I took a deep breath and shook my head as I stood on the front porch. In a way, I was relieved that it was only the ATVs that they had taken; but in another way, I was surprised and concerned that they had made the trip up to the mountaintop at all. More than that, I was worried that they might be back.
It amazed me. For as bad as things had gotten, somehow the few remaining people were still managing to make pests of themselves.
Will staggered up beside me, a rifle in his hands.
“You look bad,” I said.
“I feel bad,” he agreed. “Everything okay down here?” he asked, looking down at my still smoking .44.
“No,” I shook my head. “They got the ATVs.”
“Aw fuck,” Will grimaced, “I was looking forward to trying those out this spring. How many were there?”
“I only saw two. Don’t know if there were any more out in the woods.”
“Pretty gutsy of them.”
“I know. That’s what concerns me. And that’s why I fired the warning shots. I don’t want them thinking we’re easy pickings up here. Unfortunately, so far we haven’t done much to make them think otherwise.”
“Yeah…bad timing with them coming when everybody’s down for the count.”
“At least everyone’s safe,” I said. Then I thought about Mom, which in turn led me to worry about Claire and the rest of our sick clan. “Come on, let’s get back upstairs.”
But back upstairs, things weren’t good. Joanna was sitting next to Mom, holding her hand. Our eyes met as I entered the room, silently communicating our concerns.
“How is she?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer, or maybe already knowing but not wanting confirmation.
Joanna almost imperceptibly shook her head, “Not good,” she mouthed silently, shaking her head.
Mom passed away later that night.
Dad was sick as well, but he was aware enough to at least lie down beside his wife in the bed and hold her hand while she took her last few breaths, whispering comforting words to her and telling her how much she meant to him. Will and I each took a few minutes with her as well, passing along our own words of love and appreciation. Whether she heard or comprehended them or not, I’ll never know. I felt completely helpless. There was no doctor I could call. No hospital emergency room to rush her to. Sweet Jason even climbed into bed next to her and snuggled up, not knowing what was truly going on but wanting to share his own private moment with grandma. At one point she had the wherewithal to pet his tiny mop of golden hair for a minute before falling asleep, never to awaken again.
It was that night that I realized we might be in for a longer, harder winter than any of us had imagined, and that this new world presented so many more unforeseen and unexpected challenges that I had ever contemplated.
For all my planning, preparing and organizing, it was impossible to be ready for everything, and for as hard as I tried, I couldn’t predict what potential deadly pitfalls – many of which were things that just months before had seemed commonplace bumps in the road or trivial annoyances – awaited us along our journey into the unknown.
CHAPTER 12
We waited to have Mom’s funeral until everyone had recovered from the sickness. We ended up making it a double funeral actually. As Will and I were digging Mom’s grave in one corner of the castle’s walled garden, we made a grizzly discovery. Protruding from a melting pile of snow was a shoe. Attached to that shoe were the badly decomposed and now frozen remains of what we took to be the property’s former owner, Aaron Coughlin.
I had Ray come out and take a look since he had been the only person to have ever met the man in person, but even he couldn’t make a positive identification for sure.
Near his body, we also found two dirt mounds with bricks laid out to form small crosses atop them. We guessed that these were likely the remains of Aaron Coughlin’s wife and daughter. As we quietly excavated Aaron’s corpse from the remaining snow and ice surrounding it, careful to keep the project on the down low in order to avoid the children stumbling across what we were doing, we found a gun beside the body. After closer inspection, we also discovered a bullet wound in the corpse’s right temple, a sign that the man had shot himself beside the graves of his loved ones in what we figured to be a distraught state of grief and despair.
I had to admit that while the scene was a macabre one, the location itself, overlooking the scenic serenity of this mountain retreat, was indeed an ideal one for such an ending – if there ever was such a thing.
We made sure we had Aaron’s rotted remains buried well before bringing mother and the rest of the family out for the funeral ceremonies. Ray offered to help us with Mom’s grave, but we refused. It was something that Will and I wanted to do together, exchanging stories and memories of Mom while we chipped away at the frozen earth.
