An Unkind Winter (Alone Book 2) Read online

  One by one, he went over the scenarios in his head.

  And one by one he found a rational solution.

  To every single one of them.

  Sometimes the answers came to him quickly. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night, having dreamed of the solution he’d been looking for. And he’d scramble to turn on his flashlight, to write the answer down, lest he forgot it by morning.

  And sometimes he struggled for days, until the solution to a particular problem just appeared in his head.

  Like it was waiting there all along, just teasing him.

  It began as an impossible dream, and over the course of several months morphed into a mission. A mission that was achievable.

  And a mission he was looking forward to. Because the payoff for the mission would be the chance to finally reconcile with his wife and daughters and to bring them home again.

  Or, to confirm once and for all that they hadn’t survived.

  He tried not to think of that possibility. But he was a realist before anything else. And he had to admit it was a likely scenario.

  That scenario was the only one he couldn’t fix. The only one he had no answer for.

  -3-

  Hi, honey.

  I know I haven’t written for a few days. I’m sorry about that. The truth is, I’ve been kind of bummed out. All the harvesting is done. I dried out most of it, using the stew pots in the sun, just like you taught me to do. I had to put a folding table in the middle of the back yard and put the pots on top of it. I knew the rabbits would knock them over and have a great feast if I’d just left them on the deck.

  Anyway, the rabbits seemed to sense there were vegetables in the pots. I watched out the window and saw a dozen or more, gathered around the table, sniffing with their little rabbit noses, and trying to figure out how to get up there to check it out.

  I finished drying the last two pots a couple of days ago. I bagged all the dried stuff in zip lock bags and dated them with what I think is the right date, although I’m probably a day or two off by now.

  Then I added them to the dry stock hidden in the walls.

  And I’m pretty impressed. By my calculations, we have more dry stock here now than we had the day you and the girls left. I was able to grow way more than I ate.

  It’s obvious to me that we can actually sustain ourselves by growing our own food and raising our rabbits. To hell with the supermarkets that aren’t there anymore. Who needs ‘em?

  We surely don’t.

  I named two of the bunnies after Beth and Lindsey. For some reason they just seem extra friendly. They’re almost always together and they follow me around the yard whenever I go outside.

  At first I didn’t know what to make of it. Then I had a nightmare that maybe you guys didn’t survive. That somehow the girls were reincarnated as rabbits and are here with me now, trying to tell me I don’t have to go looking for you. That nightmare bothered me so much I tried to stay awake all night the following night. I was afraid it might come back again.

  Whatever the reason they follow me around, I kind of like it. They’re really the only family I have here now. I’ve begun talking to them sometimes. I hope that isn’t a sign I’m going insane. They seem to respond to me when I speak. One of them turns his head to one side.

  Or her head. I don’t really know whether they’re boys or girls. They’re still too timid to let me pick them up.

  Oh, I could grab them. I’m getting pretty good at catching the rabbits when it’s time to kill them.

  But these two, they’re a part of me now. I don’t want to scare them. So I’ll keep trying to coax them over to me so I can pick them up and check out their undercarriages. In the meantime, I just don’t know what sex they are.

  Of course, they both have girls’ names now. I suppose if they’re boys I could rename them. Or not. I doubt if it matters to them one way or another what I call them.

  In any event, I told them I had no plans to kill them like the others. I told them they’re free to live and breed and to have little bitty bunnies. And to frolic and hop and do whatever else bunnies do.

  What do bunnies do, anyway, besides make babies and poop? There was so much rabbit poop in the back yard it started to smell. About a week ago I dug a hole in the middle of the yard so I could rake all the rabbit poop into it. And some of the rabbits (not Lindsey and Beth) started playing in the hole. They thought I dug it for them as a playhouse, and refused to get out even as it was raining poop pellets on top of them. I couldn’t help but laugh, and I really needed it.

  As I said, I told Lindsey and Beth that they were safe from my fillet knife, and they seemed happy. One jumped over the other and then they chased each other around in circles. I think they were relieved.

  That’s when I started to wonder for the first time if they could somehow understand my words. Does that make me nuts?

  I’ve decided for sure that I’m going to come for you and the girls. I can’t do it over the winter months, though. If anyone takes the Explorer from me, or if it breaks down, I’ll have to do the journey on foot. I figure ten miles a day, maybe fifteen at best. That’s two and a half months minimum.

  I obviously can’t carry two and a half months worth of food on foot, which means I’d have to forage for food along the way. And I doubt I could find enough food in the wintertime to sustain all the strength I’d need for a thousand mile trek.

  My intent is to spend the winter getting into shape. I can jog in place every day with twenty pounds of weights on my back to build my stamina and my strength. In the springtime, I can fix the Explorer, fill the back of it with food and supplies, and then set out.

  I’m actually looking forward to it.

  But first, I have to survive the winter.

  I love you. Kiss the girls for me.

  P.S.

