The Complex: (The Reanimates) (10 page)

             
"Hey, Ty! Joey!" Trent yelled.

             
Tyreese looked up and said "Yeah man, what's going on?"

             
"I need one of you to cover me and the other to cover the gate. I gotta hang this stuff up."

             
Trent loaded up his boards in a wheelbarrow, another maintenance find, and headed out of the gate. From the inside of the wall I could hear him drill into the cinder block. The sound of the metal against the cement made me cringe. Fingernails on chalkboards had nothing on that new sound.

             
When he was done mounting his spike strips we peeked around the wall. The length of the sticks would keep the zombies from getting too close to the wall unless they wanted to get stuck on a stake.

             
The longer spears he placed on a long 2×4 in a straight row. He created brackets for the board and set them on either side of the gate. The center stake and the outside stakes had an additional support bracket attached to them. Trent and Joey lifted the spear board and set it in place. When it was all set up the board ran parallel to the ground at my waist level as a barrier. Any zombies who ran on this would be impaled on the stakes and while its not a kill wound it would slow them down. The barrier was easily removable in the event we needed to leave.

             
No one wanted to say it but the look on all of our faces said that while the new modifications might help a hair, no one had any faith that what just done with the spikes was going to make any meaningful difference. The night sky had totally overtaken the world and shadows jumped out from everywhere. It had been a very long day and everyone felt fried. We all retired to our homes to have an emotional reset. We found the Cars DVD and we all climbed into to bed. The only plus to the day we had was that we all fell asleep quickly and stayed asleep until dawn.

Power Failures

             
When we woke the next morning we found the power to be less than cooperative. We had been spoiled by the last couple days of free flowing electricity and it hadn't even crossed our minds that it wouldn't be there. The frequent brown outs were worrying. How were we supposed to operate the power tools in build without it? How was the food unit going to preserve what needed to be cold? And the medical unit? How was I going to keep the must refrigerate medicine cold?

             
While these thoughts looped in my head someone started knocking on our door. Trent went to open it and found Jody at outside.

             
"So I was thinking," she began, "that with the power coming in and out we should have a meeting with the heads of all the units. Kinda like a council meeting. We need to come up with a plan on how to cope with this or something."

             
I hated to admit that she was right. Setting up a meeting was a good idea. We did need to talk about how to be ready for an electricity free world. I also really liked having the head of each resource unit there to chime in on what they felt was a problem.

             
"What time and where?" I asked.

             
"9:00 good by you? We could meet at the school."

             
I nodded in agreement. I checked my watch. It was already 7:15. The power fluxed again and Trent suggested we put things on the charger now, but that it would probably be in our best interest to use the surge protector strips so we don't blow out anything. He went down to build as Drew and I went around plugging in things like the Kindles and the laptops. We knew that the Internet hadn't been functional since the day after the CDC announcement, nor had the TV for that matter, but the laptops represented one more family movie to me. We ate breakfast and went over to Jody's a bit early to take Drew upstairs before the meeting. Erin had agreed to watch him along with her siblings while the meeting was going.

             
Once everyone got to the school, Jody began the meeting.

             
“Alright,” she started, “we are here to talk about what we need to do to make this place stay working. We got used to being able to rely on the autonomy of the power company but it looks like we might be on our own soon. Does anyone have any ideas on what we can do if we need electricity?”

             
Tyreese was the first to speak up.”There are a lot of cars here. We don't really need them all. What if we took out the batteries on the ones we don't need? What if we decided what vehicles are essential versus the ones that could be parted out?”

             
Mercedes said “Well that's a start, but what do we do when the batteries are drained?”

             
“We could build a generator.” Trent replied, “If we're taking cars apart we can take an alternator out of one. With the alternator, if we can get it spinning it will charge the batteries. I have a basic idea how to do it. It will take some trial and error to build it but it is able to be done.”

             
“Will it be enough to do what we need to do?” Jody asked. I wondered the same.

             
Joey responded with a question of his own. “What do we truly need for it to do? What is an essential electricity need versus what do we want electricity for?”

             
I thought it was a good question. For me I know most of the things I had in my head on electricity were comfort items. Things like the Kindles and watching movies weren't truly important but it was nice. The important stuff kept going back to the refrigerators that held the perishable food as well as the medications and right under that was using the tools in build. It seemed to be that many people were coming to the conclusion I was, that there were truly pressing needs out there.

             
“The refrigerators and the tools are what keeps popping up in my head.” Jody finally said.

             
“Well, someone needs to explain to me why it doesn't behoove us to eat the perishable stuff first so we don't have to worry about the refrigerators.” Martha said. My mouth dropped open in surprise. It was the first time I had heard her speak since she was medicated after Eric died. I had worried that she had pulled into herself to cope. She saw the look of surprise on my face. I looked at the others and realized they too had the same look.

             
“What? You all think the death of my boy was gonna shut me up? Never happen. Now for what I was talking about. If we can't figure out a way to preserve what needs to be refrigerated then we need to consume it so it doesn't go to waste cause I don't think this little plan of taking car parts and building a generator is going to be enough to manage the power you all are talking about. You all are way too reliant on power. I grew up on a farm and power wasn't flowing like now. We didn't have air conditioning and super refrigerators. We had an ice box and that was it.

