Ben went on to describe all the medical problems faced by people in the city. We had some of the same problems here, but on a much smaller scale. Ben said the hospitals had become morgues since so many patients died there after the hospital generators ran out of fuel: people who were on ventilators, of course, and people who needed oxygen, or IV’s, or medicines to keep them alive.
He said the saddest place in the city was the children’s hospital, where hundreds of parents had to watch their children die in their arms. People started calling hospitals “black holes” because if you were sick enough to go there, you’d probably never come back out.
After a while, doctors started making house calls, going door to door in search of people needing treatment. Sometimes the doctor would have to do emergency surgery right there in somebody’s front room or on the kitchen table, but the outcome was often much better than going to the hospital, where out of control secondary diseases would kill you even if you survived the surgery.
Ben then described the hunger. He said it was not nearly as bad as the thirst; in fact, he had kind of gotten used to being hungry. “Being hungry isn’t that bad,” he said. “You just have to do something to get your mind off it.”
I couldn’t imagine being hungry; or thirsty either, for that matter. I realized just how lucky I was to be living right where I was. According to Ben, people had gotten so hungry that they were eating stray dogs and cats, catching birds and squirrels, even mice and rats to eat. After the President had ordered the big grain elevators opened and the grain distributed, people had to figure out how to grind it up so it could be eaten, often without even being cooked. Ben said his dad had used the marble bottom of one of his bowling trophies against a small slab of concrete to grind up the corn and wheat kernels so they could be digested.
“A little pigeon rolled in cornmeal tastes pretty good when you’re hungry,” he said, only half joking.
Before we went to sleep, Ben asked me what the date was. When I told him it was April 13th, he smiled—a real smile this time, even though it was still kind of sad—and said that his 16th birthday was in five days. I told him we could have a birthday party for him, and we could get in the car and I could teach him to drive, even though we couldn’t actually go anywhere. He smiled again and said he’d like that.
Chapter 17
When I woke up the next morning, I stretched and looked over at the bed next to me to see if Ben was stirring. All that I saw was a nicely made bed and, startled, I wondered for a second if I’d dreamed the whole thing the night before. Then I heard the back door shut. I pulled on my boots and ran after him. He wasn’t hard to catch up with and, when I did, I reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Hey, where’re you going?” I asked him when he turned around.
“Just going,” he replied.
“But why? You can stay, you know.” When he didn’t answer, I added, “Don’t you want someplace to live?”
“Yeah, more than anything, but you guys don’t need someone else to feed. You don’t owe me anything.”
“It’s not about owing anybody anything,” I answered, a little perturbed. “You need a place to live and we got a place. We got enough to eat and to feed you too.”
He looked warily at me before he said, a little suspiciously, “Why? What’s in it for you?”
“I don’t know,” I snapped. “Why does there have to be something in it for me? Why can’t we just be nice people wanting to help someone out?”
“I don’t need any…” he started to say, then stopped and sighed. “I don’t get it. I tried to steal from you and my friend tried to shoot your brother and your dog…”
“He did shoot them,” I interrupted.
Ben looked sheepish. “Yeah, well, why would you and your parents want to help me out after all that?”
“Because you need help,” I said. “Hell, you’re just a kid. Those other guys are men. They can take care of themselves, but you…”
“I can take care of myself!”
“Yeah, now, while the weather’s nice, but what about next winter? What’re you going to do then, tough guy?” I know I was taunting him a little, but I was worried about him. I felt like he was my kid brother, like Calvin, and I didn’t want to think about Calvin being out there, homeless and starving with no one offering him a place to stay.
He started to get defensive, started to tell me to go to hell or something, but then he just shrugged his shoulders and started to cry. This time he cried out loud, and my heart broke for him. I put my arms around him and let him cry into the shoulder of my sweatshirt for several minutes until it seemed he had no more tears left in him.
“It’s okay, man,” I said, trying to be as comforting as I could. “It’s okay. We really want you to stay here.”
He just nodded and we started back toward the house. By the time we went inside, Mom was up and starting breakfast. She didn’t glance at us as we went back upstairs, so I could get dressed and Ben could compose himself. I had the feeling that she had seen us out the window and didn’t want to embarrass him.
At breakfast, Ben timidly asked Dad if he thought that any of the guys he was with were shot when they ran off, saying, “I just don’t want them out there bleeding to death with no one to help them. They’re really not bad guys. They helped me a lot took care of me after my parents died.”
Dad answered, a little perturbed, “Well, they ran off and left you hanging there. But don’t worry; we shot over their heads. We didn’t want to hurt ‘em, just scare ‘em off. Alex and I’ll go down there and check around later just to be sure.” Then he added, just to remind Ben who actually got hurt, “If he’s up to it.”
Later that day, Skylar and Jenny came to visit. I ran out to meet them as soon as I heard the clip-clop of their horses’ hooves on the pavement of the highway. It scared me to think they had ridden over here with those marauders on the loose, but hopefully they were long gone by now. I was kissing Skylar hello when Ben and Calvin walked up to us. I purposely held on to the kiss just a little longer than normal to show Ben she belonged to me, just in case he got any ideas.
