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“How about now?” he called out.
It was better but still not great. “No.”
The cord pulled up some more and I could hear him move further along the roof. “How about n—”
“Stop there! That’s good!” I went back out so I could see him. “It’s good now, thank you.”
“We’ll run the cord down the corner so we can close up the walls if we need, and I’ll have to rig up a bracket or a brace,” he said. “As soon as the wind and storms start, it’s not gonna stay put.”
He began to climb back down the ladder, and I was very much aware of how remote and isolated we were out here. “Please be careful,” I said, again deliberately not looking at his legs as he came down.
He got to ground level and was grinning at me, like he could tell I was making an effort to divert my eyes. “You all good there?”
“Yes, I just didn’t want you to fall,” I said, ignoring the innuendo in his tone. “You may be fine in a medical emergency if I’m the injured one, but if it’s you that’s injured and you’re depending on me to be cool, calm, and collected, you’re bound to be disappointed. And in a lot of pain.”
He laughed and clapped my shoulder. “You’d be fine.” But then he went about scavenging up some wood and the lid of an old plastic container in a row of discarded materials on the ground at the end of the bunker. He found what he was after, somehow made it work, zip-tied it all together to make a little raft-looking device, shoved some more zip ties in his mouth and went back up the ladder.
I stood out in the sun to try and see what he was doing but the direct heat got too much for me. There were a few bangs, some mumbles, and some colourful cursing, then a victorious grin. “Pass me up my phone.”
I found it on the bed and passed it up to him. This time, when he climbed down, his grin was even wider. “Just call me MacGyver,” he said, showing me the photos he’d just taken.
There, zip-tied to the metal ridging on the roof, was a little wooden raft with my booster zip-tied to it. It made me laugh. “Good job, MacGyver.” Then I noticed how sweaty he was. “Come in and have a drink of cold water.”
“Yeah, it’s gettin’ hot out there. It’s gettin’ dark over the north-west too. I’d reckon the storm this arvo’s gonna be a doozy.”
I checked the radar on the laptop—seeing it was now in real-time—and turned it so he could see the band of yellow and red moving across the map. “I think you’re right.”
He clapped his hands together. “Hell yes.”
It was rare to meet someone who shared my enthusiasm, and I found myself smiling at him. “I need to get my gear organised.”
“I could help,” he said, hopeful. “If I was allowed to touch anything.”
I rolled my eyes but relented. “Fine.”
That wild grin was back. “Awesome. I’ll be the best fulminologist assistant to ever fulminology assist.”
I sighed, pretending to be annoyed.
It was actually kind of sweet and fun to be doing this with someone else. I’d been working alone for so long, I wasn’t used to having company in the field.
Tully picked up the small metal box. “Okay, so what does this thing do?”
I sighed again, for real this time, and tried to be patient with his inquisitiveness. It could have been worse. He could have been a real jerk, or a horrible person. But he wasn’t. He was kind and curious.
And cute.
“It’s the housing unit for the data logger, power supply and modem for the auto-station. Waterproof, of course.”
He pointed to something else, having learned not to touch it. “And this?”
“It’s the solar radiation sensor.”
“What’s this camera for?”
“It’s a secondary unit,” I explained. “The automatic weather station has a limited scope, so I like to focus a second camera on the unit itself so we can see the effect the storm is having from both perspectives.”
He looked at it in complete wonder, excited. “That is all so freakin’ cool.”
