Daunting Days of Winter (6 page)

After twenty-five minutes, the next patrol arrived back at the garrison, gave the password, and Kyle was off on his next round. The route was pretty standard. East along the river to the mountain, southwest for a mile and a half to the ranch’s fence, west to the mountain, then northwest back to the garrison. Each night the direction of the route was chosen based on a coin toss, with the men walking the same paths and seeing the same scenery, just from a different angle.

Kyle was a little over halfway through the loop and passing the firewood lot when he heard a noise. He brought his gun to the ready position, and stopped to listen. Occasionally he’d come across a raccoon on his rounds and thought that might be the case, but wasn’t sure.

Kyle cupped his hand to his mouth. “Anyone there?” he called out. No answer. “Anyone there?” he called again, this time a little louder. Still no answer, and no animals scurrying away.

Kyle began to walk back between the piles of wood. He shuffled his feet and kicked at pieces of wood to make noise, hoping to scare off any animals that might be hiding. The woodpiles were six feet high and stacked in rows that were twenty feet long. The faint light from the crescent moon made dim shadows play tricks on his eyes. Twice he was ready to shoot at what he thought were black bears, before realizing it was just shadows he was seeing. Kyle had just rounded a corner to walk the narrow aisle between two stacks of wood when there was a scrambling sound, and a wall of logs collapsed on him, knocking him sideways.

He spotted a dark figure emerging from the shadows as he fell, which threw an armload of wood at Kyle, then took off running towards the river. The wood wasn’t heavy, and in a matter of seconds, Kyle had extracted himself and his weapon from the pile and was pursuing the figure out of the woodlot. He chased the figure across a horse pasture, then through the trees along the creek bank. Kyle had closed the gap to ten feet when the figure jumped down the bank, ran across the ice on the creek, and began to climb the opposite bank.

Kyle, who’d been yelling “stop” at the person throughout the chase, paused a second, jumped down the creek bank and followed across the creek, catching the runner by the foot when he slipped climbing the far bank.

“Leave me alone!” the man cried breathlessly.

Kyle pulled him by the ankle, jerking him down from the top of the creek bank. The man kicked out with his free foot and caught Kyle solidly on the side of the knee, dropping Kyle to the ground. Kyle let out a pained yell, but didn’t release his grip on the man’s ankle. He twisted hard, spinning the man around onto his side. Kyle lunged at the man’s head, but caught a fist on his own cheek instead.

Kyle grunted, tasted blood in his mouth, and moved his hands to protect his head. The man beneath him swung again, the blow grazing off of Kyle’s ear in the dark. Kyle steadied himself. He was straddling the man’s torso and could see the arms swinging at him again. Kyle deflected the blow, then unloaded a series of punches to the man’s face. After four solid blows, the man quit fighting back. Flooded with anger, Kyle was pulling back for one last punch when he heard another voice nearby.

“What’s going on down there?”

Kyle immediately recognized Ty’s voice. “I’m over here,” he answered. The man he sat on moaned and shifted beneath him. Kyle unclenched his fist and frisked the man, then got up and retrieved his own weapon from where he’d dropped it.

“Is that you, Tait?”

Kyle could see Ty walking on the creek bank above him. “Yeah, it’s me.” Kyle pointed his gun at the man on the ground. “You have any weapons?”

The man groaned but didn’t respond verbally. Kyle knelt down and frisked him again, finding only a small pocketknife and a dead flashlight.

Twenty minutes later, Kyle stood in Gabe Vance’s living room with Sean Reider and the wood thief, Dale Briggs. Dale wiped blood from a cut below his left eye with a damp rag that Lori Vance had given him as Kyle explained what had happened.

Gabe looked at Dale and shook his head. “Anything to say for yourself?” he asked.

Dale shook his head.

“Go home, Dale,” Gabe said. “It would have been easier for you to go cut down a tree.”

“I don’t have an axe,” Dale mumbled as he turned towards the door and let himself out.

Kyle looked at Gabe, embarrassed. “Sorry about disturbing you like this. Guess it wasn’t that big a deal.”

“You’re fine,” Gabe said, waving his hand. “I wasn’t sleeping that well anyway, and that kid deserved to get his butt kicked. Maybe it will knock some sense into him.”

“I’ve never seen him before,” Kyle said. “Thought maybe he was a looter from out of town.”

