Wick

Your game is so good I didn't even notice any of these... except the frozen aiming. Which I thought was a feature.

Continued: The Lamoille family home was built in 1965, according to the plaque by the front walkway. It was the fourth structure on Great Bear, and, at the time, the most northerly one. Being as it was that this home had been the proudest achievement of Murray and Ms. Millicent Lamoille, Jamie had buried both of them there, right by the notice. He now regretted not moving the plaque out back and resting them there instead. It was a bitter reminder, even to him, when he had to walk by their cross headstones each afternoon with a bag of fish slung about his shoulder. It spoiled even the nicest catches. He might deliberately avoid the front path and come in the side door, if it were easy. But a young Murray and Great Bear's other settlers agreed that a narrow hill with an overlook of the northern coast was the perfect spot, and if you care about the view and the property value, maybe they were right. But this choice, and the expansive porches on the northern and western flanks, made it a poor spot to start a garden, or host a game of tag among the town's children - back when there were any. Jamie liked to imagine his grandfather on an unseemly high ladder, mortaring and tiling the pitch steep roof. It was quite a chore, but this roof had lasted the decades it had because of that angle - too steep for more than a half inch of snow to rest on. And that was great for insolation too, even if grandma thought it was an eyesore in this regard. And in her last days, she was certainly right. Unskilled in carpentry, Jamie hadn't begun to uphold the cracked stone coverings or the dilapidated sunspot coat. Even the front door had faded from white to gray in color as it stood sentinel against the blistering southwest winds careening off nearby Dogfish Island's cliffs and crags. The lower floor of the home was almost entirely open. One supporting wall, cut in a T-shape on the long end, separated both the entrances from the living room and kitchen. Before the collapse, this made a perfectly normal occasion to have Milly bent over the stove, the guests seated at the wide wooden dinner table, plates empty as the Autumn sky, with Jamie, Murray and anyone they could wrangle playing cards on the coffee table, legs crossed, and the entire group engaging in one conversation that spanned the whole place. Much to Jamie's dislike, there was no bathroom on the bottom floor. So rather than regularly carry snowmelt up a flight and a half of stairs to feed the upper basin of the toilet, he'd resigned to pissing outdoors whenever it wasn't so cold as to be risky. He had eight gallons of uncooked water in jugs marked accordingly sitting in the upstairs bathroom for when he absolutely had to use it, or when he just wanted to wash off blood or dirt from his face and hands. The second floor had his old folks' room, with its grandiose bedspread and Milly's expansive closet. You wouldn't think of Great Bear as the kind of place that suited her taste for six armoires worth of outfits hanging wall-to-wall, in there, but the island's mystique and Murray's stubbornness overcame a lot more than the occasional want to visit a department store. And that's not to say they never did. Along with neighbors, the Godwins, Murray's dad Ron had gone in 50/50 on a 29 foot sailboat. On Summer mornings, one family or the other, or half of each, as per the limited leg room in the cabin, would journey south half a day to Marlin Isle, a timber town of 1,800 with a proper general store, a rugged seaport, and a one room movie theatre. Of course, a return trip would risk bad weather at sunset, so they always paid $25 to Sara Rislow to sleep in the cozy store attic, secure in sleeping bags huddled around a white gas lantern, with candy wrappers and new magazines strewn around. If Mrs. Rislow was in a good mood, there'd be pancakes with blueberries in the morning, and the kids would stay and watch cartoons with the Rislow boys while Murray and anyone else able-bodied would rig The Fastened Danish for the return trip, and that's usually when Milly snuck out to window shop. Jamie's two older sisters Laura and Michelle had married and moved to the United States. In the chaos before the collapse he'd tried and failed to reach both of them, and he could only hope that they were still alive and doing better than he was. One benefit of being stuck on the island with no prospect out was that if his old radio message had reached anyone, maybe one of the girls would catch it down the line and know he was still stuck at home. If they did, at least, he'd be right in the one place they could find him. He wasn't holding his breath. As for the Godwin's kids, or anyone else he'd known 15 years ago, it was anyone's guess if they'd try to come back. Jamie kept his eyes peeled, but he'd not once seen anyone walking north on the strong ice or on the lake trail. It was probably because the roads and bridges on Baffin Island and the rest of Nunavut that led to the ports were already 15 years overdue for rehabilitation before the quakes. That, among a million other things, is why he couldn't just walk or sail out of town and hope to find civilization down south. The land was a less hospitable desert now than the ocean was. Fires, quakes, fields untended and withering, towns looted and crawling with bandits. And not a decent road or working car anywhere in the province. His thoughts were interrupted by a persistent bubbling, and finally, a train whistling to indicate the tea was done. Pouring out half and peeling open the popcorn bag, Jamie left the other cup's worth simmering on the stove on low heat. He salted and shook the popcorn and grabbed an orange for the girl. He went to work peeling it while his tongue yanked the cornel rinds out from in between his teeth. Satisfied, he walked over and set her share of the snacks down in a silver bowl by her head. Jamie reclined, rested the hardcover on his ribs, and turned to the later half of Solzhenitsyn's August 1914. His mind was only half in it, still half on his guest and what to do, but it served a needed reprieve from his nerves. An hour later, he was speechless to see her sip her cup of water and reach from the orange. After she tried her best to rise from the cot, she peered over and asked, "do you have a radio?"

