Shortage (Best Laid Plans Book 2)

by Nathan Jones

  More than that, though, in their long discussions together on quiet nights Matt and Sam had both agreed that the world didn't wait for things to be ideal anymore, and with an uncertain future it was all the more important to live the present to the fullest. Not that they considered their timing to be rushed, either: both agreed on what they wanted and couldn't see any reason to delay.

  Although even with a simpler wedding there was a lot to prepare in those two weeks after returning from their trip to get the cache. They planned the wedding to be in the town hall's auditorium with the ceremony itself limited to family and friends, which still made for a packed room, while the reception was open to the town. That meant the auditorium had to be decorated somehow, which meant a bit of scrounging around town finding things Sam, his mom, and April found suitable. While he was doing that Matt did his best to find something more formal to wear than a white shirt, tie, and slacks.

  The days of feeding all wedding guests were well behind them, unfortunately, since even with the meat they'd butchered the town's supply of food was long gone and nobody was about to donate from whatever individual stores they might have, not even for a wedding. His mom had suggested doling out what few cans of peaches, pears, and sweet corn they had as a little treat, but after Sam had asked everyone to picture how doling out a spoonful of food to each of a roomful of guests would go over they'd agreed to take food off the menu.

  At the very least Mayor Tillman offered them a container of powdered Gatorade as a present, and between that and good spring water the guests wouldn't go thirsty.

  Things weren't going well for the town as the days got colder and food got scarcer, but in spite of that Matt was almost certain the wedding was improving people's moods. When he was at the storehouse, the town hall, or even on the way to or from patrols people constantly came up to him offering their congratulations, and he quickly learned that he wasn't the only one who'd formed a high opinion of Sam during her short time in town. He passed on to her a great deal of praise about her cheerfulness, kindness, and willingness to help.

  The people around him all seemed to get just a little bit more cheerful when he was around, especially when Sam was with him, even when those people were obviously hungry and even sick, desperate for any pleasant distraction to latch on to. Matt and his fiancee spent most of their time around other people fielding questions about the wedding, quite honestly answering that yes, they were lucky to have found one another, yes, they were very excited about getting married, and yes, they did love each other very much.

  It was almost a relief to escape the flurry of wedding planning to wade through ankle deep snow patrolling the town. Sam even started going with him, since between sleeping in the shelter and wedding plans it was one of the few chances they had to spend time alone together. Matt felt bad about forcing her to tramp through the cold, but he certainly couldn't ask for better company.

  Finally the day of the wedding arrived, with Matt nervously standing in the changing room to one side of the stage trying to piece together the tuxedo he'd borrowed from Carl Raymond. As he understood it Sam, in the other changing room across the stage, had no less than four women helping her fix her dress, hair, makeup, veil, shoes, and everything else just right. Not that he needed or wanted anyone to help him dress, of course, but it would've been nice if someone had thought to tell him how to put this thing on. He'd had no idea it was going to be this complicated.

  Finally, though, he thought he managed to get it right and did some last minute comb work on his hair, which April had cut for him last night. He also ran a hand along his jaw, although if he'd missed a patch shaving this morning it wasn't like he'd be able to do anything about it now. Less than a minute later there was a soft rap on the door and he was ushered up to stand at the front of the auditorium. Ben Thompson started playing the wedding march on the piano and the noise in the auditorium died down to an expectant hush, as Matt turned to look anxiously down the aisle searching for his first glimpse of his bride to be.

  Although he did pause to glance at the first row in the audience and smile at his nephews, who were both standing on their chairs waving wildly and yelling helloes to him as an embarrassed Tam tried to get them to sit back down. Behind him he heard Terry making shushing noises, and on the opposite side with the maids of honor April finally broke away two steps to sit them back down and furiously whisper reprimands.

  When he looked back down the aisle it was in time to see Sam step into view on his dad's arm, starting toward him.

  Matt felt his breath catch when he saw the woman he loved. His mom had lent Sam her wedding dress, which was a bit big on the petite woman even after the two of them and April did their best to make adjustments, and April had lent her a pair of her nicest shoes stuffed with a bit of cotton at the tips so they fit. Her dark hair shone from brushing, hanging loose down her back with two simple clips holding it away from her face.

  He didn't think she'd ever looked more lovely, especially when her eyes met his through the veil and her smile became radiant.

  Catherine took their vows in her position as Mayor, and Matt hoped Sam could glean his sincerity among the nervous fumbling of words that didn't seem adequate to express his true feelings. Her own words were quiet and fervent, as if for his ears only, leaving everyone on the benches leaning forward and straining to hear. Anything left unsaid was expressed in their first kiss as man and wife.

  They had the reception, swamped by the congratulations of what seemed the entire town, and after hours of celebration and well-wishing changed into warmer clothes and left the auditorium, shivering in the clear cold midafternoon sunlight.

  As Matt looked around his hometown, Sam's hand holding his tight, it struck him that nothing seemed to have changed in Aspen Hill since entering the building that morning. The town was in the same bleak situation it had been before and everything looked the same, aside from one difference:

  Whatever the future held, he and Sam would face it together.

