An Unkind Winter (Alone Book 2) (26 page)

     But I expect the highways to be an obstacle course full of thousands of abandoned vehicles to drive around. And I suspect that there may be some people there as well, camping in or close to abandoned big rigs full of food. So the going might be slow.

     I have two more options, which I’ll consider before I go. One of them is making a trip to an auto parts store and getting a new alternator to install before I go. I’ve been trying to remember where the nearest store is. I know there’s a Ford dealer on Loop 410 a couple of miles away, but I don’t know how many alternators they stock. It seems to me that last time I was here getting my oil changed I saw a NAPA pickup pull up with a delivery for them. So I’m thinking they may only carry a limited amount of parts.

     The nearest NAPA store is probably five miles or so. I could make it there one night, camp there during the day, and return the next night with the alternator, so that’s an option I’ll consider.

     Another option is just taking the generator with me. It’s got jumper cables built into it to get the car running again even if the battery went dead.

    The problem with that is, if the vehicle breaks down and we have to abandon it, we’d have no power after we got back.

     Also, one of the tires is flat. I’m kicking myself in the butt for not thinking to anticipate that possibility and putting an air compressor in the Faraday cage. I could put the emergency spare on it and would probably be okay. I know I won’t be driving fast. But I don’t know if that little donut will get us a thousand miles up there and a thousand miles back again.

     I suppose that if I go to NAPA to get a generator I can grab a small air compressor too. I’m pretty sure they’d both fit in my backpack. I’m also sure it would be a chore to lug them five miles back home, but then I probably need a good workout.

     Some of the things that don’t have a lot of electronics and weren’t plugged into the wall, like our lamps and fans, were spared any damage. Maybe the air compressors survived as well. After all, I don’t think they’re very complicated, and a new one wouldn’t have been plugged in.

     It’s a lot to think about, but it’s a couple of months before the thaw so I still have some time.

     Remember those twenty glass pickle jars you bought that weekend at the swap meet a couple of years ago? Those great big ones that held like two gallons of pickles and had the screw-on metal lids?

     Remember when you brought them home and I laughed and asked you what in heck they were for and you said you were going to put dry stock and trail mix into them?

     I told you that was ridiculous and that zip lock bags would work better because we could hide the zip lock bags under the attic insulation and in the walls.

     I remember asking you, “Where in hell are we going to hide glass jars bigger than watermelons?”

     Your feelings were hurt and I remember apologizing and taking you out to dinner, remember?

     Anyway, I’d forgotten all about those pickle jars and never saw them again after that, so I guess I just assumed you threw them out with the garbage.

     Today I was in the mood to celebrate after getting the car started again, and I wanted something sweet.

     I remember hiding some bags of hard candy under the ductwork in the attic, and went up to get a bag and bring it downstairs.

     And lo and behold, there were those twenty pickle jars, stacked neatly in the far end of the attic, where you put them two years ago.

     They’re covered with dust now, and I stood there looking at them awhile wondering if I could possibly use them for anything.

     And I had a great idea.

     I’ll have plenty of room in the back seat of the Explorer, even after I fill the back with the water and provisions.

     I think I’ll fill those twenty jars with a mixture of jerky and trail mix, and hide one every fifty miles or so along the route to Kansas City, as an insurance policy. I mean, think about it. It’s the perfect container. Coyotes and dogs can’t chew into it. Neither can squirrels or rats. It’s too big for birds to carry away, and it’s watertight so rain won’t hurt the contents.

     At every mile marker that ends with 00 or 50 along the way, I’ll pull over and hide one of them real good in the bushes. Then if the vehicle breaks down and we have to walk back, we can be assured we’ll have food stashed on the way back. Hell, maybe I’ll take some bottles of water and stash a couple of them with each jar. It won’t be as much as we need, but it’ll definitely cut down on the time we have to stop to hunt and look for drinking water.

     And if the car’s still running, we won’t lose anything. On the way back from Kansas City we’ll just stop and pick up the jars and bring them back home again.

     In short, I’m not sure who’s the bigger genius: you for buying and saving the things, or me for coming up with a good use for them.

     One thing is for darn sure.

     We make a damn good team, don’t we?

-50-

     Dave put the flat tire problem on hold for the time being and resolved to spend the rest of the winter in the warmth of the safe room. He’d while away the hours trying to make some organization of Sarah’s vast amount of research material.

     Every hour he spent sorting, cataloging and alphabetizing Sarah’s files would be an hour closer to seeing Sarah herself. Instead of just what she wrought.

     At the same time, he’d look for anything that would help him along his long journey. Which plants and berries were safe to eat. How to identify poison ivy and poison oak, and any other plants he’d want to avoid. How to trap a wild rabbit or other small animal. And anything else that might come in handy.

