothing about children. I remember shows from when I was a kid talking about the milestones of a child, walking, talking, etc. I wonder if I’ll miss any. Many nights I wonder what kind of person he’ll be when he grows up. Between me and his mother his chances of being a weird shut-in are uncomfortably high.
I’m not looking forward to the petitioners. There’s a lot of bureaucracy waiting for me when I make it back to the city. I’ve also got the daunting task of figuring out power distribution for all the new homesteads that have popped up in my absence. I had a team working to map out the powerlines, but I’m not sure how things in the city have changed with the new residence. I shudder when I think of what they may have torn down. I took down a lot of stuff myself so I can’t reprimand them, but more than once I’ve worried they may take down something important in my absence.
Despite feeling abandoned, I’m not without companionship. Abby still follows me everywhere I go. She loves running through the dozen acres of woods between the dam and the barricades at the bottom of the hill. I think she misses hunting. She’ll play fetch for a few minutes but gives up quickly with an almost human exasperation. I think I may have awoken something primal in her. If we go near the palisades she’ll paw at the gates, and her ears poke up at every little sound. She’s not without sport. She’s caught half a dozen rabbits since we came here. Maybe when it warms up, she’ll have some squirrels to chase.
Personally, I would love to take Abby out to hunt something bigger, but Matt has forbid me from going past the gates. When I ask about it at meal times, he spins long elaborate stories of what Saugus’s men would do if they caught me, and how they can’t finish the dam without me. Sometimes I have my doubts, but I remember the rules Ruth left me and keep my mouth shut. Sometimes I look at the massive piles of notebooks I’ve used documenting the disassembly of the generator and I’m almost dumbfounded at what we’ve done. I’ll think it’ll be a miracle of we can put this thing back together. Then I consult my notes, and documentation and I think it won’t be so hard.
The generator room looks so different now from when we started. Shelves of meticulously labeled parts line the walls. I remember most of them since I put them there myself. I hope all of this works and isn’t just a huge waste of time. We have no idea if this thing will work when we put it back together, or if something we can’t see was wrong with it before we started. It could be the generator was operating at its full capacity when we took it apart. What if we put it back together wrong and it fries or blows up? Thinking about all of this starts to weigh me down so I try to focus on my work. Then I had an idea.
Claire sent me some boxes with her last letter. Apparently, Harold and Beth have been badgering about the bottles of cider I left at home. According to her, both her chaperons are vehemently anti-alcohol. It’s not a sentiment shared by all of their people as Pastor Roth gladly accepted the bottle we offered him as a Christmas present. Since she can’t drink it and to placate our guests, she sent them with the last shipment we received before winter set in. I decided it may be time for a little party.
I had no nefarious reason behind my plan. I just wanted an evening to feel at ease. I often help with the cooking so it wasn’t hard to convince the men on mess duty to help out when I brought in the bottles. Part of me was hoping to take the booze home with me when we were done, but after seeing the joy on the others faces at a night of drinking I think I made the right choice. Earlier that week one of the men shot a wild boar while hunting. It wasn’t very big, but pork was a little rare since things collapsed so we decided it would be a good meal for the cider to wash down. I wanted the party to be a surprise, but word got out anyway.
By the time darkness fell the meal was ready. I almost looked like Christmas dinner with all the side dishes. Everyone started drinking early, and hard. The original plan was to have the guards changed out halfway through the meal. I think the cider gained strength from sitting, because after half a bottle Matt was calling all his men to join in. Garv was reluctant at first. Apparently, he’d never drank before and at the start of the meal still held that position. After what I thought was very weak peer pressure, he took his first drink. After an hour he was on his second bottle.
Claire had sent my entire stock of cider, which certainly looked intimidating to drink over a winter, or so I thought. Two hours after the meal started I gave up hope that I would have any to take home in the spring, and Garv was going to be a major reason why. I remember the first time I had a bottle and finished it myself. I used wine bottles so they can hold quite a bit. By the end of the meal Garv had drank three, and he didn’t stop there.
We do have means to keep time, between a handful of watches, our computers and the odd smart phone kept to play music. Normally we try to stick to a normal schedule and go to bed by 9 to save power. By this time Garv was on the lakeside overlook of the dam, screaming challenges to anyone who might be hiding in the woods. My ten, he had borrowed a gun, which was promptly taken away when he started shooting in to the darkened trees. He was then given a bb gun, to humor him.
I was almost asleep by 11, remembering the hangover I had my first time drinking and thanking my hard-earned wisdom that I had resisted the urge to drink more than I did. Then I heard a strange noise outside, like some kind of heated argument with Garv screaming at a bunch of angry Women. I was certainly curious as we brought no women with us. I wasn’t the only one confused. I headed toward the wooded area outside the bunkhouse.
Garv was yelling and firing his bb gun into what looked like a moving cloud of darkness. As he turned in circles cussing, I saw he had taken someone’s night vision goggles. The cloud was making an awful noise and it took a moment before I realized what it was. Garv was firing in to a murder or crows. I can only assume they had perched in the trees for the night drawn by the smell of food. They were now flying in every direction, screeching and cawing, as the bb gun made soft pats as it fired into the swarm.
We had to shout at him several times before he noticed us. That’s when we saw another bottle of cider in his left hand, half empty. When we asked what the hell he was doing, he gave an answer that was half blech, half nonsense. When we asked him again, he promptly vomited and passed out in the snow. Then for good measure he vomited again, giving himself a nice greasy coating of diner and bile. We reluctantly carried him inside. In a way I’m glad that most of the cider is gone.
Bob Stackey
February 1, 2024