connected. My older brother Mike was more like what they expected from a son I think. They were so proud of him when he became a marine. Then he went to Iraq and didn't come back and...” I didn't know what I was trying to say. Didn't know why I was saying all of this. The words wouldn't stop. “I didn't know how to be the son they wanted. I couldn't figure out how to fill that...” My hands were shaking. My vision blurred. “I took care of them when they were sick. I brought them soup and changed the DVDs for them... and my Dad told me he was proud of me. I didn't know what he meant at first, thought he was talking about the soup, which didn't make any sense. Then he told me he was proud of me for getting into MIT. He had never said that before. I always thought he just resented how much it cost. He said he was proud and that he bragged to all his coworkers how he had a son at MIT. He said he was proud... and then he died.”
I held my breath because I feared the sound that might escape me if I didn't. I held my breath, and shook, and realized that Kalee was holding me. I let my breath out in a hiss and finally spoke again. “I never told them how much I loved them,” I whispered.
“You didn't need to.” she answered quietly. “You never have to with something like that. You brought them soup, and changed the DVDs, and they knew.” She squeezed me tighter and I realized she was crying too. “I wasn't there when my parents...” She drew a shuddering breath. “I was back at Kansas State, in the herbarium, pressing plant samples. I ran home as soon as I heard but never got any farther than the bus depot.”
We stood there, holding each other. Then I heard a shout from down in the atrium.
“Isaac, Jack is looking for you!” Milo stood there, looking up with a curious expression. Kalee pulled away and looked down at Milo, then turned back to me. “I shouldn't keep you away. Jack depends on you.” She turned to go.
“Kalee...” I began, but then realized I didn't know what I wanted to say.
She turned back to me, waited for a moment, then smiled softly and said, “We can talk after the evening staff meeting.”
“Isaac.” Milo called from below.
“Coming!” I yelled back, and headed for the stairs. I desperately wanted to wipe the tears from my face, but didn't want Milo to see it. I was relieved when I saw that he was already heading back outside.
I spent the afternoon helping Jack, then headed toward the cafeteria to grab a bit of dinner before the evening staff meeting. On the way I was stopped by Milo. I expected it would be about Kalee, but it wasn't.
“I've got something to show you,” he insisted, and led me over to the loading bay where they had unloaded the truck he had taken scavenging earlier in the day. I stopped in my tracks when I saw what was stacked there. Six solar panels.
“Where did you find these?” I asked excitedly as I ran over to get a closer look.
“On I35. We headed over that way to look at... well we were scavenging that way, and I saw one of those big lighted construction signs. You know the kind, the ones with the flashing arrows. It had two panels on top of it, and I remembered that thing about sustainable electricity in that report you put out, so we ran over and grabbed it. We found two more signs like it a bit farther north up the Interstate.”
I looked over the top panel in the stack and saw that the power cable had been cut, and the mounting brackets were similarly mangled. Rather than unscrew the panels from the brackets, it looked like they had simply severed the brackets with a bolt cutter.
“We had to do that,” Milo insisted when he saw what I was looking at. “There's still freaks wandering around on the Interstate, so we couldn't stick around any one place too long.”
“You didn't manage to rescue any batteries?” I asked, “or an inverter or charge controller... any of the electronics that went with these?”
Milo looked looked deflated. “No,” he answered, “just what you see here. Everything else was locked up in a metal housing. You can still use these though, right?”
“I think so. I mean, yes. We'll find some way to make it work.” I lifted the panel and looked at the back, trying to find their output rating. “From the size of these, I'm guessing these are at least 150 watt panels, maybe close to 200 watt. That means together these could put out close to a full kilowatt.”
“And thats a lot?”
“A lot more than we have now, that's for sure.” I started thinking about how we might put them to use.
Milo was silent for a moment, then spoke again. “So Isaac, I have to ask. You and Kalee... I mean...”
