Rainy Days 1 - WfW 22/1 - 5th Part

Words for Wednesday 22 January as given by Mark:

     Deviled                    and / or           Gargled
     Interdependence                             Presence
     Watery                                            Yelling
     Figs                                                Andalusia
     Zoom                                              Snowdrifts
     Headphones                                   Exfoliate

 For this installment I used: Headphones.

  Allan facepalmed. "Yes of course. I feel so stupid now," he said. "The waters of Antarctica and Greenland combined will make sea level rise about 70 meters. Warming of the water would add an extra 30 meters or more. A 100 meters higher sea level would make this whole region underwater except for a few, small islands. We'll have to go south."
  "What about the Arctic ice?" Tom asked.
  "Why south? Why not east or even north?" Henny asked.
  "The Arctic ice cap was more like a giant ice cube, it mostly floated. Hence it contributes very little, if at all, just like a melting ice cube won't make your drink overflow. The warming of it will contribute of course." Allan looked at Henny: "Unless we were very much off course, which I seriously doubt, south is the shortest way to higher and I think better land. East and north would take us to the stony reaches of Sweden's ridges. We'd like somewhere a bit more level."
  Tom got up. As the former captain of the plane, he still had some authority. He clapped his hands: "Everybody, dress up and get out. We need to evacuate Allan's Dunes immediately. Up till now, we have been adoing too much and thinking too little. cting. Now we've got to have to act again to avert more disaster. But afterwards ... We need to think."
  Everybody except the three children, the wounded father Paul and Eva, were soon ready to leave the plane.
  Tom spoke loudly: "Grasp the ropes. Those not able to find a place on the ropes, get behind the wings, and push and steer the planes towards Allan's Dunes."
  They all pushed and pulled with great effort. The plane was big and heavy, at least compared to their powers, but the caulking of the hatches to the cargo hull held, the wings and hull were relatively unharmed, and withstood the pressure, and slowly it began moving.
  At Allan's Dunes the waves were already lapping at the lowest edge of  Mount Luggage. The passengers made a double chain, passing crates, coffers, valises, suitcases and backpacks from hand to hand. Tom and Hank stayed aboard the plane and supervised the distribution of the luggage in the plane's cabin. Now they were happy about the discarded rows of seats. It made room for all the luggage. Quickly the worn emergency slides were shaken out and placed in the back of the plane together with tarpaulins and other watertight stuff from the mount.
  Everybody washed off, dressed in dry stuff and distributed themselves carefully aboard the plane.


