by K. M. Fawkes
Brenda gave him a smile. “We’re pretending to be pioneers,” she said, her voice just a hair too cheerful as she spoke. “Isn’t it more fun to have something a little different from everybody else?”
When Brad didn’t look quite convinced, she pulled a bowl out from behind her back. “Besides,” she said. “If we do it this way, you get to have all of the leftover popcorn!”
That had been all of the convincing Brad needed. After Christmas, Brenda took him down to the shops and they picked out some strings of lights and a few packages of red, gold, silver, and green glass balls.
“Why are we buying them now?” Brad asked. “We’re taking the tree down soon.”
“We wouldn’t want to have a pioneer Christmas every single year,” his mother said lightly. “It would get boring. Come on, do you want another pack of red or silver?”
Brad had been in his twenties before he had realized that his mother had done that because everything had gone on sale for ninety percent off the week after Christmas. Brenda had never let on how little money Lee had given her to spend. She had just seen Brad’s desire to have something that the other kids had and done her best to give it to him.
Tears threatened to choke him suddenly and he cleared his throat. He forced himself to focus on the details of the house in front of him to distract himself from long-buried memories. It was better that they stay buried for now.
Smoke rose lazily from the gray stone chimney of the house. Whoever lived here clearly didn’t mind putting out the welcome mat for potential passersby; between the light and the smoke, it was almost like they were beckoning him in.
Or maybe they were simply staking their claim. There might be a lot of firepower to back up the fact that the house was theirs. Brad was cold and in pain, but he wasn’t sure that he was about to challenge the place.
As he stood and pondered the best way to sneak around it without being seen, he suddenly realized that Remington wasn’t next to him anymore. The dog, seeing signs of civilization, had bolted for the door of the house.
“Shit!” Brad hissed as he started after the dog.
He sprinted up the stairs, planning to get a grip on Remington’s collar and yank him away. His fingers had just brushed the collar when his feet skidded out from underneath him on the ice that had formed a thin layer on the top step. He fell to his knees, unable to hold back an exclamation of pain as he landed hard.
Remington turned to look at him in concern and Brad struggled to take in a breath. Whatever had been on the verge of twisting in his back had finally twisted, and he had no choice but to remain where he was, hunched over and breathing hard. The small of his back was white-hot with agony and his left leg had gone completely numb in one sudden flash.
The door swung open and he found himself staring down the barrel of a shotgun. Brad put one hand up, having no choice but to continue bracing himself on the other one as he stared up at the woman who had appeared on the porch.
She was older than him by a few decades. Maybe around the age his mother would have been if she had survived the cancer that had taken her five years before. There were thick threads of silver in her dark hair, but the gray hadn’t taken over completely.
Remington had stopped moving toward the door when he had felt Brad’s fear spike. Now he looked between Brad and the woman, a worried wrinkle appearing between his eyes. He slowly moved backward toward Brad, giving a low whine of mingled fear and warning.
“Please put the gun down,” Brad said, his voice rough. “You’re freaking my dog out.”
“Are you armed?” she snapped out, the shotgun never even wavering.
“What? I…” Of course he was. And he wasn’t about to admit it. “I don’t mean any harm,” he said instead, taking another breath that was ragged with pain. “Please, I’m just…I’m just a veterinarian. I’m trying to find my family.”
He saw her eyes flicker down to Remington. The dog looked positively bedraggled. His fur was wet from the snow and his dark brown eyes were filled with concern. The gun lowered. Brad managed to let his breath out without it sounding too much like he had gasped.
“Come in,” the woman said, stepping back over the threshold to the cabin.
“What?” he asked in shock. He had hoped that she would let him go on his way. He had never imagined that she would invite him inside. He could feel warmth seeping out of the cabin door, touching the tips of his cold fingers.
“I said, come in,” she repeated, stretching out a slightly trembling hand to Remington.
The dog leaned into it happily, more than willing to accept a friendly touch.
Brad looked around the woman at the fire leaping and dancing in the big fireplace. His boots were soaked. So were his clothes. He might be on a death march to find people he had already lost. His back was killing him. Hell. Why not sit by the fire for a bit?
“It might take me a second to get up,” Brad said ruefully as the woman continued to watch him, her expression growing wary again even as she continued to pet the dog, rubbing its silky-soft ears and head. “I twisted my back when I fell.”
“I hope you’re not planning to sue,” she said, watching him struggle to his feet warily. “You’ll find that it could be a lengthy process.”
Brad gave a breathless laugh as he hauled himself upright. “I guess I can let it go this time,” he said through gritted teeth. “Be the bigger person.”
He was quite literally the bigger person, he realized as he stood to his full height. This woman was barely five feet tall. She looked like she was regretting asking him in for a moment so he tried to give her a smile that didn’t look so much like a grimace of pain. It must have worked because she stepped back and allowed him to hobble inside.
The rich smell of stew met him the minute he walked in and his mouth instantly began to water. Remington curled up happily in front of the blazing fire as Brad glanced at the neat little sofa and then down at his damp and dirty pants.