  * * * * *

  Their honeymoon left something to be desired, since Matt had to continue his duties protecting the town and Sam had her own day to day work to do. There was also the fact that they had to share the underground shelter with 6 other people, which made intimacy a bit awkward even with the privacy screens. It often led to the rest of the family finding vague but important things to do outside that had the adults ushering the boys out with them to give the newlyweds some time to be alone.

  In spite of the awkwardness Sam didn't complain, insisting that she actually didn't mind being a part of the close-knit family unit with loved ones all around. And, perhaps because they were so hard to come by, Matt treasured their opportunities to spend time alone together all the more.

  Still, when he brought up building a house in the spring Sam definitely didn't seem opposed to the idea, although she insisted that it was a secondary concern when they already had a place to live and so many more important things to worry about.

  One nice thing about living with the rest of the family in the shelter, same as they had before the wedding, was that their new life together felt like it flowed seamlessly from their old life with no awkward interruptions, and their honeymoon never seemed to end as they settled into being married.

  It also helped that Christmas came just over a week later. Matt's family had never been much for celebrating holidays, and according to Sam her family's Christmas tradition was a half hour or so of opening presents in the morning and then the rest of the day was pretty much normal.

  This year, however, Matt had a bit more insight into the much anticipated and eagerly celebrated event he'd seen in old classic movies or read in stories from the Old West or Victorian Era. It made sense in a way, since without television or internet to distract them, and with so much worry and suffering around them, any holiday would be both entertainment and distraction, an excuse to forget everything and celebrate with loved ones for a while.

  They brought the best young evergreen tree
they could find from the foothills and spent long evening hours that week carving ornaments out of bits of wood from the woodpile, since they'd left their own ornaments at home. Matt's mom had gone to visit Jane, much improved and who'd left the storehouse clinic and had been living with her refugee group for weeks now, and insisted the refugees have the Larson family ornaments to decorate their own tree. She wouldn't hear of the redheaded woman's protests, insisting that carving new ornaments gave them all something to do.

  Even Aaron was given a bit of styrofoam packing that might once have been considered garbage to whittle into a snowman. Meanwhile Paul was given the important job of breaking the remaining styrofoam into snowflakes, to be pinned onto the pointy bulbs of the strings of LED lights Lewis had hung along the walls to light the shelter before Ferris took the solar panels.

  Which was too bad, since they were technically Christmas lights repurposed for general lighting and would've perfectly fit the holiday spirit.

  In an attempt to lift the town's spirits for at least a short time Catherine organized a celebration in the town square on Christmas Eve, complete with a large decorated tree and carols. And while there was no wassail or hot chocolate she did manage to get her hands on several boxes of herbal tea, which along with dollops of precious honey made an enjoyable drink for townspeople to warm their hands around as they sang.

  She further tried to raise spirits with a dance on Christmas day in the auditorium, one that Matt and Sam were only too happy to attend. Neither of them was a particularly good dancer, but then again no one around them seemed to be either and that didn't seem to be stopping anyone.

  Altogether between family and friends Matt didn't think he'd ever celebrated a more enjoyable Christmas, not even as a kid when the magic of the holidays was so much more exciting. Even New Year's Eve, which he'd never considered much of a holiday, was given special treatment as everyone in Aspen Hill looked forward to a year where things improved, clinging to that hope in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

  Because unfortunately aside from the wedding and holidays there wasn't much to celebrate that winter. Thanks to Trev's generosity with his cache and Lewis's (assumed) generosity letting them stay at the shelter and draw from his massive woodpile, Matt and his family were far better off than the rest of the town.

  Which wasn't to say things were perfect. They had to viciously ration Trev's gift to make it stretch among 8 people through the cold months, and over time all of them grew thin and weak and listless. They got sick more frequently as well, which was a great concern in their weakened states and required larger meals to nurse them back to health.

  That concern was even greater when they were all effectively sharing one room with only curtains to divide beds, since sickness tended to spread. At one point in January everyone but Sam fell sick at once for almost a week, nothing life threatening it seemed but enough to keep them all weak and feverish in bed. Matt's new wife was driven almost to exhaustion caring for them all, and although he tried to help as much as he could he'd been hit the worst out of everyone and could barely stand.

  That was probably because he was the most active out of the group, since he was often out on patrol or organizing the rosters down at town hall or responding to crises in the town. With all that he worked himself even harder than Terry, who was kept busy doing his best to care for the sick and injured as the town's only doctor.

  Their family in the shelter was better fed and kept warmer than almost everyone else, while the former intern surgeon found himself dealing with increasing number of patients among the townspeople who weren't so fortunate. As far as they could tell they'd managed to prevent the flu down in Price from spreading to Aspen Hill, but even so people were coming to Terry in droves for other illnesses, injuries, or more direly as they approached the perilous brink of starvation.