     When he came across the photo he wasn’t quite sure what it was. It was tucked between an article about weather patterns in south Texas and a chart of edible wildflowers. But it didn’t seem to go with either of them.

     It was a satellite photo. A screen shot from Google Earth, probably. It showed a series of buildings in a farm setting, surrounded by woods and streams. She obviously had the “roads” feature turned off, because the road that ran in front of the property was not identified.

     In fact, there were no words on the photo anywhere.

     It didn’t look familiar at all, and he wondered why in the world Sarah would take the time to print such a photo.

     Was it a tract of land she fancied and wanted to buy, and just never got around to talking to him about? Was it a piece of land belonging to someone she knew?

     Dave was sure of one thing. Wherever it was, whoever it belonged to, he was sure he’d never been there. It looked completely alien to him.

     Then he turned the image around and looked at it from a different perspective.

     And it started to look vaguely familiar.

     He’d only been to Sarah’s sister’s house west of Kansas City once. It had been a couple of years before, when Susan and Tommy invited them up for a fishing trip.

     They’d had a good time, and Dave had caught a couple of great fish. But he hadn’t taken the time to soak in his surroundings. There just wasn’t a reason to.

     Now he wished he’d paid closer attention.

     This land looked similar in a way to Susan and Tommy’s place. But was that just his mind playing tricks on him? Was the stream that ran behind their house really that close to it? Was that barn there? And where did that dirt road lead to? He didn’t remember it being there.

     With no markings on the photo there was no way of knowing whether this was Susan and Tommy’s place. It might not have been Kansas City at all. It didn’t look much like the San Antonio area, but it could have been a shot of the Texas hill country a little north and west.

     Heck, for that matter it could be Pennsylvania, or Idaho, or a thousand other places.

     But if it was one of a thousand other places, why on earth would she go through the trouble of printing a copy of it?

     He studied it for quite some time, trying his best to remember the layout of the place he visited. The more he compared his memory with the photograph in front of him, the more he was convinced it was the same place.

     Of course, it could have just been his mind messing with him.

     He finally put the photo aside, deciding the best thing to do was to let his memory percolate for while. Then he’d look at it again, with fresh eyes, and try again to determine if it was the same place.

     In the meantime, he dug feverishly in the boxes of paper for something else that would explain the photograph’s existence. Additional photos… an article that made reference to a farm… anything.

     But there was nothing else.

     Just the lonely photo.

     Dave didn’t know it now, but he’d spend hours agonizing over that photo in the weeks ahead.

     Could it be that at this very moment, his wife and daughters were in one of those buildings, crying over the fate of their husband and father?

     Or were they there, eating a baloney sandwich and playing a video game, and never giving Dave a second thought?

     And if this was their destination in Kansas City, how could it help Dave?

     Yes, it could tell him specifically where they were. But without a map to compare this photo to, it was worthless.

     Or, maybe not. He noticed that the stream that ran behind the main house in the photo had some very distinctive features. About fifty yards from one side of the house, it had a very distinctive “s” shaped curve.

     A hundred yards or so on the other side of the property the same stream curved to the left almost exactly ninety degrees, and after twenty yards or so curved almost exactly ninety degrees to the right before continuing on its way.

     Perhaps if Dave could break into a library once he got to Kansas City and steal an atlas of the area, he could compare those two features with the streams west of the city.

     He’d finish going through the paper research material in a couple of days and start going through the digital stuff.

     After Lindsey had suggested to her Mom that it would be faster and cheaper to simply save digital copies of her research material, she saved literally thousands of screen grabs onto a backup hard drive. Every weekend, like clockwork, she took the hard drive and swapped it out with a second drive in the Faraday cage. Her logic was that if the EMP hit before she finished her project, she’d only lose a few days’ worth of research.

     Maybe mixed in with those thousands of screen grabs were overhead views of the area west of Kansas City that included street names.

     Or, even better, detailed directions to his in-laws’ farm.

     Hey, he could dream.

-51-

     It was the end of February now. The cold snap had finally broken a week before, and the daytime temperatures had been in the low to mid thirties for several days in a row. The cold temperatures then returned, but not before all the snow and ice melted away.

     Dave could once again come out without having to worry about someone tracking his footprints in the snow.

     He’d been lonely of late, and was tempted to get out and visit with his friends Frank and Eva two blocks away.

     But they would have to wait until another night to see his smiling face.

     Tonight he had a special mission to go on. One which took him in the exact opposite direction from Frank and Eva’s house.

     He had come to a decision the day before about how to deal with the flat tire on his Explorer. He wouldn’t break into the NAPA store and steal an air compressor.

     Well, he was still going to break into the store, but only to steal an alternator, and he’d go ahead and replace it before he left. But he didn’t want to have to lug a compressor the five miles home as well.

     So he’d forego the air compressor and temporarily turn into one of the looters he’d been cursing since day one.

     But only temporarily.