"All you could do was solve the problem life put in front of you."

Lindsay Lohan (Cady), Mean Girls

Chapter Nine

Forming a Plan

Laura didn't want to do anything other then curl up in front of the slowly growing fire and cry, to hid her face in her hands and let the tears come. She didn't know why she was hiding them, but she hadn't let herself cry since the night before when she had been so vulnerable, so open in front of Sam. Even though the best thing that had ever happened in her life had come from those moments of absolute honestly, allowing herself to be that unprotected again made Laura uneasy and so she kept her tears suppressed. Even though it was becoming more and more obvious that they were never going to get out of the apartment, that help was not coming, that they were going to die. Laura figured those were normal circumstances for anyone to cry, but she had gotten so good at hiding her tears that now it came naturally.

And so that was what she did as she hurried through the bedrooms in the apartment, trying to waste as little time as possible in order to return to the living room, which was better heated then the rest of the apartment. Laura's teeth chattered constantly, her hands shaking, as she went through J.D.'s bedroom, something that she didn't think was right but didn't believe she really had a choice about. They needed whatever they could to stay warm and it wouldn't hurt to find extra batteries or even a flashlight, since the candle supply was almost nonexistent.

Laura's hands shook as she stripped J.D.'s bed of its tangled sheets, tossing them to the floor in a crumpled pile. She didn't give herself the time to think that J.D. was likely to be dead and, regardless of whether he was or not, he would never be sleeping in his bed again. She tried not to think of her own bed in her home, which seemed millions of miles away and how her family must be fairing against the growing storm. Laura even found herself missing her mother and all her faults, knowing that she would have given anything to back home, being yelled at by her mother, then trapped in a freezing apartment knowing that she was going to die.

With the bed nothing but a mattress, Laura turned her attention to the rest of the room, trying to make herself believe that she was going through a stranger's things instead of the things of the person that had sheltered her from the raging storm outside. The drawers had already been emptied of clothing so Laura skipped going through the dresser, rummaging instead through J.D.'s desk drawers. There was nothing but papers with no organization and a single flashlight which she snatched up gratefully.

Gathering up the sheets she had taken off the bed, Laura headed back into the living room, grateful to get out of the frigid temperature that had enveloped J.D.'s room. She saw Sam crouched in front of the fire, warming his bare hands as he fed more paper into the flames. Brian was asleep in the arm chair he had drug over to the fireplace, nearly hidden beneath the mountains of blankets that he had piled around himself. The Walkman was in his lap, silent now since the batteries had long since run out. Brian hadn't let go of the radio, even though it was useless now, holding it as though he expected voices to pour out of the speaker; voices that would tell them that they were going to be rescued.

Laura added the blankets off J.D.'s bed into the pile that had already been collected and sighed deeply, catching Sam's attention. He turned back to look at her with a slight smile on his face; despite the circumstances, seeing Laura still managed to make Sam smile and remind him constantly how much he loved her, how much he cared for her.

"Find anything?" Sam questioned, pulling Laura to him and wrapping his arms around her shoulders. He would never get tired of holding Laura against him, he knew, and still had a hard time believing that she was his, that she loved him.

Laura pulled away from him and pulled the flashlight out of one of the pockets of her many jackets, a slight smile on her face. She realized that she hadn't even turned it on to see if it worked and clicked the flashlight on then, grateful for the beam that flashed in Sam's face. "At least we have something for when the candles run out." She told him, moving the beam away from Sam's squinted eyes. "But I don't know what we'll do when the batteries go out."

Sam sighed and kissed her on the cheek. "Maybe by then someone will have come for us." He mumbled, though he no longer had the heart to act as though he believed they were going to be rescued. A part of him did still want to believe, hope, that they were going to be found, that it was only a matter of days before search parties invaded New York City. But that part of him was dying and Sam no longer had the strength to pretend that it really was only a matter of time; his attention was best used now trying to figure out how to stay warm, how to ration their remaining food and how to keep the fire going. Those were the important things.

"Maybe." Laura sighed, burying her face in the many layers she had wrapped around her arms. "Maybe they will." She didn't look up for a while, listening to the sound of the fire and feeling Sam breathing against her back. It was a situation that she wished had come at a different time or a different place; she wished that she was back home, relaxing in front of a fire in the dead of winter with Sam instead of counting away the hours and the days until they would get out of this apartment. One way or another.

