“Close the door,” Charlie told John. “We can clean it out later if we have to.”
John did, and with help from Matt and Willy, they managed to drop the pole into the slots that held the door closed. As soon as the door was secure, they heard the wind begin to howl. It blew down the tunnel they’d dug and through the narrow cracks between the logs, making a strange whistling noise as it came through.
“Do either of you two boys want to tell us exactly what you thought you were doing out there? You realize that the both of you could have frozen solid if we’d been unable to retrieve you?”
“I slipped going for this,” he pointed at his head, showing off the ball cap. “I have no idea what the hell Mark was trying to prove.”
Mark couldn’t answer, his lips were already starting to swell. He shook his head, unable or unwilling to talk.
Journey dropped Sam’s hand back into the pan of lukewarm water, “You are darn lucky not to have frostbite. That was a stupid stunt even if it was unintentional. Mark may not be so lucky. His nose and lips have a touch of frostbite.”
“I told him to quit licking them. How were we out there long enough for either of us to have frostbite? It was what? Twenty minutes at the most? It didn’t feel that cold and it was beginning to snow again.”
“You idiot, that wasn’t snow. That was the moisture in the air freezing, so it has to be thirty or forty below zero. In case you hadn’t noticed, there were no clouds.”
“That cold? Are you sure?”
“No! I’m not sure, but it stands to reason. For the cold to suck the moisture out of the air, it has to be damn cold. Keep your hand in there until I say to take it out.”
The excited voices from the living area of the cave woke Lucas, shivering in protest of the cold air, he climbed out of his sleeping bag. He wondered where Matt had gone. Even Bear and the pup were missing. Lucas reached down into the foot of his bag and pulled out his boots and jacket. Teeth chattering, he quickly pulled the boots on. His jacket, Lucas pulled on as he headed out to the central living area. He sniffed, and realized he couldn’t smell the stench from the animals. It was cold enough, he wondered if the smell could freeze to the poop. If that was the case, he hoped it would stay frozen until they cleaned it out. Sam had said that he, Matt and the girls, were going to have to clean the pens as soon as the weather cleared and Lucas wasn’t looking forward to the task because the animals had a lot of crap to haul off.
“Why didn’t someone wake me?” he asked as he walked up to the fire. He couldn’t miss the hat sitting on the log beside his Uncle Sam. Lucas looked everywhere, except directly at his uncle. He knew he had some explaining to do but hadn’t thought up a good enough story. He remembered something his mother had always said, “The truth may get you a swat, but getting caught in a lie will get you an ass whipping.”
Resigned to telling the truth, he sat in the closest empty spot which was beside Abby. “I guess I need to explain…” Studying the dirt at his feet, Lucas mumbled, “I was trying to make us another way out.”
“And why do we need another way out when we already have a door?”
He looked at Sam, “It was a dream that made me do it.”
“A dream told you to do what? Lucas all I’m asking is how the hat got out on the ice. Is there a way out that we don’t know about?”
“Sort of. Maggie could probably get out, but not me…yet.”
“Start at the beginning and then we’ll decide if there will be any recourse.”
By the time Lucas told them his dream about them being buried under the snow and smothering from lack of air. The need to clean out the shaft became important, almost an obsession for him. He confessed to working on it at night after they had all gone to sleep. When he told about using only his penlight to see by, Lucas saw the disapproval on his father’s face. No less than he expected. Lucas sighed, there was nothing more he could say in his own defense. He wished the snow had never fallen and he and Matt could have left right then.
“Lucas, I can almost read your mind. You think I’m upset with you, and I suspect you think it’s because I object to what you did, but you would be wrong. The part I disapprove of, is you attempting this alone. You could have asked any of us for help or at least explained what you wanted to do and yet you chose to go ahead with it knowing you could fall and kill or maim yourself. You didn’t think about how catastrophic it would be for the rest of us.”
