In short, I’m not sure who’s the bigger genius: you for buying and saving the things, or me for coming up with a good use for them.
One thing is for darn sure.
We make a damn good team, don’t we?
-50-
Dave put the flat tire problem on hold for the time being and resolved to spend the rest of the winter in the warmth of the safe room. He’d while away the hours trying to make some organization of Sarah’s vast amount of research material.
Every hour he spent sorting, cataloging and alphabetizing Sarah’s files would be an hour closer to seeing Sarah herself. Instead of just what she wrought.
At the same time, he’d look for anything that would help him along his long journey. Which plants and berries were safe to eat. How to identify poison ivy and poison oak, and any other plants he’d want to avoid. How to trap a wild rabbit or other small animal. And anything else that might come in handy.
When he came across the photo he wasn’t quite sure what it was. It was tucked between an article about weather patterns in south Texas and a chart of edible wildflowers. But it didn’t seem to go with either of them.
It was a satellite photo. A screen shot from Google Earth, probably. It showed a series of buildings in a farm setting, surrounded by woods and streams. She obviously had the “roads” feature turned off, because the road that ran in front of the property was not identified.
In fact, there were no words on the photo anywhere.
It didn’t look familiar at all, and he wondered why in the world Sarah would take the time to print such a photo.
Was it a tract of land she fancied and wanted to buy, and just never got around to talking to him about? Was it a piece of land belonging to someone she knew?
Dave was sure of one thing. Wherever it was, whoever it belonged to, he was sure he’d never been there. It looked completely alien to him.
Then he turned the image around and looked at it from a different perspective.
And it started to look vaguely familiar.
He’d only been to Sarah’s sister’s house west of Kansas City once. It had been a couple of years before, when Susan and Tommy invited them up for a fishing trip.
They’d had a good time, and Dave had caught a couple of great fish. But he hadn’t taken the time to soak in his surroundings. There just wasn’t a reason to.
Now he wished he’d paid closer attention.
This land looked similar in a way to Susan and Tommy’s place. But was that just his mind playing tricks on him? Was the stream that ran behind their house really that close to it? Was that barn there? And where did that dirt road lead to? He didn’t remember it being there.
With no markings on the photo there was no way of knowing whether this was Susan and Tommy’s place. It might not have been Kansas City at all. It didn’t look much like the San Antonio area, but it could have been a shot of the Texas hill country a little north and west.
Heck, for that matter it could be Pennsylvania, or Idaho, or a thousand other places.
But if it was one of a thousand other places, why on earth would she go through the trouble of printing a copy of it?
He studied it for quite some time, trying his best to remember the layout of the place he visited. The more he compared his memory with the photograph in front of him, the more he was convinced it was the same place.
Of course, it could have just been his mind messing with him.
He finally put the photo aside, deciding the best thing to do was to let his memory percolate for while. Then he’d look at it again, with fresh eyes, and try again to determine if it was the same place.
In the meantime, he dug feverishly in the boxes of paper for something else that would explain the photograph’s existence. Additional photos… an article that made reference to a farm… anything.
But there was nothing else.
Just the lonely photo.
Dave didn’t know it now, but he’d spend hours agonizing over that photo in the weeks ahead.
Could it be that at this very moment, his wife and daughters were in one of those buildings, crying over the fate of their husband and father?
Or were they there, eating a baloney sandwich and playing a video game, and never giving Dave a second thought?
And if this was their destination in Kansas City, how could it help Dave?
Yes, it could tell him specifically where they were. But without a map to compare this photo to, it was worthless.
Or, maybe not. He noticed that the stream that ran behind the main house in the photo had some very distinctive features. About fifty yards from one side of the house, it had a very distinctive “s” shaped curve.
A hundred yards or so on the other side of the property the same stream curved to the left almost exactly ninety degrees, and after twenty yards or so curved almost exactly ninety degrees to the right before continuing on its way.
Perhaps if Dave could break into a library once he got to Kansas City and steal an atlas of the area, he could compare those two features with the streams west of the city.
He’d finish going through the paper research material in a couple of days and start going through the digital stuff.
After Lindsey had suggested to her Mom that it would be faster and cheaper to simply save digital copies of her research material, she saved literally thousands of screen grabs onto a backup hard drive. Every weekend, like clockwork, she took the hard drive and swapped it out with a second drive in the Faraday cage. Her logic was that if the EMP hit before she finished her project, she’d only lose a few days’ worth of research.
Maybe mixed in with those thousands of screen grabs were overhead views of the area west of Kansas City that included street names.
Or, even better, detailed directions to his in-laws’ farm.
Hey, he could dream.
-51-
It was the end of February now. The cold snap had finally broken a week before, and the daytime temperatures had been in the low to mid thirties for several days in a row. The cold temperatures then returned, but not before all the snow and ice melted away.
Dave could once again come out without having to worry about someone tracking his footprints in the snow.
