The next morning I shouldered my backpack and came downstairs. Although back in the familiarity of my childhood bedroom and not huddled inside my dad's deer shanty, I hadn't gotten much sleep. I wondered if I'd ever be able to sleep soundly again.
Downstairs, my grandma, who usually woke up earlier than the rest of the house, was drinking coffee at the kitchen table and reading a newspaper that was practically two years old. She read that paper every morning as if she expected the news to have changed since the day before. I would be surprised if she hadn't memorized the entire paper by now.
"Morning," I greeted.
She looked up from her reading and smiled. Her aged face softened with a warm glow. "Morning, Sam. There's coffee in the kettle on the woodstove," she said, nodding in the direction of the potbellied stove. "I also made some cinnamon buns if you're interested."
"I wondered what smelled so good."
Her smile drooped at its edges. "I'm sorry it's not more. I wanted to make us one last big breakfast before we left, but those bandits really cleaned us out," she said, shaking her head. "There was just enough sugar and flour in the dry cellar for the buns."
I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. Those bandits had stolen so much more than the food in our pantry.
My grandma went back to her reading and I grabbed a plate and a coffee mug from one of the cabinets. I poured myself a steaming cup of black coffee from the copper kettle that sat atop the woodstove. I wrapped my hands around the mug and breathed in the rich aroma. Normally I preferred my coffee with tons of cream and sugar, but I'd acquired a taste for black coffee because of the need to ration. We had run out of dairy products over a year ago and now used a non-dairy powdered creamer for anything that called for milk or butter.
My grandma had baked the cinnamon buns in a cast iron dutch oven using wood coals from the fire. It was a neat trick she'd taught my mother and me, shoveling out the red-hot coals onto the stone hearth to cook or bake on. For things like bread or large pieces of meat that needed heat from the top and the bottom, we used a dutch oven with an inverted lid. The top had a beveled lip high enough so coals could go on top. When whatever had been baking was finished, you used a long fire poker with a hook at one end and fished around in the now grey ash for a solid ring that would let you lift the lid from the oven without spilling the ashes into the food inside.
It was a lot harder to do than it looked. It was solid cast iron, so it was heavy and awkward, and if the weight of the coals on top of the lid wasn't evenly distributed or you tried to move too quickly, you could very easily tip the lid and all the coals would get into your food. I'd spoiled a few loaves of bread that way, but you learned quickly from your mistakes or else you got accustomed to the taste of wood ash in your food.
I sat at the table with my grandma and stared at my plate. The cinnamon buns were warm and decadent, but they were such a lavish departure from my usual breakfast of coffee and plain oatmeal that I couldn't help but feel like an inmate on Death Row having my Last Supper.
I didn't look up when I heard my father's heavy footsteps come into the room. I heard, rather than saw, the sounds of him opening and closing cabinets. I kept my eyes trained on my uneaten breakfast when he sat down beside me and the legs of his chair squeaked noisily against the linoleum.
"Morning," he grunted.
"Morning," I echoed back, still not looking away from my plate.
He immediately tucked into the oversized cinnamon buns on his plate. He only paused to breathe when he noticed I wasn't eating at all. "Eat that," he gruffly ordered.
I responded by using my fork to push the food around on my plate.
"We have long days ahead of us, Sam," he grunted, continuing to shovel more food into his mouth. "You need to eat."
I sighed, probably more dramatically than was necessary, but I finally followed my father's order. My grandma was a good cook and an even better baker, but it was a chore to eat my breakfast without gagging. I didn't want to leave; this was the only place I'd ever called home. I was frustrated with my dad's decision to uproot us, but I knew I couldn't stay behind. This time I couldn't just run away to the pole barn until my anger dissipated. I'd have to grow up and adjust just as we'd all had to when the Frost first began.
My grandma finished reading her newspaper for the umpteenth time. She closed it up along its well-creased folds. "So, what are we going to do?" she asked.
"We're going to finish breakfast and then we're going to hit the road," my father said.
"And do we know where we're going to?" questioned my grandmother.
"West."
"Why west?" I spoke up.