When Laura finally lifted her head again, she turned to look at Sam, who was staring into the jumping flames of the fire, his mind miles away. "Sam, do you really think that some is going to come?" She questioned, looking into his distance eyes. She needed to hear him say it, needed to hear Sam say that they were going to die, or that they were going to get out. Until he said it, she couldn't, wouldn't, believe anything.

Sam looked at the brunette and seemed to sense that now was not the time to dance around the inevitable, that doing that would no longer do any good. But he still wasn't sure how to answer; he wanted to believe that help was coming, but it didn't seem likely. "It's still a possibility." Sam answered finally, looking into Laura's beautiful brown eyes. "But I think that if we want to get out of here, we're going to have to do it ourselves."

Laura looked at him quizzically. "What do you mean?" She asked. "Go outside?" She wanted to know what Sam planned to do once they had gotten outside; did he plan on finding some way to leave the city, to get back home? Suddenly, she wanted Sam to have a flawless plan so badly that she thought she would die if she learned that he didn't have a plan at all.

Sam nodded slowly. "Waiting in here isn't going to help anything; no one knows where we are." He told her. "If we get outside and at least start trying to head toward home, or wherever we can get to, then we have a little possibility of running into a search party somewhere out there."

"We'd freeze to death before we even got halfway out of the city." Laura argued, though she wished she hadn't. She wanted Sam's plan to work, wanted to get out of the freezing city and back home where she felt safe. Safer, anyway. "And what about food...?" She looked at Sam, praying for him to argue with her, to tell her that she was wrong. To tell her that he had it all figured out.

Sam smiled faintly at Laura, brushing her locks away from her face with shaking fingers. "I'm sure we'll think of something, someway to get out of here." He told her, letting his fingers trail down her back. He wanted her badly then, perhaps more so then he had the night before but it seemed impossible. All he could do was stare at her, to study her features by the faint firelight and that was nearly enough for him. "Whatever happens," Sam continued, holding Laura's face with shivering hands. "I won't let anything happen to you. I promise." He kissed her, pulling her close to him. It was a promise he hoped he could keep.

Laura slipped her arms around his shoulders, wishing that she could remain forever in his arms, safe and protected, loved. She didn't think she could bare the thought of suddenly leaving this life, of not being able to find a way out of this new life, because she couldn't bare the thought of losing the best thing that had ever happened to her.

Lucy thought that her heart was going to break into a million pieces when Jack gave her the news she had been dreading: the government hadn't received any word that there were any survivors in the north and so the northern states were being abandoned, no help was being sent. But the blow that was more crushing was that Jack had been the one to advise the President and his cabinet of this plan.

After these words left his mouth, Lucy found herself staring at her ex-husband in utter shock, motionless and silent for a handful of minutes. When she finally managed to snap herself out her seemingly catatonic state, her brow furrowed and Lucy found herself filled with burning anger. "What?" Her voice was low, deadly soft. "Jack, how could you do such a thing? Your son...our Sam is up there." She stepped toward him. "Send them up there."

Jack looked at Lucy with a stony, business-like stare that she hated so much, unwavering. "Sending more people up north will just kill more people." He explained, though his words were empty and hollow. No matter what he said, the situation was still the same: he had abandoned his only son for countless strangers.

"I don't care Jack." Lucy snapped, steeping even closer to him. "I don't care. That is my son, my baby and you left him." She glared at him. "You sacrificed him to appease that asshole vice president." She accused.

Jack knew this wasn't far from the truth; the vice president would have argued for hours if he had proposed sending search teams up north and that would have only wasted more time saving the people that still had a chance. He had learned from data collected from the Hedland Research Center, as well as from the NASA space-station that the chilly temperatures effecting the United States now was nothing. It was only going to get colder; the upper half of the Northern Hemisphere was going to freeze over when the land mass reached the eye of the global super-storm. Sending people up north would be like signing the death warrants for countless people but that didn't make it any easier to sign his son's.

"Lucy," Jack began as patiently as possible, but he knew that everything she said was the truth. What good would it do to deny it? "That is not true. I'm just trying to do what's right for the rest of the United States and-"

"No, Jack, do what's right for your family for once in your life." Lucy snapped. "Think about your family for the first time before you think about your job." She glared at him. "That is your son, your son. You do what's right for him."

