The Miller family hadn’t fared well that winter. Their infant son had died of sickness in January, and their young daughter Eve had developed a wracking cough that plagued her even after almost a month. Hans’s wife did her best to keep the house warm and clean and tend their daughter during the cold months as Hans did his best to help the town in spite of his troubles, as well as going out with the hunting parties more than just about anyone.
He was determined to keep his family fed, although he grew more and more despairing as his daughter’s condition continued to worsen and his wife’s spirits seemed to sink a bit lower with each passing day. She’d never quite gotten over losing their son, and no hopeful words would reach her.
Trev had nothing but sympathy for the grieving father, but he couldn’t help but wonder if Hans’s presence at the roadblock when he wasn’t out hunting wasn’t his own way of fleeing from his grief. If so it wasn’t his place to say, and he appreciated that he wasn’t the only person there taking the duty seriously.
Halfway through the shift the gossip circle broke up and most of the women simply walked away, leaving the roadblock to those who remained. Trev gave Hans a questioning look but the man simply shook his head grimly: this was a common occurrence. Rob stayed, still sitting on his chair, along with an older woman named Betty Thornton and her daughter Alice.
Trev remembered Alice as plump but pretty, always trailing after the older kids hoping to be included. Now she looked as if there wasn’t an ounce of fat or muscle on her body to fill the space between skin and bone, and she trembled slightly with every motion. Her mother seemed in about the same shape.
He didn’t ask, but perhaps Hans was used to being around all the gossip because he answered anyway. Mr. Thornton had died in Razor’s attack last fall, leaving the two women to fend for themselves. Neither of them had any skill at hunting and the winter had ended any chances of finding edible plants, so their options were limited.
Apparently the Mayor gave everyone who did a full shift at the roadblock or on patrol a bowl of soup. For those on patrol the meager portion wasn’t enough to make up the energy of walking the route, which explained why Matt was having trouble finding people to volunteer, but for sitting behind a roadblock in the cold it was, barely, a net gain.
So Matt hadn’t been entirely accurate. The roadblocks weren’t a gossip circle, they were a soup kitchen line. Those who’d already left to collect their bowl of soup hadn’t sat all the way through a shift, but Catherine fed them anyway, probably since in the colder months sitting out in the cold starving would’ve just created more sick people. Trev could only assume the Thorntons were too proud to end their shift early, at least now that the weather was warming up. According to Hans they took a shift at least once a day, sometimes twice.
Trev felt a bit guilty about his initial bitterness about selling the rest of their cache to the town, knowing that this was one of the things it went towards. It also made him feel better about their decision to sell in the end.
He went out to check the road and surrounding area again, and by the time he got back the shift was over and Hal and the Thorntons had gone, a new group of women and a few men filling up the chairs and starting their own gossip. Trev nodded at the group as he passed by, making his way back to the shelter. He wasn’t about to take a bowl of soup when people were starving, and he had a feeling that in spite of his weak and emaciated condition Matt hadn’t been either.
With any luck his friend would be around when he got back, since Trev needed to have a conversation with him about the roadblocks. He had no problem with the charity aspect of things, but asking a bunch of starving people to do a vital task and then practically encouraging them to leave halfway through wasn’t making the town any more secure. Most of the women he’d seen there hadn’t even been armed, and the radio set in a box in one of the firing niches behind the furniture looked as if it hadn’t been used in a while.
When he got back he found his cousin outside on the taller hill overlooking the shelter, shovel in hand and digging in what looked like a random spot while Aaron and Paul watched curiously. Aaron kept on asking if he could help dig, but Lewis just shook his head each time as he kept going.
Trev had a feeling he knew what his cousin was up to. “You’ve got to be kidding me, another cache?” he asked as he came within earshot. He shook his head incredulously. “Although it is you, so why am I surprised?”
Lewis smiled tightly. “Not exactly a cache. More like a last ditch hiding place for all my most important valuables in case I lose literally everything else.” He used his shovel to thump an object in the hole, which made a dull plasticky thud. As Trev got closer he saw Lewis had dug down to some sort of large pipe, nearly a foot in diameter.
Lewis gave it another thump as he continued. “It’s all in vacuum sealed bags in there, then the pipe itself is airtight and I used plumber’s tape to water seal the end caps then taped around the seams with duct tape just to be safe. In our dry climate and with how I positioned the cache I doubt water was a problem. Here, want to take a turn? It’s about four feet long, so it should almost be uncovered enough that we can lever it up.” He turned to Aaron with a smile. “Then you can fill in the hole if you want.
Trev accepted the shovel and got to work. “So what’s in there?”
“Some savings in gold and silver, a small but high quality HAM radio just in case EMP knocked out my bigger one, an SP101 and some ammo in case I lost all my other firearms, an emergency pack with medical supplies, a water purifier, firestarting equipment, and a few rations, and hundreds of packets of heirloom seeds.”
“Seeds!” Trev said excitedly. “So that’s why you’re digging it up now. They’ll be worth their weight in gold!”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m selling them,” Lewis protested, looming protectively over the pipe and almost getting whacked by the shovel as Trev continued working. “You and me are going into gardening. I’ve already talked to the Mayor about a perfect plot along the Aspen Hill Canyon stream south of town. We’ll be right next to the plot Matt’s family is using for their own garden, and Catherine is letting us use what little lawn and gardening equipment they had in their store. I figured we could use our wagons to haul some manure from the pens where the livestock were held.”
Trev found the other end cap his cousin hadn’t already reached and dug around it until he could get the shovel under the edge. With a bit of pushing on the shovel handle the entire pipe popped partway out of the hole, and Lewis grabbed it and manhandled it the rest of the way. He handed the shovel to Aaron, who happily got to work trying to wield the bulky tool and awkwardly push dirt back into the hole, while he and Lewis carried the pipe down to the shelter with Paul toddling along behind.
“Why the south end of town?” he asked once they’d gotten it to the ramp, where they set it down and his cousin got to work opening it up. “Someone could steal the food we grow, or destroy the crop for some messed up reason.”
“The ground’s better there, and us and the Larsons aren’t going to be the only people growing crops along the river. The Watsons, the Tillmans, the Childresses, and a dozen other families will also be there with us. We can help each other, but more importantly we can organize a full time watch to make sure nobody tampers with the crops or tries to steal them.”
It took a while, but they managed to get one of the end caps unscrewed. Lewis spread out a clean tarp and they carefully poured the contents onto it. Aaron and Paul were interested in the precious metals and the small but powerful revolver, but Trev’s eyes were all on the seeds. “Will they still be good?”