Sabredancing with the dead Ch 19
Tokonosu, April 19 20xx
Day 7.
1320
On returning to the compound, the APCs parked outside as usual, shut down and waited for the music to draw the walking corpses away. Once the deaders had been drawn away, the crews unassed the vehicles and passed through the narrow opening in the gate. The other personnel carrier had already returned as its job was of very short duration. As soon as the men were inside, the massive gate slowly closed, powered by the two man crew who labored at the hand wheel.
Wolf headed into the club to find Kat, so she would know to make additional food for their guests. According to Capt. Nishizawa, he and his crew numbered 7, including his wife and daughter who had been aboard visiting when all hell broke loose. About half of his regular crew had been on shore leave, and hadn't made it back to the ship. He didn't know if they were alive or dead. Wolf mentioned what Capt. Nishizawa had said about "treats" and both wondered what that would be. Kat turned back into the kitchen space, to get things organized. With the supplies they'd scavenged from the food warehouse the day before, she thought they had enough material to put together something special.
That taken care of, Wolf went off to check on how the clearing of the fishermen's compound was going.
Here, Eriko and Tamichi had stacked boat cradles, skids and other material in spots along the dividing wall and these platforms were occupied by archers. As the APC parked outside the compound drew the deaders in range, most of them went out through the open gate and ganged up around the APC. Some couldn't get around piles of cradles, timber and other things. These they picked off one by one with crossbows. By the time he got to the wall, they'd been at it for several hours and the pickings were getting to be nonexistent. It was time for a team to hop the wall to track down and kill the remaining deaders. Wolf had decided he'd join them and had attached his cutlass sheath to his combat harness. Climbing up on one of the platforms he nodded to the two who were there. They put down their crossbows and hefting axes taken from the boat shed.
As Wolf got ready to go over the wall, he had a passing chuckle as he thought about hollering "Away the boarding party!" before he went but stealth was the goal here. One after the other they slipped down over the wall, holding onto a rope they'd rigged for that purpose. This allowed them to drop quietly into the next compound. They waited in silence until Shinji gave the sign to move out, and they slowly spread out, eyes darting from side to side, front to back, looking for any sign of a deader. The compound was fairly large, even bigger than the club area, and covered with crates, boat cradles, balks of timber and plenty of other places a critter could be stuck, blocked from responding to the noisemakers. Boats pulled out of the water for maintenance also added to the obstacle course.
As Wolf moved carefully along the pier side, he noticed that several of the fishing boats had launched boats, loaded with crew armed with whatever they could find. They were coming to assist in clearing the compound as well. He gave them the thumbs up and went back to looking for walking corpses. He ran across a couple and took their heads off with the cutlass as they tottered along. The team moved on, and finally cleared the compound of deaders by 1700 or so. The gates were closed by hand wheel and the compound was secure.
Their territory had just more than doubled in size. The fisherman's yard had a machine shop, carpenter's shed, welding and cutting equipment, steel in various shapes, a large supply of fiberglass cloth and resins, a shed full of electrical wiring, and other supplies. The compound was a self-serve boat yard for the deep-sea vessels it was home to. All of this would greatly improve their ability to survive. Even without power, this was a treasure trove, all behind unassailable walls. As the team met in the center of the yard, they greeted the fishermen who had come ashore like long lost relatives. Shinji extended the invitation to dinner, and those people returned their boats for a short time. There they picked up fresh fish to bring to the feast and then took to their dinghies to round the breakwater and enter the club compound. Until they could build a set of stairs, this would be the only way to move from compound to compound.