Lucas looked at his father and waited for him to continue. He hadn’t considered the ramifications of working alone, his first thought had been the misuse of his flashlight. Lucas had been ready to defend using it for his own purpose. He hadn’t thought about the light being a group possession, or why he hadn’t disclosed having it, but only because he was so used to it being in his pocket, he’d forgotten it. There was no way anyone would believe he could forget something as important as a light. The little Maglite had been a stocking stuffer from his Mom four years ago, but he’d carried it for so long, it was a part of him. He would have noticed if it was gone, but hadn’t registered its existence. It was just there…a part of him.
“Climbing without someone watching for you and doing it in secrecy and in the dark, is the stupidest idea you’ve come up with in a long time. I stand with your Dad on this. What the hell were you thinking?”
Lucas had never thought his uncle would side with his father and Sam’s voice held a note of disappointment. He sounded just like his dad and for Lucas, Sam words weighed heavily on him.
“Are you going all gang up on me? I didn’t think you guys would approve of climbing up there and I wanted to see what’s out there.”
“So, it had nothing to do with a dream? You only wanted to see outside, and you went ahead with it, knowing we would not approve?” John’s voice rose in timbre as he spoke. Sam nudged him to remind him, they weren’t going to yell at Lucas.
“No, sir! The dream was so real, it felt like I was seeing the future or something that had already happened before. It’s like that time you took me to the Whitefish rodeo to see Uncle Sam rope, and I told you I felt like we’d done it before. Remember? I even told you about the red house before we got to it and you said that I’d never been to Whitefish that it was just a coincidence. It was like that.”
Sam shook his head, “Let’s go see this so-called escape route. It may turn out to be something we need because it sure has cleared the smoke out of here.”
As Sam climbed up the chute, he couldn’t believe how well Lucas had done with carving out the handholds, but he had failed to open the shaft up enough to anyone but their smallest person to climb up it. When Sam’s shoulders lodged tight against the rock on both sides, he gave up and climbed down.
He thought Lucas had something going with his shaft and while he was disappointed the boy had decided to pursue it on his own, it had cleared the smoke, but it had also almost gotten Journey severely burned, and what if he had been able to exit the opening? No one would have known he was outside and he would have frozen to death, and not one of them could have done anything to help him because he had gone out in secret. Sam, shuddered to think what could have happened to him and Mark if the others hadn’t seen them slide down the face of the drift and they hadn’t had the rope. As quickly as their body temperatures had plummeted, neither of them could have stood to be outside much longer than they were.
Somehow, they needed to instill in their young people, the necessity of full-disclosure when it came to singular activities. They needed to learn the importance of the rules and why. It wasn’t only the kids who were guilty of disregarding their two-person rule, and he didn’t know how to make them understand that it was important to never be alone or unarmed. He wondered if it would take them losing someone for it to sink in. Sam hoped not, but it was beginning to look like a probability.
Chapter Eleven
Sam didn’t have to worry about them doing anything alone. The temperature had continued to drop, and if one of them happened to have their
head out of the snow tunnel, they could hear the crack and pop as trees froze. Some sounds were loud and sharp enough and they sounded very much like gunshots. They had no worries that anyone would be out in the cold firing guns. Journey said that people would freeze long before the bullet they fired could strike and kill something.
It had been almost three months since the frigid temperatures had forced them into their self-imposed exile. Mary and Evelyn had severely under-estimated the caloric intake it would take to keep them healthy. While little was done beyond the necessary tasks, they began to lose weight and lethargy had started to set in, and for the second-time, shallow feelings and diverse personalities held court around the fire, a fire that gave off little warmth to soften their words. It seemed as if everyone was angry with somebody and no one was talking to anyone for fear it would be taken as choosing sides.
John’s headaches had returned with a vengeance with no relief in sight, he seemed to go out of his way to criticize and demean everyone around him. Mary had herded him off to their sleeping area with his last outburst at Sherry. Pushing John in front of her, Mary directed a pointed look at Evelyn and nodded.
