An Unkind Winter (Alone Book 2)

by Darrell Maloney

  I’ve been wondering a lot lately why he took your jewelry and silverware. I had three bags of dried vegetables, a bag of beef jerky, and a six pack of Vienna sausages laying on the counter and he never even touched them. There were two bottles of water on another counter in front of him, and he never touched them either.

  Why would he be taking valuables instead of food or water?

  The only thing I could think of was maybe there are people out there who have confiscated all the food. And they’re bartering it to people for gold and silver.

  Or maybe he saw the stuff and just hadn’t put it in his backpack yet.

  Or maybe he just never saw it in the darkness.

  In the end, it doesn’t matter, I guess. He’s dead and there’s nothing I can do about it. We’re going to be constant companions for the next four months. If he’d just open up more, maybe we could get to know each other.

  You’re going to think I’m crazy. Hell, you probably already think I am. But today I put a blanket over him. Even covered up his shoulders with it. Now only his head is sticking out, still staring at that one spot on the ceiling.

  It’s almost like he’s looking up into the heavens, as if his last act was talking to God Himself.

  Maybe trying to talk his way into heaven.

  I know, I know, the blanket didn’t do anything to make him feel better.

  But I didn’t do it for him. I did it for me. I felt somehow that I owed it to the kid to try to make him a little more comfortable.

  Yes, I’m psycho. Sorry about that.

  Yesterday I was passing the time by reading your old high school yearbooks.

  I sure wish I’d known you back then. You were one hot chick, let me tell you. Especially in that cheerleader uniform. Boy, I’d have had some fun groping you in the parking lot after the football games.

  Anyway, after I found all your pictures and pretty much read the yearbook from cover to cover, I went back and read some of the things your friends wrote to you.

  Who the heck was Jesse Simpson? You never mentioned him.

  And where in hell does he get off thanking you for letting him “be your first,” in your high school yearbook? Didn’t he realize that someday your children might see that? And why didn’t you scratch it out immediately? What are you going to tell Lindsey or Beth when you tell them to save themselves for marriage? What happens when they point out that you lost your virginity in high school and then let your boyfriend brag about it in your yearbook?

  If I was there, I don’t care if he was your boyfriend or not, I’d have pummeled him good. I mean, that’s about as low as a guy could go. He deserved a good beating for that.

  And you, honey, I’m disappointed in you. I know it was a long time ago and all, and maybe you didn’t understand the future ramifications and all, but geez…

  Anyway, I fixed the problem for you. I took a sharpie and blacked out his whole comment. I only hope that the girls haven’t already seen it.

  Oh, and by the way, I also looked up the guy’s class picture. He looks like a geek.

  I don’t know what you ever saw in him. Maybe back then you had pimples or something and were desperate. But you could have done much better than that clown, trust me.

  -24-

  The next day was the coldest one on record in San Antonio. Dave stumbled out of bed and into the garage, where he shined a flashlight on a thermometer on the wall. It registered six below zero.

  He shouted out in frustration, “What the hell is happening to the world?”

  For months leading up to the blackout, he and Sarah had been monitoring the nightly news. The global warming thing was all over it. They said the polar ice caps were melting and polar bears were dying. That the oceans would be rising and coastal communities would be underwater. That droughts and wildfires would become more common, and that the entire state of Texas would become a desert within a hundred years.

  So how did that jive with the temperature in San Antonio being below zero, and it wasn’t even December yet?

  “Explain that, mister Harvard scientist! If the world is getting hotter, then why am I so frickin’ cold?”

  He took four Dasani bottles full of ice and tossed them inside his sleeping bag. He was thirsty now, but would have to wait until his body heat started to thaw the bottles, then would sip from each of them a little at a time as the ice melted.

  It was a hell of a way to satisfy one’s thirst, but he wouldn’t complain. He knew there were millions of others out there, desperately trying to keep their campfires burning when frigid air temperatures kept wanting to freeze them out. And anyone outdoors without a campfire was doomed.

  It was mid morning now. He couldn’t rebuild the fire he’d let burn out a few hours before. The smoke coming out of the chimney would have been visible from a mile away. Then he’d have more guys like Mikey coming around to see what goodies he might have stashed in the house.

  He’d have to be a little smarter from now on. Until the cold snap ended, he’d put some frozen water bottles near the fire each evening, so the fire would thaw them. Then he’d put them in his sleeping bag so they wouldn’t refreeze when the fire went out.

  An old adage came to his mind: Work smarter, not harder.

  He tossed four more packets of bread and some more Viennas into the sleeping bag too, along with a package of trail mix. He’d eat in the bag today, once the food was thawed. There was no real reason to get out, nothing to check on. He’d sleep when he could, and look at the ceiling when he couldn’t.

  Or maybe he’d do what he hadn’t done since he was a kid, and read a book by flashlight under the covers.

  When he was a kid, he did that just to defy his parents when they made him go to bed at nine p.m.

  Now, it would be a good way to pass the time if he couldn’t sleep, without leaving the only place in the house that was halfway comfortable.

  He had two extreme cold weather sleeping bags. The outer one was made for two people, the inner one was made for one.