By this time, it was nearly 1730, so the cleanup work was called off. Saburo decided that since the day was unusually cool, they could wait until tomorrow to clear up the dead. Shinji's team returned to the wall, stacked up enough timbers and skids to reach, and climbed over. Once back on their side, they cleaned and racked their weapons, and headed into the clubhouse to clean up. The fresh fish were gladly accepted when the dinghies rounded the break wall, and added to the dinner menu. Several of the fishermen turned to, and with razor sharp knives filleted the fish, and created various types of sushi. Some of the fish fillets were set aside to broil. Most of the materials used had come directly from the sea. These guys appeared to be pretty self-sufficient as long as their fuel supply lasted. They could trade seafood for staples.
By 10 minutes to 7pm, the food was just about ready and their last guests arrived, putting into the yacht club basin in a 40 foot open motor launch. Capt. Nishizawa stood at the helm, with his wife and daughter at his side. His crew sat in the well, which contained a fair mountain of boxes. Saburo, Shinji, Wolf and a few others walked over to the pier side to greet them as the Captain skillfully brought the launch alongside, coming to a dead stop 12 inches from the seawall. A couple of his crew men leaped ashore, made the launch secure and started to receive the masses of boxes being handed up to them. Shinji waved over a bunch of people to assist in moving the various boxes into the storage area in the clubhouse. From the labels, it certainly appeared that the Captain had not been joking when he hinted at treats. Boxes of imported booze, several cases of American ice cream, half a dozen cases of Kobe beef, and cases of a very expensive sake, which was rarely ever exported.
As Saburo and the Captain talked, he explained the gifts he was carrying. His ship belonged to a small container company and as such took on cargo where it could.
"You see Capt. Sakai, our small operation is much like the tramp steamers of my grandfather's era. He ran cargo all over the world for years, and when he retired from the sea in the early 30's, he started a small company of his own, with one ship. My father captained that one. Over the years and through WWII, the company expanded to 5 ships. By the end of the war, we were down to one beat up steamer. We spent years building up again, modernizing to keep pace with the new methods, but we are still a family of tramps. My brothers captain the other two ships in our fleet. Last I heard, one was in Sydney. The other one was enroute to the Middle East."
He went on to describe his route over the last month, which had seen him in Los Angeles, where he dropped off car parts and picked up the ice cream and American liquors. From there he sailed to Seattle, unloading office and hospital equipment, loading timber and beef. They had steamed across the Pacific to Honolulu, where he unloaded the American beef, the timber and some of the ice cream, picking up fresh pineapples and other fruit. From Honolulu, they crossed the rest of the way to Tokyo, unloaded the Hawaiian fruits, loaded the Kobe Beef and the sake and cleared for Osaka. In Osaka, they loaded electronics for Tokonosu. They had just berthed at Takagi's dock and were getting ready to start unloading when the disaster struck.
"How is it that you still have refrigeration to keep the cargo cold?" Shinji asked.
Capt. Nishizawa thought for a moment before replying. "Sheer luck? The EMP that you mentioned killed all our electronics on the bridge and some of the reefers at the top of the stacks. Others, buried in the center of a stack, are still running. Perhaps the masses of steel containers around them shielded them enough to keep the systems from burning out. That's my guess."
"So as long as you have fuel to run the generator, you have refrigeration? And you can make water?" Wolf asked him.
"Yes, that is correct." Capt. Nishizawa assured him.
"What is your current fuel state, and approximate consumption for housekeeping purposes?" Saburo asked him.
"Well, we topped up in Osaka, burned about 125 tons on the run to Tokonosu, so I'd say we still have about 2700 tonnes on board. The generator uses about 360 gallons a day to supply standby power to the reefers if the main engine isn't running. Why do you ask?" He replied.
Wolf explained "One of our biggest problems is fresh water. We raided the JSDF base here and grabbed 5 tank trucks, which gave us 50,000 liters. We use that at the rate of 450-500 liters per day no matter how much we try to conserve, and that rate will rise as the summer heat comes along. I was thinking that perhaps your desalination plant could make water for us."
