White Out: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller by Eric Dimbleby Page B

was scared of some kind of ghoul that lived in the closet. He said that all the people were going crazy, fighting over heating oil and food and all the things that people needed to survive. The guy on the radio had scared the heck out of him, even more than the dream-monsters.
    When his father found him listening to the radio, he snatched it away, unplugging it and hiding it away at the top of the bathroom closet. Paulie loved to listen to the radio, so he was pretty cross at the time, but now that their electricity was gone, it didn't matter much anymore. They had plenty of batteries stashed in the basement, but his father said they needed to conserve those in case things got worse.
    Paulie had asked what worse meant.
    Don 't worry about it. I didn't mean that. Things won't get worse. I promise you.
    His father never answered questions like Paulie hoped he would.
    What’s worse? Paulie asked a second time.
    Daddies were always full of promises, but Paulie supposed that went with the job. Not everybody had good fathers, and his mom had assured him that his father was better than most.
    As he stared at the pretty crystals hanging from the roof, Paulie wondered where all the mailmen had gone. It was bad enough outside that even the mailmen were scared to go out now. Paulie imagined their mailman (a chuckling man with a long black mustache who called himself Skipper) walking around with their letters, chasing them down as they blew out of his hands from the wind. And when the letters were scattered on the ground, he'd have to go after them in snow that went all the way up to his tummy, not to mention that the letters were mostly white, so they would blend in with the snow. Like those silly lizards called kuh-mee-lee-ons . Poor Skipper, he might catch a cold hunting down all those letters. Paulie laughed out loud at this image. His imagination was pretty goofy at times.
    Paulie gathered up some of his action figures and his bright red fire truck, and then walked to the stairs to visit Eggah and his father. He really wanted to get a better look at Edgar's boots again. He wondered if his father would wear boots like that if he got his mother to buy him some for Christmas next year. It would be an amazing Christmas present, if his mother helped him find some. Or maybe, if he had enough money in his piggy bank, Eggah would sell them to Paulie. He seemed like a nice guy who might do something like that, but he was also pretty in love with those cool boots.
    Placing his truck on the floor at the top of the stairs, Paulie turned back towards his bedroom, ready to pop open the little plastic piece on the bottom of his red, white, and blue piggy bank. There probably wasn’t enough money in there, not enough to buy the boots from Eggah. After all, they seemed to be Eggah’s favorite thing. They were worth far more than the change he had. He didn’t know much about money, but he knew things like boots required the green pieces of paper, not just the shiny ones.
     

 
     
    Chapter Six
    Paulie could barely keep his eyes open. The day seemed a distant memory to them both. Even though he'd napped by the fire earlier in the day, his energy was dwindling. The chilled air was getting the best of Christian's son.
    "You like Eggah, Daddah?"
    "Edgar. Yeah, he seems all right," Christian answered his son, thinking back on the oddities of the day. Only thirteen hours earlier, the stranger had showed up at their window. And in record time, the man settled in as a regular in their household. Something in that fact disturbed Christian. Some people were just comfortable no matter the situation. Given that Edgar was a self-purported rambling man, perhaps that was his unique way of living.
    "He's a scallium," said Paulie, but Christian couldn't understand the word. "He said so."
    "Stalin?"
    "No," Paulie replied, his eyes drooping as he shook his head from side to side. "Scallion."
    Christian nodded, pulling up the blankets close to Paulie's chin. "A