Dead Of Winter - A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Novel (Enter Darkness Book 2) Read online

  “I’ll walk you back to the house,” Brad said. “Then I’ll finish checking the rest of the traps.”

  “You two got back soon,” Anna said, scanning both of them quickly for injuries and then looking to see what they’d brought back. Confusion flashed in her eyes when she realized that they were empty-handed. “What—”

  “A bear got our traps!” Sammy blurted.

  Brad had to bite his tongue to hold back from cursing. He should have told the kid to let him break the news. Anna had gone pale, too. Great. More things for her to be worried about.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, looking to Brad.

  “It stole the catch and ripped the traps up,” Sammy continued. “They’re completely destroyed. It—”

  “Why don’t you go wash up,” Brad suggested, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder and pressing down.

  “But I…” Sammy got a good look at his mother’s face and then Brad’s expression and stopped arguing. “Oh. Okay.”

  “A bear?” Anna demanded in a whisper. “A bear? Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Brad admitted. “But it’s not as scary as it sounds,” he hurried to add.

  “Since when is an entire damn bear not as scary as it sounds?” she hissed in return. “And it stole all the food, too?”

  “I don’t know if it stole everything,” he said. “I thought that it would be a better idea to bring Sammy back here before I go check the rest of the traps.”

  Anna let her breath out slowly and nodded. “Okay. That makes sense.”

  “I do that from time to time.”

  She looked away. “I’m sorry. I’m just—”

  “Worried,” he finished for her. “I know. I’ll be back soon.”

  Brad grabbed the shotgun and headed back out into the cold. As he walked, his steps got slower and slower. He hadn’t been alone in a while. Either Anna was with him in the cabin or Sammy was trailing his every footstep outside of it. He appreciated their companionship, but he also appreciated the stillness as he took in a lungful of the cold October air.

  He needed a little time to calm down, anyway. He fully understood Anna’s worries. He really did. What he didn’t understand was what she gained from throwing all of those fears directly at him. Or what he could do to alleviate them. Because God knew he’d tried, and nothing had seemed to work. And now, there was a freaking bear to deal with.

  Brad let out his breath and pushed the frustration down. He had to push it down a few more times before he could really focus, but he managed it in the end. The atmosphere helped. It was nice to hear nothing but the sounds of wind and woods. The trees creaked and swayed with each strong northern gust and twigs snapped with a brittle sound under his boots as he walked. He was taking his own advice. The last thing he wanted to do was sneak up on that bear, even if he was reasonably sure it wouldn’t mess with him.

  The bear had left some of the traps alone, but they were the empty ones. As he walked back from the last trap empty-handed, he felt something brush his face. He glanced up to see snow filtering down out of the iron-gray sky over his head. Apparently autumn had lost the fight against winter, already.

  The snow was falling pretty steadily, but he wasn’t worried. He wasn’t that far from home, for one thing. For another, his boots were waterproof and this wasn’t shaping up to be a blizzard. The wind wasn’t strong enough. This might drop about a foot of snow. It would be pretty, but he was afraid that Anna wasn’t going to appreciate it.

  Determined not to be worried, Brad tilted his head back and opened his mouth, catching a few flakes on his tongue. They could make snow cream, he thought. It wouldn’t be the same without milk, but it would still be good. And maybe it would take Anna’s mind off of her worries. Something needed to, or she was going to snap.

  He understood her fear and her cabin fever, but he also understood the pointlessness of it. After the events of the previous year, she had to understand that there was only so much they could control. He could hunt, she could fish, they could insulate and arm themselves to the teeth…and it might not matter. It was that simple.

  A rustling behind him had him turning around quickly. It wasn’t the bear. What it was, was even better. It was a big deer. Really big. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment. Then, Brad swung his gun up. There was just enough snow on the ground now to show the stain of blood.

  “Wow!” Sammy called from the edge of the yard where he was busily scraping up snow in an attempt to make a snowman. He wasn’t having much luck, but Brad wasn’t going to discourage him. “Where did you find that? It’s huge!”

  Brad nodded, too short of breath to say anything in response to the question. Carrying the buck back with him hadn’t exactly been easy. The creature must have weighed around two hundred pounds.

  “It’s snowing!” Sammy continued, as if Brad had somehow missed seeing it as he walked. “How much do you think we’ll get?”

  “I don’t know,” Brad called as he walked to the garden. “Go and get my knife and then hurry and get back out here. We’ve got to get this taken care of before it gets dark.”

  They gutted and skinned the deer in the garden as the sky went darker and darker shades of gray. Brad’s hands were aching with cold by the time it was done. He couldn’t exactly wear gloves while he was gutting something, after all. And he sure as hell hadn’t been about to drag two hundred pounds of dead buck down into the basement. Sammy’s nose and cheeks were cherry red, so he was clearly feeling the cold, too.

  Anna and Sammy carried the pieces inside, Anna mentioning that she had made some chili for supper. Brad grabbed a shovel so that he could bury the guts and get into the cabin, but he didn’t manage to do much more than scrape a layer of dirt up because the ground was already freezing.

