by A. R. Shaw
After observing Bishop, the major removed his glasses and directly stared at Bishop.
“Captain, you’ve served your country well. It’s time you went home and used that degree you earned eight years ago. You’ve done your job. Your country is thankful for your service.” He thrust his hand out to Bishop then.
Bishop looked at it, and just before too much time lapsed into awkwardness, he shook his hand with a firm grip and then swiped his thumb.
He was going home. The problem was, Bishop had no idea what that meant anymore.
Unlike Roger Tildon, Bishop had never dated in college and never had a long relationship with a steady girlfriend before he was drafted. His family was destroyed. His father had died of a heart attack shortly after he’d been drafted, and his mother and sister lived somewhere with her new husband in Seattle—a place Bishop had no desire to revisit.
Roger had two more years to go. And when Bishop told him he was being shipped back, Roger went too, but only for a short time, to visit with his family on leave. He would return for two more years of battle. At least that’s what they thought at the time.
Both of them flew home into Spokane International Airport. Roger went to his family waiting for him at the baggage claim. He’d twirled around a lovely redhead in his arms and then lifted a boy waiting for him who resembled Roger in miniature right down to the brown eyes. “Bishop!” Roger called as he was leaving through the exit. “I want you to meet my family.”
Waving, Bishop said, “I’ve got to run. Someone’s waiting. I’ll catch up later.”
Bishop left and took a cab all the way to Post Falls, Idaho. Once there, he stayed in a hotel for a few days, literally remaining in the hotel room. The trip through the airports and travel was too much. Every loud noise made his pulse race. He found himself reaching for his nonexistent M4 consistently and finding he wasn’t even armed for the first time in eight years. The absence of a weapon, on his person, was unnerving.
He finally caught up with Roger a few days later in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, just a couple miles from Post Falls. They went fishing in the glistening streams. It was quiet in the woods; only the noise of animals alerted him. He felt peaceful there. “What are you going to do now, Bishop? Now that you’re free?” Roger said as if he’d served a prison sentence instead of a stint in the military.
“I, ah, haven’t really thought about it, yet,” Bishop said as they walked through a shallow stream keeping their gear high above their heads and out of the water.
Roger stopped midstream. His voice, loud over the din of rushing water, “I know you, man. You need to be needed. Why don’t you settle somewhere nearby and keep an eye on my wife and kid? I’m sure you could get on with Idaho State College…maybe teach the weather to some naïve college kids or something.”
Like yesterday, Bishop remembered the warm sun on Roger’s face through the trees. He’d only smiled and nodded to Roger’s suggestion. He wasn’t sure about the ‘need to be needed’ part, but he certainly liked the area.
Later, Roger showed him where he lived.
Two weeks after that, Roger was gone again, and Bishop found himself camping in the same forest Roger introduced him to. After he opened a storage unit to put his spare belongings in, he never left.
Chapter 7
“Mom!” Ben shouted from her bedroom where he was snuggled up under her thick down comforter to keep warm.
“Yes, dear?” she replied as she looked through the pantry in the kitchen, searching for something to make for dinner sans the power.
“When is the electricity going to come back on?”
“I don’t know, honey. I’m sure they’re working on the lines. There’s a lot of snow on the ground so they have a hard time repairing them; it might take a few days.”
“It’s getting colder,” he said in protest to her answer.
Walking back through the house toward the living room, Maeve looked at the smoldering embers in the fireplace and then glanced to her decorative brass firewood rack and said, “Dang it. We’re out already. I wish that wood fairy would come back. Oh well, so be it. I shouldn’t depend on anyone else anyway.”
She climbed the stairs to her bedroom to try and comfort Ben and glanced out of the living room window to see a path going through the freshly fallen snow leading to her front porch. Her pulse quickening, she walked over to the window and looked around. After scanning all around her immediate area, she glanced directly underneath the window. To her surprise, Maeve saw what she had just wished for: a small pile of firewood neatly stacked and ready to be carried inside.
“So he makes day deliveries as well. Hmmm. Why didn’t he knock on the door?” Looking around at the swaying trees, she worried about him out there being exposed to elements just to bring her firewood. He could have at least come in for a cup of coffee to warm up.
“Mom? Can I put on more clothes?” Ben yelled down the stairs.
She laughed out loud. She had a history of trying to keep Ben in his clothing—he always argued with her when the time came to wear coats and gloves and other outerwear. The boy would often want to wear shorts to school in the dead of an average winter like some of the other locals around town who wore Bermuda shorts in January. She’d never understood the logic in that. “Of course,” she yelled back upstairs.
As she met him upstairs he zoomed down the hallway to his own room—to procure another sweatshirt, she imagined. He’d opened his bedroom door, and the air in the hallway was like ice, having suddenly displaced some of the warmth from upstairs. Soon Ben reemerged holding a large navy sweatshirt from his drawer and closed his bedroom door. “I’m going to warm this up by the woodstove before I put it on.”
“OK, knock yourself out. Just don’t put the shirt on the woodstove, please. The last thing we need is a fire.”
