I have to sit out of view when I look outside. One day a passing man saw me in the window and then tried to come in. Of course he wasn’t allowed to—but I felt responsible for his trying. Guilty, too, that I was in here and he wasn’t. This is no paradise, but at least there’s a fireplace, and bodies, lots of bodies, to keep us warm. There’s a barrel fire at the street corner, and the people who huddle around it keep looking at our building. I think it’s only a matter of time until a mob tries to get in and overpowers or outguns our guards.
The thing is, they must think we have it really good in here. Ha! Like them, we are doomed to starvation.
Not yet, though. We still have stuff from when Richard hit the kitchen downstairs, and from Wal-Mart. Mr. Aronoff is encouraging everyone to share what they have, but hoarding is the name of the game. I’ve seen secret stashes spill out here and there. They are quickly swiped out of sight, hidden again. I don’t blame anyone. We’re hoarding, too. But not Elizabeth!
She keeps offering me food. I don’t know where her family is getting it. It’s junk food, but it’s calories, right? So I take it. I think Elizabeth is using the food as a way to ensure that I stay her friend. She doesn’t need to do that but I’m not complaining because I hate feeling hungry.
Outside, the freezing weather continues.
I think it will be winter forever.
After I blew out the candle I couldn’t sleep. So I worked on a verse I’m trying to memorize from the book of Psalms. I like what it says but I’m having trouble believing it.
“I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.” I said it over and over.
But I do feel abandoned. Hadn’t God failed us?
A prayer came unbidden, and flew from my heart up to heaven.
We’re living in the library. I want to go home!
PART FOUR
ANDREA
FEBRUARY 25
WEEK SIX
When we first came to the Hendersons’ house, I lived in dread of them showing up. Imagine their (and our) dismay were they to appear and find out we’d been eating up their food and using their fuel. Sometimes I still feel guilty about it. But the dread is gone. We have no way to know if they’re even alive.
Dad says it could take months for them to find a way back, and we’ll repay what we’ve taken. But that’s assuming we’ll have access to our bank account at some point—and that somewhere there will actually be groceries for sale.
I heard him complaining to my mother about his retirement account. “What good is it?” he said. “It’s useless to us now. We’ll never see that money. It may as well not exist.”
I hope that’s not true. But I don’t understand that stuff about money losing its value. I hated economics class. I just hope the United States isn’t ruined forever.
Dad looks like a boxer who’s losing the fight. Weary. Defeated. I guess it is a fight—with Nature or with God, or whatever caused this power outage. He’s now using a hand saw to cut down branches in the backyard here. We’ve gone through all the wood that was here when we first came. Their yard has more trees than ours, which is a good thing.
He cuts for hours every day, because that wood stove is voracious. But fresh-cut branches don’t burn well, so we’re going through our linens, using strips of fabric dipped in vegetable oil to get them started. Oh—we’re using OUR linens, not our neighbors’. I guess if this interminable winter continues for much longer we’ll have to start using theirs, too.
One night dad disappeared and came back with our coffee table—in pieces. (Goodbye, coffee table.) We’ve also burned a clothes dresser, two wooden chairs, and the work table from our basement. I went home with Dad once when he was searching for something to burn. I wanted to get some clothes and things from my room. To my shock, I could hear him banging and yelling all the way from upstairs. He was in the basement.
At first when I heard him yelling, my heart froze. Did we have an intruder? I ran into the hallway and stood listening, wondering if I’d have to hide. But his yelling didn’t change and the banging was steady, like he was working on something. I slowly descended the stairs and as I got closer to the basement door, it started to hit me. Dad was talking to himself. Yelling, actually.
I think he takes out all his anger and frustration on the furniture he’s breaking up. I was embarrassed to hear him. He was growling out things, like, “So much for democracy! (bang!) So much for progress! (bang!) For technology! (bang!)” Then some cuss words. Then, more angry rants that I don’t even want to write. I slunk back to my room and gathered what I wanted. Then I left while he was still down there.
