An Unkind Winter (Alone Book 2) Read online

  The night vision goggles he wore made it a little easier to see in the room, so he didn’t have to feel around like Mikey had done a couple of hours before.

  Dave simply stood up, looked around, then decided he must have miscounted.

  No big deal. So his last load would be a little bit lighter than the first four loads.

  All in all, a problem he could deal with.

  -11-

  Half an hour later, Dave tucked the last of the water bottles behind the shrubbery at Frank and Eva’s house, and went around the side of their garage to retrieve four large black trash bags.

  These bags were a heck of a lot lighter than the loads he had been carrying, and were a welcome relief.

  Dave considered himself in pretty good shape, under the circumstances. But even a strong man can get tired of lugging water, especially when making several trips in one night.

  Inside the four bags were the soda bottles that Dave had brought the previous night. Only now they were empty and light as a feather, after Eva and Frank emptied their contents into their bathtub for others in the neighborhood to use.

  He cautiously made his way back to the Castros’ house.

  By his reckoning, he had half an hour before the sky started to lighten by the morning sun.

  He wouldn’t have to rush, but he had little time to rest, either.

  From shrub to shrub, from abandoned car to abandoned car, he made his way the two blocks to the Castros’ house.

  And walked in with ten minutes to spare.

  It was still just dark enough to miss the blood on the doorknob and living room floor. And once he was in the dining room, there was simply no blood to see. Mikey hadn’t been in there.

  Mikey had gotten in a good nap, and was no longer sleeping soundly. He was a fairly light sleeper anyway. Especially in a strange bed, in a strange place, where he might hear noises he wasn’t used to hearing.

  His eyes opened at the sound of someone shuffling around downstairs.

  The sound he heard was very distinctive, yet he couldn’t place it. It was the rustling of trash bags full of empty soda bottles.

  Mikey was out of bed in a heartbeat.

  He had no gun. He’d come across several of them in previous months, hidden under pillows or behind couches. But he’d always left them behind.

  His logic was sound. Since his deeply religious mother had never allowed them in the house, he’d never fired one. He just didn’t know how.

  Oh, he could have figured it out. He was a smart guy, after all. But it was during that initial learning phase… when he was trying to figure out how to aim and fire the darn thing, that someone might blow him away with their own gun.

  So he traveled light, and relied on his quick feet and the darkness to help him get out of tough situations.

  Still, as he hid behind an open closet door in the master bedroom, he wished he had a gun in his hand to even the odds.

  He assumed two things. First, that whoever was downstairs shuffling around was another looter. Second, that he was armed.

  Mikey remembered that the stairs were made of hardwood. They wouldn’t hide footsteps, as carpeted stairs would have. Rather, they would announce it when whoever was downstairs made his way up to the second floor.

  But then again, something else he’d learned over the previous months was that many looters never went upstairs.

  After all, he was the exception. Nearly all of the other looters these days weren’t looking for valuables. They were looking for food and water.

  And nobody stores food and water in their upstairs bedrooms.

  So unless the looters are drug addicts wanting to rifle through medicine cabinets, most of them simply went through the kitchen and pantry, and then moved on to another house.

  He made his way from behind the closet door to the window.

  His plan was simple. He’d ease the window open and stand ready to jump.

  As soon as he heard footsteps on the staircase, he’d toss his bag to the ground below and jump. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d escaped out of a second story window. With any luck, he’d be over the fence by the time the looter made it to the top of the stairs.

  But then he heard another sound. One he could definitely identify. For he’d heard this particular sound a thousand times before.

  It was the sound of a sliding glass door opening.

  Suddenly Mikey’s brilliant plan was shot all to hell.

  He couldn’t jump out of a window onto a prowler who was in the back yard.

  So instead, he just watched and waited.

  The looter was apparently finished. Had already determined there was nothing to eat or drink, and was moving on to the next house.

  Mikey didn’t understand why the man didn’t just exit through the front door. That would have been the easy thing to do.

  But then again, he knew that some looters had a different m.o. Instead of going through the front doors, they went from one back yard to the next, hopping the fences between each yard, then trying the back doors to see which ones they could get into.

  Mikey stood at the window, watching. If the bastard next door who put the screws in the front fence did it all the day around the property, the looter would soon be screaming out in agony.

  It might be fun to watch, and the light was beginning to peek over the eastern horizon now.

  So it was the fence between the Castros’ house and Dave’s where he cast his attention.

  What he saw next was Dave, releasing the slide bolts that held the section he’d cut of the fence into place. Dave was lugging four black trash bags full of… something, and Mikey wondered what it was. Obviously some kind of loot the man had stolen from wherever he’d gone during the night. But what?

  Mikey might have gone on wondering forever, except that when Dave opened his secret gate and tossed the bags into his own yard, he was distracted by a rabbit that tried to bolt through the hole. And while shepherding the rabbit back to where he belonged, Dave managed to leave the fourth bag in the Castros’ yard.

  Dave went through the small passageway, secured the gate from the other side, and tossed the bags of empty bottles onto his back deck.