The woman tugged a blanket off of the back of a leather armchair and folded it double. Then she laid it on the couch and nodded for Brad to have a seat. He sank down carefully, unable to hold back a sigh of relief as the pain in his back stopped.
“Have you had anything to eat?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “Not since some cold ravioli last night.”
The woman turned and headed into the kitchen. Brad let his head fall back against the couch and let out his breath slowly. Feeling had returned to his leg and that was a relief. He had seriously twisted something, but some rest would probably set it right. He didn’t dare to hope that she would let him spend the night, but maybe she could point him in the direction of another unoccupied house. If it was a short enough walk, maybe a night’s rest would be all that his back needed.
“Here you go.”
Brad raised his head and saw that she was holding out a yellow bowl. Steam rose from it in slow curls and there was a silver spoon plunged into the thick stew that filled the bowl. Brad reached out and took it, letting it warm his hands for a moment while he simply indulged in the feel of warmth and the scent of hot food.
As he turned the bowl in his hands, he felt how thick the yellow ceramic was. It was slightly uneven, more of an oval than a true circle. The glaze was porous in places on the outside. Brad shifted the heavy bowl to one hand and spooned up a bite of soup.
The meat was venison and it had been slow-cooked until it was incredibly tender. There were root vegetables in the stew as well and they added a good crunch. The woman stepped out of the room again and came back with a smaller bowl that she placed in front of Remington. The dog began to eat quickly, his tail thumping against the hardwood floor. He was so tired that he didn’t even stand up to eat.
Brad knew how he felt. As he swallowed spoonful after spoonful of the stew, he grew more and more sleepy. A nearly twenty-mile walk in the cold would do that to a person.
“My husband made it,” the woman said after a moment. When she saw Brad glance around for another occ
upant in the cabin, she smiled sadly and shook her head. “The bowl, not the stew,” she clarified.
Even though Brad was still eating, the woman reached forward and traced her finger on the uneven glaze. “He was a potter. This was one of his first works,” she went on quickly and Brad was touched that she wanted him to know that her husband had gotten much better at his craft. “He wanted to get rid of it, but it was one of my favorites. I’ve always loved yellow.”
“Is he…is he here?” Brad asked carefully.
The woman shook her head, some of her dark-and-gray hair falling over her face. She brushed it back.
“No. He never knew about any of…this.” She made a broad gesture at the outside world that Brad understood to encompass the whole apocalypse and all of the fallout since. “He passed away two years ago.” She looked down at her clenched hands and made an obvious effort to relax them. “He had a heart attack in his sleep and was gone without even waking up,” she went on. “He was ten years older than me, but it never seemed like it.”
Her smile was heartbreakingly sad as she spoke about her lost husband. Brad found that he had to look away from it. He stirred the last few bites of his stew and swallowed the lump that had risen in this throat. Was there anyone that would love him that way when he was gone?
“In a way, I’m glad,” she said, her voice softer now. “At least he didn’t have to see what the world had become. Then again, he might have handled all of this even better than me. He usually handled things better than I did.”
“What was his name?” Brad asked.
“Lars,” she said. Then, suddenly she said. “I don’t know your name, young man.”
“Brad,” he said, holding out his hand, wincing slightly at the way that he had to turn his body to hers to shake her thin hand. Then he nodded over at the golden lump now sound asleep and snoring gently on the rug. “And that’s Remington. I picked him up a while back.”
“I’m Vanessa,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Even if I did hold you at gunpoint.”
Brad grinned as he put the bowl on the coffee table and leaned forward slightly, letting his back relax. The heat was helping a lot.
“It’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me since this whole thing started,” he assured her. “Tell me about Lars.”
Vanessa looked surprised for a moment. “What do you want to know?”
Brad shrugged. “Whatever you want to tell me.”
“Would you like some more stew first? Or maybe something to drink?”
He nodded. “Only if you have it to spare.”
Vanessa stood and took his bowl. When she came back with it, she held something else as well. He had expected her to bring back a cup of water but instead she brought him a pale yellow wine in a delicate glass.
“You wouldn’t think that dandelion wine would go with stew,” she said, sitting down in the chair across from him and taking a sip from her own glass. “But it pairs pretty well.”
Vanessa settled back in her chair and Brad took another bite of his stew. He didn’t like to drink alcohol with his food, so he put the wine on the coffee table as he ate. Vanessa looked a little surprised, but she began to speak again without commenting on the fact that he wasn’t drinking.
“I met Lars at the university,” she said. “He taught ethics and I had just arrived to teach philosophy. It was only natural that we saw a lot of each other.” A small smile touched her lips before she took another sip of her wine. “He told me that he fell in love with me right away, but that he knew I would need time to catch up. I called him my best friend for three years. And he was. It was just that I was missing the bigger picture.”
She stared into the dancing flames of the fire as Brad spooned up the last few bites of his stew. The second helping had been smaller. Not that he blamed her. They had a long winter to get through, and there was no sense in eating more than was strictly necessary. If he hadn’t burned so many calories over the last two days, he never would have asked for seconds.
“Then one evening he invited me over to watch a documentary,” Vanessa said, smiling as Brad leaned over to pick up his wine. “This was his house, you know. He had bought it right after he took the teaching job.”