  After dinner they all sat listening and eager.
  "Now we talk and think." Tom said, returning with the plane's maps: "Allan, please repeat your part about the rising waters."
  Allan rose carefully: "The ice all over the globe was melted by the Wave. Now it is falling down again as rain, warm rain. The melting alone will make the waters rise by around 70 meters. The heating up and resulting expansion of all that water is going to account for at least 30 meters more. More than 100 meters higher sea levels will surely inundate the whole of Denmark Belgium and The Netherlands: Also the southern parts of Norway and Sweden and the northern parts of Germany, except for a few, small islands will be below sea level. We'll have to go somewhere else."
  "And where do you suggest?" Granny T asked.
  "I would suggest we went south," Allan said. "North and east of us are the ridges and stony reaches of Norway and Sweden. But I would recommend that we began by going north and then east, to get free of the labyrinthine fjords directly south of us." He drew a deep breath and asked Tom and Hank to hold up the map. "I think I know where we are. The peninsula, we called Fantasy has to be one of these outcroppings on the western coast of Zealand, Denmark where we were to have landed. Maybe we are even in this Fjord. And if we go south from here, there's just too many dead ends, fjords, peninsulas and so on to get lost in, even with the waters rising and eventually covering them. We want to get away, not get lost. Even in the days before the Wave  I would have suggested going north and then east and south following the shoreline of Zealand, down through this strait here. It's called the Øresund. It is narrow, but with an almost unbroken coastline to follow south it would be the better choice.
  "Can we help the plane float for longer by building some sort of outriggers?" Eva asked. "I remember reading about the Polynesian people being able to navigate stormy waters in small three-hulled canoes."
  "Yes that would surely help," Hank said. Let's wait a bit with  the technical parts of this and continue with our travel plans.
  "Going south would also help us survive in the long run. Shorter winters and hotter summers, once the earth's temperature returns to normal, would be a great help. We're back to the stone ages, or rather we're worse off than the stone agers." Allison, the biologist from Roberts group said.
  "How so?" Cordelia asked.
  "No animals, Maybe not even insects. Ever since the Wave I have been on the look-out for tracks and traces of animals. I have neither seen nor heard any so far. Maybe there'll be no plants either. The densest woods seems to have a few surviving trees, mostly conifers. If any deciduous trees have survived, only time will tell. We're back to zero."
  "How are we ever going to survive?" Cordelia asked in a despondent voice. "No plants, no animals, no noting?"
  Allan raised his hands: "Don't give up! First of all, we have food enough for a long time yet. It seems most of us thought that edibles was the thing to bring from the US of A. Father Paul has a treasure chest of goodies, I have something, and many of us have as well. And even better. I have seeds here in my bag. I bought bags and bags of heirloom seeds for my Mary, my wife who loves re-enactment, pioneer times and all that. Now they are going to help us survive." Allan had saved this announcement for such a moment, guessing that the invigorating effect of this piece of news could become necessary. 
  "And I've saved a lot of pips, kernels and stones from things we have been eating." Granny T said. "I don't rightly know why, other than I like growing things. I think I'm a relative to the entwives," she said smiling.
  "But first these ents and entwives will have to keep from drowning and decide where to go to achieve this," Tom said. "Does anybody have questions, suggestions, comments or other of relevance to Allan's travel route?" After a spell of silence he said: "Well then I have. Do you have any idea as to for how long this rain will continue to fall like this and how fast the waters will rise. In other words. How long do we have? And if your guess is right as to where we are, and how far the waters will rise, how far do we have to travel?
  After a short of time, where you could almost hear all the small gears inside Allan's head grinding, he said: "Now you might think I'm joking, but as far as I can count, it is going to rain for around 40 days." Laughter met this statement. "And of course the water will rise faster in the beginning, filling up all the lower parts. Later the rate will slow down, as the water will have ever broadening valleys to fill up.  It has been raining steadily and heavily since it began, giving us an estimated 5 meters of rain, which of course is way more locally as like I said the shallow parts fill up first. My best guess is that it equals 6 or 7  times as much, which seems about right for the water to reach Allan's Dunes now. We won't have much time left now, maybe two days. But after we have started traveling we'll have all the time we want, or rather we'll have until we run out of food."
  "When will we run out?" Tom said. "Henny, Granny T and Matthew, what are your estimates?"
  "If we have water - ant there's obviously going to be no lack thereof," Granny T said, "We should be able to manage for four months, maybe a bit longer on slimmer rations. It won't be a feast, sooner a famine, but we'll live."
   "Well," Allan said, slowly. "5 or 600 kilometers should take us to the higher parts in the middle of former Germany. Walking this distance would take us around a month, maybe less. Swimming, pulling the plane ... far too long time. If we could fashion some kind of outriggers like Eva spoke of, and then maybe some rafts and stakes or paddles, then we could row and pull the plane. A wild guess is that it would be about as fast as walking, especially since we can take turns rowing."
  "I have some really good news," Tom said. "As this plane was going to land in Denmark, and flew for long over water, we were obliged to have lifeboats with oars aboard! We can do it!"
  "And," Henny said. "Those slides are inflatable, or at least they were. I hope we have not made too many holes in them on Mount Luggage. But there's still patches and glue somewhere. They could stabilize and serve as pontoons, outrigger or whatever."
  Tom rose. "My suggestion is safety before speed this time around. We repair the slides, we make outriggers, check and reinforce the underside of the plane, and fasten everything thoroughly before we set out. Anybody who has even the slightest knowledge on sailing, boats, canoes, water-sports and so on, please help. Please speak up if you think something could be done better, safer, more efficient. Anything! This is not the time to be afraid of insulting anyone - or the time to be insulted either. If we had stopped to ask ourselves about the rains, we would have left here a week ago, and been better off not least health-wise. From now on the only stupid remark or question is the unspoken one."
  Everybody spontaneously applauded Tom.
  Granny T raised her hand just like at school: "I am of not much use caulking, hauling, carrying and so on. I would like to begin a nursery for plants in the cockpit of the plane. The windows are as far as I know made of some kind of plastic that will let the sun-rays through." Hank nodded her on. "Allan has seeds, I have pits, stones, kernels and so on from what we have been eating. Earth and water is in abundance outside. It could save us lots of time getting a garden started ..." she lost momentum as everybody was staring at her.
  Then Allan said: "You and my Mary would get along so well, she would have suggested this, too." And cheering and applauding began again.
  Allison spoke up next: "But the heat must have sterilized the soil, the brown fluff cannot contain much in order of nutrients."
  "You're right," Allan said, "The heat will have sterilized it totally. No weeds will be the positive part of it, but whether the small plants can grow, I do not know."
  "They will," Mona said, "I bought sterilized potting soil for sensitive plants each year on my farm. And before they have grown big enough to need fertilizer, well have a compost ready. Or if not, then human urine, thinned with water, is a very good fertilizer," she said smiling. "We have to stop being squeamish, And I volunteer as chef de compost." A new round of  applause told her that she had the job.
  "I'll place a bucket in the toilet, when the need arise," she said. "Every healthy male is then asked to use this for his morning pee. Sorry for the discrimination ladies. It will have to happen as female hormones can be harmful for sensitive plants. Later on, when we have a place for a larger compost pile, female urine and solid wastes will be added into the system as well."

