by Stan Morris
“And we have the stuff from the logging camp. They had supplies for twenty people for six months. Most of it is canned stuff, like beef stew, vegetables, and beans. There are some apples and pears left, but we ate all the oranges. We have a lot of lemons, but they are all wrinkled. We plan to use them to make lemonade. That should provide some vitamin C. We have to watch out for scurvy.
“We’re rationing food, and we eat less than big men, so I think the stuff from the logging camp will last about four months. With that, the deer and the veggies from Mrs. Brown, I think we can make our food last for about five months. We could go a little longer if we rationed a little more.”
“It’s almost November,” Mike said. “So, we can make it until the end of March. We might be getting hungry after that.”
“Mrs. Brown will try to grow lettuce and chard in her solar room this winter,” said Hector. “And she’s going to try to grow cucumbers and tomatoes in five gallon buckets. But she said that she didn’t expect a lot of production from the tomatoes and cucumbers until after the twenty first of March. That’s when the plants will get twelve hours of sunlight. She will make bread from her wheat crop and freeze it. The road will be passable some of the time by early March. I think she will replant her wheat and oats in April.”
“I should be able to get into the forest and hunt in March,” Jacob added. “And I can still get into the forest for a few weeks more. What I bring back, we need to eat first, and save the canned supplies for later.”
“You mentioned the trout pond at the Brown farm, Jacob” said Jean. “Fish should be a good source of protein. And I’ll start classes on edible plants that grow around here.”
“You think that you know which plants we can eat?” Kathy asked, giving the woman a dubious look.
“Hey! United States Forest Ranger here,” Jean responded, giving Kathy an annoyed look in return.
“When that calf grows up, it will give milk,” Eric said. The rest of them looked at him.
“No bull, shit,” John said. The guys looked disgusted, and the girls giggled.
“That wasn’t nice,” Desi admonished her lover.
“Sorry, Eric,” John said with a grin.
“Is there anything else we are going to run out of by the end of winter?” Mike asked.
“Toilet paper,” said Yuie. “Sooner or later we will have to use worn out cloth. Which we will have to wash and reuse.” She shuddered.
“Holey crap,” John exclaimed.
“Knock it off, John,” said Mike. “Some of you haven’t heard Jean’s story, so I going to have her tell it now.” He looked at Jean.
“All right, but first, I want to thank you girls for offering me Jackie’s clothing. I know that can’t have been easy for you,” Jean said.
“This is what happened to me. I was sent by the Forest Service in the middle of May to visit an old lookout station, Baker’s Point Lookout. The idea was to see if the Service needed to destroy it to prevent possible injuries, or to restore it as a National Historical Monument.
“It coincided with my plans to take some vacation time, so I spent a few days up there, kicking back and relaxing. When I left, I ran into the gunk you call, the ‘Fog.’ I didn’t want to drive through it, so I thought that I would take a roundabout way and bypass it. Only I couldn’t. Everywhere I went, I ran into it again. And before I realized, I stupidly ran out of gas. I left my jeep and tried to make my way down to civilization. I spent a month going this way and that backtracking again and again. I had my sidearm with me, so I managed to kill and eat game at first, and sometimes I managed to catch fish from a stream. But then I ran out of bullets. Later, I found myself northeast of here. That’s where I ran across a lodge called, ‘Eagle’s Retreat.’
“Now, at first I thought I was saved. But as I made my way down the hill toward the lodge, I saw two men beating the hell out of another man. So, I got a lot more cautious. I went down closer to see what I could find out, but I stayed out of sight. By the time I got close to the place, the three men were gone. I waited until the next day, when I spotted a woman pinning clothes on a clothesline. I got close enough to call quietly to her, and when she sidled over to me, I had a very revealing talk with her. She told me she was a nurse.
“It seems that there were two different groups at the Retreat. There was a group of student nurses and their instructors, and there was a group of artists doing their art thing. And there were some other people staying at the lodge, besides the owner and his wife. Two of these other people were elderly ladies.
“The woman I talked to said that after people realized they were trapped, things started turning ugly. A group of men stole some firearms from the owner, took over, and started ordering everybody around. They threatened the owner when he protested.
“At first, they said that they were organizing things so they could survive. But then one day, the owner and his wife disappeared. They haven’t been heard from since. The men said that the owner had decided to leave. The other borders didn’t believe them. Then the two older women disappeared. The men didn’t even bother to explain that. They just said that it wasn’t their problem. The woman I was talking to said that one of the male nurses had disappeared the day before. Also, one of the female artists had been forced into a sexual relationship by the men. They withheld food until she agreed to sleep with them.
“Anyway, I hung around for two weeks. The nurse snuck some food to me every couple of days. Then, one day, as she was coming to give me some food, I saw a man following her. I don’t know if she told them about me, which I doubt, or if they thought that she was stealing and stashing food. I got out of there, right then. I spent two more weeks stumbling around in the forest before your hunting party found me. I had lost all my gear. I’m sure that I would have died there at that spot, if Nathan hadn’t found me.”
“More people,” Eric murmured.
“More bad people,” Desi added.
