by Lorch, Jeff
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All in all, it was a boring drive. To be honest, it was always a boring drive, but this time we were ready, almost expectant, for something to go wrong. Nothing went wrong.
As we headed west, mile after mile falling behind us, through each small town, we saw nothing. No signs of violence or destruction, thankfully, but neither did we see any signs of life.
My heart literally skipped a beat when we passed the “Welcome to Saskatchewan” sign on the highway. I mean for real; I thought I was going to have to pull over, but I managed to keep it together and continue driving.
Having grown up in Regina, and always secretly wanting to live somewhere else, I never thought I could be so happy to be so close to home; after all that we had been through getting here, the moment I saw that sign, I started to cry.
The three-hour drive took us closer to four hours, since we were driving cautiously. The closer we got to Regina, the more excited I got. By the time we got to Balgonie I knew we were only twenty or so minutes out, and I could barely contain myself.
But as we got closer to the city, the mood in the truck started to darken as we began to see signs of violence around us. Along the highway, along the service roads, we saw buildings and cars stripped, wrecked, and burned.
As we came into the city, we saw whole blocks still smouldering. Few areas were untouched. We turned and took the Ring Road around the south perimeter of the city.
Everywhere were wrecked and burnt cars, debris was strewn across the ditches and into the streets.
Tears poured down my cheeks as we passed block after block of devastation. This was my home, the city that had raised me. I had gone to school here, met my husband here, given birth to both of my children here. Maybe it wasn’t much in the big picture, but it was home, it was mine. And right now, it felt like the dark side of the moon; it felt wrong.
As we came around the south Ring Road and up into the city, things became worse. We saw bodies along the side of the road, some of whom looked like victims of the infected, torn apart; others looked like they had been shot, some stabbed, some beaten. All looked like they had died badly.
By far this was the worst we had seen on our journey, and my stomach churned trying to imagine how my children could have fared the last nine days without me here.
As we headed north up Albert Street, past restaurants, gas stations and shopping centres, we saw more signs of violence. We crossed the Albert Street bridge; growing up I had heard it was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest bridge over the shortest expanse of water in the world, even though in this Age of Internet I learned that there was no such record. I looked to the right and saw bodies floating in the water of Wascana Lake. My stomach turned, and I had to stop and open my door to be sick.
We turned onto 13th Avenue, towards Kevin’s parents’ house. We drove slowly but saw no signs of life. We drove past houses with front doors hanging sideways, knocked off their hinges.
Kevin’s parents were what I had always called post-boomer-pre-hippies, and the area they lived in was what I always called ‘New-Agey’. The Cathedral district was sort-of the ‘hip’ area of town. The houses were older character homes with stucco, stained-glass, hardwood floors and natural wood mouldings. The lots were narrow, but the neighbourhood felt cozy instead of crowded. Small business lined the street in houses converted to commercial.
It was the kind of area where you would find Tarot readings, homeopathic care, and small coffee-houses with live jazz music on a Saturday night.
We pulled up to their house, a Tudor-style built two-and-a-half-stories tall on a narrow lot, and my stomach heaved. Their heavy hardwood front door was hanging open, cocked sideways, knocked off its hinges. There was no car parked in front of their house, and since their small single-car garage was off the alley behind the house, we would have to go around back to look inside.
My hands shook on the steering wheel, I was unable to open the door.
“Steph,” said Alex, reaching forward and putting his hand on my shoulder, “you should stay here, let me and Jamie look inside.”
I tried to say no, I had to go, it was my job my duty my responsibility; I couldn’t, it just came out as a croak, as a sob.
I sat there, paralyzed, unable to speak, unable to move. The boys climbed out of the SUV, solemnly, and went inside. I opened the door and leaned out, thinking I was going to be sick again. All my mind could conjure up was broken furniture and blood-splattered walls.
It was only a minute later they both came out, running. I almost heaved, thinking the worst, picturing what they might have seen inside, what kind of devastation they may have witnessed, until I saw one of them was holding a piece of paper in his hand, and he was smiling.
