by C. Gockel
Those somber moments were fleeting, though, and I could tell he wasn’t about to let the memories of what once was ruin what we had now. He joked about Dutchie wanting to eat that pheasant whole before it even hit the back of the ATV, and praised my cooking, raising a glass to honor my efforts. It did feel good. Before all this, I would never have said I was particularly domestic, but I’d risen to the occasion with more success than I could have imagined.
Also, I’d surprised him by putting on the black dress I’d brought from Albuquerque, and my jeweled sandals, and those amazing tanzanite earrings that had so mysteriously shown up in my pocket after my first visit to the plaza in Santa Fe. Actual makeup, my hair styled as best I could, since I hadn’t brought any curling irons or hot rollers with me, thinking I’d never need them again. Jace had taken one look at me and asked, “You expect me to be patient all through dinner with you looking like that?”
I’d given him a sphinx-like smile and continued teetering my way back and forth from the kitchen, bringing food to the table. Funny how just a month or so in hiking boots had apparently killed all my ability to walk in heels.
And after dinner, Jace surprised me by taking me in his arms, actually lifting me away from the dining room table and carrying me to the bedroom, where he proceeded to show me exactly how much he appreciated me, mouth moving with teasing slowness across my skin, his fingers stroking me, finding exactly the right spot to wring moans of ecstasy from a place so deep that before I’d been with him, I hadn’t even known it existed. Then we were together once more, bodies locked, moving in a rhythm that had become second nature to us by now.
That was really how it felt…natural, as if my body had been made to fit with his, and the reason it had never worked with anyone else was simply that they hadn’t been the one. We fell asleep in one another’s arms, a perfect end to a perfect day.
A week after that, we had our first snowfall. At first, I didn’t even know what was happening, only caught an odd flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye while I was clearing up the breakfast dishes. The skies had been heavy and gray when we woke up that morning, and Jace said it smelled like snow. I’d laughed at him over that remark, although really, he would know more about it than I would, since he’d grown up in Taos. When I was in high school, Albuquerque had been hit by a freak snowstorm that basically shut the city down, but that was my only real experience with snow, save for a light flurry here and there that didn’t stick around long enough to cause any trouble.
This, though — it drifted downward, light and delicate, the flakes settling on the goats’ shed and the chicken coop and the evergreens in the backyard, giving everything a soft sugar frosting. I stood at the window, a dish still in my hands, and stared at the miracle of it, how beautiful it was.
I was so transfixed that I didn’t even realize Jace had come up behind me, not until his arms wrapped around my waist and his breath came warm against my neck as he said, “Looks like winter is really here now.”
“And we’re all safe and snug inside,” I responded, setting the dish in the drain before I could drop it. The sensation of having him there, pressed up against me, was enough to send all sorts of tingles up and down my spine.
“That we are. I’ll go out and check on the goats in a bit, just to make sure there aren’t any leaks in the shed or anything, but I think we’ll ride this out just fine.” He shifted, as if glancing up at the ceiling, then added, “But we may not have lights for much longer. With cloud cover this thick, the solar’s not going to do us much good.”
“Then we’ll spend our day by candlelight,” I replied. “I’ll turn off anything extraneous — maybe that way, there’ll be enough of a trickle to keep the refrigerator going.”
“Not a bad plan. You may want to go scrounge some extra candles from the basement.”
“I’ll do that as soon as I’m finished with these dishes.”
His lips brushed against my cheek as he gave me a soft kiss, an acknowledgment of my words. Then he let go of me, heading toward the laundry room and the mudroom beyond that, where he could get into his jacket and gloves and brave the snow to check on the livestock.
There really weren’t that many dishes to do, so I was done in the next few minutes. After that, I went from room to room, making sure we hadn’t left any lights on. In general, we were pretty careful about that sort of thing, but I did realize that I needed to put the computer in sleep mode so it wouldn’t draw any more power than was strictly necessary. If something happened to set off one of the periphery alarms, it would turn back on right away, but in the meantime it could hibernate.
After that I got a flashlight from the drawer in the kitchen where we kept them, and headed down into the basement. It had its own lights, of course, but if we really were in for a snowy day, I didn’t want to turn them on and waste more power. The flashlight would do well enough, even if it was a little creepy to be wandering around down there with only a narrow beam to show me what I was doing.
I’d come down here once before to fetch the candles, but that had been weeks ago, before Jace had even shown up at the compound. The basement actually was very organized, with rows of metal shelving and the items on them arranged according to use. Even so, I couldn’t exactly recall where I’d found the candles that last time. On the left, about five rows down?
Figuring it was worth a try, I shone the flashlight’s beam in that general direction, but saw only bins of what looked like bundles of wire and cable, possibly intended for repairs to the home’s electrical system, should the occasion warrant. Undeterred, I moved to the next row, only to have my foot bump into a cardboard box sitting on the ground next to one of the shelving units rather than placed directly on it. That was strange, simply because everything else I’d encountered in the basement so far had shown an almost fanatical adherence to order on the part of the person who had put it there.
