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Life after Eva: Day 85
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DAY 85 In the two months since the dogs attacked them, Shinji and Asuka had healed quickly. Their bandages had come off and Asuka’s arm had even stopped hurting. Shinji had been afraid of the possibility of rabies so he had administered shots to Asuka and vice versa. He had also waited for her. And the waiting hurt. He worried that every day that went by, the more Asuka forgot about his pledge of love for her. Had he been too quick to do so? To profess his love to someone who did not, and would not love him in return? They got along well enough. The occasional fight did spice things up a bit. Asuka had not yet gotten used to doing her share of the cleaning, and Shinji was tired of doing nearly everything himself. She had gotten better about it though. In the mean time, they both had noticed that it was getting colder. At first it was not so noticeable. Then one morning dawned and it was positively frigid outside. The day had worn on and turned into a regular hot day, but the next day dawned the same way. There was the possibility that as some point the Earth was coming back into its original alignment. With the prospect of winter came the alarm of being caught unprepared. As it was, they had no backup fuel, no snow vehicles, no cold weather clothing, no food stores, and most importantly, no real cold weather experience. Germany had been left with at least an autumn each year, but no winter. It would get around 40 degrees, and then warm up again. But if they were faced with a winter, there was no telling what it might bring them. Neither had ever experienced the cold of winter. In the last couple of weeks Shinji had begun cutting and splitting firewood, culling the dead trees first. They had managed to find a hydraulic wood splitter in town. Asuka had started venturing into town to find things that would help them through the winter. She had stocked them up on canned vegetables and soups, canned meats, staples like rice, flour, sugar, and she had even managed to find an economy-sized bag of powdered milk. In one of the clothing stores, there was a section that was stocked with "cold weather gear" but it was mostly sweaters and such. She had improvised some large coats from a couple of windbreakers lined with several sweaters and down filling from pillows. This particular morning was cooler than normal. The house had gotten down to about 60 degrees and the thermostat turned the heating on. Shinji had begun having problems sleeping recently, so when it came on, he got up and started cooking breakfast. They had killed a pig recently and once Asuka had finished killing and dressing it, he had gone about butchering it. It was amazing what you could learn from books at the library. They had also found some chickens. Since they had two sheds outside, and one was only half full of stuff, they had cleaned it out, and stored what they wanted to keep in the other one. Then converted the first into their chicken house. Eggs were a luxury that they were not going to pass up. This morning, Shinji was making bacon and eggs with homemade bread that he would toast. They had both been very busy learning the skills that they needed now. He wondered why these things were never taught as a matter of course in school. There was never any telling when you would need something like this, and these skill would help insure your survival. Easy things like building a fire. Cooking and sewing. While the bacon sizzled in the pan, Shinji was busy scrambling the eggs. The first time he had cooked eggs for Asuka, he had fried them, and she had nearly refused to eat them. She hated the way they oozed yolk out. The cooking pork smell had managed to drag her from her sleep, and soon she was exiting her own room to join Shinji. "Good morning, Shinji." She smiled at him as he turned to look at her. Then she winked. "G-good morning Asuka. How did you sleep?" He wondered what was up with her today. Usually she got out of bed at least semi-cranky and gradually got better as the morning wore on. "Oh, you know. I woke up a couple of times earlier on, but otherwise I was OK. How about you?" "I only got about 5 hours." He looked it too. Maybe it was just a temporary thing. "You making scrambled eggs?" She tried to look around him. "Yes, I am. You should know by now that I only make scrambled eggs for you." Smiling, Asuka nodded and started washing plates from last night’s dinner to put on the table. "Oh by the way, I checked on the liquid petroleum (LP) last night. We need more." "Running low huh? OK I think I saw a LP truck around town a few days ago. I can drive it up here and give us a fill up. Probably should just keep it here too." Their heating, water heating, stove and range top all worked on liquid petroleum gas. If they ran out, they would be forced to resort to their wood-burning stove in the living room. The wood-burning stove was a soapstone freestanding