Nuclear Winter | Book 2 | First Spring

by Jones, Nathan

  He wasn't sure how much time passed, but at some point Deb calmed down and shifted around until she was lying with her head on his hip. “After everything that's happened,” she mumbled, “now this. Can't we ever have anything good?”

  He could argue that before this tragedy his life had been getting better and better ever since he met her, and he hoped she felt the same. But he knew it was the grief talking. “We can. We will.”

  His wife didn't respond, and it wasn't until a few minutes later that he realized she'd fallen asleep. The position was a bit awkward, but he was glad she was getting the rest she needed to recover and didn't want to risk waking her. So he sat there at an awkward angle with his back partially against the wall, although he shifted a pillow around to prop him up a bit.

  Then, one arm resting protectively over the woman he loved more than he could ever express, he allowed himself to drift off to sleep as well.

  Chapter Eight

  Hopelessness

  There was a pall over the shelter group for the next couple days. For the expecting parents their excitement had been effusive and infectious, and while they were more drawn inward in their grief it was still shared by friends and family.

  Matt grieved for his friends and their loss, but unfortunately they weren't the only ones in town suffering. In fact, they were in a rather large company.

  There had been several deaths over the winter, which was to be expected, although thankfully far fewer than last winter's catastrophic toll. But recently that number had sharply spiked. When it finally came to Matt's attention it had already been on the rise over the last few days, but he didn't realize the problem until Terry, in his capacity as town coroner, came to him to express his alarm.

  All but one of the deaths were suicides.

  For the first few seconds after hearing that Matt's mind drew a horrified blank as he tried to figure out what could be precipitating them. Some change in the weather, or some psychological quirk that made people suddenly give up after winter had lasted a certain amount of time? Matt had heard that suicides spiked around the Holiday Season, when people whose lives were in the toilet got hit by despondency at the time when they felt it most.

  But the Holidays were months behind them, and while there'd been a couple then as well it was nothing like what his brother-in-law was reporting now. And Terry assured him that he was fairly confident he'd correctly identified the cause of death in most cases.

  Matt's next theory was out there, that maybe it was a serial killer trying to hide his crimes by making them look like suicides. The fact that his flailing mind had gone from unlikely to absurd just served to illustrate how completely baffled he was by this phenomenon.

  Of course he immediately called the town's leaders together to discuss the problem. For this meeting at least that included Lewis. His friend didn't usually come to these, although he was always welcome when he did attend, but Matt had asked him to take Trev's place in consideration of his friend's recent loss. Since Gutierrez was there to represent the defenders anyway Matt mostly just wanted Lewis's perspective on this mystery.

  Once everyone was assembled he quickly outlined Terry's findings. The others expressed the same concern he did, but it turned out not all of them were stumped by the puzzle.

  “Today's February 24th,” Catherine half stated, half asked. Matt nodded uncertainly, while Lewis and Chauncey both nodded confidently. The former Mayor sighed. “Well then that's our answer. It's been exactly six months since Corporal Bryant brought us the windfall food.”

  For a moment that drew almost as big a blank for Matt as the news itself had. Of course he saw the connection, but at the same time he didn't see how it had an immediate effect. “But we haven't had any more people than usual coming to us for aid. And even if they ran out of food right now it's still weeks before they'd be starving to death.”

  “It's symbolic,” Lewis said quietly. “The same way people committed suicide in vast numbers not long after the Gulf burned, when they finally realized the trucks wouldn't be bringing food and they were facing a real, and serious, catastrophe.”

  Catherine nodded. “They could have any number of reasons for doing it now. Maybe they'd been unsuccessful or lazy when it came to hunting and gathering, and had exactly six months. Or maybe some disaster limited their food supply. These are probably the people who don't want to be a burden on the town and possibly cause others to starve to death trying to feed them. And I imagine there are also those who simply decided to use the date when their food officially ran out as the excuse to give up like they'd been wanting to do for a while.”

  She shook her head sadly. “Few could've imagined just how hard it would be to survive in the circumstances we find ourselves in. Stories and even historical texts tend to romanticize low tech existence, but they never tell you how backbreaking, soul-crushing, and arbitrarily brutal it can be. Especially when we've lost most of the skills and knowledge we need to do it effectively. And we've already lived through one winter under terrible conditions, so those who're taking their lives know exactly what they're facing now that their food is gone.”

  Matt felt sick. But there was so much the town, or their friends and neighbors, could've done for them. Was this life really so hard for them that death was preferable? He knew his family had it much better than most of the town, and also had last winter in spite of how they'd starved during the last little bit before spring.

  He probably couldn't imagine just how bad it was for those people, and what their rationalizations had been once they began running out of options until it felt like only two remained: starve to death agonizingly or end it quickly.

  “We could've done something,” he said weakly.

  “Maybe,” Lewis agreed. “More importantly, what do we do now?”

  Catherine sighed. “That is the question, isn't it? We can't exactly run a PSA saying “Hey, we know you just ran out of food and things seem hopeless and it would be better to just end it. But don't give up yet, even though we don't have any answers for you!”

