Chapter Three: Afternoon after all
- Author's Note: Thank you all for reading, reviewing, and following. Each notice makes me giddy with happiness :) I hope you continue to like the story.
Thank you also to xyber116 for beta'ing this chapter.
I don't own the characters or Revolution; I'm just playing with them for a bit for fun, not profit. T for a bit of sexiness.
The day after The Blackout
The lunchtime conversation was benign, a combination of discussion of the latest Science publications and a debate about how last night's Cricket match between Sri Lanka and India would have ended. However, there was a dark undercurrent of tension. By the time Carol returned from the Physics Professor Pow-wow, everyone had almost finished lunch, but they all stayed to see what information she had to share. Violet asked her mom hopefully if she could have a second piece of chocolate, one she had been eyeing for at least 15 minutes, and Carol absent-mindedly agreed. Violet looked a bit startled at her mother's easy acquiescence, but didn't dare look such a gift horse in the mouth. When her mother asked her to eat it in her office, she agreed readily, clutching the precious chocolate to her chest in a Gollum-inspired manner.
Carol looked around the table, at the graduate students and post-doctoral fellows that made up her lab. She made a faint joke about having Group Meeting early this week and got a few tense chuckles.
Carol began informing her underlings of the competing hypotheses posited by the physicists. They all nodded, Mary Sue had already conveyed much of this information. She continued and stated that the leading hypothesis was some sort of electromagnetic pulse maybe of man-made or maybe of natural origins, a pulse so strong that it left behind a temporary ionic dampening field. She continued by saying there were proponents in favor of the dampening field being localized to this quadrant of the world due to an induced dipole moment in the magnetosphere. She said that the chief evidence in favor of this hypothesis would be if they saw an Aurora Borealis tonight.
There was a palpable release of tension in the room. Dr. Carol Brown just turned a mysterious and catastrophic event into an event with testable hypotheses. And, Jackson a wisecracking post-doc added, auroras were pretty.
Mary Sue wasn't quite sure why, but she didn't really believe such a pat answer. Carol told the group that they wouldn't have Group Meeting this afternoon because, one the projector wouldn't work, and two there was going to be an assembly of all of the professors, deans, and the university president, to discuss when the power might be restored and who would foot the bill for repairing or replacing the lab equipment.
Dr. Carol asked for volunteers to keep the freezers cold for the next 48 hours, and drew the unofficial meeting to a close. The lab members went their separate ways, many to attempt to jerry-rig a Bunsen burner into a stove for boiling water to make tea. The Indians and Chinese scientists couldn't go so long without a tea break. Mary Sue grabbed her stash of granola bars from the lab cupboard and packed them away in her bag.
Mary Sue pulled Adi aside and gave him her spare key, "I don't think this is a temporary condition, and I'm getting out of the city. I know I won't make it all the way home before winter, but I'm going to try to get as far from the Eastern Seaboard as I can before everyone realizes the shit has hit the fan. If I'm wrong, let The Boss know I'll be back as soon as I can, but if I'm right, I want you to have all my stuff. I have a fresh 20lb bag of rice, some jugs of water, and some canned food. Help yourself to everything in my garden, the squash should still produce for a month or so, and I planted some fall lettuce a few weeks ago."
Adi had a three-year-old daughter, a very pregnant wife, and no way to get back home to India. He tried to convince Mary Sue that she was over-reacting and being overly pessimistic, but she stuck by her guns. She gave him the number for her parent's landline, just in case the power was restored in a year or two, and wished him the best of luck.
Mary Sue slipped out of lab while Carol was at the assembly, and started her walk home. On her way she stopped at a 7-11 to buy some supplies.
As she entered, the store clerk called out, "We're all out of ice and can't take credit cards."
"That's okay," she replied. "I'm just here for some chocolate."
Mary Sue walked over to the candy aisle and selected almost twenty bucks of quality chocolate – Lindt and Ghirardelli – as well as a bag of jerky and a 32 oz. bottle of Gatorade. She doubled back to grab a box of Maxi pads to disarm suspicion. The clerk used a pen and paper to tally her total and Mary Sue handed over thirty bucks, knowing that soon this chocolate would at least double in value.