As he descended the stairs, she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps they should move into the living room downstairs and block off all the upper bedroom doors to conserve heat. With that idea in mind, she began collecting blankets, pillows, and what she needed from the bathroom for both her and her son. Closing the door behind her, she glanced at the photo on her nightstand, in a way saying goodbye to Roger’s image for a few days. Perhaps an absence would do her some good.
She carried her load down the stairs and dropped the bedding on the couch, then put the bathroom essentials into their proper place in the bathroom on the main floor. “We’re going to close off the upstairs for now to conserve our heat down here. It’ll be an adventure,” she said to Ben, who was looking at her for an explanation. “Like camping out.”
“OK, that’s a good idea, Mom.”
He was game. She hoped she could keep up the spirit of adventure because something told her things were about to get really tough. She’d foolishly limited their food supply by negligence and routine. So now she tried to look ahead to prepare for what might come. What worried her most was what would become of them in a few days once all the food ran out. What if she couldn’t get to the store?
They certainly couldn’t walk that far. They could last a few days, and she’d already decided she would skip her own lunches to conserve food for Ben. In the pit of her stomach, she was afraid she’d already failed her son.
How foolish I’ve been. I might have doomed us already.
Chapter 8
Bishop’s little place in the woods consisted of a fortified lean-to against a stone wall that led inside a cave. He was sure when scouting out a permanent residence in the forest that this spot was favored by the local bears, but after several days of surveillance, none of them ever showed up, so Bishop made the hideout his own. He’d added finesse to the structure over time, picking up pieces of scrap here and there.
Bishop also used his bank account to purchase a few items in town and utilized the scrapyard for the rest. He didn’t need much, just a safe place to lay his head in the four years since returning. At some point he thought he might return to society, but the very thought of leaving t
he peacefulness of his current surroundings made him slink further within its confines. Part of the reason for that was the fact that he’d never let his family know that he returned from war. And now that it had been four years, there was little point in explaining why. Bishop was a different man now, and he’d never return to being the same person he was before. No ambition came to him to look for a job in weather or anything else or to reunite with his family. He only wanted to remain alone.
The drip-dripping was a constant sound in the cave depths unless the ground was frozen, as the current conditions were now. The silence brought on by the sudden cold temperatures was eerie. Bishop found himself struggling to even sleep in such a vacuum. Even the unseen wild animals were spooked. He’d awoken twice last night after hearing noise he usually didn’t pay much attention to.
It was so quiet that even a passing elk alerted him to his presence. The beasts often traveled in herds, but this one, a young one, must have strayed from the group. The animal’s hoofprints still showed his path the next morning. That’s when Bishop thought the time was right to take him if he could still find him.
Bagging meat was an all-day job, and he wasn’t exactly ready for the hard work, but he suspected the Tildons needed the meat if Maeve was as prepared on the inside as he viewed the outside of their home to be. He’d bet she hardly had any food in the pantry if he looked.
Packing his bow, he also brought along an AR-10 with .308 soft-point rounds if the bow somehow failed him. Bishop wore an extra insulated jacket since overnight more than ten inches of snow had fallen. The added benefit was the relief that Maeve Tildon wouldn’t be going anywhere today either. By now she’d discovered her car didn’t work, and she was probably panicking about her circumstances.
Bishop turned and, as he always did, locked the metal gate that he had fastened to the structure to deter the temptation of theft from bear or human beast if they happened to stumble upon his little abode. No key was needed. All he needed to do was slide his thumbprint over the touchpad, though taking off a glove was a hindrance in the cold weather. At least he never lost his keys. The solar powered lock worked on minimal sunlight, and that was a good thing since it existed deep in a forest.
Bishop had to break through the snow on his way out of camp. Ten inches of snow would make the day arduous while tracking the elk, but if his hunch was right, the wildlife in the region would soon become scarce from overhunting as food ran low.
Watching the night skies was a habit, and Bishop was confident that what he’d studied and written his thesis on in college was coming true. The Maunder Minimum was upon them, and these low temperatures, so early in the year, were here to stay, and they were only just the beginning.
Chapter 9
Just before dawn the next morning, Maeve stirred, blinking her eyes in the milky blueness of a dawn too early for such a name. Yes, she was awake and could sleep no more. The air of the room was frigid as she stared up at the vaulted ceiling—the realization finally hitting her that with all the empty space above, the precious heat was fleeting too quickly into the void.
She’d slept alongside her child on a neat pallet near the woodstove and without the furnace working. She’d become a wood-feeding slave to provide the warmth needed to keep them comfortable which made her appreciate her elders’ plight in days gone by.
As Ben snored, she folded the blankets tightly against his small back as she sat up and stretched out her long legs after keeping them tucked closely underneath herself last night. Her calf muscles were stiff, so she reached for her toes within her thick woolen socks and pulled her muscles stretched and taut. Her long, lean frame allowed her to nearly reach her nose to her knees. She lifted her knees back and forth a few times to prolong the stretch.
