by Brad Manuel
“I guess, I mean, I was going to college after Christmas. Wow, it’s weird to say ‘was.’ Even after all that’s happened. I still think of college as a future thing.”
“Where were you going?”
“I had yet to decide. I got in everywhere I applied. I think it’s because I am a bit of a Doogie Howser, but I’m old enough to not be a freak. It’s not like I’m 8, and colleges don’t want me on campus because my parents have to stay with me. At 13 I can navigate college on my own. At least that’s what I thought.”
“Where were you leaning?” Greg had not thought about college or where he wanted to go. He had ideas, but his opinion changed monthly.
“Maybe you can help me decide. That could be a fun game for us.”
“Well, right now I want to talk about you going to Dartmouth College with me.” Dartmouth was in Hanover, New Hampshire, and Greg was anxious to get moving. Rebecca was resistant to leaving Concord. They would not split up the team. One of them had to give.
Rebecca folded the sheets on their couches. She folded every morning. Keeping her living area clean was important. She stopped folding and frowned. She wanted to stay with Greg at this house or possibly travel further south. She did not want to drive north in New England in November.
“We have to figure this out, don’t we? You and I have to make a decision about what our next step is, whether we stay here for the winter or move, and if we decide to leave, where are we going?” She liked to lay out equations, if then statements when possible.
“My family is alive. They are coming for me. It was too crazy when I spoke to my dad, but when spring hits, he’s going to come up to New Hampshire, my entire family is coming. I have three uncles and two cousins. If things calmed down sooner, they might be in Hanover now.” Greg said this to her a dozen times in the last three days.
“Greg, I know this is hard to understand, but do you know how crazy you sound? You have to face reality. It’s you and me and maybe a few other survivors somewhere else, but your family is dead. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be mean, but you can’t keep making decisions based on an idea that has no basis in reality.”
“They weren’t sick. I’m not sick. They lived, I know it. They are coming for me. They may be waiting for me up there. Either way, I have to get to Hanover.”
“My parents died and I’m still alive. Surviving doesn’t mean anything. Greg, they’re gone. You said it yourself. Your mother was sick. You know that means the rapture was in your house. Think about part of what you just said. Do you really think they would stay in Hanover and not come to get you at school? That they would just wait for you up there? Come on, even you have to realize how crazy that sounds.”
Rebecca was stuck. Greg was going to Hanover. She knew it. She was not attached to her current setup, but it made more sense than moving north to a small town in the middle of nowhere. She had food, water, wood, a fireplace. She knew the area. She could hunt or trap in the woods by the barn. She was comfortable, at least in the short term. Hanover was an unknown. Could they find appropriate shelter? How bad was the looting? Were supplies available?
She worked through the pros and cons of leaving her house, her safety net. If Greg was going to commit to a new life, he had to be convinced that his family was dead. The only way to convince him was to have them not show up in Hanover next year. Greg was now the most important thing in Rebecca’s life. Staying with Greg superseded everything.
“Look, Rebecca…” he started.
“Shush, I’m thinking.” She put her hand up to stop him from talking. She knew the facts. She was formulating an opinion.
“Did you just shush me and give me the hand? Are you serious?” He grinned. He had gotten to know her in the last three days, and he liked her, a lot. He was not in love with her romantically, but as a person, she was one of the best he had ever met. Rebecca was funny, practical, whip smart, and compassionate. When she held him by the barn during his meltdown, she had true empathy for him. Greg was weak when he arrived at her doorstep. Rebecca opened her doors to him. Gave him food. Shared her supplies. After three days together he trusted her implicitly. He would walk through fire for and with his new friend.
The shushing was new. She was forward with her decisions, Greg noticed, but she was never as domineering as she had just been.
“If we go, we have to go in the next two days. It’s November. I don’t know how there is not snow on the ground already. There might be ice on the roads to Hanover. Snow means we are stuck here until spring. We have to decide how we are going, which car we take, and what items we take. If we go, you and I have to realize, we’re up there until May. Do you even know where in Hanover we are supposed to go?”