Once home, Mary Sue used her eggs, flax seed, wheat germ, and oatmeal as well as raisins, flour, honey and brown sugar to make some homemade granola bars. As they were baking in her ancient gas stove, she began gathering her camping supplies, attempting to figure out what she would need to get as far from the Eastern Seaboard as she could before finding a nice apple orchard. It was September and the orchards would need extra hands to pick all the apples, and she could probably leverage her skills at brewing hard cider into room and board for the winter. She might even try her hand at distilling apple brandy.
She discarded her two-person tent and poles. It was too heavy. But she kept the rainfly and tent stakes. They, along with some paracord would work well for a jerry-rigged tent. She stuffed her 30-degree bag into her stuff-sack, her 0-degree bag was too heavy, and it wouldn't get that cold for at least three months, she should have a wintering-over place by then.
She gathered her Leatherman multi-tool, a folding knife, a flint-striker, matches, tinder, her compass, a map of state bike trails, the Google printout of apple orchards, and a backpacking trowel. She put the maps into a gallon-sized zip-lock bag to keep them dry.
She checked her camp-stove and fuel canister. The isobutene/propane canister was half-full, hopefully that would be enough. She pared down her cooking equipment to one 1L pot with a nice lid, a cup, and a spork. That should be enough to cook quick meals of rice or oatmeal or boil water to purify it. She went back to her kitchen to check on her granola bars, and packed a plastic baggy of rice, a baggy of couscous, and a third of instant-oatmeal. She added brown sugar and raisins directly to that bag and gave it a quick mix. She also grabbed some tea bags and a boil-in-bag pouch of dal. She fit the rice and couscous inside the 1L pot and clamped on the lid. She wedged as many tea bags and sugar packets into the blue enamel camping cup as she could. This, along with the granola bars, jerky, and some fruit snacks, would have to keep her going for at least three days.
After a few moments of inner debate, she filled her two Nalgenes with tap water. The water in her pipes should still be potable. She also grabbed her water purification tablets, and wished she hadn't lent her water filter to her little brother a few months ago.
She went down her mental list of the ten essentials for survival: Map check, compass check, sunglasses and sunscreen not yet, food check, water check, clothes not yet, flashlight if only, first aid kit not yet, fire-starter check, knife check.
On to clothing. She dug out her favorite pair of jeans, a snap-up cowboy shirt, a light jacket, and her hiking boots to wear tomorrow. Her hiking boots may be blue and sparkly, but they were also waterproof, broken in, and ankle-protecty. She packed yoga pants and a yoga top as jammys/back-up clothes, as well as a heavy jacket, sunhat, warm hat, bandana, gloves, two pair of undies, and six pair of socks. You could never pack too many socks when camping… or hiking for your life. She rolled everything but one pair of socks and the sunhat into a pillow-like roll.
Mary Sue grabbed her car-camping first aid kit and started to go through it, discarding anything bulky or heavy such as the chemical ice pack. She also pared down the number of bandages to a few of each size and set aside most of the gazillion alcohol wipes. She supplemented the allergy meds with everything in her medicine cabinet. If the world had in fact ended – with a whimper instead of a bang – she'd need as much allergy drugs as she could get. She also added the two Vicodin leftover from her wisdom-teeth-removal to the painkillers already in the kit. She included some calcium supplements and some condoms.
Then she went through her travel toiletry kit and grabbed a small tube of sunscreen, bug-off wipes, a toothbrush, travel-sized toothpaste, and shampoo. She transferred these items to the small, shoebox-sized, soft-strong first-aid kit and added her backup glasses with attachable sunglasses and her Epipen. She filled one of the empty vials from lab with dish-soap and added that plus the anti-microbial hand-soap vial to the kit. She also gathered some needles and thread for repairs, the razor blades from lab, and an emergency fishing kit. The kit had been a gag-gift from her little brother, she hated fish, but it would probably be very valuable for barter. She zipped the full first aid kit up.
