The Long Dark by Billy Farmer (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📗

was two or three blocks north of us. I couldn’t tell if they were shooting at us or not, but it was too close to take any chances. There was a small building near the northern side of the runway. I pointed to it and yelled, “Get your asses behind that building!” More shots rang out as we ran. In my hurry for cover, I overran my mark, overcompensated, and fell to the ground in a heap.

“Turn off the lantern,” I panted, still trying to catch my breath as I brushed off the snow. “They can’t shoot us if they can’t see us.” Not to mention the gray bastards could be right on our asses, for all we knew. I switched my headlamp off.

The building had two doors. One of which, I hoped, was unlocked. I saw a lock on the first door we came to, but it wasn’t latched. Finally, some luck, I thought. After everyone was safely inside, I tried in vain to bar the door closed. Because the door had to be locked from the outside, there wasn’t a way to lock it shut from the inside. Worse, the damn door swung inward, as well as outward, meaning it could be pushed in from the outside. “You guys have some string or something I can use to tie this door shut?” No answer.

I stumbled around trying to look through our bags for something I might use to tie the door shut, assuming I could figure a way of doing it, but found nothing I could use. Go figure. With the one window of our building facing the high school, I didn’t want to flip on a lantern and light the way for someone to get an easy shot, but it was a little disconcerting that someone could quite literally push the door open with almost no effort. We weren’t having very much luck with doors, to say the least.

I was getting ready to say the hell with it and flip on my headlamp, so I could see what I was doing, when Avery walked towards me. He pulled a coiled spool of wire out of his pocket. “It is ten AWG. It will be strong enough. The trick will be tying it.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

I began to feel my way around the door frame. I got to the top left corner where I found an eye latch. I tried to find the hook, but apparently there wasn’t one. The loop would work if I could find something to tie off to. There was a heavy shelf just to the left of the door. I motioned for Avery and Sam to come help me move it. Seeing that we were having a difficult time moving the shelf, Titouan decided he would lend a hand. We moved it the needed foot, and I tied the door closed as best as I could with the thick wire. It would hold up to the wind, but if a person tried to get in, we were screwed.

The room stunk of diesel fuel and grease. From the different pieces of equipment strewn around the place, it looked to be the airport maintenance building. It was dark, uncomfortable, and cold, but we seemed safe for the moment.

I spied Tish. I needed to check on her. I walked over and knelt next to her. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” she said, without expression.

“I’m so sorry about Tom,” I said.

Sam cursed under his breath as Tish said, “Me too.”

There was something about the way she responded. I didn’t know if it was the pitch or the tone or just the cold way the two words quickly rolled off her tongue. My stare lingered on her for a few ticks, but I eventually gave up once I decided she wasn’t ever going to make eye contact with me. Finally, I decided to just have a seat and rest my tired bones.

We hadn’t been settled in for very long when another hail of gunfire erupted. This time the shots seemed closer.

“Don’t seem ‘ike ‘ey was shootin at us,” Sam said.

I half-ass nodded. As long as I didn’t hear any bullets plinking off the side of the building, I was content with just resting and shutting my mind off for as long as possible.

Over the next half hour or so, there must’ve been at least fifty or sixty shots fired in different parts of town. Many of them were far off in the distance, on the other side of town, but it was difficult to know for sure because Barrow was such a small city. You could almost throw a rock across it was so diminutive.

With the gunfire abating over time, we settled into mostly quiet contemplations. Sam had fallen asleep but had awoken due to an apparent bad dream. A shriek and wide eyes let us know he was reliving the day’s events. Tish flexed and rubbed her fingers, trying to work feeling back into her near-frozen digits. Avery spent most of that time talking to himself, questioning God, and drawing air drawings with his index finger. Titouan just seemed broken. The cast that had been created from growing up pampered had been completely broken away, leaving behind a huddled mass of a scared twenty-something.

As for me specifically, I thought about Tom. Irrational as I knew it was, I began doubting my decision to leave him. We had a rifle. Maybe I could’ve saved him. But then I set about justifying my decision to leave. I thought about what a good guy he was. How strong his character was. He would’ve wanted us to leave. He wouldn’t have wanted any of us getting hurt trying to help him. That’s just who he was as a man. Right?

But then, you know what, I thought fuck that. We say all kinds of crap like that when we feel guilty. We say things like, “Your dad would’ve wanted me to remarry. He said he wanted nothing more than for me to be