by AR Shaw
Eerily quiet, his boots sounded like a hundred-ton giant as he crunched his way over to the moose that met his demise moments before. The sun was so dim that the blood looked like chocolate syrup instead of crimson in the snow. Steam rose off the increasing trail of brownish liquid. Dropping to his haunches, Bishop crouched before the creature. With reluctance, he had to take the kill, knowing that the forest creatures were overhunted and would soon be limited in number, since their food supplies dwindled.
Unlike in the old days, this was for real. People in town were already beginning to show signs of starvation. The weak and anemic appearance of those in town weighed on him. This condition also made them more susceptible to the increasing cold and disease.
Brushing his gloved hand over the fur, Bishop sensed the fleeting warmth through the leather. “Sorry, buddy,” he murmured. Then, taking the tactical knife from its sheath on the side of his backpack, Bishop plunged the sharp blade into the beast’s gut and slid the knife laterally up to the sternum. Steam escaped as the massive innards fell out onto the ground in front of his knees, and then, suddenly, Bishop felt a sharp sting on the back of his right shoulder. When he turned quickly, with knife in hand, another arrow flew past, narrowly missing his head. Swiveling up on one knee, Bishop automatically flipped the bloody knife in his hand backward as a figure lunged forward. All Bishop had time to do was get onto his feet and into a fighting stance, crouched low and ready.
The figure before him, dressed in camouflage, let out something like a battle yell, and Bishop recognized the fleeting desperation. It occurred to him instantly that the other man wanted his kill. But he wasn’t going to get it. Not if Bishop could help it. The bigger man lunged for him with his own knife, arms wide and away from his body. The action told Bishop that he wasn’t an experienced fighter, and he easily slashed at the man’s exposed wrist, though he only ripped through the padding of his coat’s cuff. The attacker looked stunned by the quick move, and Bishop sensed his sudden fear. If anything, Bishop knew how to fight, a skill he’d learned well in China. Again, the man took another thrusting stab at Bishop as he easily darted away. “Leave now and I won’t kill you,” Bishop warned the attacker. But the man again stepped forward, catching the fur Bishop had over his jacket before he could dodge, and this time Bishop spun around, grabbing the attacker’s armed forearm and kicked him in the side of the knee to buckle him to the ground. With one swift movement, Bishop flipped his own tactical knife around, and with a deep sudden jerk, he sliced through flesh and deeply slit the man’s throat.
The body dropped forward, hands desperately trying to stem the gushing flow of blood.
Bishop stood above him, breathing heavily, shaking his head, his hands on his hips. “You idiot.” He wiped his blade clean of the man’s blood and then checked the back of his shoulder blade where an arrow attempted to pierce his body. Finding nothing more than a hole and a stab wound to the back of his shoulder, he went back to the kill as the man’s life lifted away behind him, already disregarded.
Despite the cold, he sweated under the layers from the forced adrenaline flowing through his veins. Knowing why the man attempted to attack him, he had reluctantly took his life, but now that regret weighed on him as he butchered out the meat from the hunt that he would take back to town. Somewhere, he assumed, there was a family who would be waiting for the attacker to return to them with something to fill their bellies tonight…they would also likely starve because of this man’s stupidity. He would have shared the kill. The thought angered him as he packed the meat into his backpack.
Wiping the freezing sweat from his face with his arm, he looked over at the man’s body, blood oozing out onto the grayed snow, lifeless eyes bulging as if he were surprised he found himself lying there. Before he hefted the heavy burden, he went through the man’s pockets, took the bow and arrow and the knife, and attached them to his pack. Then he lifted the heavy backpack and began the long slog down to town and out of the woods. It’s come to that already two months into this. Man killing man for food. How soon will it be before they are killing man as food as well?
