“I never read so much in my life,” said Nick.
“There weren’t any more assemblies or updates, though,” said Kevin. “Once in a while, our floor supervisor, Lance, would come by and check in on us, or tell us that someone was working on the problem. And then he stopped coming. They kept feeding us sandwiches in the caf so there was still some staff around, probably because they were hungry too. But the fruit ran out. So did the juice and milk. It was just meat on white bread. By then, it was pretty obvious that whatever was happening was really serious. So me and Nick decided to go back outside and check out what was happening.
“We had to make the security guy at the front desk promise to let us back in. But he was on edge too. He was a big white guy, looked like a football player, but his face was real pale and his eyes were bloodshot. He had a big winter coat on because it was really cold in the building by that point. It looked like he wasn’t all there. I felt bad for him.
“Outside there was no one around. It looked like the campus was dead. Out on the street, the cops were gone from the intersection. There were hardly any cars out there too.” Kevin paused to reach for the water bottle on the table in front of him. He twisted the cap, and the cracking of the seal was Nick’s cue to pick up the story.
“It was pretty spooky,” said Nick. “We heard voices from near the grocery store. We saw a whole bunch of people out front — like, hundreds. They were yelling and banging on the front door. We stopped to watch, making sure we didn’t get too close.
“Then out of the blue someone threw a big rock through one of the front windows. It smashed and glass went everywhere. One guy ran up through the crowd and just heaved a garbage can right through the big window.” He took a deep breath and cracked open his own water bottle, and Kevin picked the story up again. Beside him, Joanne stared at her son, her eyes fixed with worry.
“The crowd rushed into the grocery store, elbowing and shoving others out of the way. It looked like some people were getting cut on the glass because there was blood everywhere all of a sudden. Some of them were getting in fights and punching each other. We decided to get out of there.
“We ran all the way back to the residence. We decided not to tell anyone what we’d seen because we didn’t want to freak them out any more than they already were. We went back to my room, and that’s when we started to figure out how to get back here.”
“There was a big storm later that day too,” said Nick. “We knew we had to get our shit together pretty quick.”
Evan looked up at the ceiling and tried to align his own memories of the recent weeks with what he was hearing. He admired their bravery and ability to make it back home. Not long ago, he’d considered them just typical teenage boys.
Kevin and Nick explained their plan to leave the mayhem in the city. Finding their way out of town and heading north was easy, they said. Both had a fairly accurate idea of the way home. And if they did get lost, they’d just try to find the hydro line and take the service road. But securing snowmobiles would be hard.
They knew where the dealerships were. Most people who owned a snowmobile on the rez had bought it from a place in Gibson. They would be locked and shuttered, maybe even abandoned by now. Floor models wouldn’t do them any good anyway. They’d have to find machines that were already in use, hopefully with some gas in their tanks, since the pumps were out of service everywhere.
They’d have to siphon whatever was left in the vehicles they could find. They also needed cans to hold the gas. “The more we thought about this plan,” Kevin said, “the more frustrated we got. But the people who were still left in our building were literally going crazy. Some were crying all night. Some were fighting. We had to get outta there.”
They decided to pack their bags with as many clothes as possible. They put their essentials in the hockey bags and stashed the sandwiches they’d been saving deep within sweaters and jeans. The bread was growing stale but the meat was holding up because their rooms were so cold. It was the only food they’d have.
“Over the next couple of days, things got worse,” said Kevin. “We were left on our own in the residence. No one from the college came by anymore. All the bottled water they left us ran out. There was no food anywhere. We sort of kept to ourselves and didn’t really talk to anyone. Nobody had really talked to us much in the first place before this all happened anyway. There were fewer kids in the hallways every day. I dunno if they left town, or if something bad happened to them. But we couldn’t wait around and worry.
“Security was gone. The front door’s lock was broken. Anyone could come and go. I was worried there would be desperate and hungry people coming in, looking for food or shelter or anything. It was freezing. So we left our bags in our room and went to try to figure out our shit. We hid little emergency flashlights in our pockets.”
Nick said they went into the campus buildings to explore. The doors were smashed open and small groups of people huddled in the corners of the foyer and in rooms off the large hallway, trying to stay warm. “They were begging us for food,” his voice broke as he remembered. “Some of them looked real sick. It must have been about a week since the blackout started by that point. We couldn’t help them.”
“I told Nick we should go down to the shop wing. No one goes down there unless they have class. I thought we might be able to get some tools and stuff. And that’s when I remembered that’s where all the maintenance vehicles were kept. I thought there might even be something in the shops we could use. So we started running a bit. We looked around to make sure no one was following us. We turned down the wing, trying all the doors and they were all locked.
“We stopped in front of the door of the small-engine shop and waited a couple minutes, to make sure no one was behind us. And then I kicked it open.”
“We turned on our flashlights, and I couldn’t believe it,” added Kevin. “It looked like no one had been in there since the power went out. Either the teacher forgot about it or just didn’t care. But there were two snowmobiles in the middle of the shop. They looked pretty new, and they weren’t in pieces, waiting to get fixed. I went to the hall to keep six, while Nick tried them out.”
The keys were still in the ignition. Nick turned one and pulled the cord to start it. The engine revved to life. He killed it immediately, and they waited a long time before trying the other one, not wanting to attract attention. The second machine worked. Then they waited, again. Neither knew how much time they allowed to pass in the shop, but they didn’t want to risk being heard or spotted, especially since they may have found their way out of the city.
Nick told them that a final scan of the shop yielded four full Jerry cans of gas in a back corner. “We didn’t know if it was still any good,” said Kevin, “but it was a good sign, anyways.”
They left quietly through a back entrance to avoid the needy students.
“The snow was pretty deep by then,” he said. “We propped the door open with a screwdriver we pocketed from the shop. We walked all the way back around to the front, tight to the side of the building, so that we wouldn’t leave any footprints in the snow.”
Nick squeezed his empty water bottle, crunching the plastic. When they got back to the residence building, they heard a commotion in the cafeteria as hungry students tore through the kitchen. They made for the stairs and went up to Kevin’s room, where they waited out the daylight. They’d been sleeping in the same room for days by that point.