by K. M. Fawkes
When he was satisfied with the fit, he pulled the leg of his pants down over it and rested his foot back on the floorboard. For some reason, he’d thought that his father would comment on it, but Lee maintained his stony silence.
If he wasn’t going to say anything, then neither was Brad. The silence left him feeling hollow. Was it too much to ask to manage to get along at the end of the world? No one could say that he hadn’t tried.
With Brad and Lee occupied with their own thoughts, they didn’t speak again until they pulled up on the road to the cabin.
Chapter 10
“We’ll walk in from here,” Lee said as he cut the engine and pocketed the keys to the truck. “There’s no reason to let them know that we have a vehicle. If anything goes south, head back here. Don’t bother to wait around for me.”
“You’ve got the keys,” Brad pointed out. “What good will it do me to get back here if you don’t?”
Lee rolled his eyes and pulled the keys back out of his pocket. He slung them toward Brad who caught them.
“Fine,” his father said. “I still remember how to hot-wire an engine. Apparently you forgot.”
Brad hadn’t forgotten. He also wasn’t at all sure that Garcia wouldn’t have made it a hundred times more difficult to hot-wire his truck than it would be to get a regular engine running. Wouldn’t that be the kind of thing that a paranoid survivalist gearhead would make sure to do? The fact that it had even occurred to Brad told him that the odds were good.
He also couldn’t deny that he felt better to be the one in possession of the keys. He was regretting more and more the decision to let his father accompany him. Lee’s mood had darkened over the two and a half hours it had taken to negotiate the roads from Ashland to the cabin. Brad’s own tension had risen over the miles, stretching like piano wire, invisible and dangerous.
He was glad to get out of the close confines of the truck and stretch his legs, despite the chill of the outdoors. His boots crunched when they hit the snow and a surprising thought crossed his mind.
It’s not icy. I can always outrun him if I need to.
Lee had exited the truck as well, closing the door gently so that the sound wouldn’t carry too far. A slammed door in the still, snowy landscape would echo like a gunshot.
Brad eased his own door closed and glanced across the hood at his father. “You do know what you’re going to see when we walk up there, right?” he asked. “It’s gone. All of it. There won’t be anything but a pile of charred wood.”
Lee nodded, but he didn’t reply. Brad kept his gaze level on him. Lee returned the stare, both of them more aware than ever that they didn’t really know the man standing in front of them or what he was capable of. Lee turned away first and set off, his hands in the pockets of his jacket and his head down against the wind.
Brad walked along behind him, trying to brace himself. He really didn’t want to see the cabin again. It had haunted his dreams for so long that it had become like a living nightmare. He wouldn’t have been surprised if he could still see smoke curling from the charred remains of what had so briefly been his home.
As he walked further up the road and they got nearer and nearer to the last bend in the path, the place that would open up to show the former site of the cabin, Brad realized that his heart had begun to pound. He took in a few deep breaths of cold air, but it didn’t really help. Seeing the place again felt like going to a final viewing, just without the comfort of an understanding family member to grieve with and a hushed funeral parlor to take a moment of solace in.
They rounded the last bend and the cabin came into view. The snows Maine had gotten over the weeks that Brad had been away couldn’t cover up the twisted pile of black wood and brittle, broken glass. A lump rose in his throat.
How could he have lost this place? How could everything he’d been so comfortable with be taken away in such a short time? All he’d wanted to do was keep Martha safe. It had cost him nearly everything. He knew that he would do it all again, but he was also aware of a deep pain in his heart about it.
Brad looked over at his father to see how he was taking it. It had been a lot longer since Lee had been here. His father was now looking at the burned-out shell of the cabin he’d spent his life perfecting.
He didn’t look happy. In fact, he looked furious, even though Brad had tried to prepare him for what he’d see. Brad knew the tension in his jaw better than anyone. He braced himself for an explosion.
“You didn’t think about maybe trying to draw the cult away from the damn cabin before you taunted them into trying to kill you?” Lee asked, his voice low and bitter.
“I wouldn’t have survived for long outside of the cabin,” Brad said. “They outnumbered me by—”
“Do you know how much work I put into this house?” Lee went on. “How many hours I spent having something for a time just like this? Do you have any idea how much money I spent making everything here perfect? Do you know—”
“Of course I know!” Brad hissed, surprised by his own anger but unwilling to try to quell it. He was tired of his father’s digs. Of his assumptions that Brad was an idiot who’d barely survived without him. Of his father’s disgusting, animalistic behavior toward the people they’d met. The people he’d killed.
