Endless Winter Box Set: Books 1 - 4

by Theresa Shaver

  Everyone starts moving toward an area full of picnic tables but Joslin turns and dashes inside the main building. I stand there for a minute and consider going after her. She might be uncomfortable explaining some of her actions but we have a right to know what happened - I have a right to know. I’m about to go to the doors when she pushes back out of them with a tablet in her hand. She looks startled to see me but then looks away and walks past me toward the tables so I turn and follow her.

  I send the two little boys back to the playground to enjoy the equipment some more and settle beside Rex at one of the picnic tables. Everyone’s looking at me so I just sit up straighter and start us off.

  “I think my biggest concern is what the General is going to do next. I can’t see him not trying to find us and retaliate against us. Even if it’s only to get Jackson back.”

  I look over at Jackson but he’s glaring in the opposite direction at nothing in particular. Joslin isn’t saying anything either so I asked him flat out.

  “Jackson, what do you think your dad’s going to do?”

  His head swings my way and what I see in his eyes has me flinching back. “Nothing. He’s not going to do anything. He’s dead!” With a jerky shake of his head, he spins away, launches off of his seat and takes off.

  I’m completely floored by his statement and judging by the looks of the others, so are they. We all turn to Joslin and stare at her expectantly. She keeps her eyes down and lets out a sad sound before gently placing the tablet onto the rough wood boards of the table in front of her.

  Chapter Three … Joslin

  My chest aches from the pain I know Jackson is feeling. I wish I could have found a different way to handle his father that would have spared him all of this but I spent years trying to find one and always came up empty. With everyone staring at me, I set my tablet on the table and clutch my hands together before telling them our story.

  “The day the bombs dropped seven years ago, I was with Jackson on a field trip to his father’s military base. When the alarms started going off and the General started the evacuation of his soldiers, Jackson insisted that I be allowed to go with them. Before we left the base I managed to get an email out to my parents to let them know what was happening and where we were going. They connected with Jackson’s mother, who knew the location of the bunker, and along with a group of military families belonging to some of the other soldiers, they managed to make it there before the radiation hit. The General made the decision not to allow any of them inside. He even kept their presence outside the door a secret from his troops. The only reason I even knew they were there is because he gave Jackson and I a yellow level clearance to talk to AIRIA when he was too busy to deal with us.” I pause for a minute to swallow the grief that still floats near the surface of my mind. “When our families became desperate to get inside, they used vehicles to try and ram the door and then fuel from them to create an explosion that damaged the seal enough that we were forced to evacuate to the lower levels. The General responded with AIRIA’s external defenses. He massacred them all, including my parents and Jackson’s mother.”

  I need a minute to compose myself before I can continue and thankfully no one says anything to interrupt. I clear my throat and tell them the rest. “AIRIA had the recordings of what happened outside the doors in her data banks and I’ve been waiting for the last seven years for the right time to show everyone the monster that he was. Last night, the timing was right. I had AIRIA play the video of everyone’s loved ones being killed on every screen in the barracks. The General’s own soldiers killed him. So he won’t be coming after us and I doubt any of the soldiers will either. With no working vehicles and only a few weapons between them all, they’ll most likely scatter and try to start again somewhere else. They may stick around the bunker for a while because there are the tents set up to give them shelter but without food, they will be forced to move. I’m sure some of them will head toward the fields because they know there’s pallets of MREs there but it’ll only be some of them. They weren’t a big happy family. Some of the abuses they inflict upon each other over the last seven years won’t be forgotten and I imagine more than a few of them will take their revenge now that the General is out of the picture.”

  They all sit in silence digesting my words until Ethan finally breaks it by leaning over across the table and pats my hand.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that Joslin. Most members of the military are honorable but sometimes power can corrupt. The remaining soldiers will have to make their own way now and hopefully we won’t run into any of them in the future. My concern is Jackson and how he’s handling this. Am I right to assume he was unaware of the circumstances of his mother’s death?”

  When I just nod my head grimly he frowns.

  “This is a lot for a young man like him to take in. Not only has he lost the only family member he has left, he’s learned that his mother died by his father’s hand. There’s going to be a lot of anger, resentment, and sorrow stored up in that boy for a long time to come. We can help him work through a lot of that but I’m most worried about how he may lash out. Do you think Jackson will hold you responsible for his father’s death?”

  I feel a tear slip down my cheek and quickly brush it away. “I don’t know but I can tell you it’s my biggest fear.”

  He nods compassionately and pats my hand again before leaning back and looking to the others. “We’re all going to have to try and include Jackson as much as possible and have patience with him. Everyone here has suffered unimaginable loss but we’ve all had time to deal with it and work our way through it. This is very fresh for Jackson and we need to be there for him.”

  Rex and Marsh both nod their heads in agreement. Belle leans toward me with a compassionate smile. “Don’t worry Joslin, we will help you and him both get through this. We’re all in this together.”