Gabe shook his head. “No, well, yes. I guess he is a looter, but he’s one of ours. His mother is Lois Briggs. Good lady. Teaches with your wife at the school. She’s a single mom, and Dale’s her youngest. She worked for an architect in town while Dale went to college. He graduated a couple of years ago with a degree in literature, but a job was never handed to him, so he just hung out at home being a nuisance to his mother. She makes excuses for him. Says he has depression, but I think he’s just a lazy bum.”

Sean zipped up his jacket. “I tried to talk him into joining the militia, but he went off on a tirade about guns. Glad now he didn’t join. We don’t need to have some kid there to babysit.”

Gabe nodded. “You’re better off without him. It would take two guys to hold his hand. I should probably be nicer, but he ticks me off. Doesn’t help his mother at all, and I know she splits what food she gets with him, so she’s going without. Stealing that wood was probably the most initiative he’s taken in the last year. Maybe there’s hope.”

CHAPTER 7

Thursday, December 29
^th

South of Deer Creek

Kyle cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. “Hello!” He waited and listened, but only the turkeys trailing behind him responded. He waited a few seconds more and called again. This time he heard a dog bark, and he retreated to a rock outcropping, climbing on top.

Copper bounded up the hill, heading straight for the boulder that Kyle was perched on. “Copper, sit!” Kyle commanded, but the dog ignored him, circling the rock and growling. Kyle looked down the hill and saw Frank walking warily towards him, his gun drawn.

Frank shouted something and Copper quit pacing and sat down.

“Kyle!” Frank exclaimed when he got close. “I’m sorry. My vision’s not so good; I should have recognized you,” he said as he lowered his gun. “Get down off that rock. Copper probably won’t eat you; I’ve already fed him today.”

Kyle watched the dog as he cautiously climbed down. Copper growled but didn’t move towards him.

“What brings you to these parts?”

It was late December, unseasonably warm, and Kyle, who worked ten days on and four days off, was in the middle of his days-off period. “I wanted to invite you to a New Year’s Day party.”

“Is it that time already?” Frank asked. “Guess I don’t pay much attention to the calendar.”

Kyle nodded. “Well, three days from now it is. We’ve invited the folks from the town of Clinton to come. I thought maybe you and Brenda would enjoy coming and meeting some people. It’s all dependent on the weather of course.”

Frank raised his hand to cut Kyle off. “I think we’re going to have to pass on this one. I know Brenda would love to go, but she twisted her ankle pretty bad last week. She’s up and hopping around now, but I don’t think she’d be up for a party.” He paused a second. “I guess I shouldn’t make the decision for her. Why don’t you come down to the house and ask her. I know she’d enjoy seeing you again.”

Kyle followed Frank down the mountainside. They took a left after eighty yards and walked past a stand of pine trees. Frank came to a stop. “What do you think?” he asked.

Kyle looked for a small cabin, but didn’t see anything, then noticed a pair of windows in the rock face. “You live in the hillside?”

Frank beamed. “It’s the most expensive cave in Montana, or at least I’m guessing it is. Actually, it’s not really a cave, and I have no idea how it compares cost wise, but it sure as hell wasn’t cheap. Come on in.” Frank led Kyle to a steel door, painted to blend in with the rocks, and pushed it open. “We got company, honey. Hope you’re decent,” he called inside.

Kyle followed Frank into his home, letting out a low whistle after his eyes adjusted to the lighting. “Wow!” he said. “This is amazing.” Kyle’s eyes swept the room. “This is not what I was expecting. How’d you do this?”

Kyle heard a door open, and Brenda emerged using a crutch for support. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was dressed comfortably in sweat pants, a t-shirt, and bright yellow socks. She greeted Kyle. “I know you’re the Deer Creek guy, but I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Kyle,” he said. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“You’d think I’d remember. It’s not like we’re swamped with visitors. Come. Have a seat. Frank must have given you the stamp of approval if he’s exposed our hideout. Whatcha think?”

Kyle shook his head as he continued looking around. He was in a large room, forty feet wide by twenty feet deep. If he’d been blindfolded and led inside, he’d have thought that he was in a modern house because other than a shortage of windows, it looked like a completely modern dwelling. The room he was in had a reclining, leather sofa, a large ceiling fan hanging from a ten-foot ceiling, and a home theater system centered on one wall and surrounded by shelves filled with books. The room was sparsely, but nicely, decorated with rugs, paintings and photographs. The kitchen and dining area were on the far end of the room and had modern cabinets, slate floors, a gas stove, and a dishwasher. Three separate pine doors at the back of the room, leading deeper into the hillside, were closed.

