An Unkind Winter (Alone Book 2) (15 page)

     “Okay, but what are back up drives?”

     “You plug it into the USB port and it saves your work. We’ll get two, and you can keep one in the Faraday cage with the laptop that’s in there. Every weekend you can switch them out. That way when the EMP hits the most you could possibly lose would be a few nights’ work.”

     And so it was that most of Sarah’s research was on good old fashioned paper. Piles and piles of it. But she also had a bunch on computer files. If Dave couldn’t find what he was looking for in one set of records, surely he’d find it in the other set.

     Sarah was nothing if not thorough. She used to keep a scratch pad in her purse, and a couple or three times a day she’d write things on it as she thought about them. Building a greenhouse on a budget… storing seeds for the long term… insulation advantages of a second layer of sheetrock… road maps of the United States… anything she could think of. And it was all either in those piles of paper or on those back up drives.

     Dave was confident he could find the answer to his question in there somewhere about whether or not rabbits hibernated for the winter. If they did, he wouldn’t freak out about them disappearing into their burrows. If they didn’t, though, he’d start trying to catch some of them as they came out occasionally to feed, so he could cull their herd and allow the ones who were left to go deeper into the burrow.

     He figured the deeper they went, the more comfortable they’d be and the easier it would be for them to survive what promised to be a harsh winter.

     In the meantime, going through the piles of paper would do something else for Dave. It would give him something to do, and help kill time.

     He picked up the first few sheets of paper from the top of a stack. It was an article about organic remedies for common maladies, from plants native to the San Antonio area.

     As thorough as Sarah was, though, she wasn’t the most organized person in the world. He noticed that some of the pages were out of order, and some were upside down. And they weren’t stapled together to separate them from the next thing she printed out.

     This would be a fun project. Or, if not a fun one, at least a time consuming one.

     He found all the sheets pertaining to the subject and put them in the correct order. Then he stapled them together and in the upper right corner put “Medicine and First Aid: Plants” Making a filing system would make this particular item much easier to find later on, when they might need it in a hurry.

     He stretched, poured himself a cup of coffee, and pondered the pile of papers in front of him.

     This was a project that was going to take awhile.

-28-

Hi, sweetheart.

     I feel really stupid. I guess I owe you an apology. And, truth be told, I owe Jesse Simpson an apology too.

     I still think he looks like the world’s biggest nerd, but I apparently misjudged him.

     I was looking through another of your old yearbooks last night. This one was from your senior year. Great pic, by the way. You were already a doll even way back then.

     Anyway, something caught my eye.

     I don’t know if remember one of your friends named Tammy Crenshaw, but she signed your yearbook as follows:

     “Sarah Anna, Thank you for letting me be the first to sign your yearbook…”

     There was more after that, but that’s all I read before the light finally came on inside my dumb head.

     It finally dawned on me that in the other yearbook, when Jesse Simpson said thank you for letting him be the first, he wasn’t talking about taking your virginity. He was talking about being the first to sign your yearbook.

     Boy, do I feel stupid. And I guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t there with you in high school. I’d have pummeled poor Jesse for nothing.

     As dumb as I feel, at least my faith in your judgment is restored. It’s been bugging me lately that you’d once been intimate with someone who looked like Jerry Lewis in
The Nutty Professor
. Now I know that you’re really only interested in big strong handsome types.

     Like me, for example.

     I’ve been going through all the stuff you printed off the internet and sorting it all out and trying to rearrange it so we can easily find what we need. I started a few nights ago, and I’m making pretty good progress.

     I have to say, I’m impressed by all the information you thought to save. I mean, I never would have thought about saving information on how to build and set traps for small animals, or how to tell a fox track from a raccoon track. But everything you printed, no matter how bizarre it may be, might come in handy some day. And you, my little angel, are also my hero. I’m so proud of what you were able to accomplish all those nights you were huddled over your computer while I was watching ball games.

     I love you.

     I’m hoping this project will keep me occupied and keep me from going insane. That worries me because of a new habit I’ve developed lately.

     This will either worry you or make you laugh. I’m not sure myself whether it’s just stupid or dangerous.

     But I’ve begun carrying on long conversations with Mikey, the dead guy in our kitchen.

     No, he hasn’t started answering me. If he does, that’ll be a sign that I’ve really lost my mind.

     But here’s the weird part. I started out talking to him when I apologized for killing him every time I went into the kitchen and saw him. Then, I started chewing him out for breaking into our house and stealing our things. And for some reason, talking to him seemed to give me a little bit of comfort.

     I know, you think I’m nuts. And maybe I am. But talking to Mikey is the closest thing I can do to talk to another human being, without having to walk two blocks to Frank and Eva’s house and exposing myself to the outside world.

     And the nice thing about Mikey is he’s a great listener.

     He never argues or interrupts me like you do. He’s always there when I feel a need to cry, or need a shoulder to lean on. Granted, his shoulder’s pretty cold. But it still makes me feel better to talk to him.

     I haven’t decided whether talking to a dead guy is a step up from talking to rabbits or not. But I seldom see Lindsey and Beth anymore. They’re always in their burrow.

