Teenage Survivalist Series [Books 1-3]

by Casey, Julie L.

  “Did you find him?” Dad startled me out of my wits.

  “Yes.”

  “Where was he?” he asked.

  “Uh…just walking around.”

  Dad eyed me suspiciously, then we both jumped as the hogs began squealing at Irv, who was carrying two buckets of feed toward the hog pen. Dad looked back at me again as if he was going to say something but then decided against it and walked away to the barn.

  When I looked over at Irv, he was staring at me, his eyes widened from the panic of almost being caught. Then he smiled slightly and his eyes became hooded again as he shook his head and went back to his chore.

  Later, Irv made one of his rare appearances in my bedroom. “Damn, it’s cold up here, Taylor.”

  “I like it that way,” I said.

  “That was close today. You don’t think Dad caught on about the…thing, do you?”

  “He’s suspicious, but no, I don’t think he knows anything. Yet anyway.” Irv nodded and turned to leave. “You know he’ll find out sooner or later, right?”

  Irv paused and sighed, his shoulders dropping in resignation. “Yeah, I know.” He looked back at me. “I’m hoping to get my first batch made before he does though.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Should be ready in a week or two. Meanwhile I’m going to stay away from it. You should too.”

  “I will. I promise.” I made a mental note to change my path to the woods so that I wouldn’t have to walk by the shed.

  Chapter 13

  Christmas

  I visited Fern several more times that month, Spook always pressed to my side like a distorted shadow of me. The more time I spent with Fern, the fonder I became of her, and I began to feel relaxed and safe in her little cabin. It was almost as if the spirit of Grammy filled the small space, protecting and loving me like she always had. I was sure it was she who had sent Spook to find me that day in the woods.

  Fern began teaching me the old ways “to help me survive whatever comes,” she said. I still hadn’t told her just how difficult survival for me had been, but I appreciated the knowledge she shared so lovingly.

  As I marked off my calendar one day back at home, I saw with some indifference that the next day was Christmas. Christmas had never held the same magic for me as for other children, who could always count on stockings full of treats and presents under a tree. I read about that kind of family life and occasionally we would get to experience it at Grammy’s or a foster home if we were lucky enough to be there at Christmastime, but usually we were with Mom and Dad whose excuse was always that we couldn’t afford any of that commercial nonsense. But I knew it was because they needed the money for their cigarettes and ‘ice’.

  Nevertheless, I decided if I couldn’t celebrate with my family, I’d celebrate with my new friends, Spook and Fern. After all, Christmas was supposed to be about love, family, and Jesus, not about all the presents, and I was beginning to feel more a part of Fern’s family than my own. I figured I could spare one of Grammy’s hankies for Fern, just to show her how special she had become to me. Finding a gift for Spook was easy—anything to eat. I figured some of the butchered hog entrails would be perfect. I wondered if dogs could be contaminated with the ghosts of people but decided that the spirit of Grammy would protect him. I packaged my gifts with whatever leftover wrapping paper I could find in Aunt Helen’s storage and stowed them in my pack along with some snacks for me and of course my field guides.

  That morning, I left early before anyone was awake. I didn’t want to chance the unlikely event that Irv or Mom or even Dad would realize it was Christmas and demand to spend time together. It was strange that something I had wanted my entire life now seemed repugnant to me; the circumstances we found ourselves in made every move toward a normal family life suspect and undesirable.

  The morning was colder than it had been and I was glad that I had wrapped a blanket around me over my coat. As usual, Spook was waiting for me at the edge of the woods and was beside himself with joy when he saw me. I’m not sure if it was me or the aroma of hog entrails coming from my backpack that excited him so that day. I wondered where he went in between the times I was with him. How did he stay warm, where did he sleep at night, what did he eat? Did he wait here at the edge of the woods for me all night or did he come every morning just in case I showed up? However he did it, Spook was a survivor like me, and I felt we were perfect for each other.