My ears felt hot. I wondered if I was blushing. “It's not... we were talking about family. She was upset. Well really, I was upset. I don't want you to think...” I didn't know what I wanted him to think. I know he likes her. God I suck at this people stuff.
“It's none of my business really. It's just, she stuck by me, at the university. And even in high school, my senior year...” He stopped. I wasn't sure what he was driving at.
“I've got to get ready for Max's staff meeting,” I blurted, looking for an excuse to escape.
Milo stared at me for a moment before replying, “Yeah, I've got stuff to do too.” We headed our separate directions.
I grabbed a few bites of cold soybean soup at the cafeteria, then ran to the machine shop to poke around in the supply cabinets before the meeting. I was hoping to find something that might help me with the solar panels. Nothing. Plenty of tools and small components, but none of the equipment I was hoping for. No deep cycle batteries. I lingered over some of the larger machines collecting dust near the cabinets. A rapid prototyper, capable of building complex 3d shapes out of plastic. An automated CNC machine that could mill and drill blocks of steel into any number of useful parts. This was top notch equipment, the kind one uses for cutting edge product development. All useless now without power. I thought about how many solar panels it would take to really bring this shop back to life. More than the six sitting back at the loading bay, that was a certainty.
The sun had crept its way across the shop floor and was beginning its ascent up the far wall. I would be late for the staff meeting if I lingered much longer. I headed back to the offices and got to the conference room just before it got started. It was all rather routine until Milo showed up about half-way through.
Sarah finished giving her summary of morale and security issues, then said, “I've asked Milo to sit in and tell us about something he saw today.”
Milo stood and dove right in. “We were scavenging east today, out past I35, and I decided to take a peak at the outskirts of Blackwell. There's a ShopWell mega-store with an in store pharmacy on the west side of town, and I wanted to see how approachable it was. I got as close as I dared and then took a peak with the binoculars. It was surrounded. I mean, it looked like the whole damn town was out there. Thousands of undead freaks just swarming that building and clawing at the walls. And there were people, live people I think, walking on the roof. At least they walked like live people.”
“Survivors,” Max exclaimed.
“Had to be,” Milo answered, “but there is no way any of them are getting out of that store, and no way we are getting in. If you thought the bus station was bad, it was nothing compared to this.”
“Any guesses how many survivors we're talking about?” Max asked.
“No way to know. I saw at least three on the roof, but there could have been more farther back, and who knows how many inside. I tried to raise them on the CB. They either don't have one or don't have power for it.”
“So what other options do we have?” Max asked.
“There's the hospital and the downtown pharmacy,” Sarah answered.
Miguel shook his head. “I wouldn't try the hospital. It's probably packed with undead.”
“Well, I don't exactly like the idea of going smack dab into the middle of town either. That's why the ShopWell originally seemed like our best bet. It's on the outskirts.”
“Aren't we
forgetting something?” Kalee interjected, a hint of anger in her voice. All eyes turned to her. “Survivors. Trapped, terrified, waiting for rescue. Remember what it was like for us, in the bus depot. Now imagine what those people are going through. They must have been stuck there for weeks now.”
We all sat silently for a minute, then Max spoke up. “Kalee, we all understand how you feel. But I just don't see what we can do. We have to be realistic.” He looked pained as he said it.
“Bullshit,” she yelled, “We have to try. We have to at least think about it. If it were you, trapped there, would you want everyone to just give up on you like that?”
Nobody answered.
“We could at least fly that balloon thing of Isaac's,” she continued, “find out what we're dealing with. Maybe there's something on the other side of the building that will help us. Maybe we'll find something elsewhere in town. We can't just give up.”
Max turned to me and Jack. “How soon could you have it ready?”
Jack turned to me. I thought about it for a moment before answering, “We could be ready in a day. Two at most. I'll need some power to run a soldering iron and power drill, maybe a couple of other tools.” I thought about the solar panels. It would probably take days to get them working. We couldn't afford the delay right now. “It means using the generator more than usual.”
