Larry, as usual, took the lead. “So here’s what I think we need to do this afternoon. Nina, I know you want to bathe and stuff, but we need water to drink first. We’re just about out of things to drink. Can we all agree on that?”
I nodded my head. “Yeah.” I definitely wanted to wash and put on clean clothes, but I also knew water to drink was of the utmost importance, no matter how far the creek was.
“And we have plenty of wood but I couldn’t find much kindling. I think we need to see what we can forage in the forest—especially since we’ll need to dry out whatever we find.” Kevin and I agreed with him on that count too. “It might not be a big deal if we can keep the fire going, but I sure as shit don’t want to be out till dark again and then not be able to start a goddamned fire.” I took a bite of the apple, remembering how cold I’d felt the night before. I didn’t want to be in that situation either. He continued. “Since the creek is off a ways, I think we should fetch water from there to drink but we should find containers around here to collect more snow in—for flushing the toilet, cleaning dishes, and bathing. One little metal pan isn’t going to cut it for melting enough.” He looked at me then. “Where would we most likely find stuff like that?”
“To melt snow in? I know there’s an old metal trough in the barn somewhere, but where would you even put something like that?” Larry frowned as though considering the possibility. “But if it’s just metal buckets or pails, I’d check all the outbuildings. There’s bound to be a few around here. It would surprise me if you couldn’t find anything.”
“Yeah, the trough might be a little extreme, but a few buckets placed on the hearth till they melt and then left here and there should work.”
“This is a stupid question,” I said, “but do we need to worry about the water in the bathroom freezing?”
“Upstairs, yes. I don’t think we should use the toilet up there. It’s too far removed from the heat down here, even with heat traveling upward. It might be okay, but I don’t want to chance it, because if a pipe breaks and it starts raining inside, we’ll have a huge fuckin’ problem. In the main bathroom down here, I think we’re okay. The water’s cold but it doesn’t seem to be freezing up. Yeah, it’s colder ‘n shit in this house, but I think the heat from the fire is at least keeping it above freezing in here. The garage is another story, but in the main parts of the house, I think we’re okay.” Kevin nodded, agreeing with him.
“Okay, so when we’re done here,” I said, glad we didn’t have dishes to worry about washing after lunch, “we tackle those tasks—getting water, finding ways to melt and store snow, and gathering kindling. That sound right?”
The men agreed. Vera didn’t even blink to acknowledge what we’d said. In fact, the last bite she’d taken had been in her mouth for several minutes. If nothing else, we had to get out of here for her sake…because she seemed to be fading fast.
* * *
The four of us stood bundled up outside under the bright sun. I loved the sunshine but it was still dreadfully cold. The squeaky sound of the snow as my boots touched it told me that it was probably colder than I thought.
We’d dug out of the trash all the empty bottles that had held drinking water, as well as two empty gallon jugs. I’d found a backpack buried in the closet by the front door, and we’d also found two big white buckets that had held kindling by the woodpile.
We had our tasks and were ready to tackle them before nightfall.
We stood outside in the front of my aunt’s house, discussing where we should go to accomplish each task and who should do it. We even had our makeshift weapons. I said, “I can get the water since I know where the creek is.”
Larry flashed me a condescending smile that set me off. “Nina, you can’t go alone. It’s not safe.”
It made me want to do it myself. If someone infected came at me, I could run. I hoped I could also find it in myself to kill now if I had to. “Larry, I know these woods better than any of you, and it’ll be faster if I go by myself.”
“We need to work with partners.”
I knew what he was implying…so I planned to call him on it. “Okay, then what about Vera?” No way did I want her as a “partner.” She would have been slower than either of the men and, after the way she’d been lately, the time spent together would have been uncomfortable. But that wasn’t the point. I was, instead, calling Larry on his bluff.
