“I don’t think there’s any point bringing the rest of the crew out,” Alex said loudly over the storm.
Charlie nodded. “We’ll be fine. There’s plenty of food to bridge the gap.”
It was Alex’s turn to nod—although he didn’t share Charlie’s outlook. Alex stood up and brushed the snow off his pants and jacket.
“We’ll see you guys when this calms down. Figure out where to go from here,” said Alex, realizing his statement sounded dreadful.
“This isn’t the end of the world, buddy. It only set us back by a month or so,” said Charlie, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“I know, I know,” said Alex. “I was just hoping to eat something fresh for a change.”
“Fresh is overrated, buddy,” said Charlie. “Didn’t you eat nothing but MREs and reconstituted rations in Iraq? This should be a walk in the park for you.”
“The glass is always half full in the Thornton house,” said Alex.
“Just trying to keep it together,” said Charlie.
“You’ve been doing a good job,” said Alex, glancing at the snow-filled planting frame. “Let’s grab the plastic so we don’t lose it.”
Alex departed after rolling the thick plastic greenhouse film with Charlie, seeking the tracks he had left on the way in. He’d taken the road instead of the backyards, not wanting to push his luck with a skittish neighbor. The community had formed a loose association during the fall, mostly promising to stay out of each other’s business. Forming this alliance had been a tough pill to swallow for Alex and his group, despite the fact that the neighbors adamantly denied plundering the Thorntons’ cottage stockpile.
Two years’ worth of food disappeared from Charlie’s basement—enough to have guaranteed his group’s survival next winter if the upcoming summer harvest didn’t meet expectations. Forgetting about the theft wasn’t easy, but Alex wanted above all things to be left alone at this point. Going door-to-door and forcing an armed search, like Charlie initially suggested, would prove far more damaging to their long-term survival prospects than simply letting it go. They had enough food to survive the first winter, and frankly, he couldn’t blame them for taking the food.
Three of the families had been renting for the week and would have been caught with little more than a few days’ supply of chips and hotdogs. Without a working car, they were more or less locked into place. The rest were a combination of full-time residents, mostly retired, and second-home owners caught at the lake during a late summer vacation week. Few of them would have kept a sizeable stockpile of food or emergency supplies, especially during the summer.
With Charlie’s home standing empty for more than two weeks, and none of the other summer-home owners returning, they probably figured the Thorntons had been killed in the tsunami. The fact that nobody coughed up the supplies when they returned reinforced the decision. They didn’t need eleven starving households conspiring against them during the middle of the winter. Charlie reluctantly agreed. They had been down that road before, and nothing good came from it. Alex wanted to avoid the mistakes he’d made on Durham Road, or at least play the game a little differently.
Isolation wasn’t an option here, and he was the outsider. He couldn’t forget that. Most of these people had lived here for years, some raising families on these shores. Six homes had been left vacant, Alex’s family taking the largest of them. Nobody had been happy to see them, especially after the shootout with Eli’s crew. He saw it in their stares during the first community meeting. Distrust. Resentment. Fear. He caught the gist of the whispers nobody dared speak too loudly. They quietly challenged his presence with weak protests of “not the owner” or “squatter.” Alex understood their misgivings. He’d spent the winter of 2013 casting the same judgments—correctly and incorrectly.
Alex found his footsteps, already partially swallowed by the sideways snow, and trudged north toward his house at the end of Crane Road. He had about a quarter-mile hike to reach the post-and-beam home nestled into the trees. The house had proven spacious enough to move the Walkers out of Charlie’s A-frame cottage. Kate opened the side door when he arrived.
“How bad is it?” she asked, shutting and locking the door behind him.
Alex threw his hat and gloves on a wide, rustic bench inside the mudroom, savoring the dry, radiant warmth cast by the kitchen’s wood-burning stove on his hands and face.
“The wind tore the plastic off last night. The frames were filled with snow. A small setback. Not a big deal,” he said.
Kate held out a steaming mug of coffee. “It sounded like a big deal when you left.”
“The fresh air changed my perspective,” he said, hanging his jacket on a row of hooks.
Alex took a sip and grimaced. Refiltered grounds. A step above dirty sink water.
“We’ll refresh the grounds in a few days. Better than nothing,” she said.
“Better than nothing,” he echoed, forcing a smile and trying to shake off the setback.
“We’ll be fine,” Kate said, taking his hands and squeezing them.
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” he said, leaning in and kissing her.
She smelled like a campfire, like everyone and everything inside the house. He only noticed it now after coming in from the outside, when the odor lining his nostrils had faded enough to tell the difference. Alex held her for a moment, acutely aware that he could feel her ribs and shoulder blades. Like everyone, she’d lost a lot of weight.
“I’m just not sure I believe it. We’ve eaten through too much of our food, and that’s on seriously reduced rations.”
“We have nothing to do this summer except prepare for the winter. Losing a few cold frames filled with seedlings isn’t going to make or break us,” she said, taking a step back.