Jack looked away, Lucy's words cutting deep into his chest. Sam was his son, his baby, his first born and only child; Sam was the person he loved more then life itself, the people he could do anything for. Sam was the boy he had taught to play football (he hadn't been very good), the boy he spend countless hours building model airplanes with (he'd been good at that), the boy he'd tucked into bed at night while telling him stories of the places his father, his hero, had been. Sam was the teenager he had never been frustrated at, the teenager he had always been proud of, the teenager he had taken to Greenland and spent ten wonderful days with. And now, because of his cowardly actions, his deep-running, not quite fear of the vice-president, Sam wasn't going to be the young man he had watched grow up. He wasn't going to be the young man that graduated, that got into the best college, that made a difference in the world. He wasn't going to fall in love (or had he? Lucy had mentioned something about a girl; Jack wished he had thought to bring it up), he wasn't going to get married and he wasn't going to become a father some day. All because of him.

"Lucy, you know if I could, I would be up there, looking for Sam-" Jack tried to tell his wife, perhaps himself, but she didn't want to hear it.

"Then go up there, Jack!" Lucy nearly shrieked. "Go up there and get him, go save him." She had tears in her eyes now, angry, frustrated tears that weren't going to fall. When Jack looked away again, Lucy started toward the door. "If you're not going to go get him, I will." She told him and she knew that she would. She was prepared to die for her son at that moment and would have gladly done so.

Jack grabbed her by the shoulders and stopped her, yanking her away from the door and back toward him. "You're not going out there, Lucy." He told her, taking his hands off her shoulders. "That's final."

Lucy stared at him in disbelief, unable to believe he had forbidden her to leave the room. "You cannot stop me from saving my son." She told him, still staring at him in surprise. "You can't stop me from going to him."

"You will die if you go out there." Jack said fiercely, hoping that she understood. He couldn't loose her too, couldn't loose his love on top of his son.

"Then I'll die." Lucy told him. "But at least I tried. I'm not going to murder my son like you are, Jack."

Before he was even aware of what he was doing, Jack struck Lucy across the cheek, catching her off-guard and causing her head to snap to the right. His hand stung from where he had slapped his ex-wife and he stared at it in almost disbelief, as though he couldn't believe he had actually hit her.

Silence filled the room, heavy and accusing and Jack felt as though his mouth was filled with rocks, unable to open and let loose the apologizes he wanted to give Lucy. Lucy finally looked back at him, her hand going up to touch the reddening spot on her cheek. Her eyes were still filled with tears that had yet to fall and she glared at Jack with them shining in her eyes, her hand remaining on her cheek.

"Lucy-" Jack started thickly, still stunned at the thought that he had raised a hand to someone he loved.

"Just get him Jack." Lucy interrupted before he could finish. "Get our son." She turned away and headed for the office door.

Jack stared after her for a long time, though he knew full well that she was not going to walk back through the door. All the while, Lucy's words were heavy in his mind. Get our son. Oh, how he wished he could.

Tessa Chapman stood in her older sister's room and wished that Laura was in there to scream at her to get out. Only sometimes was she allowed in the eldest Chapman girl's room and that was only when she had Laura's permission and she never would have been allowed to get in without those words. Tessa would have given anything, given up everything she held dear in life, if only Laura would throw something across the room at her and command her to leave. But Laura wasn't in her room, didn't know that her little sister was in her private space and the entire house felt like it had lost something too precious to ever gain back.

With heavy steps, Tessa wandered around the room, lightly running her fingers across Laura's immaculate desk, where her binders and school books were stacked, awaiting her return. She let her eyes linger across the framed photographs Laura had on her bedside table; pictures of the sisters together, pictures of just Tessa, moments of perfect happiness that were forever captured by a camera. Laura's bed was, of course, perfectly made and Tessa grabbed one of the pillows off the mattress, pressing it against her face and breathing in. The scene of Laura's lavender shampoo still clung to the fabric and brought tears to the girl's eyes; her sister should be here, she shouldn't be alone, lost somewhere in New York.

Tessa couldn't bring herself to believe that her sister was dead. Nope, not her older sister, it was someone else's. And so, she believed more then she had ever believed in anything in her life that Laura was going to join her down in Mexico, since that was where they were sending everyone because of the thing her mother called, "a God-damn, over-rated thunder storm."

Laura was going to be there in Mexico and they were going to be a happy family once again. Well, at least she was going to be happy and she was never going to annoy Laura again, never fight with her and make Laura slam the door and lock it, shutting her out. She was going to appreciate her sister, just like Laura swore she would one day.

Michelle walked down the hallway then, peering into her daughter's room and seeing Tessa standing by the bed with Laura's pillow pressed against her face. "Tessa, let's go." She prodded. "We've got to make the bus."

