Chapter 69

They had left Polis the next day. Monty would pick a team with the help of Murphy and Adara had to get back to Lake Town to make sure that preparations were made for the coming winter. Octavia would be staying with Skaikru until Spring, at which time they should have a better idea on whether ALIE was able to get her hands on any missiles.

When they reached Lake Town, Monty and Murphy went off to discuss team members and security. Adara got together with Raven, Kane, Monroe and Octavia to discuss what they needed to do to make sure that they survived the coming winter.

"Monroe, what stores do we have? We need plenty of warm clothing, blankets or furs and if there are any food stuffs we can store for a few weeks, I want to know about them as well."

"I've started putting the furs and blankets we've found to one side. The clothing you found in that outdoors store is also with them. It won't be enough for everyone though. If you can find another clothing shop or outdoors place, then we'll be able to keep most of our people warm when outside. I've also had the kids and some of the Arkers gathering wood for over the winter. I've put in a request for more storage buildings - or rather one large building and one small building. The small one will be for the firewood and the large one will be my new quartermaster's building. From there I can organise the stores better."

"Kane, Raven have you approved it yet?"

"Not yet," Kane said. "We've been making sure that all housing is ready for winter. Keeping out draughts and trying to find things we can use to make it warmer. We were hoping to have that finished by next week. We were going to check the plans once more after that to make sure we had everything covered before approving it."

"When can building start? Bear in mind that the ground will be frozen in winter, so we'd have to get the foundations dug before then. It may be a building we can do during winter to keep people busy and active."

"As soon as we approve it and find the place to put it," Kane replied.

"I want to put it on the south west side, Adara. I think it would be out of the way of any other building sites and near enough that we can get supplies without walking from one end to the other," Monroe added.

"Good. I still want numbers on those items, though, Monroe," Adara added. Monroe nodded.

"Octavia, how's the hunt for fresh food going?"

"Robert has his people out looking for any greens he can find. He's marking the places he does so we can find them again fairly easily. It won't last over winter, but we may extend our greens for a few weeks. As for hunting, Indra has told me that most of the animals won't be good to eat until they start to fatten up again in spring. Don't forget, their food will be scarce too. Bears also hibernate so we can't get them either. The other things Indra suggested are winter birds like Tarmgans and snow rabbits. Small game, we'll have to catch more of them to feed us all. The river also freezes over if the weather is cold enough so we will either have to ice fish or go without."

"What's 'ice fishing'?" asked Monroe.

The Trikru cut holes in the ice and put a line in it with a hook on the end with foods that they know the fish like. They don't get a lot of fish like that, but it's better than nothing." Adara nodded.

"Okay. Octavia, next time you're in Tondc, ask about winter hunting and foraging. See if there is anything else we can eat." Octavia nodded and wrote something down on her pad.

"Kane, finish the housing as soon as you can and then find space for Monroe's building and dig the foundations before the weather turns too cold to dig. Raven, help Monroe figure out what we need and what we've got to trade with. I'm going out with Atom's group and I'll try to find more warm clothing and blankets." Adara stopped and looked around. "We need to be prepared, people. I don't want to lose anyone from hypothermia. If that means people sharing body heat and blankets to stay warm then so be it. We've never had to deal with weather and temperature changes this severe before, we've become accustomed to living in a regulated environment. This will be a steep learning curve and I want us to be ahead of it. Let's do this." Nods all around agreed with her.

"Good, meeting over." Everyone moved to do what they needed to do to help survive winter.

xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx

Adara climbed the ladder to the south lookout tower. She had lookout duty that night but this afternoon she wanted an overview of the town. She leaned on the railing and looked out over the town she and the rest of Skaikru had built with their own hands. She'd used her double vision to find a hardware store and they had cleared it out of any tools, screws, nails, bolts, hooks, tool and storage boxes, timber and any meltal sheets they could find. They also picked up things like piping and a few manual handpumps. Those would be invaluable for the town. During the fall, several of the skaikru dug trenches and laid pipework into the town and put one of the hand pumps near the town square for everyone's use.

One other was put inside the mess hall. They'd also rigged up a trough sink they had found in the gardening section, that was still usable as a sink. More pipework took the dirty water and dumped it into another pond used for irrigating the gardens. It wasn't quite as good as the Ark, but it was better than having to drag several dozen buckets of water from the lake to the town.

