by AR Shaw
She shook her head at her own folly. If she could at least stop glancing at the photo every day, she’d mark that as finally moving on. Maybe someday she could place the photo somewhere else? Perhaps on the top of the dresser, and then slowly move the reminder of Roger into the living room—maybe her room could become her own haven once again instead of the one she still shared with Roger even now.
Taking a deep breath, Maeve selected the undergarments she’d wear that day, going for the cotton ones because they were warmer than the nylon. And instead of choosing an outfit from her closet, she grabbed a white ribbed cotton tank top and a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt paired with flannel-lined black cotton leggings and the warmest wool socks she could find. This was a day for comfort, and she was going to make sure she was at least cozy, especially if she had to conserve wood.
Before she could start her shower, though, Ben came tearing into her room shouting, “Mommy, Mom!”
“What, Ben? Please don’t yell. I have a headache.” She bent down to his level, taking her blanket with her.
“On the TV there’s a weather alert,” he said carefully.
She stood. “OK, let’s see it.”
He took her hand and skipped into the living room, trying to drag her with him. “The cold weather is making you energetic, I see,” she said gruffly, but she had to smile at his enthusiasm. Once she was in front of the TV over the fireplace, Maeve saw the banner reading Weather Alert in bright letters that couldn’t be missed.
“Expect subzero temperatures tonight and into the coming week,” Bob Madeira said looking even more graver than the night before. “We’re still technically in autumn, folks, but this isn’t something to ignore. All area schools are closed, as well as work canceled for nonessential staff. Please stay home, people. Use what you have in the pantry for the coming days. If you lose power, and many of you will, use your backup supplies and check on your neighbors. If needed, go to a shelter to stay warm. If in doubt, don’t hesitate.”
Maeve dropped her blanket suddenly and went into the kitchen to check the pantry and fridge. At least a week had passed without her visiting the grocery store. She usually bought food one week at a time, and she knew she was down to the last few days of her weekly menu.
First she scanned the pantry shelves, noting a few jars of spaghetti sauce and pasta, a box of taco shells, a few cans of soup, and a bag each of rice, flour, and sugar. She rifled further and found a bag of hidden gummy bears among the spices, and she tossed them on the counter. Then she checked the fridge, she pulled out the half carton of milk, which on further inspection smelled like something other than milk, and she wasn’t going to take a swig to check. There were a few long-gone leftovers from past meals just taking up space; they were past their prime and needed to be thrown out. Then there were condiments galore, and after she had looked further past the dried-up parsley, several eggs, and few rubbery carrots, there wasn’t much else edible in the fridge. Years ago, Roger had warned her to stock food for emergencies since they lived far from a grocery store, but she was a business owner and had little time for anything beyond her weekly grocery list, which she used an app for on her iPad to save time and money.
“We’ll have to run to the grocery store after I get out of the shower.”
Ben looked up at her with concerned eyes. “But the Bob Madeira guy said to stay home,” he said, pointing at the TV.
“Yes, he did, but he meant that you should have your supplies first and then stay home.”
“Oh, it sounded like he said not to go anywhere.”
“Well, that’s true, but we need to get a few things if we’re going to be stuck here for more than three days.”
Her son seemed to accept this and then asked, “Can I have some of those gummy bears?”
Maeve smiled at her son, his concern for their safety forgotten already. She patted his head and said, “Sure, why don’t you get ready, too? We’ll pick up breakfast in town instead of making pancakes and get our supplies early before everyone else thinks of the same thing. Then we’ll come home, and I still need to call for a wood delivery,” she reminded herself.
Grabbing her phone, she quickly checked Craigslist for the firewood listings she’d seen there many times in the past. When she found a listing, she called but only received a recorded message saying they were no longer delivering wood for the time being, and they had no date given for resupply or a waiting list to enter.
“Great,” she said and dropped her phone on the side table and again headed for the sanctuary of her shower.
Once she stepped out of her room dressed and readied for the day, her son Ben sat on the couch waiting for her. Cuddled up under the blanket she dropped earlier but still shivering, he chewed on another gummy bear.
“Still cold in here isn’t it?”
He nodded.
About to toss another log on the fire, Maeve remembered the low supply. Since they were leaving the house for a bit, she opted to save the wood until she was sure to secure more.
“OK, let’s go, buddy. Get your snow boots and coat on,” she said as she pulled on her gloves and donned her own hunter-green quilted jacket that contrasted with her fiery red hair. She stepped into her snow boots by the door and then knelt down to zip Ben’s coat and make him pull his knit hat down over his ears. After his mittens were on as well, Maeve grabbed her purse, phone, and keys, and they headed out to the SUV in the driveway.
After they had broken their way through the eight inches of snow, she buckled Ben into the backseat and noticed how frigid the air was. His teeth already chattered with the cold. She smiled at him. Strands of her red hair flew in front of her face with a frigid gust of wind. Ben pointed behind her at something he was watching.