Dad meanwhile made her a wood coffin cut from pieces of plywood we collected from the garage, a luxury we didn’t provide poor Aaron Coughlin. We did however, thank him during the ceremony for the luxurious mountain retreat with which he had blessed us and assured his spirit that he would be resting beside his wife and daughter for all eternity in one of the most picturesque locations imaginable.
If nothing else, the discovery helped to clear our consciences of the feeling that we were trespassing in someone else’s home who might arrive to reclaim the spot at any moment. We all felt just a little more comfortable knowing that we were now the full and rightful squatters of this particular property, which these days was about as much as anyone could ask for.
Aaron’s funeral was relatively easy to get through. Mom’s definitely was not. Everyone was crying and comforting one another. We each went around and recalled a certain event, memory, or funny story about Mom to share with the group. Even little Jason told us how he liked “Nana’s tawcolate mook” – his sweet way of saying he enjoyed the “chocolate milk” she used to make him. Claire laughed and hugged him close as he smiled on, his still undeveloped emotions not fully comprehending the situation or why everyone was crying. In his precious mind, his grandmother had just fallen asleep and would be awake and back with us any day. I envied his understanding – or misunderstanding – of the situation and I found myself wishing I could look upon life as he did.
After the funeral, we had a wake in the castle’s formal dining room. We powered the room’s crystal chandelier with the generator, built a roaring fire in the fireplace, and ate deep-fried goose-bit fritters as appetizers. Sharron also made some dough-balls, deep fried and rolled in sugar and cinnamon to snack on. Then for dinner we had venison and large hunks of persimmon bread smeared with some margarine spread that had managed to survive the past few months unscathed in the Coughlin’s refrigerator. We broke out two bottles of wine, and some of us enjoyed snifters of cognac, making toasts to mother and even a few to Aaron Coughlin later in the evening after we were all pretty toasted ourselves. It was a nice way to continue to honor my mother’s memory, and we turned the occasion into a sort of memoriam for other lost members of our group as well. We’d had little time to spend mourning or honoring Brian and Steve after their passing, and I think both Emily and Claire appreciated our kind words regarding their loved ones as well.
After we’d put the young ones to bed and Pam had taken up the first half of the third-shift watch, the rest of us retired to the library where we continued our celebration of life and of the lives of those no longer with us. This sort of collective healing was the best possible way I could think of to grieve, to honor, to remember, and to begin the healing process.
* * *
November brought with it colder temperatures and more snow.
We were all pleased to see that Sharron’s greenhouse garden was progressing nicely. She had gathered a variety of seeds and had used them to start growing tomatoes, carrots, peppers, cucumbers, and squash, as well as basil. They were all items that we were hoping to use to expand our culinary options in the near future and liven up what were becoming somewhat
boring meat dishes. A few of the squash and cucumbers already looked like they were getting close to harvest, as were the tomato and basil plants. The carrots and peppers weren’t quite there yet, but we hoped at least a few would be ready by Thanksgiving.
Will and Ray had become astute hunters. And while not to belittle their efforts, with the bountiful wildlife in the surrounding area, I think Laurel and Hardy might have found themselves feeling like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. The main thing was that they were keeping our refrigerator well stocked and the carnivorous members of the group supplied with a variety of protein-packed meal options. I felt kind of bad for Sharron since she was subsisting largely off of a diet of nuts, persimmons, and the non-meat remnants of the supplies we’d brought with us like rice, beans, olives, pickles, crackers, and the last little bit of the pasta. But there wasn’t much I could say or do to get her to convert to the rest of our meat-eating ways, so I left her alone. I knew that she was looking forward to the first harvest of her garden more than any of us.
Days were quickly turning to weeks, and life was actually beginning to take on some sense of normalcy.
