Ice Storm (7 page)

Alice filled a pot with water that Dad could boil on the barbecue. She watched carefully as he taught her how to regulate the gas, and how to be safe when she lit the flame. He checked the freezer. The food inside was starting to thaw.

“Only use stuff that feels like it’s still a little frozen, just in case,” said Dad. “After that, heat up stuff in tins or boxes. Do we have any canned spaghetti?”

There was some chicken that still felt a bit frozen, so they didn’t need to resort to tinned spaghetti yet. While Dad took a nap, Alice boiled more water to keep in a thermos for later. Within an hour, Dad was back on the move.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, as he gave her a tight hug. “I hate to leave you like this.”

“I’m fine, Dad,” Alice assured him. “Don’t worry about me. Uncle Henri will probably come just after you leave and then I’ll be safe at the farm. You just worry about the transmission towers. Now that I can use the barbecue, I can make hot food if he’s late. Just be careful, okay?”

Then he was gone. Alice stood at the door until his big hydro truck had inched its way down the street and turned the corner. She didn’t really feel okay at all.

Dad’s wasn’t the only vehicle inching down the street. It looked like a lot of her neighbours were packing up and leaving. Maybe the tree had scared them too. She waved at a couple of them as they went by. The Thibeau family stopped at her curb and Madame Thibeau rolled the car window down.

“Alice,” she shouted. “Is your father working?”

“Yes, he is,” Alice called back.

“We’re going to a hotel that still has power. Come with us. You can leave a note for your dad.” Madame Thibeau smiled. “The hotel has a pool!”

Alice grinned back. “Thanks, but my uncle is coming to get me. I’m going to stay with my cousins.”

“C’est bon.
Stay warm!” She waved and rolled up the window as her husband eased the car forward.
Well,
thought Alice.
That was cool of them. At least some people are still nice.

Alice went inside and tried the phone again. There was no dial tone. Where was Uncle Henri? It was way past lunch. Alice checked that the backpack she had filled with her overnight stuff was ready at the front door and picked up her book.

Two hours later, the already dark and gloomy sky started to get darker. Alice finally admitted to herself that Uncle Henri wasn’t coming. At least not today. Something must have happened. Even thinking about it made her want to cry. Had he had an accident? She hated not having a phone!

Then Alice remembered the radio. She dashed to the kitchen and cranked it up. She listened for a half-hour, until the bad news started to repeat itself. Saint-Hyacinthe had no power. The airport and the train station were closed.

The bridges were closed.

Uncle Henri wasn’t coming.
Couldn’t
come.

Now Alice did cry. She crawled into bed, cuddled Juniper, and sobbed. Daddy thought she was at the farm. He probably wasn’t going to come home. What was she going to do? Alice cried herself to sleep.

She woke up, disoriented, a few hours later. She was starting to lose track of time. For a girl whose whole life was ruled by the clock, it was almost scary not to know if it was six o’clock or eight o’clock or ten o’clock. Did it really matter?

It had been a good cry, a needful cry. Alice felt better with it out of her system. Now she was ready to take charge, keep fed, keep warm, look after the house. Dad hadn’t noticed because he was used to working outside, but the house was really, really cold. He also hadn’t noticed that she was wearing her winter jacket inside. How cold was it going to get? Alice got out of bed and went straight to the thermostat. Six degrees. The house had only lost two degrees during the day when the outside temperature had been around zero, but with night coming, how low would it go? Could the house hit three degrees? Next question – could she survive inside a refrigerator?

It was weird to think that the fridge and freezer were thawing out while she was freezing. That gave Alice an idea. She put on her boots and carefully made her way out to the backyard, holding on to the side of the house so she wouldn’t slip. With a big kitchen spoon, she broke through the ice to the snow below and scooped it into a bowl. She broke off all the icicles she could reach and put them in the bowl too. Back inside she put the snow and ice into the freezer and the fridge. There. That should help hold the food a little longer.

Alice thought about her Dad sleeping in a tent and it gave her an idea. She went into the garage, dragging out the box of camping gear. She was a little surprised they still had it – she and Dad hadn’t gone camping since Mom died. She pulled out the tent and all three sleeping bags. There was even a little battery-operated l
antern in there. Alice took that too. Dragging all the gear into the living room, she set up her new base camp. Reckoning that her body heat would keep the inside of the tent warmer than the rest of the house, Alice wrestled with the springy tent poles. Finally, it was up, sitting right in the middle of the living room. She arranged the sleeping bags inside. She retrieved her book from her bedroom and put it next to the lantern. She made a cup of tea from the water in the thermos.

There, Alice thought. I’m tough. I’m a survivor.

Day Three

Wednesday, January 7, 1998

An Accident

A
lice woke with a start
. Everything was silent now, but there’d been a noise. A really big noise. She sat up, only to bump her head against a soft web. She put her arms out. She was in some kind of a cocoon. It took her two full seconds to remember that she was sleeping in her tent in the living room. Two full seconds of panic. Alice took a deep breath. Storm. Ice. Cold. Tent.

Tree.

The noise had to have come from another tree falling down. It had made enough noise to wake her up, so it had to have fallen close by. Too close not to look, but Alice didn’t want to leave the safety of her tent. Sighing, she crawled out anyway and made her way to the sliding doors in the dining room. There was just a hint of dawn on the horizon; it was probably about six in the morning. Alice peered into the backyard. She’d known in her heart that it was their maple. It had split at the fork. The far half had crashed right through the Tickle Lady’s roof.

Alice felt paralyzed. Was Mrs. Hartley dead? Their houses were mirror images of each other, which meant that the hole in the roof was right on top of the master bedroom on the second floor. If Mrs. Hartley had been asleep like a normal person would be at that hour, she was surely dead. Stabbed through the heart by a maple dagger.