They climbed back into the truck, and Jamie handed me the paper.
“They’re not here,” he said, breathless, “it says they wanted to get out of the city, so they went to the cabin. I assume you know where that is?” He grinned at me from the back seat.
I burst into tears, clutching the note to my chest.
Kevin’s parents had a summer cabin in the Qu’Appelle Valley, less than an hour drive east of Regina, and Kevin and I had bought the place next door a few years ago. We had driven within thirty kilometres of it as we came to the city from the east, and I hadn’t even thought of it.
We sat for a moment; I was sobbing, my eyes closed, fingers clutching the note before I could even think to open my eyes and read it. It was written in Karen’s neat, precise printing.
“M&D, we know your flight is likely still in the air so you won’t get any of the texts we’ve sent, but by the time you read this, you will know what’s happening everywhere. Things in the city are getting bad so we’re ‘bugging out’. G&G are packing right now and we’re heading to the cabin, we’ll wait there for you. Love you both, K&D”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to keep it together. My kids got out, they were safe with Kevin’s parents out at the lake.
“Steph, come on, move over,” the voice said. I didn’t know if it was Alex or Jamie, my eyes blurred with tears, squeezed shut against the world. My breath came in sobs, my hands clutching the note to my chest. I shuffled over to the passenger’s seat.
I heard the engine start and felt us begin to move.
“Where to?” Jamie asked from the driver’s seat, my eyes finally clearing enough to see him.
I couldn’t speak, so I simply pointed back the way we had come.
♦♦♦
We headed back east, away from the city, along the TransCanada, back the road we had just travelled thirty minutes before. We turned northeast at Balgonie, heading towards the Qu’Appelle Valley. It was a glacial leftover: four lakes in a row in a shallow, picturesque valley, with a small town in in the middle; a gathering of small resort-villages surrounded by First-Nations’ reservations.
Historically, Fort Qu’Appelle was supposed to have been the capital of Saskatchewan, the primary Hudson’s Bay Trading Company fort back in the early eighteen-hundreds during the settlement of the province. However, for politics reared its ugly head. The Lieutenant-Governor at the time, one Edgar Dewdney, had significant land holdings on a barren patch of land some eighty kilometres to the south-west, and so the capital was moved. Instead of being a sparkling jewel in a scenic valley with four lakes surrounding it, the capital was located on the bald-ass barren prairie with a railway junction on it that was charmingly named, at the time, Pile ‘o’ Bones. Eventually, it came to be called Regina, the Queen City, which at the time was the capital of the entire Northwest Territories.
As Jamie drove, I tried to think how to tell them they didn’t need to come with me. Each minute took them further away from their home in Saskatoon, but they didn’t hesitate, they didn’t argue, there was no discussion; they simply moved me into the passenger seat and the three of us drove east, hopefully towards my family, but further away from theirs.
As if he could read my mind, from the back seat, Alex piped up.
<
br /> “Don’t be a dork and ruin the moment now,” he said, a smile in his voice.
I nodded, silently, still unable to talk.
Eventually, after twenty minutes or so of driving, we came to the Balgonie turnoff, and I directed them to take the exit towards Fort Qu’Appelle.
“It’s about thirty or forty minutes from here,” I said quietly from the passenger’s seat. “You’ll want to take the turnoff to Highway 210 down into the valley.”
I didn’t know what we would find on our arrival to the cabins, but I was optimistic; I knew Kevin’s dad had a generator in the garage, plus each of the two cabins side-by-side had a well drilled down into the water table providing an unlimited supply of fresh, if not potable, water. A quick filter and boil over a stove would render it drinkable; there was always a fair supply of soups and canned beans and ramen in the pantry, and they had cords of firewood stacked up behind the cabin. In short, you could last for weeks without any power or other supplies. I began to hope against hope that we would find them all safe and sound.
