The Darkest Winter

by Lindsey Pogue

  “Look,” Beau said holding it up. “It’s hard.”

  “It looks like it. What’s it called?”

  “It’s a Car—” He looked at Took.

  “Carrick Bend—”

  “Carrick Bend,” Beau echoed, chest out and proud. “It’s a cargo net.”

  “That will be useful. You’ll have to show me.”

  “I don’t know if I can, but I’ll try.”

  “Let’s clean this up before Jade has a conniption,” Took muttered.

  “A what?”

  Took glanced from Jade, oblivious to his mutterings, then to Beau. “Nothing,” he muttered. So, Took was ornery and not just with me. I liked it.

  I glanced around a lifetime of artifacts around the room. The kitchen was just a nook in the far corner of the cabin, barely large enough for two people, but Jade didn’t seem to mind sharing. There were two shelves with plates, cups, and cooking utensils, some of them looked metal but they were mostly wood. A large fur draped the back of the futon Thea was curled up on as she flipped the pages of a sketchbook. I stepped close. They were images of animals and familiar totem symbols, yet I didn’t know their meaning.

  “Those are nice,” I told Thea, and I noticed a large J at the bottom of each sketch.

  “Jade did them,” Thea explained. She stretched her legs out, barely able to rest of her feet on a giant tree stump that served as the coffee table. “No feet,” I whispered.

  Thea glanced at Jade, ensuring she hadn’t seen and let her feet fall.

  “Everyone grab a seat,” Jade said, unstacking the bowls from the shelf. “Sit up at the table, Sophie and I can take the couch.”

  I claimed the chair Took set out for me, feeling like I was one of the kids while Jade buzzed around the cabin like mothers do. She seemed happy to have all of us around, which made it feel like we were less of an inconvenience while I figured things out.

  “Dad,” she said, reservation in her voice. She glanced out the window at the dark sky. “Del should’ve been back by now. Will you see if he’s out in the shed and bring him in for dinner?”

  She glanced over her shoulder as Took grabbed his jacket. “That man gets so caught up dressing the meat after hunting, he loses track of time. He’d likely be out there all night, the best cuts strung and hung up.”

  Cold air fanned through the room as he shut the door.

  The caribou, I remembered. Del had gone to salvage the meat.

  Sophie sat a bowl of soup in front of me. “I hope it’s good,” she said, wiping her palms on her apron, well-worn and stained. No longer white but tanned by time and use.

  The steam wafted up my nose. “It smells amazing.”

  Sophie blushed and set the other bowl in front of Beau. “Is it fish again?” he asked.

  “It’s potatoes and leeks. And yes, there’s fish, so hush.” She smiled at him and walked back over to the stove.

  “Careful now,” Jade said, handing Thea her bowl carefully. “Up to the table with you.”

  Thea didn’t protest. Slowly and carefully, she made her way over to set her bowl on the table beside the rest of us.

  Sophie sat a bowl and spoon at Took’s seat and sat down on the futon with her soup. “It smells okay,” Sophie said relieved.

  “It’s Dad’s favorite,” Jade said and pulled her apron off over her head. “Though he’d never admit it.” I envied their little piece of wilderness even though I knew it was endless work.

  Jade walked over to the window, peering out at the darkness.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Are you going to eat?”

  “Yes, but I’ll wait for Dad and Del to come in.” She waved for me to eat. “Go on, no sense in it getting cold.”

  Jade rubbed her arms and pulled the drapes closed. “I think it’s time to replace the window.” She smiled and sat down on the futon by Sophie. “As much as we try to live on our own, I’m getting too old to be cold.” She smiled, a kindness exuding from her that made me feel surprisingly safe.

  I could see why the kids were so at ease here; Jade made it easy to relax and feel welcome. So much so, I momentarily forgot the guys would look for us come tomorrow morning.

  I swallowed a spoonful of soup and shut my eyes. It was salty and warm and had just the right amount of pepper.