"Everyone's already gone south," my dad reasoned, "so resources will be strained between North Dakota and the southern states. If we go west through Montana, Idaho, and maybe Wyoming, we should have better luck."
"But there's nothing out there!" I challenged. I had never been west of North Dakota before, but I imagined it a vast, barren wasteland.
My dad nodded. "Exactly. Which is why bandits and everyone else will have left it alone." He finished his breakfast and wiped at his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. "Finish up here and make sure you have everything you need," he said curtly, rising from the table. "I want to be on the road in half an hour."
+++
Life slipped into a routine in those days after we left Williston. We traveled during daylight hours and we camped, my father in one tent and my grandmother and me in another, when the sun set. We spoke little, a mixture of mourning the loss of my mother and not wanting to attract nearby bandits with the sound of our voices.
Between the three of us we had three sleeping bags, three sleeping pads, and two tents. There had been an extra sleeping bag and pad in my mother's unused pack, but it didn't make sense to bring it along. Our survival kits were substantial, but they weren't intended to last for very long. We could manage to stretch the supplies out of fear of not finding a more permanent living situation, but also because the provisions had been meant to accommodate four people, not our party of three.
Everyday we had three tasks to accomplish. Eat. Rest. Move. We sought the Holy Trinity wherever we went: shelter, food, and heat. At least water was plentiful; it was frozen, all around us. It hadn't actually snowed in months – it was too cold for snow to form – and the ground cover was old and crusted, but it still tasted as good and clean and pure as any water out of the tap.
My father hadn't told us if he had a plan beyond going "west," but neither my grandmother nor I pressed him. I think we were both scared that he'd admit to not actually having a plan. At least this way, following him single-file for hours at a time through knee-high snow banks, we could pretend that there was a purpose behind our continued wandering.
But even though this ignorance kept me in a mild bliss, I was starting to get annoyed. Where exactly were we headed? What were we going to do when the food in our backpacks ran out? My dad was insistent that we keep away from the cities and highways to avoid another run-in with bandits. We could catch wild game with our small animal traps, but living off of squirrels and rabbits wouldn't last us long. Why had we left the familiarity of my childhood home just to wander around until our scant resources ran out?
I tried bringing up our situation with my grandma, but every time she shook her head or shrugged her shoulders. It was unlike her not to voice her opinion, but unless she had a better idea, I supposed she chose to remain silent. I wasn't able to sit back quietly, however. He was gambling with our lives and I needed something, some semblance of a strategy, to convince me that our current travels had a purpose beyond putting as much distance between ourselves and the pain we'd endured in Williston. +
Four days after we'd left Williston, we stopped for a water break, which was basically just eating handfuls of powdered snow. I took the opportunity to voice my concerns.
"Hey, Dad?" I wanted to sound the least confrontational as possible. I'd been practicing my speech in my head for a good portion of the morning.
My dad leaned against a tree with his arms crossed. "Hydrate, Sam," he told me. "It's a water break."
I bent and scooped up a handful of snow and shoved it into my mouth. I swallowed down the melting snow and took a deep breath to try again. "Dad. What are we doing out here? We need to figure out what our end game is beyond surviving one day to the next."
My father held a finger to his lips and my complaint fell away. "Did you hear that?"
I stood quietly, listening for whatever had made him pause. I was about to restart my Grand Speech, thinking he'd made up the noise so I'd stop talking, when I heard it, too. It sounded like men shouting. My father, instead of moving away from the noise like my survival instincts were telling me to do, started walking in the direction of the troubling sounds.
I started after him and grabbed at the sleeve of his heavy coat. "What are you doing?" I hissed.
He shook me off, but didn't respond. I looked at my grandmother to back me up, but she shrugged. We both knew there was no talking to my father once he'd made up his mind about something.
The two of us silently followed him. As we cautiously crept through the thinning forest, the angry shouts grew louder. Then, a high-pitched feminine shriek pierced the air. At the sound, my father began sprinting. His formerly careful movements turned into a burst of speed like he'd been shot out of a gun.
"Dad!" I yelped, momentarily forgetting we were supposed to be traveling inconspicuously. No longer thinking about my own safety, I chased after him.