“How could I miss it?” he demanded before Lee could speak again. “Do you really think I don’t know that you loved this place more than you ever loved me? That this cabin was what you valued the most in the whole world?”
“I taught you how to survive,” Lee shot back. “And it’s a damn good thing that I did, because I was right! I said that something like this was going to happen and it did! Are you really going to deny that I—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Brad cut in, waving his father’s words away. He was much too angry to give Lee any credit. “Let me ask you this. Can you even tell me the point of surviving?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Lee asked.
“I want to know what the point of being here is! Is it just to lose everything that matters? Hell, while we’re on the subject, what’s been the point of anything in your entire life?”
“Keep your goddamn voice down,” his father ordered. “And what kind of question is that, anyway? What do you mean?”
Brad made a scoffing noise. “I mean, what the hell did you actually contribute to the family that you started? What did you give to the life that you promised to Mom?”
“I tried to give her some safety, but she didn’t give a shit!” Lee snapped. “All she wanted to do was drive around and get her hair done!”
“Jesus Christ, that’s such bullshit! She barely spent any money!”
“Yeah, because I locked all of that down! She would have spoiled you rotten if I hadn’t taken her name off of our bank account! She would have wasted everything!”
“You wasted everything!” Brad shouted. “And then you left, and spent the next twenty years living in a paranoid fantasy!”
“I had to survive!”
“Really? Well, while you were busy surviving, I was watching my mother die. Do you even know that she died, Lee? Because you sure as hell weren’t at the funeral.”
“I—”
Brad was standing closer now so he saw the moment that the truth flashed over his father’s face. He didn’t know. He had no idea that Brenda, the woman he’d once committed to love until death did they part, had died. He didn’t know because he didn’t care. Not about anyone but himself.
“I’m the one who was there for her, and I’m the one who watched her die!” Brad yelled. “For two years, I watched her waste away into nothing and you were…what?
“I was fixing up this cabin for the goddamn apocalypse!” Lee shot back.
“Yeah, and now it’s gone!” Brad cut in. “Nothing you did meant jack shit!”
“Because of you!” Lee yelled. “You were the one who showed up and ruined all of it!”
“I didn’t ruin anything! I just refused to back down from some
religious nutcases! I have principals, unlike you, you bastard!”
Lee’s fists clenched and his eyes blazed as he moved a step closer to his son.
Although it brought them uncomfortably close, Brad didn’t take a step back. For the first time in his life, he hoped that his father would hit him. Because he wanted to hit him back. He wanted to hit him until he understood all of the pain that he’d caused. Until he understood that he wasn’t the only person in the universe who was worth saving.
“Well, well, well. It seems that the prodigal has returned.”
Brad turned toward the voice and discovered that, while he and his father had been arguing, several men had come out of the woods. They’d moved up the driveway and closed in on three sides. He recognized some of the men as ones who’d helped burn his cabin down.
He briefly thought of running, but there wouldn’t have been any point. Every one of the men was heavily armed and without the cabin, there was nothing to shelter behind. His shoulders slumped. Why, out of every possible time he could have chosen, had he decided to argue with Lee right there?
“Run,” Lee hissed.
Brad shook his head, keeping his eyes down so that he didn’t see Lee’s rage at having his command ignored. Lee swore and tried to duck around behind Bradley. One of the men stepped forward and swung his heavy gun at Lee. Brad winced as his father fell to the ground, the sickening sound of the crack of the rifle stock against his father’s head seeming to echo in Brad’s own mind.
He dropped to his knees when they turned to him and allowed the Family to cuff him. Nothing felt real any longer. The cold ground numbed his legs as he felt one of the men patting him down while another knelt beside his father. Lee was struggling much more violently, yelling and cursing. The man ground his knee down into the center of his father’s back and Lee shouted in combined pain and fury.
To Brad, it all sounded like it was happening very far away. He barely felt the Family member’s hands as he yanked the gun Brad had carried from the retirement facility from his jacket pocket. What difference did any of it make in the long run? He was tired of trying to escape the inescapable.