  “How do you like it?” Jade asked, glancing between us. She patted Thea’s foot, eyes wide, and she peeked in her bowl to find it half empty.

  “Amazing,” Sophie said.

  “Good then. Now you know how to make it.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “If I can remember.”

  “I’m sure you will. Sarah, Jet’s wife—that’s my son—she caught on quick. Last I heard she’d even spruced it up enough, and it became one of his favorite dinners.”

  “Where did you say they lived?” I asked.

  “Delta Junction, it’s about two-and-a-half hours away.” She sighed. “I know it’s not far, but when you don’t get out much, it seems like the other side of the country.” She crossed her legs and settled into the futon. “He moved there probably five ago years now. He met Sarah in town, and they fell in love. She’s a good girl, and they have a lot in common, but subsistence living isn’t one. Her father’s got a welding shop in Junction, so that’s where they settled.”

  She stared down at her fingers, turning the band around and around on her finger. She missed him. I realized she was the first mother I’d met who had lost her child to the outbreak, at least the first sane mother. I couldn’t imagine how hard it must’ve been for her.

  Jade cleared her throat. “He doesn’t get out here much to see us anymore.”

  I swallowed another spoonful and licked my lips. “Wait, so, he survived then?” Del, Took, Jade, and her son? While it was lucky for her, it seemed startlingly unfair in the scheme of things when I thought about the all kids and parents they’d lost.

  Jade’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry?”

  “He survived the outbreak,” I clarified.

  But Jade’s brow furrowed, transforming her entire face from one of openness to desperate concern. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

  I looked at Sophie who seemed as confused as I was. “From the virus outbreak,” I continued. “Last December—the H1N1/12 that ravaged the lower-forty-eight before it made its way here . . .” I worried she was crazy, and I’d made a dire mistake in letting us stay here. “We’ve all lost our families,” I said calmly, measuring her sanity as her eyes searched our faces.

  Her uncertainty hardened. “Is this a cruel joke?” she rasped, and there was no mistaking the fear in her voice. She wasn’t crazy, she was clueless.

  I paled. “No—I would never joke about that.” I dropped my spoon into my bowl and faced her fully. “We were all sick,” I told her, hoping that something might register in the blue depths of her eyes. “We all lost our families. We were strangers five months ago.”

  Jades searched our faces, her chest rising and falling more quickly. Beau and Thea—we all stared at her, just as confused as she was.

  “You don’t get visitors,” I breathed. Being holed up here all winter, they had no reason to go anywhere. It seemed impossible they didn’t know about the virus at all, and miraculous that they’d never even gotten infected. My mind ticked through the possibilities of what that meant exactly. How many others were there? What did that mean for their physiology—how did that play into Sophie’s theory?

  But the dread whitening Jade’s face was enough to make every whirling curiosity disappear as I realized there was a more delicate way to explain it and it was too late. “Jade,” I breathed. “When was the last time you saw your son?”

  Her brow lifted and her eyes widened. “What?” She stood up as the panic set in. I could imagine the lump moving up her throat and the racing of her heart as she felt the weight of my words and thought of her son. It was how I felt when I thought I would die. It was how I felt when I thought my sister would die. It was how I’d felt many
times since.

  She hurried to the door and reached for her jacket. “Del!” she shouted, flinging open. She stopped on the porch, unmoving.

  “Jade!” If I’d given her a heart attack, I could never forgive myself. Wincing, I stepped out the door after her. “Jade—”

  Del stood in his coat with his rifle in one hand, pulling a sled loaded with frozen meat behind him. He hadn’t even been there.

  “Where the hell were you?” Took complained as he came out of the shed. “I thought maybe you’d snuck off for a cigar without me—”

  An engine rumbled behind us, and I turned around to see the plow on the front of the F-350.

  “I brought more company,” Del said, meeting my gaze. “I should say they found me.”

  Chapter 36

  Jackson

  Alex jumped out of the truck before I’d brought it to a stop outside the cabin. I reached for the door handle as a woman hurried from the porch to Del, but when I noticed Elle, standing just outside the doorway, eyes wide and shimmering, it gave me pause.