He nodded slowly—a default motion when he wasn’t fully convinced. The food situation had turned out to be more tenuous than he’d expected. By abandoning the Limerick compound, they left behind more than three to four months of planted sustenance—challenging every facet of Alex’s food plan. Grains, potatoes, root vegetables, corn, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, fruit trees, row after row of dry beans…the list went on. Whatever they couldn’t eat directly from the garden could have been canned or dried for winter months. Even in Limerick he had counted on digging into the prepackaged food to bridge the gap from late winter to early summer.
Thanks to the unexpected storm, they would burn through most of their prepackaged food by the time the first measurable meal could be served from the newly planted gardens. He shook his head. Alex couldn’t envision a scenario that didn’t put them in serious trouble by next January. Even if they had a bumper harvest, with no setbacks, they might be able to produce three to four months of food per family. Hunting and fishing might give them another month, if the area wasn’t completely depleted by the fall.
The lake had been emptied of fish by late November. He had no idea if any of the native species would return in appreciable numbers. Ducks and geese would come through soon, returning again in the fall, but the lake would turn into a shooting gallery at the first sight of them. Last October’s waterfowl season was cut decidedly short by the incessant gunfire. Worse yet, Charlie didn’t seem optimistic about hunting game, especially with every household turning to the forest to procure food.
It wouldn’t be enough.
“You’re doing that nod thing again. What is it?” Kate asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe we should revisit our plan to sail out of here.”
Chapter 17
Belgrade, Maine
Kate Fletcher kneeled on the floating dock and lowered a red, three-gallon plastic bucket into the water. She waited until it completely submerged before pulling it onto the dock next to another full bucket of pond water. It was her turn to fill the toilet tanks. The two buckets represented four flushes, barely enough for the first round of early morning bathroom visits. She’d dump the buckets into the tanks and return for more, placing the filled
buckets in the shower stalls. The last person to use the bathroom for more serious business would replenish the water and place the buckets outside of the door to the garage, where Kate would see them. She anticipated making at least three additional trips within the next couple of hours. All part of their new life without electricity.
She couldn’t complain—they had easy access to water, and the house was hooked up to a septic system. Their primary sanitation needs could be met without power—indefinitely if the septic system didn’t fail. Trudging back and forth to fetch water was a small price to pay to avoid using a medieval scheme of kitchen bags and receptacles to ferry human waste out of the house. A very small price.
Kate surveyed the lake. Growing pockets of slate-colored water competed with vast sheets of bleached ice that had receded from the shoreline. Long Pond would be “ice-out” within two weeks, maybe sooner if another late season storm didn’t hit the area. She hoped they had seen the last of the snow. Alex was right about their food situation. They needed to replant the cool season vegetables immediately, so they could give the seedlings a head start and clear the way for the warmer season crops. Within a month, cabbage, kale, broccoli and cauliflower plants could be transplanted from the cold frames to the garden beds, making room for beans, peppers, squash, and other warm season crops.
Still, the unexpected late April storm wouldn’t be the big deciding factor Alex dramatically portrayed. They couldn’t plant the lost seedlings for another two to three weeks anyway due to predicted frost dates for this area. Their next-door neighbor, a perpetually swearing, umpteenth-generation “Mainah,” warned against putting any exposed plants in the ground before the end of the third week of May. They’d lost a few weeks, not much more than that.
She suspected Alex’s pessimistic outlook had more to do with the long winter and the prospect of enduring another. Kate shared similar reservations. It had taken them a few years of trial and error in Limerick to produce substantial garden and crop yields, with the help of commercially available compost, fertilizer and organic pest-control products. Here, they would have the benefit of the knowledge gained at the compound in Limerick—and that was about the extent of it. The vast beds of unamended soil they created in the fall would either support their farming efforts or thwart them. By the time they could make that determination, their packaged food stores might be depleted.
Preparing the boat wasn’t a bad idea. She just wasn’t sure leaving would improve their situation. Even if they could save enough dried food to reach South America, which was at least a thirty-day voyage under the best circumstances, there was no guarantee that the food security or political situation would be any better than the United States. The journey itself was fraught with risks and uncertainties. Storms, pirates, equipment malfunctions—they’d be on their own with no expectation of assistance until they reached Bermuda or the outer Caribbean islands, and no guarantee when they did. With the geopolitical situation continuing to deteriorate, there was no way to guess the true impact of the event abroad. They’d have to carefully weigh this decision. Something Alex didn’t seem interested in hearing.
The dock creaked, drawing her attention to the shoreline. Tim Fletcher stood at the edge of the float, one foot on the platform, the other planted firmly on the sandy beach. He held two buckets in his hands. With less hesitation and a lot more balance than she expected from a seventy-two-year-old, Tim propelled the other leg onto the dock.
“Thought you could use some help,” he said, setting the buckets next to hers.
“That’s nice of you, Tim. Thank you,” she said, lowering one of the buckets into the dark water.
“Alex is almost done with breakfast. Figured we could double up on this so we could eat together.”
“What’s on the menu this morning?” she asked, lifting the bucket onto the dock.
“Breakfast skillet. Yummy,” he said, rubbing his flat stomach.
