by Paul Greci
“The first year was okay because there were so few people and lots of food,” I say, not ready to talk about what happened to my parents.
“Maybe out here in the hills,” Willa says. “But where I was, east of Fairbanks, close to the prison and the old army base…” She touches her scar again. “Like I said, there used to be eight of us.”
* * *
Even though they all dress the same and have short hair, it’s pretty easy to tell them apart. Willa is the tallest and has her scar.
Randie has freckles spilling down both sides of her nose. And when she takes her cap off, bright red hair sticks up about a half inch from her head. When she was seven, her parents died after their car struck a moose.
Tam always carries her bow. And she has blond hair, is almost as tall as Willa, and, as far as I can tell, never smiles. She hasn’t said a thing about herself.
Maxine has dark hair. And she has a low voice and a sparkle in her big brown eyes. Jess has been sticking pretty close to her, but right now Tam and Jess are on watch and Willa is asleep in the back room. Me, Maxine, and Randie are organizing supplies.
“We lost our parents at the Yukon River,” I say. “My dad was gunned down, and my mom”—my voice cracks—“we never found her body, but I’m pretty sure she was shot and then dumped into the river.” I feel my eyes getting hot. I take a breath and then I tell them about our plan to head south and hopefully make it through the mountains and the Buffer Zone to search for some settlements on the coast where Anchorage used to be. All before winter.
“It will be a while before this land heals,” Maxine says. “But it will come back. And when it does, so will I.” She’s the sole survivor after her dad tried to kill the whole family. He shot Maxine’s mom, her brother, and himself. He shot Maxine, too, but she lived.
“I’ll never come back,” Randie says. She’s putting jars of salmon in rows.
“It’s not much food for six,” I say. “But maybe in the mountains there’ll be pockets of land that escaped the fires. Maybe fish, or other animals. And berries.”
“Twenty-eight jars,” Randie says. “Less than five a piece.”
“If we find trees, we can make spears,” Maxine says. “These will be good.” She runs her hands over the collection of ancient stone spearheads we dug up from the cache.
“I made a trip to the university museum with my dad to get them,” I say. “After the first fires.”
* * *
“Trav,” Dad said, “wood burns. Plastic and glass melt. So does metal. Rubber burns. But stone, it survives.”
“Why do we even need to do this?” I asked. “Sounds like a major hassle.”
We had plenty of ammo for the shotgun. And so many houses had been abandoned that everything was in abundance. So I didn’t see any reason why we had to dig through a burnt-out museum, or a burnt-out anything for that matter. The entire university campus had burned in the fires the first summer, compliments of the government. We had heavy leather boots on and it was at least 90 degrees. Yellow jackets buzzed in the air and covered parts of the walls. They were everywhere. We could feel the hum, like the whole earth was vibrating.
Dad stopped walking. I swatted at a yellow jacket that was circling around my head.
“This whole place is powering down,” Dad said. “I just want to be ready.”
When I was little, Dad had a job at the university. He was some kind of research technician for the Anthropology Department. Then his position got axed with a bunch of others.
By the light of our flashlights we picked our way over a river of bumpy plastic in what used to be a basement auditorium for staff seminars, according to Dad.
“What you saw in the displays,” Dad said, “was just a fraction of what they had.”
My eyes were burning from something. Maybe the burnt plastic. My head throbbed.
We went through a burnt-out doorway. I didn’t understand why the ceiling hadn’t collapsed from the weight of the first floor caving in. And it’s obvious that the fire had raged through here—the cement walls were blackened, but thankfully still upright.
We sifted through the ash on the floor and, sure enough, we found spearheads and arrowheads. The real things. Ancient. Made from a black stone—obsidian. The sharpest natural substance on earth.
“We may never have to use these,” Dad said. “But you never know. And even if we don’t, they’ll be good to have. As a remembrance of how people used to live. And a reminder that we could live that way again.”
