“You almost gave me a heart attack there, honey,” he said. His hands were shaking, too, and not just from the intense cold.
“For a second, my life flashed before my eyes,” she said, her teeth chattering. “I thought it was the end. I really thought it was all over.”
“Not yet, Kate, not yet,” Jack said, pulling her close to him in a tight one-armed hug.
On the bough, Susan was in position. This time the swing went smoothly, and Susan caught the tomahawk, stood up, launched herself off the branch, and jumped over the banister successfully at the end of her swinging arc, as did Nick, to whom a little lucidity had temporarily returned. Just as Nick jumped off, Jack managed to grab the rope before it swung back, and he cut the tomahawk off the end of it.
The snowfall was growing heavier, and the wind was picking up. They could barely see beyond the big oak tree now. Jack was grateful for this. The worsening weather would at least provide visual cover for them, covering up their tracks and disguising what was left of their swing dangling from the tree. Also, he hoped that the blizzard's growing intensity would force their pursuers to get off the streets and halt their hunt, at least for a while. The more time he could buy at this point, the better.
As he’d predicted, the doors along the long balcony were all unlocked. The four of them hurried into the town hall, which, although cold inside, was a lot warmer than it was outside.
“All right,” Jack said, “let’s do what we can to warm ourselves up.”
They hurried through the building, heading down to the lower levels. Because all the doors were locked and secure, Jack wasn’t too worried about running into anyone here. If anyone were in the town hall, it would likely be other people hiding out from the marauders.
“Let’s get down to the basement,” Jack said. “I know the old woodfire-powered heating system from the 19th century is still in place.”
“Yeah, I remember seeing that on a field trip to the town hall when I was a kid,” Kate said.
“Do you think it still works?” Susan asked.
“They haven’t used it in eighty years, I’m guessing,” Jack said, “because they replaced it with a more modern heating system in the 1930s or 40s. But they kept the old system intact for the sake of history, just like they did with a lot of things in this building. It might still work; there aren’t any electrical components at all.”
They moved through the building, feeling nervous and on edge after everything that had happened. The huge, empty building, with its high ceilings, somber paintings, and Victorian atmosphere was eerie, and they felt as if eyes were watching them from the shadows.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Susan murmured.
“Well, creepy or not, it’s hopefully going to save our lives,” Jack said. “Come on, down these stairs.”
“Even if the old heating system does work, what are we going to burn in it?” Kate asked. “I doubt they keep piles of logs in the basement.”
As they turned a corner on the broad wooden staircase, Jack caught sight of a large fireman’s ax in a glass cabinet on one of the walls. He walked up to it, smashed the glass with his tomahawk, and then pulled out the huge blade. “I’m pretty sure we can find some office furniture to chop up with this,” he said.
He handed the tomahawk to Kate and then continued his journey down the staircase until they got to the ground floor. It was dark down here since all the windows had their shutters closed, but it wasn’t quite pitch-black. They were able to navigate their way through the gloom. Jack hadn’t been here for many years, but he still remembered the place's layout, and he led them through a few corridors until they got to the spiral staircase that led down into the basement.
The shadows here were impenetrable, so Kate got a small camping lantern out of her waterproof bag and lit it up. They walked through the basement, and Susan and Nick peered around with looks of surprise and more than a little fright on their faces.
“What are these rooms?” Susan asked. “This looks like a medieval dungeon or something…”
She was looking at stout wooden doors with small iron-barred windows in them. Jack opened one up and showed it to her. Beyond the door was a small, windowless cell. “In the earliest days of the town, these used to be cells for prisoners,” he said. “As you can see now, the only things locked in these cells are boxes of records and old tax files. We can use a few of these for kindling to get the fire for the heating system started.”
“That’s gonna take a while, and we need to warm ourselves up faster than that,” Kate said, shivering. “I can barely feel my limbs anymore, and I can hardly keep my eyes open. I’m so cold, so very, very cold…”
Jack was freezing and shivering, too, and he knew Kate was right; they had to warm themselves up a lot faster than it would take for the heater to get going. He racked his brain to solve this problem but found that the cold was even slowing his thinking down. His mind was foggy, and his cognitive abilities seemed to be declining. All he could think about, it seemed, was lying down and curling up and sleeping … just closing his eyes for a while, just resting them…
He snapped out of it, realizing that if he or any of the others did lie down and close their eyes, it might be the last time they ever did this. He had to get everyone warmed up, and he had to do it fast.
“Fire, we have to make a fire,” he said. “And get some water … and something to put the water in. But let’s keep moving, let’s warm ourselves up with some hot drinks, some glucose, then some exercise. It isn’t much, but it’ll do until we can get some hot water to soak in.”
“How are we going to get hot water? Or find anything to soak in?” Susan asked.
“I think I know what we can use if they’re still here,” Jack said. “But worry about that later. Get out a camp stove, and a kettle, and let’s get some coffee in us.”
“Where are we going to find water?” Kate asked.