  In growing desperation Mayor Tillman had haggled to purchase any spare animals townspeople had, even horses and dogs, to butcher for meat. She couldn't offer anything but IOUs or less valuable commodities, which was everything but food these days when everyone was starving. Precious metals, jewelry, even ammo found itself seriously devalued, but Catherine offered what she could to try to feed those on the brink of starvation.

  It wasn't nearly enough. Terry knew the numbers better than anyone since he saw many of the deaths, and Matt learned of the others from the Mayor during their weekly councils.

  All in all over a third of the residents of Aspen Hill had perished by the end of February. Among the refugees it was closer to two-thirds. Many of those deaths were among the older and younger members of the population, those most vulnerable to sickness once they were weakened from hunger. Although even the healthiest members of the community weren't always spared. Matt ended up attending funerals nearly every day, one of the few strong enough to help dig graves in the frozen soil.

  It was brutal work, especially with the specter of cold and exhaustion looming over him, and with every shovelful Matt thought of Ferris with more and more bitterness.

  Terrible as it was to think of, if the administrator hadn't fed the refugees with the town's food far more of the people of Aspen Hill would've survived. The grim tradeoff would've been that almost all the refugees would certainly have died, but heartless as it sounded Matt would've preferred to be burying strangers rather than friends.

  Which wasn't to say the refugees weren't doing their part. Under Ben and Catherine's leadership they'd integrated well into the town, and aside from a few exceptions Matt had no complaints about the new citizens helping defend their borders. In truth he had almost as much trouble from the townspeople he worked with. But any trouble he had from the people reporting to him paled in comparison to what he was forced to deal with from the rest of the townspeople.

  Following the Mayor's strict crackdown on crime after the refugees were integrated into the town thefts had dropped to almost nothing, but as the cold and starvation took its toll crime gradually started to climb again. Many, in the last extreme faced with death or theft, did what they thought they had to. And since the refugees were the worst off a disproportionate amount of that desperate violence and stealing came from them.

  Matt, Catherine, and Bert Peterson were faced with many difficult and sad choices as they held strict to the Mayor's policy of exile for theft and other crimes. It was easy to assume it was a more lenient punishment when the weather was fair, but in the depths of winter exile was practically a death sentence and they all knew it.

  Tormented by her determination to keep the promises she'd made Catherine had a harder and harder time insisting that the sentencing be enforced, although she stayed firm in her resolve. As for Matt, the only reason he was able to carry the punishments out on her behalf was because he wasn't the one making the decisions. That helped, some.

  The same couldn't be said for Bert. The elderly retired lawyer had gravely upheld his duties judging the members of Razor's gang after they attacked the town, but it had weighed on him. He was used to a system where those condemned to death often waited a decade or more through a lengthy process of appeals and other legal proceedings. He'd gone along with the hasty sentencing and carrying out the executions because of the dire situation and the clear guilt of the condemned men, but it had taken its toll.

  The later sentences he had to hand out, especially exile, nearly broke him. He even tried arranging a meeting to discuss more lenient punishments for theft, but the town wouldn't hear of it. Everyone else was just as desperate as those who were stealing, and the threat of exile was the only thing keeping the town from collapsing into chaos.

  In the end Bert had pled to be excused from his position as town judge, and no one had begrudged him the decision. In his place a tribunal consisting of six members of the community, including Ben and Chauncey, was set up to pass judgment on crimes. It was a solution almost everyone was satisfied with, and it kept the town relatively peaceful.

  Not that there weren't a few exceptions. The worst came early in Marc
h, when the shelter itself came under attack by a dozen starving people.

  Chapter Twelve

  Desperate Times

  Matt's legs felt dead by the time he finished his patrol shift west of town.

  He'd walked it dozens of times over the winter, and it wasn't so great a distance, but any distance stretched on into infinity when all he'd had for the last ten meals was a cake the size of his palm. They were made of boiled wheat mashed into a paste, and for the breakfast cake included Henrietta's daily egg mixed into enough batter for eight people, then fried in olive oil and drizzled in honey. They took turns licking the remaining oil off the pan when the meal was finished, and it was almost depressing how much of a treat that had become.

  From the first Matt had tried to have his people patrol in pairs for their safety, and he'd managed it for a while, but now he walked alone. He had less than a quarter of the volunteers he'd once had defending the town. Some had died, which was heartbreaking, but more had abandoned what felt to them like a worthless chore when they'd had less than a dozen incidents all winter and the only real fight any of them faced was against starvation. They argued that their time could be better spent searching for food than for enemies that weren't coming.

  Matt couldn't fault them for the decision, but it did worry him. The radios still worked, the guns were mostly in good repair, plans for defense of the town and calling up swift response defenders at the first sign of a threat were laid out, but none of it would do any good if they didn't have people out there to give advance warning of a possible attack.

  So he kept to the routes, taking more and more shifts as less and less people showed up to do them. Those who stayed with him at the task were mostly people who'd lost someone in Razor's attack, or younger men whose families had survived the winter better like the Watson boys. But even they showed up lest often, and seemed more halfhearted at it.