Solar Flare Apocalypse

Chapter 15

For the next week, the citizens of Webster worked hard for their survival. Things were moving smoothly since they had been divided into teams. No one was working twelve hour shifts anymore,  and life began to have a normal feel to it. Get up, eat breakfast, go to work, eat lunch, work some more, have dinner and relax for a while before going to bed. Of course, relaxing was very different now with  no TVs, no computers, and no game systems. Instead, people read, talked, and played games. The library was the most popular place in town, so the librarian changed the hours to allow everyone time in the evenings to check out books. Lucy Hammond had never dreamed of a time when the library could be this busy. She was secretly  happy for the flares, she suddenly felt like the belle of the ball. She and her employees worked out an old fashioned system for checking out books. she got the old cards out of the storage room, and put them in newly made pockets in the front covers of the books. She issued new paper library cards to the town, and worked  long days with a full staff to get the books ready for checking out. The library workers were among the few who did the same job after the flares. However, they did their jobs very differently now.

 The kids had spent a week at home with Adam, and gradually felt more comfortable with him. He tucked them in at night, and he was happy to see them hug their favorite stuffed animals. He sat beside the bed the kids shared, and told them another story. When he was done, he brought up the subject he'd been waiting to talk about.

"So, " He began slowly, "I am getting tired of calling you Miss. and Mr., and I think I might not be a stranger anymore, since I tuck you into to bed every night. So how about it, ready to tell me? "

They put their brown curls together, and conferred.  Adam watched their faces, alive and happy. They climbed out of bed and whispered to him.

Adam laughed and opened his arms for a hug. They  leaped to Adam and he gave them a bear hug, then he had them get back under the covers. Adam tucked them in for a final time that night, and shut the door on his way out. He thumped his cane as he walked to the living room, and sat in a recliner, putting his leg up. His mom sat in a chair beside  him,  Liam and Lara were snuggled on the couch on the other side of the room. 

Adam leaned back and sighed in relief like an overworked single mother. "Where's Dad and Max?" He asked.

Jen developed a crease on the center of her forehead at the mention of Max. He had been out at night with his new friends all week. Even though he was over eighteen, he still felt like her baby. "Dad is asleep, he's exhausted. Max is out." She answered him.

Adam said, "Well I have some good news, the kids told me their names!"

Lara perked up, as talk of names was of particular interest to her. "Well? Tell us!" She said to Adam.

"Clementine, and Crewe." He said like a proud parent. They laughed at how the names fit them so well.

The next morning, The Parkers got up hours before the sky lightened to start a new day.  Matt hurried to another early board meeting, and Max walked to another day of slave labor. Jen walked through the dew covered grass to the Center for her job in the kitchen. Mimi and Katarina met her at the door and they went in together. They were the first, so Jen checked the list to see what was for breakfast. Eggs, fresh pears, and oatmeal. Jen and the girls took baskets and went to the new, large chicken coop to gather eggs. Mimi and Katarina ran and hugged their mom, who was already at work filling baskets. The noise of the chickens, over one hundred of them, filled the air. They only had eggs for breakfast every three days, it took that long for the chickens to lay enough eggs. some of them were hatching their eggs, soon they would have plenty to lay, and some to butcher.

The three of them carried the baskets with several hundred eggs to the kitchen. A man had started a fire outside, and hung a large pot over the fire. Jen and the women who had arrived got buckets of water from an artisan well behind the Center. They filled the pot with water, and carefully set the eggs in. It was just too hard to fry eggs for three hundred people. Mimi, Katarina and some older teen aged girls carried pears up from the basement. They washed them by the well that flowed day and night. When the eggs were cooked, they scooped them out to cool.  A couple of strong men tipped out the water the eggs cooked in, so the women could wash it out. It was starting to get light out when they had oatmeal for three hundred  bubbling on the fire. By the time the sky was pink, there was a line snaking around the building. Mother's and fathers and sleepy eyed children walked through and sat at tables. No one complained, or asked for sugar, they were accustomed to the new diet.

Outside, the pot had been re-washed, and re-filled to heat wash water for dishes. When they were done with their breakfast, they lined up to drop their dishes off in the kitchen. Almost every dish was completely cleaned, people weren't wasting anything. An assembly line of dish washing was happening. Pairs of girls at each washing station. Each with two dish pans, and when the water got dirty or cold, one of them would go dump it and get a refill from the pot of water on the fire.

Before the dishes were all done, the lunch team was taking over. Today was soup. The fire was built up again, more water carried, more food brought up from the basement, more washing, chopping and cooking.

The cycle only stopped for a few hours in the night. The other eighteen hours, the kitchen was buzzing from dawn to dusk.

Matt spent that morning in a room, discussing policy. The five took breakfast back with them to continue talking. They were making a list of supplies that were very important, and that they'd probably be running out of. Before lunch, they had decided on a list of things that could not be privately owned.

Salt, sugar and spices, canned food, and alcohol. They added lighters, matches, tools, lumber, nails and screws. Next they decided on over-the-counter medicine, bandages, and how-to books.

It was time to meet with the town again. They had new laws to introduce, and they needed to listen to the people, their ideas and problems.