As soon as he came to the tree line of the forest that led out to the open ice, the biting wind threatened to knock him over, yet, above it all, he heard the wolves call again, sending the hair on the back of his neck to bristle. Few were known to travel the darkened Kootenai forest for decades, but he suspected they were searching for a food source, and man wasn’t typically on their menu, though they soon would be, he feared.
Bishop lifted his hood up over his head and held his breath until he had secure footing on the solid surface. With wind blowing ice crystals sideways, he shielded his face and peered out for the firelight that should come from the hotel on the other side. He barely saw a slight flame coming from the parking garage. It was only early morning, yet it seemed a gray evening of deep winter—the kind you think will never end in the last days of February after a prolonged snowstorm, yet it was only the end of November.
Somewhere in that frozen tomb of a hotel, Maeve and Ben were waiting for him. He held a firm tether to the two of them since the day he pulled them from their home. In just the few short weeks they’d been together, that tether became so strong that he recognized how vulnerable he’d become because of them. They were his weakness now, and he was theirs, and they weren’t safe yet. None of them were. In fact, they were in even more danger than when the marauders were coming for their few belongings.
The relentless ice age from the Maunder Minimum was upon them, and this was just the beginning. To survive, he had to move them south, and so far he had not figured out a way to get them out of there without risking their lives in the process. If they waited much longer, they were all doomed by any count. Not only was food running low now, the thought of anyone bringing in relief supplies was a fantasy they could not afford. And future harvests were a bleak forecast.
Thinking of Maeve, as he headed against the wind, he remembered his early morning departure. “It’s only for one day. I’ll leave early in the morning and return tomorrow night.” Bishop’s raspy voice muffled in Maeve’s ginger locks spread out like a lazy starfish across the dim whiteness of the pale cotton pillowcase on which she lay. He lifted his weight up onto his elbows so that he might see how her tender red lips fared after kissing them once again. Sometimes he thought he might devour her altogether were it not for his own need to protect her at the same time. Not that she needed his constant protection, and Maeve had a way of letting him know when he went too far.
If this wasn’t love, love be damned, he thought as his eyes lingered on her pale skin as he drug them reluctantly up from her bare navel to her pale-green eyes staring back at him.
He found her smiling, one corner of her mouth hitched higher than the other; she ran her slender fingers beside his rough, whiskered face.
“We’ll be fine,” she said in reassurance.
Catching her hand in his, he pressed a kiss into her milky palm and then forced her hand slowly above her head and pressed it into the pillow as he started nuzzling her slender neck with the intention of moving south. “God, if anything happens to you or Ben…I will go insane,” he whispered against her skin as he felt her hot breath rise on his arm where she took tiny bites and then healed them with a swirl of her warm tongue.
“Mom?”
Cursing himself for not listening for the door, Bishop reached with automatic haste over Maeve’s bare body and flung the bedcovers swiftly over his own bare ass at the same time, concealing Ben’s exposed mother when a shaft of light spread into the room. “Hey, buddy, we’re just waking up,” he said and coughed into his hand. Jeez, did he see me on top of his mother? For the love of God!
Taking tentative steps through the doorway, Ben peeked in. He was fully dressed. “Can I go down with Louna and her mom for breakfast since you guys aren’t ready yet?”
Bishop looked down at Maeve, her eyes round as saucers.
“Yeah…yeah…” Maeve nodded quickly.
“Sure,” Bishop said at the same time.
“We’ll be right down, anyway.”
“Okay, I’ll see you down there,” Ben said and turned, heading for the door.
“Be right down, honey,” Maeve called after him as he shut the bedroom door. When the lock clicked, she pulled the sheet up over her head.
“We need a lock on that door,” Bishop growled and landed his forehead into the palm of his hand.
“Oh my goodness…I can’t believe he saw that. Did he see that?”
Shaking his head, he replied, “I don’t think he saw much. I hope it was just a blur.”
“We have to be more careful.”
“I thought getting a two-room unit was being more careful. He’s quiet.”
“That’s a good thing, really.”