stove with a catalytic converter. The catalyst would recycle the smoke and burn it too causing the stove to reach temperatures of 1200 and 1300 degrees or more. It also kept the chimney cleaner than normal. While they had not had to use it yet, they had made a trial run of it, and it had heated them out of the house. Shinji turned the bacon over, and continued mixing the eggs, then added a little salt, some pepper, and a few squirts of Tabasco. Even though the McIlhenny farm had been wiped out by Second Impact, bottles of the red hot liquid could still be found in many stores since their actual sauce producing fields had been in South and Central America. The ones in the United States were used to produce quality seeds. With the bacon done, Shinji put the bread in the toaster and then poured the egg mixture in and stirred the increasingly fluffy substance. Within a minute or two it was ready, and he put it on plates, grabbed the toast, and sat down with Asuka for breakfast. "Mmm Shinji, you know I like your cooking. This reminds me of Germany." After Asuka had put the dishes in the sink, she stepped outside, and found that it was much colder than they had thought. The thermometer said it was nearly 40 degrees! She went back in after only a few seconds. "Shinji, we had better dress more
warmly today. It is pretty cold out there, and with it overcast like this, it
probably isn’t gonna get much better." He joined her back in the living room, and they left together. This time out, they left the motorcycles, and took the truck that they had gotten. It was a four-wheel drive, just in case there was something they absolutely needed after the winter was in full force. Asuka drove it into town with Shinji in the passenger seat. She needed to get used to driving. Even though they did not find the LP truck that Shinji had seen, they did manage to find the LP filling station that serviced Okayama and the outlying area. It had three 20,000-gallon tanks and after checking their fill gauges, they found that they were nearly full. There was also a tanker truck there, but it was empty. Shinji hooked the truck’s filling hose up to the tanks, and began pumping it full of the gas. He was careful to make sure that the connections were secure and that no spark would ignite the fuel. It would likely take out a half-mile square if the holding tanks blew up. Once the truck was filled, he disconnected then waved to Asuka to signal that he was ready to go, then climbed in the cab of the truck and started it up, slowly following Asuka back into the mountains. The roads were good which made traveling easier. Since they had come here, they had taken the time to push the wrecked cares out of the way to make the roads more passable. It had only taken a day and a really big truck. Most of the burned out cars were just shoved to the side of the road. It took about a half hour to get back to the house, then another half hour to fill up the tank and park the truck. Shinji threw a tarp over it so that when it did snow, the snow would not sit on the truck all winter. They had collected numerous tarps so that things would not be exposed during the snow, and they could be easily cleaned off. Once this was done, Shinji went inside to warm up his hands, and he retrieved a book on industrial electronics that he was using to wire up a huge uninterruptible power supply to the house. On the occasions the wind died down at the power turbines, they lost electricity. It did not last long, but it was getting increasingly annoying. SO they had spent some time searching for a UPS system that would be big enough to run the entire house, at least for a few hours. According to Asuka's figuring, this one would hold charge to run everything in the house for about 16 hours. They did not really use that much electricity, and the huge thing did hold one heck of a lot. Unfortunately it was a special piece of equipment, and things like this generally don’t come with instruction booklets. They are handled by professionals who know what they are doing. But the book he found helped him out a bit. Asuka was cutting insulation to line the water pipes with when he went outside. He cut power to the house at the transformer, and went to work, connecting the UPS to the main line in, and then feeding a line out to the breaker box in the house. It took nearly an hour, and when he was done, he called Asuka out, and together they flipped the breaker, and turned the UPS on. It took a moment before it started supplying power to the house. When it had charged enough, they would test it out. But that could wait until later. It had taken a full day for them to get it up to the house. A full day, a big truck and a huge forklift to be exact. The UPS was a self contained light tan box about 15 feet long, 5 feet wide, and 6 feet tall. It now sat on a concrete shelf that barely managed completely support the system. It lacked just an inch from extending the full length under the unit. Fortunately the eaves of the house