An Unkind Winter (Alone Book 2) (14 page)

     But Dave was once on an Air Force C-5 cargo plane as it flew over the Northern Atlantic on its way to Southwest Asia.

     The airplane had flown through a vicious thunderstorm, and took a direct hit by lightning.

     And nothing happened.

     The plane landed as scheduled and seemingly suffered no damage. One of the officers on board, who’d attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and therefore thought he knew everything, explained the phenomenon.

     “The cabin, and everything in it, is insulated from the outer shell of the aircraft. When the lightning struck, it couldn’t penetrate the insulation, so it merely circled the exterior of the aircraft until it dissipated.”

     It sounded plausible, and Dave put it out of his mind and forgot about it.

     And then one day he remembered and wondered… wouldn’t the same thing happen when the EMP struck the earth? Would an airplane that was in the sky and not grounded behave in the same way as a Faraday cage?

     Was it possible that his family had still been in the air and yet survived?

     It was that possibility that kept Dave going on some days. Still, he tried not to pin his hopes on a maybe and a dream.

     There were other things that concerned him.

     Even if the airplane survived the EMP unscathed, the pilots would still have to land the plane without the aid of GPS, or a glide slope indicator, or without the aid of instructions from Air Traffic Control.

     What if the last plane to land was damaged by the EMP and still sat in the middle of the runway? If the pilots touched down and the runway was blocked they wouldn’t have been able to take off again. They’d have crashed headlong into the other plane.

     Dave knew that pilots practiced having to land at an airport without any assistance. They certainly knew how to do it. But in those cases, they didn’t have to worry about another airliner sitting in the middle of the runway.

     He forced himself to consider all options, no matter how much they hurt.

     And there was one more thing that bothered him. If indeed Sarah was telling the girls that their father was a hero and would come to their rescue, he knew he couldn’t let them down.

     No matter what, he had to get to Kansas City. And then all his nagging questions would be answered.

-26-

     It was already dark when the dream woke him up. He’d slept longer than he’d expected to.

     He’d fallen asleep wondering what Frank and Eva needed to talk to him about. And whether they needed his help with something.

     His plan was to be up before sundown so that he’d be ready to get out as soon as it was dark outside. Frank and Eva had told him they generally went to bed not long after sunset, so they wouldn’t have to waste candles or fuel to light their house.

     Dave figured if he left as soon as it was dark, he could travel the two blocks in twenty minutes, and catch them before they were asleep. And that would give him all night long to get back. So he could stay and visit with his new friends at his leisure.

     But it was already dark when he woke up, and the batteries were dead on his alarm clock. His wristwatch was worthless, because he hadn’t worn it in at least a week, and hadn’t wound it in about that long.

     Dave was good at many things. Telling time by looking at the sun was one such talent. He could look at the sun and tell within half an hour what time it was, any time of day.

     Telling time by looking at the stars, however, was something he royally sucked at.

     He didn’t know if it was nine p.m. or one in the morning.

     Frank and Eva would have to wait another night.

     He had to pee again, and decided he didn’t want to go out into the back yard.

     So instead, he went into the garage to start his generator and get fresh batteries for his clock, and to find a five gallon bucket.

     The bucket was bright orange, and had the Home Depot logo on the side. Back in the days when the world was livable, Home Depot practically gave the things away. And they came in handy for everything, from hauling rabbit feed to corn cobs to fertilizer.

     He figured if they did all that, they’d make a pretty good makeshift toilet as well.

     His plan was simple. As long as the cold snap continued, he could urinate in the bucket in the garage. That would keep him from having to go outside, where the wind chill might be twenty degrees colder.

     At temperatures which hovered right around zero degrees in his garage, his urine would freeze solid within a matter of minutes. And that should help keep his garage from smelling like the outhouse.

     At least he hoped it would.

     Once the cold snap ended he could take the bucket out in the yard, turn it upside down, and beat on the bottom. The block of frozen urine would break free and fall into the dirt, where it would gradually thaw and soak into the ground.

     The rabbits might not be too happy with him for dumping his frozen pee into their living space, but what were they going to do about it?

     Probably nothing.

     Once he relieved himself into the bucket and cranked up the generator, he went back to the safe room and installed the new batteries into his alarm clock.

     He’d have to wait until sunrise to set it. He thought the sun rose at about five thirty or so this time of year. So that’s the time he’d put on the clock as soon as the sun peeked over the horizon.

     It wouldn’t be completely accurate, but it would be close enough.

     He was getting very good at starting fires, and he had one roaring within five minutes. Before the safe room was warm enough for him to start shedding clothing, though, he needed to fetch some water.

     He and Sarah had stockpiled twenty cases of Dasani drinking water in their garage as part of their preparations for Armageddon.

     Dave had gone through all of it already, but he’d saved the bottles, keeping them in large plastic bags in the garage. As fall set in, he started boiling rain water during the days, when daytime temperatures aided him instead of working against him.

     He was able to fill all twenty cases of Dasani bottles up again, leaving room in each bottle to allow for expansion when the water froze. He also filled forty soda bottles with boiled water, for use after the small bottles ran out.