“Not when I’m trying to ravish his mother. Yeah, I hate to say it. I’ve got to get going anyway.”
As a sudden reminder, a strong gust of arctic wind blasted against the hotel window. They barely acknowledged the increasingly strong blasts any longer. She watched him as he untangled himself from her and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I won’t say don’t go. I know you have to, but please, please come back to us,” she said to his back.
He turned to her and then slid her over onto his lap while she clutched the sheet around her bare chest. “Maeve,” he shook his head and stroked her russet hair, “I’m coming back. I know these woods like no one else. We need the hunt. And I’m hoping to run into Jax. It’s too damn cold. Not even he can handle this much longer.” His statement was in cadence with yet another blast as if he timed it just right. “I’ll try to bring him in if I set eyes on him.”
She didn’t look convinced. “Good luck with that. I know he saved our lives, but he’s not the kind of guy who deals with reason or people very well. He’s a solitary man.”
“Yeah, so was I.” He smiled. “But I have to try. He also has a lot of knowledge that I think we’re going to end up needing. He can’t stay out there. None of us can. Hell, even the elk herds are coming in closer and meeting their demise. We have to head south soon. I don’t think I can even try to go that far in another week with the way the temperature is dropping and the snowdrifts piling higher. It’s going to be a long slog. We have to leave here and leave soon. If we can’t organize enough people and resources, without politics getting in the way, I’ll just have to take you and Ben and escape south ourselves. The rest will die; I’m sure of that.”
She shuddered in his lap, no doubt at the thought of being out there, exposed for long with the children. Darkness took over. No one really knew when it was day or night, and even when the time was right, the snow and ice blocked out much of the sun.
“It won’t come to that,” she said, her voice rising, and Bishop stared down into her emerald-green eyes. The depth of the darkness he saw in there reflected his own as she contemplated the guilt they’d feel if they had to leave all the remaining survivors of Coeur d’Alene on their own to both freeze and starve to their deaths. Playing out all the moves and consequences of the coming weeks, Bishop too saw no other way. They had to flee, and they had to flee soon with or without the other survivors.
“Just promise me you’ll be careful,” Maeve whispered.
He only nodded. There was no way to make the promise, and he knew she knew that. “You…need to keep your sidearm on at all times along with the neck knife. And don’t linger downstairs while I’m gone. You and Ben come up and lock yourselves in. Put the chair under the door handle like I showed you, while you’re inside. And if you must escape…use the secondary route we planned. Remember?”
“Yes, I remember. And we’ll go back to the storage unit between the alleys…avoid the main streets and go in the dark if we can,” she said quietly, recounting his advice as she touched tenderly the whiskers on his jawline.
He thought perchance she was mocking him just a little, but she said it without a lilt in her voice. Even so, he shook her a little. “Seriously.”
“I am being serious, Bishop. There was a time when I’d make light of danger but no longer.”
To Bishop, that was the saddest statement of their times, but he needed to instill in everyone who’d listen. Even among the townspeople now huddled within the secure walls of the once grand hotel, they believed in a few days the cold would recede and no longer burden them with its icy endangerment. But this was not true, and Bishop knew there was no end in sight to their calamity for years to come.
The Maunder Minimum was here to stay for the foreseeable future. Living through it was yet to be determined. His study of the last Maunder Minimum was hindered by politics over global warming. Many scientists shunned the phenomena even though it had happened before, and with the low sunspot-activity pattern on the horizon once again, the prediction of the next one was within their grasp. Yet the scientific community had ignored the danger, and now they were living through a mini ice age…just barely and not for long if they let these conditions have its way with humanity. Starvation had not yet set in, but it had begun in the northern climates, and in the southern, crops would also be affected if they could grow them at all in a rapidly changing climate. What grew there before would likely not again. And everything changes with a Maunder Minimum. The regular seasons don’t apply anymore, not to mention what happens with humans and panic. He’d seen it in China. Starvation brought out the worst traits in human behavior. No longer capable of benevolence, he’d seen fathers trade their own children for food and, worst of all, humans looking to cannibalize anyone weaker than themselves. A shudder ran through him as he held Maeve in his lap. No, he needed to get them out of there and quickly.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He scooted her onto the pillow. “I’m going to take a quick shower and then pack my gear for tomorrow. Then we can go down and have breakfast with Ben.”
