Snow Falling on Bluegrass (6 page)

I put a “firm” hand on Gina's arm. “I'm thinking that while she's not your direct supervisor, Sadie still ranks above you and you should watch your tone.”

Oh, I would have to address this shit. Outbursts like that sowed trouble in the office setting, and even more so now that we were out of our comfort zone. Our department ran smoothly because we trusted Sadie to take care of us and support us. Undermining that trust would cause nothing but tension and inefficiency. And while I might be a mess personally, I did not tolerate tension and inefficiency in my office.

Sadie couldn't confront Gina directly without looking petty in front of the group. I, on the other hand, didn't need my coworkers to count on my leadership skills, so I could go after Gina's kneecaps. In a metaphorical sense, of course.

“You rank lower than I do, Kelsey,” Gina spat. “And you should remember that.”

“Sweetie, the last time I checked, personal assistants weren't listed on the KCT's ‘ascension to the throne' chart. So just settle down before you hurt yourself, mmkay?”

Gina rolled her eyes and huffed off. The group began grumbling among themselves, a low rumble of complaints that would only lead to increasing drama over the next few days. Still, Sadie remained completely composed as she turned to me and said, “Since we're probably going to be here a few days—Kelsey? Logistics?”

I took a deep breath. I was trying to remember every survival tip I'd ever picked up from episodes of
Lost
, but beyond “Avoid the Others and polar bears,” the show didn't offer much in the way of practical knowledge.
Focus
, I told myself. What was once merely an annoying work trip was now a matter of surviving an adverse situation. We needed lists, organization, prep. Fortunately, I lived for this sort of thing.

4

In Which Bonnie Gets the Donner Party Warning

I clapped my hands together, using my most authoritative office voice. “Okay, first things first: Who knows we're here besides Commissioner Bidwell?”

Luke stepped forward, his eyebrows raised. “I called my supervisors at the parks department to let them know I had emergency guests. They're aware of our situation and the number of people.”

I nodded. “Okay, that's good. That outside awareness keeps us accountable and prevents us from murdering each other when someone inevitably drinks the last of the coffee. Also, we need to figure out our heating situation, because it's getting a bit nippy in here.”

“The lobby fireplace and the fireplace in the dining room are both wood-burning, because the management wanted to keep up the ambience,” Luke said. “We just got a load of firewood, so we should have enough to keep it going for a while.”

“Great,” I said. “That's a great start. We need someone to go into as many rooms as possible and drag the comforters off the beds and into the dining room. And we'll need mattresses too, if we can get them. We're going to need duct tape to tape some of the blankets over the doors to trap the heat in the dining room. We may not actually need a full-on dining room refugee camp; we could get the power back before we have to sleep in there. But it's better to do it now instead of waiting until we
know
we're going to need it and ending up stumbling around the hotel in the dark, trying to set up.”

“Why not the lobby?” Josh asked, putting his arm around my best friend. “It's got a bigger fireplace.”

I shook my head, eyeing the wood beams crisscrossing the cathedral ceilings. “The ceilings are too high. It would be too hard to keep warm.”

Sadie nudged Josh and grinned at him. “This is why we hired her. Just sit back and let her work through her checklist.”

“Is there a disaster preparedness kit?” I asked.

“In the office,” Luke said, “along with some Coleman lanterns and emergency supplies.”

“Awesome, you bring them into the dining room as we set up camp.”

“You do realize that I'm the one who's supposed to be having this conversation with them, yes?” Luke asked, gesturing to the assembled survivors.

My cheeks went hot. “Sorry about that.”

“No, no, you were right. I just needed to reestablish my authority. If I let civilians walk in and stage a coup, my boss gets all upset with me.” He turned to the group and pointed at me. “Everything that she just said.”

Sadie rounded up the troops to scavenge bedding from the first-floor guest rooms. She called out buddy assignments and insisted on a check-in within twenty minutes. Charlie cast a long look over his shoulder as he wandered down the hall with Tom, frowning at me. That was new.

“Kels, I'm going to go use the last of Josh's cell phone battery to call the commissioner and update him on our situation.”

“Want me to run interference?” I offered. “I can make feedback noises in the background or pretend that there's a conference call coming through or something.”

She winked at me, heading for a quiet corner. “Nah, I think he knows something like this is coming.”

“So, uh, what do you do, at your office?” Luke asked.

“Keep everything organized and running on an even keel. Put out fires, figurative and literal, sometimes. On good days, I keep Josh and Sadie from killing each other. On bad days, I have to keep them from making out in the conference room when they think no one is looking.”

