I woke up to the sound of a loud crack. I sat straight up in bed, disoriented by the late hour and my exhaustion. The colder it became, the more tired I got, and for the past few weeks my father had become more strict about rationing our food supplies. I'd lost track of how long this winter had lasted, but I knew it had been well over a year.
I heard what I thought was a fight downstairs—heightened, alarmed voices—but none of it made any sense to my still sleep-deprived brain. There was another loud noise, something crashing or breaking, followed by the sound of feet pounding up the stairs to the second floor.
My chest tightened as the heavy footsteps got closer and my door handle began to rattle. I'd started sleeping with my bedroom door locked, just as precaution.
My father's voice, distinct but muffled, filtered through my closed door. "Get up," he gruffly ordered. "Bandits are here."
I shot out of bed. This wasn't a drill. I could hear more noise downstairs and the undeniable sound of looting—glass shattering, cabinet doors opening and closing.
"Samantha!" my father hissed, his voice louder now. "Get out of here now."
I didn't bother grabbing anything or even changing out of my pajamas. We'd rehearsed this; we'd prepared for the inevitable moment when bandits would intrude on our lives. Some families had hunkered down like my own, but even more people were scavengers, roamers. The most dangerous places were the abandoned highways and the city centers where they congregated. My father had told me that bandits would kill you for a match, or a cigarette, or the jacket that you wore.
I hurried out of my bedroom and found myself alone. I looked across the hallway into my grandmother's room. I could see the double bed with its covers thrown off, and I assumed she'd already made her way outside. My father had constructed a second-floor escape in case of an emergency just like this so we wouldn't have to worry about being trapped upstairs if the ground floor had been compromised. He'd turned out to be a pretty handy fix-it man. He and one of my uncles had built our back porch one summer, but beyond that he'd never really done much construction. After the Frost, however, with no noble reason to return to work everyday like a doctor or a police officer or a firefighter would, he'd stopped going to the bank and instead had thrown himself into learning skills that would help us survive.
I scrambled out the door at the end of the hallway and made my way down the scaffolding of stairs that clung to the side of our house like an overgrown ivy plant. The snow on the steps seeped through the material of my wool socks, but I didn't care. I was used to the cold and the wet by now. When I reached the bottom step, I could see smaller footprints in the snow ahead of me. The steps were close together as if the person responsible had tiptoed quickly across the backyard.
It was dark outside; the days were getting shorter everyday. I didn't need the tracks in the snow or sunlight to find my way to the unattached pole barn. There was usually an old clothesline that ran from the house back to the storage shed that my grandmother used to dry laundry. The wet clothes would freeze on the line and she'd bring them back inside to thaw before returning the clothes to the laundry line to start the process all over again. The real reason for the laundry line was to help us between the shed and house in case of a blizzard. If there was ever a whiteout, we could use the line to guide us back and forth. I felt for the line, instinctively knowing where it should have been, but only grasped air. The line was gone. Cut, I assumed, by the bandits. They'd probably thought it was a homemade alarm system or a booby-trap.
Even though the laundry line had been cut, its existence had been more precautionary than necessity. I had lived in this house and this yard all my life. I could have probably found my way back to the pole barn blindfolded.
The shed had been on the property when my parents had bought the house a few years after they'd gotten married. Over the years it had become dilapidated from ill-use, but I loved it. It had been my place to escape to when I needed to breathe. I had often "run away" to the barn and lived there for a weekend until I got bored of myself. I'd always imagined that one day I'd fix it up and make it a more livable space, but I'd never really had the time or the ambition during high school to follow through with that plan. +
I followed the footprints all the way to the pole barn. The door was usually latched with a heavy padlock that was so rusted it didn't quite close all the way. Even though it no longer locked, my dad said it kept the honest people honest. The lock was gone now though, but the two oversized swinging doors were still shut tight. The backs of the doors were insulated with thick, pink foam boards that my dad had cut down to just the right size so the doors always stayed shut tight together. I knew it was only my grandma inside who'd removed the lock, but I still wanted to be careful.
Cautiously, I pulled open one of the doors, just wide enough so I could slip inside. The pole barn had few windows, so it was even darker inside. I held my breath as if the steady inhale and exhale might give me away.
"Sam?" My grandma's voice broke through the silence.
"Gran? Where are you?" I called out.
She stood to her full height and stepped out from behind my father's riding lawnmower. Like me, she was still in her pajamas. Her eyes were wide, like an animal that had been cornered.
"Is it just you? Where's Mom and Dad?" I worried aloud.
"They must still be in the house."
I started for the door, intent to go find them, but my grandma clamped her hand on my shoulder. "Just wait a few minutes," she instructed. "They'll be here soon enough."
My shoulder sagged and I hung my head, but I did what she told me to do.
My grandma sat down on the lawnmower and sighed. "Why couldn't they just leave us alone?" she murmured.
"Are you sure it's bandits?" I asked. "Maybe Dad's just testing us, seeing how fast we can get back here?" It was a long shot; even though my father was a careful man, I couldn't imagine him doing something as elaborate as this.
My grandma sighed again, but said no more.
I began looking around the inside of the barn, searching for something I could use as a weapon. There weren't too many items inside the shed besides the lawnmower and some other now-obsolete gas-run machines, but I knew there had to be something. On one wall hung my father's tool collection. I grabbed a hammer from its hook and experimentally hefted its weight in my hand. I could probably smash someone's skull with it, I decided.
My body snapped to attention when I heard the unmistakable sound of snow crunching beneath heavy boots. Someone was in a hurry, and they were coming closer. I ducked behind the lawnmower where my grandmother continued to perch. I wanted to hiss at her to hide, but I didn't want to speak out of fear that whoever was outside would figure out we hid inside. Our footprints in the snow threatened to give us away, but they'd have no way of knowing if those were old prints or freshly made.