The forest gave way to a county highway. Abandoned vehicles dotted the road and I wove around the long-forgotten 4-wheel drive trucks and SUVs. Car travel was risky business. You needed a 4-wheel drive vehicle to plow through the snow-covered roadways, but they were also energy inefficient. Finding gasoline these days was nearly impossible. Gas had been the first non-renewable resource to go.
I hadn't run this hard in sometime; I hadn't gotten very far before it felt like my lungs were going to burst. I sucked in mouthfuls of dry, winter air and it burned down my throat. It felt like my windpipe was bleeding, but I knew that was just in my head.
I continued chasing my father's still sprinting form. The shouting had stopped. It was either that or the pounding of my boots on snow-covered highways and the heavy beat of my heart echoing in my ears had drowned out the struggling cries.
I spotted the source of the loud noises. Two lumbering figures dressed all in black, including black ski masks, were yelling at the passengers of a white SUV. With the sun high in the sky glaring off the front windshield, I couldn't tell who or how many people were inside the stopped car.
The masked men wielded metal crowbars and they began assaulting the vehicle directly. I heard the distinct sound of glass shattering and that same female shriek followed. My chest seized at the sound. I bent my head down and willed my churning legs to go faster.
My father was almost at the scene. I wondered why the bandits hadn't yet spotted either of us, but I supposed they were too preoccupied with scaring the shit out of the car's passengers. I didn't know what they were trying to achieve by destroying the car and potentially the people inside. It's not like there was much to gain survival-wise unless the back half of the car was stacked with canned goods or gun ammo. I immediately thought about the destroyed pole barn in our backyard and wondered if the human race had moved beyond survival mode now to a place of such despair that cruelty was a welcomed distraction from reality. +
I sucked in a sharp gasp of surprise when I saw my father tackle the bandit standing near the front driver's side door. My father was a big man – tall with broad shoulders. He'd played tight end at the local state university back in his college days. The bandit fell hard to the ground with my father's weight on top. The crowbar loosened from his hands from the force of my father's attack.
My father's antics caught the attention of the second highway leech. Before the second man could jump into the fray and help out his friend, I had reached the car. Not thinking, I leapt onto his back. I ripped my gloves off and began clawing at the man's face, aiming for his eyes. He cried out first from surprise that someone was clinging to him like a backpack and then secondly because my ragged nails were slicing into his face. I chewed my nails out of boredom and it's not like I'd had the foresight to pack nail clippers and a nail file in my survival pack. Space was limited; things like tweezers and nail snips had to be forfeited for more practical things.
My father must have knocked his man unconscious because he was on his feet again in a matter of minutes. He grabbed the crowbar his assailant had dropped. I saw him lift the weapon above his head. "Sam!" he called.
Using the man as a springboard, I leapt from his back and tucked forward. I led with my right shoulder and ducked my head down to roll, unharmed and untouched, a few feet away. My father's crowbar connected first with the remaining man's shoulder. He shrieked in pain from the blow. When the metal weapon connected with his shin next, he howled again and dropped to his knees. My father swung the crowbar back like it was a 9-iron and he followed through. The end of the crowbar caught the bandit's chin. His head snapped up, his eyes closed, and he fell face forward onto the ground.
My father was breathing heavy. I stared down at the bandit sprawled at my feet. I didn't know if he was dead or merely unconscious, but I didn't care. I knew from where my father's aggression had come. I had felt it, too. These two bandits, regardless if they were complicit in my mother's death, were a symbol. And my dad had kicked their ass.
I heard the groan of metal grinding on metal. The driver's side door of the white SUV opened with some difficulty. The bandits had practically collapsed the entire driver's side panel with their crowbars.
"What the hell were you thinking?" my father yelled at me.
"I could ask you the same thing," I snapped back. "When did you turn into a superhero?"
A thin man with a long face and salt-and-pepper hair shakily climbed out of the car. He held the palm of his hand tight against his forehead. I could see the crimson dribble of blood seeping through his fingers.
"Thank you." He coughed violently. "Those men came out of nowhere."
My father's figure was still tense, as if he didn't trust the car's driver not to attack.