  She was alive like Del had promised. Her ponytail was crooked and her shirt was torn, but she was standing there in one piece, practically glowing as the light spilling through the doorway.

  She looked at me, lips pursed, and she winced as she reached over and rubbed her arm hanging limply at her side.

  Letting out a ragged breath, I scrubbed my hands over my face, and flung the door open, fear finally subsiding.

  The moment I stepped out of the truck, Elle began to sob. “Jackson, I almost killed them,” she cried. “I almost killed the kids. I’m so sorry—”

  “Shhh. You guys are okay.” I wrapped my arms around her, feeling her stiffen and flinch as I drew her closer. When I pulled away, she looked at me, searching my face for only a second before she grabbed desperately to my jacket, balling it up in her fist, and cried.

  She was warm and solid, a fireball nestled against my chest, and a sense of calm came over me in a way I’d never felt before. The tension eased from my shoulders and I rested my cheek against her head.

  “I knew I had to get out of there,” she said in a rush. “I knew they would come back if we stayed, but the caribou—I hadn’t seen the caribou . . .” Her words choked away as she tried to catch her breath, and like a bullet casing dislodged from its chamber, the calm spiked to apprehension.

  I looked down at her. “Who would come back?”

  Elle pulled away, blinking up at me with wet, tired eyes. “You didn’t go to the house?”

  Hesitant, I shook my head.

  She faltered backward, face slackened and her chest heaving.

  “What happened, Elle?” I took a step closer, concern mounting as she remained silent.

  “There were men,” she said. “Three men who came, we’re fine and they’re dead, but they said there were others. So we left.”

  Breath wouldn’t come quick enough. “What men, Elle?” I leaned closer. “What did they do?” I asked more softly.

  She shook her head and wiped the tears from her eyes. “Nothing—they did nothing to us. They only scared us.” I waited impatiently for her to continue. “Jackson, we’re fine. Sophie and I shot them. You’d be proud of her, actually.” She said it lightly, but those tears were not for nothing. There was something she wasn’t telling me. She glanced at the man and woman speaking frantically by the sled, and I knew our conversation would have to wait until later.

  “—have to check on him!” The woman’s hands flailed as she shrieked, desperate.

  Elle wiped the tears from her cheeks. “They have a son in Delta Junction,” she said. “And they didn’t know about the outbreak, until now. About any of it.”

  I looked at the old man standing in the doorway, peering out at the couple as the man pulled his wife into his arms. They’d carved themselves a place so self-sufficient they were cut off from the world, and the chaos that came with it.

  “I’ll take you to Delta Junction,” I told them. They didn’t know what they were up against, and after what happened to Elle and the kids, I wouldn’t let them take any chances.

  The man and woman looked at me. Tears filled her eyes and worry creased his brow. “You helped me with my family, I’ll do what I can to help yours.”

  Chapter 37

  Jackson

  Alex, Del, and I [LL92]drove nearly the whole way in silence. It felt necessary after we’d dropped a bomb on them, potentially shattering their world. Del’s attention was fixed on the road, lit only by the headlights of his old, clunky Dodge. Although I’d offered to drive, he’d needed to do this on his terms and in his own way. I’d thought about bringing two vehicles in case we needed room for one more, but I knew it was unlikely and false hope wouldn’t do Del or his wife any favors.

  Del grabbed the empty can from the cup holder attached to the dash and spit into it. He was like an old cowboy, but instead of living out west he was here, in the tundra and wooded mountains of the arctic.

  He looked at me askance. “Birch bark,” he said. “I chew when I’m restless. You want any?”

  I knew birch wood and spruce gum were used a lot in the wildlands but a replacement for chewing tobacco was a first. I shook my head. “Thanks though.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Alex dozed in the center seat, his head lulling back in exhaustion. I didn’t blame him. Part of my mind longed for a glimpse of sleep, but I knew it was a long time coming yet. It felt more like a week had passed than a single day, and I was feeling the effects.