  It never dawned on him he was a bag short.

  He left the bags on the deck. Hopefully the freeze was still several weeks away. He had plenty of time to take his full bottles and pour some of their water into these.

  And besides, lugging the full bottles for most of the night wore him out. All he wanted to do was rest a bit, do his normal morning routine, and then get some sleep.

  Mikey stood in the window next door for awhile, waiting to see if the strange man who lived in the house with the spiked fence was going to return. And he wondered what in the world could be in the bag.

  He was tempted to go down and have a look. It might be something he wanted. But he’d wait awhile.

  Something else that piqued his interest was the rabbit that almost bolted into the yard, along with other rabbits he’d seen through the open gate.

  His mouth watered.

  He hadn’t had fresh meat in months, since he came across a live rooster on the outskirts of town and chased it down. It had taken him twenty minutes of chasing the bird before he finally wore it down, then cornered it between houses and was able to catch it.

  Even then, it hadn’t given up without a fight, getting a death grip on Mikey’s little finger.

  Finally, Mikey pulled his finger free and wrung the rooster’s neck.

  Looking back, that was the last good meal he’d had.

  He sure would love to have some fresh rabbit.

  But Mikey wasn’t a fighter. Nor was he the kind of guy who’d break into another man’s house with guns blazing, killing everybody in sight to get what he was after.

  No. Mikey was a more subtle looter. Now that he knew the man spent his nights looting, he’d come back again. When the man was gone. And instead of trying to climb over the fence again and tearing his hands to shreds,
he’d enter through the Castros’ house, go through the secret passage, and enter the man’s home. Then, while the man was out looting from others, Mikey would be looting from the man.

  Tit for tat, so to speak.

  -12-

  The previous evening, before Dave lugged all those bottles over to the Castros’ house and then taken them to Frank’s house a few at a time, he’d raided his stock of dry foods. He put three cups of dried vegetables into a pot of water to soften overnight, with the intention of slaughtering a rabbit and cooking up a big pot of stew for his meals for a couple of days.

  Seeing the dried carrots floating to the top of the water gave him an idea. Maybe he could use them later to coax Lindsey and Beth to come a little closer to him.

  But right now he needed coffee.

  He tried to boil some water for coffee on his small camp stove, but the propane ran out before the water came to a boil.

  He stuck his finger into the water to see whether it was hot enough for coffee, and immediately regretted it.

  “Ow! Damn it!”

  It was definitely hot enough.

  He poured it into a cup and mixed in two teaspoons of instant decaf coffee.

  The only thing Dave despised more than decaf coffee was instant coffee. But he wanted to sleep through the day when he laid down a couple of hours later. And the only decaf he had was instant.

  Actually, it was Sarah’s coffee, and what she preferred to drink, but he didn’t think she’d mind. And it was only a couple of teaspoons, because he sure as heck didn’t expect to drink any more.

  He carried the nasty concoction to the garage and shone a flashlight into the corner where he kept his propane bottles.

  He was down to sixteen. But that wasn’t a problem. He’d already boiled enough water to get him through the winter. He knew he had to prep his drinking water during the hot weather months, because boiling the same amount of water when it was cold would have used three times as much fuel.

  So really, the only thing he needed the propane for was for coffee and cooking, and he’d only have to burn the little stove for an hour a day, tops.

  The sixteen bottles would be plenty to last him until the weather got cold enough to start cooking his food in the fireplace.

  He grabbed a bottle and carried it back to the deck, then unscrewed the old bottle from the camp stove and connected the new one.

  Lindsey and Beth were there, still giving him the same look.

  “What?” he said. “I don’t have to answer to you two. I’m not married to either one of you. I don’t even know if you’re my type. And that reminds me…”

  He stood up and walked toward the back door.

  “Don’t go away. I’ll be right back.”

  A minute late he emerged from the house again, to find the two rabbits sitting in the same spot, still watching him.

  “Well now, it’s a shame you guys aren’t my type. You’re much better behaved than Sarah ever was.”

  The rabbits looked at each other, then back at Dave.

  He could only imagine what they were thinking.

  “You guys want some carrots?”

  He held a carrot out in front of them. They stuck their noses up and sniffed the air, but they held their ground six feet away from him.

  “Okay, then. Gonna play hard to get, huh?”

  He broke off a couple of small pieces of the carrot and slowly walked toward them. They backed away as he approached.

  He placed the carrots gently on the ground, perhaps a foot closer to him than they had been. Then he sat down in the lounge chair again.

  The rabbits slowly came forward, ate the carrots, and decided they liked them. They looked to Dave wanting more.

  This time he placed the carrots just a couple of feet in front of him, on the edge of the wooden deck.

  It took a couple of minutes, but they finally felt safe enough to hop up onto the deck.

  He reached out and touched Lindsey’s head. She jerked back, but then came back and let him pet her.

  Beth bolted and joined the other rabbits in the yard.

  Hey, it was a start.

