It also warms the earth.
Maybe my feelings about the sun had nothing to do with astrology.
The next morning, I awoke to a room so bright, I almost jumped for joy. The sun’s beams were reflecting off the snow that blanketed every inch outdoors, and the way the sight elevated my mood was palpable. I had no doubt my companions would be able to see it in my expression.
I didn’t see any dripping icicles or heavy snow falling off tree branches, which meant it was still cold outside, likely below freezing. That was okay. The snow had stopped falling, and that meant—if we were smart about it—we could leave my Aunt Lou’s place and head home, and that would bring me one step closer to my kids.
Vera was asleep in the chair but the men weren’t in the living room. I was stoking the fire and adding a log when Larry and Kevin came inside, and that made me think maybe it had been their activity that had caused me to awaken in the first place.
I wondered what time it was. The clock in the kitchen, still running on battery power, tempted me, but I wanted first to see what the men had to say. It was obvious, from their expressions, that they needed to communicate.
“You okay with leavin’ today, Nina?” Larry asked.
“Of course.” I was desperate to get back home and then to travel farther north to check on my kids if I wasn’t able to reach them by phone.
“We decided to leave after noon,” Kevin said. “We figured we should give the sun a little time to start warming things up. It’s still pretty cold out there.”
I nodded. It made sense. “So do we want to eat a little something first?” Vera sat up. With hardly any of the white noise surrounding us that we were used to in our day-to-day lives, every sound seemed amplified, so it was hard to sleep when others were talking. I felt bad for waking her up, but I supposed she should be part of the discussion too. Before she could say anything, I added, “I’d like to also make sure the fire’s completely out before we leave. Oh…and I want to untie my aunt.”
I could see something in Larry’s eyes, but he kept his mouth shut. If he was going to suggest we keep her corpse bound, he was going to meet my wrath. I had agreed to it for safety’s sake while we’d been here as well as to appease his sense of danger, no matter how unfounded or distant the danger was, but there was no way he was going to talk me into leaving her like that. I didn’t want the authorities to find her that way. It was like paranoia gone rampant. I couldn’t do it.
We spent the morning eating breakfast—this time, we opened the fridge, figuring we’d better consume the food in there, because it was going to go bad. I was surprised that it was still cool inside, but I knew that wouldn’t last long. We found some lunchmeat, a couple of oranges, and some jelly that we spread on a few of the leftover crackers from the evening before.
After restoring my aunt’s house as close as we could to what it was like before we’d arrived, we all headed to the garage to get in her car. I said a silent prayer to her, thanking her for letting us use her things that she no longer needed and promising to send someone soon to care for her body.
It must have already been habit—Larry sat in the driver’s seat, taking charge as our leader. I’m not sure how he had become it, but we’d just let him take the job. And, of course, his woman was by his side…which left me and Kevin in the backseat. Just as we had in the truck, I sat behind Vera and Kevin behind Larry. We packed up a few bottles of water and a couple of blankets just in case, because even if we could get a cell phone signal later on, all our phones were dead and worthless. Larry also insisted upon a couple of makeshift weapons. We found the tire iron in the trunk that we kept on the floor in the back between Kevin’s and my feet. We were ready for almost anything.
Except, of course, what happened.
When Larry turned the key, the car cranked and cranked and cranked…but never caught. He started muttering under his breath, cursing. I felt my stomach knot up. Was that maybe why Aunt Lou had been so panicked? She was feeling ill and couldn’t get away? Oh, God. That made me feel guilty all over again. Had her car been working the last time I’d seen her?
Larry let out a loud sigh and turned the key again, but it was just the cyclical, whiny whirr-whirr-whirr of the engine turning over but not catching. Kevin finally said, “Man, you’re just gonna run down the battery.”
Larry slammed his open palm against the steering wheel and turned around. “You know anything about cars?”
Kevin’s face curled into a scowl. “Not newer cars like this one. Give me a carburetor any day of the week.”
Larry snorted. “You got that.” He sighed again. “Well, fuck me runnin’. This sucks.” He looked first at his wife and then me. “Anybody got any ideas?”
I had none. I hadn’t had enough of a chance to think. I was once again devastated, torn between my guilty grief over my aunt’s demise and the motherly burden I was crushed by, aching because I couldn’t check on my children. But Kevin spoke up. “Yeah, actually. We’ll have to get clever, but couldn’t we siphon gas out of this car and haul it to your truck? Maybe enough to make it to Chipeta Springs?”
Larry’s face looked wry. “And then what? What if Chipeta’s just like Winchester was? What then?”
Kevin shrugged, not willing to make it a fight. “We’re taking weapons, right?”
Larry turned and looked at the dash. “Really not much gas here to siphon. I don’t know how much’ll actually come out.” He twisted again so he could see Kevin. “You got experience siphoning gas? ‘Cause if you fuck up, I ain’t no doctor. These ladies aren’t either.”
Kevin’s voice took on an unexpected quality. He sounded dangerous. “No, I’ve never done it, but how bad you wanna get out of here?”