I clenched the hammer tight in one fist and waited. My calves started to burn from being crouched and tensed. I sucked in a sharp breath when both doors swung open and a tall, broad-shouldered figure stood in the doorway.
Samantha?" It was my father. He stepped fully inside the pole barn. "Mom?"
I sprung out from my hiding spot. "Where's mom?" I demanded.
She's not coming."
I stared at my father. My eyes had adjusted to the dark by now and I searched his face. "Why not?" His words didn't make any sense to me.
My grandmother slipped her arm around my waist. "Was it the bandits, Brandon?"
He looked away, blinking rapidly. "She went downstairs to get a drink of water. She must have startled them."
The arm around my waist tightened. I still didn't understand what he was trying to tell us.
"Is she in the crawl space?" I naively asked. We didn't have a basement; not too many homes did because of seasonal flooding, but my father had built a kind of panic room in the narrow space beneath the house that could be accessed from the kitchen.
My father looked back at us. Even with only the moon streaming through the small barn windows to illuminate his features, I could see him working the muscles in the back of his jaw. "She's dead, Samantha."
If it hadn't been for my grandmother's silent strength, I would have collapsed onto the floor, for sure.
"We have to go," my dad said, not looking at us. "It's just a matter of time before those animals come out here looking for supplies."
"We can't go. We can't leave mom," I choked out. "We have to get her."
"Samantha..." My grandmother's gentle voice called me back to reality. She turned back to my father. "Where can we go?"
"My deer shanty," my dad said. "It's a few hundred yards into the woods. There's less of a chance they'll come looking for us out there."
He opened up a large cabinet in which we kept extra supplies like coats, boots, and our emergency backpacks. We had left the house in such a hurry that none of us had jackets and only my father had on shoes. He grabbed three backpacks from their hooks and handed one to each of us.
I pulled out a dry pair of socks from my emergency pack. Mine were soaked from walking through the backyard without shoes. I still had on my pajamas—flannel pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. The emergency pack had one of those high-tech, sweat-wicking thermal outfits, but I assumed my father wouldn't want to wait for me to change into a different set of clothes. I opted for pulling snowpants and a jacket over my pajamas.
I think I was functioning on autopilot. Everything was happening too quickly. I couldn't even be sure this wasn't all just a bad dream. But I wasn't that lucky. This was happening. Bandits had broken into my house. Bandits had killed my mother. An unexpected sob bubbled up my throat and was out of my mouth before I could shove it back down.
My dad shot me a hard look. "You have to be quiet, Sam," he admonished.
I clamped my mouth shut and bit down on my upper lip, but managed to nod my understanding. I knew we weren't out of danger yet. There would be time for grief and mourning my mother later.
"Stay close and try to step where I step," my dad instructed when both my grandmother and I were ready to go. "It'll make less of a trail in the snow. I'll sweep away our footprints later."
We obediently followed behind my father as he left the familiarity of the pole barn and started out into the dense woods behind our house. I used to play back there nearly every day in summers when I was young, but I hadn't visited my old haunts in years. I kept my eyes trained on the ground and did my best to step in the snowy imprints my father's boots made. My grandmother trailed behind. I could feel her holding onto the back of my emergency pack like I was a helium balloon she was afraid might float away if not properly tethered.
The deer blind was a wooden box, painted dark green, that sat on a wooden platform about seven or eight feet from the ground. My father had purchased the kit a few years ago when he'd taken up hunting as a hobby. Secretly I thought it was more of an excuse to get out of the house like an outdoor Man Cave. He'd never killed anything. He just sat out there for hours on weekends. I would have loved using that thing as a tree fort during my adolescence when I was quick to climb trees and slow to care about makeup and boys and training bras.
The inside was barren besides a canvas camping chair folded up in one corner and an old metal coffee can that looked every bit the cliché of items to be inside a deer blind. Narrow rectangular cutouts at eye-level dotted the perimeter of the shanty. Even though the blind had a weatherproof roof and a door that shut tightly, a thin layer of snow had accumulated on the plywood floor, collecting in the corners like miniature snow drifts.
"We can't risk using a light," my father whispered wearily. He sounded like he was running on empty. "This thing would light up like a lighthouse. You'll have to set up your sleeping bags the best you can without it."
My grandma brushed away at the light snow covering, and it scattered in the air like the white puff that adorns a mature dandelion.
"Don't forget your sleeping pad," she told me in a low tone.
I nodded numbly.
She unrolled her foam pad on the ground and set up her sleeping bag on top. I must have still looked shell-shocked because she pried the padding from my hands and set up my makeshift bed for me.
"Brandon," her gentle voice coaxed my father, "give me your pack and I'll set up your bed."
My father hovered near one of the window cutouts. "I'm fine," he rasped, now peering out into the night.
"You should try to sleep," she encouraged.
"I'm fine," he intoned more firmly. His arms went around his broad frame and he hugged at his torso.
Despite the shock of the night, or perhaps because of it, my eyes began to feel heavy. I reclined on my side and rested my head against the thin layer of padding that separated my head from the floor. Even though there was no heat source in the blind and the windows had no proper glass panes, it was better than sleeping in a tent on the frozen ground.
I clenched my backpack to my chest—a kind of safety blanket— before finally allowing myself to close my eyes, hoping to find rest. But the howl of the unforgiving wind beyond the protective covering of our hidden shelter caused my body to tense even more rigidly than it had been before. 1
"Try to get some rest," my grandmother urged from her sleeping bag beside me. "Things will feel better when the sun is up."
I didn't believe her. Not one little bit. I shut my eyes and focused on the fading image of my mother.