  -13-

  I’m writing this by candlelight. It’s about three in the morning, and I just got woken up by gunshots. These were close, no more than a few houses west of us.

  I’ve got so much to tell you about, but I just remembered I haven’t told you about my new friends, Frank and Eva.

  They’re good folks. About our parents’ age I guess, although I was polite enough not to ask. He was a sheriff’s deputy and has the swagger of a lawman. I’d have guessed it even if he hadn’t shown me his badge.

  Eva’s a retired school teacher. You’ll like her. She reminds me so much of your Aunt Karen. She’s sweet and she says she loves to play cards and cook and give her husband a hard time. In other words, you two have a lot in common.

  I know you’re probably shaking your head, wondering why I put myself in danger by leaving the house, and then contacting others.

  Actually, in all fairness to me, I didn’t contact them, they contacted me. At least Frank did, the night he walked up behind me. I’m lucky he wasn’t a bandit or I’d be dead now.

  Anyway, like I said, they’re good people. They’ve been helping all of their neighbors by showing them how to catch rain water and telling them how to care for their crops and such.

  Turns out they’re preppers too.

  And I feel that I can trust them. After all, Frank could have shot me that night and robbed me of my seeds. He certainly had the opportunity to do so but he didn’t.

  Long story short, I needed someone to care for the rabbits when I come for you. I told them I was going to leave some of them in our own yard, and set up a water system of some type for them. But just in case they all get out or somebody steals them, I wanted a backup plan.

  Frank and Eva are going to watch all but four of them. I told them to eat what they wanted and share what they wanted with their neighbors, or to give live pairs of them away so that others could breed them too. The only thing I asked them to do was to return a few of them to me when we return, if ours don’t make it.

  I plan to do all I can to make sure Lindsey and Beth survive in our own yard when I leave. I still can’t explain my attachment to those two rabbits. They’re not even tame, although I was able to pet one of them today. I still don’t know if they’re boys or girls, but I hope they’ll let me pick them up soon so I can find out.

  I made the best stew today. I was tired of rabbit, so I pulled some dried beef chunks out of our stash, as well as some dried vegetables and potato chunks.

  I added some brown gravy packets, and it came out great. Dinty Moore ain’t got nothing on me.

  The best part of it is I made so much it’ll last me three or four days. All I have to do is crank up the generator twice a day and slap a bowl in the microwave.

  You know, I’m quite a catch. You’re lucky to have me. Do you know how rare it is for a man to be as good looking as me and cook? Damn rare, that’s how rare it is.

  I pray every night that you made it safely to Kansas City and met Tommy and Susan there. I know they’re taking good care of you, if only you were able to make it that far.

  As for the other option, that your plane fell from the sky, I’m trying not to think of that. It keeps popping into my head, and I try to force it back out again. It’s just an option I refuse to accept.

  Good night, sweet Sarah. I love you.

  -14-

  When Dave went to bed at mid morning, he’d noticed clouds rolling in from the north. The sky was getting darker by the minute, and he’d felt a noticeable drop in the temperature.

  When he crawled into bed, he assumed the thin blanket would be enough to keep him warm.

  But he was wrong. In late afternoon he woke up shivering. He stumbled out of bed and went outside. The sky was thick with heavy cloud cover now. Much too thick to see the sunset that he knew was a couple of hours away. The temperature had dropped at
least fifteen degrees since morning light.

  He went back in the house and looked at the calendar hanging on the kitchen wall. He suspected, was almost sure, that he’d forgotten to cross off a day or two. But even allowing for that, it was much too early to have a freeze. Even if he missed a couple of days on the calendar, it was still just the third week of October.

  And the end of October was supposed to be a bit chilly at night. But not shivering cold in the daytime.

  Dave wasn’t a weatherman, of course. He relied on his own experience, his own memories, to tell him when winter and spring arrived.

  He’d lived in San Antonio his entire life. He couldn’t really remember much about going trick or treating when he was a boy. But he had vivid memories of taking his girls out each Halloween night to collect candy around the neighborhood.

  And he remembered always having to buy their Halloween costumes a size too big, so that they’d fit over light jackets or windbreakers.

  That’s how he knew that late October was chilly, but not overly so.

  He used the same method to know when spring would arrive. The South San Antonio Independent School District always scheduled their spring break for the second week in March.

  And the local theme parks were always open for spring break.

  Ever since the girls started school, the family had made a tradition of spending a day at the theme park during spring break. Sarah and Dave both scheduled a day off, and arrived at the park as soon as they opened.

  They always wore short sleeves and jeans, because the weather was comfortable at that time of year. But they always had to leave the park before dark. Because the temperature would get a little too cool for comfort after the sun went down.

  It was winter’s way of letting them know it was still around.

  In Dave’s mind, the end of October marked the time it started to get cold. The second week in March marked the time it started to get warm.

  He didn’t expect temperatures low enough to make him shiver until at least the end of November. And he’d hoped for much later.

  Dave didn’t know, had no way of knowing, really, that San Antonio was in for the worst winter on record.