managed to cover a bit of it, and Shinji rigged a lean-to tarp over the rest of it extending out from the wall of the house. That would keep it out of the elements. While he was finishing this up, Asuka was heating some soup for lunch, and in a few moments he joined her for lunch. It had steadily been getting colder all day, and the clouds had darkened a bit too. It was only the beginning of October and it looked like it was threatening to unleash on them. "I am kind of surprised how quickly it is starting. Only a few days ago it was hot. I hope that it doesn’t get too bad." Asuka said as she slurped her soup. "Yeah. I think that the wood we have should be enough, plus we have the gas, the electricity, the clothes you have gotten together, and we have a lot of food. I think we will be alright. About the only thing we need to worry about now is cabin fever." Shinji munched on a cracker between spoonfuls of soup. "I thought that was what we got the snow mobiles for. And if we can’t get out on those there is always the sno-cat. I think we pretty much have everything covered. I only have a little more insulation to put on the pipes underneath, and that won’t take but another hour." Asuka smiled at Shinji as he tried to lick a little splash of soup off of his cheek. It had been a lot of fun working with Shinji on this house. They accomplished a lot in only a short amount of time, but they had done it together, and with only a few complications between them. When she had told him earlier that she had slept well the night before she had not bee entirely truthful. She sat awake last night thinking about the boy. No. He was not a boy anymore. He had had a birthday a few months back and was now 15. But regardless of age, he was now the master of his own destiny. He was making his way in a hostile world, and he was responsible for his actions. He was a man. He was a good man, regardless of his deeds in the past. He still had spells of depression, but he was not nearly so bad as he was. He would just be more quiet than normal. She liked the man that he had become. He was smart, he was capable, and above all he was hers. She stopped at this thought. She had never reciprocated his profession of love. And yet she thought of him as hers. It struck a wrong cord in her. She really had no right to do that until she told him how she felt. She had come to the realization that she truly loved him only a few days ago, and she had really not meant to keep him waiting, but she had never found a way to broach the subject. He was surely agonizing over how long she was taking with this. Soon, soon she would tell him. "Asuka?" She snapped back to reality, and realized that she had been staring with a spoonful of soup raised to her lips for more than a minute. Quickly she drank in the cold soup and resumed eating, blushing very slightly. "Asuka?" Shinji asked again. "Um, yeah?" Shinji smiled because he knew she had not been paying attention. "I said I like your soup. It’s good." "It’s nothing. All I did was heat it up." "Well it is still good." Asuka finished her soup without looking up again. When they were both done, Shinji put the dishes in the sink, and they went back to work. Asuka headed back down under the house to finish insulating the pipes while Shinji went back out to finish splitting and stacking the firewood. The work was good because it was easy, and it let him think. Mostly these days he thought about Asuka, but sometimes he thought about the people he had known. Rei. He missed her. Even if he had never had any more intimate interaction with her than speaking on an operational or philosophical level. There was a simple beauty in her that escaped him. It was unquantifiable. She had been the biggest enigma of his life. He assumed that if he had somehow been with Rei instead of Asuka, he could have fallen in love with her too. She was a stable pillar in the sea of chaotic tides that was the world. Misato. She was quite a woman. A slob and a role model at the same time. She had taken him into her house when he had been content to be alone, and even though he had been close to her all that time, she had never intentionally hurt him. She had her bad points, but all in all she was a beautiful person. Gendo. Even though he had never been close to him, with the insight that was brought him by Third Impact, he at least understood him a little better. But his actions, while understandable could not be condoned. He did not hate his father, but he did pity him. He had allowed one bad event lead to countless others. Touji and Kensuke. He missed his friends dearly. They poked a little fun at him, but they both had hearts of gold, and would have stuck by him till the end. He had mourned their loss from the start. He had mourned all of them from the beginning. But the initial shock and denial, and the time for mourning were over. Now he had to get on with living, and salvage something out of his life. If he was with Asuka, he thought he could be happy. And indeed he had been.