Had any of the other neighbours heard the noise? Alice didn’t see any flashlights or lanterns bobbing down the street to investigate. Maybe she should try to wake somebody up to go over and check. She put on more layers of warm clothing, then her boots. Carefully she made her way down the front steps and tried to wake the neighbour across the street.

“Mr. Carlisle, Mr. Carlisle!” she shouted. “Wake up!” Nothing happened. Alice tried the next house, and the next. It looked like all the other families had left, gone to stay with friends or relatives that had power, or at a hotel, like the Thibeau family. Which didn’t help her one bit. She tried one more house, then gave up. Her shouting alone should have wakened the whole street by now, if there’d been anybody to hear. Alice cautiously walked back to stand in front of Mrs. Hartley’s house. She had to go in.

The front door was locked, of course. So was the back door. The kitchen was on ground level. Alice shone her lantern in the window. What a mess! The tree had fallen through the bedroom on the top floor and crashed right down into the kitchen below. There were branches everywhere, along with great chunks of plaster from the ceiling, pieces of hardwood flooring that had fallen from the bedroom and bits of drywall from the damaged walls. Alice lifted the lantern higher. She thought she saw something.

It was Mrs. Hartley. She was lying on the floor amidst all the debris. And she wasn’t dead. Her foot was twitching.

Alice was petrified. She needed help to break into the house and get Mrs. Hartley out, and she needed an ambulance to take her away, and she needed her dad – right now! But she wasn’t going to get any of those things, not without a phone. She was on her own.

“Mrs. Hartley, I see you!” Alice yelled through the window. “I’m coming!”

But how?

Alice ran back to her house, taking care not to fall. Now would not be a good time to give herself a concussion. In the garage, she got an old car mat and Dad’s axe; it was the heaviest thing she could find. She took them back to Mrs. Hartley’s. Holding the axe like a baseball bat, Alice swung it towards the window. It hit the window, but didn’t break it. How could that be? That kid had put a ball through the window from right across the street. Maybe the Tickle Lady had put in special reinforced bulletproof, axeproof windows after that. Yeah, right. The axe was just too heavy. Alice couldn’t put enough oomph into the swing.

Returning the axe to the garage, Alice chose a hammer this time. At least she could really swing it. Back at the window, Alice closed her eyes tightly and swung with all her might. She felt the hammer go through the glass and was so surprised she nearly let go and let it fly right through the hole with all the broken pieces. The sound was just like that of the ice falling from the trees, only louder and sharper and a whole lot uglier. Alice could hardly believe she had broken a window on purpose.

The jagged hole wasn’t big enough. Alice had to use the hammer to knock all the sharp bits away from the edges of the window before she had an opening big enough to crawl through. She laid the car mat over the edge, hoisted herself up and rolled into Mrs. Hartley’s kitchen.

Alice rushed to Mrs. Hartley. “Are you all right?” she asked breathlessly.

After a brief silence, she heard a voice.

“What do you think, you fool girl? Do I look all right?”

Alice caught her breath. It really was the Tickle Lady and Alice was going to rescue her and then be tickled to death. The thought was so ridiculous that she started to laugh.

“You think this is funny?” demanded Mrs. Hartley in an outraged tone.

“No,” replied Alice. “I was just so relieved you were alive. Nervous laughter, I guess.”

“Hmmmph,” snorted Mrs. Hartley. “Get me out of here.”

Alice surveyed the mess. She’d have to be careful moving the old woman away from the branches. Every time Alice tried to move one out of the way, another shower of plaster came drifting down.

“Are you trying to totally destroy my house?”

“I think your house is already totally destroyed, Mrs. Hartley.” Alice carefully extracted a few more branches, then gently dragged Mrs. Hartley away from the debris, helping her sit with her back against the dining room wall.

Alice took a look at the old woman. Her thin white hair, normally pinned into a bun at the nape of her neck, was hanging loose around her face and spattered with blood from a cut on her head. Her hair was really long, longer than Alice had imagined, but there was very little of it. Mrs. Hartley was practically bald. And skinny. She looks like a scrawny chicken, Alice thought unkindly. Good thing she’s wearing so many layers, or else she’d be nothing but a bag of bones.

And of course, let’s not forget those fingernails. Alice didn’t want to look at them but curiosity won out. Ugh. There were even worse than the neighbourhood kids had described. Not so long as four inches, but thick and cracked and brownish. They didn’t even look like nails. They reminded Alice of something else, but she couldn’t quite remember what. Horns – cow horns – that’s what! How could Mrs. Hartley let them get that way? It was disgusting. But then Alice noticed Mrs. Hartley’s leg and her sympathy came back. The leg was badly cut and bleeding heavily.

“Go to the bathroom. There’s a first aid kit in the bottom drawer,” commanded Mrs. Hartley.

Alice brought the kit back to the dining room, and Mrs. Hartley talked her through the cleaning, disinfecting and bandaging of the cut. Alice tried her best to be gentle and Mrs. Hartley didn’t complain once, but by the time she was finished the old lady was really pale. Alice was getting scared again.

“You have to take me to your house,” said Mrs. Hartley. “The rain’s pouring in. I’ll freeze here.”

Inwardly Alice groaned. Of course Mrs. Hartley was right, but she was the last person Alice would have chosen for company. And how to get her next door? Mrs. Hartley couldn’t walk on that leg and Alice sure couldn’t carry her, especially with all that ice. Alice thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll be right back. I’ve got an idea.” After taking an afghan that had been on the living room sofa and wrapping it around Mrs. Hartley, Alice dashed back to her garage.