Jared dipped his chin and gassed the car into forward motion, leaving John to stand in a cloud of dust kicked up by the VW and trailer. John broke a large branch off one of the many bushes near the fence and used it to brush away any tracks left by the car or trailer. He reattached the fence to the old weathered fence post, leaving behind no sign he and Jared had passed through. When John was finished, he jogged the half mile to where Jared stood next to the car, rifle hung at low ready, waiting and scanning.
The two men climbed back into the car, started the raucous engine, and continued the last short distance to the ranch house. Like every time Jared left, he felt a sense of dread as he got close to the house. He hoped the women and especially Essie were fine. When he and John pulled into the ranch house’s front yard and he saw the front door to the residence was intact, he felt a little better. When Essie came blasting through the door with Shannon close behind, Jared breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Salvador was much more standoffish as the women and two men hugged, excitedly talking about the helicopter they’d heard the night before and then again a few hours ago. Essie didn’t leave Jared’s side as everyone caught up on how their trip went and what the women did to remain busy while Jared and the rest of the men were gone. Only a couple of days had passed, but it was evident Shannon, Stephani and Claire were happy to have company.
Crank came around the corner of the house, stopped, then barked briefly before sniffing at the air and finally approaching the men.
“That dog keeps us up all night with his barking and growling,” Shannon complained, fixing eyes with John.
John smiled as he scratched the dog’s head. “Probably all the wildlife out here. He’ll get used to it and settle in the longer he stays with us.”
“I sure hope so,” Stephani injected.
Later that afternoon, Carlos, Barry, Calvin and Devon arrived home, tired, sore and hungry. Jared knew someone was coming when Crank tore out of the house, heading toward the OP, which was unmanned at the time. Both John and Jared followed the little white dog until they saw the men riding in. Their ride, although long, had gone smoothly, with Devon guiding them away from any unwanted contact with the people in and around the greater San Jose area. It wasn’t that any of them were antisocial, it was just a matter of minimizing one’s risk. The more contact you allowed with other humans, the higher your risk of getting killed or hurt was.
Chapter 43
Over the next two days, Barry and Jared worked together on the electronic component of their solar endeavors while Carlos and John worked on devising a method to install the panels in a manner in which they could absorb the most sun and not topple in a strong wind. John and Carlos ended up tearing portions of the shed down and using the timber to build a rack-like system to cradle the panels so they were off the ground and secure.
Barry needed to repair some of the motherboards in the inverter and other components, but was at a loss on how to do it, when Jared suggested using a fire like a blacksmith would have used. They could superheat a spike or nail and use it just like a soldering iron.
By the end of the second day, Barry wrestled the electronic components into a serviceable condition, ready to connect to the panels. The third day the men hung the Powerwall batteries on the side of the ranch house and connected them to the panels.
On the fourth day, Barry completed the last few tasks and connected the battery to the house, powering everything up. The women screamed in delight as the refrigerator hummed to life, accompanied by many of the lights inside the house. Jared went around the house shutting all the lights off, not wanting to drain any unneeded power from the batteries.
After the joy of finally having some level of power back wore off Jared and the group, they all sat and talked about what they needed in the way of electrically operated items. Many items simply wouldn’t work, having been damaged too badly by the event to even consider being repaired. The fact that the refrigerator worked was astonishing to Jared until Barry informed him the unit was probably older than the both of them and probably had the same amount of electronics in its innards as a 1908 Ford Model-T.
While Barry labored with the solar array, Carlos finished solving their drinking water problem by way of a filtration system he built. No one had been able to get to a pool store for the calcium chloride Carlos needed for the perfect setup, but instead he improvised. Carlos used a large blue barrel, lining the bottom with charcoal taken from the group’s many fires. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do for now. Next, he packed small rocks on top of the charcoal, and lastly, he poured sand over the rocks. When he was finished, the barrel was a third full of his ad hoc water-purification system.
Carlos constructed a stand for the barrel and brought both items inside the house, placing them in the corner of the kitchen like a water cooler. Carlos stretched a folded sheet across the bottom of the stand and set the barrel on top. The barrel pinched the sheet against the stand, allowing it to sag only slightly. Under the stand, Carlos placed a small tub for gathering the filtered water that drained from a small hole Carlos cut in the bottom of the barrel.
The gravity feed line from the creek was run to the outside of the kitchen, then pushed through a hole Carlos cut in the wall above the sink.