He’d been lonely of late, and was tempted to get out and visit with his friends Frank and Eva two blocks away.
But they would have to wait until another night to see his smiling face.
Tonight he had a special mission to go on. One which took him in the exact opposite direction from Frank and Eva’s house.
He had come to a decision the day before about how to deal with the flat tire on his Explorer. He wouldn’t break into the NAPA store and steal an air compressor.
Well, he was still going to break into the store, but only to steal an alternator, and he’d go ahead and replace it before he left. But he didn’t want to have to lug a compressor the five miles home as well.
So he’d forego the air compressor and temporarily turn into one of the looters he’d been cursing since day one.
But only temporarily.
And hey, he was planning on breaking into the NAPA store anyway, so he figured it wasn’t much worse to steal from an ordinary citizen.
He rationalized that whoever he was going to steal from was probably dead now anyway. And if he wasn’t dead, he sure wouldn’t be needing his vehicle anytime soon.
And that he’d already killed a man. And stealing, in God’s eyes, couldn’t be any worse than that, the ultimate sin.
So he figured that in this case, it was okay to steal a wheel from the white Explorer in the street four blocks up and three blocks over from his house.
He’d remembered placing a packet of seeds on the hood of the vehicle a few months before, when he felt guilty about the Nance family committing suicide next door. He’d resolved after that happened to do more to share what he had with others, to try to save more desperate people from doing the same thing.
The white Explorer had burned a plac
e in his memory because it was the same model as his, but was white in color.
He’d always hated white vehicles. Despised them, in fact, and wondered why anyone would buy a car that showed dirt so easily and had to be washed constantly.
Then, of course, he’d purchased his own black Explorer and discovered that it showed dirt almost as badly.
He still thought his looked better, though.
In his backpack were the scissor jack from his own vehicle, a lug wrench, a jack stand, a pack of seeds and a note.
The note said:
Sorry. Needed your wheel, and figured it was of no use to you. Please accept these seeds as payment.
Of course, it was highly unlikely that the owner of the Explorer would wind up with the seeds. He was probably just some poor schmuck who was driving through the neighborhood when the EMP hit the earth. He probably walked to his home a mile or two away and would never see his vehicle again.
Most likely, a looter walking through the neighborhood the next day or two would see the note and take the seeds.
And, if it was a stupid looter, he’d probably chow down on the seeds and make a single meal of them instead of planting them.
But still, leaving them made Dave feel much better about what he was planning to do.
And maybe, just maybe, one of the neighbors would look out his window the next day and notice that a wheel had disappeared from one of the abandoned vehicles in the street in front of his house.
And maybe, just maybe, that neighbor would examine the vehicle further. And would see the note and the packet of seeds.
Perhaps he’d even be bold enough to walk out into the street to retrieve them, and would plant them in the spring.
And perhaps the wheat and corn that grew from the seeds would save someone else from starving to death.
Hey, it was a long shot, sure. But it was a possibility. And that was enough to help Dave feel better about what he was doing.
He knew that the wheels were interchangeable and that this wheel and tire would fit on his own vehicle.
He’d replaced his tires the year before, so the tread patterns almost certainly wouldn’t match.
But he wouldn’t be driving highway speeds. Not at night on a highway littered with abandoned cars and trucks. And he didn’t much give a darn if using two tread patterns on his front tires messed up his alignment a bit.
This tire would get him where he wanted to go and back again, God willing. And that was the only thing that concerned him.
When he arrived at the white Explorer he looked around to make sure no one was about, and placed the note on the hood, with the seeds on top of it.
Then he set about removing the left rear wheel, cursing under his breath because the jack squeaked with every turn of its crank.
He’d never make it on an Indy pit crew, but he made respectable time. Especially since his hands were freezing and it was dark outside.
Ten minutes later he was rolling the tire back toward his house, satisfied with his haul and hoping he could get it back home without being spotted.
For a brief moment he wondered if he had enough time to deposit this wheel in the Castros’ living room and go back after a second one, to place on top of his luggage rack for the long trip to Kansas City.
Just as added insurance in case he had a flat along the way.
Then he decided not to. If someone had seen him and had gone out to check out the vehicle he’d just stolen the wheel from, it might be too risky to go back.
And he’d likely pass plenty of other Explorers on the highway to Kansas City anyway. He’d just pull over and take a backup tire from one of them. If need be, his emergency spare would work until he was able to do that.
By the time he’d rolled the heavy tire up the slight hill, through the Castros’ house and into their back yard, he was winded. He was once again reminded that he was in dreadful shape. If his vehicle broke down or was taken by bandits on the way to Kansas City, how much ground could he cover by foot each night? Especially with a fifty pound pack on his back?
He had to figure out a way to get back into shape. Without going jogging, without a working treadmill or a gym to go to.
But that was a problem for later. For now, he just wanted to get this tire into his own garage, wash up, and start a nice warm fire.
