Commune: Book Two (Commune Series 2) Page 22

  I felt a lot of people shift around during this speech and even heard one or two people mutter quietly towards the end. I guess they thought that Jake’s definition of “easy” was a bit different from their own. I could see it from both sides. Yes, it was technically easy to go pick a bunch of stuff up and bring it all home. On the other hand, getting shot at by random strangers is bullshit. I grew up in a pretty rough area but my past was a cakewalk compared to how things were now.

  “Our plans don’t necessarily change now that you’ve all come to stay with us,” Jake said. “They just have to scale up. We’ll need to do everything we can to get our food stores up to an acceptable level; enough so that we’ll be sustained through winter. Scavenging is going to be everyone’s responsibility, with the obvious exception of the children. We have enough vehicles to support everyone who can do it; we’ll go out in teams and comb the area in grids. It’s going to be tight but I believe it’s entirely possible if we keep organized.”

  That fucker Jeff said, “Someone will need to stay behind with the kids, won’t they?”

  “That’s right,” Jake agreed. “I suppose we could draw lots for work duty or something similar-“

  “Or, some of us might be better at certain jobs,” Jeff said. “I know that Alish and George were both teachers once. I wasn’t but I used to do a lot of community work with the YMCA and such.”

  “That’s a good point,” Jake said, “but I also want to avoid people getting pigeonholed as much as possible. The sad fact is that everyone needs to be competent with firearms and be able to fight as a team if the need arises. There’s no way around it. But your point is noted. I’m sure we’ll be able to work up a solution with little trouble.”

  Jake looked around us for a bit to see if there was anything else. Amanda stood behind him banging away at the whiteboard, collecting the important points. When nobody said anything, he continued, “So much for provisions; the next item is shelter. Now, please don’t get me wrong. As I said, we’re very happy to have you all here with us, but, well, we’ve got to get you all your own residences.”

  “Hell yes,” Tom said. “Fred snores loud enough to wake up a dead man.”

  “Oh, hush now, fool. Ain’t that bad,” Fred shot back.

  “I’ll take Fred’s snoring over your horrible, horrible singing,” Wang said.

  “Dude,” said Tom, “my singing rules.”

  “Alright, goddamn it, secure your pie holes,” growled Gibs. I mean, dude straight up growled; you could always tell when he was getting pissed. If you get him worked up enough he’ll go from growling to full blast in, like, 0.3 seconds. I’ve seen him do it a few times. It’s epic.

  There were a few muttered sorries, which Jake waved away. “So as I was saying, we need to figure something out for your homes. I had considered putting you all up on cots here in the garage to start but I’m against it for a few reasons. First, it’s a temporary solution at best. The building isn’t insulated and you’ll all freeze once the snows start in. On top of that, living in a garage on cots in a big group of people is just a miserable way to be. It’s like living in a shelter; actually, no, it is precisely living in a shelter. People need a home, a place that’s theirs. So we might as well skip the whole shelter concept and get busy working on something more permanent.

  “Oscar, I’d like you to start working on some ideas for that; your background in the construction industry will give you some unique insight into the problem. That alright with you?”

  “Uh, sure, man,” I said, wondering how the hell I was going to house sixteen people without a work crew. “No sweat, I guess.”

  “Keep in mind,” Gibs offered, “that you don’t have to worry about inspectors, OSCHA, or any of…of that. What we come up with needs to be safe to live in but it doesn’t need to be a palace. One of the first things we could do is board up the windows on the bus, rip out all the seating, and build in a bed, some living area, maybe throw in a camping stove. See what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Yeah, that’s a good point, man.” I looked back at Jake, a little excited, and said, “Okay, bro, lemme work on this a bit. I think I got a few ideas that’ll do.”

  “Thank you, Oscar, that’s much appreciated,” said Jake. “Next item: sanitation. As some of you may realize, the cabin sits on a septic system. I’m not sure exactly how old the cabin is but let’s guess and call it five years, for much of which it sat idle; our friend Billy used it as a summer getaway. The average septic system lasts about forty years, so given the lack of use this place saw, we'll assume a total of forty years of good, future use. Now, this average of forty years is based on your typical American family unit; call it four people. That’s forty years for four people. Another way to look at it would be to say that the system would last for one hundred sixty years if used by only one person, right? One hundred sixty divided by four people puts you at forty years, basically.”

  People were nodding while Amanda was writing these numbers out on the board. I already knew where this was going.

  “So, if we follow that math, we can extrapolate and say that the same septic system only lasts about eight and a half years when used consistently by nineteen people. One hundred sixty divided by nineteen is around eight and a half, see? There’s a decent chance we’re going to be here longer than that, so a single septic system divided among us all isn’t going to cut it. On top of that, you need water to drive normal toilets and we don’t want to use as much water as it will take to flush for nearly twenty people.”

  Gibs was nodding while shifting around from foot to foot and waved at Jake. Jake raised his eyebrows and nodded back, letting him know he should speak.

