Jess, Emma and Jared took turns showering and bathing.
“Clean, what a glorious feeling,” Emma said.
The whole crowd was newly energized by their innovation: the simple addition of hot water.
Vestiges of civilization were slowly creeping back into their lives.
“Back to the Future,” Jess said. “Dennis talked about building a solar oven too, but I'm not sure I want to do that without him. He was talking about gaskets and double-walled construction and stuff. I think we should get as many of the supplies as we can so that we can do it tomorrow.”
“What do you need?” Emma asked.
“Well, we'll need another window, but not so big this time,” Jess said. “The oven will be smaller so I think the wood scraps you have in the barn will be big enough. We can use the rolled insulation we got today and some screws.”
Emma grinned at the teen's enthusiasm. “Just make sure it's big enough for two loaves of bread at a time. Do you think you can do that?”
“Sure, we can build it any size, but we'll have to find a window for it. The window will go in the lid and reflectors go around that to direct the sun into the box. Some backyard solar ovens get as hot as three hundred and fifty degrees. We were learning about them in science. Mr. Steiner brought his into school and we cooked potatoes in it. Oh, I forgot—we need mirrors for the reflectors.”
“Well, I think you two have done more than enough for one day,” Emma said, smiling. “Why don't you guys help me with dinner and then you can go out in the morning looking for your window and mirrors? Go outside and start me a small fire, would you? I'll need the coals for the Dutch oven.”
****
The moon was nearly full; it shone almost fluorescent against the mountain cliffs all around. The night was so still, it was if the world had stopped turning. Kelly rode up to the porch, where Jared sat waiting for her.
“The others are just behind me,” she said. “It's after midnight; I didn't think you'd wait up.” She took off her cowboy hat and swung her long hair free, dismounted her horse gracefully, then started slowly toward the barn.
Jared opened the front door and announced loudly, “Everyone's home,” then ran after Kelly and took Pokey's reigns. “I thought you'd never get back,” he said as they walked side by side. “You look tired. How was the trip?”
It was just polite conversation while walking up the hill, and Kelly knew it.
When they got to the corral, the two stood still for a moment, staring at each other. Jared wasn't in the mood for staring or polite conversation. He threw his good arm around Kelly's waist, drew her in and kissed her deeply.
“I'm glad to be home,” Kelly said breathlessly.
“I can see that, my dear. I should send you away more often if absence makes the heart grow fonder. It did for me.”
They melted into each other again. Tiredness racked Kelly's body. She leaned into him heavily. He stood there sturdily as she rested her head on his chest. She felt him breathing.
Jared ran his hand through her hair. “You smell good,” he said. He put his nose to the nape of her neck and inhaled deeply.
“Don't be silly,” Kelly said, “I've been riding all day.”
“No, I'd know your scent anywhere, follow you anywhere.”
Kelly stood motionless, taking it all in: the night, the warmth, the closeness.
The sounds of the other men's horses soon interrupted. Kelly stood upright and turned toward the barn. Jared opened the corral gate and led Pokey in, releasing him to feed and water.
Dennis and Rich brought the other three tired horses to the corral gate and unbridled them, setting them loose as well. All four walked back to the house together, Jared and Kelly hand in hand.
Lynn rushed out onto the porch and folded herself into her dad's arms. “I'm so glad to see you back home, safe and sound.” Dennis wrapped his arms around her, grateful to have a daughter who still missed him.
“Dinner is on the table,” Emma said, tossing a dish towel over her shoulder.
The delicious smell of chicken stew, made from canned soup with added greens and garden carrots, revived their tired bodies enough to be hungry. Everyone made their way to the kitchen, where they sat and related news of the trip while they ate their small rations. They had skirted town as much as possible and kept their weapons high profile. The padlocked enclosure where they had left supplies was undisturbed and the group loaded quickly and hurried out of town unchallenged. They had seen a dead body along the way, but the circumstances of the death were unclear. When beggars or thugs approached on the roadway, they had kept their weapons in sight and at the ready.