Characters: Jamie - A mid-twenties truck driver from Toronto came to Bear Island the year of the collapse to take care of his ill grandmother. She passed away shortly after the collapse, and he has been trapped far from home, fishing with his grandpa Murray’s bait and tackle. When a seemingly minor slip on the ice chafed some skin off his exposed ankle, an infection began to fester. Ill-equipped and without medical training, the ensuing growth had him ready to amputate when his queasy nature had him tearing apart grandma’s bathroom kitchen before he found some expired antibiotics. He took a shot in the dark, and it’s finally beginning to heal, or so it seems, when a clamorous knocking pounds the side door of his inherited two-story home. Lonnie - A nursing student born and raised in Great Bear was home for the holidays and missed her train back to Thunder Bay shortly before the collapse. She said she’d had car trouble - and her parents believed her, but only Lonnie knew the truth of what she had been running from. When a blizzard tore the roof off of her family home, they all set out south to the valley town of Chester, looking for a place to stay. Maybe their old neighbors would take them in? Anything was better than here. Part 1: Coho Freezing to death and snowblind, Lonnie wouldn’t have made it another hour down the old lake trail. Even as warm air fed blood back into the capillaries in the tips of her fingers for the first time in days, icy crystals rode back in through her veins, stabbing her in the heart. On death’s door, Jamie held her in his arms, not entirely surprised to see another ghost. Many had wandered past, some on macgyvered bicycles, one family carried by sled dogs - if the wintry winds hadn’t shown him a mirage. Many more had waddled along like she had. What would she lay on? For the moment, Murray’s old leather recliner propped her up. It would do while Jamie cooked up a fire. When the first sparks were skirting across tiled marble, he laid the first of four shaved firelogs beside the shabby pyramid of crooked fingerlings. He was no boy scout. Satisfied, Jamie lugged his grandmother’s cot down the stairs to the fireplace. The screeching and scraping of the icy metal on the worn oak steps didn’t bother Lonnie, who couldn’t have been woken by an August thunderstorm splitting a sequoia in two. Then, gently, with one elbow under her knees and another in the small of her back, Jamie lifted her into the cot. He spread the neonblue sleeping bag halfway over her before it occurred to him that she might be hurt in ways fire couldn’t cure. His eyes surveyed her sunken face and drooping eyes. Her patchy blonde hair was knotted from tip to follicle. She was very thin, and her scrawny shoulders were apparent even underneath three layers of what appeared to be the nicest fabrics he’d seen since coming to Great Bear. Dirt strewn blood was caked on behind her right ear, but a washcloth didn’t reveal an actual wound. He didn’t dare remove anything besides her parka, hat and gloves, God forbid she woke up halfway through. Besides, what would he even be able to do if he did find a wound, or an infection? After hanging them from the mantle to dry, he tucked her into bed and noticed the tag on the parka, labeled in hasty black sharpie: L. He put on popcorn and camomile tea for two in the kitchen, plus a glass of water by the fire in case she woke up parched, like he always did.