  Remember I told you last spring that I found a map you printed for Susan and Tommy’s house? Well, I looked closely at it and it was their old house, in downtown Kansas City. Apparently it’s the one you printed three years ago when we drove up for Susan’s college graduation. Right before they moved to the country. So I’m back to square one without a map. Bummer…

  -4-

  Mikey and Dave came from different worlds. Had grown up in different places. Lived completely different lifestyles, on two distinctly different economic planes.

  But they had some things in common, too. They were both good people, from families of strong moral character. They were both God-fearing and hard working.

  And they were both completely alone, left to fend for themselves in a harsh, cruel world.

  Dave, of course, saw it coming and prepared for it.

  Mikey and his family had been caught completely off guard.

  Mikey wasn’t his real name. His real name was Miguel. He asked his friends to call him Mike, because he thought it sounded more American. He wanted his American friends to accept him, and thought they’d be more apt to do that if his name sounded more like theirs. It was his American friends who bastardized the new name into Mikey, based on Mike’s diminutive stature. They said it fit him better.

  And he liked it. It was catchy.

  It wasn’t the only thing he did to fit in. He stayed up three hours each night, long after finishing his homework, to study his English. He read any book in English he could find. Romance novels, mysteries, sports magazines… it didn’t matter. He just wanted to build his vocabulary, and he knew that reading the English language would do that.

  It was a major struggle at first. So many of the words were completely alien to him. Every sentence or two, he’d had to stop and refer to his English to Spanish dictionary to look up a strange word.

  But he was driven, and he had an excellent memory. Once he committed a new word to memory and saw the context in which it was used, he seldom forgot it.

  Many of Mikey’s American friends thought he was illegal, but he wasn’t. His father was a professor of Mexican-American relations at the University of
Mexico City. He’d accepted a position, and a work visa, to teach at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

  Mikey had a green card, and was as legal as any of his friends, white or brown. And he loved being in America.

  But so many things were different in San Antonio. He’d never been cold in his life before his family moved to Texas. Never even owned a coat. And while San Antonio would never see a blizzard even in the harshest of its winters, it did indeed get cold.

  Something else Mikey’s family never had before he came to America was an outdoor grill.

  Oh, some of his friends and neighbors in Mexico City had them.

  But Mikey’s father preferred to barbeque only occasionally, and did so the old fashioned way, the way his own father had taught him. Over an open fire, in a backyard spit, the meat on a stick and slowly turning.

  The blackout had come the previous March. It was the transition month for San Antonio. Typically, the days were moderate but the nights were still cold, as the city changed over from winter to spring.

  The first day of the blackout, the family had been okay. They, like everyone else, had assumed it was a problem with the power company. Mikey’s father had taken a week off, to build another bedroom onto their house. He was the only one in the family who drove, and since he didn’t have to go to work that week, it never occurred to them that it was more than just a normal blackout.

  Had he tried to start his car, and then looked up the block to see abandoned cars in the middle of the street, he would have realized there was much more going on.

  But he never did that. His car sat untested in the driveway, and the family was blissfully unaware of the extent of the crisis.

  That first night, without heat in the house, the family snuggled under blankets. It was a miserable night for all of them.

  The second day had brought some relief, the sun warming the house and their bodies just a bit. But as the sun set low over the horizon on that second day, they were realizing they were in for another brutal night.

  It was a cultural thing, really. Since most of the people they grew up with had no capability of owning a barbeque grill, no one in the family knew it was a bad idea to bring one indoors.

  Well, ironically, no one except for Mikey.

  But Mikey was out that night. The family was running out of drinking water, and the tap wasn’t working. His best friend Tony invited him to spend the night, and also said his family had several cases of drinking water stacked in their garage.

  “My mom won’t mind if you take a case home in the morning,” Tony had said.

  Mikey’s father could have been forgiven. Although he was considered a brilliant man in his field, he was a

  bit lost in the ways of the world, and had been accused more than once of acting before thinking things through.

  When he announced that he had the perfect solution for making the family’s second night without heat more comfortable than the first, no one thought to question him.

  Rather, they thought he was a genius.

  The family next door, the Marinos, had asked Mikey’s dad to watch their home while they were on vacation.

  The last thing they’d said before leaving was, “If there’s anything you need to borrow in our absence, feel free.”

  The Marinos had once invited Mikey’s family for a backyard barbeque. They had a fine propane grill. It had wheels on one side, and was ridiculously easy to roll.

  And the Marinos shared a common alley with Mikey’s family. So it wasn’t difficult at all for Mikey’s father to roll the grill out one gate, through the alley, and into the other gate. And then into his house.

  Mikey’s father beamed with pride as his wife and children praised him for his ingenuity.

  The last thing he did that night before everyone went to bed… the last thing he did in life, really, was to move the dining room table out of the way and light the grill.

  -5-

  Mikey returned home the following morning, a case of Dasani thrown across one shoulder. He was barely seventeen, and one of the smallest kids in his high school class. But he was strong for his size. Lugging the water for two blocks wasn’t the greatest of fun, but it wasn’t that difficult either.

