Earth's Survivors, page 140
She arched her eyebrows. “No? Well, it's like this. The pain starts, and then it comes and goes. I haven't felt it either, mind you, I asked Jan. Then, over a period of time the pain becomes regular, contractions, which is... Never mind, I can see it's killing you already. Suffice to say, No, there isn't just few seconds of pain, there is an hour or two... Sometimes more, several hours,” she said.
“Wow,” Mike said. His face was white, even in the early gray dawn-light.
“Wow is right. You're not good with pain are you, baby? I mean, like, for real not good with it, right?” Candace asked.
“Um, no. I thought about piercing my ear once,” He colored, the red looking out of place after the white. “I had a friend do it. He pushed the needle in and I passed out.” Mike cleared his throat.
“Damn, and I thought you would get a nice tribal piece to match mine,” Candace joked.
“Ha ha, I hope,” Mike said. “I mean, I love the way it looks on your body, but me? Whoa. I don't think I could do it, baby.”
“Easy. Relax. I was kidding,” Candace said with a laugh. “Although I'd probably like it.” She focused her eyes on his once again and the laughter bled away from them. “The thing is childbirth is painful. So you'll have to deal with it. And, I have two of them... Two!” She said as the laughter crept back into her eyes.
“I better go pull that wire, baby. They're probably waiting on me,” Mike said.
“Babe, do you know how many babies there would be if men had to bare them?”
“Well... Uh...”
“None. There would be none, babe. Not one.”
“You're picking on me now, right?” Mike asked.
Candace smiled. “Kiss me now and then go pull your wire. I've got to get back to Lilly... Have you decided what to do about Pearl? Watertown?”
Mike frowned. “No choice. Like we said... Like we all decided, they have to go. I should be going with them... It's a bad deal.”
“No!” Candace said sharply. “...Never mind that... Never mind it, it's just hormones talking. … But don't you say that again or even think it. Your place is right here. They want to be there. They understand what they need to do. Not you. You belong here with me. With the babies,” she said quietly. “You promised me that... I love you,” Candace finished.
He kissed her. “I love you too... No more.”
“I do love you... I'll be with Lilly... Soon?” She asked
“Next couple of days. Bob and Tim have guys working on finishing up the trucks... The pretense is going to be this cold... We don't know how long it will be... We have to get while the getting is good,” Mike finished.
Candace laughed. “You are such a nerd, but I love you. Get while the gettin's good. How are you ever going to sound streetwise?”
He pulled her to him and kissed her longer and they both pulled apart a few seconds later with nothing further to say. Mike turned and walked down the pathway that lead to the valley floor. Candace watched until he was lost in the gray-blackness of the fog and then turned and went inside the cave.
Donita: Harlem
Donita watched from her tree once more, squatted on a thick limb. Harlem was an exception to her rules and she didn't understand why that was. Yes, there were dead in Harlem, but they were dead that stayed dead. She had watched them herself as they fell, knowing they would rise, and being shocked when they did not.
Unexpected was probably the word, she decided, that best explained the turn of events. And there was more. There was something more on the air. The feeling that way back in the valley where the living still gathered she had missed some sort of an opportunity to change everything. Harlem. The world beyond Harlem. All of it. But whatever the small thing was she had missed it completely as she had stood upon the ridge and looked down on them and decided they could wait. They were no threat to her at all.
She turned her eyes back to Harlem. There were men looking back at her and her army behind her. She had hoped it struck fear in their hearts. She had hoped they could see the uselessness of fighting her. Of holding out. But these men seemed unmoved. These men seemed confidant of another outcome entirely, one that Donita herself had not even been aware of until just a few days past. Loss.
There could be loss. If there could be one place where the dead did not rise to join her army then there could be another place, and another. It could change everything.
She held herself steady, her fingers tented against the roughness of the bark, her body motionless. A second later she dropped effortlessly to the ground and walked slowly back through the trees to the park proper.
There was the other thing. The knowledge on the air that she had somehow made a mistake with those living in their valley. A mistake that she did not even know about at the time, but that was now becoming clearer and clearer. She almost understood it. Almost. Second by second she gathered it to her on the air and understood a little more.
Donita entered the large park and let her eyes travel over her army. Thousands upon thousands here and more waiting on her word.
Her eyes lifted to the tall buildings that stood silently in the early morning light outside of the park: Marching away into the fog and cloud cover that hung over the city. Immense clouds of flies lifted and settled, looking like some sort of black ocean spread over the city outside the park. But the air was cool and the flies would be gone soon.
The flies did not bother her. They were partners of a sort. The flies carried death to those she could reach. And that death would then bring them to her. She squatted, tented her fingers to support her body, and scented the air with her eyes.
~
“So this is it?” Mike asked. He was standing in the tunnel with Ronnie and they were pulling wire. What it amounted to was bringing the wire bundle from up top to the power room. All the other circuits were in. The batteries had been charging for three days and they were topped off. The clinic: The large open meeting area of the cave. The entire tunnel and all three entrances; the bath and shower house, and the new space inside the other cave that was being converted into a barn, were all wired.