  I stretched my legs out as much as I could, trying not to get too comfortable in the truck’s warmth.

  “So,” Del said, clearing his voice. It was rough from disuse and maybe a little scared. “The whole world, huh?”

  “All of it.” It still sounded fictional, staying it out loud.

  “What else do I need to know about it?”

  How did one explain the downfall of humanity on a global scale and the aftermath that followed when all that likely mattered to this man was finding his son? “It started in the lower-forty-eight and spread. It mimicked the flu, or maybe it was, I don’t know. There was a rumor it was a government experiment gone wrong, and another that it was some ancient virus unearthed in the climate change. But if that’d been the case I doubt the biggest outbreak would’ve been in New York so early on.”

  “There was never any explanation then?”

  I shook my head. “It was too late by the time they realized how bad it really was.” I remembered the first day I’d heard about it on the news, and all I could do was shake my head, grateful we were in the middle of nowhere and not some metropolis. A lot of good it did us. “So much for innovation in the twenty-first century. Science couldn’t even save us.”

  Del glanced at me. “Maybe that’s what caused it.”

  Damn. He was probably right.

  “And your family survived. How did you manage that? Are you a prepper or something?”

  “No,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’m not a prepper. And I did lose my family—my father, my daughter, and wife.”

  Saying out loud first the first time was like sticking a knife in my heart and cutting me through. The hurt hadn’t gone away even if it’s been more easily masked.

  “I should prepare myself for the worst, is what you’re telling me?”

  Yes, he should prepare himself, his son was either dead or alive, and if it was the latter, he would not be Jet that Del remembered. He would’ve come home if he was. “If he is alive, he’ll be different. You should prepare yourself for that.”

  The truck bounced going over the rough road, and Alex swayed in his seat beside me.

  The outbreak had transformed the world—I could feel it in the silence, a void unlike anything I’d ever experienced. You could feel a charged around [H93]people who survived, and energy you could feel if you stopped to notice it. You could practically feel what was coming, good or bad.

  “It makes sense,” Del said. “Elle not being thei
r mother,” he clarified. “I thought she looked too young, but you never know these days.”

  “She found them in Whitely when she was looking for her sister. They all lost their parents.”

  “It was nice of you to take them in,” he said.

  “That was Elle,” I told him.

  Del looked at me then peered out at the passing Delta Junction sign on the highway. “You know,” he said. “When I first met Jet, he was a punk kid who was giving his mama a rough time. I knew it was because his father never treated him right, always drunk and belligerent, but I liked to think he was a decent kid under all the hurt.”

  “I didn’t realize he wasn’t your son.”

  “Oh, he is. That’s how it works, you know? They wiggle their way into your life. It starts with seeing a spark in them you haven’t noticed before, and maybe no one else has either. You see something that makes you want to work for it and somehow you build a friendship and a bond you never expected. Jet was never my son by blood but we were closer than he ever was with his father.”

  Suddenly, I was acutely aware of Alex sleeping in the seat next to me. I’d never thought of him as my son, still didn’t and never would[LL94], but he was a kid in need of a family, he had been most of his life by the sound of it, and I wanted to be someone he could count on no matter what. “Were you a family friend or something?”

  “I was Kel’s best friend, and I watched the way he treated his family, maybe I even felt a little guilty for not stepping into their turmoil more while he was alive. But Jade has always been a good woman, and deserved someone to cherish her and her kid, and after twenty-three years . . .”

  Del turned onto the main road and we passed the high school Alex and I had scavenged only hours ago. “Sometimes families have a way for forming, even if we don’t think we need or want them.”

  The kids, Elle, and I had never planned on staying together; it was something we agreed early on. But I knew saying goodbye would be difficult, it was part of the reason I wanted to stay detached for so long. But growing closer or not, Hartley wasn’t the place for me, I could feel it in my bones. “Elle and the kids are going to Hartley Bay,” I told him. “There’s a safe zone there, promising community and safety. It will be the best place for them.”