Jack smiled, walked over to a nearby bathroom, and turned on the faucet. Water flowed out of it. “My dad has done his fair share of plumbing work in this place over the years,” he said. “He told me that they have big old water heaters on the roof. There are a few thousand gallons in ‘em. The water won’t be hot anymore, but it’ll still at least be lukewarm; I know my dad put a lot of insulation around the heaters. And it’s basic gravity feed when it comes to the running water. No electricity is needed.”
They filled up a camping kettle with shivering hands, lit up a gas stove, and made some instant coffee. They ate some jerky, dried fruit, and chocolate, too, and all of this helped keep them awake, although their body temperatures remained dangerously low. After that, Jack put everyone to work carrying chairs and small items of office furniture through the building, and he and Nick smashed them up with the hatchet and the fireman’s ax to make some firewood.
After that, Jack got everyone working on clearing out one of the cells; this was where they would make a fire. The stone walls and ceiling would prevent the fire from getting out and setting the rest of the building on fire. They chose the one nearest the staircase so the smoke from the fire would rise up the stairs and not smoke out the entire basement.
Then Jack sent the women to the kitchens to get the largest pots they could find, while Nick got busy starting the fires they would use to heat the water. Jack, meanwhile, scoured the basement storage area for the item he’d seen as a boy, and when he found then, joy and relief washed over him.
The others had already started heating water in huge pots and pans from the kitchens when Jack rolled the first of the large wooden barrels out of the basement's storage area.
“Is that a whiskey barrel?” Kate asked, staring with amusement at the barrel.
“You may not know this, but a hundred years ago during the Prohibition, some of Al Capone’s associates distilled whiskey up here on a homestead in the mountains. These were seized as evidence, and after the trial, they were moved here and forgotten about. I remember our teacher telling us about ‘em on a fiel
d trip. There are two more barrels; let’s get some hot water in them. The sooner we do, the sooner we can soak and warm ourselves up properly.”
It took them a while, but eventually, they got enough hot water into the barrels to soak in. They stripped down to their underwear, and Nick and Jack had a barrel each, while Susan and Kate, with their petite frames, squeezed into the third barrel together.
They soaked until the hot water became lukewarm, by which stage they were feeling a lot better. After that, they put on dry clothes and got the ancient heating system going, which soon started to warm up the building, and they made themselves a decent meal with canned food they found in the kitchen.
And then they slept on the floor near the woodfire heater, feeling least safer than they had felt in a while even if they were really safe.
It was not to last, though. Despite the raging blizzard, danger was already prowling outside.
31
Jack wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep when he woke up, but he felt as if he only just closed his eyes seconds earlier. Had he heard a sound, or had it been a dream? He sat up, reaching for his AR-15, and peered into the darkness beyond the dim orange glow of the fire in the furnace. All he could hear was the crackling of burning wood, though.
Still, he could have sworn he had heard something. He continued to listen, his heart racing, his hands gripping his rifle tight, but heard nothing.
Finally convinced that he had either dreamed or imagined the sound, he lay down again and closed his eyes, knowing that he needed sleep as much as anyone else. They had set a few basic fishing line tripwires on the stairway linked to pots and pans, so if anyone came down the stairs, they would have an advanced warning. As exhausted as he was and as desperately as he needed rest, though, Jack found it difficult to get back to sleep, for all sorts of worries and fears were rushing through his mind. He wasn’t sure how they would get out of here and evade capture, not yet. After that, he had no idea how they would manage a multi-day hike through not only inhospitable and rugged terrain, but a super-blizzard, to get to Arthur’s cabin.
Jack opened his eyes and looked around him, and his gaze lingered on his sleeping wife next to him, and his daughter a few feet away. He let out a long, sad sigh. How had his well-laid plans and meticulous preparation for this event all gone so badly awry? He had known things would go wrong; it was, after all, an unprecedented catastrophe they were dealing with here. He just hadn’t thought it would go so spectacularly wrong. He did know one thing, though: he would die fighting like a cornered mountain lion to protect Susan and Kate.
He then looked at Nick, who was sweating and shaking and mumbling deliriously in a feverish sleep. The young man had looked a little better for a while, but Jack guessed that maybe the adrenalin of the chase and breaking into the town hall had simply given him a temporary boost of energy. Now he had slid back into the terrible fever from his infected ear. Jack hoped he could save him but knew that the young man would surely die if he didn’t get medical attention in a day or two. And with Arthur’s cabin being many days’ walk from this place and the Humvee sitting upside down at the bottom of the river…
He sighed again and wished there was something more he could do for Nick. The young man was little more than a stranger to the family, but he had saved Kate’s life as well as risked his life for theirs on a few occasions, and Jack knew he had a good heart. It seemed like the ultimate act of unfairness for Nick to have come this far, escaping what surely would have been a horrible death had he been stuck in the city, only to die like this.
“That’s what life is, though,” Jack whispered to himself. “It can be cruel, and it’s often unfair. And all we can do is do our best … and I’ve done my best to help you, Nick. All I can do is pray that God is watching over us and helps you to pull through.”
