2nd Earth 2: Emplacement by Edward Vought Read Free Book Online

other team gets back. They have five frightened young women and three men who appear to be in their twenties. We decide to spend the night here and head back in the morning. We get to know our new friends better while we eat dinner and after until we fall asleep. Morning comes early and we decide to see if we can get the flatbed trucks running and at least one of the fork trucks. There is a large compressor right in the yard, so while Gary and Sara work on the trucks, Ken and I go to look at the other building that caught my eye. This was apparently a wheat mill and processing plant. What interests us is the large stone wheels they have to grind the wheat in large quantities, instead of spending half a day grinding enough wheat to make a dozen loaves of bread. Ken and I estimate from the size of the hoppers that feed the big wheels, we could get at least two bushels of wheat at a time in them.
    There are actually three sets of the big stone wheels in the building along with several pallets of fifty pound plastic bags full of wheat. There are also several pallets of bags that have been ground. We study how we might be able to get at least one set of the grindstones out of the building and reassemble them back at our farm. Gary and Sara come looking for us and agree that we could really use these wheels. Gary has apparently done quite a bit of maintenance work in factories, because he sees right away how to disconnect the controls and the wheels. He has a note pad and a pencil so he draws the controls and makes a sketch of how the wheels come apart. He says he wishes we had a camera to take pictures because he might and probably will miss something. Sara is looking through the offices, she is interested because as she points out, these are prefab offices that can be taken apart and moved. They could come in pretty handy if we want to put a room in the barns.
    I start to ask them a question when Sara tells me that yes, they got the trucks running and the largest fork lift. She also comes out of one of the offices carrying a fairly large book that contains the prints of the equipment as well as the electric schematics. She also found the operation manual for the grindstones and the instructions for grinding wheat as well as other types of grain. We decide we have to go for now, but we are definitely coming back for building supplies and these grindstones. When we get back to the lumber yard, Ken and I can see that they not only got the trucks running, but they got air into the tires and loaded one of the trucks with eight pallets of cinderblocks and two pallets of concrete mix. The truck has two fifty gallon tanks for fuel so we fill them both, as well as our vehicles, from the gas storage tank in the yard.
    Gary and Sara want to drive the loaded truck back so we all load into the other vehicles, with the items we are taking back, and we head out. We go about four blocks when one of the young ladies from the other city says she is sure she saw a girl looking out a window as we went past. We stop and she jumps out to investigate. She comes back in only a couple of minutes with a very frightened young lady who looks to be about fourteen. We tell her she is safe now and ask how she came to be alone. She tells us that she used to live in the city where the others were found, with her parents. They were taken by men a while ago. She hid so they wouldn’t take her. After they didn’t come back she started walking and wound up here yesterday. She says she saw the vans going and coming back, but was too afraid to let them see her, so she hid. She was afraid to talk to us when she got here, but she was also afraid to stay here alone. She was so relieved when the lady named Mary came to ask her to join us.
    Doc McEvoy says he thinks this is the young lady that one of the couples we took back already asked him to look for. The young lady gets excited and asks if he knows their names. He smiles and says his memory isn’t quite what it used