Greg could not believe she was agreeing to go. He was struck dumb.
“Are you kidding me? You don’t even know where we are supposed to meet? Just ‘Hanover’? It’s a good thing you are cute, Greg Dixon, because you are not impressing me in the smarts department. Let’s have some breakfast and start making lists. I guess we can just find a house when we get up there. I’m glad we aren’t meeting your family in ‘Boston’ or ‘New York City.’” She teased.
“What’s with the one eighty on going?” He was finally able speak.
“If you say your family is going to be in Hanover in the spring, well, we have to be there. Now is the last chance we have to travel.” She was lying, something she vowed never to do to him.
“I don’t believe you, but I understand. We’re not separating, and you know I have to go. It’s okay if you don’t believe my family is alive. I’ll believe enough for the both of us. You get me up there and keep me alive until spring. That’s your job. Don’t let me do anything else stupid, like uprooting two people who are safe with ample food and shelter and move them to an unknown place based on an idea that is most likely insane.”
“Let’s make some lists.” She said, looking at him and putting her hand on his shoulder. “I hope I’m wrong about your family. I’ll keep you alive until the spring, and I’ll try to keep myself alive too.”
They smiled. In three short days they were best friends. Like two kids transferred to a new school at the same time, stuck in a place with no other friends, they bonded. They knew how lucky they were to find and like each other. Greg considered finding Rebecca to be the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him.
Greg moved the barn blanket hanging above the portico and stepped into the cold kitchen. It was his turn to collect eggs for breakfast. Their house had an six foot privacy fence around the backyard, but Greg was able to see a wild turkey two yards over. It was walking in the grass looking for food.
“Rebecca!” He yelled.
She came through the blanket door quickly. “What’s wrong?” She was scared he saw other people, bad people.
“Look at that! It’s a turkey. Do you think we can get it? I’d love to have fresh turkey.”
“I do not think we can catch that turkey. First of all, despite what you probably think, that is a bird with wings that can fly away if we try to grab it. If you want to look very dumb, you can try to catch that bird. I’ll make breakfast while you do.”
“I specialize in looking dumb, particularly around you, smarty pants. I bet the breakfast dishes I catch it.” He did not like being told he could not do something. He also felt dumb for thinking turkeys could not fly, though he did not admit it to Rebecca.
“Deal, and good luck. I am going to enjoy this.” Rebecca went back through the blanket door to put on a sweatshirt. She wanted a front row seat for Greg’s hunt.
Greg turned and went into the garage. He looked around for a hoe or scythe or something he could use to whack the bird. He settled on a hoe, but it was one that was hollow in the blade area. It looked like a metal trapezoid on the end of a long stick. Rebecca’s father loved the tool. It broke up topsoil in his garden. Rebecca brought it over from her house to start a garden with in the spring.
Greg believed he could get the metal trapezoid ar
ound the turkey’s neck and yank quickly to snap it. He might behead the bird altogether. Worst cast he would try to hit the turkey with the hoe. He was a baseball player and would use blunt force.
He thought about using a gun, the pistol from his pack. Rebecca had several guns too, but they were nervous about attracting other people with the sound. He considered throwing something heavy at the bird, a baseball bat or an axe, but he did not see such a tool available. Rebecca did not have an axe in the garage. She found all of her firewood already chopped. Greg wished he had a baseball or a lacrosse ball, but neither were available.
Greg needed to hurry. He held the hoe, practiced the snare and jerk, and decided it was his best option. The side door of the garage creaked open and he walked outside. It was cold. Rebecca was right. They had to leave this week or winter was going to make their decision for them. The garage door opened outside the backyard privacy fence. He walked towards the turkey, blocked by the fence until he got to the end of his yard where he could see the bird. It had not moved. It was pecking the ground, oblivious to him.
