An Unkind Winter (Alone Book 2) Read online

  It was probably dark enough outside to prevent anyone from seeing smoke rising from his chimney. But he wanted to wait a couple of hours to start the fire, just to be safe.

  He put a heavy comforter on the bed in his safe room and crawled underneath it. His intent was just to warm up for awhile, then get up and make his fire and spend the night hunkered down in his safe room, reading and writing and watching a couple of movies.

  But he fell asleep and didn’t wake up until after two a.m.

  “Well, so much for my sleep schedule.”

  He noticed when he got up and lit a candle that he could see his breath. He couldn’t remember if that happened when the temperature hit a certain mark, or whether it fluctuated with the humidity or other factors.

  Whatever the case, it didn’t matter much.

  It was darn cold.

  He built a fire in the fireplace, glad that he’d accomplished everything that needed to be done before the first freeze. If it wasn’t freezing outside, it was close, and any day now he expected to go outside to find the rabbits’ water trough frozen solid.

  At least he didn’t have to worry about his water bottles bursting. It had been two weeks since he’d made the last delivery of water to Frank and Eva’s house, and he had used the empty bottles to drain excess water from every bottle in the house.

  Actually, he ran a few bottles short, but that wasn’t a major problem. He poured one third of the last full bottles into the kitchen sink, and would use it a little at a time to make his coffee.

  It didn’t take long until the fire was roaring, and he was able to take off his coat. The fireplace would do a pretty effective job of keeping his safe room warm, even in the coldest weather, and despite the fact that a good portion of the heat escaped through the open doorway.

  Dave hoped that the open doorway would provide enough ventilation to prevent the buildup of deadly carbon monoxide. But just in case, he resolved that anytime he felt drowsy or his eyelids started to droop, he’d take a walk outside the safe room.

  And any night he was extra tired because he didn’t get enough sleep the day before, he’d forego the fire completely. It was much better to be cold for a day than to be lulled to sleep by an invisible gas, never to wake up again.

  Now that the fire was burning well, he put a pot of coffee on to boil and went outside to take a leak. The cloud cover had lifted just enough to give him a little bit of starlight and he could tell by the way the steam rose from his urine stream it was close to freezing.

  Then for a brief moment, he panicked.

  If he could see steam in the twilight, was it also possible for others to see smoke rising from his chimney?

  He walked over to the corner of the yard, careful not to step on any of the darker rabbits who sometimes got under his feet.

  And he breathed a sigh of relief. He couldn’t even see the chimney, which was made of dark gray brick. Much less the smoke coming out of it.

  He could smell the smoke, sure. But several other houses in the neighborhood also burned their fireplaces at night. He knew that the smell of smoke wouldn’t lead anyone to his house specifically.

  Dave looked to the sky and suddenly lashed out in rage.

  “Why? Why in hell did you do this? You’re supposed to be a God of compassion, of love! Do you have a sick sense of humor? Do you hate mankind so much that you thought you’d play a cruel joke on us? Why the hell would you do such a thing, and why the hell should I worship you if this is the way you treat your people?”

  He fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face, babbling to himself.

  “Why? Why?”

  Half of him hoped God would be angry with him, and strike him dead with a lightning bolt from the heavens.

  The other half just wanted answers.

  To questions that were unanswerable.

  He finally stumbled back into the house. He took a flashlight from the kitchen counter and went into the garage, where he poured two cups of gasoline into his generator.

  As the generator came to life, he thought how sweet it would be just to bring a pillow and a blanket into the garage, and to lay on the floor and doze off to sleep. To let the invisible and odorless fumes overtake him, and steal away his life.

  Then he could face God directly, perhaps, and demand answers to his questions.

  But no.

  Dave was a man who took the words of the Bible literally. He’d always been that way. That’s the way he was raised, the grandson of an old minister who preached fire and brimstone each Sunday morning, and made damn sure his grandchildren were there to hear every word.

  The Bible said thou shalt not kill. And while it specifically didn’t mention suicide, the killing of oneself still counted.

  Dave had always believed that suicide was a train ticket straight to hell.

  So if he had laid down, and let the carbon monoxide end his life, he might indeed meet his God and get his answers. And then God might tell him, “I have your loved ones here with me. But you’re heading in the other direction.”

  In the end, he shook off his funk and returned to his safe room, where he spent most of the night sipping black coffee and watching old family movies.

  And softly sobbing.

  -15-

  His alarm clock went off at five a.m., not to wake him up, for he’d been up all night.

  No, the alarm was to remind him to douse the fire that had warmed his body all night long, lest an early morning looter or bandit notice wisps of smoke coming from the chimney of an empty house.

  And wonder why someone would go through so much trouble to make an occupied house look empty, and what treasures they might be hiding inside.

  He kept two buckets of dirt next to the fireplace, having learned during his Boy Scout days that was the quickest way to kill a campfire.

  Actually, that wasn’t true. It was the second quickest way. He could douse it faster by tossing water on it, but he hadn’t lost his mind to the point of wasting his most precious commodity.

