The No Where Apocalypse (Book 1): Stranded No Where by E.A. Lake Page B

was short on and either could kill me: Company and wood.

    To say a man goes stir-crazy without companionship after 30 days is like claiming a person needs air every few seconds. It’s just a given.
    I’d spent years either in school, at work, or hanging out with my buddies watching some game. My solitude mostly consisted of three partial deer seasons. At most that meant six hours of silence for two days per year.
    Even here in No Where (yes, that’s the official name I’d given this place, I had a lot of free time to come up with it) I hadn’t gone a week without speaking to another human being. Then the snow began. And like any good gift it just kept on coming.
    When it wasn’t snowing it was blowing. A 10-inch dusting, as Dizzy calls a snowfall that minor, pretty much shut you in. Twenty inches? Get the roof rake out. You can practically hear the roof trusses bending. Snows stops and you’re fine? Hardly.
    The snow abating meant the wind was ready to increase. And not some minor 10 to 15 mile an hour breeze. We’re talking winds that shook every window in my ever-diminishing abode. Each day inside brought the walls a little closer I noticed. And when the wind gusted up over 40 miles an hour, the walls hardy slowed it down.
    Usually late in the night, I’d hear the wind abate. And that’s not good. That meant cool crisp Canadian air had settled in.
    One morning, I arose and found the actual air temperature minus 35. That’s 35 below zero. Even a roaring fire would hardly warm my hovel at that point. But there was good news about the cold, it didn’t usually last too long. Just a day or two.
    And then the snows returned.

Day 100 WOP

    Wood was quickly becoming an issue. Most of the cut wood still lay at the back of the cabin. For some reason, I thought it was convenient enough back there. Oh sure, I hauled a couple dozen armloads to the front side, and another two or three inside when the first heavy snow hit. But the bulk of my supply was out the front door and 50 feet around in back.
    Ordinarily this wouldn’t have been an issue. I could just slip on my coat and a pair of boots and fetch wood as I needed it. Winter made it a problem, though.
    Aside from the 10-foot drift that blocked my front door one morning, I discovered something even more disturbing. The south and north ends of the cabin liked to buffer the winds just enough to allow snow to pile up on the corners. And not small piles.
    The southern route had a drift that reached past the top of the roof — a good 20 feet — and extended another 50 feet out into the formerly open yard. The northern drift was twice as bad and made me depressed just thinking of it.
    As such, hauling wood became an all day ordeal. That was after two days of unburying it from another massive, well-packed drift of winter fun.
    Another problem came to me just before Christmas. My woodpile was dwindling faster than I had anticipated. As much as I wanted to wade through the snow to go tell Dizzy he had been correct, I decided to use my waning energy and gumption to split more wood. At least while it wasn’t snowing, or blowing, or 40 below zero.
    That had been one day in the past month.
    Given the amount of snow resting on top of my ready to use wood, it was hard to judge exactly how much I have left. But I knew there wasn’t a whole lot left buried under the remaining snow. That left me with two possibilities.
    First, I could cut more wood. I had been bright enough before the snow began to pile up to bring the ax and maul in the cabin. That would save me a whole lot of digging out back if I could even find the pit my grandpa had made.
    On the other hand, I could just burn less wood. Up to that point, I had kept the fire in the small wood-burner going at a fairly decent clip. I figured if I was going to be alone in the woods all winter I needed to at least be comfortable. But now I saw the error of my ways and began cutting back.
    However, I still needed to cut more wood. For