Free An Unkind Winter (Alone Book 2) by Darrell Maloney Page A

the fireplace. They’d be cold by then. He’d shovel out most of the dirt and put it back into the buckets, and sweep out what he couldn’t shovel.
         Then he’d place the half burned pieces of wood back inside the fire box and start the flames anew, adding additional wood as it caught.
         Surviving the cold winter months alone, he’d decided, would be just an endless monotony of habits that rarely changed. Everything would eventually become a mind-numbing routine.
         The only thing that would make it bearable was knowing that each sunrise brought him another day closer to his ultimate goal, and the only real reason he didn’t lay down in that garage.
         Each new sunrise brought him a little closer to the day when he could leave and go find his wife and his little girls.
         And that reminded him to don his heavy parka and go check on the rabbits.
         He drained the last of the coffee in his pot and sat on the back deck, watching the clouds.
         They were mere wisps now, far different than the heavy cover they’d been the night before. But the cold was still there. He could still see his breath, and although the coffee in his cup wasn’t as hot as it had been a couple of hours before, it still put off steam.
         His two favorite rabbits, Lindsey and Beth, came to him and sat against his ankles. Looking for warmth, maybe? Dave didn’t know. But he remained as still as he could so he wouldn’t scare him away.
         Beth looked straight at him for a time.
         He wondered why. It was almost like an angry wife’s gaze, steady and unwavering. It was almost like the stare Sarah occasionally gave him when he screwed something up. Kind of a “what did you do this time?” look.
         He wondered if Beth was blaming him for bringing the cold weather in.
         After a few minutes they hopped off, one first and then the other.
         Once again, Dave was left to his own thoughts, pondering what the coming tomorrows would bring.
         After awhile, he remembered why he’d come out to begin with. He walked over to the water trough and saw that it had a layer of ice across the top of it. He saw two of the rabbits licking water from the top of the ice. Maybe that’s what Beth was trying to tell him with the long stare.
         He’d wondered how the rabbits would get their water when it froze, and was now confident that they wouldn’t die of thirst. He assumed that was how rabbits in the wild survived their winters when everything around them was frozen.
         Still, he took pity on them and decided that licking ice to get water was just too much work.
         He took his shovel and used the handle to break the ice into a dozen pieces.
         Beth immediately hopped over to get a drink.
         All in all, he decided, he was glad that winter was finally here. Even if it was particularly harsh, he could handle it. And he reminded himself that in the dog days of summer, when the temperatures had hit 105 or better, he’d looked to the sky and cursed and wished for winter to get there.
         He finally got his wish.
         Now all he had to do was survive it.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    -16-
     
         After he broke the block of ice for the rabbits he told them, “The temps should go up a little bit today, and keep it from refreezing. It’ll probably get cold again tonight, though, so I hope your winter coats are coming in.”
         He went to his outhouse and urinated, careful to watch the flow and the color.
         One of the most valuable things he’d learned from Marine Corps survival school was how to tell when he was dehydrated.
         He could still picture Gunnery Sergeant Campos in his mind, still hear the exact words he hammered into each of his students’ heads.
         “Always watch your piss. It’s one of the best warning signs your body can give you. It should be clear, or lightly tinted. The more