They had also wired Sandy and Susan's home, Josh and Sharon's and installed lights in all of the storage rooms. This line, the last line that had to be pulled to the circuit box, went up to the guard post and fed two huge outdoor lights for the field.
At the entrance to each of the three caves they had installed lighting. They had also installed low voltage lighting for the ledges and the pathways, steps and even the narrow pathway that led to the top of the mountain.
“This is it,” Ronnie agreed.
To pull wire you started at a junction box and determined how much wire you needed to reach the next junction. You could Begin by running what was called a fish, a long, stiff steel line through the conduit and dragging the wire along with it. Or you could began by pulling or pushing the wire through the conduit. In any case the goal was to get the wire in the conduit and to the place you needed it. It wasn't all that hard, Mike decided, it was more of a smooth, careful pull so that you didn't damage or kink the wire. You continued in that manner from junction to junction until you reached the panel box or the circuit completed itself and terminated at an outlet, light or some other box.
Once this line was completed Tim would power up the main panel box. There was a line that ran down to the power house. It could both supply power when needed or take away and store excess power when it was generated. The power house itself was still being worked on and was a few weeks away from being operational.
They had tested the power house, and it worked well. They had installed the battery banks for it and the diesel engines that would run the generators during down time. What remained to do was to divert the stream into the channel that fed the wheel that turned the generator. That channel was deeper, angled so that the water would pick up speed as it came. The channel was finished and encased I concrete. Behind the power house they had created a large lake that Cindy had envisioned and would work on stocking with fish next year. All that remained to do was to open the channel, it was currently blocked off, check the flow rate and then calibrate the wheel so the R.P.M. would be correct for the generator. Mike understood the basics of all of that, but had no idea how to actually do much of it. Tim had two crews working to finish. Tim himself, as well as Bob were nowhere to be seen today though. They had never left the barn last night. The work was nearly done on the Outrunners trucks and they intended to make absolutely sure it was finished sooner rather than later. Tom had come in to pull wire for an hour before Mike had cut him loose sending him down to help Bob and Tim.
'Where's your head?” Ronnie asked.
Mike laughed and looked at Ronnie. “This military base under Watertown... I want to say if it exists, but I guess that is just denial.”
“Yeah... But we all knew it. It shouldn't really be a surprise at all. We knew the government fucked us over.... Suspected they did, anyway.” Ronnie said.
Mike was nodding.
“So... We decided the way we had to... Bear and Billy know what they are going into. Pearl certainly knows. Why is it still renting space in your head?” Ronnie asked.
Mike frowned. “Responsibility, I guess. I feel like I should be there.”
“Candace would kill you if she heard you say that,” Ronnie said unsmiling.
“Been there. She was upset when I said pretty much that same thing this morning. She said I promised... I couldn’t break my word.” Mike said quietly as he pulled at the wires wrapped around his gloved hand slowly, coaxing them through the conduit.
They both fell silent and Mike began to get his thoughts back on the wiring once again. Over the next few weeks they would be running wire to the houses in the valley and stringing wire for lights along the pathways that lead to the houses, school and barns. The pathway lights would be something like streetlights for the valley.
The wires to the houses wouldn't be good for much more than basic light, but eventually, with more wire, they would be able to run more circuits. Probably next spring, or maybe even next fall before they could get to it, and that depended upon a lot of things, including how this mission went with the Outrunners.
“It's hard to believe that we are nearly out of wire already. We loaded so much on those trucks I really thought we had enough to last us,” Ronnie said.
I thought that same thing. I was just thinking it,” Mike agreed.
“Really? Because it looked like you were lost in thoughts of Watertown again,” Ronnie said quietly as he pulled another three feet of wire through the conduit.
“Yeah, well, that too, I guess. Hard to stay away from it.”
Ronnie nodded.
Mike went back to thoughts of electricity. There was a windmill planned. The windmill itself was already up. It had gone up in two mornings of work a few days back. But it needed a custom compute program to run it and it also needed the proper software. It was a project Tim would eventually get back to.
A second and third bank of solar panels to supplement the ones that had already been installed, were planned for the tops of the ridges on both side of the valley. He and Janet Dove had carefully crafted a computer system that Tim would use to run the power system. Mike had readily conceded that most of the real programming work had been done by Janet Dove. He was okay, but more of a HTML and Java guy, not the hardcore C++ language that Janet used to build the bones of the software. And Mike had no doubt the Tim would soon be better than both of them combined. He had that natural ability to pick up nearly anything you threw at him.
The computer system would regulate the power flow between the power plants: Monitor all the separate systems for usage; keep track of the two storage sites where the batteries were kept. That included charge states and incoming and outgoing power levels.
The line was stuck. Mike grasped the ends of the wire with his linesman pliers and kept a steady pull of pressure as Ronnie worked the kinks out of the plastic jacket and sprinkled it with baby powder.
“Push it backwards just a little, Mike.” Ronnie said. “Good... Good... Pull it forward now.”