     I can’t say that I blame them. I found a note from Frank and Eva. They want me to come over and talk to them about something, but I keep putting it off.

     I keep saying I’ll go when the weather breaks. But it never does. It’s been no higher than twenty degrees for three weeks now. And that’s in the hottest part of the day. At night, when I’d have to get out, it’s always below zero.

     And you know I’m not a cold weather person, which is why we live in San Antonio to begin with.

     I’m starting to wonder why this winter is starting out so vicious and whether or not it’s just a fluke. I mean, I’ve lived in San Antonio nearly my whole life, and I’ve never seen a winter like this.

     I’m also starting to worry whether or not the EMP damaged the earth’s climate somehow, or did something to the weather patterns or something. Maybe it’s eighty degrees in Anchorage right now.

     Such thoughts defy logic, I know. But after all, I really needed something else to worry about, right?

     Give the girls a kiss for me. Tell them I love them lots. And tell them when this is over, when the world is back to normal again, never to let some geek like Jesse Simpson sign their yearbooks “Thank you for letting me be the first.”

     Unless of course, they hate the geek and want their boyfriends to beat him up.

     Love me forever, sweet princess. That’s how long I’ll love you.

-29-

     A week later, Dave finally got a respite from the cold snap.

     He couldn’t exactly call it a heat wave, but the daytime temperatures were hovering right around thirty or so, and a couple of days it actually went above freezing for a little while.

     Not long enough to thaw anything.

     But long enough to let him know that the world wouldn’t always be a popsicle after all.

     It also reminded him that he owed Frank and Eva a visit, and he was tired of putting it off.

     He set his alarm clock to go off at eight p.m. He knew it would be getting dark outside then, but the temperature wouldn’t drop to the place where it would be a few hours later.

     Dave despised cold weather.

     The worst part about going to visit with Frank and Eva was that he’d have to delay building his fire until after he returned.

     It was tempting, cranking up a fire before he left, so he had a nice warm safe room to return to an hour or two later.

     But it just wasn’t worth the risk. If a stray ember floated out of the fire and onto the carpet, or his bed, he’d come back to a raging inferno. He wouldn’t have to worry about what to do with Mikey’s body, sure. But in the ashes of his home, mixed in with the ashes Mikey would leave behind, would be the charred remains of his food, his water bottles… everything.

     If that happened, he’d have to ride out the winter in the Castros’ house, foraging for food and water, like all the other poor souls who’d been caught totally unprepared.

     It just wasn’t worth the risk.

     By nine, Dave was through the fence and in the Castros’ back yard, slowly sliding open their patio door. He sniffed the air, to make sure there was no fire in the fireplace. That would have meant someone was taking refuge in the house.

     There was no fire, meaning no one was there. If there had been, they’d be dead within hours without a fire to warm them.

     His night vision goggles in place, he made his way through the house and to the front door, where he repeated his usual procedure. He opened the door slowly, careful to watch out for anyone approaching from either direction on the street. Then he crept out onto the porch, using the low shrubs in front of the house as cover.

     Once in the shrubs, he had an unobstructed view up and down the street. When he was convinced it was clear in both directions, he could dart to the next stand of shrubs, or behind a stalled car, or a car in a driveway.

     Then he’d repeat the process.

     He expected the cold weather to keep most people indoors. If he were a scavenger, he’d be holed up somewhere, in front of a fire, trying to stretch whatever provisions he had until the cold snap ended.

     So he didn’t expect to see anyone out tonight. But he still had to be cautious.

     It took him just under half an hour to cover the two blocks to Frank’s front door. He knocked, noticing how much louder his knock seemed to be in the frigid temperatures.

     He tried to whisper a yell, and found it was impossible to do so. To get his voice loud enough for Frank to hear him, the neighbors would be able to also.

     But he had no choice. To knock without announcing himself might be suicide. Frank might be the kind of guy who shot first and asked questions later.

     He reasoned that it really didn’t matter much if the neighbors heard him. The whole neighborhood knew that Frank and Eva lived there. They weren’t trying to hide their presence as Dave was doing. He knocked a second time, then a third, while shouting, “Frank! It’s Dave!”

     Finally, a voice from inside the house:

     “Hold on a minute, Dave. Let me get my gear on.”

     It was another thirty seconds before the door cracked open.

     “Are you alone?”

     “Yes, sir.”

     The door opened all the way.

     The room was only moderately warm, but it felt heavenly to Dave.

     He took off his goggles and looked around. The room was lit only by the fire in the fireplace, which was going strong but having to fight hard to heat the lightly insulated room.

     A double mattress lay on the floor in front of the fire. On the mattress, under half a dozen comforters and blankets, was Eva. She was either sound asleep or trying to get there. Only the top of her head was visible, peeking out from beneath the covers. And it was covered by a bright pink knit stocking cap.

     Frank looked at Dave with a finger to his lips to keep him from talking. Then he picked up a flashlight from an end table and motioned for Dave to follow him into another room.

     In the kitchen, Frank spoke in a low voice.