Joe glared at him dramatically. “Not a chance. I get to tell him, or the deal’s off.”
“Done.”
The farmer looked over at the house, and the hills beyond. “So, what’s the plan for water? You said you’d fix that problem, too, and you’d better, if you want these people to have water to drink.”
“That’s easy. Easy to plan, at least. You’ll be mighty glad you’re taking in those refugees, though.” David let go of Joe’s shoulder and turned to motion at the hills. “See where those two hills join together? There’s a big ravine there, basically, right? Like a saddle.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Well, you’re going to have to dig down into the top to make a basin, a good ten feet deep at least, but no more than twenty. Dig it wide, across the whole tops of those hills, but leave about a quarter of its width on all sides.”
Joe let out a low whistle. “Lots of digging, ’specially without a backhoe. And it’ll cave, where the ravine lays.”
“Lay in sandbags to fill out the ravine, down to well below the basin floor’s level. It’ll hold. And if you can find enough tarps, or just a bunch of clay, line the pond you made, so it doesn’t seep out too fast.”
“Easy enough, sure. What next?”
“Then, move from two-inch pipe at the top, down to your regular pipes feeding the house supply. Gravity will apply all the pressure you need, and more. I can write out the way to figure the pressure, based on how high up you place it. Figure that out, just to see whether you’ll need a pressure limiter at the house junction.”
David went on to describe in some detail about each step in the self-siphoning system, the farmer stopping him occasionally to ask questions, and he was thankful they were smart questions. It meant he didn’t have to worry too much about Joe forgetting steps or cutting corners and ending up with a bigger problem for which David would be blamed.
Of course, the conversation wandered, as well, and they laughed or shared misery about exes, high school, jobs, and more.
At the end, David glanced at his watch and saw that it was a quarter past six. He’d been talking for an hour, and Orien had stayed moping in the car for most of that. But, it was kind of nice to talk to someone other than Orien, for once, and somewhere in there, Joe had invited him to supper after the water situation was fixed, of course. David surprised himself by accepting the invitation, if he was still in town by then.
As the conversation wrapped up, however, Joe said, “Where’d you learn all that? Were you a plumber, before putting on that badge?”
David grinned. “Nope. I studied things like that on my own, in high school mostly, to pass the time.”
“Ha. You’re a stereotype. Got tired of getting bullied, so now you get to do the bullying. I heard you shot a looter who was trying to kill one of us—us being the farmers around here, not that crap-head, Cobi. They say you had to shoot him five times with a shotgun because he was on that angel dust. Scary stuff, out there.”
David sighed. The stereotype might have fit in his case, but it wasn’t like that for most of the officers he knew. And people usually said that when he was writing them a ticket for something they actually did, not in a friendly tone mid-conversation.
Still, Joe didn’t seem put off. He was just a straight talker. “Maybe, Joe, but I’m one of the few cops I know like that. And I don’t go around bullying people, but I do try to protect people from the same sorts who made my life hard in school. They grow up to be criminals, a lot of the time.”
Joe nodded. “Worse bullies, not better.”
“Right. And although I did have to discharge my firearm to defend myself, while breaking up a mob of refugees, I only shot him once. No PCP was involved that I know of, either. You farmers sure like to gossip.”
Joe shrugged. “Sure, we like to talk about our neighbors every chance we get. What else is there to do for fun, but watch the pigs humping?”
David threw his head back and laughed at that. “Now, there’s a stereotype thing to say if there ever was one.”
Joe frowned, and David thought he might have said something wrong, until he replied, “We got a lot of stereotype people, here. Like Cobi, that rat. He’s every stereotype about petty bureaucrats, and fits all of them perfectly.”
“I see,” David said, his tone neutral. The dinky town’s political issues were none of his concern, even if he didn’t care much for Mayor Cobi.