Tessa lifted her head and looked at her mother. "I'm going to take this." She gestured toward the pillow. "Okay?" She didn't care what her mother said; Laura would like to have her favorite pillow down in Mexico.

Michelle sighed. "Fine." She answered shortly. "Let's just go." She started down the hallway then, the two large suitcases she had packed bumping against her legs as she walked. She couldn't believe that someone had forced her to back away her most important belongings into two suitcases and leave her house behind. Michelle wanted to stay, wanted to resist and ignore everyone's over-exaggerated claims about a global super-storm. However, she had no choice but to comply, but she didn't really think it mattered. The whole thing was just going to blow over soon anyway. They probably wouldn't even make it halfway to Mexico before the government (bunch of idiots, anyway) realized that they had made a big mistake. Then she'd be back home again, unpacking her things and shaking her head at the whole stupid situation. The whole thing was just going to below over.

Coleman wondered if hallucinating was the first sign to dying of starvation because he was almost certain that he was, in fact, hallucinating. It was little things, however, that plagued his mind; things like the fat, ugly rabbit that his ex-wife had kept in the bedroom. He could see it sometimes, hopping around the living room, fat with food that Coleman wished he could have.

He was way past the point of hunger; he felt nauseous but there was nothing in his stomach, so he spent long hours dry heaving. His hands were shaking, his head was spinning and he felt feverish, lost and confused. Every little sound, the howling of the wind banging against the side of his apartment, made Coleman jump and he quite often forgot where he was. Oh, what he wouldn't give for a greasy hamburger.

His hunger and thirst was so bad that Coleman had begun to think that he was hearing voices, the sounds of people coming from outside his apartment. He knew that was impossible because there was nothing but ice and snow outside, there were no people; he doubted that there were any people left in New York City. He was a man, stranded on a deserted island, dying ever so slowly.

Coleman knew he had to get out of the living room, had to get away from the cold and the voices and that damn hopping rabbit. It was quite a process getting to his feet, and he fell several times because his shaking legs couldn't support his weight. But he finally managed to stand, wrapping his quaking fingers around the couch and pulling himself upward.

There had to be some food in this damn apartment; something, anything. Maybe one of those granola bars his wife had liked to eat, stashed in one of her coat pockets. The idea of the health food snack sounded good to Coleman right then that he started salivating, all but tasting the food in his mouth. There had to be something...somewhere...

Coleman managed to stumble down the hallway toward the closet, where he still had some of his wife's expensive (too expensive) fur coats on hangers. But if there was anything to eat in the pockets, he swore he would buy her a hundred more coats to go with the stash she already had. He opened the closet door and started tearing through the hanging garments, throwing aside the coats and knocking hat and shoe boxes off the top shelf.

It was only after Coleman had torn everything out of the closet that he remembered he was supposed to be looking in the pockets; he wasn't going to discover a hidden door in the wardrobe that would lead to a feast fit for the characters in the old C.S. Lewis novels. And so, wearily and feverish, he turned back to face the heap of coats that he had piled behind him.

Shaking and miserable, Coleman started going through the pockets of the fur coats, not once stopping to think about putting one of them on to alleviate the chill. He was strangely warm anyway.

The pockets yielded to prizes aside from one stale piece of butterscotch candy which Coleman popped in his mouth greedily, almost forgetting to take off the wrapper. So he went through the bunches of boxes that had fallen with the coats, taking off the tops and throwing them across the room.

And it was in one of the boxes that he found the thing that he forgot he even had. A coal black pistol lying amidst ribbons and tissue paper, completely innocent and unassuming, simply waiting for the chance to be used once again. And Coleman found himself staring at the gun for a long time, mesmerized by its sleek design. He wasn't sure how it would come in handy but he was unable to take his eyes off the weapon.

When Sam woke, the first thing he realized was that Laura wasn't wrapped in his arms. He blinked his eyes, allowing them to readjust to the lack of light and lifted his head, regretfully leaving the cavern of blankets he and Laura had created around themselves hours before. He didn't want to expose himself to the cold again, wanted to stay beneath the blankets until it somehow miraculously became warm again, snuggled with the girl he loved. But since that girl wasn't around, his wishes were quickly ruined.

Brian was still asleep in his arm chair, shivering, his teeth chattering, but not yet awake. Sam hoped that his friend would be able to sleep for at least a few more hours; at least one of them deserved a good night's sleep. But there was no sign of Laura in the living room, which was slowly making Sam more and more worried. However, the fire hadn't died down, so he figured that the brunette was around, keeping watch over the flames, a job that he had declared his own in order to let Laura drift to sleep in his arms. But it appeared that it had been he that had fallen asleep.