"I see." replied the Captain. He considered the matter for a moment before speaking again. "We could do so but not for long. The desalinator runs off the heat generated by the main engine. It produces about 2000 liters a day at full output. The problem is that it would be burning fuel at a great rate. Even if my engineer were here, and could reset the engine for maximum economy, we'd be burning about 75-80 tonnes per day. Our tanks would be dry in a matter of a month or so if run continuously. Given your consumption and ours, we might stretch that out to 3 months or a bit longer by running the main engine every 3-4 days. Eventually we would run out of fuel. There is no way to refuel as the depot is up the bay and most likely over run by those things."
Wolf considered this for a moment. "Ok, so much for plan A. We can use this method in an emergency but we'll have to come up with something better for the duration." At that moment, Fujiko appeared on the patio and announced dinner was ready. The people slowly gathered on the patio and laid into a very nice meal. With the addition of the sushi, and some of the beef, they all chowed down with gusto, conversing with the fishermen and the crew from the container ship. Capt. Nishizawa and his family sat with the command staff, discussing the overall situation. Among other things, he was told of the events relating to the securing of the airport and the beachhead at the shipyards.
Wolf wasn't paying much attention to the conversation. He was still trying to puzzle out a solution to the water supply problem. He kept coming back to something he'd read a few years back about the Canadian Armed Forces Disaster Response Team or DRT. He remember their response to the 2004 tsunami that had killed hundreds of thousands all around the Indian Ocean. One of the things they'd been known for was their dispatch of water making units to critical sites.
He turned to Shinji. "Shinji, do you know of any JSDF units that might have large scale water purification plants that are used for disaster response?"
Shinji thought about it for a moment. He looked at Wolf with a grin on his face. "We don't have any on our base but there are some about 120 km from here at the naval base." With that, his face turned grim. "Again we are faced with the same problem we came up with about the farm machinery. How do we get them from there to here?"
"How are they set up? Mounted on trucks?" Wolf asked him.
"No, they are pallet mounted. Big things, about 9 meters long, and 3 meters wide. They are placed on trailers for transport to the airport or to the site if it's a local problem. They are completely self-contained, needing only fuel and barrels to collect the water. There were 25 or 30 of them on the base, last time I was there." Shinji replied, before picking up some sushi and popping it into mouth.
Wolf sat for a time, thinking the problem through. Palletized cargo on the dockside or accessible from dockside. They would have to be able to move the pallets, thus requiring prime movers of some sort. The APCs would do in a pinch. Getting the pallets up on dollies would be a real treat. However, given the manpower and basic tools it could be done. He'd moved machinery before in one of his careers, and hydraulic jacks didn't worry about electronics being burnt out.
They also needed a small ship or barge mounting a derrick in order to lift the pallets onto the ship and move them back to the compound. It wouldn't make sense to risk people on a 100 mile plus road trip over unknown roads through what amounted to hostile territory. They'd need a small one with a draft that could make it alongside the breakwater at the club to unload. He remembered the depth of the yacht harbor as being well over 20 feet at high tide. The naval base wouldn't be a problem, being designed to handle deeper draft ships than that. So, was it worth it to go and get them? Time to ask people.
He once again turned to Shinji, who was quite happily chowing down on the barbequed beef.
"Shinji, is there something like a truck mounted derrick at your base? Something to lift heavy machinery?" he asked.
"Yes, there is. Why?"
"I'm putting together the pieces so we can go get those water purifiers. I'm still working out the details. Enjoy your steak." Wolf replied as he turned to Capt. Nishizawa.
"Captain, could you and your crew handle a small coastal freighter, perhaps 150-300 tons? With derricks mounted for on and off loading cargo in primitive harbors?" He asked the Captain. Shinji and the others started paying attention as the Captain thought about it for a moment.
"Yes, we could. Why do you ask?" he wondered.
Well, if we can find one, and you and your people can run it, and if our people can act as stevedores and cargo handlers, we might just be able to solve our water problems. Shinji says there are a bunch of water purification units at the naval base about 120 klicks from here."