But Kevin wasn’t here. How was I supposed to go to them, tell them what happened, explain to them why he wasn’t here, explain to them that he would never be coming home? How could I ever face my children again knowing that their father had died in my arms, died bloody, forgiving me for dishonouring my wedding vows, forgiving me my infidelity?
Thirty minutes later, we were following the descent down into the Qu’Appelle Valley. As we followed the curve down, slowly the lakes on both sides of the road became visible.
There were four lakes in the chain, with the town of Fort Qu’Appelle in the middle. Pasqua Lake and Echo Lake were the first two, and then after the town, Mission Lake and Katepwa Lake finished off the chain. In the summer, the lakes were a buzzing hive of activity, with holiday boaters, fishermen and swimmers peppering the shores and beaches. Now, in the fall, the lakes had turned dark and cold, mirroring my dread.
The valley had a prominent First-Nations population, with several treaty reservations established in the area. Pasqua Lake, the lake our cabins were on, was to the left. The lake was bordered to the south by the Pasqua First-Nations reserve occupying almost the entire south side of the lake, and the Standing Buffalo First-Nations placed between the two lakes on the north side. Across the bridge just onto reserve land was the Standing Buffalo school and the community centre, behind which was the rodeo-powwow grounds and a gas station-slash-convenience store at the corner.
As we followed the road down the valley where the road crossed into the reserve, we saw ahead a road block at the bridge between the two lakes. From where I sat, I could see a half-dozen people or more standing behind the blockade. It looked like they were all armed with rifles.
♦♦♦
The sun was starting to dip behind the end of the valley to the west as we drove slowly up to the blockade. The bridge spanning the lakes, a small concrete affair only two lanes wide covering a sixty- or seventy-foot wide stretch of slow-moving water, had been blocked with two large water trucks parked back-to-back.
As we came within twenty feet or so of the trucks, I motioned Jamie to stop the SUV. He shifted into Park and shut the engine off. I told him to wait in the vehicle as I climbed out and approached the blockade.
I saw six or seven men standing behind the blockade, all armed. None of them were pointed directly at me, yet, but I could sense the borderline hostility the closer I got.
“Far enough,” one of them said, the voice accompanied by the sound of guns being cocked.
“We’re not sick,” I said, “we’re not infected.” Having said it, I felt stupid; this blockade wasn’t here to stop the infected, it was here for another reason entirely.
“Doesn’t matter if you’re sick or not, turn around and go back the way you came,” came the same voice.
“My family is here,” I said, pleadingly. “We have a cabin just down the lake, my children are there, and my in-laws. Please, I need to get to them, we’re not going to cause any trouble.”
I could hear voices speaking behind the trucks, discussing. Then, off to the side, I heard a voice speak out.
“Mrs. Hayes?” it said. “Stephanie?”
I looked to the voice, hopefully.
“Terry?” I asked, my voice breaking. “Terry Yuzicapi?”
Terry lived on the reserve and ran water delivery and a septic haul service along the lakes, looking after hundreds of cottages. He liked to joke that he rarely mixed up the two trucks. He had been providing the service for years, first for Kevin’s parents’ cottage, and then a few years ago when we bought the neighbouring cabin, for us as well. He and Kevin’s dad had a tradition every year, once a summer, of sitting down over a beer and having a game of chess. At last count Terry had won six years straight.
“It’s okay, she’s okay” he said to the men beside him, stepping ahead and motioning for them to lower their guns. They did so, albeit reluctantly.
I ran up to him, giving the big man a hug. We had never exchanged more than a couple of dozen words each summer, and maybe shared a beer or two on chess-day, but at that moment, finally seeing a face I knew from before all this pain, all this horror, it was like running into an old dear friend.
I looked into his eyes, at his brown, weathered face. He had his long black hair, streaked with grey, tied back with a rawhide thong, and a green John Deere ball cap on his head. I saw a long scar running down from his left eye to below his jaw. The scar was fresh, at least as new as the scars on my right hand. He saw me looking at his injury and winced.