Larry sucked in a deep breath. “Fine. Let’s give it a shot.” He continued looking forward, not making eye contact with us in the back, telling me that we definitely needed to get on the road before these two men took their conflict to the next level. “What do we need?”
Kevin’s voice once more sounded normal to my ears. Maybe what I thought I’d heard earlier had been my imagination. “A hose of some kind. Something to pour it into. A gas can would be ideal.”
“Was there one in the trunk?”
“I don’t remember.”
Vera opened her door, apparently bored with the man talk. I was feeling helpless again. I could try to help the men with this problem, but I didn’t know how effective my solutions would be. It wasn’t long before the men (and then I) followed Vera in exiting the car, and the first thing they did was open the trunk.
No gas can.
Larry managed to stay calm. “What kind of stuff does your aunt have in her outbuildings, Nina?”
I shrugged. “I know she has a lot of garden and yard tools—stuff like rakes, hoes, more shovels. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other things.”
“So we’d be likely to find a hose then.”
“Yeah.”
“What about car stuff?”
“I would have guessed the garage here, but you might check the barn too. When my uncle was alive, he might have had a reason to keep stuff like that in other places. I don’t know—I’m just guessing.”
Larry nodded and then looked at Kevin. “Why don’t you have Nina show you where the garden shit is? I’m thinking we’ll want a hose at least a couple yards long, but we can adjust as necessary. Just bring whatever hose you can find. We’ll want to cut the metal connector off one end so we can feed it into the car.”
Kevin grinned—actually grinned—and asked, “Should I be asking how many times you’ve done this?”
Larry managed to smile too, helping me relax a little. “I’m just fuckin’ smart.” He looked at me then. “Can you show him where your aunt kept the garden supplies? I’m gonna snoop around here for something to syphon the gas into.” He paused. “But if you find something we can use, go ahead and bring it.”
I nodded and started walking toward the doorway back into the house but paused
when I sensed Kevin wasn’t behind me. Larry added, “It should be something that will allow us to get the gas back into my truck. Something with a small spout if you can.”
Kevin nodded but said nothing, instead walking over to where I stood. As I started moving again, we heard Larry yell, “Probably better this way. The garage door’s electric. It’d probably be a real bitch figuring out how to get that door open without electricity.”
I noticed Vera sitting in the overstuffed chair in the living room again as we walked toward the front door. “Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that.”
As we walked out the door and onto the bright deck, Kevin said, “There’s always a way to get an electric garage door open, even with the power off.” I raised my eyebrows and then returned my focus to the outdoors. I wasn’t going to question him, assuming he knew more about the matter than I did. I’d never had a garage, let alone an electric door.
The sun’s rays bouncing off the snow were overwhelming but very welcome. It was still cold, though, and I noticed nothing seemed to be melting. Even with the sun, the temperature was below freezing. If I’d been back home in Winchester, the snow on the roof of the house and on the trees would already be turning to slush, dripping, telling me everything was thawing.
Not so here.
Before he could even ask, I led the way to the right so we could head behind the house and in the direction of my aunt’s outbuildings. I’d never understood why they had more than one, but I was sure that, at one time, they’d made sense. My uncle had been a bit of a handyman and had constructed those buildings over the years. If Aunt Lou were here, I might have asked when they’d been built and for what purpose.
But that would never happen now.
I was trying not to dwell on that, instead grabbing onto the little bits of conversation Kevin and I had started before heading outside. “I wonder when the electricity’s going to come back on.”
I could see him cock his head a bit out of the corner of my eye as we kept walking toward the smaller shed on the property, the one where I knew the majority of garden supplies were. Having helped Aunt Lou with her garden for the past several years, I knew at least what that building held.
“This was a pretty significant storm. There’s half a foot of snow here. With all the weird shit going on anyway, getting the power back on might be low priority right now.”
“True.” It was a bleak prospect…but quite likely.
It wasn’t until we got to the shed that I remembered Aunt Lou kept it locked. Why, I had no idea, because she was so far removed from civilization, there was barely a chance in hell anyone would hike all this way up the mountain just to steal a pair of garden shears or some fertilizer. I knew for certain that she never locked the biggest building, the one they called the barn, even though there was plenty of stuff in there worth stealing as well—probably antique farming equipment worth a pretty penny, in fact. I knew she bothered locking everything up when she planned to be gone for a while somewhere—a week’s vacation visiting one of her kids, for instance—but usually the barn was unlocked and easily accessible.
“Damn it. I need to get the key.”
“Hanging up in the kitchen too?”
“I think so. Sorry. Be right back.”
“No problem. Uh, want me to get it?”
“Nah. I got it.” I didn’t know that he’d even know which key was which…not that I would, either, but I probably had a better chance. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket along with a lighter. I knew I’d heard him say he was almost out, but it was hard to tell because the box had maintained its shape. I knew I’d been a grouchy bitch when I’d quit, so I was glad he wasn’t being an asshole just because he’d had to ration.
Or maybe he was. Maybe he was nicer when he could smoke all the cigarettes he wanted.
