AFTER THE DUST SETTLED (Countdown to Armageddon Book 2) (2 page)

     Scott looked around for Duke. They’d surprised him with his own companion. Appropriately named Duchess, they’d bought her just a few weeks before. A sleek black
Labrador retriever, just like Duke.

     By pure happenstance, she happened to be in heat when the group pulled up to the compound. She was doubly happy to see Duke, and Duke spent the first hour of their relationship getting to know her intimately.

     But that was the whole idea, after all. The reason they got Duchess was so that they’d have an endless supply of guard dogs well into the future, in case they had to spend the rest of their lives up here.

     He trudged to the gate, to make sure it was locked and chained from the inside. He’d already checked it twice before, but he was ti
red almost to the point of delirium. One more check couldn’t hurt.

     Joyce came out of the darkened house and took his hand.

     “How are you holding up, baby?”

     “I’m okay, doll. Damn happy to be here. How about everybody else?”

     “We’re okay. You need to go inside and get some sleep. You look like you need it worse than anyone else. I know you haven’t slept much the last couple of days.”

     “I can’t. There’s so much to do.”

     “So much that it can’t all be done today, or tomorrow, or the next day. I know what your plan is, and I won’t allow you to work on getting the power back on while you’re exhausted. That’s stupid. You’ll slip off the top of the wind turbine and fall fifty feet to your death. Or you’ll electrocute yourself.

     “And whether you believe it or not, Cowboy, we’ve all grown quite fond of you. We’d like to keep you around.”

     “I’ve got to get the surveillance system turned on, at least. Everything else can wait a day or two. But we’ve got to get the cameras running.”

     “Scott, no. I’ve talked to Linda and to
Jordan. We’ll do security the old fashioned way for today, and for tonight if you need that too. Linda was able to get some sleep in the back of the Gator on the way up the mountain. She’s fresh. She’s going to take the first watch. If I wake up before Jordan, I’ll relieve her. If he wakes up first, he’ll do the same.”

     “Baby, I can’t sleep when there’s so much to be done.”

     “Yes you can, and you will. And if you need to, you can sleep into the night tonight. There will be a full moon. We’ll have a good view of the roadway. And you know there’s only one way on and off the property. No one can sneak up on us.”

     She looked past Scott, to Duke and Duchess going at it over by the feed barn.

     “And if those two ever get finished trying to make puppies, they can help us keep watch too. Duchess started barking when we were still a quarter mile away. They’ll let us know if someone is out there.”

     Scott hated to admit it, but Joyce was right. She usually was.

     He dragged himself into the house and up the stairs.

     He saw his ex-wife Linda, with an AR-15 rifle in her hand, standing watch out the window in the east bedroom. He paused in the doorway only long enough to look at her.

     “I’m surprised she was able to get you and your hard head up here, Scott. Good for you, Joyce.”

     She smiled, and then went on.

     “Go in there and get some sleep. We’ll wake you up at the first sign of trouble, I promise. Not that there’ll be any, of course.”

     “But how can you know that for sure?”

     “Scott, you’d know that too if you’d had any decent rest the last three days. You can’t reason when you’re exhausted. We’re ninety miles from the city. It took us two full nights to get here, and we had vehicles. Slow vehicles, sure, but we didn’t have to walk. How long do you think it would take anyone else to get up here if they were on foot?  A week, maybe more?

     “And that’s even if they knew we were here. We’ve been very careful this whole time to stay hidden, remember? Now, please, go lay down and get some rest. We’ve got this.

     “Besides,” she said with just a touch of bravado. “Nobody’s gonna mess with us when Annie Oakley’s at the window with a shotgun.”

     “It’s a rifle.”

     “Whatever. It’ll still make a very large hole in any prowler stupid enough to walk into the yard. Now go get some sleep. Seriously.”

     Scott and Linda had a unique relationship. They’d been divorced for several years, but remained great friends. And he’d never been able to win an argument against her, either. He disappeared into the bedroom, and laid on the bed with Joyce. He was expecting to stare at the ceiling for hours, going over in his mind the multitude of things he needed to do.

     But within two minutes he was out, sleeping like a baby.

-2
-

     Joyce napped fitfully. Without a working clock to guide her, she guessed it was about noon when she carefully worked her way out of bed and away from Scott. The sunlight was no longer shining directly into the east facing window. It appeared to be above them now.

     She crept out into the hallway and into the watch room.

     Scott’s oldest son Jordan, a senior in high school, greeted her.

     “Good morning, sl
eepy head. Did you get any rest?”

     She hugged him and said, “Yes, honey. Enough to keep me going for awhile, anyway. How long have you been standing watch?”

     “Not long. I relieved Mom about half an hour ago. What’s the game plan for today?”

     “Well, your father
’s going to catch up on his sleep, and then he’s going to try to get the electrical system going before nightfall. I told him to sleep all day into the night, but you know him. He’s as stubborn as a mule. The moment he awakens he’ll be off and running again. He’ll need your help later.”

     “Doing what? Maybe I can get an early start while he’s sleeping.”

     “No, you can’t do this yourself. He’s got some really huge batteries out in the Faraday barn that’ll need to come into the house and down into the basement for his electrical system.”

     “I don’t need any help carrying batteries. I’ll bring them in while he’s sleeping.”

     Joyce laughed.