“So, smart
and
brave.”

“No, just interested in not being emotionally traumatized when I walk into the conference room unannounced,” I said, making him give a barking laugh. “What about the kitchen? Is the stove gas or electric?”

Luke grimaced. “We switched over to high-efficiency electric appliances last year. Part of the governor's environmentally friendly efforts. But the good news is that there wasn't enough room in the budget to replace the big old gas water heaters yet, so we still have hot water.”

“And I suppose a backup generator would be too much to ask for?”

“We couldn't afford to install one big enough to run the building. It's not like we're a hospital or anything. If we lose power, we send the guests home.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Unless, of course, those guests invade without paying attention to your carefully prepared warnings.”

“Well, that happens,” he said carefully.

“No, it doesn't.”

He shook his head and grinned at me. “No, it doesn't. But it's been entertaining as hell so far. Wanna go forage?”

“After you.”

With a courtly bow and a sweep of his hand, Luke led me to the manager's office. What the lodge lacked in backup generators it made up for in emergency supplies. The office closet offered up an emergency kit the size of a mini-fridge, plus lanterns, bulk-size packages of batteries, freeze-dried food, candles, and blankets. We dragged as much as we dared to the dining room, where Sadie was in full commander mode, directing the others in arranging rows of mattresses in front of the fireplace. Bonnie moved the food coolers to the second-floor balcony. Gina and Theresa were grudgingly folding blankets at the foot of each pallet.

Despite the ice-reflected light coming in through the windows, the forest-green walls made the room feel even darker and smaller, like a prime-rib-scented cave. The shiny maple tables had been shoved aside to make a semicircular clearing. Tom and Jacob had chosen to make their pallets in the long, cushioned booth seats on the far wall, though I wasn't sure whether that decision was the result of some floor avoidance strategy or an unwillingness to carry additional mattresses.

Gina sidled up to Charlie, practically cooing at him. “Charlie, do you think you could help me gather extra blankets? I'm a little afraid of going to all of those rooms by myself. I'd feel better if you were with me.”

Charlie gave me a pitiful “Help me!” look, but he still let Gina lead him away like a sacrificial lamb to the skanky slaughter. I rolled my eyes, and unfortunately I did it in the direction of Josh, who had walked into the dining room with an armload of wood. “Geez, Kelsey, I can only carry so much in one trip. It's these city boy arms of mine. I'm built for show, not hard labor.”

“No!” I exclaimed. “I wasn't rolling my eyes at you.”

“Well, that's a relief.”

“What about Operation Gollum?” I asked. “Is that still a go?”

Blanching a little, Josh patted his coat pocket, where I'm sure the One Ring was stashed. “I wish you wouldn't call it that.”

“My best friend is getting engaged,” I said, even as he shushed me, searching around for signs of an eavesdropping Sadie. “I have the right to be a little irreverent.”

“I think you have a right to insist on a decent bridesmaid's dress. Everything else is optional. And yes, it's a go. I still want to marry the crazy woman. I don't see why a lack of electricity should change that. And besides, it will be a heck of a story to tell our kids, way more interesting than your standard ‘candlelit dinner and ring in a soufflé' engagement. I just have to find the right moment, something special.”

“Well, if you need help, let me know.”

“Thanks, but I'm familiar with your brand of ‘help.' I have no interest in proposing while locked in a supply closet,” he muttered.

“That was one time!” I exclaimed, slapping at his coat sleeve.

“Being locked in a closet, even once, is
memorable
.”

“Everything I do is memorable!”

He laughed, instantly quieting and patting his pocket as Sadie walked into the dining room carrying her giant box of retreat materials. God, that was adorable. One day, I would love to have the power to turn a reasonable, rational man into a quivering pile of twitches.

With the others distracted by the essential elements of survival, I methodically unpacked my camera equipment, something that had helped me survive when other assistants had been laid off or furloughed. I'd become quite the amateur photographer in my time with KCT. We needed photos for our various ads and publications, and having someone on staff who could take reliably decent shots was considerably cheaper than hiring a full-time photographer. (Also, I could be bribed into working weekends with cupcakes from Sweet Eats, which was less likely with those mercenary art school types.) Sadie was savvy enough to secure funding for a digital camera that did all the thinking about lighting, aperture, shutter speed, and so on for me. All I had to do was correctly frame the object, point, and shoot.