* * *
Maxine picks up a spearpoint. “My ancestors traded for this black rock. It came from somewhere far away. It was valuable. The best.”
“Do you think they have electricity in the settlements?” Randie asks. “And running water?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “All I know is that my mom and dad were going to head south and search for them if we got stopped going north. I think the earthquakes caused a lot of damage down there. Damage that they couldn’t fix. But it’s got to be better than this place.” I look away. We were so close to crossing the Yukon.
“We’ll need to go soon if we want the food to last,” Randie says.
They each have a small backpack, but I’m not sure what’s in them.
Besides the spearpoints and salmon, there was some spare clothing in the cache. Two wool shirts and two raincoats. Two knit caps. And two small packs. And about a hundred feet of quarter-inch-diameter yellow rope.
And in the basement there’s an assortment of stuff—some tools, dishes, cups—basic household stuff. I just want to bring the essentials so we can travel as fast as possible. They want to go south. We want to go south. I know they’re tough because they’ve survived this long. These girls are about my age, I guess. And the one that doesn’t smile, Tam, looks a little like Stacy.
In my mind I flash back to Stacy, to the last time I saw her. Back then, I couldn’t imagine ever being without her. I don’t even know if she survived the trip south, but I want to find out.
“There’s nothing stopping us from starting south today except picking the route,” I say. “My dad said there are ways to cross the mountains even though the melting glaciers have made a mess of things and the rivers have cut new channels.”
“Even under all this ash,” Maxine says, “the land is alive. We’ll just have to pay attention to it.”
“The farther north we went, the more trees we saw,” I say. “There were even mosquitoes.”
Maxine laughs. “Where there’s mosquitoes, there’s meat.”
“This place just seems so dead. I mean, last year when the salmon didn’t come back and fires burned everything up again, it hit me just how dead it was. Big-time dead. My dad said the organic layer of the soil got burned off. And that’s the main reason the plants are so slow to come back. Usually, fires don’t burn that hot. The places where we see fireweed sprouting—maybe those spots didn’t get totally scorched.”
“The land has been traumatized,” Maxine says. “It can’t support much life right now. That’s why we need to leave. To give it a chance to heal.”
“I don’t ever want to come back,” Randie says.
“I’m coming back,” Maxine says. “Someday.”
I turn to Maxine. “All I want is to get my sister to a place where she can have a life.”
Maxine leans forward and says, “She already has a life. So do you. We all do. Embrace it.”
“My sister saw six dead bodies on the riverbank. That’s not the kind of life I want for her.”
“Travis,” Maxine says. “We’ve all seen death. Ugly death. Up close. It’s everywhere.”
“No doubt,” says Randie. “I just don’t want to experience it personally.”
“Just a safe place for my sister where she can be happy, that’s all I want.” And for me too, I think, but I don’t say that.
“I don’t know if anyone will ever be safe again,” Maxine says. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t be happy, or grateful just to
be alive in this moment.”
“In this moment,” I say, “my parents just died and—”
“Travis,” Maxine cuts in, “that sad moment has passed. This is the moment where our group has found your group.” She looks me in the eye. “We’re making a new family. Right now.” She smiles a big smile and I feel the corners of my mouth start to curve upward in response.
I still feel a deep sadness for the loss of my parents, but I’m happy to be getting to know these new people.
Then Jess’s warning whistle fills the basement.
She must’ve spotted someone.
CHAPTER
15
THEY ARE STILL A WAYS off but appear to be coming toward us. I have my tiny pistol and the knife on my belt. Tam has her bow. Randie and Willa are armed with seven-foot-long pieces of rebar. Maxine and Jess hold shovels. I want Jess to go inside, but seeing her with Maxine makes me pause. Jess needs the companionship. And she’s part of the group. So I decide that, for now, she can stay.