Greg took the obvious approach. He walked towards the bird slowly and steadily. When he was close enough, he would bring the hoe down on the bird’s head. The turkey was about 25 yards away from him. It was big from the kitchen window, but even larger up close. Greg guessed it weighed at least 35 pounds.
He was five yards closer, walking slowly, nice even movements, five yards closer. The bird looked up., flapped its wings, and flew away.
Greg did not want to turn around. When he did, Rebecca was doubled over laughing at him through the window. She opened the kitchen door to get the eggs. “Now that, that was funny.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a clown. At least I’m trying.” He knew he looked foolish. He deserved the ridicule.
“That promise to keep you alive? It’s going to be tougher than I thought.” She laughed harder.
Greg laughed at himself as he waved her off. He walked back with his head down and his shoulders slumped. “Now we know there are turkeys near here. Maybe we can catch one.” He thought to himself.
“I will clean up breakfast. Big man hunter no catch food.” He joked loudly as he came through the kitchen door.
“I took it easy on you. We’re doing soft boiled eggs for breakfast, no pan to clean. I sliced some of your bread from last night. I did not realize how much I missed bread, and I am still in awe of your bread making skills.”
A pot hung over the fire. Greg saw six medium eggs cooking in the water. There were slices of bread waiting to be toasted. “I wish my turkey catching skills were half as good.”
Rebecca made breakfast while Greg thought about catching a turkey.
“When did you know you were a genius?” Greg asked.
“I don’t know, I mean, school has always been easy for me. I’m not a nerd. I’m a regular kid. I like the same things kids our age like. I just do well at school, and puzzles, and planning. If you want to know when everyone else realized, I guess it’s when I was in kindergarten and I was reading Harry Potter, all of the Harry Potters in a week. There are a lot of kids that read books in kindergarten, but I was tested, and I skipped to third grade.”
“I completed grades in about half the time. I couldn’t skip the work. My parents were very adamant about making sure I read and did all the same work as other kids. I had to read the required books, and take the required exams. It created a time constraint to moving up in grades, but I was about to finish high school. This was my last semester. I was going to be done before Christmas, but I couldn’t start college until a new term began.” She looked at the pot as she spoke.
“I get the work wasn’t hard. Was it hard being 13 and a senior? Has it been 7 years since you took classes with kids your own age? It must have been tough.” Greg thought he understood. He felt out of the loop when he came back to Charleston after his first year at Hightower. He hung out with his brothers and family because his social structure was gone. It was one of the reasons he went to baseball camp early and returned to where he belonged.
“It’s all I’ve known. I don’t know if it was more difficult or not. School is hard socially, whether you are me going through what I had to deal with or you dealing with whatever you had to deal with. There are bullies and mean people all over. I might have been insulated more, adults paying special attention to me because I was younger. I don’t know, I never had it different. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I know, school is rough no matter how you do it, same age group or advanced.”
They sat in silence for a few moments before Greg asked another question.
“So why did you really decide to come up to Hanover? What was your thought process?” Greg liked the way Rebecca thought, systematically and logically. He was curious why she changed her mind about leaving their current location.
“You’re right. I don’t think your family is alive. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t make sense. I hope they are, but I don’t think they are.” She stopped, the timer dinged to take the eggs out of the water. She used a slotted spoon to pull each egg out and put them in paper bowls. She would use the hot water to wash clothes later.
She placed the bread to toast on the wired rack sitting above the fire.
“Make sure I don’t burn the toast while I’m talking, okay?” Rebecca asked. Greg nodded in response, though he knew she could multitask.
“I like our current digs.” She continued. “But there are flaws in the location. This house is new. It’s not colonial. We already modified it to trap warmth with the blankets. It isn’t that cold yet. When the temps drop low, I have no idea how cold this house will get. It might get too cold for us to use. The homes in Hanover? There is as strong possibility we can find one much older, brick, set up for the extremities. We might find a woodstove, bigger fireplaces, bedrooms with fireplaces. We might improve our situation.“
She flipped the bread and continued.
