A. R. Shaw's Apocalyptic Sampler: Stories of hope when humanity is at its worst

by A. R. Shaw

  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.

  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 the 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.

  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 fat
her’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 stores’ 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.

  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.

  Having memorized the forest’s intricate paths over the past four years through all kinds of weather and forest fires—a yearly occurrence, especially in the summer months—Bishop knew every tree, bush, and stream; every boulder and ravine; and even a few of the bears and mountain lions by name.

  The aroma of burning pine wood permeated the area. He’d noticed a sharp increase in the odor over the last few days. Since the power went out, people were relying heavily on their fireplaces for the first time in recent history. No longer was it nostalgic to light up the fireplace: it was a necessity. He wondered how long it would take them to run out of their meager piles before going for the green stuff lying around readily on the forest floor, the likes of which would cause them chimney fires in no time as the creosote built up along the walls. No, these people might live in the woods, but they didn’t know how to survive in the woods. And they would soon find out what they were made of when nature put them to the test.

  He’d already traveled over three miles, and his eyes were beginning to lose their focus on the two-tone world of white with its few sparse coal projections. When he came upon his intended prey, too afraid to whisper the words out loud, which might spook the animal, he said them within, “Hello, buddy.” Bishop raised the bow while the elk stood and pawed at the snowy ground in an effort to get to the dry grass underneath. He aimed the broad head of the arrow at the side of the creature, near the heart, and let loose.

  The animal began to bolt from an enemy unheard, but the broad head of the arrow opened a decent-sized hole in the animal’s essential organs and dropped him to the ground, dead almost instantly. The kill was swift, and Bishop was thankful that he hadn’t tortured the animal or had to track a suffering creature for miles farther.

  Upon approach, he knelt in the snow, removed his glove, and ran his hand over the animal’s fawn-to-rich-brown fur. To him, each being was special and though he needed meat to survive like most people, sporting for an animal bothered him. Doing so was a waste of life. When he could, he used every part of the beast to honor the animal’s existence.

  Bishop could tell it was a young elk by his size and by the few points on the small rack that crowned his head. Unsheathing his knife at his side, he pulled out several bags from his pack as well as a tarp to make the job easier and cleaner. He set to work and took the hindquarters, neck meat, and back straps. After nearly half an hour, Bishop packed up all the meat he could carry and left a steaming mound of entrails for the local wildlife to savor. If he passed the same area within three weeks, only bleached bones would remain, and even then the animal itself would return to the earth in time.

  Bishop set out again, his legs burning and his pack overburdened with over seventy-five pounds of meat, but his efforts would keep Roger’s widow and the boy alive for a time; when the weather was too cold to hunt, they would still have meat if they used the gift wisely.

  Struggling up an incline going back the way he’d come, Bishop adjusted his pack on his shoulders and looked up at the afternoon sky. The sun shone weakly through a veil, its outline as small as the moon’s. This veil was something he was sure would seem thicker in the months ahead, as if the sun had absconded from man, fleeing for a time and taking with it the warmth of life. He predicted not all would survive. In fact, only a few, if he was right. The thought of the ravages men had ahead of them saddened him.

  As Bishop continued back to his cabin struggling ever more with the weight upon his back, he contemplated the best way to handle delivering the meat. Stopping first to saddle Jake, his horse, to help with the trek to Maeve’s, he could drop the pack on her porch after dark, but he wasn’t sure if she’d discover the meat in time and that could attract unwanted predators to her location.

  In fact, the more he thought about how to deliver the goods, he found no way to avoid actually talking to her. He’d been eluding conversation with the wood deliveries. Part of him wanted to have a real conversation with the redheaded widow, but the other part of him did not. However, at the end of his argument with himself, he fell on the idea that taking care of them was a duty he owed to Roger.

  She probably didn’t even know how to butcher the meat, and he needed to get into the house anyway because he had a new deadbolt to replace the flimsy lock on the back door. Also, he needed to see if she had snow tires in the garage that could replace the low-tread wheels on her FJ before he sought out new ones. That task alone would take part of the evening, and that was only if she let him inside the door to begin with.

  11

  By sundown, Maeve had most of the first-floor windows covered in an extra layer of protection against the cold. Upstairs, she’d closed all of the doors and used towels or clothing to block the warm air from escaping under the doorframes. Even the drains in the sinks drafted cold air into the rooms, so she cut up a rubber mat to cover the holes when not in use. Once she was finished trying to insulate the house from the frigid outdoors, she heard a knock on the front door.

  “Someone’s at the door, Mom,” Ben said as he sat up from playing with his cars on the living room floor.

  Maeve left the kitchen and said on her way to the door, “I don’t know who would be out in this weather. It’s way below freezing out there.” She reached for her pistol on the high shelf of the hall closet on her way to the door. Ben watched her in surprise as she handled the Gloc
k 17. She put up a silent finger to her mouth to usher him into quietness.

  Holding the gun behind her back, Maeve peeked through the peephole in the door to see who was on the other side. She saw him standing there, the man who secretively delivered wood stacks to her door, the one her son called the hermit.

  “I’ve got to ask him his name,” she whispered.

  “What, Mom? Who is it?” Ben asked.

  Without answering her son’s question, she said, “Ben, can you go in the kitchen for me and stay out of sight?”

  “Why, Mom?” he said, looking confused.

  The guy knocked again, and she jumped this time. She let out a frustrated breath and then opened the door a crack. The brisk, cold wind invaded her home.

  He stood there with his pack weighed down and dressed in insulated camouflage as if he’d never left the war. He stared right through her with those blue eyes and dirty light-blond hair. The beard on his face gave him a wild man look, though the eyes were gentle. She would have feared him if it weren’t for the eyes as blue as glacier ice. His complexion was weathered too, and she could tell he’d once been an attractive man; he still was, but in a torn and rugged way.

  The frigid air passed freely inside, and he suddenly said, “Don’t open your door to strangers, Maeve.” His statement came out harsh, a condemnation of her actions.

  “I…I know who you are.”

  “You can’t do that. It’s not safe,” he said, frustrated.

  “I have a gun.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t tell anyone you have a gun. Don’t say the words.”

  She couldn’t believe he was giving her a hard time.