Vaxdemic Book 2 Chapter 18
Chapter 18
I used to hate water. Back when I could get any food, I wanted delivered I never drank it, and if it weren’t for the bi-monthly showers I would have almost never touched the stuff. More than once I pondered the oddness that it was the only liquid on earth humans needed to live and it didn’t taste good. It’s also has the amazing ability to damage anything. Years ago, a small leak in my roof cost me several thousand dollars to repair, and a few weeks of miserable mornings with contractors arriving at 8am. My attitude changed a bit when it became necessary. I’d started to think water and I had come to an understanding, but lately I feel like water hates me.
All of the spillway pipes are in use, the lake is only a few feet away from the lip of the dam, and the sound of roaring water can be heard day and night as rockets out the river side of the dam. It’s gotten so bad Garv and I had to make a crude sign language to communicate. We’re working as fast as we can to put the generator back together so we can open the main valve and relieve the pressure. There are actually two inlets we could open as there were once two generators in the room. We were starting to rig up a piping system when Garv noticed the inlet was welded shut. So much for that idea
We don’t have to finish the whole assembly. The generator came with a switch that led to an attached pipe that bypassed the turbine. If we can just get things assembled that far we can open the inlet and let the water flow. The inlet is much bigger than the spillways so it should do a lot to alleviate the flooding. Unfortunately, we can’t bypass the generator all together because of its size, location, and our limited pipe supply.
There are other problems. The land around the dam is not the same elevation. The side with access to the roads is slightly lower than the dam and the side with no access, I assume this was intentional so water could flow around if it got too high. With our fortification we’ve destroyed that safety measure. Flooding has become Matt’s biggest problem. The fighting is still going on. Garv’s drones have scared our attackers enough to stop using the lake. This leaves them with only one direction to attack from, the front gate. Now there’s just as much shooting as when they started their attack, but now it’s people instead of decoy sites. We’ve lost a few more men. All of this has made Matt’s job harder.
In the brief moments I’ve seen him he’s talked about digging permanent trenches with barred gates so water could pass right through the fortifications and bother nothing. When they were setting up the defenses, they left most of the trees between the gate and the dam. They give us cover and prevent people from shooting in. Even when they cleared some for growing space, there was still no easy spots to dig the needed trenches. The ground if full of roots and rocks, which make digging without a machine hard grueling work. Not that it matters, we don’t have the men to spare.
Everyone is working with less sleep. There’s about 50 people here last time I checked. We have a lot of land behind our walls, which mean we have long walls that need defending. Luckily our attackers don’t outnumber us enough to simply overrun us. Matt has given every man an airhorn. This is in case they spot a large number of enemies. They blow the horn and will instantly be joined by every free man. Matt tells me that 10 men behind armored positions are worth 100 outside them. From the number of bodies he tells me are on the other side of the wall I’m inclined to believe him. He still insists this is the work of Saugus. I’m not fully convinced. I remember Seth telling me about the others who came from the prison. Matt says they’re too well organized and supplied. I don’t know enough about war to argue with him. It’s not just shooting and guarding that needs to be done. People still need to eat, drink, and build. I wasn’t lying when I said the access side of the dam is lower. Water has been building up on the north side of our fortifications for a while. Matt has been doing his best to seal that side and has so far been successful, but that’s been a war itself.
The fortified walls of the dam are a hodgepodge construct. The front with its layers of wood, steel, and cement could stop a truck. The sides, and especially the sides facing the lake are not so thick. At first Matt stacked sandbags in front of the walls. One night the rain was particularly heavy and by morning half the bags were washed away. He tried building out the walls with cement, but it’s been raining for days and the cement has not had time to dry. This hasn’t stopped him from trying to middling success. On days of very heavy rain the cement simply gets washed away. It doesn’t help that when he gets one area secure the water rises and moves to another. Matt insists there have been days the sun has come out, but I can’t remember what it looks like at this point. Matt has asked us more than once to hurry.
It's getting hard to keep track of the days. I’ve been staying up multiple nights in a row to finish work on the generator. Years of programing and gaming have given me an edge when it comes to all-nighters. Garv has also mastered this skill at some point in his life. We just work until the sound of roaring water and the fear of being flooded out can’t keep us awake any longer. We like to think we’re making progress, but more than once in our sleep deprived states we have missed some crucial piece and lost a day or two of work taking things off to reach the area we need. The first time this happened I cursed for most of the day. Eventually I had to accept it was something that would happen in our rush to finish.
Finally late one night we succeeded. I had to make several trips around the generator, consult my notes, and eventually bring in Matt to make sure it was correct. I have rarely been as happy as when he said we were ready. We opened the exit valve to the river side of dam, flipped the lever for the bypass pipe on the generator, and on the count of three pulled the lever to open the lake side of the pipe to the generator. Only it didn’t budge.
Garv was the first to try. My first thought was his scrawny arms were too weak to pull it. I stepped up myself, and determined not to make the same mistake put all my weight into it. After doing what I’m sure is irreparable but invisible damage to my body that will haunt me in my old age, the lever remained unmoved. As I lay nursing what I was sure was a dislocated shoulder, Matt stepped up to try. The lever remained undefeated.
After a quick once over Matt told me I was fine and left to get tools. That’s when the shout came down. Water was leaking onto the dam. Panicked and completely ignoring the new pains in my body I threw myself at the lever. I was not about to let all my hard work on this dam go to waste. The lever did not relent. Garv joined me and the two of us ended up hanging from the unrelenting piece of steel. By the time Matt returned with his sledge hammer Garv had found a rope and tied one end to the outside of the lever trying to pull it down with his body weight as I jumped on it from above, trying to shock it into movement.
Wasting no time Matt joined in with his hammer. The three of us working frantically to force the inlet to open. My terror of being flooded out, mixing with the terror of my foot being crushed on one of Matt’s swings. Our efforts were bearing little fruit. I realized we needed to combine our impacts if we were going to have any hope. I stopped everyone, counted to three, did everything it was possible for my mind to do to swallow my fear of crippling injury from the sledgehammer, and jumped.
A great lurch, and a scream from Garv and myself preceded my fall landing on the concrete floor. I lay there in the shock before the pain comprehending what had happened. I had stopped my face from hitting the floor, but caught the wiff of ozone I knew meant pain was coming. Then I heard it. The rush of water down the pipe. The bang and shake as it hit the bends in the bypass. The rattle of the housing that held the pipe to the floor. Then the glorious roar of water coming out the other side. It was almost deafening, and it was the most glorious sound I’ve ever heard.
Bob Stackey
June 21, 2024