After a few seconds, Maeve stood and padded into the kitchen by the dim blue morning light shining through the windows. She resisted the urge to light a candle, preserving the few she had for the darkness of night. She needed to get used to the pale light of day instead of illuminating the room with a flick of a switch. Then, out of habit, she flipped the Keurig switch on, and when there was no sound indicating the water was heating for her, she regained the recollection that things were not as they used to be; there was no power, there was little food, and again she called herself a fool.
“How am I going to deal without coffee? Oh man, no coffee, no heat, no food?” she whined out loud. As weary as she sounded, she looked back into the living room and spied the bundle on the floor near the glow of the fire. Her son…she had Ben. She had everything she needed.
Coffee can wait, she thought. The house was quieter than she’d ever remembered it being. The refrigerator no longer hummed; there was a break in the wind and near tons of fallen snow. Neither the settling of the foundation nor water running through pipes made the slightest of sounds. It was as if everything was halted, perhaps just for her, at this moment.
She’d bought this place with Roger brand-new before the humming refrigerator was delivered, before the settling of beams. She’d walked in with him before the builder had arrived to explain the place. She knew this was to be her place before they’d even decided to buy the house. She saw herself here with Roger before Ben was even conceived. The rooms called to her; the surrounding land wanted her here. It was home the second she stepped over the threshold.
Now this place was a sanctuary for her even though memories of Roger were here as well. Her father thought she might take Ben and move home to Maine after Roger’s death. He thought perhaps life would be too hard to remain in a place with so many reminders of her dead husband. He offered to let her and Ben move in with him in Maine in her childhood home, but she only said, “This is our home. My life is here. I can’t imagine leaving.” So she’d stayed, and she didn’t regret that decision—not then and not since. She thought she might in time, but not yet. She felt grounded here on the edge of the Kootenai National Forest.
Thinking of her father—he must be worried—she reached for her iPad. She’d charged the device before the storm and checked her e-mail. As she suspected, there were a few e-mails from family and friends reaching out in shared catastrophe. Her father said that, in Maine, the snow was halfway up the garage door and that her brother had slipped on the ice and wrecked his truck though no real harm was done. She was to call and check in with him as soon as possible.
Elizabeth, her business neighbor, mentioned her husband had slipped and had a concussion. The state of the local hospital was alarming when they’d arrived. Luckily someone was able to stitch the gash in her husband’s head, and instead of waiting around in the standing-room-only area they opted to leave and recover at home. “Avoid the hospital at all costs,” she wrote, “unless absolutely necessary.”
There were a few more relatives’ inquiries, but the one that caught her eye was her aunt in Texas saying that the many local migrant workers were returning to warmer grounds in south Mexico due to the ruined orchards and cold weather.
After scanning a few more e-mails, Maeve returned her father’s message and let him know she and Ben were totally fine. They had the advantage of wood in their backyard to keep warm. She neglected to tell him about their lack of food, but she didn’t want to worry her father any more than she had to.
Then Maeve tuned to the news app, reading that the entire country was engulfed in the severe cold crisis. She slid her finger up the screen and found on further inspection that this was a global catastrophe.
Meteorologists from around the world had collaborated and found no end to the record-breaking temperatures. NOAA called the weather phenomena a catastrophe in the making. The Maunder Minimum had struck even though the phenomenon had only been a debated theory years before, much like climate change and the ethics surrounding stem cell use.
One article predicted famine in the coming weeks of the mini ice age with the calculation of food shortages in the long term and distribution problems in the short.
Looting was expected in the next day or two as s
tores’ stocks began to dwindle to empty metal shelves. Not only that, but the deep freeze affected the war effort abroad. That was one subject Maeve no longer cared to hear about. After the death of her husband, she just didn’t care who won or who lost. The war had taken so much from her and her son that nothing else mattered. Not a battle won, a secret obtained, or an island conquered counted more than robbing her and her son of Roger. There was no cause in her mind that warranted his loss.
Maeve set the iPad on the counter after turning the device completely off to preserve the battery and ran her hands briskly over her shoulders, attempting to warm them from a sudden chill through her long-sleeved cotton Henley. She gazed out the frosted window, lost in thought and worry. Then finally she stepped away from the kitchen window as well since the icy air felt as if it was pouring freely through the glass panes. Then she had an idea and quickly grabbed a few decorative pillows from the living room sofa and brought them into the kitchen. Looking around, she realized she could stuff more blankets and pillows against the windows as insulation. That would be a task to accomplish for the day.
“Looting? I’d better get the Glock handgun Roger picked out for me and make sure it’s ready. Just in case something happens. I should have already thought of that,” she said to herself, always feeling one step behind. Maeve ran up the stairs to retrieve the weapon locked in a biosafe in her nightstand drawer.
Chapter 10
Tracking a young elk through deep snow on uneven terrain took a lot of energy, especially when trying to stay downwind of the animal. And trudging over ten inches of snow on steep slopes wouldn’t be safe on the back of his horse. This was one trip Bishop would do by himself.