I have no idea what piece of furniture he was breaking up this time. But it’s easier to break up our possessions than it is to cut down frozen branches outdoors. It’s unreal. This wicked cold spell won’t go away. Mom, thankfully, no longer seems concerned about her furniture.
Yesterday the boys and I helped Dad on an outdoor scavenging mission—taking brush from anywhere we could find it. He led us to the only empty lot in the development—the last piece of property that no one purchased yet. It’s on the end of the street, right after Mr. Herman’s house. He came out while we were filling the sled and spoke to my father. (UGH. He gives me the creeps for sure.)
I don’t know what they said but I saw them looking over at me. It made me feel weird. Mr. Herman’s house has changed, too. I think he’s a crazy person. He put barbed wire over his fence, which already hid his backyard entirely from view. And the front porch windows were actually boarded up. He told my dad it was just a precaution. A precaution against what?
ANDREA
FEBRUARY 26
WEEK SIX—DAY TWO
Some people from the other end of the plat were just here asking what we’re doing for water these days. It was like the whole neighborhood came out. I guess people are thoroughly sick of hauling in snow and having to boil it. I don’t blame them. Somebody knew we were in the wrong house—I heard my dad telling them we had permission to be here. It’s a lie, but I certainly wasn’t going to say anything.
Everyone had well water around here like us, wells that work on electricity. Dad said nothing about Jim’s manual pump. Ours is still broken. I know my dad is planning on using Jim’s well when the snow is gone. Why didn’t he tell them about the pump? I’m sure there will be enough water for everyone in the plat. We don’t see Jim much. He did have bad frostbite on his feet after walking home when the EMP hit. He hasn’t been up and about a whole lot, since.
So it’s almost the end of February and winter hasn’t shown any signs of letting up. The amount of snow we’ve had is mind-blowing. Either I can’t remember having this much snow in the past or we’ve just never had so much. Walking anywhere new, where there isn’t already a foot trail, is difficult. Even with the hot wood stove here in this house, I still have to change and dress quickly—and we have a ton of clothes and stuff that needs washing. Doing laundry is out of the question because it takes so much water. We stick to spot-cleaning. I wear the same clothes for as long as possible. We may not have much in the way of food but one thing we do have is a lot of clothing.
No one is talking about how we’re running low on food. The Henderson’s pantry was a God-send, but it can’t last forever. We’ve been here two weeks and we’ve made a palpable dent in the supplies. I have no idea what we’ll be eating in two months. When I think how Mom used to go grocery shopping every week, I can’t believe we’ve even made it this far. Pretty soon we’ll have to eat stuff no one likes, such as baked beans and sauerkraut. I miss bread.
EVENING
Dad took the rifle off the mantel tonight and started messing with it. Cleaning it off and loading it and unloading it. I think Mom and I were both gaping at him. Mom asked, “WHAT are you going to do with that?”
He said, “Practice shooting. Tomorrow. I may need to hunt, soon.”
We both stared at him. Dad hadn’t hunted in my whole life that I knew of.
“Do you really think it wil
l come to that?” Mom asked, wistfully.
He nodded. “Yup. Unless someone drops some stuff out of the sky.” He continued examining his gun. I waited, expecting my mother to tell him what a bad idea it was. I’ve heard her say how she hates guns and dislikes hunters. When she fell silent, it felt eerie. It was like a scary moment in a movie when you know something bad is gonna happen.
“Do you really think you have a chance at catching something?”
“I appreciate that vote of confidence,” he snapped.
Uh-oh, I thought. Here it comes. They hadn’t been fighting for awhile so I guessed it was time for a big one. I started to leave the room.
“It just so happens,” my dad continued, his voice like ice, “that I may need to protect this family.”
“From what?” asked my mother. She made it sound like it was a ludicrous idea. I couldn’t help it and I stopped to hear his answer. If we needed to be protected from something, I wanted to know about it. I think I was hoping he’d say, “From Mr. Herman.” Instead, he shook his head towards the front of the house.