  We found Fern outside at her cabin, decorating a straggly pine tree in the yard with old glass ornaments and tinsel. She laughed merrily and invited us to help. I put my backpack in the house, and Fern showed me how to place the decorations on the tree. It’s an art, you know, and one I had never had the chance to learn. Fern was incredulous that I had never decorated a tree before, and I think it added to her growing suspicions that my family life was not ideal, especially since I had chosen to spend Christmas with her instead of them.

  After we finished the tree and stood back a few minutes admiring it, we went inside the cabin to warm up. The cabin was filled with the aroma of some kind of sweet bread baking. It was a smell I only remember from times I spent with Grammy. To my knowledge, Mom had never baked anything in her life, at least not while I’d known her.

  Fern made pine needle tea, which she told me was high in vitamin C and perfect for boosting our immune systems. She pulled a loaf of cranberry bread from the Buck Stove oven. “I made it from a mix that Lauren brought me,” Fern said. “I added some dried berries I harvested earlier in the year though.” I had never tasted anything so delicious.

  After breakfast, I gave Fern and Spook their gifts, and Fern gave me something almost as precious as the treasure from Grammy. Spook gobbled up his gift and then curled up for a nap by the stove. Fern handed me a book—A Painted House by John Grisham—and told me it was her favorite. “I want you to have it, dear. It was even autographed by the author. Jack and I met him once on a trip to Atlanta.”

  But that was not the precious gift; this was: Fern smiled tenderly at me and said, “Dear girl, I thought I would be happy to live out the rest of my life here alone with my books and my memories, but I find myself yearning for your visits more and more. If you ever need a place to live, if things get rough at home or whatever happens, you will always be welcome here. There’s not a whole lot of room, but there’s the loft if you’d like some privacy.”

  I couldn’t help the tears that spilled out of my eyes, but I smiled sadly and took both of Fern’s hands in my own. “I would like nothing more,” I said, barely above a whisper. “But Irv needs me to watch out for him. He’s not well. Mom too. I worry about them.”

  “I understand, dear. But if anything changes, you know where you can come.”

  Somehow just the knowledge that I wasn’t trapped with my family anymore, that at any moment I could just walk away and have a loving home to go to, made me warm inside.

  When I got home that afternoon, Mom, Dad, and Irv were laughing and talking loudly. It was surreal and at first I thought I was in the wrong place, but soon I learned the reason they had awakened from their apathy: Irv’s moonshine. The grain alcohol had made them giddy with joy at the end of their ‘prohibition.’ Mom and Dad danced around while Irv enjoyed being the center of their attention and affection. It seemed no one had even noticed I had been gone all day.

  The warm feeling I had gotten from Fern chilled with the frosty air of my bedroom as I pulled the covers over my head.

  Chapter 14

  Snow and Ice

  After a six-day binge, my family awoke from their stupor to find that not only was the alcohol all gone but also, in his oblivion Irv forgot to start a new batch of liquid salvation. Irv stewed, Mom cried, and Dad yelled. I tried to melt into the background. To make matters worse, Irv found that the quickly dropping temperatures had cracked some of the tubing on his still.

  When Dad heard that, he went into a rage, pushing things off tables then overturning the tables themselves, throwing va
ses and other breakable objects at the wall, reveling in the sound and sight of destruction all around him. Things got really scary when Dad reached the kitchen and started throwing knives. One just missed Irv’s head as it sunk into the door behind him. “Go make more juice!” he yelled.

  While Irv was out in the shed, Dad turned his anger to me. He said he knew what I had been doing all those times I went into the woods alone—I was meeting a drug dealer and scoring some ice. I retreated to my room, but Dad soon followed. That’s when he stormed into my room and broke my unicorn. It was the first time I really considered leaving my parents. But I knew I couldn’t go without Irv. Somehow I had to talk him into leaving with me. I didn’t know if Fern would be open to having two of us, but I had to figure something out.

  The new year brought lots of snow and frigid temperatures. Some days it was so cold and the snow was so deep, I couldn’t make it to Fern’s. I worried about her and especially Spook, but Fern had told me on Christmas Day that Spook often came back to the cabin at night when it was cold. I could only hope that they were together helping each other to survive when I couldn’t make it there.

