William Forstchen - One Year After

Some were so exhausted at this point that there was a call to close the meeting, but for once, John refused such a request, feeling there were still some details to be hammered out and that now was the moment to do it, when a wave of near idealism filled the room. He suggested that those who needed a break could go into the chapel and stretch out in one of the pews.

John, taking a break himself, went into that special place and looked up at the starlight, the sight of the scorched beams and part of the roof missing reminding him of photos of churches and cathedrals in war-ravaged Europe of many years earlier. Makala came out to join him, taking his hand, again recalling the first time they had met here. The room was silent; there was no one at the piano at this hour of the morning—and besides, the piano was gone, crushed under a collapsing beam, a heartbreaking sight for both of them, though someone had pulled a scorched flag out of the rubble and pinned it to the far wall.

“They’re already talking about this fall election with enthusiasm and hope.”

He looked at her and smiled. “Maybe there’ll be a painting some day, like the one of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.”

“You are sounding more like a historian every day, Makala.”

“Kind of rubs off after a while. Besides, it is what I want for our child.”

“Elizabeth and little Ben, I do pray that they see it. I was scared to death when I caught a glimpse of her in that final assault wave. I’m so damn proud of her, but now that this moment is over with, I just wish she would go back to being a mother for a while.”

“I do too, especially when Ben has a brother or sister to play with, though technically, I guess it’ll be his aunt or uncle.”

It took a moment for that to sink in, and then he turned to her in surprise.

“Yup, we’re pregnant.” It was all she could get out before he pulled her in tightly, hugging her fiercely.

“If she’s a girl,” Makala whispered, and she started to cry, “can I have your permission to name her Jennifer?”

And now both of them cried together.

“Well, here it goes!” The expectant crowd fell silent. Paul and Becka Hawkins stood in the open doorway of the rough-hewn power plant, Becka with a hand on the main switch, snapping it down.

An instant explosion of light enveloped the crowd of nearly half a thousand who stood around the building and had spilled over on to Montreat Road and the parking lot of Anderson Hall. A long line of festive Christmas lights, strung from the power station to a telephone pole and down to Anderson, sparkled to life. And then there were shouts from farther up the hill, lights in the chapel humming back to life after more than two years of darkness.

A phone in the power plant rang. Becka picked it up, chatted for a moment, and then looked to John, smiling. “It’s for you, sir.”

Though badly shot up in the fighting, parts of the switchboard had been salvaged, and with that as a template, several old phone company technicians had actually begun to assemble an entire new board based in the new town hall in an abandoned day care center a block away. Only a dozen connections were back in place, but it was a highly symbolic start in John’s eyes. They were not scavenging items from the past, retro equipment of a hundred years ago, but were beginning to build things from scratch. Psychologically, John saw it as a major step forward for the entire community.

He took the phone from Becka, putting a hand over one ear.

“John, we’ve got electricity up here! How long will it stay on?”

John looked at Becka and repeated the question to her, having to shout to be heard. Becka looked at the old-style analog gauges, measuring the energy output coming from the full-size turbine that was humming away beneath their feet, the generator in the next room whining at a high pitch. The air was redolent with the scent of ozone, and the way it was all rigged up, it did have a bit of a “Frankenstein’s laboratory” feel to it.

“I think it’s holding together okay. We’re shutting things down at midnight to go over all the equipment. After that, if it is holding together, we’ll throw the power back on for an hour, three times a day, then on full-time come evening to midnight.”

There were so many factors at play, John realized. Though running smoothly at the moment, this was their first truly operational generator, though work had already begun on a second, and work crews were already busy rebuilding the original power dam for Montreat a couple of miles higher up along Flat Creek. For the moment, this was their one and only power source with no reserve yet in place, and it was not to be stressed. Turning it on at hour-long intervals and then off for four throughout the day would allow the hospital to chill down the freezers and refrigerators, his communications teams to recharge batteries, and—luxury of luxury—to run a hot-water heater at the college and hospital and then washing machines. Hand scrubbing had just become a thing of the past, though the decidedly old-fashioned ritual of hanging out clothing on clotheslines would continue for a long time to come before they had become so profligate with electricity to actually run dryers.

The power supply for right now was wired to just the campus and Assembly Inn, the town council for the time being forbidding anyone to try to tap into the power line for home use. With the second station going in above the first, plans were already afoot to put in a third unit in a cove above Black Mountain—actually over in Ridgecrest where there had been a power station over a hundred years earlier—again a dam that had to be rebuilt. Once in place, that would provide electricity straight into the town. Paul calculated it would provide enough energy to be wired into one of the town’s old water pumps. Homes below 2,400 feet in altitude were still receiving a trickle of water from the gravity-fed pond, but it had to be boiled, and two years of no maintenance on the lines meant that nearly all the precious water was now hemorrhaging out. With a town water pump back online, twenty thousand gallons a day could be pumped up to the old water tank that overlooked the village and then gravity fed back down and run through the small filtration plant. That, in turn, meant that they were going to have to find or make new filters and some way of getting chlorine or some other purifier. But what a blessing. That most simple of luxuries would again become commonplace and with it hopefully eliminating E. coli and other illnesses that still plagued the town at times, caused by the lack of public sanitation.

So the complexity of it all would then start to multiply. Water going out meant bringing sewerage filtration back online, setting up some kind of public hot showers and laundry facilities, and then…

“John? You still with me?” It was Makala on the other end of the phone.

“Oh yeah. Ah, Becka said they’ll run to midnight. Can you come down for a few minutes? Something of a celebration kicking up.”

“Be right down, and I’m bringing someone with me.” She hung up.

It was indeed turning into something of a celebration. The students had rigged up a small stage with a CD player and speakers. One of the kids, who again for this moment appeared to be “just” a college kid, was up on the stage, shouting for requests. Then held up his hands in acknowledgment and rifled through a stack of old CDs, but he first turned on the player and ran the volume up, and the crowd fell silent for a moment. It was “God Bless America,” and within seconds, all had joined in, more than a few with tears streaming down their faces.

He saw Makala approaching him through the crowd with Doc Weiderman by her side, carrying his medical bag. He tried not to blanch at the sight of the dentist.