  “I can take this one on, if you like. I have some experience in this area.”

  “What do you recommend?” Jake asked.

  “Well, in the absence of chemical toilets, the obvious choice is a pit latrine. Basically, you dig a six foot pit, put a cover on top of it with a little hole cut out, and then build up an outhouse around that. We could dig his and hers pits.”

  “Drawbacks?” Amanda asked from behind Jake.

  “A few,” said Gibs. “First, you wouldn’t want to do this if you’re sitting on a high water table…does anyone know if we are?”

  “I think we’re okay, there,” Jake said. “Our well is sunk fairly deep.”

  “Alright, good to go. Other problems include the obvious smell and the fact that contaminants from the waste material will leach into the nearby soil, so we have to keep this well removed from the main living area and any farm land we plan on cultivating. Can I get at that whiteboard?”

  “Absolutely,” Jake said, and Amanda handed over the marker as Gibs approached. Gibs started by drawing out a wobbly circle with a break in the line at the bottom right corner. At the top left corner, he drew two rectangles.

  “Okay, so this is the valley and these two boxes up here are the cabin and garage, right? This break down here is the entrance into our valley,” said Gibs while pointing at the board. “Off to the northeast of the garage is the well. What do you call it, Jake? Thirty yards?”

  “Sure, close enough,” Jake agreed.

  “Good. Some distance up from there in the same direction is the river, right? I haven’t seen it yet; does it always have water?”

  “It’s more of a stream, really. It runs out the cleft alongside the road,” said Jake. “I’m pretty sure it’s all fed by snowmelt. It’s more or less a mud patch right now. I haven’t seen how heavy it gets when the season is right.”

  “Okay, probably doesn’t matter either way. I’m gonna say we put the pit latrines down here.” He drew a couple of X’s along the edge of the circle southwest of the house. “We’ll say a hundred yards out from the house; that’s a total minimum distance of a hundred and thirty yards out from any main water source. Additionally, let’s say we maintain a minimum distance of one hundred yards between this location and any crops we eventually grow. That should keep our food and
water supply safe. So that’s another disadvantage; you’ll have to go for a walk any time you want to deuce.”

  Gibs handed the marker back to Amanda and resumed his place among the group. He said, “Finally, these things will fill up. When the fill level of the pit comes to within a foot of the cover, we’ll need to fill in the hole with dirt, tamp it down, and move the whole setup to another location; relatively close but not close enough that the new pit breaks into the old one.”

  “How long would it take to fill one of these things up?” asked Barbara with a sour expression.

  “Can’t say for sure,” Gibs said. “I don’t have a lot of experience with these. Mostly, we were either in small groups straddling trenches or in groups large enough that we needed burn out latrines.”

  “Burn…out?” Barbara asked.

  “Yeah. In our case out here, you’d basically build up an outhouse-like enclosure around some metal drums. You cut the drums in half, so you get two units per drum. People squat into that and, once per day, you pull them out, add in some diesel or MORGAS, and burn the contents. It’s typically a no-no to do unless you’re in some third world sh-…uh…an underdeveloped nation. Environmental regulations, see? Not exactly a problem anymore.”

  “So, they’d need fuel,” Jake said. “Good to note.”

  “Not in our case,” Gibs said. “It’s too valuable but there are other options. There’s a lot of water in crap, so letting it dry out enough to be combustible isn’t the best option. We could get the fire going by burning our garbage over it, which would theoretically burn off the initial moisture-“

  “I think this might be the most disgusting conversation I’ve ever heard,” Rebecca said.

  “-or we could look at making charcoal from the local wood supply, which wouldn’t be difficult. I haven’t tried this before personally but I think it would be possible to build a, uh, a poop barbeque. It would take a lot longer to completely burn the material out but if you expose it to extreme heat for long enough, all the water cooks off and then the waste itself eventually converts to ash. Charcoal burns really hot for a long time, so…you know. But all that’s for when you have a lot of people; say a hundred or more. I think the pits are good enough for now.”

  “So that covers number two,” said Monica. “What about number one? I’m assuming we’re good to do everything in the pits, aren’t we?”

  “You know, we can make some pretty powerful fertilizer with the urine,” Barbara said.

  Everyone stopped and looked at her, this little, old lady with short, mom-hair. “Why, Barbara,” Gibs said, smiling, “what have you been up to?”

  “I loved to garden,” she said, sounding defensive. “I liked reading about this stuff. Anyway, we can let it ripen up a bit and mix it into compost. It’s like fertilizer steroids.”

  “That’s an outstanding call,” Gibs said. ”We upcycle what we can; put the rest in the pits.”

  “That’s agreed,” Jake said. “Okay, final item: supplies. To put it bluntly, we need to find poor Fred a pair of pants that fit.”

  “God bless you, sir,” Fred boomed, and the rest of us laughed our asses off.