Tim looked the gauntest of everyone in the extended group. Age combined with minimum rations had pulled the skin taut across his face, exaggerating his sunken eye sockets. Like everyone, he complained of chronic exhaustion, but it seemed to have visibly worsened for him toward the end of the winter. He moved fine, but looked utterly drained. This morning he appeared pensive, almost brooding.
“Breakfast skillet number five-three-two-one-seven?”
“Negative. Number five-three-two-one-six. Ham and peppers,” he said and winked.
“My favorite,” she said, standing up.
Tim grabbed two of the buckets by their handles and lifted them off the dock.
“Just grab one. I can run back for the extra bucket,” said Kate.
“I’m not that broken down, Kate.”
“I know. Just be careful at the end of the dock,” she said.
After they had helped each other off the dock and started across the backyard, Tim turned to Kate.
“I’m worried about Alex,” he stated.
“He’s worried about you,” she said, wishing she had just shut up and listened.
“I could use another thousand calories per day, but so could we all. That’s not what we’re talking about. He’s acting despondent, and it’s starting to spread to the rest of the group. What’s going on? And don’t tell me PTSD. He was fine until we started planting the cold frames,” said Tim.
She lowered her buckets next to one of the long garden beds and pretended to examine the soil. They had removed the sod and tilled the soil in ten-foot-by-thirty-foot strips with the shovels last fall. The rows were oriented north-south so none of the rows would overshadow the others. The tallest plants would be placed at the northernmost end. They had spent entire days strategizing the garden during last September, and the rest of the fall diligently digging and preparing the beds. They treated it like the deadly business it would be next year.
“He’s worried about next winter,” she said.
“Already?” he asked, irritated.
“He’s not seeing the garden and our natural surroundings as a viable scenario. Frankly, I’m starting to question it myself,” she said.
Tim sighed, kneeling next to her. “I’m not sailing out of here on a boat. We’re too old for that shit.”
Kate stifled a laugh. “He’s thinking of it as a contingency. Like last year. We’ll do everything we can to make the garden work and assess the situation in September.”
“Hurricane season.”
“We’d start out as late in October as possible. Sail down the coast to Jacksonville and wait for a good stretch of weather. A few good days from there should put us below the southern limit of the fall gales.”
“A lot can go wrong on a trip like that, especially for a crew that’s never been more than ten miles offshore.”
She couldn’t argue with him. He was right on every count, and she wanted more than anything to stay in place. Ultimately it wouldn’t be their decision. The ground under her fingers would make the final call. If the ground didn’t yield enough food for nineteen people, they’d take at least four mouths out of the equation. Maybe everything would be back to normal in the United States by the fall. However, that was doubtful.
“We might not have a choice,” she said, running wet soil through her fingers.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” said Tim. “Until then, square away mister doom and gloom. He sets the tone for everyone.”
Chapter 18
Belgrade, Maine
Charlie dipped his hands in a plastic bucket filled with a diluted bleach solution and opened the bathroom door. Alex stood in the front doorway, next to the kitchen, dressed in woodland camouflage pants and a gray, wool sweater.
“Make sure you rinse your hands in the bucket,” said his wife.
“I know the procedure. I’ve been living the dream for eight months now,” he said, trying not to sound annoyed.
“And shut the door!” yelled Linda, appearing to hand Alex a cup of steaming coffee.
“Jesus Christ, it’s
not that bad!” he said, pulling the door closed.
“Well, it hasn’t gotten better, so do us all a favor,” she said, turning to Alex. “Fresh grinds put him in the crapper earlier than usual.”
Alex hesitated to sip the coffee.
“See! You’ve grossed him out, Linda. Sorry about that, Alex. I promise nobody crapped in your coffee mug.”
His friend shook his head with a confused grin.
“I had never considered the possibility of…that. Until now,” said Alex.
A few grunts and groans came from the sleeping bags in the family room, the only signs of life from the group of five teenagers strewn across the floor in front of the wood-burning stove.
“Just kidding, buddy. What brings you over this early?”
Alex motioned for Charlie to join him outside and stepped through the front door, disappearing into the front yard. Charlie stepped into the dining room and nodded at Ed and Samantha, who had already taken Alex’s cue and pushed their chairs back. The group of adults met halfway up the gravel driveway, waiting for Charlie and Linda. He walked slowly with his wife, who couldn’t easily walk without a cane. None of the nearby hospitals could provide the level of orthopedic surgery she required to properly reconstruct her ankle. It was something she would have to endure until things got back to normal.
“What’s up?” asked Ed, glancing anxiously at the trees and evergreen bushes surrounding the property.
“Nothing’s wrong. Sorry about the secrecy. I just didn’t want to get the kids involved right now,” said Alex. “I wanted to talk to you about a contingency plan, in case the summer’s harvest doesn’t add up.”
The smiles and squints in the early morning sun slowly faded to uneasy grimaces.
“I know I’m not the only one that’s more than a little concerned about next winter,” said Alex.
THE ALEX FLETCHER BOXSET: Books 1-5 Page 138