Teeth chattering, Sam stood achingly slow, the cold having set into his body, making his limbs feel heavy and unused. He pulled the numerous quilts around his shoulders, noting that several of them were gone, and stepped away from the fire. Even a few inches away from the hearth, the room was agonizingly cold, colder then he believed any other country in the world to be. The cold wasn't natural, Sam had understood that for a long time and he wondered again just what the cause was.

Now Sam could hear Laura's voice coming from the kitchen, where she was singing softly to herself, no doubt to alleviate the silence that had filled the apartment. Silently, Sam entered the kitchen, standing at the foyer and watching Laura as she went through the cabinets, pulling out boxes of cereal, bags of chips, anything she could find and stacking it on the counter.

Sam watched her, utterly captivated by her quiet voice that seemed to match her beauty so perfectly. Laura went about what she was doing, singing an old Jewel song, unaware that she had a spellbound audience. "But if you could hear the voice in my heart it would tell you, I'm tired of feeling this way. God, won't you please hold me, release me, show me the meaning of mercy-." Laura paused suddenly and turned around, as though she had sensed Sam's presence. "Sam." She said, somewhat flustered, her pale cheeks coloring quickly. "What are you doing?" She looked away from him, somewhat embarrassed. Having people hear her sing had always embarrassed her, no matter how many times she had been told that she had a beautiful voice, yet somehow she was glad that Sam had stumbled upon yet another private part of her. It was nice to know that someone knew almost everything about you; that way you didn't have to hide yourself.

"Nothing." Sam told her with a slight smile. "Just watching you." His smile grew wider but he remained where he was, though he wanted nothing more then to sweep Laura into his arms and have his Angel of Music sing to him for hours.

Laura looked away from him, her cheeks still flushed but a smile on her face. "I didn't mean to wake you." She apologized in an attempt to change the subject. "I was just looking for breakfast and I figured I might as well see how much food we had left."

Sam entered the kitchen and slipped his arms around Laura's waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. "How's it looking?" He questioned. "Are we going to survive the Long Winter?" It was a bad joke, he knew, but he couldn't help himself. They were stuck where they were and, while making light of their situation wasn't going to help matters, it might get a smile or two.

Laura sighed. "That is the question." She picked up a box of cereal and shook it. "Breakfast." She muttered unenthusiastically. She had never been a huge fan of cereal but she figured now wasn't the time to go around, being picky. Besides, she hadn't really been hungry since the realization that they were stuck in the apartment had hit her, but she figured it was better to force herself to eat.

Sam and Laura headed back toward the fire and fed the flames once again before sitting down, with Laura nestled against Sam's chest. She opened the book of cereal and offered some to Sam before taking a handful for herself; bowls didn't seem necessary right now, though Laura figured she would have been dying to act as though it was just another normal morning. But it wasn't a normal morning and pretending it was wasn't going to get them out of the apartment; it was time to start embracing the situation at hand and attempt to figure a way out of it.

For a while, Sam and Laura sat in silence, enjoying each others company and listening to the cracking fire. Laura had taken the plastic cereal bag out of the box and was now tearing the box itself into strips, an action that appeared almost off-handed to Sam. However, once the box was nothing more then a pile of cardboard strips, Laura started feeding the strips into the fire one by one, attempting to coax the flames along.

"I was thinking about what you said last night." Laura mused aloud, looking back at Sam. "About trying to get out. What if we found some way to get in touch with someone, the military or...anyway and told them where we were. That way, they'd know there were survivors and they'd come looking for us."

For a moment, Sam thought about what Laura had said, running her plan over and over in his head, as though he was feeling it out, checking for any possible errors. Though he was certain there were many, most of them escaped his mind for the moment. If they could find an old CB radio, then they had a good chance of reaching someone on one of the frequencies and sending help to them. That way, they wouldn't have to risk the weather outside.

So, I've been banned from posting for the last week and let me say, it's been hell. But here I am again, with another chapter and I hope that no one lost interest. I'd just like to say, thanks to my best friend Lucie for putting up with me during the last week and only rolling her eyes and smiling whenever I reminded her "three days..." Thanks to Lily for finally reviewing...you know I love ya, sis. And thanks to someone who will never read this story: our high school president Mark, because without him this story wouldn't exsist anymore (really, it's a long story...) So, I hope that everyone is still interested in this story and keep those wonderful reviews coming!