Sam saw the exchange and followed Evelyn into her and Mark’s sleeping area. Seeing Mark buried in his sleeping bag, Sam paused on the threshold and waited while Evelyn dug through a black bag. She pulled a small bottle out and shook it as if confirming there was something in it. He watched her slide it into her pocket, zip the bag up and set it down. She turned and jumped when she saw Sam watching her. Evelyn cast a look at Mark to make sure the squeal of surprise she let escape at seeing Sam standing there, hadn’t disturbed Mark’s sleep. She brushed past Sam without a word but gave him a pointed look. It dawned on Sam that he hadn’t seen Mark the past two days. Which in itself was not noteworthy, because with nothing to do, everyone seemed to sleep more, but to have not seen him, even at mealtime was remarkable. It had seemed to be the one time of day they all gathered around the fire.
Mary had laid down the law and declared there would be no arguing or harsh words, period, during the main meal of the day. She and Evelyn had used their imaginations and creativity when it came to their dinner, but they had run out of beans the week before and were reduced to beef flavored rice. Mary had confessed to Sam that very soon it would be beef flavored hot water and jerky. They had no more weeds, MRE’s, canned, freeze-dried or dehydrated food left. The chickens had quit laying the month before, and the rabbits huddled in their cages trying to stay warm. Even the goats who had previously been entertaining, spent their days curled up together against the cold. The cow seemed to be the only animal still producing for them, and her milk had dwindled with each milking. Soon, she would produce nothing.
Mary had threatened to cook up some of the dried grass they’d stored for the animals when they finally exhausted their food.
“The damn animals are eating better than we are,” she’d told Sam.
“Not for much longer if the weather doesn’t break soon. I had to tell the boys to cut their rations in half. They won’t last long on the little we have left.”
Back in the open area, Sam took Evelyn by her arm when she went to walk away, and it looked like she was headed to John and Mary’s sleeping place, “Is he okay?”
Evelyn frowned, “Who? Mark?”
Sam wasn’t sure who he was asking about, but he was sure whatever she had in the bottle was meant for John, but seeing that Mark hadn’t so much as moved, he wondered if Mark was sick too. He knew the man had diabetes, but he had thought that with the change in his diet that Evelyn had it under control. No one had said what type of diabetes Mark had, but Sam did remember that Mark had been looking flushed the last time Sam had seen him and had chalked it up to sitting too close to the fire. He had lost weight, but they all had. At least all the adults except for Lucy had. She and the young people were given the largest portion of whatever they were eating.
When Evelyn tried to pull her arm free, Sam reached into her pocket and took out the bottle. He held it up, but couldn’t read in the gloom. He led her toward the fire where the light was better and read the label. It was worn and faded from the bottle being handled too much.
“What is this?” He asked holding the bottle up between his thumb and forefinger. “Is it for John?”
Evelyn nodded, “It’s a painkiller. The last that we have.”
Sam opened the bottle and carefully dumped the contents out into his palm and counted, “Nine? What is it?”
“Percocet, I had it left over from when I had surgery.”
“Percocet? For a headache? What about that bark mumbo jumbo you had concocted up? Wouldn’t that be better than this? Shouldn’t we save this for a real emergency?”
“Oh my,” she said, wringing her hands. She seemed torn by something as if telling him what was going on was too much for her to handle. She finally stiffened her spine, “You need to talk to Mary. This is not for me to say. Sam, you’d better come with me.”
Sam followed Evelyn into John and Mary’s sleeping area. John was curled into a ball, his knees drawn tight to his chest. Both arms were wrapped tight around his head, and a soft moan escaped his tight lips. Mary knelt on their pallet, sobbing softly.
Evelyn hurried to Mary’s side, the bottle held out in front of her, “Here. Give him two of these.”
Mary sniffed and dragged her arm across her eyes. She was shaking her head as she lifted it to look at Sam, “He won’t take them. He says they won’t do him any good. Nothing will.”
