The Haven Part 10

September 3, 2004

I have the solar-wind farm up and running, quite efficiently I might add, the water filtration system is working at one hundred percent capacity and the air circulator is up and running in almost every proposed room. I have done my job well so far but I have to stay here until the job is completely done. The rooms are coming along nicely, there are just a few of the living places to be finished then all of the tunnels have to be drilled. Vince sent his men home at the end of July; we had no more use for them so we decided, the less crowding, the better. I went down to Lompoc for a week mid-August and spent most of the time with my fiancée. She and I are both quite excited for the wedding, her especially because she has only seen plans of “The Haven”, she’s never seen the real thing, neither has anyone except Hank, Vince, Rachel, Andrew and me. Hank came up last week to see where all his money was going and he was quite impressed by the progress from the simple cave system he found years before. The wedding planning is being done mostly by Angela, she and Andrea have become very close in the past few months, we all have become closer because we are in a situation that we all have to deal with together and being close to each other is a good way to improve our chances of survival. I have to fix a problem with the air circulator, apparently one of Andrew’s men didn’t know what the tube to the room was so he covered it in cement, now Andrew and I have to go find where it is and uncover it. Summer apparently found out something about government testing being done on captured zombies, they are trying to weaponize them, but they don’t realize that they’re a threat to everyone, including them. I fear that it will be the American government that will accidentally cause Z-Day and lead to the apocalypse. I probably won’t have much time to write until after the wedding, and even then, I might have other things to do. I just hope the government has some basic idea of how to keep those undead terrors from getting out into the wild.

Sorry for the long wait, I have been quite busy and I honestly forgot about the blog, I hope you all enjoy as Marcus is getting closer and closer to Z-Day.

Happy Readings,

     SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 9

July 7, 2004

We have half of the windmills up but only two of them are working, the rest aren’t fully wired yet. We planned to have a farm with twenty-five windmills but we reduced it to twenty due to space and material restrictions. Vince and his guys are remarkably adept at this work and they learned how to put these together quite quickly. Vince and his men have been working almost non-stop over the past few months and their work shows it. They have finished the library, the utilities room, the storage and indoor training facility, the medical area, the operating room, the medical storage area, the labs and offices and the miscellaneous storage area. And they are almost finished with the kitchen and small food storage area. At the rate they’re going, they will be done by the beginning of November, earlier than expected, and we all get to go home sooner. Everyone in California has been improving with their general fitness and weapon skills, almost everyone is a half decent shot now, and Hank has high hopes for us. I have to fix the water filtration system, one of Andrew’s men accidentally dropped a rather large rock on it, and now it’s making funny noises and spewing some brown liquid. I have a feeling that until November I will be too busy to write much but I will try to make time, there still is a lot of work to do if we want this place ready for the wedding. Yes we decided to have the wedding here, in the entrance hall with just our small group. The wedding will be on December 12th this year and everyone is looking forward to it. I am actually going to take a week off to go down to see my fiancée at the beginning of August, but to do that, I have to work very hard until then.

Only a short one today. Happy Holidays to all, I'll write more after Christmas.
Happy Readings,

     SammyShoffy

EXAM TIME

I am entering exams at my university soon so my posts will be few and far between for the next few weeks, I expect 1 per week, I apologize for the wait on The Haven Part 9 but I haven't finished re-writing it and I want it to be as good as possible before I post it.

SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 8

May 13, 2004

I asked Andrea to marry me while I was in Lompoc and she said yes, we are going to have the wedding close to Christmas time so we can celebrate the wedding and the completion of “The Haven” at the same time. I’ve finished the air circulation system and Vince and his friends are helping me install it tomorrow. Andrew and his guys have finished hollowing out the library and are going to pour the cement floor on the 16th. While I was in California, we took a vote on who should be the leader, there were rules to the vote, the leader had to have at least a fifty-one percent majority and no one could be nominated, everyone was eligible and no one could vote for themself. We all considered the leadership to be more of a burden than a reward because all of the blame would land squarely on the one person’s shoulders. The last rule was the person elected was stuck, they couldn't back down and we would have elections ever year. I was elected to be leader by a ten to one vote. I had voted for Eric. With my new responsibility I started getting people ready, we started training. Andrea designed programs specifically for each of us, to help work on our respective weakest areas. I also started getting people weapon ready, we took trips to a firing range to see who had skill and who needed help. Hank was in charge of getting people battle-ready because he had the most military training. Hank was the best with the guns but I was told that I had natural skills, I guess all of those hours playing Duck Hunt served me well. Eric also had talent, probably because he was sitting at the NES right beside me playing Duck Hunt too. The rest of them (who were there, Rachel, Vince and Andrew were absent for obvious reasons) were pretty bad, so Hank started training them and giving them tips. I started working on the wind/solar farm design and I’ll probably have one working by mid-June, I’ll get Vince and his crew to help me build them so we can get them up faster. I have a feeling that until “The Haven” is done, life will be rather monotonous.

I think I'm settling into a nice calm schedule of 2-3 updates per week. I think that my original schedule of daily updates was overly ambitious.
Happy Readings,
     SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 7

April 7, 2004

They poured the floor of the entrance hall five days ago and they say we can walk on it today. Andrew and his men decided to pour the concrete and take food, water and sleeping bags with them and work while the cement was drying. They have been working at a ridiculous pace. I did a few rough calculations and if they maintain the rate at which they’re working now, they’ll have the rooms hollowed out, cemented and connected by late November this year. I have started to learn a bit about the mining and Andrew is being quite patient with me. I’m going back to California for a few weeks to visit Andrea and everyone else, but then I’ll come back and stay until November. I want to get “The Haven” done as soon as possible. I also realized that after it is finished being mined out and cemented, we still have to make it breathable. I have to get the air circulator made and working before the miners go too deep into the caves because if I don’t they might not be able to breathe in the farther back rooms. I’m going to put off the air circulator until after I get back from California because the miners won’t get that far into the mines in two weeks, they are still working on the kitchen and library. When I go home to Lompoc, I’m going to get everyone together to decide who gets what room and how things should be organized. I think we should have a vote for a leader because a group can be indecisive but a leader must make up his or her mind and their decision would be final. My flight for California leaves on the 10th so I have much to prepare before I leave. I want to have the plan for the air circulation system finished before I leave so I can have people check it over when I get home. I can’t wait to see everyone back home; I worry about them all the time. Our next order of business after the caves is weapons, Jeffrey tells me that he has started getting our group gun licenses and we will assess skill while I’m back. We need to find out who needs the most help with learning because we have to be able to keep ourselves safe but keeping ourselves safe requires keeping the rest of our group safe, and we need to work on that. We want a versatile arsenal, for example a few people specializing in sharpshooting, a few in hand-to-hand combat, etc. I hope we are working fast enough and I hope what the government thought was somewhat true, if Z-Day hits sooner than 2008 we could be in serious trouble. When I go back to California, I’m planning on asking Andrea to marry me, I’m madly in love with her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her, even if that means keeping her safe from an undead, infected world.


Here's another part of "The Haven", it's starting to get good. I've had to start posting less frequently because of exams which are starting soon. The number of posts will start to pick up closer to the Christmas break.
Happy Readings,
     SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 6

March 21, 2004

Summer did some semi-legal research into some government databases to see if they had any clue when Z-Day would arrive. The closest estimates they have are early 2008. We are hoping that we have that much time to finish the fortress; we are progressing slowly and have no clue when we are really going to be finished. On the up side, both Vince and Jeffery read my book and were welcomed into our group with open arms. Vince is up here with Andrew, Rachel and me working with my brother’s mining friends. Vince has a few acquaintances that he is going to get to join in the work effort. I’m trying to help as much as I can but I’m finding that I get in the way more than I help. I am also helping in other ways, I’ve been designing different defence and survival systems that will help keep us alive throughout any apocalypse. The work was being done as fast as possible while still keeping everyone safe. We have almost finished our escape plan for Z-Day, we will drive from our homes in Lompoc to the southern coast, and then we will sail up the western coast in Angela’s boat until we eventually get to Brown Lake, British Columbia. Brown Lake is the lake at the bottom of the mountain where we are building our haven. We have been trying to come up with names for the place and the best one we have so far is “The Haven”, it’s not my favourite choice of name but it fits better than anything anyone else could come up with. We started making lists of things we want to keep, realizing that after Z-Day, we might be some of the last humans left alive on Earth; we have started buying every book we can get our hands on from children’s stories to religious texts. Due to this revelation, we added a large library to the cave plans. The main problem with the caves, the reason the work is being done so slowly, is because there are constant safety checks and hollowing out caves is a lot harder than it seems. Stalactites are very hard to remove especially when the roof is thirty feet up and you don’t want to drop any big rocks on people working below. The living room, or entrance hall as some people have started to call it, is scheduled to have the concrete floor poured in early April so we can work from there. It is hard to judge the timescale for work for the other rooms because we don’t know where other openings may be, how much we have to remove from them or if we need to make a few caves from scratch.