I frowned and moved the flashlight’s beam over the box. It had clearly come from some kind of a manufacturer; there was even a shipping label still affixed to it. Crouching down, I read the name and address.
Cory Berman
28-A Skyline Trail
Santa Fe, NM 87501
Cory Berman. So was that the name of the developer from Phoenix who’d built the property, or the caretaker who’d kept watch over it? Maybe it didn’t really matter. They were both gone, after all.
What did matter, as I read the lettering stamped on the box itself, was what had been sent to him.
Yaesu FT-857D Amateur Radio Transceiver
Holy crap.
A ham radio?
A way to make contact with other survivors.
Heart pounding, I shone the flashlight around and saw another package, a much longer one, that seemed to contain the antenna to go with the radio. Damn.
I didn’t know the first thing about setting up a ham radio, or its antenna, but maybe Jace would. Or at least could puzzle out the instructions. We’d have to wait for the snowstorm to blow over before we could go up on the roof to mount the antenna, but in the meantime we could read up on how to use the radio itself.
This could change everything.
I was halfway to the cellar stairs before I remembered I’d come down here in the first place to pick up some spare candles. After going up and down a few more rows of shelving, I found them — pack after pack of shrink-wrapped pillars and votives and tapers, the sort of thing you’d buy in bulk for a wedding or some other large event. I grabbed a flat of pillar candles and headed back to the stairway, then hurried up to the main level of the house.
Jace was nowhere in evidence as I set the package of candles down on the breakfast table in the nook. When I peered out the window, though, I could see him hauling something from the garage to the shed. A sack of the pellets we used to supplement the goats’ diet, it looked like. That made sense — they probably weren’t going to head out to forage until the snow stopped.
About ten minutes later, I heard him come in, then
waited as he stopped in the mudroom to get rid of his coat and scrape the snow from his boots. In the meantime, I’d gone around the house and lit a number of candles, as it was clear from the lowering skies outside that we probably wouldn’t see any sun today. Actually, it was so dark that it almost felt as if dusk was coming early, which of course was ridiculous. At this time of year, the days were short, but they weren’t that short.
“What’s up?” he asked, almost as soon as he entered the kitchen. I supposed he could tell I was fairly dancing with impatience.
“Guess what I found in the basement?”
One brow lifted slightly. “You know, that question generally doesn’t have a good answer.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” But I could tell by the twitch at the corner of his full lips that he wasn’t…not really.
“A ham radio,” I announced. Jace appeared nonplussed by that revelation, so I went on, “It’s still in its original packing…I think it was delivered here but never used. And there’s an antenna, too.”
“And?” he asked.
I felt a stir of impatience. “What do you mean, ‘and’? With that radio, we can try to reach out to any other survivors, find out where they are, how they’re doing.”
“Maybe they don’t want to be found. It seems as if they’ve done a pretty good job of hiding so far.”
“So have we,” I pointed out. “But it doesn’t mean we don’t want people to find us. Or…do we?”
Without replying, he went to one of the cupboards and got out a glass, then filled it with water. He drank some, his gaze not fixed on me, but on the increasingly snowy landscape outside the window. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “You wouldn’t think there’d be much of a struggle for resources, not with so few of us left, but after hearing what happened to you in Albuquerque, I’m not sure I’m willing to trust anyone right now. What if there’s a bigger, more organized group out there, one that decides what we have here is better than where they’re living? We have weapons, but there are only two of us. Would you be willing to risk that?”
When he put it that way…. Involuntarily, my mind flashed back to the man in the Walgreens, to the greed in his watery brown eyes, and I shivered.
“No,” I admitted, hoping Jace hadn’t noticed my shudder. “Of course I don’t want to do anything that would put us in harm’s way. But maybe if we set it up and just listened, didn’t transmit?” That seemed like a good compromise to me, but Jace’s grim expression didn’t change. After a perceptible pause, he said,
“Maybe. But we’ll have to wait for better weather. No way am I climbing up on the roof in a snowstorm, just so I can install an antenna.”
“Of course not.”
“And it may need hardware we don’t have, so then we’d have to go back into town.”
A prospect I didn’t particularly relish, and it seemed clear enough to me that Jace wasn’t looking forward to it, either.
“Well, we can figure out the logistics later,” I said. “It’s nothing that has to happen right now.”
He nodded, and I let the matter go, instead went on to ask him what sounded good for dinner that night. Something in the tense set of his shoulders appeared to relax. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he was glad that I didn’t intend to press him on the issue.
Exactly why, I didn’t know. Was he really that worried about the consequences of contacting other survivors?
Or did he have some other reason why he wanted us to stay isolated here?
Chapter 16
Actually, despite his obvious reluctance to do so, Jace did get to work on the antenna situation a few days later, after the weather had cleared. We bumped along the icy, muddy roads to go back to the hardware store, since, as he’d guessed, we didn’t have all the little bits and pieces necessary for the installation.
