by Lorch, Jeff
Pauline sat, leaning into her husband, somehow both taking support and giving strength at the same time. Her long grey hair was tied back with a simple piece of yarn, accentuating her fine features; despite the tears, her blue eyes were still clear, but full of pain.
Alex and Jamie had brought the truck down into the yard, closed the gate, and had unloaded our gear into the back room, keeping themselves conspicuously occupied and absent while I told my family about Kevin and we shared our grief, our tears, our loss.
Finally, I had called them inside, and made introductions. Pauline made a fresh pot of coffee, and we all sat down together.
Slowly, the three of us told my family about the last nine days, of getting out of Toronto, meeting Taylor, getting supplies, the bandits on the road (we left out the threat of rape, but I think Tom and Pauline understood anyway), and of the attack by the infected at the beach house on Lighthouse Point. When I could continue, I told them about the fort established at Sault Ste Marie and the long-term plans of re-establishing supply routes along the TransCanada, but also about the risk of raiders and looters.
When I got to the part about Shilo and the point where I broke Dumont’s nose, David’s mouth fell open. “Mom kicks ass!” he said reaching across me to poke his sister for emphasis. I saw Tom smile, a little, for the first time.
“She sure does,” said Alex with a big grin. “Wait until she gets to the part about the jailbreak.”
It only took a few moments to finish the narrative and bring everyone up to date, but at the end of it, I felt wrung out.
Standing up to grab a fresh cup of coffee, Tom told us their story which, as he pointed out, was much less exciting than ours. When the news hit about the sickness spreading across the continent, Tom had immediately gone out to Costco and filled his truck with as much food and other supplies as he could get. It was crazy, he said, people fighting in the aisles over the last packages of toilet paper. He didn’t elaborate beyond that, but I saw him rubbing a days-old scratch on his bruised knuckles. Like his son had been, Tom was a gentle man, but I knew he also could have a fierce temper when provoked.
Pauline and the kids had gone home to our house and loaded up everything they could think of in short order, and then the four of them had come straight out here to the lake. When they left the power was still on and emergency services were still operating. They had managed to avoid the real violence and madness in the city.
Once out here, Tom had filled their gas cans and topped off the vehicles so they would at least have some fuel for the generator if, and when, the power failed, which it did that evening.
He had spoken a few times with Terry, who had kept him abreast of what was happening on the reserve. They were doing okay for food, and some of the men were spending their days hunting deer along the valley, but they were running low on things like baby formula, milk and some medicines. Fort Qu’Appelle had been looted extensively, so there wasn’t much to be found there.
“How long do you think you can hold out here?” I asked Tom. I knew they had water from the wells and heat from the fire, with enough firewood put up outside to last for quite a while, weeks likely, maybe even a month or more, and they had some food, but I didn’t think they had anywhere near enough.
Tom echoed my thoughts; he said there was enough food for a couple weeks, maybe three if we were careful, but that was it.
There were deer and rabbits all along the valley, and Tom had a couple rifles here so hunting for food was always an option I supposed. But winter was coming, possibly sooner than later, and trying to tough out a Canadian winter here in the cabin without proper provisions would be madness.
“I think we should try to make it to the army base in Alberta the supply convoy was headed for,” I said, finally putting voice to thoughts that had been running through my mind since we left Shilo. Everyone was looking at me, waiting for me to continue.
“Shilo is closer,” I said, embarrassed, “but honestly I think we might have worn out our welcome there.”
“Ya think?” said Alex through his crooked smile. I saw Karen look up at him, her eyes sparkling, and I swear to God I heard a little bow twang and an arrow hit her heart. My God, I missed my husband at that moment. I looked at Pauline, and she smiled at me, seeing what I saw.
“If we were going straight through from here, I think we would want to try Moose Jaw first, see if the air base there is still occupied. I’m kicking myself for not thinking to ask when we were at Fort Rapids, but since they didn’t mention it, and it’s on the way, I’m pretty sure it’s been abandoned.”
CFB Moose Jaw had been reduced to little more than an air force training base back in the nineties. I didn’t know how much of an active military force was maintained there pre-outbreak, but since our convoy from Fort Rapids was going to go past it without stopping, I was guessing any active units had been moved from there to one of the other bases like the one in Alberta we were headed to.
The boys were nodding, following my logic, but Tom and Pauline weren’t. I knew it was going to be hard to sell them on this idea, and we weren’t even at the hard part yet.
“But we’re not going to head straight through from here; we need to head north to Saskatoon before heading to the base at Medicine Hat.” That was the hard part.
Both Alex and Jamie were smiling, I’m sure they had been hoping for this but still grateful for me to have said it. Jamie jumped out of his seat and grabbed me in a bearhug, tears in his eyes.
I saw the idea take both Tom and Pauline by surprise. “Saskatoon?” Tom asked, then realizing where this came from, glancing at the brothers.
“Their family is in Saskatoon,” I said, “or at least they were. I never would have made it home without them, and I’m sure as hell not going to abandon them now. We can’t come this far together without going that little bit farther.”