  Or, in this case, one person and some bottles of frozen water and food.

  By putting one bag inside the other, he ensured that none of his body heat would escape to the outside. It would act as a heater, instead, to keep him warm and to thaw his provisions.

  Dave crawled inside his bags and zipped them up so only his head was exposed. Then he scooted down farther into the bag so his head was covered as well. The top of the bag was still open, to provide him fresh air. And the two watch caps sitting on top of his head would keep it warm.

  He slept fitfully. Warm, but a little bit cramped in the confined space of the sleeping bags. Once, he woke up wondering what the weather was like in Kansas City. Whether his wife and daughters were warm enough.

  For an hour he worried, thinking the worst- that they were slowly freezing to death while he was laying toasty in his bed.

  But then he reasoned that wouldn’t be the case. He and Sarah had worked through all their survival plans together. In fact, they had included the girls on much of them. It was actually Lindsey who had the idea of putting one sleeping bag inside another to increase its effectiveness.

  No, he didn’t have to worry about his family. They were troopers, all three of them. And if anyone could survive this harsh winter, it would be them.

  His mind once again at ease, he allowed himself to drift off to sleep again, only to roll over onto two icy cold bottles of water a couple of hours later.

  He was instantly awake.

  And the water bottles reminded him that he was incredibly thirsty.

  He sat up in the bags and felt around for the other bottles, which had worked their way down between his feet.

  Each of the bottles was partially thawed now, and he was able to get half a dozen sips from each of them. It was enough to sustain him until he awoke again, and would be able to get a bit more.

  The water brought another need to his attention. Even as thirsty as he was, he knew he wasn’t dehydrated. He could tell because
his bladder was telling him he needed to get his lazy self out of the warm bags and go out into the cold to visit his outhouse.

  He could have held off. He wasn’t in pain yet. What he was feeling was just the pangs of discomfort. He could probably go back to sleep again if he just tried to relax and put it out of his mind.

  But Dave knew his body pretty well. If he ignored the need to urinate, if he allowed himself to go back to sleep, he’d merely wake up again in a couple of hours. And he’d be in pain, and have to run outdoors to relieve himself.

  He lay in bed for a time debating. It would be smart to go now, and be able to sleep through the rest of the day and into the hours of darkness.

  But leaving his warm sanctuary was such a hard thing to do. Especially since he knew very well the arctic blast that would greet him as soon as he stepped out of the bags.

  Between his Boy Scout days and his years with the U.S. Marine Corps, Dave had picked up a few tricks about cold weather camping.

  One was never to sleep in a winter bag with socks on. It sounded counter intuitive, sure. The average Joe would assume that the warmer the better, and would never remove his socks.

  Dave knew better. If the feet were too warm they’d sweat. And over the course of several nights, they’d develop into something akin to trench foot. Not to mention the socks would be damp when the average Joe got out of the bags. And damp socks would make the feet even colder in the temperatures outside the bag.

  Dave knew the smart way to go was to remove his socks once he got into the bag. That way his feet didn’t get too hot, and didn’t sweat. And they had the chance to breathe for a bit after being in socks all day long.

  Another thing he’d learned, going back to his winter camping days with the scouts, was to keep a change of clothes inside the sleeping bag with him. It was common practice for his scout troop, winter camping in south Texas, to toss a full change of clothes into the bag with them at night.

  Sure, they were all wrinkled by the next morning. But nobody cared. They were camping, not putting on a fashion show.

  But along with the wrinkles came something else. Something good. By morning, when the scouts woke up, their change of clothes was close to body temperature. They could change inside their bags instead of coming out in the cold air to do it.

  Dave had gotten quite good, back in those days, at changing in his bag. He could still do it in about the same amount of time he could change outside the bag.

  He chuckled, remembering the first time Sarah and the girls tried it.

  It took them forever. Especially Sarah.

  He’d laughed at her and she’d fumed.

  “Oh, shut up,” she’d said. “You try to untangle a bra and put it on in a sleeping bag. You men don’t know how easy you have it.”

  Little Beth had piped in.

  “Yeah, you tell him, Mom!”

  His smile melted away, his jovial mood turned to sorrow. He wondered if he’d ever hear those voices again.

  He felt around in the bag for his socks and put them on his feet. Three pairs. Half of them were probably inside out, but he didn’t care.

  He slipped out of the bag and put his socked feet into the oversized slippers Sarah had bought him. They were corduroy on the outside, lined with fake fur on the inside, and a full size larger than his size ten foot.

  “Why so big?” he’d asked.

  “So you can put them on your feet with three pairs of socks on, silly. You certainly won’t be able to get your shoes on.”

  As usual, her logic had been sound. Between the socks and the slippers, his feet were just as warm as they’d been in the bag.

  He shivered from the cold as he put his heavy parka on, then shuffled outside.

  For a brief moment, he panicked. He thought all the rabbits had gotten out. They were nowhere in sight.

  But first things first. The blast of frigid air seemed to have loosened his bladder even more, and he really needed to go.

  He went over to the outhouse he’d built the spring before, not even bothering to close the door behind him. There was no one to watch. Not even, apparently, the rabbits.