I made my way back to the house and walked into the kitchen. Once there, I looked over the board of keys, trying to figure out which set had the shed key on it. I didn’t want to take several sets of keys, hoping I grabbed the right one.
I could hear Larry doing something quite noisily in the garage and I wondered how Vera could sleep through it. Poor thing—she seemed miserable here. I hoped we could get out of there soon—not just for me and my worries, but for her peace of mind as well. Out of the four of us, she seemed least equipped to handle it.
There were three keys that I thought were most likely because of their size. I’d only seen Lou open the shed once or twice, so I was guessing. As I walked back outside, I felt a little silly. I should have checked out the lock first. But once I got there, Kevin was still smoking his cigarette, patiently waiting. I fished the keys out of my coat pocket, trying one and then another…and it was the third one. I was beginning to think I’d either have to go back again or that the key was nowhere to be found.
Kevin tossed his butt in the snow, blowing out a plume of smoke into the cold air, and I didn’t know if his breath or the smoke was more visible.
The stupid metal door wouldn’t slide open when I pulled on it. He walked over, ready to use his muscle to force it open, and for some reason, that really pissed me off. I glared at him. “Back off, Savage.”
He raised his eyebrows, the tiny glint in his pupils telling me he was amused. And it was a pain in the ass—super difficult to open—but, by God, I did it, and I did it without him. After all the shit I’d been through in my life, no way was I going to let a man pretend like I was the weaker sex.
No fucking way.
Chapter Twenty-five
“Team Hate” – Static-X
We chose a large green hose and, out of respect for my aunt’s things and her children (who would have to sort through all her stuff once they were able to make it here), we relocked the shed before returning to the garage. Kevin was chuckling the entire way back…which pissed me off even more.
I wanted to ask him why I’d become such a big fucking joke to him, and then I realized I was being hypersensitive. I was emotionally raw. I was tired. I was worried. I wanted to take a long hot shower. I wanted to sleep in my own bed. I wanted to put my arms around my kids and hold them close.
I wanted to sit on my goddamned porch and mourn the loss of my aunt.
But I couldn’t do any of those things. Instead, I had to keep trying to problem solve.
And deal with the men.
Kevin had definitely chilled out and I wasn’t as anxious around him as I’d been at first, but the infatuation was over. I was beginning to question how smart I’d been in high school.
I blamed it on naïveté. I certainly didn’t suffer from it anymore.
Larry had been looking for the ideal container to hold the gas. He’d found a small red plastic gas can that would hold about a gallon and a half, and we figured that would be enough to get us to Chipeta Springs. Once we got there, we’d buy enough gas to fill up the truck and make it home. We talked about cash—in case the phone lines were still down and Larry’s credit card would be rejected—and agreed to pool whatever we had. I knew I had less than twenty dollars in my purse, but I was pretty sure I had close to that amount. Kevin wouldn’t say how much he had but told Larry he had more than enough. Larry had some too…and we had no idea if Vera had any, because she was still snoozing in the chair.
I was starting to worry about her more, but I was glad we would be leaving soon. We needed to get her home. She wasn’t dealing well with the situation at all.
Larry fished a pocketknife out of his jeans and, measuring several feet, cut the hose. It wasn’t pliable because it was so cold. Instead, it was stiff and unforgiving. Then he held it up to his eye as though peering inside the blackness would tell him something. “This a clean hose—only used for water?”
“I assume so. My aunt was no mad scientist.”
I had no idea why, but he appeared skeptical. “Just checking. We don’t want to contaminate the gas.” I almost asked if he’d double checked the gas can as well and decided against it. It took some time, but he fi
nally figured out how to access the tank. He had to unlock the little door from inside the car with a button. Once the door popped open, he pushed the hose inside the hole that led to the tank, feeding it several inches at a time until he hit the magic spot—the bottom of the tank.
I knew the dangers involved with siphoning gas. “Larry, you sure you wanna do this?”
He nodded. “I don’t see any other way.”
I knew there was almost always another way, but we human beings were too damned stupid and tunnel-visioned to see any of those routes. Thinking outside the box usually meant thinking of another slight variation in the plan we already had. I’d participated in enough quasi-corporate “brainstorming sessions” to know that the capacity of our minds was limited to our experiences and our willingness to try new things. Most of us just didn’t have it in ourselves to be truly innovative.
But I wasn’t going to argue that with Larry. “I’m okay with it if you want to pass and try to think of something else.”
It also could have been his ego. He just gave me a look like I was a stupid bitch and set about the task.
Well, that was his choice, but it didn’t mean I had to watch. I wasn’t going to go far, because I knew if he did hurt himself by accidentally swallowing gas or getting it in his eye that he’d need my help, but I didn’t want to stand there like an enthralled spectator at the Colosseum, just waiting for the carnage to begin.
I went in the house and decided to write a note—just in case someone found my aunt before we could get the authorities there. I went to her “office” desk tucked in a small corner between the dining room and the living room and sat down, locating a notepad and pen.
I was amazed at how quickly the words flowed from my hand. It was as though all those thoughts were aching to come out.
After a few minutes, Kevin walked in and asked, “Where would I find a clean washcloth, Nina?”
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