Barter, right… what else did she have that would be valuable? Besides the chocolate she just bought she had some rum. She filled her Star Trek hipflask up with rum – the flask had been a gift from a close college friend. Mary Sue wondered if she'd ever see her again - she was teaching in Abu Dhabi. Mary Sue also had some seeds leftover from her garden and the yeast she had bought to brew some hard cider. The yeast would be far more valuable in her hands, but she did have 10 packets, so she could spare some. Mary Sue placed these trade items in a pile and went to her bedroom and opened up her jewelry box. She didn't really have anything too valuable, but the semi-precious earrings and necklace pendants might be worth a meal to someone, and if she got desperate enough, she might fool someone into thinking the cubic zirconia was diamond. She found her passport and travel pouch and transferred her driver's license, a credit card, her social security card, and her health insurance card – maybe she was wrong, and these things would be helpful to have. She transferred all the cash she had, almost $300, and the jewelry to the pouch.
What would she do for a flashlight replacement? She mulled this over for a while, candles were pretty bulky, and then realized that she had some citronella tea lights. They could serve two purposes, light and bug repellant.
Her granola bars started to smell done so she checked on them, they were close not quite.
Now for the actual packing… She folded her rainfly up part way and placed in her school backpack – she thought taking her backpacking bag would be an advertisement to be robbed – and arranged it as a water-proof liner for the main compartment. She dropped the tent stakes, paracord, and Leatherman in the bottom of her bag as a tent kit. Next she wanted something light to balance the weight better – her clothes roll. On top of the clothes she placed the small treatises from the library and the first aid kit. The kit didn't take up quite as much room as the clothes so she had a nice hole for something that would be soft against the back. TP! She went to the bathroom and grabbed a roll of toilet paper. She carefully removed the inner cardboard tube to save space and weight and put the roll in a zip-lock bag. There, it fit perfectly. She placed her light jacket, sunhat, poncho and one pair of socks on top of the main compartment and folded the rainfly over it.
She turned her attention to the foodstuffs. She placed a thick plastic bag she stole from lab in the secondary compartment and neatly organized her pot, cup, stove, and food in the now waterproof compartment. She added one of boxes of matches and tinder and that compartment was done – for now.
She split her vital gear - knife, a flint-striker, matches, compass, map, water purifying tablets, whistle, and emergency poncho between the "pencil-pouch" of the backpack and a camera case turned belt-pouch. She added a few bandages and a granola bar from work to the belt-pouch and strapped it as well as her 10" Bowie knife to her belt.
She placed her Nalgenes in the side water-bottle mesh pouches and snapped her sleeping bag stuff sack to the bottom of her bag. She tied the backpacking trowel to the outside of the pack. She hefted the backpack to her back. Hmm, about 25lbs, totally doable if it is well balanced.
She walked with the almost fully loaded bag to the kitchen and pulled out the granola bars, placing the baking dish on a trivet. She walked back to her pile o' gear and plopped the backpack onto the sofa.
Mary Sue transferred the passport pouch and barterable items into the smallest outer compartment, stopping to add two packets of cider yeast to her vitals belt-pouch. She looked at the 7-11 bag with the Gatorade and the Maxi pads and decided that she should pack the pads as well. She took them out of the hard cardboard box and sealed them in a zip-lock bag. These she placed in the main compartment underneath the easy-access clothing.
Mary Sue placed her bag next to the clothes she was going to wear tomorrow and noticed her gardening gloves and walking stick in the corner. Those would be nice. She slid the gloves under the rainfly and to the bottom of the pack, and propped the walking stick next to the pack. Her packing done, it was time to fix dinner, a last meal of sorts.
Five years after The Blackout
Lunch at the Cooper farm consisted of the winter staples of cornbread, baked beans, salt pork, butternut squash, and baked apples. It was fairly bland and starchy, but filling and orders of magnitude better than what Mary Sue could have made. The lunchtime conversation mainly focused which farm-girl had her eye on which militia officer. Several of the Cooper girls had their eye Alec Penner, Miles' protégé.