  I smile gratefully at them but then look back down at my hands. There’s so much more to our situation then the summary I gave them but now isn’t the time to go into it. After all, as much as I appreciate their support, they’re strangers to Jackson and me - it’s something him and I are going to have to work out together if we have any chance of remaining friends and saving our relationship.

  Lance clears his throat and with an understanding glance at me, changes the subject.

  “It’s good to know that we don’t have to worry about the General coming after us so let’s put that behind us for now and start making plans for what we’re going to do in the coming days.” When everyone nods in agreement he continues. “The most important thing we need to do is get an inventory of everything we have, especially food. We need to know just how much we have and how long it will last us.”

  I pick up my tablet and thumb it awake. “I can help with that. The list that I gave Jackson of supplies to move here accounted for six months worth of food for ten people. With Jackson joining us we have eleven. I have an inventory of everything you brought as long as you stuck to the list.”

  Rex leans forward. “I don’t know about yesterday when Lance took my place but when it was Marsh and me, we loaded everything that was on the list Jackson had.”

  Lance agrees. “The two loads we brought yesterday finished off everything that was on it.”

  I sigh in relief. I hadn’t had a chance to ask Jackson before everything happened if he had gotten all I wanted. I glance quickly at Skylar before looking back to Lance.

  “That’s great. All I need to do now is add in everything you guys managed to grab last night from Skylar’s pantry and calculate how much the animals will produce and I can rework the numbers to give you an estimate of just how long we can go with what we have. I think the very first thing we should do is get the fridge and freezers working so that we don’t lose any of the perishables you guys managed to bring.”

  Lance grimaces. “I can get the generator going but the fuel we have won’t last long if it is running constantly to keep the fridge and freezers cold. We s
hould look at finding another way to preserve those supplies.”

  I shake my head. “We won’t want to run the generator for that. There should have been solar panels in the first load brought over. Skylar’s dad had quite a few in his storage and they were number two on the first list. As long as they were brought we can get them set up. They won’t be enough to run everything electrical that we would like but we should have enough power from them to keep the appliances going. Once we have a hard freeze in the freezers we can unplug them overnight and they should stay cold enough not to melt. We’ll just have to remember to plug them in again every morning. We should really try and keep the fuel for the generator for other uses.”

  Marsh pumps his fist in the air. “Yeah, like for video games! Good call on the TV’s, Joslin.”

  I stare at him in confusion. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  “What video games?”

  His grin is infectious when he says, “I snagged Benny’s Xbox on the way out so we can hook it up to the TV’s you had on the list and have some digital battles.”

  There’s a slight grin tugging at my lips as I shake my head in amusement. “Um, okay. The TVs were actually on the list so that we can watch tutorials that I downloaded to hard drives. There’s a lot of things were going to need to learn how to do so I thought it would be a good idea to bring the knowledge with us.”

  Marsh nods his head eagerly in agreement and says, “Yes and video games!”

  Lance gives him a light smack on the back of the head with a laugh.

  “Sure kid, we will put video games on the list - far, far, far down on the list of things to do.” Everyone laughs and the tension from earlier dissipates. Lance glances over at the cargo truck and then back to us. “We brought back a bunch of mattresses and bed frames as well as some other pieces of furniture. I think today we should get our accommodations setup after we do the solar panels. We’re going to have so much work that we will need to have a good night’s rest going forward. Everyone needs to decide if they want their own cabin or if they want to stay in the main building.”

  Skylar looks over at the playground where Ben and Matty are taking turns racing down the slide. “I don’t know about the rest of you but for now I’d like Benny and me to stay in the main building. I’m not ready to be in one of the cabins. That might change in the future but for right now I’d feel better in the big building.”

  I chew on my lip and glance nervously at her. “If it’s okay with you Skylar, I’d like to stay in the big building as well. I don’t want to be alone in one of the cabins.”

  She just shrugs a shoulder and looks away. I don’t expect Skylar to automatically accept me but I hope that she’ll give me a chance and that at some point, we can become friends.

  Belle speaks up next. “Well, I think Sasha and I will take one of the cabins for ourselves. It’s been a long time since we’ve had our own space and I think it’ll be nice to have some privacy. As much as I love you boys, I will not miss the smell of dirty socks!”

  I look past Belle to Sasha and see that she has a small smile on her face. She’s been very quiet and hasn’t had much to say since we got here. I know from the video feeds that she and Skylar have a not so great past but last I saw they had moved forward and were starting to get along.

  Ethan echoes Belle in his choice. “I think that’s a great idea. Lance and I will take our own cabin and you boys can bunk up in your own. I think it’s important that Jackson stay with you boys so that he feels included and you can keep an eye on him.”