Tom put in an hour before going to bed, sitting with his headphones on, fiddling with the radio, trying to make it work,  but not a sound was to be heard. Not even statics.
He turned to Hank: "I think the Wave also contained some kind of anti-magnetics. Nothing has been working since it hit."
"Yes" Hank said, "I have noticed. No batteries, no electricity, no computers, no electronics at all. I wonder if it was only a passing thing, if we can make those things work later on."
"Only time will tell. I'm going to give it up for now at least," Tom said shrugging his shoulders in a forlorn gesture.


  Next morning at first lights the construction and boat-wise people congregated aft to pull out and inflate the lifeboats. Allan found his seeds and joined Granny T in the small kitchen compartment just outside the cockpit. He handed her the seeds and said: "I'll volunteer for the carrying and other heavy work. I'm not needed in the outrigger department right now. There's no need to have too many hands either."
  Granny T just smiled and handed him two big buckets, "Water and soil," she said, quickly grasping the package containing the seed bags. 
  As Allan returned with the filled buckets, Granny T and Mona were in the cockpit planning the set up of trays. He helped bending, forming, twisting, drilling, hammering and filling in soil together with the two eager women. By evening the cockpit looked more like a greenhouse than anything else. Small buckets with peach pits, date kernels and even avocado stones stood on the floor, Trays of moist earth hung in layers, covered in white plastic to create the right ambience for seedlings. Allan carefully packaged the remaining seeds. They had decided to use only a third of the seeds now, One third to be saved for possible mishaps and re-planting, one third for next year. Allan placed the remaining seeds back into the watertight container inside his backpack.
Also inside and outside the plane things had been happening. The slides had been mended, Father Paul and Ulla had been very good at this job, and  Ulla's husband, who had worked in a bike shop for years, had been the very best. The skeletons of two boat-formed outriggers could be seen outside. Branches, small trees and the former stakes criss-crossed in crazy patterns, more long poles lay alongside the plane, made from what to Allan's untrained eyes looked like whole trees, but actually was an ingenuous composition of trees, lightweight metals and strings.

to be continued