Beyond the New Horizon: The Last Sun, Read online

  Willy and John were by her side in seconds, and both men seemed wide awake.

  “What is it?” both asked in unison.

  “Look,” Gina answered and pushed the door open as far as she could until it hung up on the snow piled behind it. “A half hour ago it was just getting started and now this.”

  John and Willy crowded close and did as she’d asked. They looked. Willy seemed to grasp how dangerous their situation was before John, and bellowed, “Everyone up and dressed right now.” To John, he said, “We need to get the animals in here before we can’t.”

  Rubbing the sleep from his eyes as if he thought it would lessen the depth, John stared out. “Oh, crap!” He hurried off to find some warmer clothing.

  “Better build that fire up,” he said to Gina, “and dig out the warmest clothes we have.”

  “I’ll let Mary and Evelyn take care of it. I need to bring the goats and chickens in before they’re buried.”

  Gina piled wood on the fire that greedily latched onto each piece as she laid it on. The flames seemed to consume it as fast as she put it down, giving off very little heat.

  “Someone come look after the fire,” she said and pulling on her nylon jacket over her wet clothes she nudged Sam with her foot. “Sam, unless you want Willy or your brother dragging you from that bed, you better get up.”

  Sam grumbled from the depths of his bed, “I’m up already. For Christ sakes, it’s only snow.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s apocalyptic snowfall, and I bet you’ve never seen it like this.”

  Sam grumbled and sat up as Gina left. She hoped he was getting up because they had to rescue their animals before they got buried alive. If she had her way, that wouldn’t happen, but she needed help. Her only consolation was that they weren’t penned far from the front of the cave.

  “Tell whose ever on guard duty to come down here,” Willy hollered at her as she slid out the partially open door. They would have to clear out in front of it before it was too deep to get out it at all.

  Gina hollered up at Abby, “The two of you need to come down now.” She listened until she heard Lucas answer and set off to the rabbit hutches which were the closest. Olivia would not be forgiving if anything happened to her rabbits. In her mind, the rabbits were safely in the cave, and she worried about catching the chickens. She still had the scar from her last battle with the rooster, but she suspected he would be more amicable to being caught this time. Occupied by her thoughts of the chickens, Gina grabbed the end of the four-hutch rabbit arrangement and began pulling it and almost fell when someone picked up the other end. Through the thick snow, she couldn’t see who it was but was grateful for the help. Charlie hollered at her, but Gina couldn’t make out what he had said. It seemed as if the snow had robbed the sound of his words. Walking backward, she carried her end into the cave. Someone shut the door behind them.

  She set her end down and turned to go back out. Sam grabbed her arm, “Stay inside. The visibility is zero right now.”

  Gina pulled her arm away, “The chickens are still out there and what about the mares and foals. We can’t leave them out there.”

  Sam grabbed her and held on. Gina realized that she could see his hands holding her by her shoulders, but couldn’t feel his grip. All she felt was pressure from his fingers, and she knew she couldn’t move. “Sam, let go of me.”

  “They’re all here. They’re safe.”

  Gina looked around and saw that Sam was telling the truth. The horses were in their space as were the chickens including the nasty old rooster. She couldn’t see all the horses because they were fenced off from the main cave in an alcove near the front entrance. With it walled off by the rocks it was the logical place for them to be. Most of them hadn’t started growing their winter coat, and they needed to if they were to stay warm. Putting them as far from the fire as possible would stimulate their hair growth, or so they had theorized. Gina hoped it was correct because they had nothing extra to cover them with. The goats were stabled in a pen beside the horses with the cow beside them. Everyone must have been hustling to bring the rest of the animals in while she and Charlie had wrestled the rabbits in.

  Her teeth began to chatter, and she couldn’t resist when Sam pulled her toward the fire. She wiped her hand over her face and comprehended that she couldn’t feel her cheeks. Somehow, in the short time she’d been outside, she’d gotten herself half frozen. Gina didn’t think she’d been out for very long. She stood while Sam stripped her jacket and sweatshirt over her head. Both were stiff with ice. Someone wrapped a sleeping blanket around her shoulders, and someone else pushed a hot cup into her hands.