Although a good deal of the snow had melted by then, there was still enough of it around to make driving treacherous, and I was more than happy to have Jace behind the wheel. He had experience driving in snow and ice, and I sure didn’t. And as I stared out at the streets while we drove along, it suddenly hit me, the thing that had been niggling at the back of my mind for so long.
“None of the cars are missing,” I said, and Jace took his eyes off the road for just long enough to shoot me a quizzical glance before returning his attention to the icy pavement.
“What?”
I glanced back out the window, wanting to confirm the notion that had finally taken coherent shape in my brain. “You know how I said that it seemed like there weren’t as many vehicles around as I remembered, that some seemed to have gone missing, but I couldn’t quite figure it out?”
A nod.
“Well, the cars are all here. And sure, there are still SUVs and trucks all over the place. But….” I let the words trail off as I focused on the patterns I now saw on the streets around us.
“But what?”
“I bet if we stopped and made a survey, we’d see that the SUVs and trucks left behind are the ones without much utility. Two-wheel drive, small engines…you know, passenger cars with SUV bodies. The ones that can pull their own weight, like this Jeep — I have a feeling we won’t find as many of those around.”
By then we were almost at the Home Depot, so Jace didn’t say anything until after he’d pulled into the parking lot and stopped. “You mean someone’s been coming here and systematically taking the trucks and the four-wheel-drive SUVs?”
“Well, I doubt I could prove it, but…yeah, something like that.”
He shook his head and pulled the key from the ignition, then slipped it into his pocket. “In a way it makes sense, I suppose. Whoever and wherever the other survivors are, they’re going to have to do a lot more for themselves. So having vehicles that can tow things and haul things and get around on unplowed roads would be vital.” His brows had been pulled together as he pondered the conundrum, but then he seemed to relax, and although the air was sharp and cold, a flicker of warmth went through me as he gave me an admiring glance. “That was some pretty good detective work, Jess. I don’t think I would have even noticed.”
“Well, it’s just a theory,” I said deprecatingly, trying to convince myself as much as him.
“Better than anything I could come up with.” Then he hesitated, looking past me down the street that fronted the store. Of course it was completely deserted, but I could tell he was worried. “Maybe you should stay here. You know — keep an eye on the car.”
I really didn’t want to do that, but if it turned out I was right about the way the abandoned vehicles were being cherry-picked, then it made sense for me to stand watch. At least this time I’d remembered to bring a sidearm. It was hanging in a holster against my hip, a reminder that we could never relax all the way when we came into town. Jace had one as well, the big S&W, which was better suited to his height anyway.
“No problem,” I said. All right, so I didn’t sound terribly enthusiastic, but neither had I argued with him.
He leaned down and kissed me on the cheek, his lips warm against my wind-chilled skin. “I’ll be less than five minutes. I just need some brackets and wire. It’ll be fast.”
I nodded, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out the car key.
“Just in case.”
In case of what? I wanted to ask. I didn’t, though, only took the key from him and slid it into my coat pocket.
After that, he turned away from me and headed into the store, walking quickly despite the patches of ice that lingered on the asphalt. I supposed I could have gotten back inside the Cherokee where it would be warmer, but I didn’t. Instead, I leaned against the driver-side door, my eyes scanning in all directions for…what? A batch of marauders out of a Mad Max movie, bearing down on me, intent on stealing my SUV?
No sign of anything like that — no movement at all, except a crow that came flapping down the street and then perched on one of the tall lights in the parking lot. It shook out its wings an
d settled down, fixing me with a baleful yellow gaze.
Crap on my car, and I’ll use you for target practice, I thought, but the bird didn’t move, only sat on the lamppost, surveying the parking lot. In happier days, it might have had some pickings there — the uneaten fries from some kid’s Happy Meal, a spilled Coke. Now, however, the lot was bare of anything except the abandoned vehicles that still remained there, waiting for owners who would never return, and some patches of unmelted snow.
But even though I didn’t see anyone else, and I knew I was perfectly safe, I couldn’t help the wave of relief that washed over me when I saw Jace coming back out of the store, carrying several bags’ worth of supplies.
“It looks like they — whoever they are — came back. More stuff is gone.” Jace handed me the bags, and I got the car key out of my pocket and gave it to him.
“Stuff you needed?” I asked anxiously.
“No, everything we came here to get is pretty esoteric. But now the batteries are totally cleared out, and the solar garden lights, and — well, just a lot of different things.”
The batteries would have worried me, except that we had flats of the things back in our basement, both regular and rechargeable. And solar garden lights? Our property was outfitted with those, too. It seemed whoever was looting the Home Depot, they were coming from a place of a lot more need than either Jace or I.
But we’d have to figure that out later. Or never. The weather seemed to be holding, and I had to hope it would stay that way for a few days, long enough so Jace could get the antenna installed. Maybe after that we could start to get some answers.
Right then, though, it was a lot more important that we get home. We had no evidence to show that anyone knew of our hideaway, but leaving it unattended always made me feel nervous. Dutchie would bark up a storm, but I doubted her doing so would be enough to scare off anyone who was determined to break in and take what they could.