“Our neighbors, first of all.”
Mom looked over at me. We were both stunned.
“From our neighbors,” my mother repeated, as if trying to understand. He gave her a hard stare. “Or people like them. Today they came about water. Next time, who knows what they’ll be asking for? Or, IF they’ll be ASKING.”
My mother looked troubled, but just shook her head. I could tell she didn’t agree with my dad’s actions, but she said nothing further. I was glad. Neither of us was in the mood to hear him lose his temper.
Every night is the same. We’re all exhausted from hauling and boiling water and getting firewood and cooking over the stove and cleanup. So we sit around the room for a little while and then go to sleep. I’m even used to being with the family day in and day out, now. The boys have a pile of board games they rotate, though their favorite is RISK. (I hate that game.) Dad actually plays with them, which is nice.
I think about my friends and I feel as though I’m living in a separate world from them. As if they are all fine, going to school and getting on just like they used to. It feels like we’re the only ones—us and our neighbors—who have suffered the loss of everything. Lexie and I used to text constantly, even during class. Now life is like living on the moon. I’m miserable.
ANDREA
WEEK SIX—DAY THREE
Jim stopped over and said someone tried to break into his house last night! He’d tried to shoot the intruder but missed. (I must have slept through it. A gun is loud, right?) It’s hard to believe that my neighbor actually shot at someone. Dad got his rifle and they started talking guns and defense and bullets and that sort of stuff.
I saw Quentin sitting attentively and looking for the whole world like he was following the entire conversation. But by following his rapt gaze, I realized it was the gun itself that was really the object of his affection. I said, “Don’t ever touch that gun! You could kill someone. Or yourself.”
My dad spun his head around at us and said, “Maybe you ought have a lesson on gun safety, Quen.”
My mom said, “He’s too young for that!”
But dad said, “We’ll be living around this firearm for now on, so I think he needs it.”
“Me, too?” asked Aiden.
My father nodded.
My mother gave a loud, heavy sigh.
“Kids get hurt by guns if they don’t know about gun safety,” my dad said.
“Not if it isn’t loaded,” returned my mother.
“And if it isn’t loaded,” said my dad, “how am I supposed to defend this family if someone tries to break in here like they did at Jim’s?”
I felt a full-fledged fight coming on and I stood up to leave the room, but my dad stopped me. “Stay where you are, Andrea!”
I sat back down. He went over to the gun and said, “You, (pointing at Aiden) “and YOU, (pointing at Quentin) AND you!” (pointing at me.) “Come with me!”
He made us follow him to the sliding doors to the back patio. He opened the door wide, letting in the freezing air from outside.
“It’s cold,” Aiden whimpered.
“Shut up and pay attention,” Dad said. He lifted his gun and pointed it out at the yard. “Cover your ears,” he growled.
My mom yelled out, “Don’t! Don’t do it, Peter!” But it was too late. Dad pulled the trigger. A crack so loud it hurt my whole head rang out, and I cried, “Ahhh!”
Aiden and Quentin, covering their ears, ran to my mother, who put the baby beside her on the sofa and let them scamper onto her lap.
“It was too loud, mommy! It was too loud!”
“I know,” she said, and I could see tears in her eyes. I was so mad at my dad I wanted to scream but I was afraid to.
He calmly came back and put the gun back in place and then looked at my brothers.
“That’s why you should never touch that gun,” he said. “Understand?”
The boys nodded their heads, their eyes wide with fear.
Sometimes my dad is the biggest jerk in history.
“Are you crazy?” my mother said. “You could have damaged their hearing! You could have hurt Lily’s ears! It made MY ears hurt, from in here.”
He said nothing for a moment, then turned and looked at my mom, still holding the boys against her.
“I don’t know,” he said, lightly. “Maybe I am crazy.” And he walked out of the room.