I had three fully charged batteries in my bag. They would be enough to get me through several days of shooting. I might as well document our suffering. It would make for an amusing addition to the wall of “family photos” at the office. Or it would serve as evidence of which one of us snapped when the authorities stumbled onto our still-frozen remains in the spring.

“Girls on the right, boys on the left. I don't want to go down in the papers as the marketing director who encouraged sexual harassment lawsuits through coed sleeping arrangements,” Sadie called as the others claimed their beds.

“Yes, because avoiding unwanted invasions of sleep space should take priority over not freezing to death,” Dorie Ann muttered.

When Sadie leveled her “Really? You have jokes now?” expression at her, Dorie Ann dropped her head and said, “Sorry.”

Slinging my shoulder bag on a folded comforter, I claimed the pallet between Sadie and Bonnie, who was keeping her typical sunny face on, despite the fact that she seemed none too thrilled to be separated from Will.

“Doesn't this make you think of all those crazy post-doomsday shows on TV?” Theresa asked, tossing pillows onto each pallet. “Like you're supposed to be reviewing your zombie apocalypse survival plan in your head?”

“I don't have a zombie apocalypse plan,” I told her, and she gasped in mock horror. “I figure I'm going to fall to the first wave. And I'll probably die in some really embarrassing way, like getting bitten and turned in the shower and end up wandering the earth for all eternity naked, clutching a loofah.”

She pulled a disgusted face but laughed. “That's so sick.”

I giggled. It was at times like this that I missed my nerd herd even more. My boys wouldn't have been thrown in the slightest by this situation. Though they were as hooked on electronics as any other self-respecting geek, the four of them had been raised in Kentucky, after all. They'd been taught to make camp, to hunt and fish, to clean and cook what they caught. They didn't particularly enjoy the activities, but they kept up their skills and the equipment necessary, because Wally was convinced that one day the “grid” would go out and we would all need to go back to living off the land. Wally's family had a hunting cabin near Lake Cumberland that he'd graciously offered us as sanctuary when the unhappy event occurred.

My boys wouldn't have screamed and worried about perishables. They would have already established a hierarchy based on useful skill sets and improvised a backup generator out of a paper clip and coconut water. So in their honor, I compared this situation to the Donner Party and started a debate over who should be on the menu first.

“I say we eat Gina first,” I said, pointing at her.

“Don't be silly.” Sadie sniffed. “Gina hardly has any meat on her bones. If anything, we go for Bonnie first. She's small, but she never exercises, like veal.”

Josh covered his face with his hands. “I cannot believe this conversation is taking place.”

Oddly enough, my liberal use of snark seemed to make the others relax a bit. Whether it was because of my return to my normal office attitude or my admitting and then laughing at the worst-case scenarios, I wasn't sure. But eventually the grumbling turned to the usual patter we'd hear around the office on days when we
weren't
trapped together like victims of Stephen King's imagination. And the dining room was starting to look like a sultan's tree house, which was sort of fun.

“You know, this could lead to any number of horror movie scenarios,” I mused. “Angry ghosts of people who bumped off their families while staying in the hotel. Crazy backwoods serial killer who uses a farm implement to stalk us one by one. One of us develops snow madness and starts killing everyone off while singing spooky nursery rhymes.

Sadie's head popped up from the nest of blankets she was trying to wrangle. “Kelsey?”

“Yeah?”

“Please stop trying to make us feel better.”

But still, she laughed, as did Bonnie and Dorie Ann and Will, plus a familiar husky voice that I had not heard in quite some time. I looked up to see Charlie standing in the doorway with a pile of forest-green thermal blankets in his arms, shoulders shaking as he joined in with the rest of us. Our eyes connected, and I felt a little bit of the weight on my chest ease. My lips parted, whether to smile or speak I didn't know. But before I could decide, Luke called my name. “Kelsey? Would you mind coming into the kitchen and helping me check over the pantry?”

The spell was broken.

“Sure,” I said. Charlie gave me a little shrug as I followed Luke through the industrial kitchen to a large closet tucked into the back wall.

“We're only stocked for the slow season, so it's not going to be much of a selection,” he said, grunting as he yanked the door out of place.

I eyed the floor-to-ceiling display of canned fruits and veggies, soups, individual packs of crackers, industrial-size jars of peanut butter, and granola. “I think our definitions of ‘not much' are very different.”

“I meant fresh-food-wise,” he amended. Of course he did. Look at the guy, I told myself, he probably lived on wheat germ and those protein bars that taste like chalk and feet. Definitely out of my league, considering my league involved a diet of takeout Thai food and experimental cupcakes from Sweet Eats.