Ok, everyday posting is not going to be very possible because I am a student and my studies have to come first. Every other/three days it is.

Happy Readings,

     SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 5

March 8, 2004

Andrew came with us to B.C. He’s not completely convinced about the inevitable Z-Day, but I think he’ll come around to the existence of zombies. He asked a lot of questions about them on the flight down, trying to get a feel for how I truly feel about them and I think he’s starting to believe more because I believe so much. Both Angela and Summer agreed to join the group. Angela was a lot easier to convince then Summer, Summer had a lot of questions regarding our sanity and only agreed to join after Hank offered her a much higher salary then she was earning at his company. I think that extended periods of hanging around us will convince Summer more of Z-Day then any amount of money ever could. Over the last few days Andrew, Rachel and I have been exploring the caves and coming up with plans. Andrew has found a bunch of caves that can be opened up further to accommodate living areas and still be structurally sound. Andrew and Rachel are working together to come up with a design for the fortress. They left it up to me to work on the outer wall. The basic design so far is a small plateau on the side of the mountain with a large walled fortress bigger than two football fields long and one wide with a reinforced steel door leading to the outside. On the other side of the fortress, the side against the mountain will be another heavier, stronger steel door leading into the caves. The first room will be the living room and from there, hallways branch off to the library, storage areas, medical area, labs, offices, kitchen and the living areas. In total there are going to be eleven living areas, each as big as a medium sized apartment, enough for everyone to have space to live. There will also be a large storage area and a room with all of the machines that will help us survive, such as a water filtration system leading to the lake at the bottom of the mountain, the air circulator so people can breathe in some of the farther back rooms and the power distribution system. The power generation was my idea, on the top of the mountain we will have a combination solar/wind farm. I am in the process of designing windmills that are covered in solar panels so that they generate energy as efficiently as possible.

We decided on two final people for our group, then we would be complete and we could start forming a plan. The two people left were Jeffrey Williams, mine and Eric’s lawyer and good friend, and Vince Hayes, an old buddy of mine who works construction.

Jeffrey Williams is my lawyer and friend; he knows everything there is to know about gun and weapon laws in California, which is useful for when we start to arm ourselves. He is one of the most trustworthy people I know and I am quite sure he thinks the same of me. Jeffrey is about six feet tall and in decent shape due to our weekly basketball games and the many trips to the gym. He is one of the most dedicated people I know and he will not stop a project until it is completely finished.

Vincent Hayes is a construction worker who Eric and I used to go to high school with. He, Eric and I go way back; we met back in elementary school and have been close ever since. He is a giant of a man at six foot six and two hundred thirty pounds. He is one of the strongest men I know and his knowledge of construction could be very helpful with the fortress in B.C. Vince is also one of the gentlest and kindest people I know and I would trust him with my life. He will make a valuable addition to our group.

Andrew, Rachel and I decided to stay up here for a while longer so I have asked Eric to organize everyone to try to get Vince and Jeffrey to join. Andrew is getting some of his mining friends to come up to British Columbia in a few weeks so we can start excavating and building this shelter. I hope we are working fast enough to be finished before Z-Day.

Hooray for late night posts!! Here's the next part of "The Haven". Enjoy.

Happy Readings,

     SammyShoffy