Mike pulled and once again the wire pulled steadily along through the conduit.
The conduit was nothing more than inch and a quarter pipe in ten foot lengths. It fastened together with couplers or elbows. Those transitions also offered a place to pull the wire from.
“Okay... Getting there,” Ronnie said as both men went back to pulling wire.
~
“How you feeling, Lil?” Candace asked as she came into the room.
“Ugh, like someone shoved a two year old inside of me.,” Lilly said.
Candace laughed, Lilly laughed too.
“I'm not kidding about the two year old though. This kid is huge. I feel like I'm stretched as tight as I can go,” she said.
“Baby you are big, that's for sure,” Candace told her.
“Hey, Lil,” Patty said, as she came up behind Candace.
“Pats,” Lilly said. “Did you bring it?“
Patty held up a big bag that held three outfits Lilly had made for the baby, a couple of blankets and a pair of booties. “Right here,” she said.
“Thank you, Pats,” Lilly said. She pulled herself up a little bit in the bed as the pain began to move through her lower back and abdomen again. Candace held her hand.
“You're welcome,” Patty said as she moved up to hold her other hand.
“Twenty minutes,” Candace said. “The other one was only fifteen.”
“Ugh,” Lilly said.
“Honey, is that a word?” Patty asked.
“Yeah, it's cave woman for I can't believe I let Grug stick his thing in me,” Lilly said, laughed and then groaned.
“That bastard,” Patty said.
“Who?” Lilly asked.
“Why, Grug,” Patty said. “I can't believe he did this to you.”
They all laughed. Steve came in with Sandy as they were all laughing. “How we doing?” He asked.
“The last one was twenty, the one before was fifteen,” Candace told him.
“Sounds like a little work yet then,” Steve said. He snapped a pair of latex gloves on his hands and lifted her gown. Sandy held it as he examined her. “Coming along nicely,” He told her. “You're dilating. I would expect that those contractions might start getting closer together very soon... How are you feeling?”
“Unbelievably big,” Lilly said.
“Well, you are,” He chuckled lightly, “But it's looking very good.. I'll be back in just a little while. Meantime if you need me I'm right in there.” He pointed back toward the door.
Sandy smile at her. “I tested positive,” She told her.
“What?” Lilly said as another contraction began.
“I'm pregnant,” Sandy said.
“You must be nuts,” Lilly said through gritted teeth. Her voice was a snarly growl from taking against the pain of the contraction.
Sandy laughed. “A little, yes,” she agreed.
“Little less than fifteen,” Candace said solemnly.
“I figured, now that we have a doctor... Me first and then Susan wants a child.”
Lilly rode the pain out. She took some deep breaths and looked a Candace. “That bastard,” she said. “Grug.” She couldn't get more than one or two words in a breath.
Candace and the others laughed while Lilly rode the pain out.
Sandy frowned.
“Not you,” Lilly said once the pain began to roll back down. “I'm happy for you... Honestly, Sandy. Susan too... It's that damn Grug.”
Candace squeezed her hand and smiled.
“That one hurt a lot,” Lilly told her.
Candace squeezed her hand again.
~
Outside the morning progressed, but the sky stayed the same leaden gray.
Josh walked to the cave entrance and looked out over the valley. The sheep were out and the goats with them. A great deal of the space behind him was now the biggest barn the Nation had.
He had yet to convince the horses into the barn, but the Bison had come in after only a few days. They had readily eaten the grasses and hay Josh had given them, and many of them could already be hand fed. A few of them were downright curious and would walk right up to Josh.
The goats and the sheep used a small area of the barn. There were a half dozen cows who were already pregnant, crossed with the bison. Almost a dozen bison cows who were also pregnant, and they had culled the male down to just four of the biggest. Two they had gelded to use as Oxen, and the other two they intended to keep for stud. One in the barn, the other in the field. Never together at the same time as they tended to be very territorial when the cows were present. They were every bit as aggressive as the bulls were.
He walked back into a corner of the barn where Queenie was. The kids had named her Queenie and her mate Rex. He had made the little area up for her earlier when Shar had told him it might be her time. Just yesterday Angel had her puppies. Six, all with gray fur. That little was down in the valley in the second barn.
Shar was bent over in the corner when he approached.
“Five, so far,” she told him. She moved aside so he could see and as she did the mother slid another pup out easily and quickly chewed at the cord and cleaned off the sack that surrounded it. The puppy was crawling around blindly, searching for a nipple in just a few seconds.
These puppies were a little larger than Angel's puppies had been, but not by much, Josh thought.
“Gonna be monsters,” Josh said aloud.
“That's for sure,” Shar agreed. She leaned over and kissed Josh and then went back to watching the puppies. Content to have him by her. He reached out and took her hand, rocked back on his heels and watched as another puppy was born.
~
At the large cave that opened into the field above the cave, Jessie Stone kissed Brad and then stepped out into the wide tunnel. She peeked out into the field. The gray sky hung above it The clouds nearly touching the tops of the grasses in the field. It reminded her of snow.