  “It’s only hot water and whiskey. Mary says to drink it all.”

  Gina took the first sip and felt the warmth sliding down her throat. Gratefully she drank it down. As she thawed from the inside out, she understood how easy it would be for any of them to freeze in a matter of minutes outside. She wondered about the rest of the horses and cattle which had to remain outside.

  Sam led her to one of the logs and helped her to sit. She did and stared into the flames. The fire was larger than they’d ever had and she wondered where the smoke was going to go. The smaller fires they used to cook on had already turned the ceiling black.

  When she’d quit shivering, she looked around at the other faces staring into the flames. Most had wet hair and appeared as cold as she felt, and all were wrapped in some sort of blanket or sleeping bag. She saw stunned, worried expressions on every face.

  Finally, Mark broke the silence, “I guess the guy in Australia was right. He said it happened overnight, he just didn’t say how bad it was going to get. Without a radio, I don’t even know if they survived.”

  “How bad do you think it could get? I’m not sure how much snow they normally get around here?” Journey wasn’t really addressing anyone with her questions and waited for someone to answer. She looked around, “Well, it can’t snow forever!”

  “Can’t it? As hard as it’s coming down there’ll be four feet by the end of the day,” Charlie said as he stood up. He walked to the door and peered through one of the many cracks between the logs. The mud had fallen out, and he could feel the cold air coming in. “Can’t see anything out there, but I think we need to cover this door to keep the cold out.”

  “We can’t cover it. We need the ventilation or we might not wake up one day. Co2 poisoning.”

  Charlie looked at John, and pointed up above the fire, “This doorway isn’t the only ventilation here. Look at the smoke.”

  The adults followed Charlie’s finger and saw the smoke was being drawn up and back into the cave. It didn’t drift upward and congregate against the ceiling as you would expect it to, but rose in a column as if it were being sucked out. As dim as it was in the cavern, they couldn’t see where it was being sucked to, but it did seem to have a purpose and a direction.

  “That’s weird. How come we never noticed it before this?” Mark asked.

  “Because we’ve never been inside with the door closed or had a fire this big. We need to figure out where it’s going because there might be another way out of here,” John answered.

  As they warmed up, they grew sleepy as if the storm had sucked the energy from them. Lucy, Ben, and Abby were the first to head back to their sleeping area. One by one they drifted back to bed until only Charlie, Sam and Gina remained.

  “No one answered Journey’s question about the snowfall. How much do you guys usually get here?”

  “Well, that would depend. Do you want the combined total for the winter or what we can expect for the duration of a storm?”

  Sam snickered, “Too many variables. It would depend on how long the storm was to last or if there was wind or if the snow was wet like this is or dry and drifting. There’s no telling what we should call normal. I’ve seen drifts twenty feet high and had it snow for days on end and have the wind blow it into the next county, leaving us with no measurable total.”

  “Why I rememb
er when I was a kid…”

  “Walking five miles to school through three feet of snow?” Sam finished for Charlie. “Heck, that story has been around since the first settlers. The fact is that it was probably true back then. Now the school systems call for snow days and close their doors.”

  Charlie joined Sam in laughter, “And we had to work our asses off when school was closed. I hated when they did that because it seemed like it was easier to go to school than stay home.”

  Gina listened to the two men talk about the different winters they remembered from the past and compare farming tactics their families had used for feeding the stock and keeping water pipes from freezing. With their voices a hum in the background, Gina thought about the animals they’d left outside. She didn’t see how they could survive without help. The snow could be too deep to dig down through to the remaining grass, and the grass hadn’t had time to recuperate from them cutting it for storage. She said a silent prayer for the snow to stop and the sun to come out and melt it all.

  She didn’t know the water amount versus the amount of snowfall, but if it melted all at once, they could be faced with flooding, which would bring them a whole new set of problems.