“I’m speechless. Thought I’d be in a cave with water dripping from the ceiling.”

Brenda laughed. “When I married Frank and he said he wanted to live in the mountains, I was thinking a little cabin with a nice porch. Didn’t think he meant literally ‘in the mountains’. It took him a bit to convince me this was the way to go, but I’m glad we did.”

“This must have cost a fortune.”

“Not as much as you’d think, but it all depends where your priorities are. There’s over $90,000 worth of concrete and rebar here. The rest of it wasn’t that much since the labor was free. It’s not going to win any architectural awards, it’s just a big square with five rooms, but it has everything we need.”

“This is nicer than my house.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Frank replied. “We do without some things, though not as much as you might expect. There’s no AC, but being in-ground keeps our temperatures fine in the summer. Water’s a bit of an issue. We have two cisterns further up the hill, one fed by a small year-round spring, the other by a stream that runs March until August most years. The spring gives us twenty gallons a day, so we’re not hurting, but we can’t take baths or irrigate with it, and we only flush a couple times a day.” Frank stroked his beard and thought for a second. “I had more working solar panels than we do now, but the EMP took them and the better charge controller out. Fortunately we have some old equipment that we’re running off of, but it’s not full power. There’s some other stuff, but you get the idea.”

“I’d love to have something like this. It’s fantastic.”

Frank motioned for Kyle to sit, and walked towards a woodstove. “Can I get you some coffee?”

Kyle’s eyes widened. “I think I’ve forgotten what coffee tastes like. I’d love some.”

“Milk? Sugar?”

“You’ve got milk?”

“It’s goat milk, but it’s good.”

“Both, please,” Kyle said, watching expectantly as Frank poured the hot drink while Brenda retrieved the milk and sugar. Kyle took the mug from Frank and cradled it in his hands, sipping slowly, savoring the warmth and flavor. “I may never go home. A pot of real coffee would be worth a mint down there.”

“Didn’t you have anything stored?” Frank asked between sips. “A case of coffee, some MRE’s, anything?”

“No, I mean, we’d stock up in the winter a little bit, in case the weather kept us snowed in for a few days. But Jennifer, my wife, she worked in town, so she could get to the store easily.”

“Can’t get to the store now, can you?” Frank said, staring intently at Kyle.

“Brace yourself, Kyle. The lecture’s coming,” Brenda said, then shook her head at Frank. “He’s a guest, dear. Don’t be too rough on him.” She turned back to Kyle. “Our son got this lecture all the time, as did all our friends, family, you name it. They’ve all heard it. That’s why no one comes to visit.”

Frank looked at his wife and gave her a defensive look. “No one comes to visit because they didn’t listen to me, and they’re probably dead or dying. Prior to September, they laughed at me behind my back. Thought I was a fool. Thought that the blood and sweat I put into this place was a waste of resources. ‘Buy a condo,’ ‘go on vacation,’ ‘get a boat,’ they’d say while they flushed their money away. You ever been to Hawaii, Kyle?”

“No,” he answered. “We wanted to, but couldn’t afford it.” Kyle heard Brenda catch her breath.

Frank took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses with his shirt. His good eye was bloodshot, and his cheeks were getting red. “I’ve never been to Hawaii, Kyle, but I didn’t want to. Do you know that for the price of a vacation in Hawaii you could buy a year’s worth of food? Half our friends went on fancy vacations every year, but didn’t have jack squat for food storage.”

Frank was talking faster, his eyes darting between Kyle and his wife. “Do you smoke, Kyle? Or I guess I should say did you smoke? A lot of people went cold turkey this year.”

Kyle shrunk back in the couch and shook his head. “No. Tried it once, but it made me sick.”

“Good,” Frank said. “Nasty habit, and a waste of money. Do you know that if you smoked a pack a day for ten years you would have spent enough to buy food for your family for two years and enough guns and ammo to fight off a small army.”

“Frank, Kyle didn’t come up here to be lectured. Besides, this doesn’t do anyone any good at this point.” Brenda’s eyes were pleading but warm as she spoke to her husband.