My grandmother finally caught up with us. Her cheeks were red and she was breathing heavier than usual. I immediately felt guilty for running off and leaving her behind.
"What do we have here?" she asked. Her icy blue eyes trained on the fallen bandits who still hadn't moved. I didn't want to check if either of them was still alive or not.
The passenger side door creaked open. The sun was shining right in my eyes, and I had to cup my hand over my face like a visor to get rid of the glare.
"Stay in the car, Nora," the salt-and-pepper man instructed.
Whoever was in the passenger seat seemed not to hear the man or was ignoring his command. I could just make out the slight curves of a woman's silhouette, accentuated by the bright sun behind her. She stooped and picked my gloves off the ground where I'd hastily thrown them to better shred some man's face apart. She walked over to me, her feet making small, careful movements as if she was afraid she might slip on ice even though the road was only covered in snow. Wordlessly, she handed me my gloves. With the sun now at her back and it no longer blinding me, I could finally get a good look at her.
Locks of strawberry-blonde hair poked out from beneath her white knit cap. Her peach skin, dotted with a light spray of freckles, was tinted rose at her cheeks. I couldn't tell if the blush was from the cold or from unnecessary makeup. Her eyelashes were black and long, framing a pair of aquamarine irises a vibrant shade I'd only ever witnessed in my mother's flower garden. Her lips looked too soft for this world, and I found myself self-consciously licking my own. My lips felt cracked and dry from extended exposure to the cold. In her winter boots she was maybe an inch or two shorter than me. She was bundled up in snow gear like the rest of us, but similar to the salt-and-pepper man's clothes, it was newer and nicer than anything I owned. She looked like she was ready to go downhill skiing rather than outlast an apocalypse.
"Thanks," I said, taking the gloves and stiffly shoving my frozen hands back inside them.
"I suppose I should be the one thanking you."
My head snapped up at the tenor of her voice. It was low and velvety, the kind of low burr that always made me weak in the knees. I didn't know what it was about women with lower register voices, but their hypnotic element always ensnared me. It wasn't fair. God was most definitely punishing me with this girl's voice for every wicked thing I'd ever done.
I stared at her and she stared back, her face emotionless. It was like a game of chicken, neither of us looking away. I found myself once again staring at her mouth. Her lips were generous, thick and soft. It was the kind of mouth celebrities spend a fortune on trying to achieve. The carefully manicured eyebrows. The gentle slope of her well-proportioned nose. It was too much perfection to be contained on one face. 4
When my father spoke again, we both finally broke our staring contest. "What the hell were you doing in a car? It's idiotic using one of these things. You just attract attention to yourself." He kicked at the useless tire of the SUV.
The salt-and-pepper man grimaced. His head looked like it was still bleeding from a nasty gash across his forehead. "I guess I underestimated the weather and how much gas it would take to go cross-country. We're kind of stranded. I'm hoping you can help us." He leaned against the hood of his car. It looked like it was taking all of his efforts to stay standing up.
"I'm sorry," my father started. I didn't think he sounded truly apologetic – it was just force of habit. "We can't help you. We've got to worry about ourselves."
"I know how to get to Eden," the man wheezed.
My father stilled. "Say that again."
"The rumors are true. Eden exists," the man said, still coughing. "And I'll take you there and get you inside if you'll help us."
My father's icy blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. "How do I know you're not just making this up so we don't leave you two for dead?"
"The company I own received government contracts to retrofit an underground facility," the man revealed. "When the government realized what was happening to the earth's climate, they reopened an old, underground bunker from World War II. Roosevelt had had it commissioned as part of the Manhattan Project as a precaution to nuclear warfare. My company was responsible for turning it into a living space," he continued. "And as reward for our secrecy, there was a lottery for spaces inside."
Where is it?" my father demanded.
The other man shook his head. "If I tell you, you'll just leave us or kill us. But I can take you there."
My father always played it safe. That had been his job at the bank for thirty-some years – to weigh the pros and cons, to analyze the risk involved in trusting others. He'd kept our family stationary while the rest of the planet scrambled over one another to gobble up the world's remaining resources. He wasn't a risk-taker. But now, with seemingly nothing left to lose, he was hesitating. My father seemed to actually be mulling over this man's story.