He lowered his eyelids, indicating to me that he knew exactly what I was doing. “Listen, Nina. I’m just as much for equal rights as any guy.” I forced myself to not blurt out a sarcastic laugh, because just the few days I’d spent here with Larry told me all I needed to know about his view of women. I was beginning to understand why Vera didn’t work outside the home, among other things. I kept my mouth shut so he could finish talking. “But we need to work in pairs, and each pair needs a man.”
That did it. Larry had no fucking clue. I had never needed a man and I sure as shit didn’t want to be made to feel like I needed one now. I could feel my eyes glowering as I said, “That’s bullshit. I can take care of myself.”
Larry’s nostrils flared. “Savage is going with you.”
“Like hell he is.”
I felt Kevin’s hand on my arm. Oh. Okay. If he was as sweet and gentle as he’d been and he nicely re-presented it, I could be persuaded. But that wasn’t the tack he took. “Nina, what happens when you freeze again? What then?”
I felt my blood turn hot because I had no counter for him. I could feel my lungs expand with the air I took in through my nose as the pressure in my veins built. “Fine,” I said, snatching the backpack out of his hand. “Let’s go.” I started marching down the hill, stomping one step at a time, praying in the back of my mind that I wouldn’t slide down the bank and make an ass out of myself.
I could hear Larry chuckling at me, but I didn’t care. I was pissed.
I heard Kevin’s boots in the snow as he caught up to me. He walked alongside me but didn’t say a word as we marched down the long drive that headed toward the road.
Smart man.
My breathing was growing deeper then as I exerted myself, but I still had a lot of anger to work out. I was still mad when we got to Larry’s truck and kept walking past it.
After a little while longer, Kevin said, “Still angry?”
I couldn’t even look at him. The good thing about my heightened emotional state was that I couldn’t feel the cold—not one bit. “What do you think?”
We walked several more feet in silence before he said, “You know he’s right.”
My blood pressure spiked again and I stopped cold in my tracks. “That’s fucking bullshit.” He raised his eyebrows, and I couldn’t tell if it was because he wasn’t used to hearing strong language come out of my mouth or if he found my anger amusing. Aside from the brows, though, he had a poker face, and I couldn’t read what he was feeling. That made me all the angrier, and I turned on my heel and started stomping toward the main road again.
He lost no time keeping up with me.
He was quiet again, and it wasn’t until I could feel the adrenaline ease off before I said, “Yes, I get the idea, but I could have done this myself. So I had a moment yesterday where I just shut off. I promise you that won’t happen again.”
“That’s not it, Nina. We really shouldn’t do anything alone, not right now. Not you or me or Larry…”
“That’s not what he meant, and you know it, Kevin. You know damn good and well he meant that I needed a man.” I continued stomping until I saw the main road in my sights. I kept walking but said, “I haven’t needed a man my whole goddamned life, and I certainly don’t need one now.”
I heard him sniff, but it wasn’t until we were just a few feet from the road that he said, “Okay. So you’ve never needed a man. Nothing wrong with that. But are you telling me that, in your whole life, you’ve never needed anyone? So…you never hired a babysitter for your kids? Never, uh…never needed a mechanic to fix your car? Never had yo
ur kids go to public school ‘cause you could do it all yourself? Never asked a friend for a lift or borrowed five bucks from your parents till payday?” I so wanted to look at him but refused…especially because he was right.
I slowed my gait, though, and took a deep breath. Then he said, his voice soft, “Or are you like all of us and need a little help now and again?”
We crossed the road and, although I didn’t mention anything, my mind noticed that there was only one set of tire tracks in the snow. Even though we were in the high country, it had been a few days since the last snowfall and the snow wasn’t so deep that no vehicles could get through. There should have been a lot more tracks that the set I saw.
I didn’t know if Kevin noticed it. Of course, this part of Colorado was likely new to him, and he might not know that one set of tracks wasn’t normal. I knew we couldn’t hear vehicles drive by from my aunt’s house—it was too far and, even if it wasn’t set back from the road as much as it was, there were a couple small hills blocking the view of her house. It had been built in that spot intentionally so that Lou and Felix could feel like they and their family were the only ones in the world, and that was part of why the drive to their house went a ways, because it wound around instead of over those hills.
