Nathan Jones - First Winter

One of the spokesman’s companions said something to him, too quietly to be heard at this distance. The other two men were already backing away from the hideout, hands raised. Seeing it the spokesman’s shoulders slumped, defeated, and he joined the others a safe distance away. “We’ll tell the military about this.”

Lewis had looked slightly surprised by the shot as well, but now he showed no sign of it. “Please do. We have hundreds of people willing to support our claim.”

Cursing and grumbling among themselves, the intruders picked up their sled and carried it north, towards where the meadow intersected the road that led down to the bridge across Huntington Creek. Trev felt his shoulders loosening now that he was sure things had gone well for them.

“Lucky timing,” he said, joining Lewis as his cousin made his way over to the stove.

Lewis nodded. “They’re probably the ones who looted the place to begin with. I’m guessing they couldn’t take the stove right then, so just like us they planned a trip to come back for it. That explains why they had the sled, and how fast they were about removing the stovepipes and hauling it out while we were distracted with the elk. The fact that we managed to get here before they could drag it off is incredibly lucky timing.”

“If they’d come later we’d be gone with it and we wouldn’t have had to scare them off,” Trev pointed out. “So the timing could’ve been slightly luckier.”

His cousin shrugged and awkwardly climbed through the door around the stove, grabbing the far end and testing its weight. “Not as heavy as the elk… I think the two of us can get it. Those guys must’ve been weak from hunger to have so much trouble.”

Jane, warily watching the intruders leave, turned towards them at that. “If you’ve got this I’m going to follow them. Just to make sure they really leave and stay gone.”

Lewis hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. Splitting up wasn’t ideal, but his cousin was obviously even less thrilled at the thought of intruders roaming around. “Be careful,” he told his wife.

She nodded and started off, angling up the hillside where she could trail the four men out of their view, and also stay between them and the bikes on the logging road above. They certainly didn’t want those and their precious trailer stolen, either.

Trev grabbed his end of the stove, joining Lewis in hauling it out the door and walking it towards the slope. His cousin was right that it was lighter, although taking it up the mountainside was still going to be a pain.

Before they’d gone too far Lewis set his end down and moved back to the door, closing it. For a moment he agonized over the broken hasp, then he chuckled wryly and entered the padlock’s combination, pulling it free and dropping it into a pocket to take with him. “Oh well. It’s not like they can loot the place again.”

“They could burn it down,” Trev pointed out.

His cousin grimaced. “I wouldn’t mind if they did, if it meant the shelter had been spared instead.”

That wiped the smile off Trev’s face. The blockheads had burned down every structure they could when they fled, which included the underground shed Lewis had buried and outfitted for a disaster scenario.

Trev wouldn’t have expected the shelter to burn very well, but the blockheads must’ve been motivated. The heat of the fire had weakened the structure enough that the weight of the three feet of dirt it was buried beneath had collapsed it. What was left was a solid mass of twisted, melted metal and fused and blackened dirt, along with the remains of whatever debris they’d burned inside to destroy it.

Completely unsalvageable. It had taken him and his cousin hours to even dig through the mess enough to realize how complete the damage was.

Thoughts of the shelter brought to mind unpleasant reminders of other things they’d lost since the Gulf burned, but luckily hauling a large hunk of cast iron provided a good distraction; pretty soon they were working too hard hauling the weight for any more talking. They took it one careful step at a time, resting as needed, as the minutes ticked away.

Eventually Jane returned to report that the would-be looters had crossed the bridge and were well on their way north traveling on the highway. There wasn’t much she could do to help with the stove, since they weren’t about to tie ropes to it and drag it up the slope like they had the elk, and she was barely strong enough to lift one end. So she kept pace with them and watched the mountain around them for danger.

The line of iron gray clouds Trev had been eyeing for the last few hours finally rushed to cover the entire sky from horizon to horizon, bringing with them a misting rain. With his exertion the light cooling touch drifting over his face felt good at first, but then the rainfall increased to just past the point of being unpleasant.

Trev was familiar with these cold mountain drizzles, although they usually happened later in the year. Still, he could ignore the discomfort until they got this job done. And if it kept up like this he supposed they could even ride home in it.

Then he glanced across the valley to the mountain slope across the way. Through the drizzle it was a veiled gray and green blur, but his eyes tracking up to the peak saw a dusting of white, there at the very tip.

He froze lifting the back of the stove, staring. The motion didn’t disturb the front, where Lewis was focused on setting his feet for his first steps after their break, and Jane’s eyes were on the logging road above them. Neither noticed as Trev set his end down and got out his binoculars for a look.

It was definitely snow.

Trev knew the mountains at this elevation tended to be around fifteen degrees cooler than the valley during the day, with even more pronounced temperature extremes at night. Up on the peak it would be colder still. The snows always came to the mountains a month or more earlier than down below.

Even so, even on a peak… snow, in August. They were a bit past what should be the hottest part of the year, but not by much.

“Um, guys?” he said, pointing with his binoculars. “Should we be worried about that?”

He wasn’t using his “we’re in danger and I need your immediate attention” tone, so the other two didn’t immediately pick up on his worry. “You let go?” Lewis asked in annoyance as he dropped his end of the stove. “I almost fell over with this thing on top of me.”

Jane finished examining the road above and turned, eyes following Trev’s pointed binoculars. Expression tightening, she unclipped her own binoculars from her belt and raised them. She didn’t say anything, just silently handed them to Lewis as he joined her.

His cousin looked through them for a few seconds. “Huh.”

“I’d say snow in August warrants a bit more of a response than that,” Trev said.

Lewis shrugged. “It could be a fluke. The weather up here can be pretty random and show surprising extremes. I’ve seen hail coat the mountainsides during the summer months plenty of times. Usually just a short, cold squall, and then in less than an hour it’s a nice day again.”

Trev was pretty sure this wasn’t hail. But he didn’t want to say what they all had to be thinking.

Everyone was expecting nuclear winter to hit early and hard. But if it was already bearing down on them they were in real trouble.

Jane lowered her binoculars. “It’ll still be months before we see weather like this down in the new Aspen Hill valley, right?”

“Right.” Lewis smiled tightly. “No need to read more into a single event than it deserves.” He motioned to Trev. “Come on, let’s get going.”

Maybe his cousin was trying to convince himself as much as them, but the silence was different after that. More tense, as they all contemplated with dread the ordeal of the long, bitter winter looming in front of them.