I looked over at the man and the younger woman. I didn't trust them. I didn't trust anyone. I'd heard of Eden, but we'd all thought it was a legend like alligators in the sewers. It seemed too calculating, too cruel, that our government would have created such a place and then left the majority of us to fend for ourselves. I thought this man must be trying to take advantage of my father's current desperate mindset.
"Ok."
I was sure I'd misheard my dad.
"You're not serious," I blurted out. "Dad, we don't know them," I said, waving my hands at my sides.
"Samantha." My father's tone let me know this wasn't up for discussion. I wasn't used to him making decisions for me. Ever since he'd shaken me awake when bandits raided our home, he'd taken on the sole leadership role. I was an adult; shouldn't I have some say about if we allied ourselves with these strangers?
"That cut looks pretty bad," my grandmother observed, sidling up next to the salt-and-pepper man. "Mind if I take a look at it?" She removed the first-aid kit from her backpack. It wasn't much – a few Band-Aids, cotton balls, and iodine. If any of us got seriously injured, we'd be in trouble.
She dipped a cotton ball into the iodine and began to rub away at the blood that had dried on the man's forehead. "What happened?" she asked him.
The man winced as she continued to dab at the open wound. "We'd just run out of gas," he said. "I was planning on ditching the car and walking until we found some gasoline or another car with gas in the tank, but just as I was opening the door, those two men attacked us. They both had crowbars and started bashing the car, breaking the windows and hitting the side panels."
"They hit you with a crowbar?" my grandma gasped.
"No. I think the car door clipped me in the head when I was trying to get out and they slammed it shut on me."
My grandma nodded sagely. "Well, it's certainly a good thing we came along when we did."
The man breathed out deeply. "That's for sure. I'm Jerry West," he introduced himself. "And this is my daughter, Nora."
"Rosemary Poulsen, but you just call me Rosie," my grandma said with a wink. "That tall drink of water over there is my son, Brandon, and that's my granddaughter, Samantha." 2
"It's nice to meet you all," the man said with a brief smile and a cough.
"I wonder how those men found you," my dad thought out loud. "We're in the middle of nowhere. Usually bandits stick to the cities where there's more resources."
"Maybe the cities are drying up, too," I suggested. "Maybe they're widening their territories because they're getting more desperate."
"We should get moving," my dad said, frowning. I think he realized the truth and gravity of my words. "I don't know what you've got packed in your car, but you'll probably need to downsize. Everything you need for survival can be carried on your back."
"Nora," Mr. West called to his daughter as my grandma finished patching up his head, "go start downsizing."
"Sam, go help her," my grandma urged me.
"Why?" I demanded.
"Because it's the right thing to do," she said pointedly.
I rolled my eyes, but did what she said. I walked around the vehicle to the rear where the girl was tugging on the straps of an oversized hiking pack. The backpack looked swollen from over-packing. I was surprised the zippers hadn't burst. She made frustrated noises as she yanked and pulled without result.
"Let me help."
She swung her head to look at me. "I can do it."
"Let me help," I insisted again.
"I'll be fine," she grunted as she continued to struggle.
I held up my hands and walked away without another word. I knew I should have tried harder to help her, but I was only going through the motions to satisfy my grandmother.
I walked back to where my grandmother sat in a snow bank. "That was fast," she shrewdly commented.
I held up my hands again. "She said she didn't need my help."
My grandma shook her head and muttered something under her breath in Norwegian. I knew a few scattered phrases. I'm pretty sure she'd called me stubborn.
My father pulled out his laminated map and laid it out on the hood of the SUV. He and Mr. West, now freshly bandaged, hovered over the waterproof map.
"I need some directions," my dad said.
"I can't let you have them," Mr. West countered.
"Give me a state at least," my father snapped, clearly displeased. "We can't help you folks if you get us lost and we're just walking around in a giant circle. I won't put my family at risk like that."
Now it was the other man's turn to regard my father. I was glad he had put some conditions in place so we weren't traveling blind and at this man's mercy, but I still felt annoyed and uncomfortable that I hadn't been consulted about my father's decision to trust them.
"Idaho."