I stood up again and walked over to one of the walls that ran down from the opening of the station to the far-back where we were set up. Several plastic shopping bags with handles hung from nails we’d driven into the wall. It had been a dirt-ass bitch finding them, no place still uses them, but we’d needed them because they were so easy to hang and seal. I pulled down the one closest to the opening of the station and rummaged around in it for a while before finding a small chocolate bar amid the other food stored in there. Keeping the bags up off the floor like that kept the rats out of them, and keeping them tied shut kept out the bugs. Underneath where the bags hung were our cans of food, and, even though it was dark, I knew exactly where the peaches in heavy syrup were. The chocolate was going to taste great with the peaches, and the Xanax in my pocket. Breakfast of motherfucking champions.

Shivering, I hustled back toward the fire and dumped my breakfast there. The fire began to warm me right away, and I felt like never moving from in front of it again. My bladder was fuller than if I’d drank five forties, but luckily, the piss bottles were right there, and José and Sebastian were sleeping. So I pulled down my pants and squatted over the one with the top cut off and let go. I didn’t have to shit yet, which was great, because it was a crotch-ugly sand-fuck to carry the newspaper I did it in down to the street and out of the squat when it was this cold.

Moving the piss bottle off to the side, I pulled my pants back up and sat down in front of the fire. The concrete floor was icy, and I could hear at least one big rat moving around down in the gully that cuts through the station, where the train used to run a long time ago. I’ve definitely lived in worse places than this. In fact, with the oil drum woodstove, all the food we started stockpiling long before the storm, the warm sleeping bags, the set of cooking pots and pans we found in the trash, the alcohol stove that Sebastian built out of a beer can and a large coffee can, and the bottles of rubbing alcohol that we’d lucked into before the storm when a supply truck was unloading at a pharmacy, I’d say it’s a pretty good place to live. Well, it was a pretty good place to live when we were all here.