The Darkest Winter Read online

  My eyes watered from the cold and the blurry house came into view. Out here in the remote villages there was nothing. There was no help if we needed it, but no lunatics either. At least none that had found us yet. It’s seclusion and proximity to our final destination was why Jackson picked Slana to make a temporary home.

  House. It wasn’t a home, and we weren’t a family, at least not one that included Jackson. As much as I wanted things to be different, they weren’t, and Jackson didn’t owe us anything—he’d promised us nothing and yet he’d done so much.

  It wasn’t Jackson I was disappointed in, I was angry with myself. I wanted a partner in all of this. Not a husband, but an equal and friend to help me manage this new life with four kids so I wasn’t in it alone.

  Suck it up.

  I slowed as I made it to the driveway, my chest so tight from exertion and cold, I have to drag in every breath just to fill my lungs. Hands on my hips, I paced the driveway and took stock of what felt like a single spark inside me. It felt good to feel more in control. I considered experimenting with it, but how and when without the kids, especially now, made it impossible.

  I turned on my heel and nearly walked into Jackson. “Geez—”

  “Sorry,” he grumbled and fiddled with a case of batteries in his hand. “I wanted to catch you before you went inside. About yesterday,” he said, looking up at me.

  “No, Jackson. You were right, you didn’t ask for any of this—”

  “Neither did you.”

  His words surprised me. “No, but it’s different for me. I want to help them, and I—I know it’s not your problem.”

  “Elle, will you stop pretending you don’t think I’m an asshole for a minute so I can say something?”

  “I don’t think you’re an asshole,” I breathed. “You’ve already done so much . . .” I shook my head, glancing everywhere but at him.

  “Elle.” His voice was more commanding than I expected and forced me to look at him. “I didn’t mean what I said yesterday. Whatever shit I’m dealing with doesn’t give me a free pass to be a dickhead. I don’t mind watching the kids.”

  I nodded, uncertain if this as an apology or something more.

  “I was going to leave last night,” he admitted.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Because I’ll have the rest of my life to be miserable and alone. I can hold out a couple more weeks until you guys head for Hartley Bay.” The brown and green in his eyes were bright and clear in the sunlight. “I wanted you to know I’m sorry, and I won’t be drunk like that again.” He looked down at his hands. “Believe it or not, I wasn’t always like this.”

  “I believe it,” I said easily. “There are a lot of things I didn’t use to be either.” A liar was one.

  His eyes met mine, and a silent understanding passed between us.

  I was grateful he’d stayed, and relieved to know he wasn’t so different from the guy I thought I saw in him, even if that only made things harder in the end. I had a partner again, for now.

  “I left you coffee,” he said, and the tension dissipated in the brisk morning air. “It’s getting cold.”

  “Buttering me up, uh?” I simpered.

  Jackson’s mouth quirked in an almost-smile, which I didn’t get to see often enough.

  He nodded to the mechanic shop. “I’ll be packing for the trip, if you need anything.”

  I nodded and shoved my hands in my back pockets as I watched him head back down the road. He was wearing clean pants and a jacket I hadn’t seen before, one that wasn’t covered in grease. Before hope could weasel its way into my thoughts, I headed into the house. Walking through the door, I stopped and smiled again. The whiskey bottle beside the couch was full and my heart swelled.

  MAY

  Chapter 25

  Elle[LP64]

  Our routines had become less rigorous as spring set in. We no longer raced against days with limited sun, and there was an unexpected excitement in the air. In a matter of days, we’d head to Hartley, with other survivors like us.

  “What are y-am-es?” Thea tried to pronounce the word.

  I dropped the last three cans of pink salmon into my bag to add to our trip inventory. I wanted to make sure we had enough food for a few months since life in Hartley was a question mark.

  “It’s yams, stupid,” Beau corrected.

  “Hey.” I nudged him. “Give the girl a break, would you? She’s learning how to read.” Beau forgot he was three years older than her from time to time.

  “Yams are like a potato,” I explained. “But they’re candied and sweet.”

  Beau rolled his eyes, but I didn’t take it personally. “I’ll get the crackers,” he grumbled and went down another aisle to mope. Nine was an age of impatience and confusion, I realized, or maybe it was just Beau adjusting to all he’d been through.

  “Candy? Yummy. Can we have these for dinner?” She eyed the purple label. “They would be good with our casserole,” she explained.

  “Would they now?” I chuckled. “Okay, put two cans in your bag.”

  She dropped the cans in, weighing her bag down quickly.

  “Beau,” I called, peering over the shelf into the other aisle, looking for his blonde head. “Grab Oreos for Alex, would you? The doubled-stuffed kind. We’ll give them to him with his present.” His special day had finally come and I couldn’t let his eighteenth birthday come and go without celebrating him. It was the perfect excuse for everyone to focus on something good and have a little fun.

  “Okay,” he grumbled. Beau did well when he was busy with purpose, like the rest of us, and with Alex and Jackson working on the snow machines to take to Whitehorse, he was stuck with me and Thea.