She turned to him as he said, “The trees…they’re moving a lot.”
She watched as the tops of the tall pines behind her house swayed in the harsh, cold wind. Another gust blew past her, stinging her skin. She quickly closed the backseat door to protect Ben and then seated herself in the driver’s seat.
“The trees are moving a lot. I hope this winter storm doesn’t make them come down. That’s the last thing we need, unless of course it came down magically prechopped and seasoned like the load that appeared last night,” she said, imagining her lack of firewood would suddenly appear from her own backyard.
“Where did that wood come from, Mom?”
Maeve put on her seatbelt and then inserted the key into the ignition. “I’m not totally sure,” she said. Then she realized the engine didn’t turn over. “What now?” she said and tried the key again. Nothing happened.
“What’s wrong, Mom?”
“The engine’s not turning over,” she said, confused. She looked around, making sure everything was as it should be, and tried once more, and again nothing happened. “I don’t get it. The battery isn’t dead. All of the dash lights work. It’s just…it’s just not starting. That’s just great!” she said and put her hands over her mouth to keep herself calm. Why is this happening?
“Did the engine freeze?” Ben asked through chattering teeth, trying to come up with a solution.
She smiled. “I don’t know, son, but it doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere this morning. We’ll have to make do with what supplies we have.” She stared out of the car window at the gray sky and snow as the flakes began to blow along with the gusts, and Maeve knew she needed to get Ben inside. This is only going to get worse.
“Ben, go ahead and quickly undo your seatbelt and climb up here. We’ll go through my door and run inside quickly.”
“OK, Mom,” he said, always up for the unconventional.
She quickly opened the door once Ben climbed into the front seat and then swiftly pulled him out, and they ran inside the house with the bitter wind chasing them along the way.
ONCE INSIDE, Maeve tossed another log onto the fire first thing, poking it into place with her iron poker. As the hot embers danced in the warm, rising air disappearing up the chimney, s
he thought about what things she should take care of if the storm were to take the power out as the weatherman had warned earlier.
“Ben, you sleep with me for the next few nights so we don’t have to heat your room. Go ahead and pick a few toys out of there, grab your pillow and blanket, and put them in my room.”
“Why, Mom?” he asked, suddenly concerned.
She didn’t like the look of worry on his little face and smiled. “We just need to conserve our firewood until the storm passes, so we’ll close all the unnecessary doors like the hall bathroom and your room as well as the laundry room and only use the bathroom in my room and this main room. That makes sense, right?”
He nodded.
She knew letting him contribute to making some of the decisions made him feel more secure, and she’d have to keep that in mind. “I’m going to plug in all of my electronics like my computer and phone and iPad to charge their batteries. Do you have anything you want to charge in case we lose power?”
“Yeah,” he said and ran off to his room.
She assumed he was gathering all of his handheld games in a hurry and various charging units to plug them in as she was doing.
Once that was done, and after she’d closed all the unnecessary doors in the house, she called her car service and explained to them that her battery must be defective or something. Unfortunately, they had no service for her area due to the storm at the time and advised her to call them back in a few days after the storm passed.
Frustrated with the call, she turned her attention to the pantry and kitchen again, feeling foolish for not preparing ahead to stay home longer than a few days with foul weather.
She tossed everything that wasn’t edible and took stock of her supplies more thoroughly than before. If they ate spaghetti twice and had soup for lunch, she still had rice and baking supplies to use at her whim. She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead and wondered what culinary masterpiece she could create with rice and a few condiments. At least I can make bread, she thought and again thanked her deceased mother for having the forethought to teach her a few simple recipes that she always held dear. For now, she’d promised to make pancakes for Ben, and she used one of the two eggs left in the fridge to whip the dough up quickly. A roaring of rushing wind shook the house as she was about to pour the batter into the hot skillet. Ben looked at her from the living room sofa.
“Are the trees going to crash on the house?” he asked after the rushing sound subsided.
“I think it will take more than that to knock these big trees down, but a few may fall anyway. That’s how nature is. The weaker ones fall so that they can make room for new growth.”
She poked the bacon strips around in another skillet, noting that it was the only protein they had in the house besides half a jar of peanut butter. She would save some of the bacon just in case they needed to stretch it out, and she wouldn’t give up the bacon fat either.
Once breakfast was made, she called Ben to the table and poured warmed maple syrup over his pancakes. He eagerly dug in.
Maeve also ate a pancake, and they each had two slices of bacon. After breakfast, she packed up the leftover pancakes and saved them in the fridge along with the extra bacon. She usually threw out the bacon grease, but this time she kept every bit of it in a bowl. She wasn’t sure why. Her grandmother used to save bacon grease, but Maeve had never used it for anything before. She figured if her grandmother kept it she probably used it to cook with, and since Maeve had few supplies, she was saving everything possible.