I’d noticed that Dad had started to slow down quite a bit after Mom’s passing. He was spending more time by himself in the library, reading books, smoking cigars or dozing by the fire. Sometimes I’d find him roaming the house just enjoying the various antiques and collectibles, at which point he’d regale me with a tale about a certain item he’d sold as an antiques dealer back in his former life. I’d also noticed that Emily was quickly warming to dear old Dad after Mom’s passing. In a way, it kind of made me mad seeing another woman encroaching on Mom’s territory, but I had to remind myself of not just their individual situations – having both recently lost spouses – but of our collective situation overall. I was glad that they were providing each with good company and hoped that Emily’s companionship would help Dad find a way out of the funk he was in. I understood their situation, and in some ways, I was kind of thankful for Emily’s efforts to spend time with my father. Pickings for human companionship were slim these days to say the least, and I appreciated the fact that they both needed someone to take their minds off their spousal losses. And while the grandkids served as a pleasant distraction, they couldn’t fully compensate for the lack of adult interaction with people their own age. As we had grown and become closer as a family unit, I guess it probably just seemed natural for each of them to try to fill the void that their respective other halves had left. Therefore, I kept my mouth shut and hoped that they could find some level of comfort, solace, and happiness in one another.
Before we knew it, Thanksgiving was nearly upon us.
I tried to make our holiday celebration one befitting our surroundings. Several days before our planned dinner, while passing Janet as she was helping Sharron create labels for the various vegetables in her garden, I noticed the teen’s handwriting.
“Wow! That’s incredibly beautiful,” I said, amazed by the swirling and aesthetically pleasing way with which she formed her letters.
“Thanks,” she said, quietly embarrassed by my praise.
“It’s amazing. How did you learn to write like that?”
She looked away and then quietly said, “I used to watch movies where people would write like this…you know, films like Wuthering Heights or Sense and Sensibility. I thought it kind of was neat.”
“So what, you took a class in calligraphy or something?” I pushed, wanting Janet to open up a little since she always seemed so quiet and reserved.
“No,” she said, shaking her head and giving a cute little laugh.
“Well, then how’d you learn it?” I urged.
She gave a teenagerish shrug, “Just did. Lots of practice, I guess.”
“You learned it all on your own?” I said, amazed.
She just nodded in a self-conscious kind of way.
“That’s awesome! Would you do me a huge favor?” I asked.
She nodded. “Sure,” she said softly.
I honestly wanted her assistance since I was finding that while I was a great planner in many things, setting up a banquet-style dinner was not one of them. Therefore, I set Janet to work lending a hand with our Thanksgiving dinner planning and hoped that her involvement with the event would help her feel a more integral part of the collective group.
Janet began by creating beautifully designed name placards for our individual spots at the dinner table. I thought such details would add a sense of that Victorian or Gilded Age ambiance that would make our dinner more exclusive and unique. She then recommended that we dim the chandelier in the dining room and use candles to light the dining space. She found a wonderfully elegant lace table cloth, broke out the castle’s lovely eggshell porcelain, and polished the Sterling silverware and serving dishes.
When she was done, it looked like we were hosting a dinner befitting English lords and ladies of the 19th century. I could tell that Janet was proud, and I was proud of her. We kept everyone else out of the dining room until everything was set. To add to the atmosphere, Will and Ray found several tuxedos in the master bedroom’s walk-in closet. They acted as a butler and footman and filled glasses, served hors d’oeuvres, and dished out the first course of soup before they joined everyone at the table.
It truly was an event. And I gave Janet full credit for the staging and preparation for which she received continued compliments and praise throughout the evening. She would respond coyly and with grace and humility, trying to hide her sweet little smirks of pride at what she’d accomplished and how well she’d done pleasing us all.
Laid before us was a grand feast. There was brown-sugar topped squash, a surprisingly delicious tomato bisque that Sharron created using powdered creamer she’d found among the home’s coffee supplies, an interesting, but still delectable cucumber and venison stew (minus the venison for Sharron), a lovely goose prepared by Emily and my father, and even a wild hog that Will and Ray had caught and roasted on a spit they built out in the garage. We wallowed in the lavish spread, stuffing ourselves with food and drink until we felt we’d pop.