Jenny jumped down and said hello before looking to me with raised eyebrows as if to say, “C’mon, introduce him, will you?”
“This is Ben,” I said casually. “He’s going to be staying with us for a while.” Ben looked at me a little gratefully, probably since I didn’t mention just how he came to be with us.
Jenny walked over to him and stuck out her hand to shake, saying, “It’s nice to meet you, Ben. Are you going riding with us?” I could tell she was very interested in him. Her voice sounded different—flirtatious, I guess.
Ben returned the interest, but replied, “I don’t know how to ride a horse.”
Jenny giggled—actually giggled—and said, “That’s okay. You can ride with me.” Ben eagerly agreed.
Calvin didn’t seem too happy about Ben taking over his usual spot and said, “I can saddle up Big Red for him. He’s gentle enough for a baby to ride.”
“Oh, Calvin, you can ride Big Red,” Jenny replied condescendingly. “Let the guest choose.”
Of course, Ben chose to ride with Jenny. Calvin suddenly decided he had something else to do and went back in the house with a scowl on his face. I felt kind of bad for him. After all, he and Jenny had had a thing going for a while and now he was being thrown out like yesterday’s trash. I felt sorry for him, but not enough to go after him.
We rode around our land, keeping an eye out for the bad guys, which Ben kept reminding us were not really bad guys. We eventually told the girls the whole story of what had happened the night before, and they listened with a sort of cautious wonder. After all, not many exciting things happened in Holt County, either before or since PF Day.
Skylar turned halfway around in the saddle so she could hug me tight, saying, “Now I won’t be able to sleep, worrying about you.” I knew she was overreacting, but I enjoyed her concern anyway. I glanced at Ben because I felt
his eyes on us and was a little pissed off to see him staring longingly at Skylar. He quickly looked away when he noticed my glare.
All day long, I kept catching him looking at Skylar and laughing a little too loudly at her jokes and maneuvering himself to stand closer to her anytime he could. Skylar seemed not to notice, but Jenny did, and I could see the jealousy growing with every little bit of attention Ben showed Skylar. I could tell I was going to have to have a serious talk with that boy later on that night.
Dad and Alex had taken a couple of the horses and ridden the perimeter of the farm, looking for traces of Ben’s friends and, finding none, they rode over to check on the Thomas’s and the other neighbors, like Mr. and Mrs. Caruthers and Johnny and Crystal Phillips. Nobody had seen any men, but Johnny said one of his chickens was missing. That in itself didn’t prove anything, but Dad told everyone to be careful anyway. “Better to let ‘em take a few chickens than to risk being shot at,” he told them.
We were out riding all afternoon and came back for dinner around sunset. After brushing the horses down and putting them in the paddock, we went inside. I made sure to seat Skylar between Robin and me at dinner so Ben couldn’t sit by her. Instead, he took a seat directly across from her and, even though Jenny sat next to him, he spent more time looking at Skylar. Skylar tried to ignore him for the most part and kept turning to me to whisper silly things in my ear, which kept us both giggling at the table. At one point, Mom gave me a look that reminded me it was not polite to whisper, so we just held hands under the table and gazed at each other. I thought that would send Ben a clear message.
Either he hadn’t been paying attention to my message or he didn’t care, because later that night, after we had all gone to sleep, I woke up in the middle of the night and Ben was gone. Great, I thought. I started down the stairs quietly and met Skylar halfway, tiptoeing up to get me.
“Can you put your friend on a leash?” she whispered with a meaningful grin on her face. I thought about taking Skylar up to my room instead of back down to the living room, but I wasn’t sure if Ben could be trusted alone with Jenny, so I reluctantly led Skylar back down.
Ben was sitting near Jenny, but his eyes lit up when he saw Skylar and he said, “You’re back!” just a little too enthusiastically for my taste. Jenny’s too, apparently, because she hauled off and punched him in the shoulder.
He looked at her all innocent-like and said, “What was that for?” She just shook her head and turned away from him.
After we settled down and talked for an hour or so, the girls said they wanted to go to sleep, so Ben and I went back to my room. I told him that Skylar was my girlfriend and we were probably going to get married someday, so he’d better back off. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Whatever, man. I didn’t mean anything by it. Just being friendly.”
“A little too friendly,” I grumbled, to which he turned his back on me. I wasn’t very happy with the outcome of the conversation, and I still didn’t trust him. I knew I’d have to keep my eye on Ben, and I didn’t sleep well at all that night.
Chapter 18
The girls went home the next day. To my satisfaction—and Jenny’s delight—Ben paid little attention to Skylar and focused most of his interest on Jenny. Still, I didn’t quite trust him, so when I rode to town later in the week to visit Skylar, I promised Calvin I’d do his chores for a week if he found some way to keep Ben occupied at home. Mom wasn’t too keen on me riding alone, so Dad volunteered to go with me, saying he had some business in town to take care of anyway.
We took the wagon, which Dad loaded up with some buckets of grain and tubs of homemade butter to trade. With two milk cows, our family had more than enough milk and butter, so we could afford to sell off some of our supply. Since we couldn’t keep the milk cold for long, we usually ended up giving a lot of it to the dogs and the barn cats, but the butter kept longer without refrigeration and we had plenty to spare.