  He scooped the offal into the shallow trench, dumped some dirt over it and headed inside while he could still feel his fingers. All he wanted right now was to get cleaned up and get some warm food. Hopefully, he could stay inside for more than six hours this time. He nursed that hope as he flexed his sore muscles and walked up to the cabin. A deer that size should calm Anna’s nerves for a day or two, at least.

  Chapter 5

  When he woke up the next morning, Brad wanted nothing less than to get out of bed. It wasn’t just the fact that he was tired down to his very bones, either, although that was definitely a factor. Carrying that deer back to the cabin was the straw that had broken this camel's back. Luckily only figuratively, but he still swore softly as he stretched and his back and shoulders screamed at him.

  The biggest problem with getting up was how warm he was. He’d layered three extra quilts on the night before and he could tell that it had been the right move. He always slept with one arm outside the covers and even though he’d worn a long-sleeved shirt to bed, that arm was freezing cold.

  He tucked it back under the blankets and burrowed further down into the warm spot that he’d created by being so tired that he’d barely moved in the night. It was even colder today than it had been yesterday, which meant one thing and one thing only: it was the perfect day to stay right where he was.

  Or, maybe he could talk himself out of bed and go sit by the fireplace. It wouldn’t take the small living room long to warm up. He could stay right by the fire and catch up on some reading. Maybe for lunch, they could eat the deer chili that Anna had left to simmer overnight. They could also make some tea with the chamomile he’d gathered a few weeks back. They could—

  His door swung open gently and completely destroyed his dreams.

  “Hey, Brad?” Anna asked in a low voice. “You awake?”

  “Yeah,” he said cautiously, looking over the edge of the blanket without getting up. She didn’t sound frantic, but she did sound like she wanted something from him.

  Anna walked in and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to get some more batches of chili made and canned today,” she said briskly. “I was thinking that it might be a good day for you to finish l
ooking through the attic, since it’s so cold.”

  He managed to hold back his groan, but only just barely.

  “Remember when you used to sleep later than me?” he asked as he sat up, forcing himself to face the cold.

  “Remember when you said that you’d look through the attic for things we might need?” she asked pointedly.

  Brad pushed the blankets back, making the movement quick in hopes that the shock of cool air would help him wake up. It didn’t do much for the mental fog, and it made his sore back hurt even worse. He stood up anyway, stretching and sighing.

  “I’ll get on it,” he promised when it didn’t look like she was going anywhere. “Where’s Sammy?”

  “Still in bed,” she answered. “I thought I’d let him sleep in.”

  Brad stared at Anna through the neck hole of the sweater he was halfway through putting on over the other two shirts he’d slept in. “Oh really?” he said. “How nice for him.”

  She cleared her throat, looking at least mildly guilty. “Okay,” she admitted grudgingly. “How about we take the afternoon off?”

  He eyed her suspiciously as he pulled his jeans on over his pajama pants. The extra layer wouldn’t do him any harm in the attic. It was going to be freezing cold up there since it was completely sealed off from the heat that came up from the lower level. And he planned to keep it that way. There was no sense in losing all of the heat from the rest of the house just so he could be warm in the attic for a few hours.

  “And do what?” he prompted her. The last time Anna had suggested a fun “day off”, he’d spent the afternoon cracking walnuts and hazelnuts. It wasn’t relaxing; his palms were still stained from the black walnut hulls.

  She held up her hands in surrender. “Whatever you want,” she said with a slight smile. “No work, I swear.”

  “I want to eat chili and read by the fire,” he said, testing her. If she mentioned mending anything or drying anything or “just getting started on” a single project, he was going to hide in the attic for the rest of the day. No matter how cold it was up there.

  “Sounds great to me,” she said. “Sammy and I need to finish that book.”

  “I’ll hold you to it,” Brad warned her as he pulled on another pair of socks and then sat down beside her to tie his boots. His feet would probably freeze in the attic without them.

  Anna held up two fingers solemnly. “You have my word that there will be only relaxation. Scout’s honor.”

  Brad grinned at her. “You weren’t a Scout.”

  “No,” she admitted. “But I probably qualify by now, don’t you think?”

  “You probably do,” he allowed as he stood up. “I guess I’ll say that’s close enough and believe you,” he said with a smile as he stepped into the hallway and pulled the ladder down. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

  Once he’d closed the attic door behind him, he lit a few oil lamps to help the pale, weak sunlight that was struggling to get through the thick cloud cover and into the small window in the eaves. Brad glanced around the attic, trying to decide where to start. His estimate of “a few hours” might have been overly optimistic, now that he saw everything he had to look through again. Reading the labels would probably take an hour in itself, especially in the flickering light of the lamp. The labels wouldn’t help much anyway, since he wasn’t looking for something specific, so much as taking an inventory of what they had and what they might need later.

  In the end, he simply decided to go around the room clockwise and check everything out. In a stack of boxes all labeled “camping supplies,” he found several military-grade backpacks and other supplies—flares, compasses, and fire-starters. There were also several smaller, lighter backpacks, along with some tents and sleeping bags.