     “You haven’t seen these batteries. They were made for electric forklifts, and they weigh about three hundred pounds apiece. I had to help your dad unload them and put them in the back of the barn. And there are six of them, so I hope your muscles are working today.”

     “Wow. What are they for?”

     “I’m not an electrician, so I can’t explain it, other than the way your dad explained it to me. He’s going to set up a battery bank in the basement, where all of our electricity needs will come from. That way our power won’t be dependent on the wind blowing or the sun shining. When
the sun shines, the solar panels will charge the batteries. When the wind blows, the wind turbine will also charge the batteries. We’ll get the power for the house and outbuildings directly from the batteries instead of from the turbine or solar panels. That way our power is uninterrupted.”

     “Sounds
complicated. So what happens if it’s overcast for a couple of days, and we have no wind?”

     “That’s funny. I asked him pretty much the same thing. He said he’s got a diesel generator that will come on automatically when the batteries drop below twenty percent of capacity. He even sketched out everything so I could see how he planned to configure everything.”

     “Dad’s always been the planner in the family.”

     “No doubt. Are you hungry?”

     “I’m starved.”

     “Is your brother up?”

     “No, I haven’t seen the little pest yet.”

     “Well, if he gets up, send him downstairs to help me. I’ll see if I can find a way to cook us up some breakfast. We’ll bring you a plate, and I’ll relieve you at the window in a little while. If Sara gets up, and wants to keep you company, you two behave yourself.”

     He turned red.

     “Okay. We will.”

     Joyce turned for the door but he stopped her.

     “Hey, Joyce?”

     “Yes?”

     “I never said thank you. For being so good about letting Sara join us, I mean. I was afraid you and mom and dad would send her away. But she’s got nobody else.”

     “I know that, Jordan. And we could never send her away to fend for herself. The world is getting very ugly out there. And it’s going to get a lot uglier in the weeks and months ahead. She wouldn’t have stood a chance out there alone.

     “If we gave you the impression she wasn’t welcome, put that thought out of your mind. She caught us off guard, yes, just showing up with you out of the blue. But any concerns we had were for her, and how she would get along without her family. And how they would be thinking she was here all alone, fighting for her own survival. I wish there was a way we could get word to them that she’s okay. That she’s one of us now. And that she’ll be safe.”

     “If they can find a way back here, they’ll find her note. And then they’ll know. And thank you again for being so understanding.”

     “You’re welcome, sweetie. Now, you remember what I said about you two behaving yourself.”

     “Yes, ma’am.”

-3-

     Joyce was right about Scott’s jumping out of bed as soon as he awakened. It was mid afternoon, and he cursed himself for sleeping most of the day away. He didn’t have too many hours of light left, but it would be enough to get the generator hooked up and running. It would power the house directly while they were dragging the batteries out of the barn and down the sixteen steps into the basement. And he’d stocked plenty of diesel, so if they couldn’t get the battery array set up until the next day, it wouldn’t be a major crisis.

     In fact, that was probably the smarter way to go. He was just passable when it came to working electrical projects. An experienced electrician knew exactly what he could and couldn’t get away with.

     Scott was less sure. So he’d move slowly and carefully. He was always extra cautious when it came to dealing with electricity.

     He found Jordan and Sara sitting together at the dining room table, looking forlornly into each other’s eyes. His youngest son, Zachary, sat on the couch reading a copy of
Sports Illustrated.

     “Hi, Dad,” he said as Scott walked through the room.

     “Sure is
boring.
Sure wish I could play a video game or something.”

     Scott chuckled, but didn’t stop. Zachary was as subtle as a bomb blast.

     He found Joyce and Linda in the kitchen, trying to figure out what to do about dinner.

     They’d made a point to keep the freezers closed, in an effort to preserve the meat inside. For breakfast, they’d managed to cook bacon and eggs on a skillet on the propane grill out back, using fresh eggs straight from the chicken coop. They still had water even without the well pump working, thanks to the 300 gallon elevated tank out back. The water was cold, but it was better than nothing.

     “Don’t worry about cooking anything on the grill,” Scott told them. We’ll have generator power within the hour, and we’ll run off of it constantly until we get the batteries up and wired together.”

     Then he stood in the middle of the kitchen and made an announcement.

     “Attention in the house. Any teenage boy who wants to play video games or take a hot shower before he goes to bed needs to come and help their father. No pressure, but no complaints will be heard from anyone who doesn’t help.”

     Both of the boys were there within seconds. Sara made her best pouty face and said, “I guess teenage girls aren’t wanted.”

     Linda laughed and hugged her.

     “Hey, you don’t want to work with those stinky old men anyway. You can help us carry appliances into the house.”

     “Appliances?”

     “Yes. Scott is going to check out all of the electrical items that were in the house when the EMPs hit. Some of them might have survived, but he won’t be able to tell until he breaks into them. If they look like they suffered any internal damage, he’ll toss them so they don’t present a fire hazard.

     “It’ll probably be a few days until he gets around to it, so we’re going to assume everything is bad. But that’s okay, because I’ve been hitting garage sales for months. We’ve got a huge stack of replacement items in the Faraday barn ready to come in here.”

     “What kinds of things?”

     “Basically anything that plugs into a wall. Lamps, clocks, televisions, video game consoles. If it runs on electricity, we’re going to set it aside and assume it’s damaged until we find out otherwise.”