  Maybe another day, at some point in the future. But not yet. Not today.

  He’d intentionally let it burn down, having placed no more wood on the fire after three a.m. That would become his habit in the months ahead. And he was surprised, in a way, that the room stayed as warm as it did even after the fire drew down.

  Apparently five sheets of half inch plywood not only did a good job of stopping bullets.

  It was also excellent insulation.

  Dave tossed both buckets of dirt onto the fire, killing it immediately. No smoke, no mess, nothing. One second the fire was there, the next second it was gone. He thought back to the misery he was in the night before and reflected. He could have snuffed out his own life that easily as well.

  He was glad he didn’t.

  In the evening, after he slept most of the day away, he’d pick the pieces of unburned wood from the fireplace. They’d be cold by then. He’d shovel out most of the dirt and put it back into the buckets, and sweep out what he couldn’t shovel.

  Then he’d place the half burned pieces of wood back inside the fire box and start the flames anew, adding additional wood as it caught.

  Surviving the cold winter months alone, he’d decided, would be just an endless monotony of habits that rarely changed. Everything would eventually become a mind-numbing routine.

  The only thing that would make it bearable was knowing that each sunrise brought him another day closer to his ultimate goal, and the only real reason he didn’t lay down in that garage.

  Each new sunrise brought him a little closer to the day when he could leave and go find his wife and his little girls.

  And that reminded him to don his heavy parka and go check on the rabbits.

  He drained the last of the coffee in his pot and sat on the back deck, watching the clouds.

  They were mere wisps now, far different than the heavy cover they’d been the night before. But the cold was still there. He could still see his breath, and although the c
offee in his cup wasn’t as hot as it had been a couple of hours before, it still put off steam.

  His two favorite rabbits, Lindsey and Beth, came to him and sat against his ankles. Looking for warmth, maybe? Dave didn’t know. But he remained as still as he could so he wouldn’t scare him away.

  Beth looked straight at him for a time.

  He wondered why. It was almost like an angry wife’s gaze, steady and unwavering. It was almost like the stare Sarah occasionally gave him when he screwed something up. Kind of a “what did you do this time?” look.

  He wondered if Beth was blaming him for bringing the cold weather in.

  After a few minutes they hopped off, one first and then the other.

  Once again, Dave was left to his own thoughts, pondering what the coming tomorrows would bring.

  After awhile, he remembered why he’d come out to begin with. He walked over to the water trough and saw that it had a layer of ice across the top of it. He saw two of the rabbits licking water from the top of the ice. Maybe that’s what Beth was trying to tell him with the long stare.

  He’d wondered how the rabbits would get their water when it froze, and was now confident that they wouldn’t die of thirst. He assumed that was how rabbits in the wild survived their winters when everything around them was frozen.

  Still, he took pity on them and decided that licking ice to get water was just too much work.

  He took his shovel and used the handle to break the ice into a dozen pieces.

  Beth immediately hopped over to get a drink.

  All in all, he decided, he was glad that winter was finally here. Even if it was particularly harsh, he could handle it. And he reminded himself that in the dog days of summer, when the temperatures had hit 105 or better, he’d looked to the sky and cursed and wished for winter to get there.

  He finally got his wish.

  Now all he had to do was survive it.

  -16-

  After he broke the block of ice for the rabbits he told them, “The temps should go up a little bit today, and keep it from refreezing. It’ll probably get cold again tonight, though, so I hope your winter coats are coming in.”

  He went to his outhouse and urinated, careful to watch the flow and the color.

  One of the most valuable things he’d learned from Marine Corps survival school was how to tell when he was dehydrated.

  He could still picture Gunnery Sergeant Campos in his mind, still hear the exact words he hammered into each of his students’ heads.

  “Always watch your piss. It’s one of the best warning signs your body can give you. It should be clear, or lightly tinted. The more yellow it is, the more dehydrated you are. If you piss yellow, you’d damn well better get out your canteen and guzzle that son of a bitch.”

  Dave never forgot that sage advice from the old gunny, and even before the world went black he made a point to make sure his urine never got too dark. In the summertime, he’d used another piece of the gunny’s advice as well.

  “When you’re working all day in the hot sun, you’re gonna sweat. And that’s a good thing. It’s your body’s air conditioning system. Your body sweats so that the passing breeze can cool you down.

  “What you have to remember, though, is that you have to take in a lot more water when it’s hot and you’re sweating.

  “If you ever stop sweating on a hot day, you’re in a world of hurt. That means your body has no more extra water to give out. And it means you’d better get some water into your system pronto or you’re gonna be a dead Marine. And I don’t allow dead Marines in my class. If you die in my class because you’re too dumb to drink enough water, I don’t care if you’re dead or not. I’m gonna kick your dumb ass anyway.”

  Gunny Campos had a way with words that was common with his generation of Marines. He’d been old school, had come up through the ranks before the Corps became sissified, and started teaching courses about sensitivity and respect for others. Campos and his comrades weren’t afraid to swear to get a point across.