  Although Matt respected the former Mayor's wisdom and experience, sometimes her cynical pragmatism irked him. “Why couldn't we get the word out? Make the message a bit more subtle than that, but emphasize all the problems we've overcome, the good things we have going for us, and that there's a lot to be optimistic about with the future.”

  The others were skeptical. “Are you suggesting we just gather everyone for a pep talk on top of circulating news that over a dozen people have killed themselves in the last four days?” Chauncey asked. “There's no way to make that subtle.”

  “Some sort of holiday, then?” Ben asked. “A midwinter celebration?”

  Midwinter, at the end of February. Well, the way this winter was going it sure felt like it was only halfway over.

  “Anything like that would just be a bandaid over the underlying problem,” Catherine argued. “People aren't killing themselves because they feel like it's hopeless, they're doing it because their situation effectively is. Something to improve their spirits won't change the fact that they're facing starvation. The best way we could prevent more suicides is to find some source of food for those people.”

  “Well that's always been the trick, and even more so in the middle of winter,” Ben replied. “Any particular idea how?” The former Mayor hesitated, then shook her head. Ben turned to the rest of the group. “Anyone?”

  There was a long, awkward silence. Then Lewis spoke quietly. “These suicides aren't cries for help, attempts intended to fail in a way that'll draw attention. They're sincere, which means they'll be quiet. All the solutions proposed so far have been loud, the wrong approach if you ask me. Why don't you just quietly go door to door to everyone, ask if they're comfortable sharing their food situation, and assure them that the town can help them if they really need it?”

  “We can't help everyone, though,” Catherine pointed out.

  “We can at least get everyone through to spring alive, and worry about
things from there.”

  Terry was shaking his head. “If they killed themselves to avoid being a burden, how would this change their minds?”

  Lewis paused, seriously thinking it over. “Maybe it wouldn't, for some. The ones we might never be able to reach. But for the others reaching out to them might be just enough to get them rethinking things. It's a lot easier to contemplate the unthinkable in the darkness when you feel you're all alone, than it is when you're staring into the face of a friend who's calling you back from the edge. Hearing it personally from someone that yes, they're going to be a burden, but the people who care about them are willing to share that burden if it means saving their life . . . that can make all the difference.”

  Matt looked around at the others and saw a few nods. “If nothing else it's a good starting point,” he said. “Let's consult the map of town and section it off for pairs of us to visit.”

  * * * * *

  Over the next few days Raul joined Trev, who was grieving but determined not to abandon his friends and neighbors when they needed him, in going door to door to dozens of houses to ask the people of Aspen Hill about their food situation.

  That wasn't the easiest task for Raul. It was actually darkly amusing that nobody thought he might also need to be sat down and given some encouragement.

  And he probably did. Watching townspeople running out of food and giving up all around him in increasing numbers, then choosing to end it themselves rather than suffer the way they had during the winter after the Gulf burned, hit him hard.

  Just not in the expected ways. Raul had plenty of food thanks to his own efforts hunting and gathering, so he wasn't worried about personally going hungry. And none of his close friends were worried either, knowing that.

  Only it wasn't the hunger that threw him for a loop. After finishing up the task of talking to their section of town, with modest success, Raul got back to his usual routine, and found it nearly unbearable. The combined effects of cold, prolonged darkness, and boredom were taking their toll, which combined with the relentless assault of his memories was gradually grinding him down.

  And, yes, he'd admit to himself that loneliness played a part. Until now he'd never minded solitude, and for months during the winter he'd been content. But finally he began to feel that itch to be around other human beings, even for just short visits to hear another person's voice, feel that human contact. With all of that, it scared him to find that he was almost envious of those who'd decided to take the easy way out.

  He wasn't to the point of contemplating joining them, but it was a close run thing. Helping Trev supervise the defenders and taking shifts on patrol helped a lot with that. It gave him purpose, people to talk to, filled the hours. But eventually it started to not be enough.

  So, ignoring the protests of friends who all thought he was crazy, he took the snowshoes he'd made out of strips of bark and soaked oak saplings painstakingly bent into shape, the sled that had been equally challenging to build, gathered up some necessary gear, and began setting off to explore.

  He wasn't completely crazy. It wasn't like he was just picking a random direction and wandering off. He'd always been bothered by the fact that the townspeople seemed to have just accepted that old Aspen Hill was burned to the ground and nobody had really taken the time to check it out. No attempts to see if any infrastructure remained, or to poke around looking for things that could be scavenged.

  Raul brought it up with Matt, who gave him the green light to go pick the town over and take whatever he wanted. His friend also suggested he wait until the snows melted, then that he was crazy for going when Raul insisted.

  It wasn't completely unthinkable. The impossibly cold weather of January and February had finally broken, and temperatures were now tolerable in the 10s or low 20s. That was actually also ideal for snowshoeing, since the snow developed a hard crust that would remain all day long. Not too dry and powdery, not wet and melting, just right.

  Goldilocks conditions, as his drill instructor in Basic used to call it. Of course, the man was the type who'd call anything from driving rain to blistering heat just right.