Joe didn’t seem to notice his tone change, however, and continued his diatribe. “Now, that was all well and good when everything pretty much ran itself and he couldn’t do much damage, but since the CMEs, we need real leaders, not paper-pushing jerks like him.”
“The townies seem to like him.” David shrugged.
“Oh, sure, he smiles pretty for the cameras, and townies care more about pretty smiles than firm handshakes. But have you ever disagreed with him? He has the total Jekyll-and-Hyde thing going on.”
“Mm-hm.” David recalled Cobi’s words at the town hall, and frowned.
“Yeah, that man leaves no room for discussion. But the thing is, everything does not run itself, not anymore. We need new ways of doing things, new ideas. But with Cobi, unless those ideas come out of his feeble little mouse-brain, he wants no part of it.” Joe paused, then added, “Unless he can take credit for it, of course. Then he’s all over it.”
David found himself nodding. That, he had indeed noticed. And he didn’t care, since he was leaving as soon as he got gas enough to go somewhere else.
That reminded him of his fuel issue. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to have spare fuel to gas up the SUV, would you? Cobi provides very little—just enough to patrol town, or to head out here and back.”
Joe shook his head. “You mean he gives you just enough to keep you here and reporting to him. I sure wish I did have it, officer. I’d have given you a full tank for free, just to piss him off. Hell, in the time you’ve been here, you’ve done more to help Weldona than he never did in all the time since he got out of diapers.”
David let out a sigh. “But you don’t have any gas to spare?”
“Nope, sorry to say. Try my ass-hat neighbor’s house, the jerk with the new tractor he’s using as a lawn ornament now. I bet it has a tank of gas, and he sure isn’t using it up in that tractor.”
“Thanks. I will. But I have to get going, and you have work to do, I’m sure. Can I get that load of food we talked about, for the refugees? Figure on them coming either later this evening or mid-morning, tomorrow. It’ll take them a while to walk here, so I don’t think they’ll head out today.”
While Joe cheerfully loaded up the SUV with fresh food, whistling a happy tune, David leaned against the SUV and considered the man’s words. Was Weldona truly so poorly led? If so, the world had better recover fast or Weldona and its people would be in very real trouble, very soon.
The drive out to the refugees was quiet, with Orien pouting and David pointedly ignoring it. The trainee’s behavior was kind of a mystery, though. Why had he become so upset? Hell, he received worse jokes at his expense every morning before starting his shifts, back at the precinct, and took that in stride. David decided not to ask, as they were almost to the refugees.
He pulled in, at the encampment outskirt this time, and walked up to the man he took to be their leader without waiting for his partner. He didn’t hear the sound of Orien’s car door opening and closing, however. Still pouting…
“Hey,” the refugees’ leader said as he approached David. “Any luck in helping us?”
David forced a wan smile. “I did indeed; a carload of help. Everything the town could spare at the moment, and all the freshest stuff.”
“You’re a godsend, officer.” The man beamed a smile.
David ignored the compliment and said, “Listen, those who want to wander on are free to do so, though they should go around Weldona, not through it. But I have something else to consider.”
“I’m listening,” the man said, looking sideways at David, his skepticism evident.<
br />
“I found a farmer who needs farmhands. Work for him, and get food and a place to pitch your tent. He’ll even consider building some shelters for those who want to stay and work. Any of you who work through harvest time will stay warm, dry, and fed all through winter.”
“You don’t think this will last that long, do you?” The refugee leader crossed his arms, almost like he was challenging the notion.
“I do. I see nothing that says otherwise. But if it doesn’t, well, you won’t be prisoners. Leave whenever you want to. But if things don’t get any better, then what? You have food for today. What about tomorrow? What about when the snow starts to fall? You’ll have a mutiny, even if you do everything right—and no one gets it all right, especially in these circumstances.”
The man shook David’s hand, then went to talk to his people about the idea. They talked for twenty minutes, during which time David didn’t see anyone yelling, so that was a good sign.