“This is why the trucks are here,” he said quietly, gesturing to his face. “There have been raiders coming out from the city, men coming to take what is not theirs.” I could hear the anger and the quiet fury in his voice, words unsaid, coming from generations of knowing that same anger, that feeling of helplessness. “We’re not going to sit back and let that happen, not ever again,” he said. “We’re going to defend what is ours.”
He looked at my hand and took it in his. He saw the fresh blood on the bandages, from my fight with Lt. Col. Dumont. With that, he looked to the SUV behind me, seeing what wasn’t there.
“Kevin?” he asked quietly, his words speaking volumes.
Silently, I shook my head, tears welling up at his name and pouring down my cheeks. It was all so fresh, and the fear of what I would have to tell my children, his parents, was still in my throat.
Without speaking, he nodded and stepped back, motioning to the men behind him.
“Let them in, their family is here,” he said, his voice ringing out.
I felt my knees go weak, my hands dropping to my side. I took a step back and steadied myself against the SUV.
“They’re here?” I said, my voice breaking, “they’re safe?”
He told me the kids and Kevin’s parents were at their cabin just a few minutes away; he had stopped by there a couple days ago and they had all seemed fine.
“They don’t know?” he asked needlessly, referring to Kevin, as I climbed back into the SUV. I shook my head. He reached out and grabbed my bandaged hand where I was hanging onto the truck door.
“You’re here,” he said. He waited a moment, looked at me and squeezed my hand again, bolts of pain shooting up my arm. “You’re here,” he said again, emphasizing his words by squeezing my hand.
I knew what he was saying. I was here, that was something. Right now, that was everything. I looked him in the eye and nodded firmly. He knew that I got it.
Terry guided us past the roadblock and told us they had a headquarters of sorts set up at the school, just across the bridge. They had collected all the supplies in the area and were safeguarding them there, armed guards and all. We were welcome there, as long as we brought whatever supplies we had with us.
Behind the blockade, I saw several familiar faces, people who worked the convenience store beside the school, people we would see and exchange words and smiles with during the summer while getting gas for the boat. There wer
e no smiles today, only a simmering anger. For the first time since I had been coming here when Kevin and I had started dating, I felt like an outsider.
We drove slowly to the corner and turned left along the lake road. My hands were shaking, my stomach churning. I was torn between the need to see my family, and the desire to run away and not have to tell them about Kevin.
Suddenly, there it was, as we came around a bend in the road, Kevin’s parent’s cabin and driveway came into view. The driveway gate was closed, so I parked along the road and shut the engine off.
I asked the boys to wait in the SUV as I climbed out and went to open the gate.
“Mom!” I heard my son cry from inside the cabin, and a second later the back door flew open. David came charging across the yard and flew into my arms just as my legs gave out. I fell to my knees, sobbing, holding my son tight in my arms never wanting to let go. Then I heard the door slam again and I heard Karen cry out and suddenly I had both of them in my arms, the three of us hugging and crying, kneeling in the dying light of the day, amid the yellowed grass and the dead leaves of autumn.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Day 9
The seven of us sat inside, the cabin warm from the fire in the old Franklin wood-burning stove in the corner. A coffee cold and forgotten on the table in front of me. I sat on the couch facing the lake, hidden now in the darkness, my feet curled up under me, and my children hugged tight to my sides. Our eyes were dry now, but red and raw from the tears we had all cried.
Kevin’s parents, Tom and Pauline, sat together on the loveseat to my right, their strength gone.
We had several candles lit, providing a little light for us, a little comfort. Tom had the generator running outside, but said they were just using it enough to keep the fridge and deep freeze outside in the shed working. They didn’t need lights at night, but they needed to keep the food from spoiling, he had said.
Tom was a large, powerfully-built man. His sixty-five years in this world hadn’t seemed to age him anywhere except this full head of thick, white hair, but in the last thirty minutes he seemed to have aged a decade. He looked smaller. For the first time ever, I thought he looked old.