  Dave, on the other hand, had gone through in the day when swearing at recruits was frowned up. When it was supposed to hurt their feelings or something. And he found himself wishing they’d left his Marine Corps the way it was. When toughness counted more than feelings.

  It was mid morning now, and almost time for him to go to bed.

  But first, he had a couple of daily chores to attend to.

  He picked up several pieces of firewood from his wood pile in the back yard and carried them into his safe room. He stacked them on the brick step next to the fireplace, in case he slept until it got dark again. He didn’t mind collecting wood in the dark, but it was easier to select the pieces he wanted in the daytime.

  He went to the garage and opened up his chest freezer.

  The wiring in the freezer had been fried from the EMP, but he’d been able to save it by replacing the bad wiring with wire from a heavy duty extension cord. Now it was connected to his generator and ran for two to three hours per day, whenever his generator was running. It seemed to be enough to keep everything frozen, as long as he didn’t open the door to the freezer any more than he had to.

  But he was never in the freezer for long. He only had two items in it, and it was neatly organized so he never had to root through it looking for something.

  Zip lock bags of rabbit meat were stacked on the right side, slices of bread in zip lock bags were stacked on the left. It was an easy system, and allowed Dave to get in and out of the freezer very quickly.

  He took two packets of sliced bread and one packet of meat from the freezer, then laid them on top of it. Then he went to the corner of the garage, on the far side of his Faraday cage, and opened up a box that said “old clothes.”

  He took two sweaters from inside the box and put them inside.

  Beneath the sweaters were twenty six-packs of Armor Vienna sausages, in little cans.

  He took the plastic cover off one of the six packs and removed a tiny tin of the hot dog-like sausages, then put everything back in place.

  From another box, marked “purses and shoes,” he removed a zip lock bag of dried vegetables. He tucked it under one arm, picked up the bread and meat, and carried everything to his safe room.

  He’d actually had fun helping Sarah prepare the dried vegetables. Much of it had come from their own garden, in the days before the blackout came and rabbits took over their back yard. They spent a lot of time together, he and Sarah, standing side by side at the kitchen counter. They cut the raw vegetables into chunks, no more than half inch cubes. Then they put them into huge stainless steel stew pots.

  The stew pots were placed on a folding table in the middle of the back yard, and the summer sun dried then over the course of a day or two. Sarah had bought flat strainers, which Dave called “screens with handles,” to place over the top of each pot to keep insects out. Then it was just a matter of stirring the vegetables several times a day to make sure they dried completely.

  It was a very effective way to dry large amounts of veggies and make them shelf stable, without running the oven constantly and heating the house during an already brutal summer.

  And it was something they did together. That made it more fun.

  The bread, on the other hand, was more of a chore. Dave had prepared it all in the summertime, by using a charcoal powered camp oven on his back deck. The oven was essentially a steel cube, about the size of a microwave, that was heavily insulated and had an adjustable tray underneath it.

  The tray was filled with several briquettes of charcoal, and the temperature was regulated by turning a crank to either raise the glowing red briquettes closer to the box or to lower it so they were farther away.

  It was equipped with a thermostat which told what the temperature inside the oven was at any given time, and merely had to be checked every few minutes to keep the temperature at the desired level.

  He used Sarah’s recipes for sweet bread, whole wheat bread and zucchini bread. At first he had tr
ouble getting the bread to rise, until he figured out he wasn’t letting it sit on the counter long enough for the yeast to do its work. Once he conquered that problem, it turned out he was a pretty good baker.

  Sarah would have been proud of him.

  One of the last things Sarah had bought before she and the girls flew to Kansas City was a bread slicer.

  It was basically a rectangular cutting board, with pieces of slotted plastic mounted to each side. It came with two bread knives, and the operation was so simple even Dave could handle it. He merely let the two loaves from each batch in the oven cool. Then he put them into the slicer, one loaf at a time, and used the grooves in the plastic plates as guides to cut the bread into slices.

  He learned not to press down on the knife, because it tended to crush the bread easily. He also learned that the cooler the bread, the easier it sliced.

  He’d spent a good potion of the summer baking bread on the back deck, two loaves per batch, three batches per day. Once it was sliced, he put two slices into each of over two hundred sandwich-sized zip lock bags, and then stacked them neatly into his freezer. It would be enough bread to get him through the winter, and he’d kill the rest of it before setting out in the spring to find his wife and daughters.

  In his safe room, Dave placed the bag of frozen meat next to the fireplace to thaw, if the daytime temperatures rose above freezing. He filled the stew pot full of water and dumped the dried vegetables into it to soak.

  In the night, after he restarted the fire, he’d combine the meat and the vegetables and let the pot simmer over the fire for a several hours. The stew in the pot would be enough to feed him for at least three days, maybe four. It could be reheated quickly in the microwave during his generator time, and would keep quite nicely in the cool temperatures of the room.

  The can of Vienna sausages and four slices of bread would be his breakfast when he awoke in the evening.

  He tossed them under the comforter on his bed to take the chill off of them. His body heat would do a great job of keeping them at an edible temperature. He’d try not to roll over onto the bread as he slept.