  Lance claps his hands. “Good, so today we will focus on getting our accommodations set up, setting up the solar panels and taking inventory of everything that we have. I’d also like to work on getting the water flowing to the main building. We know there’s a well here that’s still producing so we can see if the solar panels can handle the load of the water pump in the building as well as the appliances. If not, we can start building more of the mini windmills that worked for us in the past. Tomorrow we should work on clearing a garden area with the tractor and getting it tilled up for planting. We’re also going to have to harvest some building materials from the resort to create planting beds for inside in the atrium. I took a quick look in the groundskeepers building at the resort when we were over there this morning and saw a stock of bagged soil in there that we can use. It was probably for the many flower beds they have around the resort but with some good compost it’ll work just fine for growing vegetables inside and we don’t have to worry about it being contaminated. We’re also going to need to create animal pens for the cow and chickens. It’s going to take us quite a while to get all this done but it’ll be worth it in the end. So, I’m going to go to work on getting the solar panels and batteries set up. You guys can get to work on cleaning out our living spaces before we unload the mattresses. Ethan, you should go track down Jackson and see if he’s okay. We could really use his help with a lot of this heavy lifting and I think it would do him good to be busy.”

  Everyone stands up and starts to walk away. I look down at my tablet and put it to sleep. I should be the one to find Jackson but I just don’t know what to say to him right now. I know eventually we’re going to have to have a conversation but I’m so afraid of losing him as a friend. I hope if he has a few days before we talk, he’ll be able to see things clearer and he’ll give me a chance to explain. I feel like a coward as I walk toward the main building to start taking inventory and leave my friend alone to deal with what he’s going through.

  Chapter Four … Skylar

  I stand over Benny as he finishes brushing his teeth and spits in the bowl we have in our room for dirty water. Once he’s done I run my fingers through his unruly hair and send him on his way. As hard as the last few days have been with the heavy workload, I’m happy. I’ve never seen Benny as energetic and happy as he’s been since we got here. He and Matty are too small to do a lot of the heavy lifting but they have their own list of small chores they do every day to help out around the camp and they’re both loving it.

  We’ve gotten a lot accomplished in the four days since we arrived. All of our individual accommodations have been cleaned out and set up so that we all have our own beds. After finding a few gas push mowers, we’ve cut all the old dead grass within the fence so that hopefully new grass will grow. The tractor and its attachments have been a lifesaver as far as labor goes making quick work of clearing the contaminated topsoil and then tilling and loosening the hard-packed dirt underneath it so we can plant seeds. Seeing just how quickly the tractor accomplished it confirmed that the General used that hard day of backbreaking labor he forced us to do as a ploy in his sick game of dominance. I’m glad he’s dead and we never have to worry about him again.

  We’ve been working every day from sun up to sun down and then falling into our beds exhausted so I’m happy to be changing it up today. Lance wants to head over to the resort to scavenge building materials for the indoor planting beds as well as grab the bags of topsoil and pull more car batteries from the many dead cars that fill the resort’s parking lot. The batteries aren’t really meant to work with the solar system but he thinks he can get them to work even if they won’t have a long lifespan.

  I’m just happy for a change of scenery so I’m going with him, Lance and Marsh to lend a hand. Ethan is staying back to watch over the smaller boys and he’s keeping Jackson with him to help set up a medical room. Jackson has thrown himself into helping us with every project but he’s still keeping his distance from the rest of us. Ethan is the only one he seems willing to speak more than a few words with. We’ve all tried to engage him but he’s got his walls full up and most times, he just walks away. I don’t expect him to get over his grief in just a few days but having him around acting this way is putting a real strain on the rest of us, especially Joslin. The shadows under her eyes get deeper every day and based on the anguished looks I catch her sending his way, she’s going to crack pretty soon. Walking on eggshells around these
two is draining so I can’t wait to get out of here for a few hours.

  I finish strapping on my holster, grab a jacket and head out to the dining area for breakfast. As I pass by the open door to the office Joslin has set up as her room, I catch sight of her sitting on the edge of her bed looking lost and miserable. I carry on past for a few steps and then stop with a surge of annoyance. I turn around and stand in her doorway and take in the room. Blank white walls, a desk shoved into a corner and a double bed against one wall. The room is so plain and empty it might as well be a prison cell. The sad girl sitting on the side of the bed matches that description as well. She’s wearing a plain military uniform with no decorations or accessories so it could easily be a prison uniform. My frown deepens and my tone is harsher than I intend it to be.

  “Joslin! Grab your gear. You’re coming to the resort with us.”

  She flinches at my tone but then shakes her head. “Uh, I have some calculations and schedules to work on today.”

  I roll my eyes. “No, you don’t. Leave your lists and get your gear. It’s field trip time!” I don’t give her a chance to reply, just turn and walk away. That girl needs to get out of her own head for a few hours.

  I walk into the dining area and see everyone else has beat me here. I take a quick look at Ben’s plate to make sure he’s eating and then head to the serving counter and dish up a plate of scrambled eggs and a few slices of tomatoes. I’m relieved my laying hens weren’t too traumatized by the move and are still producing eggs. I make a mental note to pull out five or six hens and put them into a separate area with the rooster so they can start clutching. It will be good to breed more chicks to expand our flock. With this many people, we’ll go through what they’re laying every day. Increasing the flock is important to improve our egg production and then we can also start culling the older hens for another source of meat. Ideally, I’d like to triple the number of hens that are laying between now and winter. Even with the supplies we brought, having that extra during winter will keep us more comfortable food wise.