When the leader returned and said they’d take up the offer, and thanked him for basically saving their lives, David forgot all about his earlier frustrations and, as they stood around talking and laughing in the suddenly festive atmosphere, Orien even got out of the SUV and joined in.
It was amazing to think that he’d probably saved all these people’s lives, and stopping in here had all been on a whim. That’s how close life and death had become.
And maybe Farmer Joe was right about Cobi. Maybe, David mused, he’d stick around just long enough to make sure Cobi didn’t get everyone in Weldona killed. Hell, the precinct probably didn’t need him half as much as Weldona did…
A short time later, he drove back into town, confused about the issues he faced and more uncertain of the future than ever, but he felt a mental high from his day’s work that left him humming happy tunes as he drove, and even Orien soon joined in, singing the songs David hummed, with a surprisingly strong voice.
Not a bad day’s work, after all.
30
“Okay,” Christine said, pointing at a handwritten bullet point on a sheet of lined paper. “As you can see here, you have farmers who grow foods that don’t easily perish, like potatoes or summer wheat.”
She held the paper out a bit, so the half-dozen people attending the meeting could see it, too.
Jacob “Cobi” Jones, the HOA president and sort-of mayor—the big fish in a very small pond—nodded. “Okay, but we also have other crops.”
Wiley, sitting on her other side, answered first. “We all eat the perishable stuff first, like berries.”
Christine added, “Minus whatever we can offload to our immediate neighbors in trade, or to one of those traveling merchants you’ve been seeing, of course.”
“Okay… And the rest? The stuff that keeps longer? What about that?”
Christine nodded. “The grains and tubers and so on, you save for our own merchants to travel a bit farther to trade it out. We could send someone to try trading with Denver, but there are roadblocks, and some of the things David mentioned make that kind of a scary idea for whoever had to go.”
Cobi frowned. “I don’t get it.”
Christine tried very hard not to frown. How many times had she heard some bureaucrat say that, at her work, when they were buying time to formulate some way of shooting down an idea they hadn’t come up with themselves? If he followed up by saying it was too complicated to try, she thought she might scream. The man was a walking, talking stereotype, a bureaucrat down to his bones. She controlled her breathing, though, and replied evenly, “Are you sure you can’t understand this concept? Because it’s pretty simple.”
“Simple to you, because it’s your idea.”
Yeah, it was… Christine let her smirk show. “You did go to college, so I’m sure you can understand it. Any old farmer can ‘get it’ just fine. Maybe I can explain it a different way, so that it’s more clear to you?”
For once, she didn’t pull her punches, and it felt good.
Cobi clenched his jaw, but nodded. “Mm-hm.”
Gotcha. She’d painted him into a corner. She pointed again at the bullet-point item written above it. “Here are the number of acres under cultivation at any time, and here, we have the number of people each acre can feed, on average, based on the seeds we have available—”
The double doors at the meeting hall’s far end opened, interrupting her as David and his sidekick cop walked in, and she stood to turn and wave in greeting.
David nodded back to her, but then he looked right at Cobi as he approached.
Cobi smiled his plastic, fake smile at them, and Christine imagined herself smacking that look off his face. He said, “How are my favorite Weldona P-D officers doing, this morning?”
David said, “Remember the farmer with the well pump that wasn’t working, so his wife had to go without water in the house? Joe Jones?”
Cobi frowned. “How can I forget? My idiot cousin. He refused to go to college, yammering about ‘family duty’ and ‘making sure the bank doesn’t take the farm’ from his dad. My uncle. Also an idiot.”
Some of the farmers standing around cocked their heads at him, even glaring, but Cobi ignored them.
Christine shook her head. As long as that jerk had the townie vote, he didn’t have to worry about pleasing the peasants doing the farming…
David’s expression never changed, not even a twitch of his lips or cheeks flushing. Impressive, given how the cop must feel about Cobi and his asinine statements. He said, “I fixed his water delivery issue—”
“You fixed his pump?” Cobi interrupted. “Where’d you find the parts? You didn’t loot them, did you?”
