Chapter 11

Two days later they moved into a one room 'apartment'. It was really a bedroom on the second floor of what was once a general store. Christmas day had been one long party, with sledding in the morning, hot chocolate and presents from the army to everyone in the afternoon, and old movies in the main room of the newly built barracks that night. It had snowed on and off all Christmas day for a total of sixteen inches when added to the Christmas Eve snowfall. Today only about four more fell, but everyone was back to work. Matt was out shoveling snow from the pathways between the buildings, and ten year old Bobby was in the army now too, he was off learning how to use the miniature rifle the soldiers had given him.

Vanessa and Ryan were with her, in their new room, helping sort socks. The army was going to pay her for each pair she salvaged. Some of them were almost new, while others had only small holes, but some of them were beyond her. She could fix a small hole, that was easy enough, but the ones with huge threadbare patches would go into the scrap pile and get used as rags. The kids were on the bed, while she sat in the overstuffed chair.

The pay wasn't much, just few pennies a pair, but they could eat free because Matt had joined up, and both he and Bobby were getting paid too. There wasn't much to spend it on, but they could buy gum and candy if they wanted. Despite the recent meals they'd had, she'd learned that desserts usually weren't provided. Most of the camp wasn't eating as well as they were either, breakfast had been oatmeal, cornbread muffins, eggs and toast with butter. Most people had only gotten oatmeal and muffins, unless they felt like paying for 'extras'. In a way it made sense, no one was going to starve, but there was a lot of work to do and the 'extras' gave people a reason to do it instead of sitting around like most of the people in the center had done before it fell.

She finished darning another sock and looked up at the string of Christmas lights strung near the ceiling. There wasn't a light switch, instead they plugged into an extension cord that ran through a hole in the wall halfway between the cast iron stove and the door, right by a metal bucket filled with coal. She hadn't thought she'd ever see electric lights again, but they had some in their room. A layer of sandbags ran along one wall, under the window. They covered a couple of holes cut into the wall, and if the camp was ever attacked, it would be her job to shoot any of those things she could see through the holes. She was supposed to keep the window closed.

Valerie nearly filled a basket with pairs of socks before Matt came in. He looked tired, but happy, and not worried like he used to either. "You'll never guess what happened," he said. He didn't wait for her to guess, just kept talking, excitedly. "The Army loaded up all the books and medicine from the stores, and dropped most of it off here. We got half the salvage fee, split five ways between us." He slowly brought a cardboard box from behind his back. "I got this for you, I know how much you've missed it."

The box was brown cardboard, and unlabeled except for 'Merry Christmas' scrawled on it in Matt's sloppy handwriting. It rattled a little when she took it. Inside were six half pound bars of chocolate, labeled 'Kailua – Made in Hawaii'. According to the date stamped on each of them, they were only six weeks old. Valerie looked up at his smiling face. "So these are for us to share?"