I could see Tom’s walls going up, and my heart sank; I loved the man to pieces, but something that had always infuriated me about him was his stubborn streak; when he made his mind up about something, almost nothing, including being wrong, could make him change his mind. And right now, I could already tell his mind was made up on this.
“Absolutely not,” he said, setting his coffee cup down on the table in front of him. “We’re fine here, we have food and water, more than enough to wait this out. Terry and his people are protecting the valley from the raiders, it would be crazy to just pick up and leave. You just finished telling us what it’s like out there, and in the next breath you say you want to leave the only safe place we have and take your children out into, into, well, into who knows what?”
“Tom,” I said quietly, “when we were at Fort Rapids, they talked about working at getting things back working again: getting the lights back on and the trains running on time, but they were talking optimistically about it taking months. Optimistically, months.” I let that sink in for a moment before continuing.
“Two months from now this valley will be buried in snow and it might be twenty- or thirty-degrees below freezing outside; the lake and the wells will be frozen solid. But none of that will matter to us, because long before then we will all have starved to death, with no food, or frozen to death, with no heat. That little fireplace isn’t going to cut it at -30.
“I can’t make you come with us, but I hope you do. I don’t want to spend the coming months worrying about the two of you here by yourselves,” I leaned forward and took his hands in mine, “but the kids and I are going.”
Things did not go well after that. We never broke down all the way into a full-blown fight, but tempers were flaring on both sides, and we were getting nowhere. At the end, Tom stomped off to bed, slamming the door behind him, while Pauline went about gathering spare blankets and pillows for the boys, who would be sleeping on the couches. Our cabin was next door, but we had shut it down before leaving for Paris, just in case there was an early freeze.
I tried to talk to Pauline, to make her see that we had to leave, but she
cut me off gently with a motion, without saying a word.
I slept with Karen, her brother in the room beside us.
Something had changed in me, I thought to myself in the darkness. I never would have stood up to Kevin’s parents like that in the past, would never have stood my ground. I flexed my hand, the pain not as severe as yesterday. I never would have punched a man in the face before, either, I thought with a wry smile.
I rolled over and snuggled up closed to my daughter, and let sleep take me.
♦♦♦
The next morning, I climbed from the bed and made my way to the kitchen, dreading the reception I was going to get. Tom had never been one to hold a grudge, but he did like to hang onto it for a day or two sometimes before letting it go.
To my surprise, Tom was in the kitchen chatting with the twins over coffee while Pauline was frying bacon over the wood stove. The sun hadn’t yet peeked up over the top of the valley, but the sky was lightening.
Without pausing in his conversation with the boys, something about their trip to France, Tom got up, poured me a coffee, and gave me a sad kiss on the forehead as he handed it to me. I smiled, grateful, a million words said in that simple gesture. We were good.
Steaming mug of coffee in hand, I walked to the front room and stared out over the valley.
The change of season was in full swing here, the south side of the valley across the lake almost glowing as the sun came up, the leaves caught in transition from the vibrant green of summer to the full, thick reds and yellows of fall.
Down by the shore, the sections of dock were stacked up, leaning off to the side, safe from the damage that ice could cause in the spring when it moved from our prairie winds. Tom’s old Bayliner boat was tucked away for the winter in his boathouse. I thought of all the summers we had with the kids being towed water-skiing and tubing behind that boat and wondered sadly if we would ever have another summer like that.
This couldn’t last forever, I hoped, grasping, it’s not like this everywhere. This was going to pass. I didn’t know what was on the other side of this, and what the country, or the world, would look like afterwards, but I knew it couldn’t be just this lawless wasteland. It couldn’t be.
Across the valley, as the sky brightened, I could hear occasional gunshots echoing across the lake, likely hunters from the reserve taking advantage of deer caught out in the fields feeding.
I walked to the kitchen to see if Pauline needed a hand with anything and was surprised to see a large turkey sitting in the sink, covered in water, thawing.
“I pulled it out of the freezer last night,” she said as she chopped onions on the counter. “Today we have something to be thankful for.”
I suddenly realized that it was Thanksgiving. My dad had been born in the US and moved to Canada after having served in Viet Nam, so growing up we had always celebrated both Thanksgivings, Canadian in early October and American in November. Between two Thanksgivings followed by Christmas, by January I didn’t want to see another turkey until the next Thanksgiving.
I looked at the table where Tom and the boys sat; I pictured it dressed for supper tonight, and in my mind, I saw the empty chair set for Kevin.
“Tom figures he can cook it on the barbeque outside, so we won’t have to waste the gas running the generator to power the oven in here. He said we might need the fuel for our trip to Alberta.”
I looked at her in surprise. She gave me a small, sad smile and went back to chopping her vegetables. I ran up and hugged her from behind. I knew after they had gone to bed, she had sat in the dark and explained to her husband of fifty years that he needed to stop being a horse’s ass and think things through. She would have kept him calm and done what I couldn’t do; she had made him see that leaving was the only option.
I walked over to Tom and wrapped him in a hug, crying.
Pauline was right; despite the loss of a husband, a father, a son, today we did have something to be thankful for.
