John’s mouth opened slightly as he hurried to stay abreast of the two lest he miss one second of this mouthwatering talk of food and drink. He wasn’t starved by any stretch, but also hadn’t benefitted from a real cooked meal in a while.
“Meat? You guys ate cooked meat? Are you sure it wasn’t human?” John asked, his mouth watering at the thought of actual cooked meat, not human meat of course.
“No, it was venison, and they smoked it or roasted it in the ground,” Jared explained, loving the look on John’s face.
“Who were these people?” John finally asked, feeling like he’d missed out on an opportunity of a lifetime.
“Tongans, a whole family. Maybe twelve or more. They stayed in their house, and as people left or died, they expanded their yard by knocking over fences. They also have a pretty good security situation. They have enough people to pull watch all night and day, and they scavenged barbed wire from somewhere, strung it all around the place. Anyone trying to get in would make enough noise to get those guards on them, and then, well—they all had rifles, so it didn’t seem like they were getting messed with too much,” Jared finished.
Chapter 35
John knew Jared’s story and how Jared had somehow managed to survive when everything John knew of the world screamed people like Jared should all be dead. John was acutely aware of the fact that Jared thought his way through most of the first month before falling into company with Bart, who taught Jared how to take decisive and sometimes violent action in order to continue his existence on earth. Knowing all this, John was still bewildered by the other man’s ability to drift through life unscathed.
John marveled at Jared’s ability to think on his feet, as he had with the whole whistle-code thing, not to mention Jared’s story of how he got a group of Tongans to invite him to dinner when food was more valuable than diamonds. John was liking Jared more and more, but was careful with their friendship after the Shannon episode. John was the newcomer to the group, and when Shannon took a liking to him, Jared had made it clear he hadn’t liked it. John had nearly a decade more life experience than Jared and knew better than to make any more out of Jared’s being upset than it deserved. They were trying to survive, not pick up women in a club. John had plenty to do without chasing skirt in a post-apocalyptic world.
For now, John would keep his admiration of Jared to himself, and maybe he’d keep it that way forever, he didn’t know. John was also aware of Jared’s insecurities when it came to John. They got along fine for the most part, but John knew Jared strived to impress him with his ability to shoot and take care of the group. It was as though John were a measuring stick based on his past profession. John almost laughed out loud when he thought about how much of his former self didn’t work in this new world.
He was perfectly fitted for the shooting and battle part of the new world, but the rest was pretty new to even him. He liked hot showers, home-cooked meals, beautiful-smelling ladies and cars when he wasn’t on a mission. Now he was perpetually on a mission. He walked everywhere, ate little, and it sucked.
“Okay, sounds like you two got damn lucky. You didn’t by chance bring any of that meat with you?” John asked, already knowing the answer would be a resounding no.
Jared shook his head, a grim look on his face. “’Fraid not.”
Back at Solar Green, Stephani and Jared dropped their packs while Claire crowded in after seeing Stephani in a new pair of shoes. Jared left the women to sift through the packs while he and John went to the back of the warehouse to see what Barry had been doing during Jared’s absence. They found Barry in a corner, tinkering with a large piece of electronic equipment. Jared guessed it was some form of inverter by the looks of the thing.
Barry told Jared that the day before, he and John had dragged a smaller section of solar panels outside and positioned them to face the sunlight. Barry connected the panels, then ran the connective cables back inside the warehouse, where he worked to get a current running through a charge controller and into a battery.
Barry further explained his plan was to suck power from the sun, run it through the charge controller, then into a battery. Barry planned on running the power from the battery through an inverter and then on to whatever appliances they could find that remained operational. Barry told Jared, just because a piece of electrical gear didn’t work didn’t mean it was useless. Barry told Jared and John he felt he would be able to repair many of the items affected by the event.
Barry showed Jared where he’d staged six Powerwall batteries. Jared pushed on one and found the thing weighed a ton.
John smiled with his brows raised as Jared struggled with the heavy battery. “Each one is, like, two hundred pounds. We ain’t carrying them all back to the house,” John cautioned.
“How are we getting all this stuff back up into the mountains?” Jared questioned as he released the weighty battery.
“Haven’t worked that out yet. I want to stage all the stuff we need here, then secure this building and come back with whatever we figure out to move it all,” Barry interjected.
Jared turned to John as if the man would have a ready-made answer for the problem. John scratched at his beard, but said nothing. Jared’s mind drifted back to a time not so long ago in an apartment in Belmont. At the time, he had no idea what had caused the loss of all the electronic gear and
