The Reawakening by Joseph Souza

Author:Joseph Souza [Souza, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Publisher: Cactus Tree Publisher
Published: 2012-05-14T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

THE SNOW DIDN’T STOP. IT WAS relentless and unforgiving. Once it started that first day, it kept on coming, which meant that Dar and I stood no chance of returning to Boston until the roads had cleared. Every couple of days, we received a fresh coat of powder. It glistened and radiated in the sun’s sallow glow, obscuring the debris that lay strewn across the hardening crust. We took turns shoveling in order to keep clear the path between the doorway and the barn. Every day Rick plowed the snow until the banks built up like a massive wall in front of the driveway. He plowed it up all around the farmhouse so as to provide a natural barrier from the creatures. Other than the flying ones, it would be difficult for the dead to reach us. We made sure to have two sharpshooters tag along with the people shoveling just in case the dead flew down from the roof.

The power died and never returned, which meant that we had to rely strictly on the generator. Rick turned the generator on for about two hours a night. At around nine, we lit candles and read or played cards by the flickering light. He’d insulated the house a few years back by spraying foam in the walls and laying loose insulation along the attic floor. That combined with the fireplace kept us relatively warm and dry. We ate cereal and canned goods for breakfast and lunch, and we took turns preparing hot meals for dinner. Coffee in the morning got reheated over the fireplace.

We learned to live with each other, to put up with each other’s idiosyncrasies and help deal with the post-traumatic stress we suffered on account of living among such cruel demons. As a result, we worked to tolerate each other’s needs as best we could. The children behaved relatively well, considering the situation we found ourselves in, but they acted up like most children do. Gunner had his hands full taking care of them, especially when Emily cried out for her mother. We all tried to help out as much as possible, but there was only so much any of us could do. Thorn was the exception when it came to the kids. He didn’t want anything to do with them. He did, however, make up for it by performing many of the laborious tasks that no one else wanted to do. In his defense, he claimed he’d rather fight hand-to-hand combat against five flesh-eaters than have to deal with kids.

The snow piled up against the house in long, sweeping arcs, and the temperatures often dropped below zero. Most days the wind whipped hard down from Canada and whistled through the snow-swept valley.

On Thanksgiving Day, we ate a hearty meal cooked up by Kate. Instead of turkey, we had one of the chickens Rick processed this past summer and stored in his freezer. He kept three freezers filled with poultry, beef, deer and moose meat out in the barn.

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