It also meant that we’d have no idea what kind of activity there was on the road until now.
But we crossed it and entered the woods again. We were close by then. I knew, from memory, that we had to walk down a slope after climbing a small rise, and that would be the indication that we were getting close. First, though, we had to walk through a thicket of chokecherry trees, and then we had a clearing to walk through. It was a field owned by another person in the bed of the valley, and I knew there were a few fields here and there throughout. We were officially off my Aunt Lou’s property now, and I didn’t remember the name of the family who owned this place, but I did recall playing there as a child. We played in and by the creek a lot as kids and the neighbor hadn’t taken issue with it. There were other smaller streams in the hills feeding into this one, but this was the one I always thought of. White Creek, not named such because of its color but after one of the settlers of Chipeta Springs well over a century ago, probably was quite white now because of the weather.
By the time we reached the creek, I was feeling calm once more. Taking in the beauty of nature and nostalgia had bought some peace to my bones. I admitted to Kevin something he already knew. “Yes, I need help from people sometimes. Don’t we all?”
There was no smile in his voice, no accusation, no smugness, all the things I would have expected from Larry. “Yeah, we do.”
We walked a few feet until we got to a level place next to the creek. The water was covered in ice, but the ice wasn’t so thick as to impede us. I had been carrying the shovel (my “weapon”) and I brought it down on the edge of the ice to crack it. Kevin and I both squatted down at the same time, but he pulled the broken sheet of ice off the water. He looked at me and said, “We need to be able to get at more. You want to do it or you want me to?”
I shrugged and stood up, but he had already set down the two water jugs and was chipping away at the ice with the tire iron in his hand. Soon there was plenty of room for us to get to the water. Now that the ice was off that spot, it babbled in its travels as it rushed downstream, and I remembered as a kid scooping up handfuls of water in the summer and downing them, loving the taste of the water. No bottled water, no drinking fountain, no chemically treated tap or purified delivery coolers could come close to what nature had created. I was tempted then to rip off my gloves and do the very same thing, but I knew the water was cold. Bad enough my hands would touch it to get it in the bottles.
Kevin filled the two gallon jugs first, and then we both took bottles out of the backpack and filled a couple at a time. As we got more efficient, we could both hold two bottles in the water. We filled them up to the rims. I noticed that we both kept looking around at our surroundings, careful to make sure we weren’t being snuck up on.
Part of me wanted to apologize for being so angry earlier, but I wasn’t sorry for the sentiment. I had never liked being made to feel weak. When I’d choked and hadn’t wanted to kill one of the infected? Sure, that could be viewed as weakness, and that was one I could admit, but other things…no. Especially not with a guy like Larry who was turning out to be what seemed unbelievably misogynistic.
Still…none of that had been Kevin’s doing, and he was right. I shouldn’t walk to the creek alone, not in light of all we’d seen over the past week. To do so would be foolish. I took a deep breath and concentrated my vision on the bottle I was filling. An apology was the right thing to do. “Hey…sorry about losing my cool. I…haven’t had to take anyone’s help for a while.”
I finally looked up and met his eyes. They were a light green and the black pupils were tiny, thanks to the bright snow all around. He was beautiful then and I could see in those orbs that boy I fell in love with all those decades ago. My heart melted then, and I knew that—no matter what words came out of his mouth—I was going to fall for him once more.
What he said solidified the deal. “I want to help you, Nina, so please take it.”
He took my breath away.
Chapter Thirty-three
“Tear Away” – Drowning Pool
We declared our first day of not trying to get out of the woods a success. The next day, we would start talking exit strategy once more and figure out a way to get home, but now we had daily chores assigned to each of us to ensure our survival, and then we’d try other things to get us out of there…but we would no longer leave our day-to-day existence to chance.
