Excerpt: The Cabin Journal

There are six of us in the cabin now:

Tyson Allard, age thirty-six, former line cook at the Mount Washington Hotel.

Tyson is a member of the Civil Air Patrol, and this cabin belongs to him, so he’s been something of a leader to our group since we came together. I sometimes worry about the amount of time he has to spend away from home, but he gets us the information and supplies we need, so it has to be done.

Carter Desilva, age twenty-eight, former teacher at White Mountains Regional High School.

Carter and I have been close since the day we met. We were colleagues until last year when he moved up here to Whitefield. It was a last-minute re-location, so he didn’t have time to find a place of his own- which is how he ended up renting Tyson's spare bed room. The two got along well, so Carter never did find his own place. And, then, of course, all of this happened. He’s the one who came and got me during the riots, the one who brought me to the cabin, so saying that I owe my life to him isn’t overstating things at all.

Lindsay Wilder, age twenty-seven, former physical therapist at Memorial Hospital.

Lindsay and her husband, Eli, used to live in Conway like I did, but none of us knew each other before they arrived at the cabin (two weeks after I did). During the riots, they went into hiding in the cellar of Eli’s family home, and then, when Route 302 was cleared, they escaped by making a dangerous walk north through Crawford Notch. State troopers in Bretton Woods almost shot them, thinking they were LDs who’d somehow made it out of the valley.

Eli Wilder, age twenty-five, former bartender at The Red Parka.

Eli is the quietest of us, but I sometimes get the sense that he didn’t used to be like that. I have to wonder what exactly stole his humor and his voice, but the possibilities are endless. I think, though, that it wasn’t the horror of LD, but the riots- they way ordinary people, without any virus stripping away their humanity, decided to behave.

Brianna Petrovich, age seventeen, former student at White Mountains Regional High School.

Brianna used to be in Carter’s English class, and this would have been her senior year of high school. She arrived at our cabin two days ago because, by her own admission, she had nowhere else to go. Her family fled to Montreal during the outbreak in September, but Brianna wouldn’t leave her boyfriend, so she forced them to go without her. The boyfriend abandoned her last week, though she has yet to explain the exact details of all that.

And then there’s me:

Katherine Cavanaugh, age twenty-six...