“OK, do it,” Max said, “Make it your top priority, and let me know the soonest you are ready to fly it.” He turned to Sarah. “I need you to pick teams and plan for the launch and retrieval of this thing.”
And with that, Jack and I headed back to the shop.
May 13 - The Factory, Oklahoma
“It won't work,” I told Max and Sarah in a hastily called meeting early today, “I've been over the numbers a dozen times, and we just don't have enough helium.”
“You're sure?” Max asked.
“Well, Jack is double checking the basement to make sure we don't have another helium tank, but yes, failing that we have little more than half what we need. We can lift the walk-talkie or the camera but not both. I trimmed weight everywhere I could, replaced the foam shock absorber with an air bag, but kept coming up short.”
“And you absolutely have to include the walkie-talkie? You can't skip that somehow?”
“Without it, it just flies off with the camera.” I though for a moment. “I suppose I could just wire up a timer, try and guesstimate so it drops after making it over the city, but the risk of losing the whole thing goes up if we can't control where it drops.”
Max was still forming a reply when Sarah interjected, “Maybe we are thinking about this all wrong. What if we leave off the camera instead?” I didn't get what she meant, and from the look on Max's face neither did he. Sarah continued. “We need information, right? And it would be helpful if we could communicate with the survivors in that big box store. Can't we drop a walk-talkie right on the roof of that thing?”
“Yes, I see where you're going with that,” Max said, “The people in that store could describe the situation, inside and out. They could have information about other parts of town. What about it, Isaac? Can you rig a walkie-talkie to be a release mechanism and still be usable as a walkie-talkie?”
“Yes, that's easy,” I replied, “I'm just tapping into the speaker output, so pull those wires and it's back to normal. The tricky part is actually targeting the building. We'll need to get close enough that changes in wind direction don't mess things up too much, and we should release a few small trial balloons to check the wind direction at different altitudes.”
Sarah nodded as she answered. “Well it makes things easier on my end. We don't need a recovery team any more, just a launch team.”
“Actually, you should still have two teams,” I replied. I started to explain, then realized it was easier to show them and stepped up to the conference room's marker board. “Here you have the store, and a team somewhere west of it releasing the balloon.” I drew a box in the middle of the marker board and an X to the left. “That team can tell when the balloon's path is lined up with the store, but it will have a hard time telling if it is actually over the store instead of a little before or beyond it. You need another team here.” I drew an X above the store. “They can report via radio when it's lined up over the store from their perspective. When both teams see it over the store, it's safe to release.” I added dotted lines representing the lines of sight of both teams converging over the store. Where they crossed, I drew a small circle to represent the balloon.
“That will put the second team closer to town,” Max mused. “The ShopWell store is on the West end of town, but there's still some buildings north of it on the other side of Highway 11.”
“Well, the teams don't have to be at complete right angles, just as long as you have two different perspectives to triangulate.” I drew another X farther west and drew another dotted line. “you could also do three teams, the launch team and two spotters. All of them could be west of town, but the spotters would be farther north and south. Of course we are assuming that the wind stays mostly out of the west, but that's a pretty safe bet.”
We discussed the details for a while longer, but Max ultimately gave the go-ahead for mid day tomorrow. Sarah went in search of her gunners to fill them in, and I went back to the machine shop. With the simplified design, I finished rather quickly. I found an electronics breadboard in one of the equipment cabinets and got a prototype of the release circuit working with minimal tweaking. I then wire wrapped a permanent version, hooked up the release solenoid, and tested it with weight applied to the release clip. Standing on a work table, I tied a string to one of the overhead fluorescent lights. To that I tied a metal ring, clipped the release clip to it, and let the weight of the walkie-talkie and its cushion of foam padding dangle from it. I stood back and held down the squawk button on the other radio. A loud tone screeched out of the suspended hand set, and a second later it dropped to the table. Success! I repeated the test three more times just to be sure. Without having to worry about the camera mount or a timing circuit, I'd gotten the entire thing finished in only a couple of hours, and without even resorting to drilling or soldering anything.