  Irv was frantic to fix his still. He brought it piece by piece into the house and reassembled it in the living room under Dad’s close supervision. After combing the entire farm for parts to replace the cracked ones, to no avail, Dad gave Irv an ultimatum: fix the still or get out—more precisely, “get the hell out and don’t come back.”

  Irv started preparing for a trip to town, gathering up supplies he could trade for the needed parts. I had to stop him from raiding our supply of canned food, instead talking him into taking some of the butchered pork.

  “I’m coming with you,” I said.

  “No you’re not.”

  “Yes I am,” I said resolutely.

  “You have to stay and take care of Mom. Dad’s jonesing; I don’t know what he’ll do to her.”

  “Oh, so you don’t care what he’ll do to me though.” I put my hands on my hips and stared him down.

  Irv looked at me and shook his head. “Taylor, I haven’t worried about you since we were little kids. You’re the toughest, smartest, best survivor there is. Hell, you live in an ice box up there in your room and you don’t even flinch when Dad yells at you. You really live up to the nickname Ice Queen, you know.”

  I tried to be mad about what Irv was saying, but the truth was it made me proud. Proud that my big brother had so much respect and belief in me that he felt he didn’t have to worry about me. I certainly didn’t feel the same way about him. I didn’t know how long he was going to be able to survive under these conditions.

  Chapter 15

  Frozen

  At the end of a three-day warm-up, during which most of the snow melted, Irv set out to town, leaving me behind supposedly to guard Mom. Instead, I immediately headed out to check on Fern and Spook.

  They were fine, of course. Fern had been living without electricity for several years and thanks to Lauren and her husband John, who came every fall to cut and stack enough wood to last her through the worst of winters, Fern had been completely unaffected by PF Day. The cabin was warm and dry, and the small hand pump on the sink brought up fresh water from the well pipe that had been installed under the cabin, ensuring that it stayed unfrozen as long as the cabin was heated.

  Fern had an attached storage shed full of canned and boxed food, and she occasionally fished and trapped small game to implement her food supply. That day she taught me how to make snares for small game, using wire and sticks. She taught me several different ways of making them, including ones in trees for squirrels and birds and ones on the ground for rabbits and other ground-dwelling game. When we had several made, we went outside where she showed me how and where to set them for the best chance of catching game. She explained that many snares had to be set in order to increase the odds of catching anything. After the snares were set, it was just a waiting game. She would check on them twice a day to see if we had been lucky.

  When we went back inside to warm up with a cup of hot tea, Fern repeated the invitation for me to come stay with her. “I’d love to,” I said, “but I can’t come without Irv.”

  “Well, then bring him with you,” she said, and I could tell she meant it. “It’ll be nice to have a man around to do some of the work.”

  I went home early that day, my heart happy at the prospect of both Irv and me finally getting away from our oppressive home. I expected to welcome home Irv before dark, eager to tell him about Fern’s offer, but the sun went down with no sign of him. The temperature plummeted and the patches of melted snow and ice froze up again. I hoped Irv had found a friend to stay with in town instead of trying to make his way home in the cold and dark. I filed my worry away inside my brain and slept soundly, worn out by the day’s activities.

  Early in the morning, a light snow began, its delicate flakes reflecting the meager sunrise, turning the view outside my window into an inside-out snow globe. I watched, mesmerized, for a long time until the snow quit and everything lay still and silent under the soft blanket of snow. I sat at my window all day, watching the road to town, waiting for my brother to return.

  In the evening, it started to snow again, this time with more purpose; the clouds that had hung over us all day seemed determined to make the earth their mirror image. By the next morning, they had succeeded, with mounds of snow reminding me of big fluffy clouds as I looked down from my window on the land below.

  Again I hoped Irv would stay put instead of trying to trek home in the shin-deep snow. I put my anxiety and my life on pause, waiting and watching for the return of my brother, much like Fern would be waiting and watching for a successful snare.