“Sounds like some of them are good. But right now they’re trapped,” Howard said.
“There’s nothing we can do for them now,” said Mike. “But, when spring comes, who knows?”
“One more thing,” said Jean. “They had goats and sheep. I saw some of both, mostly sheep, wandering around.”
Erin wanted to do something for Halloween, but no one had any good ideas, except for telling ghost stories. That didn’t seem like such a good idea given their predicament. In the end, they asked a few people to sing songs to mark the night. So October turned into November. The days grew colder. Jacob brought in a few more rabbits, and to the surprise of everyone, a pig.
“A boar actually,” Jacob said.
“It’s pig out time,” Yuie yelled.
“I was going to say that,” John complained.
The next morning they sliced the boars belly in the deserted dining hall and ate bacon with the eggs that Mary Brown had sent.
Snow began to fall more and more. Hector made a last trip to the Brown farm. He reported that things seemed to be fine at the farm. The two little kids were happily forcing their new older companions to play with them. He had helped Mary winterize her machinery.
The campers broke apart some of the cardboard boxes in which the kitchen equipment had been delivered, and they used the cardboard as sleds. Some of the kids wanted to use the emergency bathroom, but Mike declared it off limits. They had to use the outside toilets as long as possible, he said firmly.
At the beginning of November, they experienced some days when the temperature rose into the seventies, although most of the time the high was in the fifties. By the end of November, they were glad to see an occasional day when the temperature reached sixty. It became a game to see how low the temperature would drop. One night at the end of November, many of them stayed up after midnight, and at four am they watched the temperature gage drop to five degrees.
The solar heating system was working well. On days when the sun shone for several hours, it became so warm in the small cave, that the boy
s who preferred cooler air would take their sleeping bags into the central area of the Lodge to sleep. Some boys, who had been assigned bunks in the boys’ room, traded beds with some of the boys who were sleeping in the small cave. Mike knew that eventually it would be cooler in the girls’ rooms than in the cave. He was worried that a girl would request that she be allowed to sleep in the cave. What would he say? What should he do?
As December came in, Mike realized that his birthday had passed a few weeks ago. He was fourteen. He wondered how many other birthdays had passed unnoticed and uncelebrated.
In early December, they received three days of continuous snow, and Mike set a curfew. Everyone had to be in the Lodge by four o’clock. There was a lot of grumbling, and when the skies cleared for the next ten days, a lot of kids thought that Mike’s curfew had been premature.
Then, a week before Christmas, on a clear day when most of the restless kids had abandoned the Lodge to play outside, a sudden storm blew in around noon. The skies darkened, the clouds opened, and an enormous amount of snow began to fall.
At first, the kids ignored the snowfall, thinking only of it as a chance for more fun. Then, as the temperature began to drop precipitously, they began to seek the shelter of the Lodge. Some went to the dining hall, thinking to wait out the snowfall. They soon realized that it might be difficult to wade back to the Lodge through the blinding fury.
Mike had the Spears scurrying to and fro, rounding up the strays, helping the kids in the dining hall make their way to the Lodge, and taking a head count. When all the bathrooms were empty and the head count was complete, they were short four campers. There was a short intense meeting in the Chief’s Room.
“Chief, we have to find them!” Erin wailed. “Maria is one of the missing.”
“I understand how you feel, Erin,” Mike replied, his face grim. “But I can’t allow anyone to go out in that storm.”
“Maybe they are still in the dining hall, Chief,” said Howard. “We could make our way to the old Chief’s Headquarters and then to the dining hall and check.”
“I checked it, man, I checked it,” Ahmad stated. “I made sure that I was the last one out.”
“They might have gone in after you checked it and left,” Howard argued. “They might have been down in the parking lot or something.”
“I was down there, Howard,” John said. “I sure didn’t see them.”
“Maybe they broke into the Chief’s Headquarters,” Desi suggested.
“We can’t let them freeze, Chief,” Yuie pleaded.
“Let me think!” ordered Mike roughly. Then he turned to Jacob. “Can you make one more check around the perimeter of our camp?” he asked. “And then check the Chief’s Headquarters and the dining hall.” Jacob nodded.
“I’ll go with him,” said Jean. “It’ll be safer if two people are together.”
“I’ll go too,” Hector said.
“No!” said Mike while shaking his head emphatically. “I’m only risking two.”
“There are kids out there,” Hector exclaimed. “I’m going.”
Mike looked up at Hector. “I said, no,” he repeated quietly. “And I’m either the Chief or I’m not.” He waited.
Hector breathed out harshly. “You’re the Chief,” he said.
Jean and Jacob left. The others waited minute by agonizing minute. Mike, Hector, and Yuie stood outside the door, straining to see through the blinding snow.
Suddenly Yuie shouted, “That’s them!”
A few seconds later, a person came into view, and then another, and finally it was evident that there were six persons making their way back to the Lodge.
The three watchers went out to meet them. Yuie was crying and hugging Maria and the others. Erin and Ahmad came out of the Lodge to help. Gradually, Mike got them all shepherded into the Lodge. Mike looked in wonder at Jacob and then grabbed him in a bear hug.