With that done, I turned to another problem I'd been itching to get to. The solar panels. The closest I found to anything useful was a variable power supply that plugged into 110V AC but could generate varying levels of DC power. It was basically the opposite of what I needed, but it might have parts I could use if I tore it apart. I might also steal parts from a few computer power supplies.
Computers. The thought seemed to tickle something in the back of my mind. Then it hit me.
“My god I'm an idiot!” I shouted to the empty room, then headed quickly back toward the office area. I probably drew a few looks as I ran toward the server room. Once inside, I began wandering up and down the rows of rack mounted equipment. I heard someone else enter the server room. Kalee, Milo, and that young gal named Shelly were approaching. Good, they could help me look.
I turned to greet them, then saw my target in the rack-mount cabinet just opposite of the one I had been examining. I gave a shout of joy as I yanked the glass cabinet door open.
“What?” Kalee asked as she ran up, “What's going on?”
Milo's curiosity was also piqued. “Yeah, what's got you so riled up? You ran in here like the devil himself was on your tail.”
“This!” I proclaimed happily, as I began to drag the footlocker sized piece of equipment out into the aisle. “It's a UPS, un-interruptible power supply, and it's exactly what we need to get those solar panels working.”
“Solar panels?” Shelly asked. Milo wasted no time proudly describing the results of his scavenging prowess. She grew excited as she realized the implications. “You mean I might be able to use my iPod again? And my hair dryer?”
I wondered for a moment what sort of person brings their hair dryer with them during a zombie apo
calypse. Probably the same kind that brings textbooks instead of food, I thought sheepishly.
“So you can actually use this to get them working?” Kalee asked.
“It's almost perfect. This thing is packed full of 12 volt deep cycle batteries, and it already includes the circuitry to convert it to 110 volt AC.” I pointed at the standard wall outlets on one face of the unit.
“There's a second one here,” Milo declared, and dragged it out of the cabinet with considerably less effort than I used on the first one.
“I'll have to coble together a voltage regulator circuit to go between the panels and the batteries, but I can probably strip parts out of some old computer power supplies to do that. A few capacitors, some resistors... it shouldn't be too tough. This will also work better on Jack's wind turbine than the car battery we are using now.”
“Just think of all the stuff we can do with electricity again,” Kalee said wistfully, “I could use electric pumps in the hydroponic garden!”
“Music,” Shelley said with considerable emphasis. “The thing I miss the most is my music.” That got us all talking about the music we listened to before the disaster, our favorite bands.
“There was this local band from Kansas City, Metastatic Mayhem.” Shelly shared, “My friends and I would sneak away to their shows. My best friend Gina was a friend of the base guitarist, and he would sneak us in the back door to avoid the bouncers. They were amazing on stage. I wonder if they are all zombies now.”
“Would we know the difference?” Milo snorted, “I mean, I saw them in concert once, and, well... all that screeching and yelling, not really my thing I guess.” Shelly didn't seem to take it personally. She was lost in thought.
“All those musicians, and artists, and movie actors,” She mused, “All probably dead or undead now. At least they did something that will live beyond themselves. They're kind of still alive in a way, in all those CDs and DVDs out there.”
“I suppose,” Kalee replied, “but only if someone actually listens to them I think. Maybe that's the biggest reason we need to rebuild what we've lost. So all that... beauty... can live on.”
I felt humbled. I had been tackling the solar panels as an isolated problem, a puzzle that offered the joy of solving it as its primary reward. Kalee was thinking bigger than that. She was thinking past mere survival to the reclaiming of humanity's legacy, or maybe it's destiny. I don't know. I can't seem to find the words for it, everything that we've lost, the immensity of reclaiming it. But Kalee dares to dream that big. More than that, I don't think she ever imagined thinking smaller.