After a meal of baked potatoes (with a dash of salt and a tiny bit of butter since we didn’t have much left), canned tuna fish, and apples, we sat around the fire, wrapped in blankets and staring at the flames as they danced and flickered.
It was almost as though we were too tired to speak, but Larry finally broke the ice after we’d been sitting there for ages. “You all see any infected today?”
Kevin shook his head. “No. You?”
Larry’s voice took on a sinister quality as he said, “Didn’t engage ‘em, but we saw some off a piece. I didn’t want Vera to have to fight, so we avoided ‘em.”
“How many?”
“Just a few—I couldn’t see if there were more in the trees behind ‘em. I saw at least—was it three, woman?”
Vera’s eyes shifted to Larry but she didn’t move her face. “I don’t know.”
Larry shrugged and stretched backwards, looking like he was getting ready to lie back in the recliner and go to sleep. But then he asked, “You think the trip to the creek is one we could make every day?”
Kevin looked in my eyes and I gave him a slight nod. The trip back was tiring, mainly because it was mostly uphill and we were carrying all the water then, but it was doable. It was necessary for our survival, and so I’d do it as often as needed. After today, though, I imagined our loads would be lighter, because we’d only have to get enough water to replenish what we’d drunk and used to prepare meals. “Yeah, we can do it.”
Larry tilted his head back a little, as though ruminating on his thoughts. “You two volunteering?”
I didn’t know where the hell he’d come up with that idea, but, I supposed, it wasn’t something I objected to. I wasn’t uncomfortable around Kevin anymore. Hell, I’d proven that to myself earlier in the day. Until spending every waking moment with these people over the past week, I never would have shown such open anger to anyone. It wasn’t that my companions were starting to feel like family. It’s hard to explain, but I felt like we were each integral to the survival of the group. We had to find a way to get along, to support each other, to work alongside each other.
Kevin looked at me again, and I could see it in his eyes. He too felt the same way. “You okay with that?”
“Yeah.”
“So what’ll you and Vera be doing?” I was glad Kevin asked it, because
Larry’s chauvinism might have made him decide not to answer the question.
“Well, some of what we did today. I think we definitely need to make sure we keep a good supply of kindling. We also need to keep all these extra buckets full of snow for working water. But I know those things probably won’t take as long or be as hard as hauling water.” I felt a little relief that Larry seemed to be thinking magnanimously for a change—if that was what it was. “But I was also thinkin’ that maybe, while Vera and I are collecting kindling every day, we can also start looking for neighbors. If we start early in the day, after breakfast, I think we might be able to find homes and maybe get the hell out of here.”
Kevin inhaled deeply before saying, “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Maybe Nina and I can do that too.” He glanced at me again, and—even in the dim glow in the room—I could see the sparkle in his eyes. I didn’t know what it meant, but he asked, “Sound okay to you?”
“Yeah, sure.”
The more time I spent with Kevin Savage, the more time I wanted to spend with him. I might have had a schoolgirl crush on him—worse than most—but the woman Nina was getting to know the man Kevin…and I thought that maybe I had seen then the man he would become now—because I could see that he was something special.
I wondered if it was simply because I saw him juxtaposed with Larry, a guy who had, at first, seemed like a decent neighbor and solid friend but was devolving into a base character, someone with little integrity, especially when it came to matters of the opposite sex.
I was beginning to dislike Larry—a lot.
He said, “Then it’s settled,” and, as if he had been a judge listening to a long-deliberated trial, he slapped his thigh and then sat back, kicking up the footrest to the recliner and joining his hands under his neck, his pointed elbows forming a diamond around his head.
We sat in silence for a while, staring into the fire, and I knew we’d all doze off at some point. I had some things that had been on my mind, though, more than I could ever say, so I started with what was concrete. “If we wind up staying here for much longer, I’m going to start sleeping in a bed.”
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