Alone, Book 3: The Journey Read Online Free Page A

Preferably indefinitely, if the rains kept the open topped container full.
         As an afterthought, he covered the open topped drum with wire screen, to keep leaves from the tree from sinking down to the bottom and clogging the drain hole.
         He tested his system for a month, and lost less than an inch of water from each drum. He couldn’t imagine any reason why it wouldn’t provide at least a year’s worth of water for the rabbits.
         But Dave knew to plan for the unexpected. If there were a drought, or an exceptionally hot summer, the water in the open drum might evaporate faster than rains could replenish it. The tree had never been struck by lightning before. However, a direct strike might topple both drums and render them worthless. Or, some heathen might find a way over his booby-trapped fence and steal his water supply.
         So Dave took some extra measures. He dug a hole in the opposite corner of the yard, beneath a peach tree that would keep it shaded much of the time. The hole was twelve inches deep, and eight feet square. He lined it with heavy duty plastic and filled it with water from the rain barrels he had placed under the gutters of the abandoned Hansen house behind his.
          When he finished, it resembled a kiddie pool.
         The rabbit he’d named Beth took no time hopping into it.
         “Well, I’ll be damned,” Dave had muttered. “I didn’t even know bunnies could swim.”
         Dave had also built a cistern, which was really nothing more than a hole in the middle of the yard about two feet across and two feet deep. In the bottom of the hole he placed a plastic pan, and across the top he stretched heavy plastic, held in place by heavy rocks.
         In the center of the plastic he placed a two pound rock.
         From his days in the Marine Corps, he knew that ground water would condensate on the underside of the plastic, then would roll toward the center and drip into the pan.
         He dug a small tunnel from the yard, angled downward, to connect with the bottom of the cistern. He wasn’t sure how the tunnel’s ventilation would affect the condensation process, but when he pulled the plastic cover off after a week there was water in the pan. So he knew it would work to some degree.
         He hoped that when the spring and early summer rains came, they would keep the kiddie pool and water pans he’d placed around the yard full. If they dried up, though, he was confident that the drip drums and cistern would do the trick.
         After he’d finished his project, he’d come across an article about rabbits that Sarah had printed off the internet.
         It said that wild rabbits got most of the water they needed from the green grass and plants that they ate.
         He felt foolish at first, going through so much trouble for rabbits that would probably have survived without his help.
         But then again, probably wasn’t good enough.
         Especially considering the puzzling warning from his daughter to protect the rabbits at all costs.
         Dave reckoned that the annual spring rains would make the grass in the back yard grow faster that his expanding bunny population could eat it. But just to be on the safe side, he went into the back yard of the Hansen house and threw the rest of the wheat and corn stalks from the previous fall over the fence and into his own yard.
         It was dry, sure. It wouldn’t be as good as the green grass and milkweed and dandelions that would spring up all over his yard in late spring.
         But in a pinch, it would sustain them. It had all winter long when the grass was dormant.
         When he finished his inspection, Dave was satisfied that his bunnies, and their offspring, would have enough food and water until he returned.
         The only thing left was saying goodbye.
         He sat on his deck and, as expected, the bunnies he’d named Lindsey and Beth came hopping