Dad was making plans to repurpose the old storm cellar out back into a cold cellar, but the past winter had been too mild to collect enough ice to line it with. Still, it was cooler than the outside air, and we had been storing our smoked meats, along with some apples, carrots, onions, and potatoes in there for use in the warmer weather.
I had a great time in town with Skylar, as always, and Dad was able to trade his wares for lumber to make shelves for the cold cellar.
The next day, we got right to work on building shelves and, although Ben tried to help, he really didn’t know anything about using tools or making things. It took twice as long, because we kept having to stop and show him how to do something; nonetheless, Dad said it was important that he learned how to do things right.
The idea behind a cold cellar started way back in olden days, before there was any kind of electricity or anything else to keep things cold. It’s basically a hole in the ground, fortified so it doesn’t cave in, although if you’re lucky enough to have a natural cave on your property, it saves you a lot of work. The hole has to be several feet underground so that the food is kept at a constant 50° all year. Dad had us dig another, smaller room at the back of the original storm shelter, with its own thick, insulated door to keep food even colder. If you cut blocks of ice from a frozen pond or, like Dad planned to do, set water out in buckets on below-freezing days, then put the ice in the “freezer” room and cover them with straw, they will stay mostly frozen through the summer, keeping whatever is stored in with them frozen, as well.
Another alternative that Dad thought about was using our electric deep freeze and burying it in the ground, but he decided that once you added the blocks of ice inside of it, you wouldn’t have enough room for much food. Instead, he just used the door of the freezer as the door to the new freezer room, and the shelves of the freezer to store food on.
Dad decided that we needed to expand the storm cellar, so we spent several days digging it deeper into the ground. Ben complained to me the entire time when Dad wasn’t around to hear it and he’d lean on his shovel to take a break whenever he could, but when Dad showed up again, he looked busy and eager to work. When I mentioned his behavior to Dad, he said, “Don’t worry, I know his kind. He’ll either get used to working like us, or he’ll get tired of it and leave.” I have to hand it to my Dad; he’s a shrewd man.
Mom is a shrewd woman too. Ben was always giving her compliments and rushing over to help her carry something light up the stairs, but was curiously absent when she needed someone to do the hard work. Mom noticed right away and, after a couple of days of this, she pulled him aside and had a talk with him.
I know I shouldn’t have, but I eavesdropped on the conversation. She told him, nicely, that actions speak louder than words—something she always said—and that a real compliment to her would be for him to offer to take some of the tougher jobs off her hands, like filling and dumping the washing machine tub or wringing the clothes out. In fact, she added, if he really wanted to show his appreciation, he could take over the laundry altogether. I had to stifle my laughter at her cleverness.
We were out checking the fence line one day, about two weeks after Ben started staying with us. Ben, Calvin, and I had gone one direction while Dad and Alex had gone in the opposite direction, and we were supposed to fix any wire or post that was down. At one point, Ben went off behind some trees to relieve himself and never came back. When I went to check on him and tell him to hurry up, he quickly stumbled out from behind a big clump of bushes and said, “C’mon, we’re wasting daylight.”
I could have gotten on to him about how he was the one wasting time, that he always liked to waste time; I just shook my head and went back to checking the fence.
That night, after we had been asleep for several hours, I woke up to the sound of the back door shutting and the dogs barking. I noticed that Ben’s bed was made up, and he wasn’t in it. Déjà vu.
When I looked out my window, I saw Ben petting the dogs to settle them down, and then walking away with three men. I remembered the strang
e way he had acted earlier that day. He must have been talking to his friends in the bushes during his ridiculously long bathroom break. They had come back for him. Maybe he was right—they weren’t so bad after all if they cared enough to come back for him.
I went downstairs and found Dad watching them from the kitchen window. I asked him if we should go after him, but he said, “No, he’s gotta make his own choices,” and I knew he was referring to the choice of whether to work hard or leave.
Dad told me that Ben had taken a loaf of bread and some ham, but that was okay. He would have given the kid more if he’d asked. I have to say, this time I wasn’t sad to see him go, but I did hope he would be all right. I mean, I liked the guy and all; he was just kind of a pain in the butt. I guess he wasn’t so different than any of us brothers, when I got to thinking about it. Unlike my brothers, however, I didn’t share a history with Ben, so I was more willing to let him go than if it had been Alex or Calvin. Well, maybe just Calvin.
Jenny was the one who I thought would be really upset to see him go, but the next time she and Skylar visited, she didn’t act surprised at all when she found out that he wasn’t there. I thought that was odd until she let slip that Ben was living in town with the other three men, in a house whose owner had died last winter.
Great, I thought—now he’d be able to see Skylar more than I could.
Jenny made me feel better by saying that she and Ben were dating now, and that he and his friends were doing odd jobs around town for the necessities of life. She said his friends seemed nice enough, although they weren’t very motivated. Apparently, they worked only enough to get some food, and then they would just leave and go home. They were allowed to live in the house for free because no one owned it, or at least no one that anyone knew about.
Teenage Survivalist Series [Books 1-3] Page 11