“He doesn’t mean that, Andrea,” my mother said. She must have seen my eyes. I was probably staring at my dad with disgust.
Afterwards I was too frazzled to just sit there so I got up and walked around the house. As I looked at this home, which was every bit as classy and attractive as ours, I started feeling like it was really a dressed up graveyard.
Really. Think about it. Just like a cemetery, it’s filled with dead things. In the kitchen the counters are dotted with useless appliances. They sit there like ghosts, mocking us. The food processor, expensive Kitchen-Aid mixer, microwave--even the electric kettle--they’re all useless. Mrs. Henderson must be a lot like my mom, because they have similar taste in top of the line appliances. Her kitchen has a different color scheme but like ours has granite countertops and a tiled floor. Our kitchen has Italian tile—I don’t know what kind of tile this is here, but they’re equally stupid now. Because you know what tile is like in a cold house? COLD.
All of these surfaces are stone cold. Sometimes my mom wears two layers of plastic gloves when she’s preparing food. The little bit of food that we have to make do with. But all the expensive stainless steel and tile and granite is absolutely useless! We’re hungry and thirsty while we drown in affluent junk.
What a joke.
Only I’m not laughing.
EVENING
There’s less tension in the house tonight. I think that’s because we’ve accepted the facts. What are the facts? That we’re living in 21st century pioneer days. My white collar dad is going to start hunting. Only we’re worse off than the pioneers because they knew what they were in for; they knew how to cook without stoves and heat a home without central heat. They knew how to grow food. They knew how to save enough for winter, but we didn’t save up any food.
We never dreamed we’d have to.
LEXIE
FEBRUARY 25
WEEK SIX, DAY ONE
The weather is still freezing cold. I’ve never seen our wood pile go down so fast. Yesterday a man showed up at the front door asking if he could buy some wood from us. Dad refused as kindly as he could, but the man got frantic. Said his family had gone through all their propane and had been trying to gather enough wood for a fire, but the snow cover was making it next to impossible. Even what wood he could find was too wet to burn.
“All we’ve got left for heat are candles,” he said, with tears in his eyes.
Dad sold him about half a cord, but told him not to come back. We aren’t sure we have enough wood to last the rest of the w
inter since we’ve never used it exclusively as a heat source before. So then we spent hours hauling our wood indoors to the basement from the wood shed to keep it safe.
“Isn’t it a fire hazard?” I asked, as we carried down the first load.
“It could be,” Dad replied, “if there’s a spark.” He eyed me steadily. I’ll put an extra fire extinguisher by the stairs. But if that man comes back, he won’t be looking to buy wood next time.
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“He’ll know we don’t have enough to sell him any; he’ll be ready to help himself.”
“He seemed like a nice man,” I said, remembering the tears for the sake of his family.
“I’m sure he is, when he’s had enough to eat and can keep his family warm. But desperate times can bring out the worst in people. May as well not flaunt that we have something he wants.”
“Are we going to bring it all down?” I asked, daunted by the size of the task. I was hauling it down in a heavy-duty canvas log holder, but I could see myself getting weary of this really soon.
“No,” he said, taking my latest haul and stacking it neatly against one wall a few feet from the stairs. “We’ll leave enough out there to make it look convincing. Either that guy or someone else can take it, and we should still be okay. Let’s pray we don’t have an extended winter. We still have a propane heater I haven’t used and a few canisters of propane. We’ll get by.”
After all that work, Mom broke open a five-gallon storage bucket full of prepared freeze-dried food as a special treat. Our storage buckets were an investment. Our storage room is lined with them. They stack five high to the ceiling and each one is labeled with its contents. Up to now we’d finished off what had been in our refrigerator and freezers, thanks to having the generator. Then we’d started on the pantry, eating a lot of spaghetti and canned sauce, or rice and beans, with canned stew or chili thrown in now and then for good measure.
The Pulse Effex Series: Box Set Page 16