They also knew that it would probably freeze up in winter, but for now, it was a godsend. Plans were being drawn up for a water tower to be built in town. The idea was to fill it up and they could use that in winter when the lake froze over. If that froze, then they were faced with a mile long trek to the river to get water. No-one was looking forward to that, but this was their first winter on the ground and they had no idea of how bad it would get. It was one of the reasons that they were trying to stockpile winter clothing or at least, warm furs. Once winter was over, they would have more of an idea what would be needed.

Next spring, they would be planting lots more food stuffs such as wheat and barley - keeping the barley away from Monty's still would be an ordeal but Adara could just threaten them with no food if they took too much.

Adara gazed out over the work being done. She saw Kane organising people to dig the foundations for Monroe's new quartermaster stores. Bellamy was leading a group out to scout the river. They would travel upriver for three days before coming back. Troy Gibbons had gone with them to draw and sketch the areas they came across and to map it out for them. He'd taken to cartography with the same enthusiasm as most of the hundred had to the jobs they enjoyed.

She watched as the youngsters who had only just begun to understand what the Ark actually was, played on the town square. They were playing a game of tag - an age-old game that was played by children everywhere, probably from the beginning of humanity, after all, all that was needed was a ton of energy! She watched as they laughed and played without a care in the world - a world they were not supposed to be on. Halfway through the 200 years that the original Arkers thought would be needed before the Earth would be safe for them again. Almost 100 years and now they were living on the ground and finding that they liked it.

Looking to the northwest, she saw someone had put up a washing line and was hanging out her washing. Adara smiled. They were adapting faster than they thought they would and coming up with ways to overcome the amenities they were used to on the Ark. No more washing machines, no more ready made food, no more heated quarters, no more sheltered areas. They were learning to wash their clothes in a tub, learning how to make their own food - some of the experiments in food had been… interesting… to say the least! Adara had made sure that the last experiment was never repeated when several of them had come down with mild food poisoning from undercooked meat.

Several of the Arkers had taken to making their own clothes. It seemed that now they could make clothes, they loved to. No more worn out clothing with ingrained dirt. Now they walked around in clothing that was clean, it was a novelty and they couldn't get enough of it!

Looking north, Adara saw movement just beyond the fence and saw Atom and Roma teaching some of the Arkers children what to look out for when they were exploring. The Arker kids were taking to their lessons like a thirsty man to water. They were learning what they wanted about the world around them. Each of them were learning faster than the adults - more than likely because they had no preconceived ideas about what to do. Octava and Robert were teaching them plants to eat, plants that were poisonous, and the ones that could be used for medicine.

The tower to the east of the town looked out over the gorge. It was once just the path for overhead power lines, but when the bombs fell, it opened up into a gorge. There were no bridges over the gorge, but it didn't matter. They didn't go over there, it was too dangerous. The gorge stopped south of the town in what was once a trailer park. The other end of the gorge stopped just short of intersecting the river. Adara wondered what would happen if they dug through the end of the gorge and let it fill with water. It would be a nearer water source, but they couldn't guarantee that the sides of the gorge wouldn't fall in, making the gorge bigger and moving it nearer the town.

Adara turned around and watched as people were harvesting the last of the food crops. The wheat had been brought in a couple of weeks earlier. Now, they were pulling up or picking the last of the fruit and vegetables. It would soon be cold enough to snow and they wanted the food in before that happened. The Trikru had warned them that frost-bitten food was not nice.

As the Skaikru town had over 1500 people in it, they knew they had to ration food over winter to make it last. The problem would be the meat. When in the whitehouse bunker, she had been reading about storerooms built into the ground to store their food. The cold hard ground would act like a refridgerator and keep them fresh for longer. Adara was hoping that they could build one next summer, probably near the messhall. She also wondered if she needed to keep the food storage guarded in case someone got hungry and tried to take more than their share. Being a leader was a hard job. She never realised just what she had to know and think about.

Adara sighed. It had been a hard few months, but she liked to think that they had done enough to make it through a winter they were unprepared for. They had never been exposed to extreme temperatures and she knew that they could lose a few to pneumonia. Abby and Jackson had been talking to any clan healers they could, asking about medicines for things like frostbite, what it looked like, and what to do about it. They also asked about anything else they needed to know about healing and health in winter.

Everyone was doing all they could to keep themselves alive. This winter would see each and everyone of them go through something they had never experienced. It would break some of them, she knew that. She'd send those people to the Bermuda island to keep warm.

All in all, Adara thought they were doing good and providing they could keep out of ALIE's reach, they had a good chance of making a good life for themselves.