“Thanks, man,” Mike said, his voice choked with emotion.
“Found them down at Hector’s bridge,” said Jacob, panting from the cold. “They went into the forest to look for pine cones.”
“Oh, Jeez,” Mike exclaimed.
“They were smart,” Jacob continued. “They were following the river back. They probably would have made it to the dining hall.”
“It’s my fault,” Erin confessed. “I remember telling them I wanted some pine cones for our Christmas decorations. But didn’t think about that when they were missing.”
“Never mind, Erin,” said Mike. “They’re safe. That’s all that counts.”
The close call got everyone’s attention. Mike made a new rule. Until further notice, no one was allowed to go beyond the boundaries of the camp. There was no argument when he announced the new rule. That night, the mood of the tribe was subdued.
Mike found Hector for a talk. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure, amigo,” Hector answered. “Good call, Chief.”
“I know that you wanted to go and find them, Hector,” said Mike. “But you, Jacob, and Jean are the people most likely to keep the rest of us alive. I couldn’t risk all three of you. And I couldn’t say that to you in front of the others.”
Hector smiled down at the boy, and then he laughed. “Oh, I think there is one other person much more likely to keep us all alive. But I see what you mean.” Puzzled, Mike watched him walk away.
In the close quarters, Mike often dealt with irritations and eruptions between individuals. Two campers, Tyler and Gabby, seemed to have an ongoing feud. Mike was constantly hearing about Tyler teasing Gabby, or Gabby taunting Tyler. He got a little peace by threatening to tie them together for a day.
Some birds had made their way into the Lodge through the gap over the beams. They were living in crevices high in the rear of the cave. Jean said that they were white throated swifts. Mike wouldn’t have cared, except for the mess that they made on the cave floor.
One day, Mike remembered that if the old world had not disappeared he would be in school. Since Jean was the oldest member of their tribe, he asked her to organize a school. Attendance was mandatory, he told the kids, from nine in the morning until noon. After that, there would be another two hours of school, but attendance was not mandatory. Of course, his announcement was met with a chorus of obligatory boos, but most of the kids welcomed the distraction. Most even went to school in the afternoon. And Jean was surprisingly effective, some even said threatening, as their teacher.
Jean was not that happy to be selected as the teacher. These kids could act an awful lot like, well, kids. Teasing each other seemed to be their favorite pastime.
“You need a haircut. You look like a girl.”
“I do not!”
“Do to!”
“Do not!”
“Hey! I’m trying to teach a class here,” Jean exclaimed. “I need you to concentrate on wild onions, tubers, and berries.”
“I need a haircut.”
Jean borrowed a pair of scissors, and she cut some hair.
They had a tree for Christmas, if not a lot of presents. To Mike’s great surprise and lasting gratitude, Erin and her social committee presented handmade gifts to each person in the tribe. Christmas Day, they had a sing-along which lifted everyone’s spirits. The night before, there had been a lot of silent tears, and some not so silent tears as they lay in their bunks.
Tyler and Gabby celebrated New Years Eve by putting insects in each other’s sleeping bags which brought new threats from Mike. Howard and John flipped a coin to see which couple would get privacy in their room that night. Howard won. Hector agreed to let Kathy zip their sleeping bags together for that one night.
“As long as you wear your pajamas,” he stated his condition firmly.
Kathy searched in vain for a cute nightie, but she had to settle for her heavy cartoon pajamas. Not willing to take a chance, Hector wore his trousers to bed. Still, they enjoyed the moment when the watches turned twelve. Since there were many watches, and as not all of them were synchro
nized, there was some dispute as to when twelve o’clock actually occurred.
And so January arrived. Mike had given the kids a holiday from school, but a few days after the first of January, some of the kids asked Jean when school would restart, so Jean reluctantly restarted her classes. It was cold, but the solar heating system and the central wood fire kept it bearable in the central area of the Lodge. The small cave was comfortable. A few girls left their bunks and slept in the central area where it was warmer.
Mike hesitated to let people use the emergency bathroom during the day, and this precipitated a crisis. One day, as the Council was gathering in Chief’s Room for a meeting, John and Desi entered obviously upset with each other.
“Chief, John and I are breaking up. You need to assign us bunks,” Desi announced.
“Ignore her, Chief,” said John. “She’s just mad. She’ll get over it.”
She whirled on him. “I will not get over it,” she said angrily. “You hit me!”
“I smacked you a few times on your ass. And you deserved every smack,” John countered.
“I don’t care what you call it. You hit me. And for no good reason.”
“Um…I need to use the bathroom,” Mike said, and he left the room.
“See? He didn’t ask anyone’s permission,” Desi barked.
“He’s the Chief. Besides we all know where he’s going,” John responded, trying to sound reasonable.
“Wait a second,” Erin interjected, giving John an incredulous look. “John, you hit Desi because she used the bathroom without your permission?”
“Yes!” Desi shouted.
“Of course not,” John scoffed. “I smacked her butt because she didn’t let me know she was going outside.”
“Ah,” said Hector. “She went outside to use the bathroom, and she didn’t tell you that she was going. So you spanked her for that?”
