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

ineptitude.  The fact of the matter was I was paralyzed with fear, and the voices I heard just minutes earlier weren’t helping matters.

We were within running distance of Miley’s. Looking down at the poor baby, I remember thinking how she might not make it if we didn’t hurry, but internal struggles coupled with self-doubt left me paralyzed. The best I could come up with was to err on the side of caution. The baby would be dead just the same at the hands of the Grays or at the bite of the bitter cold. And since the military presence we hoped for didn’t pan out, or at least hadn’t appeared to, the best course was to err on the side of caution.

***

There was a blue duplex just across the street from Miley’s office building. It had stairs leading to a small landing and entrance to the upstairs apartment. The upstairs landing would provide an excellent vantage point over the surrounding area. The few minutes up there scoping the area seemed like a better option than just running for our lives and hoping Miley’s was safe.

Under the steps leading to the second-floor apartment was a small, mostly enclosed cubbyhole just big enough for Kelley and baby. It had wide strips of latticework covering the railing and would provide adequate cover from the wind and snow. I let her know I was going to climb to the top to get a better look. She absently nodded. I think I was starting to grow on her. I glanced at the baby before leaving. She was swaddled in thick blankets, but I worried about her. She would at least be protected from the wind and snow under the stairs.

The surprise of hearing what I thought was a buzzing cell phone stopped me in my tracks. More specifically, I heard the reverberations of a vibrating cell phone off the wooden lattice of the porch. “Did you hear that buzzing?” I asked, walking around to where she sat.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about… I didn’t hear anything,” she said.

Either I was going crazy or Kelley was deaf. She didn’t hear the voices I know I heard, and she didn’t hear the loud, vibrating sound coming from two feet away from her. I was exhausted mentally and physically, my nerves were shot, but by god my ears still worked. I decided to let it go. There were other more important matters to attend to.

The landing was a complete dud. I couldn’t see shit from up there. I felt completely impotent and stupid. It was obvious I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. All the landing provided was time: time to feel terrible for all the crappy decisions I had made up until that point. I had endangered my friends’ lives. Not only that, but I had also picked up two other people I couldn’t take care of.

My mind raced with negative conclusions, which was just an extension of how I felt back at the security fence. My friends were probably dead, and that was probably my fault. The military wasn’t there, and I was all alone. If I had allowed it, my mind would have raced in an infinite loop of horrendous outcomes. Instead, I summoned strength and resolve I never knew I had and put a stop to the destructive thinking.

Once I calmed myself, I inexplicably laughed. Kelley probably thought I was crazy, and maybe I was. After all, we were literally fifty feet from Miley’s parking lot. I wasn’t going to learn anything else from the landing. All I was doing was putting the baby’s health in jeopardy because I was afraid to cross the street – afraid of what I would find or not find.

You know how you feel when you buy a Powerball ticket? Although statistically you know you probably aren’t going to win, that doesn’t stop you from thinking you could be holding a winning ticket. I wanted to savor my numbers a little while longer, I guess. I didn’t want to find out I’d lost, because everyone’s a potential winner until they’re not. I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had made excuses long enough. It was time to walk across the fifty-foot expanse and see if my friends were there. It was time to check the numbers.

I quickly made my way down to where Kelley sat. Where the hell was the baby, I wondered. Before I could say anything, she said, “I needed to feed her. She was getting fussy.”

Sure enough, she had her inside her parka. “Oh, okay – I’m, uh, I’m going back up there until you’re finished.”

“It’ll just be a few more minutes.”

“Sure.” More time to savor my numbers.

She seemed to be trying to be nice to me. For a moment, I felt guilty for the way I felt about her. I hired a lot of people in my day, though, and my record was pretty good, especially given I didn’t always have top tier people to choose from. I was confident in trusting my gut, and it was screaming not to trust her, especially since I was pretty sure she lied to me about the cell phone. Having said all of that, I was willing to delay my conclusions about her until a later time, especially considering she had just lost her husband in a horrible manner.

But still, if all the electronics were down, how in the hell did she have a cell phone?

Nearly as soon I got back to the landing, I heard a crash to my left, followed by the sounds of multiple broken windows. What the hell! Soon after, I heard the crunch of footsteps in the snow directly below the landing. My first thought was Kelley running off with the baby. I looked to where the noise seemed to be coming from, and it wasn’t Kelley. There was a brief respite of sound, and then I was inundated with the crunching of hundreds of footsteps in snow.

“The fuck,”