he rose to his feet and resumed his journey. He knew he was taking longer than he planned, but he couldn’t help it. The job still had to be done.
Another tree appeared to his left and he gave it a wide birth. He continued to move in what he thought was the right direction, but his goggles were almost entirely coated in ash. He wiped at them with his gloved hands, and saw that the ash continued to stick to the lenses. It was apparently electrostatically charged, and wiping at the lenses seemed only to make it worse. John continued walking, having lost count of the number of steps he had taken, but thinking it couldn’t bemany more before he reached his destination. He was just about ready to shift his direction of travel when his outstretched hand hit the side of the shop. With both hands on the wall, John worked his way to the right, hoping to find the door. When his right hand fell away from the wall, he stopped. Realizing that he reached the corner of the shop, he began to move back to his left. With his right hand on the wall, he soon made his way to the side door. He noticed the door was just two feet from where he made initial contact with the shop, which actually pleased him despite his minor detour.
With the door key hanging from a dog-tag chain around his neck, John leaned forward and unlocked the door. With a great deal of effort, he pulled the door outward and swept the ash off the step. Once sufficiently clear of the ash, John quickly entered the dark shop and instinctively reached for the light switch, but he diverted his hand up to his helmet mounted flashlight. He turned it on and examined the shop for reasons of security. Finding the shop clear, he closed the door. A trail of ash revealed his path, but he wasn’t worried about it in the shop. He was just glad it wasn’t deeper than it was.
The flashlight beam played across the familiar landscape of the shop, and despite the darkness, it remained a comfortable and familiar place. John spent a lot of time in the shop, it was his man-cave of sorts. He removed his goggles and face mask, and set about preparing the generator for action. The brand-new generator sat patiently next to the shop’s large, metal, roll-up door. He regretted not setting it up yesterday, before the ash had fallen, but was still surprised he needed to use it this soon. He lifted one end of the generator and wheeled it over to where his cast-iron potbelly stove once stood. The stove’s vent line was capped and waiting for an entirely different exhaust mission. John purchased the cast iron, railroad-type, potbelly stove to heat the shop during the winter, but he used it so little that he moved it to the garage. Before the disaster he planned on selling it, but now he was glad he didn’t. He knew it would come in handy now, much more than ever before.
Using hose clamps, and garage grade metal flex hose, John attached the generator exhaust pipe to the stove vent in the wall. He knew it wouldn’t be carbon monoxide proof, but it would be better than letting the generator run completely unventilated in the closed up shop. He decided to bring a carbon monoxide alarm with him when he returned to the shop.
After adding oil to the generator, and filling the tank with gasoline from one of his vintage military jerry-cans, John hit the starter button and smiled when the generator came instantly to life. He was glad he didn’t have Adam put all the gas cans in the fuel pit. Given the conditions outside, that would have added another twenty minutes to his mission.
Next, John removed three, two-hundred foot, contractor grade extension cords from a storage box and set them on the floor next to the generator. He then opened a box marked “Christmas Lights” and removed four spools of white, LED Christmas lights. After unwinding one of the extension cords, John anchored it to the side of the shop with several heavy-duty cable staples. He didn’t want to make any unnecessary trips back to the
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