♦♦♦
The rest of the day was a blur of activity, with Tom directing us in our tasks; Pauline good naturedly corrected him when he made a mistake while still somehow managing to make cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner without electricity look easy. She had enlisted her granddaughter to help her with preparing the meal, since the two of them often cooked together and managed to not get in each other’s way.
Over bacon and eggs that morning, Tom had prepared his list.
Tom was a legendary list-maker. Anything worth doing couldn’t be done unless it was on a list first. I had once asked Kevin if his dad had a list on the night table beside his bed that started with “#1 - put on pants” just to get his day off on the right foot.
We got a plan put together. We would pack up and prepare today and leave tomorrow at first light.
We went through the food that wouldn’t spoil and packed it away in the vehicles, dividing everything between our SUV and Tom’s truck. Anything that would spoil was moved to the kitchen where Pauline and Karen would somehow make use of it for tonight’s meal. We still had several gallons of water in our SUV, so we took the two big jugs of drinking water Tom and Pauline had left and packed them in Tom’s truck.
Despite it being better on fuel, the decision was made to leave Pauline’s Prius behind, since it was just too small for our needs. Tom’s truck was an old four-wheel-drive Ford with an extended cab, so between it and the SUV, we had plenty of both seats and cargo space.
The SUV’s windshield was a mess from when we smashed through the gate at Shilo, but it was still holding and, while it took away from a bit of visibility, it was useable.
Alex went about filling the SUV with gas, then siphoned the Prius dry to top up our gas jugs. We figured between our jugs and Tom’s we had enough spare gas for almost one fill for each vehicle which should be more than enough for our trip, even allowing for delays and detours.
Jamie and David organized the firearms and ammunition between the two vehicles, including Tom’s rifles. My gut reaction was to tell David no, he was too young to be handling guns, but then I thought better of it. Jamie proved to be a very competent instructor, and I realized, just like me, David was better off knowing how to use a gun than not.
My job was to change my bandages and, while I was at it to make sure we had a decent first-aid kit put together for each vehicle. We still had the first-aid kit in the SUV we had grabbed from the store in Barrie, so that just left Tom’s truck.
I sat in the bathroom and slowly removed the bandages from my hand, careful not to tear anything loose. Despite the nightmare of stitches, and the repeated abuse I seemed to be putting it through, it looked like the cuts were healing and there was no sign of infection. As I wiped the cuts with alcohol swabs, Karen poked her head in to see if I needed help.
She looked at my palm and my fingers, something that would make Dr. Frankenstein cringe, and came to sit on the tub beside me, taking my hand in hers, tears in her eyes.
“Mom, your hand,” she said in a quiet voice, disbelieving. She took the alcohol swabs and gently began wiping the cuts. She then started wrapping fresh gauze around the wounds. “This happened when daddy died?” she asked in a whisper, her breath hitching on the last word as she tied the bandages.
I nodded, and took her in my arms, holding my little girl who was becoming a woman, as she cried.
Last night I had told them the truth, that Kevin had died protecting me from an attack by the infected. The news had come hard, but I think the ten days since the outbreak had prepared them for the news of the loss. There would be time to grieve, time for us all to share the loss, to remember all of the good times, and the bad, but that time was not yet. Not until my family was safe.
♦♦♦
We took a break for lunch, with most of the preparations done. We didn’t want to fill up, everyone was looking forward to the turkey dinner to come, but the table was laid out in a feast of all the perishables we were leaving behind. Anything that didn’t get eaten Tom was going to take
down to the school and leave for Terry and the people staying behind. While there, Tom would pull Terry aside and tell him our plans, and suggest that they should come with us, or maybe take the shorter trip to Shilo; he doubted they would ever leave their land, but at least they could make their own informed decision.
While we had gone about our chores that morning, Tom had gotten the bird wrapped in tinfoil while the grill got up to temperature; charcoal, not gas, he was a purist in that. Pauline had the sink full of washed and sliced vegetables ready to be cooked. He had put the turkey on the grill in the roaster about thirty minutes ago, and the smell of charcoal and cooking turkey was already starting to drift in the open front door, making everyone’s mouths water.
I was asking Tom what would be involved in heating water for a bath, it had been days and I knew the boys and I were all getting a bit ripe, when a volley of gunshots rang out. These were closer than the ones we had been hearing throughout the morning. These sounded like they came from the bridge.
More shots rang out, almost continuous now, as Tom stood and grabbed the binoculars from the hook by the front window. He walked out onto the front deck and looked towards the end of the lake where Terry and his people had the blockade.
“Oh my God,” I heard him whisper. I shaded my eyes as I looked east into the sun towards the bridge; I couldn’t make out much detail as it was over a kilometre away, but standing outside, now I could hear them.
I saw a mass of infected swarming down the valley road, hundreds of them, heading straight for the blockade. It looked like some of the infected had already reached the bridge and were fighting furiously with the men behind the trucks. I could tell in a heartbeat the defenders had no chance.
Tom handed me the binoculars as he went for the door to grab his gun.