Brad took a sip of the wine and tried not to grimace as he swallowed. It was pretty strong stuff, and it didn’t taste at all like he had imagined that it would. He’d thought it would be gentle and mostly floral, but it verged on bitter and there was a sharp citrus kick. He wondered if some of the bitter greens had gotten into the batch by mistake. Lee had made dandelion wine in the past and Brad knew that you were only supposed to use the flowers.
Either way, he wasn’t going to be rude enough to leave it after she had poured it for him. He took another long swig and then leaned back against the cushions while he waited for Vanessa to go on. She seemed lost in memory at the moment though, her eyes back on the crackling fire as she ran the tip of her finger over the rim of her own glass.
Brad took another drink while she was looking away from him. Maybe the wine would help the pain in his back. Maybe it would also keep him warm once he inevitably had to go back out into the cold again. He couldn’t expect her to keep him here overnight, after all.
“By the next morning, I called him more than a friend,” she said, seeming to realize suddenly that she had left off in the middle of her story. “I only went back to my apartment three weeks later to pack it up. I moved in here and I never once looked back.”
Vanessa sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back off of her face again. “I know that it sounds like hyperbole, but every single second of our lives together was more than I had ever thought to dream of. We toured Europe together. We learned to dance. He took up pottery. We hunted and dressed our own kills. We protested the automation of the service industry. We believed all of the same things. I’ve never stopped missing him.” Her voice was rough with sadness now and she took a long drink before she cleared her throat.
“I…I have people I miss, too,” Brad said, lulled into the rhythm of the conversation. He had never been great at them, but this woman made it easy.
“A wife?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. A family. A little boy and a girl and the boy’s mom. We meet over the summer, but…we got separated. I’m going to find them again. That’s why I’m out here.”
He told Vanessa all about Sammy and Martha. He told her about Anna, her stubborn temper and her brave heart. When Vanessa topped off his dandelion wine, he tossed it back, making a quick gulp of the stuff. Etiquette probably demanded something different, but Vanessa didn’t seem to mind how quickly Brad drank her wine.
“Sammy does these carvings,” Brad said. “They’re so intricate for a kid his age. He’s got real skill. Real talent. He’s…”
Brad broke off, rubbing his eyes and blinking hard suddenly. Out of the blue, his vision had doubled, leaving two Vanessa’s watching him from the chair. He probably shouldn’t have tossed back that second helping of wine so fast on top of all of that warm stew. He was getting close to dropping off as soundly as Remington.
“I’d better go,” he said, trying to get his feet under him. The cold air would wake him up.
His knees bent uselessly when he tried to put his weight on his feet. He couldn’t seem to organize his legs to do his bidding. He gripped the arm of the couch and tried again. His luck wasn’t any better the second time around. Brad shook his head slowly.
“Sorry, I’m just…a little tired.”
He saw Vanessa’s mouth turn down in a frown. He didn’t blame her. Clearly he wasn’t that great at holding his liquor anymore. His thoughts had gone fuzzy and everything looked so far away. Maybe she would let him stay here. Just for a few hours. Just until he slept off the worst of the wine.
“I’m sorry, Brad,” Vanessa said, her voice barely above a whisper.
He almost had to read her lips to know what she was saying. It felt as if his ears had been stuffed wit
h cotton wool.
He tried to lean closer, but he only fell to his hands and knees on the floor, having completely overbalanced himself. Remington woke up and scrambled to his feet, his paws sliding on the hardwood floor as he hurried to Brad’s side.
Brad wondered how the dog was moving sideways and then realized with an effort that he wasn’t. Somehow, Brad had slid down to lie to the floor. This wasn’t from the wine. He had never gotten this drunk in his life, let alone from a glass and a half of wine.
“If that wasn’t a line of bullshit that you just fed me then you’re a good kid,” Vanessa said as she leaned forward in her chair, placing her own glass on the coffee table beside the pretty yellow bowl that her husband had made. “But I do have to protect myself. I have to do what I have to do.”
“Did you…did you…poison me?” he slurred. “Am I gonna die?”
Was this really how it was going to end for him? Not at the hands of a crazy religious cult or a dangerous military man. Not in a fire or as he struggled through the blistering cold of a Maine winter. Was he really going to die on the floor of a pretty lakeside cabin at the hands of a sixty-year-old hippie?
There were worse ways to go, obviously, but he still felt pretty bitter about it. He had trusted Vanessa. He had taken the food and drink that she had offered to him without thinking to question it.
“Go to sleep,” Vanessa said, her face ashen as she spoke the plea. “Just please go to sleep now, Brad.”
What in the hell had she given him? What could he use to counteract it? There was no time to ask; it felt as if his tongue had stuck to the roof of his mouth.
He reached for the gun that he had tucked in his waistband under his heavy coat, but his hand simply slid along the floor lazily. He couldn’t lift it. His body no longer obeyed him.
Whatever it was, it worked pretty fast. The fire faded to black as Brad’s eyes closed unwillingly. He wasn’t even aware of Remington’s nose against his cheek as the dog tried to rouse him. He sank quickly and deeply into the unwelcome darkness of unconsciousness.