“Thanks for getting the supplies,” Emma said. “We need everything we can get our hands on.”
Jose glanced at the new plumbing and whistled. “Now that's something. Who did that?”
“We did,” answered Jess and Lynn enthusiastically. “Took us all day.”
“It works wonderfully,” Emma enthused. “No fuel to heat for dishwashing, and my shower was heaven. Too bad for you; it's after bathing hours, sun's down.”
“Looks like we'll have to wait until tomorrow and pray for sunny skies,” Jose said. “I'm glad to hear you guys did such a good job.” He smiled at Jess and Lynn. Both of the teens beamed.
“We did it just like you told us, Dad,” Jess said. “The water gets really hot too. We didn't work on the solar oven today, though.”
“We can build the cooker tomorrow. I think I've had all the fun I can stand for today. It's time for bed.”
****
In the morning, Dennis and Lynn went to the Branham house for another window and a mirror for the solar oven. They made a better search through the building for food, but found nothing worth scavenging. Lynn chose a few bolts of fabric from the garage to take home.
The others unloaded the cart and worked making row covers for the garden to keep the winter frost at bay.
When the scavenging party returned from their mission, everyone met back in the yard and started construction on the oven. The window that had been salvaged was two by three feet. Jess and Jose made a frame to fit around it. They built an insulated box with a forty-five degree angled glass lid to collect the sunshine. It took them all afternoon to finish the oven and build a frame to angle the mirrored reflectors correctly.
“Fine job,” Emma said. “Makes me want to bake something.”
“Not today, I'm afraid,” Jose said. “We are getting short on daylight. Baking will have to start mid-morning and finish up by sundown. We'll have to experiment with timing and temperatures, I'm afraid. I don't know how hot it will get either. It will depend on if it's pre-heated and if there are clouds that day.”
“Preheated!” Emma laughed.
“Yes,” said Jose. “You heard me right. You'll have to turn the glass to the east the night before so that by mid-morning, the bricks on the interior will be hot enough to maintain temperature. Solar ovens take a while to bring their contents up to temperature and need mass to keep the temperature steady.
“Great,” Emma said, “another skill set to learn. I'm ready.”
Chapter 12
The morning chores completed, Rich led the clan to his house. House may have been a bit of an overstatement; it was more of a cabin. Built of stone walls and a wood-shingled roof, it sat behind and higher up the canyon than Emma's house. With the exception of Jared, the men had all slept in the shed near the barn up until this point. They had been on the porch for breakfast and in the crowded living room once, but had never really been invited in any further than that. Rich now led the group through the small living room lined with books. A table in the dining area—it couldn't be described as a whole room—was covered with electronic equipment.
Colored charts and maps covered a huge pushpin board on the wall. This was Rich's ham radio shack. The radios were scattered across the table, unusable since the power outage.
Rich led the others into his tiny bachelor's kitchen and opene
d what seemed to be a pantry. He turned his shoulders sideways to make his body as narrow as possible and squeezed through the small, hidden doorway. Kelly blinked, baffled at what she had just seen, before stepping closer to peer into the small space. Rich had descended dusty, wooden stairs into a rock-lined cellar and stood at the bottom, bathed in the soft glow of an oil lamp. The pitch black had been forced back and the yellow glow revealed a large room lined with metal shelves that were loaded with canned goods. Platforms hung from the ceiling beams, holding boxes and wrapped bundles. Boxes were stacked in the corners. Rich placed the lamp on a table in the center of the room as the others filed down the narrow stairway. Despite the stored items, the basement was spacious, having the same footprint as the house upstairs.
“Here it is,” Rich proudly announced with his arms open wide. “This is my year's supply.”
“It's like a secret passage in a movie,” Lynn said. She brushed away a few cobwebs from the ceiling beams as she descended.
“Or a haunted house,” Jess said as he ran his hand along the cool rock wall.
Kelly felt the cool, dry air as she entered. The room smelled of dust.