  Now, though, standing at his front door, it was starting to get a bit heavy.

  He knocked on the front door a second time. Then a third, a bit irritated that no one seemed to hear him.

  He tried the knob and it was locked. No surprise there.

  Then he walked through the gate to the sliding glass door. The door hadn’t been locked for the two years they’d lived there. It didn’t need to be. They had two pit bulls who’d have made a snack out of anyone who tried to break in.

  He slid the door open and he saw the gas grill. It had run out of propane and burned itself out a couple of hours before, but not before it had done its damage. Now it was cold to the touch, in the chilly morning air.

  Mikey immediately knew the implications.

  He ran through the house, saying, “No! No!” The air seemed very thin. It was hard to catch his breath. Subconsciously, he understood why. But he wouldn’t admit it to himself.

  He went to his little sister Mary first. She had passed out in the hall, in front of her parents’ bedroom. It was as though she had realized something was wrong, and went to announce it.

  He dragged the girl outside.

  Then he went back for the others.

  His father was a big man. Over two hundred and seventy pounds. Much too large for Mikey to move.

  He grabbed his mother and dragged her out, all the while yelling at his father to wake up and help him.

  “We must get everyone out!”

  But in the end, the only two people he’d take outside were his mother and Mary. He simply couldn’t get them all. He had to start work on the ones he might be able to save.

  He’d taken health the previous two semesters, and they’d taught CPR. They showed several videos, and even had a representative from the American Red Cross come in to stress how important it was.

  She’d told the class, “Everyone should learn CPR. You never know when you’ll be called upon to use it.”

  But Mikey was like most other teenaged boys. When a classroom darkened and a video began to play, it was a time to daydream or snooze, or send text messages to his friends. It certainly wasn’t a time to listen and learn.

  Oh, he tried to save them. But it was a lost cause. They’d already been dead for several hours when he found them.

  Deep down inside, he could tell from the way their skin was cold and clammy, and their limbs had stiffened. But he tried valiantly anyway.

  Eventually he gave up, and spent most of the next three days digging graves in the back yard.

  And then dragging everyone he loved in the world into them.

  That was six months before.

  Mikey’s world had changed a lot since then.

  Now he was a child of the streets. He’d go back home occasionally, but his house held horrific memories now. He could barely stand to be there, and only went by every few days to change his clothes when they got too rank to stand. Or to visit the graves of his dead family.

  Mikey’s habit on most nights was to wait until darkness, then go find an abandoned house. He’d break in, look around to see if it might contain anything of value, then hang around until daylight. Once he had light he had plenty of time to loot it at his leisure.

  Mikey’s logic was simple. Even though the world had gone to hell and nobody knew when the power was coming back on, everything would eventually return to normal.

  Nearly all the other looters were just looking for food or water. They were leaving the good stuff behind.

  Mikey could get food and water from a 7-Eleven or a Sysco truck. What he got from the houses was a lot more valuable in the long term: gold and silver bullion, jewelry and silverware.

  Every night he selected a different house. In the daylight he filled up a backpack with treasures that would ensure
he was a rich man later in life. Once the backpack was full, he snuck out to the boonies a mile west, past the last housing development.

  He had a secret cave there that now held a treasure trove worth at least half a million bucks.

  After adding his loot to the pile, he simply slept in a tent not far from the cave. He’d wake up in the hours of darkness and do it all again.

  -6-

  Dave spent much of the day gathering water bottles from around the house.

  In the two and a half years preceding the blackout, they’d saved hundreds of two liter plastic soda bottles. And maybe a hundred gallon milk jugs. Now, they were filled with water, and distributed all over the house: inside the interior walls, hidden behind the clothing in the closets, inside mattresses he’d hollowed out. Every little nook and cranny in the house held either dried food or water.

  He even had a hundred such bottles stored in the Hansen house.

  The problem with the water bottles was that they wouldn’t survive the first hard freeze. He’d filled each bottle to the top, in an effort to stockpile as much rainwater as he possibly could.

  Now, though, it was apparent he’d shot himself in the foot. He knew that the water in the bottles would expand when the temperature dropped below freezing. With each bottle full, there simply was no room for expansion. Each bottle would burst.

  And that wasn’t acceptable. If the bottles burst, not only would he lose the water within them. He’d also lose the bottle, and therefore the capability of stockpiling more water after the winter was over. In addition, he’d have water damage all over the house, wherever the bottles were stored.

  Toward the end of the day, at just about twilight, he went into his back yard and crawled through the fence to the Castro house next door.

  The Castros bugged out not long after the crisis had begun. He’d seen them leave, with backpacks and suitcases, walking down the street. One of the children pulled a little red wagon full of belongings behind him.

  For a long time, Dave stayed away from the Castros’ house. He wasn’t sure if they were coming back, and he didn’t want to violate the sanctity of their home. They were good people and they didn’t deserve the heartache of coming back and finding that all of their things had been rifled through.