Asuka listened to the steady chunk sound of the wood being stacked outside. She resolved to tell him that night, but she was still at a loss for how she could do it. She was great at confrontations, why was this one so hard for her. She just wanted it to be meaningful for him. Something that would show him rather than tell him that she loved him. The long scar on her arm was still hard underneath but it had long ago
stopped hurting. She remembered Shinji taking such care to do for her the best
that he could in a difficult situation. He spied Asuka. "Not a moment too soon. Look at that." He said pointing. Asuka looking in the direction indicated, and she could not see the next
mountain over. The snow was not coming, it was already here. They covered up the
splitter, and walked inside where they watched the snow. Neither had seen snow
before, and they found it kind of peaceful. Even more so than rain. Snow floated
down, and softly touched down on the ground then a moment later it melted. It was not long before the melting snow started to stick. By the time it began piling up it was getting dark. Here it was September and it was snowing like this. They both prayed that this was not an indication that it would last extra long next year. Shinji spent some of the time cooking. They had liberated several pounds of butter that was sealed in its package, so they could bake and cook with it without fear of contamination. Shinji flipped through the cookbook, looking for a good idea for something to make. He stopped in the cookies. "Asuka, what do you think about Oatmeal cookies?" He looked up to see her turn to him smiling. God, he loved to see her smile. "That sounds good, can I help? I haven’t ever made cookies before." "You know that is kind of fun. The dough was a bit gooey, but otherwise it was cool." Asuka said taking a sip. "Yup. It is good to try something new, you might like it. I hope you like these cookies. I put in just a little more brown sugar than I normally do, they will be nice and sweet." Shinji yawned and looked out the window at the snow. It had snowed about 2 inches according to the pile on the porch. Asuka nodded and looked outside too. It was very dark out, but she had grown used to this darkness. In the city there is always light around you, but out here, with no one else around, the darkness could be complete. They had found a pair of night vision goggles at an electronics and technology store. They were pretty new, and she had gazed up at the stars through them several times since. Through them you could see ten times the stars as even on the clearest night out here. The timer dinged and they pulled the sheets out of the oven and let the cookies cool. They had made four dozen cookies, and when they were cool enough, taste tested a whole bunch of them just to make really sure they were fit to eat. With a couple of cookies each, they turned off all of the lights, and watched the snow together on the sofa. It was very quiet, and only the soft wind made any noise at all. Shinji was sitting very close to Asuka, and he found the circumstances on the whole very emotionally moving. He leaned on her, very slowly adding his weight. She knew what he was doing, but welcomed it. Was this what life was all about? Sharing beautiful moments like this with someone you love. Being able to recall things such as your first snow with your only love many years later? She hoped that this is what made life special because it felt special to her right now. Shinji leaned closer and whispered in her ear. "I love you Asuka. It is getting late, so I am going to bed. I will see you tomorrow." And then Asuka's chance was gone. It walked down the hallway and shut it’s door behind it. She watched the snow alone for a half an hour. It continued to pile up on the porch. The hole in her heart ached so severely now. She had told herself that she would tell him, and yet she had let the opportunity pass her by, like so many before it. She longed to be with him, and then she had it. She stood and padded softly down the hallway, stopping in front of his door where she listened for a moment. The sound of his light snoring filled the room. The door squeaked a little as she opened it, so she did it quickly so that it would squeak as little as possible. She closed it the same way. She pulled off her socks and pants, and got in the sleeping bag with him. It was cooling off in the house, and she cuddled up to him, wrapping one arm around him. She scooted up just a little to reach his ear, and whispered into his ear. "I love you too, Shinji. Sweet dreams." And then she went to sleep herself. That night was most likely the best night of sleep either of them had ever had. They had each other, whether one of them knew it or not, and that was all that mattered. |
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