  He noted a dark yellow tint to his urine, which didn’t surprise him. He already knew he needed more water. He’d remedy that once darkness came a few hours later and he could build a fire.

  Once his bladder was empty, be walked around the yard, trying to find the hole where the rabbits had escaped.

  But there wasn’t one.

  He stood next to the fence, scratching his head, and remembered the burrows and tunnels the rabbits had dug in the center of the yard, before the weather got cold. He’d assumed they were shallow and short, and made merely to play in and hide from the hot sun.

  Was it possible they were much deeper than he imagined?

  And large enough to allow twenty something rabbits to just disappear without a trace?

  Or was it possible they’d tunneled through to one of the other yards, and were now happily hopping all over the neighborhood? Maybe laughing at Dave for his futile attempts to hold them, and celebrating their prison break?

  He retrieved a wooden folding ladder from the garage and placed it against the fence separating his house from the Castros’ house.

  Then he climbed the ladder to peer over the fence, expecting to see an exit hole in the yard next door and the rabbits all over the place again.

  Instead, he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  He moved the ladder to the other two fences, and checked out the other yards that connected with his own.

  Still nothing.

  Now he was very puzzled.

  As he was folding the ladder and getting ready to return it to the garage, he finally got his answer.

  The rabbit he called Lindsey emerged from one of the holes that pockmarked the center of his yard.

  The rabbit looked at Dave, as though blaming him for the wretched cold. Then it hopped over to the pile of corn stalks Dave had placed in the corner of the yard two months before.

  He, or she… Dave still wasn’t sure, munched on a corn stalk for a couple of minutes and licked the frozen water that used to be their water trough. Now it looked more like a miniature ice skating rink.

  The rabbit looked at Dave once again and then quickly disappeared back into the hole.

  Dave stood there, wondering if rabbits hibernated. He should know. But he didn’t. He’d try to find out.

  And as a bone chilling breeze blasted him in the face, he also resolved to find a way to avoid coming outside to pee twice a day. There had to be a better way.

  -25-

  When Dave reentered his safe room he looked over at his alarm clock to check out the time, and was disheartened to see that the batteries had gone dead.

  He muttered, “Crap!”

  But he wasn’t so concerned that he’d deal with it now.

  Crawling back into his nice warm sleeping bag seemed like a much better option.

  Later, when it was dark enough outside to allow him to build a fire in his fireplace, he’d replace the batteries in his clock.

  He had others in the garage that were fully charged.

  Once of the things he’d placed in his Faraday cage the year before was a battery charger and a dozen or so rechargeable batteries of every size. The charger was now permanently plugged into the power strip in the garage, which was connected to his generator. Every night, he ran his generator for two or three hours, and the batteries in the charger charged during that time.

  Once it was dark, he’d build his fire. Then he’d crank up his generator and swap out the dead batteries for good ones. And as his room warmed up from the fire, he’d sit back and watch a movie or two on TV, or read a book.

  But that was all later.

  Right now he was too cozy in his sleeping bags to do anything.

  Except sleep.

  “Mommy, I don’t like it here anymore.”

  Sarah went to little Beth and wrapped her arms around her.

  “Oh, ho
ney. I know you miss your Daddy and your friends. And I know this isn’t your home. But your Aunt Susan and Uncle Tommy have been so nice to us. They found us at the airport and walked with us all the way here, to keep us safe. And they’ve given us lots of food to eat and clothes to wear, and the other kids have shared their things with us.”

  “I know, Mommy. But I miss Daddy. I miss him a lot. And I worry about him too. I worry that maybe he isn’t okay without us being there with him. He always told me that he needed three things to live… food, air and my hugs. What if he dies because I’m not there to give him my hugs?”

  “Oh, honey, Daddy’s not going to die without your hugs.”

  “But he said…”

  “I know he said that, honey. But you left your bear there, remember? Mr. Bennett will give your Daddy lots of hugs until he gets here. I just know he will. They won’t be as special as yours, and Daddy will still miss your hugs. But it’ll be enough to get him by.”

  “But Mr. Bennett’s just a bear. The hugs aren’t the same. And he’s in my room. Daddy won’t know where he is.”

  “Honey, don’t you remember, when Grandma gave you Mr. Bennett, she told you he was a magical bear?”

  Beth was close to tears now.

  She blubbered, “Yes…”

  “Well, honey, the way magical bears work is, they look just like regular bears until someone really really needs them. Then they come to life and go to help. And when they’re finished helping whoever it is that really really needs them, they go back to being regular bears again.”

  “For the reals?”

  “Yes, honey. For the reals.”

  “So whenever Daddy is sad and lonely, Mr. Bennett will come to life and go find Daddy and give him hugs and tell him it’s going to be okay?”

  “That’s right, Punkin. That’s exactly what will happen.”

  Lindsey, a little bit older and a little more attuned to the reality of their situation, said, “Mom, I miss Dad too. Do you think we’ll ever see him again?”

  Sarah looked at Lindsey and said, “Of course we will. It’s just a matter of time before he comes to get us.”