     As a result, he was confident he had enough purified drinking water to get him through to the spring thaw.

     Now all he had to do was remember to thaw it.

     He brought ten small bottles and balanced them on the step adjacent to his fireplace. They’d thaw slowly over the next three or four hours. But that wasn’t a problem. Any time he needed a drink, he’d just remove the caps from several of the bottles and take what each was willing to share with him until he’d quenched his thirst.

     One of the last things he did that morning was fill his coffee pot full of water and coffee.

     He knew the water would freeze in the pot, of course. But placing the pot full of ice directly on the fire would be much faster than having to thaw the water from a bottle, and then pour it into the pot. This way he’d have hot coffee within twenty minutes or so.

     He was learning as he went. He and Sarah had had many brainstorming sessions over recent years about what life would be like after the world went black. But things like filling the coffee pot the night before, and lining up frozen water bottles close to the fire to thaw, just never came up.

     He was learning to modify his behavior by solving life’s little problems one at a time, as they occurred.

     He smiled, wondering if Sarah could have brought herself to sit on his orange bucket to pee on icy mornings.

     He decided she’d do it if it was cold enough outside. But that she wouldn’t like it much.

     Dave went into their old office and grabbed the first of two huge boxes of printed paper from the corner. He took a stapler and a box of staples, and two sharpies from the desk drawer, and tossed them in the box as well.

     He was halfway to the office door when he had an afterthought and went back.

     He found a pencil and tossed it into the box as well.

     Just in case the sharpies wouldn’t work anymore after they were thawed out. He didn’t imagine they were made to be frozen solid.

     Back in his safe room, Dave put the box down and went back to the office for the other box.

     While the generator was running and he had good light, he’d start a project he’d been intending to do for months.

     First, though, he needed to be cheered up a bit. He turned on the television and looked through one of several binders that held his DVD collection.

     He decided on a classic, and one of his favorite western comedies,
Blazing Saddles.

     Then he sat back on his bunk, relaxed, and tried to spend the next couple of hours laughing away his misery.

-27-

     Sarah, bless her heart, had the best of intentions when she’d started the research project three years before. And Dave agreed with her plan. He thought it made a lot of sense.

     It wasn’t until she’d gone through twenty reams of paper, a couple of dozen toner cartridges, and three printers, that they finally decided there had to be a better way.

     In fact, it was their oldest daughter Lindsey, who Dave called the “family genius,” who’d found the better way.

     “Hey, Mom, whatcha doing?” she’d asked one night a few months before the blackout.

     “I’m just printing out some recipes for campfire foods.”

     “Campfire foods?”

     “Yes. Foods you can make easily over an open fire. Like this one, for example, is for skillet fried trout and wild onions and potatoes. It might come in handy someday after the world turns ugly.”

     “It seems like you’re always printing something off the internet. Every time I walk past your room, your printer is either printing or beeping because it’s out of paper.”

     “Well, honey, that’s what I do most evenings now. I scan the internet for things that might come in handy after there’s no power anymore. Then I print them out, so that we have access to the information later on when we need it. It’s the same reason why we buy books on first aid, and stuff like that.”

     Lindsey looked around at the mountain of paper that seemed to be stacked everywhere around the office.

     “You know, Mom, there’s a better way to do this.”

     Sarah looked at her and asked, “Really?”

     “Sure, Mom. All you have to do is do a screen grab.”

     “A what grab?”

     “A screen grab. Get out of your chair for a minute and I’ll show you”

     Lindsey sat down and opened up a new folder on Sarah’s desktop. She called it “Mom’s Armageddon Stuff.”

     Then she went to the article Sarah had been looking at and went through it, page by page, taking screen grabs of each page and saving them in the folder as .jpg files.

     “See, Mom, you can even name them. We can name these
camping recipe 101, camping recipe 102,
etcetera.”

     “Wow, this will save me a fortune on paper and toner.”

     “That’s the point, Mom. That brings up what I wanted to talk to you about. I need to go clothes shopping. My pants are too short and my bras are too tight. I’ve grown over the past couple of months and my clothes don’t fit me any more. So tomorrow we’re going shopping, and whatever money you’re going to save on paper and toner you can spend on my clothes instead.”

     She flashed an angelic smile that Sarah instantly recognized. It was the same smile Sarah gave to Dave whenever she wanted something. It was a smile that Dave had a hard time refusing, and Sarah did as well.

     “Well, I guess my baby’s growing up in all kinds of ways. Where did you learn about those .jgp files and saving snapshots of the computer screen and all that stuff?”

     “It’s .jpg files, and I learned it in school. They have computer classes now that everybody takes to learn the basics, and then advanced classes for those who are interested in learning more.”

     “Does this mean I’ll have to put my computer in the Faraday cage every night, so I don’t lose everything when the EMP hits?”

     “No. After I spend most of your money on clothes I’ll use whatever you have left on a couple of back up drives.”

     She flashed her angelic smile again and Sarah laughed.