Sam didn’t want to ask. Without Mary confirming what Sam thought, it wouldn’t be true. How had he not known John’s cancer had returned? How could Mary and John have kept something so important from him? From all of them? Sam felt his throat grow tight and he sagged down onto the pallet beside Mary. He wrapped his arms around her and held her while she cried. He buried his face in her hair and wept for a brother he barely knew anymore.
John had told him, they thought they had gotten the whole tumor and finished it up with chemotherapy. John had been so sure he was cured. Sam wondered how long he had known that it had been lurking in the background waiting to strike when they needed him the most. Sam did remember that during the past few months that John had been having frequent headaches, but he’d said they were nothing more than that. Sam had assumed it was the stress he was under, but hell they were all stressed lately. Being confined inside a cavern with no sunlight or fresh air, the stench of too many animals, and not enough food, for months on end would stress anyone out.
Some days it was all Sam could do to remain civil, and he found himself joining Lucas in his shaft, helping him excavate the opening. At least with Lucas, unlike being with Gina, Sam didn’t have to carry on a conversation re-hashing the same words day in and day out. Sometimes he thought if he heard the words, “When we get out of here,” one more time, he would throttle whoever said them.
Sam heard John’s last breath gurgle deep in his chest, and he and Mary watched his body relax. John was pain-free at last.
“That’s it then,” Mary said as she pulled away from Sam, leaned over and turned John’s face toward her. She smoothed back his long hair and placed a kiss on his forehead. Sam helped her to straighten his body out of its curled position and Mary tidied the blanket around John’s body as if he would care they were messed up and laid her head on his chest. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed and Sam stared at his brother, uncomprehending that he was gone. John’s face had relaxed with his passing and Sam really saw how thin he’d become. He was barely more than a skeleton with facial hair.
“That’s it? That’s all you can say? For Christ sake, Mary…your husband dies, and all you can say is, that’s it?” Sam ground out from between his clenched teeth. He awkwardly stood up and stared down at her. His fists were clenched tight against his hips, and he wanted to hit something, anything, just to relieve his anger. Looking down, Sam saw Mary and released his breath in a rush. In her face, he saw all of them. She hardly looked any better than
John, and she was still breathing. He looked at Evelyn who had reached over to take him by the arm, she looked as bad as Mary and John, skin stretched over facial bones, her eyes sunk far into her head. The only recognizable feature was the ridiculous curl of her bangs. She still wore her signature pink foam roller in her hair at night.
When Evelyn pulled Sam down to her size and wrapped her arms around his neck, it was his undoing. He felt his body sag against the smaller woman, almost toppling them both and bawled like a baby. When he had been reduced to hiccups and wiping his nose on his sleeve, he turned away from Evelyn and hugged Mary to him and realized that she was comforting him as much, as he was her.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured into her hair. “So sorry.” Sam felt Mary nod, trapped under his chin. She said something in return, but her voice was muffled, and he didn’t hear, but he knew they were words of comfort for him.
“Do the kids know?”
Mary pulled away and wiped at her eyes, “They do. They’ve known for days. John tried to prepare all us, but you didn’t hear.”
Sam’s jaw dropped, and he blinked several times rapidly, “I heard him say he had a headache, but not that he was dying…”
Mary stared at him, her eyebrows arched, and he saw that a headache for John was the same as announcing his cancer had returned.
“I hate to interrupt, but Sam, you need to come and see this.”
Sam turned to the voice, and both Willy and Charlie were standing on the other side of the stack of wood surrounding John and Mary’s sleeping area. The row of firewood that at one time had been several feet high, once giving them privacy, now stood only a few rows high. He saw the wood supply was quickly being depleted, but it didn’t register. Sam was torn between Mary and the problem the two men thought was important enough to interrupt.
Beyond the New Horizon: The Last Sun, Page 10