May 14 - The Factory, Oklahoma
When I went to tell Max that the walkie-talkie was ready, he dropped a bombshell on me. He expected me to head the launch team. He mentioned it practically in passing, as if he expected I would want nothing different. I just nodded, and agreed to meet with Sarah to coordinate things. That is how, earlier today, I found myself sitting in the cab of a panel truck armed with nothing but a walkie-talkie and heading for a town swarming with undead. A guy named Jeff Watson was driving, and Jack and a couple of gunners were in the back, filling garbage bags with helium as we drove. We waited until departing to start filling them so as not to lose too much helium to any slow leaks before launching.
Milo rode with Sarah in a second vehicle. They were spotters. Our team would double as spotters after launching driving a bit north or south as needed to get a better perspective relative to the other team. We stopped well away from the ShopWell store to get a look with binoculars before proceeding. Jack climbed up on the flat top of the truck's cargo section and peered at the building.
“The swarm is still there. God that's a lot of them,” Jack remarked, “The wind seems to be coming from the southwest. Radio Sarah and tell her to swing south a bit when they release the pilot balloons.
I relayed the message, and Milo and Sarah took off in the silver SUV. They drove down highway 11, drawing uncomfortably close to the store, then turned south and cut across a field that lay between us and the building. They slowed, then stopped, and a small black shape emerged from the car and drifted up. They moved on and stopped again. Another black balloon appeared. They repeated this four more time. I couldn't see it without binoculars, but I knew they were also planting flags at each release point.
“The people on the roof have seen them,” Jack observed, “I can see them jumping and waving like nuts.”
I squinted but couldn't make out the detail from here. I looked back to the SUV and saw them pick up speed and head southwest, a tail of dust kicking up behind them. After a bit they stopped, and I heard Sarah on my walkie-talkie.
“Where in position. The first two are way off the mark I think. Numbers three and four look close.”
“Number four looks right on the mark from here,” Jack yelled. I was now outside the truck, standing on the running board so Jack could hear the walkie-talkie. I asked Sarah about balloon four.
“It's just drifting up to the building now from my point of view.”
“It's looks a bit left but still over the building to me,” countered Jack.
“Now. Number four is over it now,” yelled Sarah.
Jack yelled, “It's just on the edge from here. I say we launch just south of position four. Isaac, take the binoculars. I'm going to help with the launch when we get in position.”
I grabbed the binoculars and climbed back in the cab. As soon as Jack was in the back with the gunners, we took off. Jeff drove until he encountered the tracks of the SUV and turned south. The panel truck bounced and over the rough ground making it difficult to look for the flags.
“There,” shouted Jeff, “There's the first flag.” He drove over it. I looked over at the ShopWell building. Damn we were close. The horde of undead surrounding it seethed like a stormy ocean.
“Second flag,” yelled Jeff. I could see zombies pealing off from the main group and beginning to shamble toward us.
“Third flag,” yelled Jeff. More zombies were headed toward us.
“Fourth flag. I'm stopping here.”
“Just a little past,” I reminded him. As soon as he stopped, I heard the back of the truck open. The gunners took position on either side while Jack guided the balloon out.
“Damn!” I heard him shout, “One of the bags is caught on something.” A gun fired, then another.
“No time!” one of the gunners yelled, “Just yank it out.” Two more gunshots.
“It's off,” jack shouted, “Go go go.” I heard the cargo door slam, and Jeff gunned the engine. Dirt flew from under the wheels as he pointed the truck west and floored it. I looked behind us and saw the balloon slowly gaining altitude. A zombie wandered up to it, absently reached at the dangling foam covered walkie-talkie, sending it spinning as it bounced off the creature's hands. The balloon drifted safely over the remaining zombies as it rose. One deflated garbage bag hung from the side of the balloon mass, but it continued to slowly rise.
When we were sufficiently far away, Jeff stopped, and I immediately climbed out and up unto the top of the cargo area. I focused the binoculars on the store and tried to raise Sarah on the walkie-talkie.
“Sarah, how's it look to you. It's still a bit south from here.”
“It's still west, not over it yet,” she answered. It drifted closer to the building.
“It looks like it's over it now to me,” I informed her.