He rolled the tire through the passageway between the two yards, and slid open the sliding glass door leading into his house.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of brown and was startled. In less than a heartbeat, a rabbit had bolted past him, into the house, and up the stairs.
“Damn it!”
He was much too tired to chase a stupid rabbit around his house. And he suspected it would be hard to catch. There were a lot of beds it could hide under, or furniture it could hide behind.
He’d just let it hang out until daylight. Then it would be a lot easier to chase it back outside again.
By the time his fire was going strong, Dave was exhausted. He put a movie in and laid back to watch it.
The cold woke him up hours later, after the fire had burned itself out and the sun was high in the sky.
-52-
Dave called out as he climbed the stairs.
“Okay, you stupid little furball. I’m coming to get you. I hope you didn’t leave those little rabbit turds all over my house.”
He went first to his own room and peeked under the bed. Then he looked behind the dresser and through the open closet.
Nothing.
He closed the bedroom door behind him to keep his quarry from doubling back behind him.
One room down, four to go.
“Okay, you wascally wabbit. Here’s the deal. If you make this easy on me and don’t run, I’ll let you loose again back in the yard. If I have to chase you all over the house to catch you, then you’ll be in my stew pot before the sun goes down today. The choice is yours.”
In little Beth’s room, he paused long enough to pick up her bed pillow and sniff it. It still smelled of Johnson’s baby shampoo. She wasn’t a baby any more, of course, but it was still her shampoo of choice. She had a bad habit of getting shampoo in her eyes.
“All the others burn,” she’d said. “I like this one ‘cause it doesn’t.”
He almost teared up, but caught himself, put the pillow down, and searched Beth’s room just as he’d done his own.
Before he left, he lifted up the bottom of a Care Bears poster and reached his arm into the hole in the wall behind it.
He pulled out a zip lock bag with about a pound of dried vegetables and seasonings.
“My rabbit stew sure is gonna be yummy,” he called out. “I can either use some dried rabbit, or I can use you. Your choice, Mister Bunny.”
He closed Beth’s bedroom door and walked into Lindsey’s room.
And he felt as though the world dropped from beneath his feet.
In the center of Lindsey’s bed, looking at him, was the rabbit he’d come to call Lindsey.
Dave didn’t even know rabbits could jump that high.
“There you are, you little troublemaker. I didn’t know it was you. Where’s your partner in crime? I thought the two of you went everywhere together.”
He very slowly closed the door behind him, so the rabbit didn’t bolt and lead him on a wild chase through the house.
Then he looked around the room for a laundry basket, a box, a trash can… anything suitable to carry a captive rabbit back outside.
But Lindsey the daughter was a great housekeeper. Always had been. The tiny trash can was way too small, and there was nothing else that would work.
Lindsey the bunny never left her spot on the bed, but followed Dave with her eyes as he walked around the room.
“Well, this is great. I guess you know that I’m not going to cook you. Lindsey asked me in a dream not to. So you’re off the hook. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you just come in and out of here as you please.”
The bunny didn’t
say anything.
Dave was unsure what approach to take next. He’d tried on several occasions in the past to make friends with the rabbit and its BFF, Beth.
But both of them had always resisted his advances. They’d let him get close enough to touch them, and then bolt.
Maybe he’d get lucky and would be able to catch it when it jumped. Maybe he’d get a handful of ears or something. In any event, just the two of them were confined in this small room. There weren’t a lot of places for the rabbit to run.
He reached out very slowly to pet the rabbit in the hopes of calming her. At the same time he braced himself, waiting for her to jump and hoping to catch her in mid-air.
He was surprised when the rabbit didn’t bolt. Instead, it calmly looked at him and allowed him to pet it.
He was mesmerized by the big eyes. They were moist, almost as if it were crying. He’d never taken the time to notice, but he wondered if rabbits’ eyes were always like that.
She looked incredibly sad.
He stroked her for several minutes, all the while chastising her.
“You see, little troublemaker, here’s the way it’s supposed to work. Rabbits live outside because they’re… well, they’re more equipped to handle it than we are. You’ve got all this thick fur to help keep you warm that we don’t have.
“That’s why you live outside and I live inside. That’s just the way it works. And it works much better if you don’t invade my territory and I don’t invade yours. Capiche?
“After all, you wouldn’t like it if I went outside and wiggled my great big ass down into your little rabbit tunnel and made myself a sandwich, would you? No, you wouldn’t like that at all. You’d tell me to get the hell off of your couch and get out of your place and never come back.
“You see, we’re kinda like oil and water. We can co-exist, but we’re not supposed to mix together, okay?”
The bunny continued to look at him but still said nary a word.
“So, here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re being real good and reasonable so far. I don’t have anything to put you in, so I’m gonna slowly pick you up, and you’re gonna behave yourself while I take you back downstairs, okay?
An Unkind Winter (Alone Book 2) Page 19