Where are all the five-gallon buckets of wheat?” Dennis asked. “I thought preppers ground their own wheat into flour.”
“I never understood that,” Rich said. “I used to look at the suggested year's supply list and see four to six hundred pounds of wheat and sixty pounds of sugar per person. Then I looked at what I ate. It wasn't even close. Nobody I know uses that much flour. I decided that I would store the kind of foods that I would normally eat. No need to use somebody else's list.”
“Mostly canned goods,” Emma said, looking around the room. “How come you didn't show me this before, ol' man?”
“Not everything is your business, ol' woman.”
“I guess you don't bake much,” said Emma.
“I do bake,” Rich said. “There's enough flour to bake a couple of loaves of bread a week and plenty of extra for other cooking and baking. I don't plan on grinding any wheat. Wheat lasts forty years, flour only lasts ten. I used the food down here every day and replaced it when I went to the store. If I can't use up my initial stock of flour in ten years, I'm storing the wrong stuff.” He walked down the line of shelves, motioning to various items. “I keep plenty of beans and brown rice, too. They're good for protein. These cans have a good selection of meat, fish, vegetables and fruits. With a little creativity plus my garden and animals, I can dine like a king.”
“A bachelor king, or a prince maybe,” Emma quipped.
“I've been dining at the queen's table,” Rich said looking Emma right in the eyes. “And I have no complaints.”
“Pretty clever,” Dennis said looking around the room. “It's not just food either.”
“Which brings us to these trash cans over here,” Rich said. He looked at the paper labels taped on the can lids. “Ah, this one,” he said, removing the metallic tape sealing the can and lifting the lid. Styrofoam lined the inside, which was in turn filled with cardboard boxes. Rich easily extracted two small FRS radios and batteries. “Here, put these batteries in and let's see if they work.” He handed Lynn and Jess each a walkie-talkie.
With the batteries inserted, the teens pushed the power buttons. “Hello, hello,” Lynn said holding the push-to-talk button.
“I can hear you. Can you hear me?” Jess said into his radio from across the room.
“Yes, I can,” Lynn responded, not bothering to transmit.
“Looks like your Faraday cage worked, Rich,” Jose said. “What kind of goodies did you stash in these cans? This is better than Christmas.”
Rich selected another trash container and opened the lid. “This is a radio station in a trash can. We can set it up in the dining room.”
He handed out parcels and bundles from the container and everyone started up the stairs. Lynn and Jess helped clear the ham shack table of all of the now-useless electronics as Rich unpacked an olive-drab radio that bristled with several knobs and switches.
“That looks like real military stuff,” Jess said.
“It's British Army surplus,” Rich said. “They call it a Clansman PRC-320. It's a high-frequency radio for long-distance communication. You can carry it on your back or hook it up to a vehicle. I have two.”
“We had HF radios in Civil Air Patrol, but we didn't use them often,” Lynn said.
Rich unpacked a microphone, speaker, Morse code key, and a green box with a hand crank and other parts. In a few minutes, the pieces were connected.
“This is the hand-cranked power supply to charge the batteries,” Rich said, looking directly at Jess and then Lynn. “I'll need help outside repairing the antenna before we can fire her up.”
He removed a coaxial cable from a burlap bag. The group moved outside to the green telescoping pole set vertically on the side of the house. Two wires hung from the top of the mast, which formed the true antenna. Rich removed a pin from the pole, causing an upper section to slide into the lower section. This process was repeated until the entire mast was collapsed and they could easily reach the top. Finally he removed the ruined coax and replaced it with the new one. He climbed up a ladder and passed the new coax connector into a conduit under the eaves of the house. Rich and Dennis worked together to lift the pole section by section until the antenna was back in its full upright position.
“That should do it, let's go in,” Rich said, brushing the dust from his jeans.
Everyone followed him inside and watched as Rich made the final connection to the back of the Clansman. Running his finger down a frequency list on the pushpin board, he scribbled a note, then sat down at his radio, turning dials to set the frequency, and then adjusted the antenna tuner.