  As he glanced over the supplies, thinking how nice this stuff would have been to have had on the road, an idea came to him. He pulled out one of the big black backpacks and stuffed a tent, a sleeping bag, a compass, some flares, ration bars, fire starters, and a water bottle with an attached filter into it. The bag was so big that even that amount of supplies didn’t really fill it up. Then, he did the same with two other backpacks and grabbed a tarp to wrap them in.

  He didn’t anticipate anything happening to the cabin, but there was always the chance that one of them might get locked out and have to spend the night outside. He could stash these short-term emergency packs in one of the trees in the orchard. That way, everyone would be able to get to them if they needed it. If nothing else, it would probably make Anna feel better to know that the option existed. He felt like he owed her a little something for the sacrifice she was making in letting him take a half day off.

  He put the newly stuffed packs by the ladder. He’d take them down later. If he went now, he’d probably wake Sammy up, and he really wanted to go through these things alone. It wasn’t that he thought he’d find anything too crazy; it was more that Brad wanted another taste of the quiet he’d gotten in the woods yesterday. He also really needed to be able to pay attention to the things that were in the attic so that he could build a mental inventory, which would be more difficult with Sammy at his elbow all morning.

  Brad had always been a man who valued silence, but Sammy’s constant commentary didn’t bother him nearly as much as he’d thought it might at one point. When the boy had eventually grown comfortable with him again after he and Anna had returned, he had launched into a monologue that really only stopped when he was sleeping. And, for the most part, Brad really liked it.

  He was willing to bet that the kid would be happy to have a day off as well, even though Sammy seemed to enjoy being busy. He’d been a little slower to get things done over the past week. With the reminder of the break that was to come, Brad got back to his inventory with renewed vigor. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, he just had to get there.

  A few hours later, he was covered in dust and starting to get seriously hungry, but all in all, he felt pretty accomplished as he surveyed the loot he’d piled up. He’d found a few propane tanks that he could use in the grill that was on the back porch. He’d also found more ammunition for both the shotgun and pistol, which eased his mind a lot. Ammunition was one of those things he just couldn’t create on his own.

  He’d also discovered a vast collection of knives, just as big as the collection that was already in the pantry. Lee must have started collecting even more seriously after Brad had stopped visiting. All of the knives that Lee owned were well-made and durable, but these were also fairly fancy—the blades were high-quality and some had handles made of either bone or antler.

  He pocketed several of the smaller ones for Sammy. The boy spent every spare second carving these days. Brad had made sure to take the time to cut some new blocks for him during his last woodcutting session. He had a feeling that, with the new blocks of wood and the new knives, he knew exactly what Sammy would be doing on his afternoon off.

  He’d also found some more winter clothes in several of the boxes. There were long johns, thick, waterproof gloves and an assortment of heavy wool socks and woolly hats. There were a few bigger coats packed away, as well.

  Brad had found another surprise in the bottom of that box, and he couldn’t wait to share it with Anna that night. When he’d picked up the last coat, he’d found a dark glass bottle. Brad had picked it up cautiously. With Lee, one really never knew.

  He shouldn’t have been alarmed. It was a bottle of Scotch. Brad had caught his breath when he’d seen the date on the label. Not just any bottle of Scotch; Scotch that probably would have cost him an entire paycheck. He had grabbed a pair of those thick gloves and carefully pushed the bottle into one of them before he repacked the box. It was presently near the ladder, waiting to be carried down, and the idea of it warmed him up much more than the additional shirt he’d added a few hours ago when his fingers and nose had begun to go numb from the chill.

  The stack was bigger than he’d anticipated, but they would make good use of all of it. And he now
had an excellent idea of what was in the attic that they could use later. He considered the job done, and done pretty well. Anna should be happy with his progress as well as the new emergency kits and the Scotch, which he planned to save for an opportune moment.

  As he turned to go, eager to get his leisure time started, he saw something in the one corner he hadn’t explored thoroughly. The wind-up gramophone stood there in all of its glory. There was a big stack of records in a box underneath it. A flood of memory washed over him as he walked over to it, running his fingers over the fluted black horn.

  “What’s the point of this thing again, Dad?”

  “Never know when you might need some tunes!” Lee said with a laugh. “Just because the world’s gonna end, that doesn’t mean you don’t want music.”

  Brad pushed the attic door open again and carried the supplies he’d gathered down the stairs.

  “You’ve been up there all day!” Sammy said, rushing up the main stairs as soon as he heard movement. “Mom said not to bother you, but I really wanted to help.”

  Brad smiled at him. “You can help me now,” he said, pointing to the boxes of clothes. “Take the blue one into your room and the red one into mine. I’ll be back with some more stuff in just a second.”

  Anna came up and waited at the bottom of the ladder as Brad came down with the backpacks. “Did you find a lot of good stuff?” she asked.

  “I think so,” Brad said, holding out the packs. “Take a look in there.”

  She glanced through and then looked up at him, slightly confused. “I mean, it’s great to have,” she said. “But I don’t really understand what we’re going to do with them right now. It’s way too cold to camp.”

  Brad explained his idea about emergency supplies and her eyes lit up. “That’s such a good idea!” she said happily. “I’m going to feel so much better knowing that these are there.”