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area, looking for anything suspicious, but nothing jumped out. It was obvious that others had been to the plant, but their attention had been focused on the warehouses.
    “Bingo!” Carlos hollered from the far side.
    Neal made his way to Carlos and found him with his arms outstretched, attempting to hug the tank wall. Just above him was a large sign that read POTABLE WATER.
    “But is there anything in them?” Neal asked.
    Carlos’ face scrunched, as he hadn’t thought that far ahead. He raced to a small valve he had seen earlier. It was nothing more than a simple ball valve that teed off a much larger pipeline coming from the base of the tank. He turned it slowly and instantly water gushed out. Carlos cupped his hands and brought his nose to the water. “Smells fine.”
    Neal stepped up behind him with anticipation.
    Carlos pressed his eyes closed and sipped it.
    “Well?” Neal asked.
    Before he opened his eyes, Carlos sang out, “It’s good. Hell, it’s better than good; it’s the best water I’ve ever tasted.”
    Neal placed his hands under it and cupped a mouthful of water. Carlos was correct, it was good, straight from the deep aquifers that lay beneath the old desert. “There has to be more places like this. We just gave ourselves months if not years of water.”
    Carlos looked at each tank and said, “These have to be forty-thousand-gallon tanks. I’m not sure if they’re full—heck, I bet they’re not—but we have water, my friend.”
    “But how do we transport it back? Do we come here daily with water jugs?” Neal asked.
    “No, that’s small fry. We need a tanker or a water bull that we can tow,” Carlos answered.
    Neal looked at the Lincoln and said, “We could use a truck too.”
    “That old girl can tow anything. She has a big ole V8 in her,” Carlos proudly declared.
    “That may be, but any significant weight on the rear end will bottom the car out.”
    “Shit, you’re right. Well, in the meantime we’ll just come here daily, fill up the biggest jugs we can find, and if we come across a running truck, we’ll take it.”
    “We don’t take anything from anyone, maybe we trade,” Neal said, reminding Carlos of the pact they had made early on not to steal from others. They fully believed in salvage rights, but theft was not an option.
    Carlos squinted and said, “The code, I remember.”
    “We have to maintain our integrity as best we can,” Neal again reminded him.
    “Yeah, yeah, let’s fill up some jugs now and get home. We need to celebrate.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    “If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.”
– Thomas Fuller
    Guatay, CA
    The door to her eight-by-eight room creaked open, bringing in the glow of the late afternoon.
    Charlotte naturally scurried towards the corner and cradled her knees to her chest in fear of who might step through.
    Drew, the man who so far had offered kind words and a gentle touch, walked in and stopped two feet from her. “Hi, Charlotte.”
    She looked at him with her wary eyes but didn’t reply to his greeting.
    To appear less ominous and frightening, Drew lowered himself and squatted. “I got you something.”
    Charlotte looked but saw nothing.
    “Do you want to see it?”
    “What is it?” she asked.
    “Hope told me you’d want it, so I found it,” Drew said as he reached into his jacket and produced Charlotte’s diary. He held it in his hand but didn’t offer it to her.
    Charlotte’s eyes grew twice their size at the sight of it.
    “I also found a pen and a pencil, not sure which you preferred,” Drew said with a smile.
    Charlotte sat up as tears began to flow.
    Seeing this, Drew extended his arm with the diary so she could take it.
    As swift as a cobra, Charlotte smacked it out of his hand. “Why, why did you take it?”
    Drew recoiled from her response. “I don’t understand.”
    “I left it at the house for my mom to find. I left it there on purpose so she’d find it and then come find us!”
    “But Hope said