Ray Gorham - Daunting Days of Winter

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.

“Relax, dear. I want him to think a little on his walk home.” Frank’s tone was icy cold. He turned back to Kyle. “Eat out much?”

“I don’t know. I guess if you count lunches, probably seven, eight times a month.”

Frank’s eyes bugged out. “That’s at least $100 a month wasted. Just as bad as cigarettes.” Frank took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “Look, you can tell by looking around that this stuff is important to me. Promise me something.”

“Sure, what?”

“You’re young. Promise me that when things come back around, because they will, and you’ll still have lots of life to live, promise me that you’ll think a few years down the road. It doesn’t have to be another EMP. It could be a pandemic, or a war, or a solar flare. Shoot, Mother Nature has half a dozen things up her sleeve that she could use to really mess us up. Promise me that you’ll get ahead of the game.”

“Okay, Frank, that’s enough. Let poor Kyle up for air.”

Frank grunted. “Wait here, Kyle.” He got up and walked through the far door.

Brenda smiled weakly at Kyle. “Sorry about that. He took a lot of grief from everyone about all this,” she motioned around the room. “I think he wants to be able to gloat. Don’t take what he said personally.”

“He is right, you know,” Kyle said, looking Brenda in the eyes. “I’ve thought about it a lot. There’s a ton of stuff I could have done differently. What you’ve got is way out of my league, but I could have been a lot more prepared.”

“Well, you’re still alive, so you must have done something right.”

“I don’t know. God must like me, or something. By all rights I should be dead.”

“You didn’t come up here to be lectured, Kyle. Is everything okay?”

“Things are good. I actually came to tell you about a New Year’s party.”

Kyle was filling Brenda in on the details of the party when Frank returned holding a plastic baggie filled with white powder. He tossed it on the table in front of Kyle. “Take that,” he said. “It’ll help you out.”

Kyle looked at it uneasily, reaching out to touch the bag. The consistency of powder was a little finer than table sugar.

“That’s okay,” Kyle said. “I appreciate it, but I think I’ll pass.”

Frank looked puzzled. “Take it. It’ll help you get through this. If you have younger kids, it’ll help them, and the older, weaker folks too. But you don’t have to share if you don’t want to. You can use it all yourself. It’s up to you.”