  Gina found it alarming to think of their valley filling with runoff from the melting snow and trapping them inside the cave with no way out. Lucas had said there was another passage at the southern end where the rock walls met, but was the terrain lower there and would it be enough to drain the water away? He’d also said the passage needed to be cleared to get through it, but he’d thought it was possible. Several times she’d heard John mention that he’d like to check it out, but she’d never heard if he’d gone there or not, until he’d brought it up again and Willy had nixed the idea. After listening to John, she wondered how he had ever run a profitable ranch. He was always talking about things he’d like to do but had never followed through with. His ability to make a decision and stay with it seemed to be lacking the leadership skills she had assumed was necessary to earn a successful living raising cattle. She thought about the money that Sam had said he’d sent to Mary so she could make ends meet and decided she was happy that Willy was now leading their group and not John. She felt they had accomplished more in the relatively short time that Willy had been in charge, than their whole time together. To be fair to John, they had not been faced with the same problems and decisions they’d encountered with Willy, and Gina really had no way of knowing how John would have reacted or the decisions he would have made. Maybe she was overly critical because when it came right down to it, she didn’t care for John very much and it wasn’t that she disliked him, just that she didn’t have an opinion either way. She would defend him if it came down to it, but she had heard him more than once, berating Lucas as well as being overly critical of Mary. What had set her hackles into the air was overhearing him condemning Sam’s method of taking care of the depraved men. He’s gone along with Willy’s idea of stringing the dead men up, but she’d seen the disapproval on his face. She’d wanted to ask him what he’d thought they should do, but Sam had read her mind and stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  She had almost drifted off to sleep when she felt Sam lift the edge of the sleeping bag and slip in beside her. His body was still warm from sitting in front of the fire, and she snuggled close. Without a word, he had pulled her closer, burying his face in her long hair. Within minutes, his breathing settled into the slow, steady rhythm of sleep. Gina pushed her worries aside and drifted off.

  Chapter Nine

  With nothing to do but sleep, tempers became short, and bickering took the place of meaningful conversation. By the fifth day when he couldn’t stand it anymore, Willy stood on the stump by the fire, cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed, “Time out! That’s enough.”

  Even the heated argument between John and Mary stopped in mid-sentence. They both looked at him in astonishment as if neither could believe he had interrupted a family disagreement.

  “Everyone, front, and center,” he used his gruffest voice and must have sounded like the military personnel he had once been when they all came to stand in front of him. He was surprised when no one argued or questioned his authority, but stood in silence waiting for him to continue. “Okay…that’s better. Now I’m going to show you all how petty and childish you sound.” He pointed to John, “Tell us what is so important you have to argue about it.”

  John looked from Willy to Mary, who had dropped her head down. “That’s not your concern. What we were discussing is between my wife and me.”

  Willy raised his eyebrows and set his lips in an upside-down grin, “Really? You chose to make it public so, here’s what we all heard. You were fighting because you thought she had given Sam a larger piece of pemmican than she’d given you.” John lowered his head because he knew Willy was right.

  He pointed at Matt and Lucas, who were still glaring at one another, “You two, what is your issue? The two of you looked like you were ready to duke it out with each other.”

  Lucas chewed on the inside corner of his lip. Matt shuffled and glanced at Lucas. “He pulled out my hair,” Lucas finally answered, his voice barely audible.

  Willy cupped his hand to his ear, “What’s that? We couldn’t hear you.”

  Lucas rubbed his chin with the memory, and bellowed out, his voice full of frustration, “I said, he pulled out my hair.”

  Matt giggled and looked away, “Because you were treating it like you had a forest growing on your face. Geez, it was only a hair.”

  “Sherry, Abby, Maggie, and Olivia, would you care to tell us why you found it necessary to treat each other with such disrespect? Name calling is for children and that goes for the rest of you too. Everything you say in here is public. Whether we acknowledge it or not we all hear, and this is getting ridiculous. I’ve listened to all of you go at each other as if our very survival hinged on you winning an argument. I’d tell you all to shake hands or kiss and makeup, but I have a feeling it wouldn’t do much good.”