I guess living people mean the possibility of food. But they also mean the possibility of death. I don’t know what I’d do if I was out of food and I saw a group of people. Will some people kill you even if you just ask for food and don’t threaten them? Will they just shoot as you approach? The rules of life have changed and I’m still figuring them out.
“Let me do the talking,” I say.
“That all depends on what you’re going to say,” Willa says.
“I won’t know until I see them.” One thing I don’t want them to know is that I’m the only guy. Not that these girls aren’t capable of kicking some ass, but I don’t want to deal with macho dudes getting all overconfident. Let them see my six-foot frame and four “guys” in camo clothing.
They’re walking side by side but I can’t tell how many. Four. Five. Six. Maybe more.
“Let’s move,” I say. “All the way to the edge of the hill. All of us.”
“But that’ll make us more visible,” Willa says.
“Exactly,” I say. “Last time people approached me and my dad here, we stayed back by the entrance to the basement and we didn’t know where they’d pop up, and they surrounded us. Put us at a disadvantage. We need to be right at the edge of the hill so we can watch their every move.”
I walk forward and everyone follows. Now I can clearly see five people down in the valley. We watch them walk for a few minutes, leaving a trail of ash in the air.
I wonder just how many people are still in the Sacrifice Area. Just these five, plus us? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred? There is no way to know. But I do know one thing. Over time, I’ve seen fewer and fewer people. I’m guessing a lot of people starved to death last winter.
I put my hand to my forehead to block the sun and squint. “Anyone see anything on them? Guns? Packs? Anything?”
“The guys on the ends, they’ve each got a dark strap running across their chests,” Maxine says. “Like maybe they’ve got guns on their backs.”
“Yeah,” Randie says. “I see that, too.”
“If they have ammo for those guns, we’re at a serious disadvantage,” I say.
“Maybe they won’t come up here,” Jess says. “We’ve seen people just walk on by.”
“Tam,” Willa says, “how close before you could get a good shot?”
“About halfway up the hill,” Tam says. “But shooting down a steep hill, I haven’t done too much of that.”
“We can’t stand here and let them take aim,” Willa says.
I keep my eyes on their movement. “If they reach for their guns, we can lie down. But if we back off now, they’ll know we don’t have any firepower.”
Willa turns to me. “I don’t like just standing here.”
“What do you want to do?” I ask. “If we run down the hill, we lose the advantage of being higher than them. If we back off toward the basement so they can’t see us, they’ll take that as a sign of weakness. Plus, we won’t be able to see them. And if we do get into a shouting match, I want to do the shouting. If they find out there’s a bunch of girls up here, they—”
“Wait.” Willa points to Tam. “That girl was gonna put an arrow through your heart until we realized Jess was a girl.”
I glance at Tam and her eyes lock onto mine—like maybe she’s still considering shooting me.
“All I’m saying is there’s sick people out there.” I pause. “I understand why you’d want to kill a guy first and ask questions later, even though in my case you would’ve killed the wrong guy. And I understand that you all could turn on me and take me out. It’s obvious you all have a lot more fighting experience than me. But we’re on the same side. Why not use my voice to our advantage if it comes to that?”
“I hear what you’re saying,” Willa says. “We definitely don’t advertise our gender all the time. But I’ll say this: We’ve run into groups of guys who got overconfident when they found out we were girls. Not many of them lived to tell about it.”
“Okay,” I say, “I get that. Maybe we should just wait and see if we even need to speak. Maybe just our presence up here—showing them that we’re not backing down—will make them retreat.”
The five people in the flats have stopped but are looking our way. Besides Jess, we look like a bunch of guys. And camo can be pretty intimidating. In my mind it implies military training. Badass dudes trained to fight. Killing machines that thrive on conflict.
“Maybe they’re reconsidering,” Maxine says. She puts her arm around Jess. “We must look pretty buff.”
“Do you have to make a joke out of everything?” Willa says.
“One life,” Maxine says. “They’re too far away to shoot at us. If you let the possibility of death get you down, you’re just wasting your life.”
