Free Gray (Book 2) by Lou Cadle

hard the day after the garage was done, and they stayed mostly in the snow cave, riding out the storm. By the end of the day, the snow was falling thick and fast. When they went out to use the latrine, they kept hold of their nylon rope, tied to a metal rod from the train, thrust deeply into packed-down snow at the cave’s entrance, so as not to lose their way in the swirling snow. They tucked cans of soup and water bottles around their sleeping bags so they were mostly melted by body heat and ate the soup cold and undiluted.
    For three days, the snow fell thickly. The second day, the wind blew harder, bringing whiteout conditions to the world outside. Stuck in the snow cave, they played twenty questions and “the farmer’s cat” and any other talking games they could dredge from their memories. She tried to ask him about his past, but he wasn’t interested in having that conversation. It was dark inside, except for faint light at the tunnel’s entrance, and every trip outside the world felt painfully bright, making her squint, though she knew it wasn’t really bright out there at all, between the snow clouds and the ash still blocking the sun.
    They were about three-quarters through their water supply when the winds died down. The next time Coral went outside, she didn’t have to use the rope to keep from losing her way. But it was bitterly cold out there. She could see all around her fresh—though gray—snow. Six to eight inches of it had done its job of hiding them from any prying eyes. Their original campsite would be buried, too.
    By the time she was done at the latrine, her nose and toes and fingers and butt felt numb from the cold. When she returned to the snow cave, she said, “I hope this isn’t a permanent temp drop. It’ll freeze your nuts off out there.”
    “Huh. In that case, maybe you should do all the outside work.”
    “Seriously, we need to be really careful about frostbite. There’s nothing I can do for gangrene.”
    “You have a hatchet.”
    It took her a second to realize what he meant. “No way am I chopping my own toes off.”
    “You’ll damn well chop mine off if it’s the difference between dead and alive.”
    She could see doing that all too clearly in her mind’s eye. “Let’s be careful so I don’t have to, okay?” She thought it would be far more likely amputation wouldn’t help, and she’d be digging a grave for him, or vice versa.
    They lived there for six weeks. It grew colder, and colder still, and finding fuel continued to be a daily struggle. Every three days, one of them went for water, having to pull the sled further away along the stream bed to chop ice. Every five days, they both took a trip to retrieve as many cans of soup as they could haul on the sled.
    More and more, they grew weary of each other’s company and sometimes bad tempered. When Benjamin lost it, it manifested as a deeper and deeper silence, which only broke after he took a day to go hunting, though he found no game. When Coral was the one who began to snap at him over nothing, he also took a day to go hunting. Sometimes, though neither was angry, there was simply nothing to say to each other for many hours.
    When he was gone, Coral began to talk aloud to herself, not caring if it was a security danger or a sign of insanity. She told her own life story to herself. She talked about her favorite meals, her favorite movies, the best parties she’d ever been to. She daydreamed of the medical practice she’d been planning one day, an independent small family practice clinic, two doctors, a PA, a nurse, a receptionist, all of them kind and dedicated to care, not to profit. She mentally decorated the place, with chairs and wallpaper and a play area for the kids.
    Frostbite was a constant danger. She couldn’t sit still and cook but had to put the pot on the fire then return immediately to the relative warmth of the snow cave, which was too small for two people to stay in 24/7 without going nuts. She