  My life remained on pause for days as I waited for Irv to return. After two weeks of snow and bitter cold and no sign of my brother, I decided to go find him. The only problem was I had no snow boots and the snow was now up past my knees. I just made it to the end of the long driveway before I was exhausted, and my feet were wet and near frozen. I returned to my room and for the first time since Irv left, I cracked opened the cabinet of worry deep inside my brain just a little and let the ink stain of despair start to seep into my subconscious.

  Two days later, a figure on a horse appeared on the horizon of the road about midday. At first, I was ecstatic, thinking Irv had found a way to get home through the snow. I ran down the stairs and out the front door, uncharacteristically shouting on the way, “Irv is home!” Mom and Dad followed me out.

  By then the horse had made it to our driveway, and we could see right away that the rider wasn’t Irv; it was the town’s sheriff, Ian Donald. He was a familiar figure to our family, having gone to school with Mom as well as having arrested both Mom and Dad on occasion. Dad faded back into the doorway, no doubt planning his escape if necessary. Sheriff Donald dismounted and walked up to Mom, taking his fur-lined aviator hat off as he did. Mom stood frozen in fear. There was just nothing good that the sheriff could be coming all this way for. Were they coming to arrest Mom and Dad? Had Irv been arrested in town?

  Sheriff Donald stood still, looking at the ground for a moment that seemed to hang in the air like an icicle. Then he looked up at Mom in a way that made my blood turn to ice. His eyes were sad, so sad, and the sorrow went deep—I could see right through them to his soul; he didn’t want to have to tell Mom why he had come. The words welled to the surface along with the tear that spilled out onto his cheek and seemed to freeze there.

  “Libby…” he said and the word sounded like a sigh. Then he looked up at Dad in the doorway and started again, “Kyle, I’m so sorry…” Mom’s shoulders started to shake as the sheriff looked back at her, this time reaching out for her hand and peering into her eyes. She seemed to sense what this was about—a mother’s intuition, I guess. “We found Irvine in the park this morning, frozen…”

  “No!” I screamed involuntarily, throwing my hands up to cover my ears. But it didn’t help; it couldn’t block the horrible words that kept
coming, kept intruding on my brain, filling every crevice with the blackness that had started days before.

  As I heard the words, “He’s gone,” the stain flooded my world with darkness, and I tumbled into the abyss of despair that had been threatening to take over my life since I was born.

  Chapter 16

  Black

  Days and weeks followed of which I have very little recollection. I don’t know how I survived the blackness. For the first time in my life, I knew exactly how Mom felt when the darkness descended upon her and hung over her like a never-ending storm. Everything seemed dark, even in the daytime, and there was a constant low rumbling in my ears that made me want to scream. I slept a lot and when I was awake, I covered my ears with my hands to try to block out the noise and the truth.

  One of the few memories I have of that time was when I first awoke after passing out at the news of my brother’s horrible death. I don’t know how long I had been out or how long he had been there, but Dad was sitting in a chair beside my bed, his head in his hands. By now his beard had grown long and there was quite a bit of gray in it and the once black hair on his head. At first I didn’t recognize him or my room or even who I was. There was a tiny moment of peace in the anonymity before the black overtook me, flooding my brain with all the dark memories that haunted me.

  I must have made some sound or movement, maybe a clearing of my throat or a soft subconscious moan, because Dad sat up and looked at me. We stared at each other for several moments, neither of us wanting to start the unspeakable conversation. His eyes were red and his face pale, beyond his normal appearance of withdrawal symptoms.

  He broke the silence by reaching beside his chair and bringing up a bowl of dry cereal, my favorite cornflakes, and a can of condensed milk, which he began to open with the hand-crank can opener. “You need to eat. Sit up,” he said a little gruffly to mask his kindness. I turned away and stared at the window. “The sheriff said they found this in Irv’s pocket. It’s addressed to you.” I turned and looked as Dad placed an envelope on my bed. I just stared at it, unable to move my limbs to retrieve it, as if I were frozen just like my brother.