Free Survivors by Rich Goldhaber Page A

mounting the inverter to generate AC voltage just inside
the entrance to the building. I climbed the ladder
to talk to Bill. To my untrained eyes, it looked like
they were making good progress. They had completed the assembly of mounting rails on the roof
and were now carefully attaching the solar panels
to the rails. About half of the panels had been attached. I asked Bill the status of the project.
    “We should finish the arrays by lunch tomorrow. Jessie’s just about done with the mounting of the inverter, and by the end of the day today,
we should be finished with all the electrical work.
We should be able to fire things up by the end of
the day tomorrow unless we run into problems.”
    I yelled to the group. “Hey everybody,
George finished getting power to the apartments,
and I’m pleased to report we now have lights and
air-conditioning, at least during the daylight
hours.”
    After the shouts of approval died down, I
climbed down the ladder and found Jessie waiting
at the bottom. “Let me give you some of these gel
batteries. I’ll bet George can use a couple dozen to
help provide power at night. Explain what we’re
doing here. I think he’ll want to do the same thing
at the apartments. A couple dozen batteries should
be more than enough.”
    As I drove back to the apartments, I
thought about what extraordinary things people
could accomplish in the midst of a catastrophe.
Necessity is absolutely the mother of invention.
Chapter 12
    Back at North Lake Village, people were
hard at work preparing the apartments for their
new residents. Beth had the two boys helping prepare the evening meal. She was going back and
forth between the kitchens in two adjacent apartments. Beth sort of looked like everybody’s grandmother. She was a little overweight but seemed to
handle the extra baggage well as she supervised
the young kitchen help.
    Mary, who was in her early sixties, looked
like she could climb Mount Everest with no training. She was having problems assembling Carla’s
new crib in one of the bedrooms. “You’re just the
man I want to see.”
“What’s up?” I asked.
    “We’ve got a health and safety issue. We
found two dead bodies when we opened up the
apartments. The insects were having a feast. I’m
sure there’re dozens of bodies all around the campus. We need to get them buried as soon as possible and disinfect the apartments with concentrated
bleach or we’re going to risk spreading some pretty
terrible diseases, and we’ve all had our fill of terrible diseases.”
“What do you suggest?”
    “I know there’s a nursing school on campus. I’ll check things out. I’m betting they have
hazmat suits. Maybe one of the guys can find a
tractor with a backhoe, and we can bury them all
in a common grave.”
    “George and I found one body in the energy
plant, and there were a couple of rats taking their
time with the banquet. Let’s talk about it at dinner
tonight. We’ll divert some resources tomorrow to
make it happen.”
    I spent the next hour helping Mary finish
assembling Carla’s crib. The assembly instructions
appeared to be written for a previous version of the
crib and never updated, and it took several attempts before we got it right. We moved Carla from
the carpeted floor to her new home, and she expressed her approval by depositing a smelly load in
her diaper.”
Mary laughed, “What gratitude.”
    I found Beth and asked her what was for
dinner. She smiled, “We’ve got soup and Chef Boyardee Ravioli, and I made a few apple pies for dessert.”
“Apple pies, how did you do that?”
    “The girls found everything I needed when
they robbed Wynn’s yesterday, and now that
George gave us power, I used the electric ovens to
bake the pies.”
    I gave Beth a hug. “From now on, you are
officially our Head Chef, as long as you’re willing to
accept the honor.”
    Sporting a Cheshire cat grin she answered,
“I would consider it a rare privilege and indeed an
honor to