was not helping to soothe him. Lying down on the adhesive leather couch, sweating more than reading, Daniel looked up longingly at the stagnant ceiling fan. The ashen dust would coat everything inside the house if he opened the doors in an effort to gain some semblance of relief from the accursed summer heat. The doors were his only choice as there was really no way for him to physically open the windows, they had all been sealed shut long ago.
The worst of the dust storms had seemed to pass and the atmosphere looked clearer with each passing year. As he thought of his trip to the Warehouse earlier in the day, Daniel realized that almost no one including him was wearing masks to guard against the choking particulates. This alone stood as testimony to the fact that the dusts were easing up. He thought of opening the sliding door and standing in front of it for a while just to catch a slight breeze. Corinne waking up to a fine layer of dust coating everything in the house would not be considered trivial, so Daniel endured the safe choice.
When he was a child the sunlight would almost be completely blocked out by the dust on some days. The sun itself became nothing more than a hazy brightness in the sky, its true position could never be ascertained. The growing seasons were shortened significantly and had to be accomplished in sealed hot houses to keep the plants protected.
It had only been a year since Daniel started making attempts at growing food in the backyard. This was made possible due to the fact that the ash had finally lessened to the point where the nearly-full power of the sun could be felt again. Additionally, Daniel could see the end of consumer goods coming down the pike. Refilling the numerous boxes of canning jars he had emptied over the years was really the only foreseeable option moving forward. To keep Rebecca in nourishing produce year round without his full-time pay was going to require a rather sizeable addition to the garden patches next year.
Daniel struggled with the warmth and dim lighting for a while longer, retaining nothing of what he had read so far. His sagging eyelids eventually forced him to peel his back away from the soft leather couch and head back into the bedroom with Corinne.
Chapter 3
Monday
Water was intensely metered to help pinpoint the location of leaks. The quantity that each household was permitted to pull from the tap was based on a mathematical ratio, mainly determined by how many people drew from the same line. This arrangement worked very well, as it was controlled by stiff fines.
The Maintenance Department worked tirelessly for years to get sections of the water system operational. Before the Polynesian volcanoes polluted the world, the City of Warren had started updating portions of its 70 year-old water system. This meant that the old maintenance yards held pipe, valves and back hoes, along with precious replacement parts; almost all the materials needed to start water flowing again.
The D.o.C. supplied all the missing pieces needed to get the pump and pressure houses operational. This crude yet effective technique pulled water from the Red Run drainage, southeast of the city buildings and kept it pressurized by means of closed-loop. Anything not being used was sealed off, minimizing the amount of new pipes that had to be replaced above and underground. To keep the water flowing at the Warehouse even when the system was turned off it was pumped by generator into the water tower that sat in the center of the General Motors Technical Center.
The water that was supplied to the surrounding area removed most of the sediment and chemicals, but still needed to be boiled or filtered to be made potable. Given the power restraints, it was impossible to remove all the pathogenic bacteria. The city had no way to control what leeched into the flow, and it made little difference to the person drinking the water whether it was some flesh rotting upstream or if it was some vehicle dripping poison.
Corinne took a brief shower every morning when the water was flowing. To her it was seen as absolutely necessary. When the water system lost pressure she would be reduced to hand washing with tepid water. This alone was enough to make her cry some days. Hefting the bucket of water to flush the toilet was despised, but washing dishes in buckets of filtered rain water