  The comment about pulling the seats out of the bus got me thinking about ways we could quickly get everyone into their own homes. After the meeting broke up, I ran over to Jake to talk to him about it.

  “Hey, what’s up, Oscar?” he asked.

  “I got an idea about housing everyone but I’m gonna need to borrow your truck.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Trailers, dude,” I said. “Fifth wheels and stuff. That truck already has a ball hitch. I just gotta go out into the neighborhoods, find them, and bring them back.”

  “Okay,” he nodded. “Not bad at all but do you think you can find enough?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe not. I’m pretty certain I can find at least two to start. They usually sleep at least six people, so that would be twelve taken care of on the first night, assuming I get lucky.”

  “Good…good, that covers the short term. What about long term? People will want their own place to live eventually.”

  “Two options,” I said. “For one, there’re a ton of trees around here. I’m pretty confident I could put up a simple cabin with a raised floor if I had some people to help me.”

  Jake raised his eyebrows and leaned back all surprised. “You think you can build a log cabin?”

  “Oh, shit yeah, man. I could build a house by myself if I had enough material. I used to do it all; framing, plumbing, roofing, and drywall. The only stuff I never got into was electrical and tile, which aren’t a big deal anymore. The interior finish work might be a little jacked ‘cause I didn’t do cabinetry and all that, but the place would be livable. I’d almost just recommend doing that but we can’t ‘cause there wouldn’t be enough material. The local Home Depot or whatever they got around here probably wouldn’t have enough framing lumber for more than a couple of small homes; not enough for everyone.”

  “That’s true but now that you mention it, we should probably head down there anyway and clean the place out,” Jake said, almost like he was talking to himself.

  “Yeah, sure, we can do that but it won’t solve the housing situation. Anyway, we can do cabins but I’ll need help for that because the logs’ll be too fuckin’ heavy to lift on my own. I’d need, like, a couple of dudes to help me. The main drawback, though, is that it’ll take so long to build them.”

  “Yes, but it sounds like the most desirable thing, long term. People used to fantasize about such things not long ago. So, a couple of campers now, which we think covers twelve people, and then start to work on cabins?”

  “Well, that’s twelve if we find two campers. We might find three or only one. But I got another idea in case that doesn’t work out at all.”

  “Yes? What’s that?”

  “I’ll explain if it goes that far,” I said. “For now, I just wanna get out there and start looking.”

  Jake thought it over; absently scratching at his beard while looking off toward the bus (we hadn’t moved it since we arrived). “Take Amanda with you. She’ll keep you safe,” he said. “Go in the jeep first to scout. I want to minimize diesel use; that stuff is always hard to find.”

  “Aw, look, man. I’ll be fine. What can she do? She’s even shorter than I am!”

  Jake looked at me, then, and the look on his face shut me up. He wasn’t trying to mad dog me or anything; don’t think of it like that. The dude can just go from chill to goofy without warning. We used to see dudes like that in the barrio back in the day. I grew up in a pretty tough area, so you had to be tough to get along. The thing is, a lot of us spent a lot of time just acting tough, putting up a front to try to keep from getting fucked with. A lot of times, that was enough because you can’t actually tell if you’re dealing with someone who’s tough or someone who’s faking. Then you had those loco motherfuckers. For the most part, you knew who they were, stayed away from them, and it was cool. I even had a few friends who were like that. You just didn’t want to catch them on a bad day.

  I never seen Jake lose his cool before. I’ve seen him go to work a few times and I know he’s hard but he ain’t mean or cruel. Irregardless of all that, sometimes he gives me that look and I’m pretty sure I’m looking at another loco motherfucker.

  “She’s little,” he said, “but you haven’t seen what she can do, either. Take her with you, please.”

  “Uh, yeah. Okay, bro.”

  I found Amanda not long after that; she was off to the side talking to her daughter Elizabeth while my girl Maria and Rose stood close by. Like an idiot, I happily walked up to them only to find out that Lizzy was getting told.

  Amanda was saying, “I don’t care that you’re in a group now. You three need to stay close to the cabin. Period.” She put out her index finger and started stabbing it at each of the girls in turn: “Every…one…of you. Got it?”

  The kids all had that pissed off look that they get w
hen they decide to disagree silently. I decided to weigh in and said, “Mija, ya. You remember what it was like getting shot at? Either of you remember Kyle and Jessica? This ain’t a world anymore where you get to disobey and just get grounded. If you screw up now, people die. Ain’t no grounding for that. You get somebody killed because you’re feeling like rebels; you just won’t ever be able to forgive yourself…and neither will anyone else around you.”

  The looks on their faces fell and I wondered if I hit them too hard. They were all remembering their own friends that were gone; all of the fight had escaped them. Amanda was looking at me funny and I couldn’t tell if she was upset or what.

  “Sorry to butt in,” I said.

  “No, it’s fine,” she said. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard someone else speak Spanish. It was nice to hear.”