“Okay, let's see what happens. Jess, will you do the honors?” Rich pointed to the hand-cranked generator. “There should be some residual battery power.” Jess cranked for a few minutes and then Rich threw the power switch. A quiet hiss emanated from the speaker. “The background noise is very low.”
“What does that mean?” Dennis asked.
“Normally, it means you didn't put the antenna on the radio.” Rich chuckled. “Today, it may mean the receiver isn't working or that background emissions are low. Things like power lines, street lights, car alternators and most anything electric put out a radio signal. Those signals mix with cosmic radiation, and the radio itself generates electrical static, making the background noise. When this happens, hissing, crackling and popping come from the speakers. With the power grid down and no electronics working, its pretty quiet.” He adjusted the knobs again and listened closely. “I've tuned into the frequency of the Arizona Emergency Net.”
“Is that a government net?” Jose asked.
“No, it's an amateur radio net for passing messages. It doesn't seem active. During a disaster, the frequency should be jam-packed with stations handling messages.”
“So does that mean the receiver is broken?” Jared asked.
“I'm not sure. I'll tune around and see if I can hear anything else,” Rich said. “The Arizona Emergency Net is in a band that's good for local communication during the day and long distances at night. Let's see if there are any shortwave broadcast stations on the bands for long-distance daytime communication.”
“What if we don't hear anything?” Jess asked, visibly shaken.
“Just because a long-distance station is transmitting doesn't mean that we can hear it,” Rich said calmly. “The radio waves go up and bounce or skip off of the ionosphere and come back down. For us to hear those signals, we have to be where the waves come down.” He opened a book lying nearby and scanned its pages before making further adjustments to the radio dials. “Voice of America, nothing.” He readjusted the radio. “BBC, still nothing.” Rich continued tuning.
“So we don't know if the radio is broken, if the stations are not transmitting, or if they are transmitting and we just can't hear them,” Jared said.
Suddenly a new sound
came from the speaker. It sounded almost human. Rich turned a dial very slowly, making minute adjustments until they could make out a scratchy voice, broken and barely audible. The group could only understand a small part of the words being spoken by the broadcaster.
“It's Radio Australia, the Australians are beaming radio signals toward Asia and the Pacific like they always do,” Rich said. The clan was glued to the speaker.
“Prime Minister... Governor General... Australian Defense Force... Europe... United States... supplies... Iran... Israel... Japan... China...”
So went the broadcast. It was just enough to hold all of the group's attention and provided no real answers.
“Hey, can someone else peddle this thing?” Jess asked, sweat glistening on his brow.
“Oh, sorry, forgot about you,” Rich said. “That's a pretty good workout.”
Lynn touched his hand and Jess recoiled from the sudden tension. Their eyes met for the briefest of seconds, but it was enough. “I'll take a turn,” she said. No one seemed to notice their brief exchange.
“I think I would like to set up my other radio,” Rich said. “It's a Yeasu and it will let us see if the Clansman is receiving correctly. We can also listen for VHF, very high frequencies, and UHF, ultra high frequencies, on that one.
“Why don't we try calling someone with the Clansman radio?” Lynn asked.
“Just because someone has a radio doesn't mean they are friendly,” Rich said. “No need to attract unwanted attention. Now is the time for listening. First, we'll check for local activity on VHF.”
Rich returned to the basement, this time returning with the Yeasu FT-817, a small, portable HF/VHF/UHF radio, a VHF/UHF antenna and two solar battery chargers. He set it up near its bigger green cousin and using a small antenna on the Yeasu, checked to see that both radios were sending and receiving correctly. When he tried listening to the Australian station with the smaller radio, the signal was no better. Next, two solar panels were placed outside the cabin and connected to trickle charge the two radios' batteries. The mast outside was lowered and the eight-foot VHF/UHF antenna was attached on top.
Post Grid: An Arizona EMP Adventure Page 18