We felt like the elite, sitting in our mountaintop castle, gorging ourselves, sipping on fine wines and liquors, and smoking cigars. It was like a dream. Here, the world as we’d known it had ended, yet our group as we sat now had not only survived; but, as I saw it, frankly thrived. It was hard to believe that just months earlier we’d been sleeping in tents on the cold hard ground, eating pasta with ketchup for dinner and just struggling to survive. We truly had something to be thankful for, even if the road to get here had been an extremely difficult one.
We decided to throw caution to the wind and forgo the third shift for the evening in order to better enjoy the holiday. We had the place buttoned up pretty tight, weapons close at hand if we needed them, and we had our plan of defense in place should anything occur.
After dinner we even fired up the generator, broke up into paired teams, and had an air-hockey tournament downstairs. It was hilarious and wildly entertaining with teammates jostling one another as they defended their goal from the floating puck or tried to ram it home against their opponents. Blame was jokingly assigned when a teammate let the puck clatter home or a game was lost. Eventually, it was down to me and Claire versus Joanna and Janet.
In an effort I’d prefer not to recount, Claire and I ended up being defeated 10 to 4. Claire did her part, scoring three goals, but I was soundly embarrassed as the opposing team of the fairer sex ended up trouncing my efforts by blocking all but one of my shots; my only goal being a ricochet off of Joanna’s paddle for which she wouldn’t even give me direct credit.
The grand prize for Joanna and Janet’s win? A week’s worth of being exempted from the third-shift watch schedule. Joanna twisted the knife a little deeper as she laughingly told me she’d be happy to give me free air-hockey lessons after dinner each evening she had off from watch if I could spare the time from my own busy schedule. I played along and sulked while declining her offer, knowi
ng her ribbing was all in good fun.
By the time we were done with all the festivities, it was after eleven o’clock. But everyone was having such a good time, we hardly noticed. Even Jason was still wide awake and going strong.
In a world without many operating clocks, time just wasn’t that important anymore. It was actually kind of nice. Our minds and bodies functioned on more of an “as need” basis as opposed to being regulated by scheduled events. Rather than doing things when we were “supposed” to do them, we did them when we wanted or needed to do them. Other than dinner – where we could all come together as a family for an hour – if we were hungry, we ate. If we were tired, we slept. When we needed to work, we worked. If was all so very simple; and in a way, so much less stressful.
All-in-all, it was a wonderful and memorable Thanksgiving, and one that would endure in our memories forever.
* * *
I’d pegged December 1st as inventory day.
Things had gotten pretty tight on food during the weeks following our arrival, but with Sharron getting her greenhouse garden situated and Will and Ray exceeding our expectations when it came to their hunting efforts, food – at least for the moment – wasn’t a huge concern. Still, I liked to have an idea of where we were on supplies, how much we were consuming, and how much in the way of additional provisions we had, just in case our situation changed, which I knew from previous experience could happen in an instant.
We still had plenty of tea, sugar, salt, pepper, and other seasonings. Sharron’s vegetables – most of the seeds for which she’d found in unopened packets out the garage – were doing great, and she was beginning to expand her garden as her initial plantings flourished and she could try her hand at some different growing options and techniques. It was more the items like toilet paper, deodorant, toothpaste, and the typical things you tend to take for granted in the normal world that we found we were beginning to run short on. To compensate, we were learning to substitute. For example, while it might sound kind of nasty, out of necessity, we’d taken to using wet washcloths to wipe with, which cut down greatly on toilet paper consumption and waste. We’d put the washcloths in buckets full of water and soap after we were done with them, and then, several times a week we’d use the generator to power the washing machine in the basement to clean them, and then dry the washcloths on a line we had rigged in the laundry room.
The Systemic Series - Box Set Page 31