The topic of conversation made Mary Sue nervous. She was never very good at girl talk, and sooner rather than later one of the young women would ask her about Miles.
"So how is General Matheson?" Coyly asked Jessica Cooper, a girl not more than 16.
"He is resting after a mission he lead to attempt to destroy the army from New Jersey," replied Mary Sue, deliberately misconstruing the girl's question.
The girl looked confused for a moment and Mary Sue shoveled the rest of her baked apples into her mouth and grabbed a piece of cornbread for the road.
"I'll see you at the distillery," Mary Sue told Jake Cooper and Sarah. As she left the table she could hear Jake rib his younger sister, jokingly reminding her that everyone knew the General had sworn her to secrecy. If Mary Sue told, he'd have to kill her. Some of the younger children seemed to believe it; the sad thing was there were so many rumors about President Monroe and General Matheson, even adults would believe almost anything about them.
Mary Sue walked back to the distillery and proceeded to give the trashcans of raw cider a good stir and placed her hand on the outside of each can to take its temperature. She did have one precious glass thermometer, but she had done this so many times that she didn't need to it take out. The cans were about body temperature, and still needed to cool a bit. Mary Sue manhandled them away from the still and to a fresh, cold spot of cement.
Mary Sue went to the back of the factory and down the semi-hidden stair to her storeroom. One of the best things about the factory was the full basement. Along the back short wall were the whiskey barrels from the past two winters. The first year's crop of 100 was on their sides, while last year's was still upright. You had to rotate whiskey to allow the alcohol to leach the flavors out of the charred oak barrels. This process took at least five years.
Directly underneath the boiler were shelves and shelves of cider bottles. The cider needed to be stored a bit warmer than everything else in order to finish fermenting. Across the room were shelves of fifths of un-aged Applejack and one shelf of double-distilled moonshine. Mary Sue mainly used this for sterilization but also sold some to doctors for the same purpose. About one half of the basement contained clean trashcans, 100 virgin white oak barrels – they arrived from Mr. Williamson just last week, soon it would be time to switch to making whiskey – and crates of clean glass bottles, fifths, and growlers.
Mary Sue grabbed two crates of clean growlers and carried them upstairs, setting them down beside the bottling table. She repeated the process until Jake, Sarah, and Hodor returned from lunch. She instructed them to bring up more growlers and sixty of their precious bottle caps. Unused bottle caps to seal up the bottles were a limited resource, Mary Sue had done some experiments with a jerry-rigged beeswax-tin foil combo, but it didn't work very well.
Mary Sue grabbed three lengths of clean plastic tubing and started unwinding them as she walked back to the three trashcans. She removed the lid propped on top of one and primed the tubing with the hard cider. She used the tubing to siphon the semi-settled cider, transferring it into a clean growler. She continued the process, filling each of the four growlers in the crate.
Jake and Sarah began on the other two cans and Mary Sue instructed Hodor to carry the full crate over to the capping area and grabbed a crate of empties. They made short work of the cider and were soon were crimping the bottle caps onto the growlers. Hodor carried the capped growlers downstairs and Mary Sue oversaw their placement, and labeled the shelf with the bottling date and cider grade.
Mary Sue stirred the raw cider and checked its temperature. It was maybe 85 degrees, perfect. She poured one fifth of the gallon of happy active yeast into each trashcan as Sarah stirred rapidly. Jake followed behind re-greasing the lids, sealing the cans, and placing a plug and airlock in the hole in the lid. The airlock was a bulbous u-bend of glass with an ounce or so of moonshine in the bubble. It would allow CO2 out but not let bacteria in. Mary Sue poured the gallon of sterile, filtered, raw cider into the now mostly empty 2-gallon growler and gave it a shake. She then replaced the rubber plug and plastic airlock. This would grow up overnight and be tomorrow's starter yeast.