  But for Raul's purposes it really was. So out he went, filling the seemingly endless days of March with long treks down out of the mountains. He didn't find much, and he already knew the area well from his time patrolling the town so he didn't get much useful scouting in, either. In spite of that he still didn't feel like he was wasting his time; he was improving his ability to move in snow, strengthening his muscles, and he did find some scraps here and there worth taking.

  And the hunting down where the winter wasn't quite so fierce was actually not bad at all. Having a field dressed carcass to drag back with him on the sled on most days let him feel like he'd accomplished something.

  Raul's expeditions definitely drew notice. Trent came around to ask if he'd seen any good cars with intact windows nearby, and if so if he'd be interested in going after glass from them when conditions were a little better. Matt wanted to talk to him about any groups of settlers he'd run into who the town could possibly approach for trading. Lewis was curious if he'd seen any sites of combat where he could potentially scavenge more brass. And random townspeople came hoping he could tell them something about their destroyed homes, give them some closure.

  It got to the point where Raul was no longer starved for human contact, and bizarrely him spending long periods of time traveling away from the community actually strengthened his ties with it. He even found himself getting visits from single women who just seemed interested in hearing him talk about his trips out into the cold. Raul got the feeling most were flirting with him, and a few definitely did more than flirt.

  He wasn't complaining, he just couldn't seem to return their interest.

  But his most surprising visit came from Robert Paulson, halfway into March when Raul had been going down to explore the town's ruins for a couple weeks.

  Raul didn't exactly dislike the carpenter, but he'd barely talked to the man. Part of that was because Robert had been interested in Mary, although that hardly seemed to matter now. Still, it meant this visit was unexpected.

  “Hey,” Robert said when Raul opened the door. “How's the winter treating you?”

  “Cold and boring, about like you'd expect.” Raul stepped aside and invited the man into his tiny cabin.

  With plenty of time over the last few months he'd improved the small space with a table and chair, which he directed his visitor towards while he sat on the edge of the bed. He still had no source of light other than his fire, and where needed the flashlight he used for patrols and charged using the town's solar panels. But given how far those battery reserves needed to stretch to meet the town's needs, especially for Chauncey's radio, he tried to avoid using any for personal needs.

  That made Trent's invitation to go along looking for windows a lot more tempting, and Raul intended to accept so he could make that vital improvement to his home. Having sunlight to see by during the day would almost feel like a luxury after so long relying on dim, flickering firelight.

  The carpenter settled down on the chair and rested one elbow on the table. “You seem to be handling the cold pretty well, and boredom too. I hear you've been exploring the ruins of the old town just about every day you don't have a shift.”

  “Pretty much. What's it to you?”

  His tone was a bit colder than he'd intended, and Robert gave him an uncertain look. “Um, do we have a problem I don't know about?”

  Raul sighed. Maybe there was still some lingering jealousy about the man's interest in Mary, although the carpenter didn't seem to have pursued her over the winter. “Sorry. Just wondering why you're here.”

  “Yeah, I guess we're pretty much strangers.” Paul settled back in his chair. “I was hoping to pick your brain about conditions down there. I've been talking with a few people who were considering moving back down, trying to rebuild the original town. A few people feel bad about abandoning their property, even if their homes ar
e no longer there, and want to go reclaim it. The area's worth holding onto, and if we don't then some group of refugees definitely will.”

  Well that was a surprise. “You want to abandon new Aspen Hill?”

  Robert winced. “Not abandon. We're part of this town, and we want to keep those ties strong. But it seems a bit crazy to be trying to survive up in these mountains now that the blockheads are gone and there's no reason not to return to the valley. The winters are bad enough without adding a few thousand feet of elevation. We'd basically be an extension of Aspen Hill, that's all.”

  Raul supposed that was fair enough. The valley they were in was buried in snow, but that was nothing compared to the deep drifts blanketing the ridges to the east and west and the mountainous regions beyond. They might see spring and green grass down here in a month or two, while a few hundred yards upslope in either direction the snow was still five feet deep.

  His visitor fidgeted as if nervous about what he was going to say next. “In fact, we're always looking for more good people to join us. You'd be an amazing addition to the group.”

  And . . . that was also unexpected. On the one hand Raul's current situation wasn't working for him, and he'd obviously been looking for a change. On the other hand he doubted any of his friends were going to abandon their efforts in this valley just to start over again in the ruins of their old home. And what was the point of going to another place just to still be part of Aspen Hill, but none of the parts that made it worthwhile for him?

  Raul shook his head. “I appreciate the offer, but I don't think it's for me.”

  “All good.” Robert shrugged. “It's always on the table if you change your mind. But in the meantime I'd still like to hear what things look like down there.”

  “Sure.” Raul spent the next half hour or so giving a rundown on the condition the ruined town and the surrounding area was in. The Aspen Hill Canyon stream was still flowing just fine, and while the spigot on the town spring had been busted the spring itself was still flowing strong. That was all the water a prospective settlement needed, just like it had kept the residents of Aspen Hill going before they'd been forced to abandon their homes.