“But if you don’t pay attention,” Willa says, “you might not have a life.”
“Do you think they can see my bow?” Tam asks.
I turn toward her and say, “Maybe.” But she just glares at me. I keep my eyes trained on hers for a moment and then turn away.
I wonder where she learned to shoot that thing and if she’s actually any good.
The people are still standing in the flats, looking our way. We can hear little snippets of their voices carrying across the ash, but no clear words. I wish they’d either keep coming or change direction. I just want to know. At least they’ve paused. I doubt they’d be doing that if it was just me and Jess up here.
Gunfire explodes in my ears, and I see Willa lunge forward and fall face-first over the edge of the hill. Another shot on top of the first, and Randie is down.
I dive to the ground and feel dirt and ash splatter my face, the next shot just missing me. Confusion racks my brain. I search for Jess but don’t see her, then catch a glimpse of Tam as she lets an arrow fly toward the basement behind us. It enters a man’s neck and pushes him back. He drops his gun and grabs the arrow shaft with both hands. Then Tam buries another arrow into his torso and he goes down, blood seeping onto his light blue jacket.
Ambushed. Why didn’t I have someone keep watch behind us? I was so concerned with what was in front of us, those guys approaching from the valley. They stopped because they saw it. They watched it happen. They must be in on it. And now, they are walking toward us.
CHAPTER
16
“JESS,” I YELL. “JESS.”
Tam points down the hill. I run to the edge and see Maxine lying on top of Jess. Have they been shot, too? I only remember three shots—Willa, Randie, and the one that almost got me in the face.
I take four giant steps, and I’m by Maxine’s side. I shake her shoulder. “Are you okay? How about Jess? Come on. We’ve got to take cover.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tam huddling over Willa.
I pull Maxine up. Jess is shaking. I grab her with my other hand. “Jess, let’s go. They’re coming.”
Tears are streaming down Maxine’s cheeks. “This world is so messed up.”
“Just go check
on Randie.” I point across the hillside. “And hurry. This isn’t over.”
“Dead,” Tam calls, pointing at Willa. “I’m glad I got that swine.”
I scoop up Jess and carry her up the hill, my feet digging into the ash. When she sees the man impaled by two arrows, she turns her head and pukes. I set her down, run to the dead man, and grab his gun. It’s an old pump-action shotgun just like Dad’s. One slug in the chamber and two in the magazine. I frisk him, searching for more ammo, but find none. Maxine and Tam top the hill. Maxine has the two shovels in her hands.
I make eye contact with Maxine, but she just shakes her head.
“Maxine,” I say, “you and Jess go inside and stuff as much as you can into four packs. Quick. I want to be up on the ridge behind us by the time these guys reunite with their dead friend.”
I tap Tam’s arm and we crawl to the edge of the hill and peer down into the valley. The guys are closing in, slow and steady, the two on the ends carrying shotguns in their hands.
Randie and Willa lie crumpled below us. I wish there was something I could do for them. Something to show them respect. Bury them. Anything. But we don’t have time.
We don’t need this place. Any place, I decide, is a trap. We need the food in our packs, whatever else is useful, and we need to keep moving south, all the way to the coast. But first we have to get up on the ridge and regroup, before more bullets start flying.
Tam glances back toward the basement, then says, “They are taking too long. I’m going to go help them.”
“Great,” I say. “I’ll keep watch here. We need to move.”
Tam runs to the basement and down the steps. I turn back toward the guys in the flats. They are almost to the base of the hill and are starting to spread out. The two guns are all I can see among the five of them. I’ve used Dad’s shotgun a couple of times, but I’m no expert. And if they knew how many bullets their buddy had, then they know I don’t have enough from him to get all five of them. Or maybe they don’t even know that their man is dead. I mean, Tam killed him with arrows right in front of the basement. No way could they have seen it, or heard it.