My WIPs include Howard the Red, Douglas Lives, and Sasha the Scarred. I've experienced some of the worst health in recent years, so I'm very behind. Here is a piece from Sasha the Scarred. The narrator is Kim, a Korean boy, and it begins about the same time Surviving the Fog begins.

Copyright 2013, 2016
Surviving the Fog-Sasha, the Scarred
By Stan Morris

Chapter One

It was easy to follow the men who took Sasha. They made more noise than buckets of empty water cans dumped into a recycle bin. They trampled on dead branches that snapped with sharp cracks and banged their shoulder slung rifles against trees. From a quarter mile, with a brisk wind at my back, I could hear their loud voices. I didn’t have to worry about the wind, because it was blowing toward me on that cloudy day. It was an east wind, unusual for May. It did not smell like rain, and I was glad, because they didn’t act as if they cared whether or not she got wet.

I didn’t know why they had taken Sasha, or where they were going, although I had suspicions. Her hands were tied behind her back, and she stumbled occasionally as she walked. From time to time one the men would give her a little push or a pat on her butt, occasionally adding a suggestive sexual threat. Sasha whimpered when she stumbled, sometimes asking them to stop so she could rest. Every now and then, she would cry out or sob for a few minutes, until one threatened to hit her if she didn’t shut up. The words reminded me of when I was a boy hiding in the central heating vents at Eagles Retreat, listening to the evil men say those same things to the women they held hostage.

[Memory] The Heating Ducts

I was born in Korea; the evidence points in that direction. Iris says she learned this from my father who she knew as “Mr. Kim.” That’s why I’m named Kim. I can remember two Korean words. “Umma” means mother, and “Apba” means father. I’m not sure of the spelling, because I was six when my mother and I left Korea to join my father in California. I have a vague memory of an older woman. Perhaps she was my grandmother, or an aunt, or maybe just a friend of the family.

I believe we lived in Palo Alto, but that may have been where my father worked. According to Iris, he worked for a technology company in what was known as Silicon Valley. I don’t remember the name of the company, and it doesn’t matter now, since everyone there died on the day the Fog came. My family wasn’t home that day, because shortly after my mother and I left Korea to join my father in California, my father took us to a resort in the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains, northeast of Bakersfield. I was seven years old, and I know this, because my parents surprised me with a birthday party the day before we left for the mountains.

There were many people vacationing at Eagle’s Retreat, including some kids. I knew a few words of English, and my parents could not watch me all the time, so occasionally I slipped away from them to seek out the other children. I remember Sasha and her brother, James, but she was older than me, and I was a boy, so she ignored me. I remember running with James through the fruit trees on the semi-level grounds of the Retreat. Once, James and I found a wet ragged tennis ball on the thin lawn. We took it inside and rolled it across the floor to each other, but when we were spotted we were scolded, because the slobber covered ball belonged to a shaggy white dog named Seth.

I don’t know when my father died. I know he was quarreling with the men who had taken over Eagle’s Retreat, but I don’t remember the day he disappeared. I remember asking my mother where he was, and I became alarmed when she burst into tears. I begged her not to cry, and I told her that I would search for him. She stopped crying and ordered me in a sharp tone not to leave our room. She sounded angry, and I was thoroughly confused.

When we first arrived at Eagle’s Retreat we took our meals, buffet style, in a big room with everyone else, but after my father disappeared, our meals were delivered to us by a mean looking man, and they were nothing like the huge plates, loaded with food, I had been used to. I remember my mother arguing with the man, but he laughed at her and called her a name that had her seething with anger. It seemed as if each day we received less and less food at each serving. My mother began hoarding food, even when I complained and asked for more.

One day she made up a game. She removed the floor vent from our heating duct and told me it was a secret tunnel. She was going to leave our room, and after a short time I would not hear and feel the air coming out of the duct. When that happened, she said, I was to get into the duct and explore the secret tunnel. Before she did this, she gave me her watch and spent an hour teaching me how to tell time. When she was satisfied I had learned this lesson, she left the room. Soon, the air flowing from the heating duct ceased, so I dropped into the secret tunnel. I was in a short rectangular can, and when I crouched down I could enter each side of the duct.

I didn’t have any trouble negotiating the passageways, and I could easily turn around. The heating duct was located in the basement, and it ran the length of the building. An inclined portion, hidden in the walls, led up to the upper tier, above the high ceilings of the second story rooms. By pressing my body against the sides of the duct and wiggling, I was able to reach the upper level. I explored most of the building’s heating ducts, before I felt air moving again. Quickly, I scrambled back to the can leading to my room. I climbed out, replaced the vent cover, and pushed a chair over it, as my mother had taught me.

Seconds later, I heard loud noises, and the mean man shoved the door open. He was holding my mother by her upper arm and yelling at her. He pushed her to the floor, and that’s when I noticed the big bruise around her eye. I hadn’t learned enough English to know what he was saying, but I could see that she was terribly afraid of him. He pointed to me and said something, and she responded by kneeling, bowing, and saying something. By that time, she was crying, and I started crying, too. The man left, and my mother hurried to me and wrapped me in her arms.

After that day, the building always seemed to be cooler, and less heat flowed from the vent. My mother taught me a new game. At night I was to get into the duct and creep around very quietly. If she heard me, she scolded me soundly, even spanking me if I had been too loud. I soon learned to be soundless when traveling through the secret tunnel.

Then she gave me a tiny screwdriver from her purse, told me to stick my hand through our vent cover, and practice removing the screws that held it to the heating duct. It did not take me long to become proficient at this. On the last day, I got into the heating duct at her command, and she left the vent cover by the side of the vent.

“I don’t know when it will be safe to come out,” she said. “Stay inside. If I bring you food, you must eat a little every day, not all at once. Promise me.”

She was stern and emphatic when she said this, so I promised I would stay in the vent until she said otherwise, and I promised to eat only a little of what she brought me.
From the vent, I watched her remove a pillowcase from the pillow. She pulled the electrical cord of a heavy lamp from its socket and placed it on the floor by the door, and then she left the room. Of course, I was quite puzzled by her actions.

After a time I heard the rush of footsteps, and she barreled through the door, holding the pillowcase. She ran to the vent, pushed the pillowcase into my hiding place, slammed the vent cover into place, and pushed the chair over it.

“Go! Hide!” she screamed.

I knew I should obey my mother, but I could not leave her. I lifted the vent cover and watched, tears streaming from my eyes. She grabbed the lamp, waited by the door, and when the mean man charged through, she smashed the lamp against the side of his head. He fell to the floor, bleeding from his temple, and she hit him again and again. Blood spurted and pooled on the floor.
She appeared to be as shocked at I, but she saw me watching from the vent and whispered, “Go!”

I grabbed the pillowcase containing the food and slithered into the vent. Behind me, I heard a commotion from the room. That was the last time I saw my mother. At night, on rare occasions, I left the heating ducts to steal food or to stand, but other than that, I lived in them for two years, until I was nine years old.