  Sam snickered and started a landslide of embarrassed laughter. Willy glared at him, “Yes, we’ve heard you and Andy going at it too, and Kimzey was not the first rookie to win the world championship. Bill Kornell was the first in 1963. I was there to witness it. He turned to Journey and Lucy and waggled his index finger at them. “Journey, we all know you have Lucy’s best interests at heart, but she knows whether she feels like sleeping or not, and you, young lady,” he pointed at Lucy, we all care if you have a healthy child or not. She cares, or she wouldn’t be so bossy. For you to tell her to mind her own damn business is uncalled for. Your life and the life of the unborn child is very much her business.”

  Willy, felt as if pointing out the other’s imperfections had drained his energy and sat down. He looked at Charlie as if asking him to go on. He hung his head in disgust.

  Determined not to ignore his son’s indiscretions Charlie turned on them, “I raised the lot of you better than that. We’re all tired of being cooped up here and having to listen to the two of you gang up on Sierra and Kenny breaks my heart. The only ones who have kept their personal disagreements halfway private are Sam and Gina, but even without loud words, your body language gives you away, and sometimes the tension can be felt by all of us. If we expect to survive this time stuck in here, we need to come up with a plan to keep our sanity. I think we’ve all gotten a dose of cabin fever, so let’s settle down before someone actually kills someone.”

  His words had the desired effect when everyone began protesting that killing was never an option. Willy and Charlie sat back and watched as hands were shaken, apologies made and backs slapped.

  “I think the snow has stopped,” Sierra announced.

  They had rigged up a system that called for one of them to push a stick out the gap above the door and wiggle it around to clear a hole. Each time the hole was cleared, they marked the stick. Each time the hole filled in, they marked how far out they had to push it to see daylight. The stick they had used for the l
ast puncture was just over five feet, but when Sierra checked, the hole someone had made earlier, was not filled in.

  Willy’s and Charlie’s chastising, and Sierra’s announcement brought them back together as a cohesive unit like nothing else could have. They grouped around the doorway waiting for Willy to do the honors.

  He tugged on it, but it didn’t move. He pulled harder, and it groaned and squeaked as the bottom edge dragged across the frozen snow that had sifted under the door.

  They were faced with a wall of white. Impressions of each log and the ropes tying it together were imprinted against the wall of snow. Willy put his hand on it and then knocked against it with his knuckles. The wall was frozen solid. They could see where they had been poking the stick up through the snow and with one eye closed, he put his other eye up to the small hole.

  He stepped back and with some effort, pushed the door closed. “If I didn’t see it, I would find it hard to believe, but that snow is at least eight feet deep.”

  “That’s impossible. I’ve lived here my whole life and never has it snowed that deep in just two weeks. Hell, sometimes we don’t get that much over the whole winter. Maybe there’s a drift against the hill. We’ve seen drifts deeper than eight feet before.”

  “But John, not one time have any of us noticed a wind blowing. Well, I guess we couldn’t see it, but we would have heard it. You know yourself, that when the wind blows it howls. It would have been impossible to not hear it, and dear, it has been almost three weeks since the snow started.”

  “I agree with Mary. We would have heard it if it blew with enough strength to pile a drift up this high.”

  Charlie, who had stood surrounded by his sons looked at Sam, “So how do we breach it? We don’t have a shovel. Do we?”

  “We have your little folding shovel. It should still be in Lucas’s saddlebag, or maybe one of the boxes we had on your horses.”

  At the mention of Charlie’s horses, his face fell. He had turned them loose when it became apparent they didn’t have enough grass stored to feed the big horses. They had removed the rocks from the front entrance to bring in Willy’s buckboard and buggy and then his boys had taken the pair along with the bay geldings his boys had ridden back into the hills where there was available feed and water and set them free. He had felt sure that if they ever needed them, he could call and they would come.