AFTER THE DUST SETTLED (Countdown to Armageddon Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

need to. He had a backup generator in the Faraday cage to replace it.
         Now his biggest problem was getting the generator down, and the replacement up. They weighed just over two hundred pounds.
         He’d run a length of rope over the housing above the generator and tied it to tie-down rings on the generator itself. The other end of the rope was three hundred feet away, tied to the front end of his Bobcat. And behind the wheel of the Bobcat, with a walkie talkie in hand, was Jordan, awaiting further instructions.
         They’d used old fashioned hemp rope, because it tended to stretch less than nylon. And stretchy rope in this case would be a very bad thing.
         The plan was simple. The rope that Scott ran over the housing and tied onto the generator would keep it from falling when he removed the bolts holding it in place.
         Once the bolts were out, he’d give Jordan the go ahead to drive the Bobcat slowly toward the tower. As he drew closer to the tower, the weight of the generator would lower it to the ground.
         Scott had gotten the idea from the days he went hunting with his dad when he was a kid. Sometimes when the deer they shot was too big to manhandle, his dad would use a rope around a nearby tree branch to heft the carcass across their fender in a similar manner.
         As the generator was lowered, Scott climbed down the tower and together, he and Jordan untied the old generator and then retied the rope to the new one.
         Then Jordan was back in the Bobcat, slowly backing up to his original position, while his father was on his way back up the ladder.
         Scott had to wrestle with the swinging beast to get the bolts to line up. But once he got the first bolt in place, the rest were easy.
         And once most of the bolts were in, he called Jordan on the walkie.
         “Okay, son, I’ve got it from here. You can go install those cameras now.”
         Jordan enjoyed working with his father on these kinds of projects. Scott had never had any formal training on electrical systems, plumbing, carpentry, or any of a dozen other talents that come in handy to keep things running. Scott had learned what he knew mostly by watching his own father as he grew.
         And his own sons would learn the same way. Scott knew that Jordan was capable of installing the new video cameras without supervision. Scott would go behind him to check his work, of course. But he didn’t expect to find any errors.
         Jordan was only doing the cameras on the house and the perimeter fence. There were two other cameras that needed to be installed, on the two hundred foot tall tower just east of the property. It was one of the line towers they’d followed up from San Antonio when they’d escaped from the city. It was strewn with eight high tension electrical wires, each one two inches thick. But they no longer carried electricity.
         After the cameras were installed on the outside of the house, Scott and Jordan would go off property together to install the tower cameras. It was just safer to use the buddy system any time they were away from the protection of the compound.
         Scott finished the last bolt. The generator was in place.
         He looked over his shoulder and inspected the ham radio antenna that he’d attached to the turbine the previous spring. In the days ahead, he’d dig out the ham radio from his Faraday barn and use it to contact other survivalists around the world.
         Scott knew there were others out there like him. Others who saw something ugly on the horizon. And who took steps to protect their electronics so that they could maintain more or less a normal lifestyle after the catastrophe hit.
         He hoped there were enough of them out there to set up a network to pass news back and forth. The ham radio, he strongly suspected, would be their only link to the outside