They brought the best young evergreen tree they could find from the foothills and spent long evening hours that week carving ornaments out of bits of wood from the woodpile, since they’d left their own ornaments at home. Matt’s mom had gone to visit Jane, much improved and who’d left the storehouse clinic and had been living with her refugee group for weeks now, and insisted the refugees have the Larson family ornaments to decorate their own tree. She wouldn’t hear of the redheaded woman’s protests, insisting that carving new ornaments gave them all something to do.
Even Aaron was given a bit of styrofoam packing that might once have been considered garbage to whittle into a snowman. Meanwhile Paul was given the important job of breaking the remaining styrofoam into snowflakes, to be pinned onto the pointy bulbs of the strings of LED lights Lewis had hung along the walls to light the shelter before Ferris took the solar panels.
Which was too bad, since they were technically Christmas lights repurposed for general lighting and would’ve perfectly fit the holiday spirit.
In an attempt to lift the town’s spirits for at least a short time Catherine organized a celebration in the town square on Christmas Eve, complete with a large decorated tree and carols. And while there was no wassail or hot chocolate she did manage to get her hands on several boxes of herbal tea, which along with dollops of precious honey made an enjoyable drink for townspeople to warm their hands around as they sang.
She further tried to raise spirits with a dance on Christmas day in the auditorium, one that Matt and Sam were only too happy to attend. Neither of them was a particularly good dancer, but then again no one around them seemed to be either and that didn’t seem to be stopping anyone.
Altogether between family and friends Matt didn’t think he’d ever celebrated a more enjoyable Christmas, not even as a kid when the magic of the holidays was so much more exciting. Even New Year’s Eve, which he’d never considered much of a holiday, was given special treatment as everyone in Aspen Hill looked forward to a year where things improved, clinging to that hope in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
Because unfortunately aside from the wedding and holidays there wasn’t much to celebrate that winter. Thanks to Trev’s generosity with his cache and Lewis’s (assumed) generosity letting them stay at the shelter and draw from his massive woodpile, Matt and his family were far better off than the rest of the town.
Which wasn’t to say things were perfect. They had to viciously ration Trev’s gift to make it stretch among 8 people through the cold months, and over time all of them grew thin and weak and listless. They got sick more frequently as well, which was a great concern in their weakened states and required larger meals to nurse them back to health.
That concern was even greater when they were all effectively sharing one room with only curtains to divide beds, since sickness tended to spread. At one point in January everyone but Sam fell sick at once for almost a week, nothing life threatening it seemed but enough to keep them all weak and feverish in bed. Matt’s new wife was driven almost to exhaustion caring for them all, and although he tried to help as much as he could he’d been hit the worst out of everyone and could barely stand.
That was probably because he was the most active out of the group, since he was often out on patrol or organizing the rosters down at town hall or responding to crises in the town. With all that he worked himself even harder than Terry, who was kept busy doing his best to care for the sick and injured as the town’s only doctor.
Their family in the shelter was better fed and kept warmer than almost everyone else, while the former intern surgeon found himself dealing with increasing number of patients among the townspeople who weren’t so fortunate. As far as they could tell they’d managed to prevent the flu down in Price from spreading to Aspen Hill, but even so people were coming to Terry in droves for other illnesses, injuries, or more direly as they approached the perilous brink of starvation.
In growing desperation Mayor Tillman had haggled to purchase any spare animals townspeople had, even horses and dogs, to butcher for meat. She couldn’t offer anything but IOUs or less valuable commodities, which was everything but food these days when everyone was starving. Precious metals, jewelry, even ammo found itself seriously devalued, but Catherine offered what she could to try to feed those on the brink of starvation.
It wasn’t nearly enough. Terry knew the numbers better than anyone since he saw many of the deaths, and Matt learned of the others from the Mayor during their weekly councils.
All in all over a third of the residents of Aspen Hill had perished by the end of February. Among the refugees it was closer to two-thirds. Many of those deaths were among the older and younger members of the population, those most vulnerable to sickness once they were weakened from hunger. Although even the healthiest members of the community weren’t always spared. Matt ended up attending funerals nearly every day, one of the few strong enough to help dig graves in the frozen soil.
It was brutal work, especially with the specter of cold and exhaustion looming over him, and with every shovelful Matt thought of Ferris with more and more bitterness.
Terrible as it was to think of, if the administrator hadn’t fed the refugees with the town’s food far more of the people of Aspen Hill would’ve survived. The grim tradeoff would’ve been that almost all the refugees would certainly have died, but heartless as it sounded Matt would’ve preferred to be burying strangers rather than friends.
Which wasn’t to say the refugees weren’t doing their part. Under Ben and Catherine’s leadership they’d integrated well into the town, and aside from a few exceptions Matt had no complaints about the new citizens helping defend their borders. In truth he had almost as much trouble from the townspeople he worked with. But any trouble he had from the people reporting to him paled in comparison to what he was forced to deal with from the rest of the townspeople.
Following the Mayor’s strict crackdown on crime after the refugees were integrated into the town thefts had dropped to almost nothing, but as the cold and starvation took its toll crime gradually started to climb again. Many, in the last extreme faced with death or theft, did what they thought they had to. And since the refugees were the worst off a disproportionate amount of that desperate violence and stealing came from them.
Matt, Catherine, and Bert Peterson were faced with many difficult and sad choices as they held strict to the Mayor’s policy of exile for theft and other crimes. It was easy to assume it was a more lenient punishment when the weather was fair, but in the depths of winter exile was practically a death sentence and they all knew it.
Tormented by her determination to keep the promises she’d made Catherine had a harder and harder time insisting that the sentencing be enforced, although she stayed firm in her resolve. As for Matt, the only reason he was able to carry the punishments out on her behalf was because he wasn’t the one making the decisions. That helped, some.
The same couldn’t be said for Bert. The elderly retired lawyer had gravely upheld his duties judging the members of Razor’s gang after they attacked the town, but it had weighed on him. He was used to a system where those condemned to death often waited a decade or more through a lengthy process of appeals and other legal proceedings. He’d gone along with the hasty sentencing and carrying out the executions because of the dire situation and the clear guilt of the condemned men, but it had taken its toll.
The later sentences he had to hand out, especially exile, nearly broke him. He even tried arranging a meeting to discuss more lenient punishments for theft, but the town wouldn’t hear of it. Everyone else was just as desperate as those who were stealing, and the threat of exile was the only thing keeping the town from collapsing into chaos.