“It's not quit there yet,” she insisted. It was now centered over the building from my perspective, and beginning to drift north. “Not quite yet,” she said again. It was approaching the left edge from my view. I could see people on the roof staring and pointing at the balloon.
“Now! It's there now,” she yelled. I clamped down on the squawk button just as it approached the north edge of the building. Nothing happened. Then a moment later I saw the package drop, drag strip trailing behind. “Did we do it?” Sarah asked, “Did we hi
t the building?”
“I don't know,” I answered, “We either just barely got it or dropped it off the north side. I can't see from here.” All we could do now was wait for a voice on the walkie-talkie. As I climbed down, I noticed several undead stumbling toward our location. With everyone back on board, we headed toward the SUV.
How long would it take for them to unpack the walkie-talkie from the foam padding? Read the note we had included with it? Remove the release circuit wires? We pulled up to the SUV.
“Anything on the radio yet?” Sarah asked.
“Nothing yet,” I replied, “You want to try reach them with the hand-held CB? It has better range than this thing.” She nodded, and gave it a try.
“This is Sarah Williams to the people in the ShopWell. Can you hear me?” We waited. Nothing but quiet static. “This is Sarah Williams. Is anyone receiving me.” Still nothing.
“Maybe we missed it after all,” Milo suggested. He might be right. Or maybe the walkie-talkie broke on impact. Or maybe my instructions were not clear enough. This thing had always been a long shot.
Suddenly, the CB crackled to life. “This is Mike... Mike (unintelligible). My god are we glad to hear from you. Who are you with? How soon can we expect rescue?”
Sarah thought for a moment before answering. “Well, we're not really with anyone. We're just survivors like you. We'll do what we can for you, but I don't know what that is yet.”
“You're not with the military? Or FEMA? Or... anyone?”
“No, I don't think any of them exist anymore.” Sarah let that sink in. I could only imagine how their hopes must have crashed back to earth. “Before we can help, we need to know your situation. How many are you? What shape are you in?” There was a long pause before the reply.
“There's ninety two of us.” I could hear an unintelligible female voice, then Mike said, “no, it's only eighty nine of us now. I forgot...” The channel was quiet for a while. “It's really all gone?”
“Yes, I'm afraid so. Mike, we're going to get you out of there, but I need to know what we have to work with. How well supplied are you? How many guns? How much ammo? How much longer do you think you can hold out?”
A pause, then, “We have a couple of hand guns with a few shots left, but we've used up most of what we had trying to get more supplies from the store. We've been stuck on the roof for more than a week now. They got into the store, and we all had to climb up. For a while we were able to snag food and such from the top shelves, but we've gone through most of that. We've lost people trying to get stuff from lower shelves. We're low on water too. I don't think we'll make it more than another couple of days or so.”
Sarah and Mike went back and forth for a while, Mike painting a bleak picture of desperate survivors at the edge of despair. They had very little information about the rest of Blackwell, having been stranded for about two weeks. The conversation was interrupted at one point by the approach of walking dead, but we drove farther south and continued the conversation. Milo and Jeff drove the SUV around the group of approaching dead, keeping them distracted as Sarah finished talking to Mike from the safety of the panel truck's cab.
“OK, stretch your supplies as best you can,” Sarah advised Mike, “I need to get back to my people and discuss this. We'll come up with something and get back to you. Turn the radio off for now to conserve the battery, but turn it back on at sunrise tomorrow. We'll send someone out to get back in touch. I promise you, Mike, we are going to find a way to get you out of there.”
We packed up and headed back to the factory. Sarah promised we would save them. God I hope we can, but I just can't see how it's possible.
May 14 - The Factory, Oklahoma
The evening staff meeting was tense. Sarah had given a full report to Max as soon as we got back. He questioned the wisdom of promising a rescue given the odds we were up against, but Sarah wasn't backing down.
“You weren't there, Max, you didn't hear the desperation in his voice. I... I had to give them some
The Bolachek Journals - Part 1 Page 11