             
“Now Cali, you say we have medications that need to be cold. That's fine and all but do you need a full sized fridge for them? I bet that there is a small one around somewhere. That would save a lot of power now wouldn't it. Besides that, is anyone even actually on the medications that need to be cooled? Insulin? I don't know of any diabetics here right now. The liquid penicillin? Is it premixed with water right now? Does it have to be cold now?

             
“As for the tools... If you ask me, those Amish boys can build some really nifty things without one shred of power. Heck they don't even have nails. If you need something build it the old fashioned way.

             
“Power isn't going to kill us if we're in the dark. That was the point of you guys running off to get all that camping stuff, wasn't it? So when the power fails we could still cook food and see with the lanterns? What's going to kill us are the zombies. What's going to kill us is if the water fails now. I bet you all that the people who put together the water system are relying on electricity for the pumps. It probably has a back up system but we have no idea how long that is going to last for. When the power goes out and stays out? We may have a new host of issues. We should be running through all these empty units and filling the bathtubs up with water. We should be looking for anything that has a lid to keep water in. If we don't get water together dehydration will kill us. If we don't get the water contained in a clean and a safe way we all will be sick and there aren't enough meds in the world that will fix it. That is what we need to be working on first.”

             
As much as I hated to admit it, Martha made some excellent points. It hadn't occurred to me to think of the pumps. I had never been in a prolonged power outage. I started to think more about water. It's a definite issue. We are in the middle of a desert. How long can we all last on a few tubs full of water?

             
“She has a point.” I conceeded. “We do need to collect water. We also should figure out a way to save gray water as well. We can use it for watering and to refill toilet tanks so we don't end up with diseases from sewage. We should be collecting water for storage. The bath tub thing is brilliant. We can scrub the tubs first then throw in a cup of bleach with the water so nothing can start growing in it.”

             
“Let's get started then.” Martha said with a tone of finality. “Anything that can be used for water storage needs to be filled.”

             
“Is there anything else we need to discuss while we're here?” Jody asked. No one spoke up with anything else on their minds. “Then, meeting adjourned. Let the rest of the complex know what the project is at hand.”

             
We had gone through all the units before when we were looking for food and medicine but since container grabbing wasn't on the to do list it was probable that we hadn't gotten out containers that could be used. It hadn't been a priority before. In this go around, we gathered trash cans for gray water and containers with lids for the drinking water. In one unit, we found ten empty five gallon water jugs. I couldn't figure out how we had walked right by this on the first run. I did some quick math. If the average person needs to drink 64 ounces of water a day that was half of a gallon. There were 18 of us. More or less these containers alone would cover us for only five days. True, I was figuring the kids taking the same amount that the adults needed but it was just easier to round it. Besides, I thought, just because the numbers worked out didn't mean it would actually work out. It was a lot like a budget, just because the numbers worked out didn't mean it would actually work that way.

             
Many of the units had some sort of container. There were a few water pitchers or sun tea containers. There were many empty two liter bottles set out for recycling as well as the 20 ounce soda bottles. One team spent the rest of the day cleaning them all out and filling them. I hoped that it would give us a bit of wiggle room in the likely event that the running water failed. We added the bleach in with each filled container. It only took two drops of bleach for every quart to make it safe to drink. He added in the conversion of four quarts make a gallon to help make it easier to figure out. The water unit was placed next to the food unit. It would be easier for ration pick up if they were next door to each other.

             
We decided that we should start collecting the gray water now to be fully in the habit of it to water the gardens with. It wouldn't hurt anything to be in that habit.

             
“So mom, what exactly is gray water anyway?” Drew asked while we were both in the process of scrubbing out a particularly soap scummy tub. I was half grumbling in my head wondering how anyone thought they were going to get clean bathing in this.

             
“Gray water is water that looks clean enough but we shouldn't drink. Laundry water, dish water, bath water is all gray water. Used toilet water is black water.” I responded. “Black water is so nasty that you don't even want to use it on plants.”

             
“Why not? It's fertilizer built in, right? Fertilizer is poop.”

             
“It is poop. Problem is people poop has germs that can be picked up by people. Cow poop like in fertilizer doesn't transmit to people. A long time ago there was this big thing around here because the school district, in an effort to save money, had bought of strawberries from Mexico. In Mexico there wasn't an inspection to make sure that the right kind of fertilizer was being used. Turns out this place was using human excrement to save money. They had unknowingly been using excrement that had a disease called Hepatitis A. The disease stayed on the strawberries and it infected several kids. They had to be on a ton of medications to fix their liver. That school district was in a crapload of trouble over that. Ever since that story was on we all remember that we don't do that. People here are probably healthy and all and it would probably be fine, but no one wants to learn the hard way that we should have been more careful.”

             
Drew was carefully thinking about all this. “But gray water is usable?”

             
“You got it.” I replied.

             
“How are things going?” Trent asked. I jumped a mile in the air, startled because I hadn't heard him walk in. He was laughing at me so I threw a sponge at him, missing. He laughed harder.