David’s placid demeanor cracked for just a moment, eyes narrowing for a second.
Cobi smiled smugly before David could repair his professional mask.
David replied, “I did not. I found an alternative, one that will last longer and be less prone to malfunction with lack of parts and maintenance.”
“I see. And you’re telling me this, why?”
“In truth, I was trying to earn a tank of gas to resume my actual duties, which are those of a Denver police officer rather than Weldona’s. Unfortunately, he just didn’t have it to spare, though he suggested I ask his neighbor with the new tractor.”
Cobi nodded at him. “Oh yes, that man’s a genius at farming. You should hear him talk about it. It’s very impressive—very educated.”
Christine rolled her eyes, and had the amusing thought that Cobi’s “genius” farmer probably had a tractor that didn’t work, explaining how he might have gas to spare. She kept silent, though, and sat back down.
It occurred to her that David had helped the man, even without getting gas in return to run away from Weldona. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to. But the fact that he’d done that was a bit surprising, and maybe he wasn’t the stereotype she’d pegged him for.
Just as interestingly, she wondered about his alternative with the water, what he’d done to fix it without parts or power. If Cobi’s cousin didn’t have gas to trade for getting his water working, he sure didn’t have gas to spare to run a generator, just to keep a well pump under pressure… She made a note to ask David about that later, but for the moment, couldn’t help but smile at him. Bonus, he’d irritated Cobi.
Wiley said, “That’s fantastic. Well done, David. No pun intended. I didn’t think you would be the type to help people without being told to, but maybe I misjudged you.”
David cocked his head at Wiley, and Christine turned around to face him, too. How hard must that have been to say, given the tension between those two? Maybe Wiley wasn’t the only one guilty of misjudging. Maybe she’d misjudged more than one person when she too had put Wiley into a category that wasn’t very flattering.
But just because those two might have more than one side to them, that didn’t mean Cobi was anything but the one-dimensional stereotype she took him for, and nothing would convince her otherwise. Every time the man opened his mouth, he only proved how righ
t she was about him.
When she glanced up at Cobi to gauge his reaction, though, she found him staring at her. “Um. What?”
Cobi’s eyes narrowed so slightly that she almost missed it. In a cheerful enough voice, he said, “I see you find that amusing, judging by your expression. No, don’t bother denying it. It’s written on your face. Of course, none of you know Joe like I do, since not one of you is from Weldona.”
Her eyes locked onto his, she replied, “You do know I was born and raised here, right?”
Cobi shrugged, and she thought his expression painted a picture of “smug.” He said, “So? You left as soon as you were old enough to hop a bus, and that’s not what a real Weldonite does.”
“And yet, I am a Weldonite.” She put her hands on her hips.
Cobi continued without pausing, “And then, the minute things got hard out there, you ran home to your mommy. You couldn’t take care of your own kids yourself. That’s not Weldona, either.”
“Hey now,” Wiley began.
Cobi ignored him. “In fact, Chrissy, all you did was bring more worthless mouths to feed into our town. You and your family are a burden, since none of you knows how to farm, or even how to build something useful.”
“Excuse me?” David asked, surprise in his voice.
Christine said, “A lot of people here aren’t farmers, and—”
“Burdening others because you were too high-and-mighty to stick around and learn how adults do things here? That’s another thing no true Weldonian would do.”
Christine stood abruptly, sending her chair skittering backward, and instantly regretted letting him goad her into such a display. It only fed right into his hands. This was a display for the people around him, and nothing more, but it was too late to stop herself.
She could only plunge forward. “Obviously, you’re wrong. I think David, here, has helped more people than you since he got here, and I know I have. You push pencils, while we push solutions. These people need solutions, not paperwork. They need you to be the leader they deserve, and—”
Inception of Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story Page 20