After breakfast was put away and the dishes were done, Maeve scoured the house for candles, matches, flashlights, and anything else she could find or thought she might need if the power went out. In all, she had three decorative pillar candles and few books of matches from various hotels from years past as well as a butane torch lighter she used for the fireplace that was nearly empty. She also found a flashlight under the kitchen sink and another one in the garage. She wasn’t sure how old the batteries were—that was something Roger always took care of. She hadn’t gotten around to being the man of the house yet. Every time Maeve went into the garage, Roger’s scent that permeated everything within would send her into a three-day grieving spell. As a result, she avoided the garage as much as possible.
While Ben made car noises with his handheld game, she stood back and tried to assess how many hours of candlelight they had. “Probably a couple of days if we only use them at night,” she said to herself.
“What, Mom?” Ben asked.
“The candles. We have enough for probably a few days, and we have about three or four days of food hopefully…” she trailed off.
“Do you think that’s enough till the storm passes and we can go to the grocery store?”
“Sure,” she said, being optimistic for his sake.
“First, we have to wait for someone to come and fix our battery, and then we will go to the grocery store.”
That’s when the next gust of wind rattled the house. So strong was the force, that like a child playing with a toy town, it also took down several trees and power lines and, along with them, the joyful tune coming from Ben’s racing game.
6
Deep in the Kootenai National Forest, a few residents lived isolated lives among the tall cypresses, winding streams, and wildlife that roamed among them. They were part of their surroundings, unlike those men who lived on paved streets. They knew of one another and also knew where each of their neighbors resided, tucked away in hidden coves among large boulders the glaciers abandoned years past or near veiled alcoves. There were at least five hundred acres between each of them. A few of them visited one another when the need arose, to either trade something or when they had a task for more than one man, but mostly they remained alone, and those that required the isolation were left alone out of respect.
Mark Bishop was one of those men. He’d never imagined his life taking this turn. He’d started out in a pretty standard household: one mom, one dad, and a sister, growing up in a little town named Post Falls, Idaho, not far away from his current residence.
After graduating high school in 2014, Bishop headed to the University of Washington and spent four years in the rain and muck of Seattle. Then he graduated in 2018 with a shiny new bachelor’s degree in atmospheric sciences and promptly fled the wet area before the ever-present mold could form on his certificate.
He’d applied for jobs a few months before graduation and instead landed a great internship with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Maryland for a congressional communications position. The position entailed studying oceanic and atmospheric research and giving reports to Congress. But that’s as far as he got into a routine life Prewar. Things were changing.
In the spring of 2018, China attacked Japan over the disputed Senkaku Islands. An all-out war converged in the East China Sea by air, land, and water. At the time before the attack, the number of active duty members of the US military was at an all-time low since the Cold War. When the US joined the fight to protect Japan’s interests, the draft was implemented immediately to bolster its numbers when the military troop casualty rate suddenly skyrocketed. The country needed more able-bodied men, and Bishop was one of them.
Bishop was drafted immediately, as his age and fitness score made him a perfect candidate. Instead of heading off to Maryland for the internship, he was measured for a head-to-toe individual protection combat uniform, taught how to use an M4, and deployed to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. This sudden change in his life happened so quickly that he found himself shooting at the enemy only after bullets whizzed by his head as he wondered how in the world he’d arrived there in the first place or how he’d ever survive.
In the end, the task was simple: kill or be killed. That’s what it all boiled down to. Gun down, bomb, or massacre as many of the enemy as possible before they killed you and your buddies. He found he was pretty good at the killing part with his M16. Because of that, and his degree, he ended up
progressing through the ranks rather quickly and soon found himself directing, coordinating, and planning attacks.
That’s where he met Roger Tildon. They were both part of the same unit and fought together many times. Both of them saved the other’s life too many times to count. Four years of battle turned into six and then eight, and Bishop was up for recommission one day when he walked into his major’s office on orders.
Standing in front of a man with gold oak leaves on his fatigues, Bishop waited in the sparse room as the senior officer typed away on the rugged laptop before him on the metal desk like some secretary at the IRS during the last day of an audit. Bishop was finally left at ease and asked to sit on a nearby hard metal chair. Bishop thought the furniture of the room was from some other era, possibly the fifties. Nothing had changed in decades.
Finally, the major stopped typing and looked up from his computer screen. Like the room, the officer himself looked like he belonged to another decade altogether. His jet-black hair with gray highlights was slicked back and plastered to his head and was flanked by silver-framed glasses and matching silver eyes. “It says here you’re ready to recommission.”
Bishop didn’t respond because there was no question to the statement.
“You have a choice, you know? I’ve looked at your record, and you’ve served your time here, Captain Bishop. You’ve done your part. We’re winning the battle and hope this will all be over soon. You can go home. We’re starting troop withdrawal anyway.”
Home? Some part of him remembered the concept, but with bullets tearing soldiers down next to you, you quickly forget what home is all about. Instead, you focused on the survival stuff. Home was something that could always wait.