“I’d also like to find a place near water. We don’t have water here. We were going to have to move in the spring. Why not make a move now? We can re-assess in the spring in Hanover. Eventually I think we’ll end up somewhere other than New England, but if we are going to find out the truth about your family, we are going to stay in the north for at least the next 9 months, right?”
Greg nodded in response.
“I know you won’t ditch me, but I won’t make you suffer. If I know we are going to leave this house anyway and I have questions about its viability, well, it makes sense to leave this house now. Hanover seems to be a decent place. We’ll have a river, lakes to fish, mountains to hunt. There are stores we can use to find things we might need. As long as we can get up there safely and we take all my food, I decided it was not only a viable option, it’s probably the right option.” She used metal tongs to take the bread off the toasting rack.
“Wow.” Greg said. “I’ll be honest. I thought you were going to say you agreed because I’m cute.” He took his piece of toast from her outstretched hand.
Rebecca blushed. She did not expect his response.
“You keep your ego in check, Greg Dixon. We have a lot of planning to do, and being cute is not going to help you through a long Hanover winter.”
He laughed, and cracked the eggs onto his toast. They sat across from each other. She was on the fireplace hearth while he sat on one of the couches. There was a coffee table between them. She mixed orange juice concentrate for them during his turkey hunt.
“Do we have a large truck? Did your store have a delivery van or anything like that?” Greg was not going to let Rebecca do all the heavy lifting with regards to the planning, although he knew she probably had their trip planned in her head. He was hoping to be more than just the “labor” part of the equation.
“That’s not a bad idea. I left our van at the store. We can take all the food, and fit the chickens in the back along with of our blankets, bikes, that kind of stuff. The less we have to scavenge, the better, particularly in the short term.
We want to be able to get our bearings for a few days before we have to start looking for supplies.”
“My father told me to go to the house he grew up in, an old brick house. I know where it is. It has a wood stove and like four fireplaces. There is a pond right down the street.” Greg took a bite of toast. “My family has a small cottage on another lake, but it’s remote, way outside of town. We would be stuck if it snowed. It’s winterized, sits on a lake. It has a woodstove that heats the entire place. If we had our food with us, it would work, but I’d rather stay in town.” Greg was contributing for the first time. It made him feel good. He relied on Rebecca’s work since arriving.
“Let’s walk over to my old store, figure out what we want to take, and start packing up the van. It takes diesel, but the tank is full. Hanover is not far away. We will have enough fuel to get there and back here if something bad happens. Worst cast, we scavenge a vehicle up there. I’m sure there are plenty of cars.”
Rebecca pulled out a legal pad and started making a list of items she wanted to take.
“Could you put ‘Greg’ and ‘Greg’s backpack’ on there? That has my contributions covered.”
Rebecca smiled, but she was not amused. Serious things were serious. Joking while working was not her thing. She focused and got her jobs done. She knew Greg would get his work done, but probably not as quickly or as efficiently as she got her work done. Part of Rebecca’s wiring made her serious.
Greg was focused and determined, but he was 14. He acted like a sophomore in high school. He made jokes, goofed around, procrastinated every once in a while. Greg was considered the serious one of his friends, his family, pretty much everyone he knew until he met Rebecca.
“You clean up. I’ll keep working on the list. We know what we need. I’m making this so we can check things off when we put them in the truck.”
Greg let her do her thing. He put the paper plates and plastic forks into a bag and walked out to the trash. It was a cold and gloomy day, classic weather for New England in November. It was well past the first frost. All the leaves were off the trees. Their newer sub-division had no trees and no leaves to rake. As Greg’s eye moved towards the older neighborhoods he saw the yards and streets covered in browns, yellows, reds, and oranges that should have been raked, bagged, and picked up long ago. Tall grass poked through the leaves, evidence that the lawns were unkept before the leaves fell.