  Beau, Thea, and I continued our perusal of the market, each with a list of items to gather and fill in our bags. It was a mundane task, but a necessary one, and it passed quickly. The market was neither large, nor fully stocked, not like a grocery store would be, but it had fed us well over the past few months.

  “Do you think he’ll like his beanie?” Thea asked, dropping a package of gum into her bag. She looped up, found me watching her, and grinned.

  “Would you like it if Alex made you a gift?”

  She nodded.

  “Then I think he’ll love it.” We’d tried our hand at crocheting, and while it was a work-in-progress, it would serve its purpose and keep him warm. “Go grab a package of toilet paper to take back with us, okay? Then we’re heading out.”

  Thea skipped down the aisle happily and disappeared around the corner. One saving grace in all the chaos was the cost of living was low. I would have needed a second job just to buy enough TP and paper towels for a family of six before the outbreak.

  I made my way down the shampoo aisle and plopped a few into my bag. Plumbing, on the other hand, had proven less convenient. The lack of electricity and frozen water pipes had become a major issue, making hot showers a thing of the past. No one wanted to bathe in cold water when it was already freezing outside, except maybe me sometimes. Lukewarm had to suffice, and bathing went from a few minutes to an entire process we had to plan for in advance.

  “Come on, you two. Let’s head back before the sun sets.” It grew exponentially colder as the sun dropped behind the horizon, and the wolves had been coming out more, howling throughout the night.

  Beau made his way past me and out the door, his canvas bag full and heavy over his shoulder. “Set your bags on the sled. We’ll pull them back to the house.”

  While the Expedition would’ve come in handy for our two-mile trip, I took every opportunity I could to keep moving and burn all the energy I could. The kids seemed to have an endless supply as well.

  I dropped chocolates and marshmallows into my bag at the last minute, assuming s’mores would do in place of a birthday cake, and I shut the door to keep the weather and animals out.

  The distant sound of snow machines caught my ears, and shielding my eyes with my hand, I peered down the high
way. Had both snowmobiles not been completely white, I would’ve been apprehensive, but I recognized Jackson’s height and Alex’s Mohawk helmet immediately.

  “Looks like they’re working!” Beau practically jumped in place.

  “Yeah, maybe they’ll take you for a ride now that the machines work again.”

  “That’s okay, I need to pull this for you girls.”

  “Oh, really?” I asked, more than happy to have him do all the work if that’s what he wanted. “You don’t think Thea and I can handle it?”

  Beau shrugged. “Jackson wanted me to be helpful,” he drawled.

  Alex and Jackson slowed the snowmobiles as they drew closer, finally stopping them outside the store.

  “We got you something,” Thea sang, looking at Alex conspiratorially.

  Alex removed his helmet. “You did? What for?”

  “Your birthday, silly.” She giggled.

  “Will I like it?”

  “Yep!” she chirped with an enthusiastic nod.

  Alex winked at her then looked at me. “We’re going to take the machines for a spin and get some target practice in before the sunsets.”

  “Really?” Beau yipped. “Aw, can I come? Please?” Beau looked at me and I looked at Jackson. He peered into Thea’s bag as she showed him the Oreos. “Yum. That’s the good stuff,” he said.

  She put her finger to her lips.

  “If Jackson says it’s okay,” I told him.

  Beau ran over to him. “Can I come with you?”

  I gave Jackson a consenting nod. “He was very helpful today,” I assured him.

  Jackson nodded. “Sure bud. Put this on first . . .”

  “Do you guys want to come?” Alex asked. “We can come back for the food. That way you can practice.”

  “Are you kidding, Elle’s a better shot than me.” Jackson winked at me.

  “Ha, that’s a lie. But I’m okay for now. What about Sophie?”

  Alex couldn’t hide the downcast expression that washed over him, but he tried to shrug it off. “She said she had stuff to do.”

  “When people get secretive around birthdays, it’s best not to ask too many questions,” I told him, knowing that wasn’t Sophie’s excuse, but it might make him feel a little better.

  He smiled, but it wasn’t real, not the heart-stopping smile I knew he had in him.

  “Okay, we’ll you boys have fun.”

  “But I want to go too,” Thea whined.

  “Yeah, you need to work on your aim,” Beau said, climbing on the back of the snow machine.

  “Nah-haw!” Thea taunted.

  “Yuh-haw—” Beau froze when a snowball hit him in the helmet.

  “See,” Thea taunted. “I’m a better aim than you.”

  Beau swung his leg off and ran after his sister. She shrieked and threw a wad of snow at him, hitting him in the shoulder.

  “Oh, damn!” Alex laughed as they went at it, and before I knew what was happening, the three of them were having an all-out snowball war.

  Thea hid behind me, using me as a shield. “Hey—don’t bring me into this!” I shrieked with a laugh and moved out of the way. Thea ran over to the inoperative light post like she might hide behind it, and I laughed the moment she got hit, her mouth dropping with surprise.

  Jackson and I stood there, amused as we watched the kids, laughing and having fun like kids could so often remember to do. It was refreshing, and healthy, and it made everything feel like everything might actually be okay.