That being completed, Mary Sue turned to the process of distilling the other two trashcans of hard cider into Applejack. Mary Sue double-checked that her copper still was clean and the screw-like threads on the top of the pot had a thin, continuous ring of grease. Jake and Sarah began siphoning the hard cider from one can into clean buckets and pouring them into the still. Mary Sue started a small fire in the fireplace underneath the still, you needed to control the temperature of the still, and therefore a small fire was best.
Once the still-pot was full and the cider was getting hot-tub hot – maybe 150 degrees Fahrenheit – Mary Sue screwed on the still-head and the long copper condenser. She placed a clean metal pail underneath the end of the condenser. She poked at the fire for a while waiting to hear the tink of the first drop of the "head." She listened to the steady tink-tink-tink of the singling dripping into the pail. Once the pail contained maybe a half-gallon she replaced it with a 5-gallon glass carboy. She poured the "head" into the other trashcan of cider, the cider yet to be distilled.
Jake and Sarah went about other needed chores – cleaning the boiler, and the used trashcans, then washing and scalding more glass bottles, fifths, and growlers. When the still reached a steady equilibrium dripping rate, Mary Sue stepped in and helped scrub out some glass bottles, keeping half her mind and both ears on her still. She would stop frequently to test the temperature of the still-head and adjust the fire to keep the dripping slow and consistent. When the liquid level reached near the top of the second carboy the dripping slowed. Mary Sue tested the still-head – it was heating up, she switched the carboy for the pail and caught the last pint or so of tailings before killing the fire. She poured the tailings into the trashcan of cider yet to be distilled.
Both the head and the tailings would be more alcoholic than the hard cider, but not at the fifty or sixty proof of the rest of the singlings. Mary Sue let the still cool down and had Hodor lift the carboys up to the bottling table. She and Hodor carried up several crates of clean fifths. Mary Sue quickly used a siphon to fill up 45 fifths and sealed them with wine-corks. Hodor carried the Applejack downstairs and Mary Sue gingerly took off the hot head. The pot ale still steamed, and Mary Sue thanked her "lab hands" - the developed ability to stand high temperatures for short periods of time.
Once open to the air, the pot ale cooled down rapidly, and Mary Sue and Hodor emptied the still, Hodor carried the buckets of low-alcohol pot ale to the Cooper farm's hog slop trough. Mary Sue gave the still a quick scrub, the residual yeast could stick to the copper sides and scorch if not removed, but she'd give it a more thorough scrub after the last batch. She refilled the still and began the process again.
Mary Sue was in the process of reattaching the still-head when she heard the main door open. Sarah and Jake stopped their scrubbing and said, "Good afternoon, sir" in unison.
Mary Sue turned around and saw Miles standing in her distillery. He was wearing his dress uniform with the black coat, shiny buttons, and thick leather belt. His gravity-defying hair was greased back and his mere presence was enough to send a wave of warm moisture trickling to her core.
Mary Sue stammered a welcome, and Miles ran his fingers through his hair and wiped his hand absentmindedly on his uniform trousers.
Miles licked his lips and glanced meaningfully at her assistants. They either didn't get, or refused to follow, his silent command for privacy. He continued despite the audience, "Um, I have an exciting surprise dinner planned, if you're free."
The wave of moisture increased to a cascade as Mary Sue was charmed by Miles' adorkable manner, "I'm kinda busy here, just filled the still." She said regretfully.
Jake piped in, "I can handle the still; you know I can."
Mary Sue nodded, Jake had been her apprentice for more than two full years, and there was almost nothing she didn't trust him to do, except maybe the second distillation of the whiskey, but that was mostly because she was a perfectionist.
"Yeah, Mary Sue, go enjoy your sexy date," said Sarah.
Miles looked like he was getting more uncomfortable, and after reassurances that Jake and Sarah would distill the Applejack and clean up everything thoroughly for tomorrow, she was chivvied out of her own distillery and onto Miles' mare Zeppelin for a "meal to end all meals."
- Author's Note: Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated :)
FYI, next chapter will go up to M for sexiness.