She nodded, and he left her staring out the big window open to the frozen lake. It couldn’t be helped. Such a formidable sight with the sharp wind blowing snowdrifts over the solid mass of smoky-blue ice.
3
For the first time in three weeks, Geller ascended the steps to the upper level. The heavy metal door was unlocked and then opened for him by a man used to such tasks, used to becoming invisible to his employer. The doorman stood to the side. Geller nodded a cursory thanks as he passed. If he was anything, he was gracious—ruthless but gracious about his ruthlessness.
As soon as he stepped outside, a strong wind sandblasted his face. He had yet to put on the facemask the soldier handed him earlier. Slipping it over his face now as he fought the wind, he barely saw the aircraft about twenty yards in the distance. Another soldier grabbed his elbow to keep him upright against the wind and urged him forward. There were at least twenty of his private hired soldiers, one pilot and himself.
Racing for the aircraft, Geller tripped in the blowing and unstable snow. Two men at each side hefted him upward again, placing him on his solid feet. That was what his money bought these days—men who didn’t let you fall down. They weren’t paid the old-fashioned way. Not anymore. No, they were paid in resources to enable themselves and their families to survive in an increasingly harsh and frozen world. Men do anything asked of them if their families’ lives were at stake, and right now there was no shortage of lives at stake. If they had useful skills, he could use them. If not, they were nothing to him.
His hands were frozen through already despite the heavy gloves. These conditions took lives by the dozen. No one on earth would survive this, and below was the only answer. No one was prepared, but, luckily, Geller had prepared—and prepared well, except for one thing: he hadn’t had everything in place before this Maunder Minimum thing hit.
The one thing he was missing was still in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. That’s where he kept them in a climate-controlled vault of the hotel basement until this current bunker was complete. Then he intended to transfer the cases here in this desolate-looking place in
Deer Trail, Colorado, for longevity. But in the meantime, he was a collector of these items…of things he’d left behind.
Preparing for the end of the world was a hobby for him. He’d thought of all kinds of catalysts but had never imagined an ice age of all things. He’d once read an article on a far left leaning blog discounting something called the Maunder Minimum as nothing more than anti–global warming activists mucking up valid science.
The majority of scientists regarded the phenomena as nothing more than political, but when a prominent Russian scientist published her new findings, calling for a reassessment of what she claimed as an eminent global threat, he paid little attention until the rest of the scientist community pounded her for such an idiotic outburst.
In the long run, she was right. And he felt he should have paid more attention. Temperatures dropped, artic ice reformed, lakes froze over, and harvests were not coming. That realization came after Geller left Coeur d’Alene. He hadn’t realized it then, but they were in it, and it was too late to prepare more. He’d thought things would settle down in a few days. Not so. They only became worse by the day. Then over radio, he heard the term Maunder Minimum again, and the Russian scientist’s findings came back to him. She’d been right all along.
Moving his wife and adult children and their families to the bunkers was easy enough once he called his private military into action. With one exception. They’d lost their pilots. Finding one to fly the complicated Osprey CV-22 took time, but they finally did locate a pilot willing to make the essential trade to work for him in exchange for his family’s survival.
Ideally, the craft needed two main pilots, but they’d only found one, and Geller offered the man the one thing he wanted: they moved his wife and children to the bunker immediately into a suite of their own.
The pilot was reluctant to fly in such conditions, but Geller made sure he realized what was at stake. If he failed, his family would die. If he succeeded, they would live. Simple motivation.