He closed his eyes and finally felt himself drifting off to sleep again. But then, as he was on the verge of slipping into slumber, a loud crack jolted him awake. And this time, he knew that he wasn’t merely hearing things. He had heard a window being smashed, he was sure of it.
He leaned over to Kate and gently shook her awake. She opened her eyes, blinking in confusion for a while, but a smile came across her face when she saw Jack. When he turned, his face caught some of the gentle orange light, though, she saw the expression on his face, and her smile vanished. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“Someone’s in here,” he whispered back. “I heard a window breaking upstairs.”
“Oh my God,” she gasped. “What are we gonna do?”
“Take ‘em by surprise,” he said as he got out of his sleeping bag, his movements slow and careful to avoid making noise. “But first we need to figure out exactly who they are, and how many of them are in here. If it’s the whole gang … I guess we’re going to have to fight. But if it’s just a few scouts, I think we could handle them without having to fire a shot. If there’s just a few of them and we can take ‘em out silently, it’ll buy us some time to figure out how to escape this place.”
“Should I wake Susan and Nick?” Kate asked.
“No, let them sleep; they need rest, especially Nick. Take your pistol, a gas lamp, and the tomahawk. I’m gonna carry this guy,” he said, picking up the big fireman’s ax. “Follow me.”
Kate slid quietly out of her sleeping bag, lit up the gas lamp and picked it up with one hand and held her pistol with the other after tucking the tomahawk through her belt. They walked with soft, deliberate footsteps across the floor and past the old cells, and got to the stairs, where Jack disabled the tripwire.
“Why are you doing that?” Kate asked.
“I want them to think they’re sneaking up on us and that we’re oblivious to their presence,” Jack said. “If they think they’re the hunters and we’re the unsuspecting quarry, they won’t be as careful as they should be. All right, now that that’s done, I need you to turn the gas lamp down as low as it’ll go without the fire burning out. We don’t know if these guys have a light, but whether they do or don’t, we don’t want to give away our position by letting ‘em see this light.”
They went carefully up the stairs to the ground floor of the town hall. The gentle white light of the gas lamp threw out eerie, phantasmagorical shadows and gave the long hallways with their high ceilings, marble busts and dark, somber oil paintings a surreal and almost nightmarish atmosphere.
Every few seconds, they would stop and listen for the sound of footsteps. They hadn’t heard anything yet, and Jack was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t losing his mind and hadn’t imagined the whole thing. But finally, when they stopped near the main stairwell to listen, they heard the sound of voices. There were two people at least, and they were speaking in low, hushed tones.
Kate and Jack, now on edge, their hearts racing, waited and listened. They couldn’t make out what the men were saying, but it sounded as if they were on the next floor up. There were two distinct voices, but no more. Jack felt sure now that there were only two men here, or maybe three at the most. They would probably be coming down to this level soon enough. Jack knew he had to come up with a plan fast.
There were several office doors near the bottom of the stairs, and none of them were locked. “Kate,” he whispered, “this is what we’re going to do. You’re going to go into one of these offices with the lamp. When you hear them coming down the stairs, say something like ‘Jack, wake up, I think there’s someone here,’ soft enough to sound scared, but loud enough that they’ll hear what you’re saying clearly. I’m gonna hide under the stairs here, sneak up on the bastards when they think they’re surprising us and whack ‘em with the ax. If there’s three of ‘em, I’ll have to shoot, though. So stay down, lie on the floor.”
“Okay,” Kate said nervously. The plan sounded quite risky and dangerous, but they didn’t have many other options at this point. She hurried into one of the nearby offices and left the door half-open so that some of the light from the gas lamp was thrown out into the hallway.
Finally, though, he heard footsteps on the stairs above, coming down slowly and cautiously. He heard two voices whispering but couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying. As they came down the stairs, he noticed a dancing orange glow thrown onto the walls; one of them was carrying a Zippo to light the way, it seemed. When they got halfway down, they stopped abruptly. Jack guessed they had seen Kate’s light in the office two doors down from the end of the stairs. The light from the Zippo abruptly went out; Jack knew the men were now preparing to attack. He tightened his grip around the ax.
The men came very slowly down the remaining stairs, careful not to make any noises. Jack’s heart was drumming in his chest like a chugging Harley motor. When the men got off the stairs, they paused. Jack had to hold his breath, for they would soon walk past him and be mere feet away from him in the dark. Now, finally, when they whispered to each other, he could hear what they were saying.
“Remember, it don’t matter much if we kill the dudes,” one rasped in a soft, harsh whisper. “But Mark wants the bitches alive. Don’t shoot the whores; I’ll fuckin’ shoot you if you do.”
“We don’t know if it’s them that’s in here,” the other whispered back. “Might be some other folk.”
“Who the fuck else could it be, dumbass?” the other whispered back. “We done killed everyone else who was stupid enough to stick around here. It’s them; I know it is. Now come on, let’s blow some holes through them dudes and catch us them whores. Hehehe, you an’ me can have us some fun with the older one right now. It’s the kid we can’t touch ‘til Mark’s had his fun with her.”
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 22 | The Coldest Night Page 16