  Chapter 26

  Jackson

  “This is Huck Fulton from Hartley Bay for the daily broadcast.” Fulton’s voice was lower than usual and seemingly deflated, but still grating over the radio due to my pounding headache.

  “It’s been a few days since our last broadcast, due to radio transmission issues. Having since found a cache of military radios, we’re back to broadcasting. That being said, are there any electrical engineers out there interested in joining us?” He laughed, though it was more brittle than amused. “Today, I’m happy to report that we haven’t seen outsiders in nearly two weeks, which is lucky as far as the infected are concerned . . . and troublesome. We’re still in need of another doctor after the militants robbed our scavenging party just outside our walls three months ago. We lost Doc Chin in the raid. Without giving too much away, we learned our lesson and we’ve gotten more strategic; it’s been quiet ever since. As always, I urge survivors to come this way, especially if you have any medical skills. We’re nearly a hundred strong and could use your help. We have weapons and plenty of food, and in the months since the outbreak, we’ve been able to find a semblance of community and a new normalcy within our walls.”[LP65]

  I glanced up from my maps rolled out in front of me to Sophie, listening intently from the couch. Alex stared at the radio as well.

  “Who wants snacks?” Sophie asked, uncurling from the couch.

  Thea jumped up from her book organizing on the rug in front of the heater. “I want the circus cookies,” she said.

  She and Sophie disappeared down the hall. Alex and Beau were oblivious as they cleaned the rifle I’d lent Alex for target practice yesterday. His thoroughness and attention to detail made me proud.

  My head pounded a little and took a gulp of water from my thermos. Being cooped up indoors during a whiteout was different when you were stone-cold sober; everything was borderline distracting, and the heater was on so high, I thought I might melt, but I wouldn’t say anything. It was an extravagance for the kids, one they could rarely enjoy unless the winds were loud enough to cover the sound of the generator while we were trapped inside the house.

  I angled the lamplight on the card table and zeroed in on my maps as the clan stirred around me. Focus was something I was fairly good at, I was just out of practice.

  “Don’t tell Elle I gave you cookies, Thea,” Sophie said as they walked back into the living room.

  “I heard my name,” Elle shouted from her room upstairs, and Thea’s eyes widened.

  Shoving another cookie into her mouth to get rid of the evidence, Thea wiped her hands on her pants, checking for crumbs before she grabbed one of our Alaska survival books and flipped through the pages.

  “Here,” Sophie said, handing me some jerky as she came back into the room.

  I reached for it. “Thanks—”

  She bypassed me and set it on the table. “Sure.”

  I must’ve looked more haggard and harried than I thought.

  “That’s not the map to the Yukon,” she said. “What is it? It looks like a bunch of maps combined?”

  “Something like that. It’s all the places I know of where Troopers have busted squatters, trying to stay off the grid.”

  She looked at me, incredulous. “I thought we didn’t want to find other people.”

  “We don’t, necessarily.” I pointed to a few circled areas in the bush and National Parks. “These are potential places we might find shelter on our way to Canada.”

  “It’s only an eight-hour drive.”

  “In normal weather,” I explained. “And a lot can happen in eight hours.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  I didn’t have a good feeling about leaving Slana, a combination of a lot of things. I didn’t know what I would find in Whitehorse, or if I’d meet up with Ross again. And part of me worried about Elle and the kids and what Hartley Bay would bring when we parted ways.

  “Which on are we taking then?” She asked, pointing to two different routes.

  “I haven’t decided.”

  She sat down in the chair next to me.

  “A straightforward route on the highway with would be fastest, but it would also expose us and everything we were hauling along.”

  “To people you mean?” she asked.

  I nodded, surprised by her curiosity.

  “We’re probably not the only survivors with a plan like this. Especially with all handful of announcements that have been circulating about Hartle
y[SF66].”

  “And the other route, it follows the river?”

  “I figure it’ll keep us off the roads. We’d need to get more snow machines, but they would be easy enough to find. We’d be close to a water source—”

  “But have to brave the elements,” she finished for me.

  “Like I said, I haven’t decided.”

  I eyed the journal in her hand. “You look like you’ve been doing some planning of your own.”

  “My favorite subject in school was biology—well, science in general. When you were telling us about Beard Lichen and where to find it, I was thinking I should write that kind of stuff down, for when you’re not around anymore, I mean.”

  She’d been listening more than I thought she was. It made me feel a little better, like they might be better off on their own than I thought.

  She opened her journal and showed me a sketch of a spruce branch and lichen. “I wrote all the things you said we can use it for.”

  Versatile: Dye, deodorant, toothpaste, salves were written in big round letters on the page.

  “Does it look right?” she asked, pointing to her sketch. It was long and stringy, just like an old man’s beard. “I know lichen looks similar, but I figure I should be as specific as I can, in case Elle or someone else needs to use it, they’ll know what they’re looking at.”

  “I think it’s great,” I told her, awed by how much work she was putting into her journal. “And here I thought you’ve been writing about boys. You have your own survival guide in here.”

  It occurred to me for the first time that Sophie, Alex, Thea, and Beau have an entire lifetime to discover this new world, which Elle and I had pasts behind us, experiences in the world before that would haunt us.