The man jerked him to his feet, grunting because he’d been left to handle Brad alone while everyone else focused on subduing Lee. Brad stumbled awkwardly when he was pulled off balance and nearly pulled the man back down to the ground with him.
As he and his captor leaned unintentionally against each other, each trying to steady himself, Brad couldn’t help but notice that he could feel the man’s bones. In fact, no one in the group looked as well-fed as they had before.
When he was finally upright and steady on his feet, he could see that man’s cheeks were sunken in deep hollows beneath darkly circled eyes. He didn’t have time to wonder why they looked so underfed before he was shoved roughly forward. He managed to stagger toward the woods, moving under his own power while they forced Lee in the same direction. As they moved deeper into the woods, they were steered toward a path.
Brad wasn’t surprised to see that a truck had been parked there. He doubted that any of the men would have managed a long walk in their current shape. From the looks of the equipment he could see stacked in the back, they’d been out hunting. Guessing by the gaunt demeanors, none of them had been hunters prior to the end of the world.
The man who’d been walking with him gave him a hard shove right between the shoulder blades and Brad fell into the truck. The edge of a box caught him in the ribs and pain blazed through his side. For a second, when he felt a surge of heat and nausea, he was afraid that he’d broken a rib.
As they threw his father in beside him though, Brad got to knees and realized that the warmth had been from the blood running down his side. The hard edge of the box had ripped through his jacket and his skin. He leaned back against the side of the truck, trying to catch his breath. He had no way to see how bad the cut was, but it burned like fire.
Lee was thrown into the truck even more roughly, but he had the good luck not to smack against any of the equipment. He tried to get up, but he was clearly disoriented from the blows he’d already taken. He lunged wildly toward the back of the truck, but had the door slammed in his face.
Brad watched as Lee kicked at the door, screaming and swearing. His father’s face was bright red, and not just from the blood that had run from the cut in his scalp. Brad could see spit flying as his father threw insults after the men who’d closed the door on him.
He remembered wondering if his father would be able to reintegrate into a civilized society. He knew the answer to that now.
Brad leaned his head back against the metal side of the truck and let his eyes slide closed. His whole body ached suddenly; it was as if the pain in his ribs had radiated everywhere else.
The truck rumbled as the engine was turned over. Brad felt it chug as whoever was behind the wheel put way too much pressure on the gas pedal. The clutch seemed balky, but that was probably because there was an idiot driving the thing. Lee lost his balance and fell to his knees when the truck began to move.
Cursing, he edged back to lean against the opposite wall, facing Brad. Brad glanced at him, but when he saw the pure hatred twisting his father’s face, he didn’t bother to speak. What was the point of starting the argument all over again? They wouldn't solve anything. They had never solved anything.
Furthermore, he needed to focus so that he could see where they were being taken. If he decided to keep fighting, he wanted to know a good way out. From what he could see of the landscape as it flashed past the windows, they were headed toward the quarry.
Brad frowned as he realized that the quarry wasn’t very close to the Family’s former site. Had something happened to it? Something that made them have to leave? He simply didn’t see how it could have.
The other option was even more chilling. Had they expanded their territory? Did they now own everything between the quarry and the cabin? He remembered what he’d heard about them from Joe and Julian. The men had said that the Family had controlled a large area in northwest Maine. He hadn’t expected it to be that much though.
Brad gritted his teeth as they went over a bump. The cut wasn’t bleeding now and he was relieved about that, but he knew that any injury could quickly become serious if it went untreated. He wondered if he’d have an opportunity to deal with it before the Family sacrificed him to whatever amalgamation of gods they’d settled on.
He further wondered where the rage he’d expected to feel upon seeing the Family once more was. It was completely absent. Or was he in shock?
The latter was entirely possible, he realized. It wasn’t that he hadn’t expected to run into the Family again—hell, he’d actively planned what he would do if he did—but the plan hadn’t included getting captured because of a stupid argument with his father. It also hadn’t featured being cuffed and thrown around like a sack of flour. He let his breath out and looked over at Lee again, wondering if he should be the first to speak.
He decided against it when he noticed that his father’s eyes were closed. Maybe Lee was reining in his temper. Or maybe he was gathering himself for one last fight. There was no way to tell and Brad decided that he had enough on his plate without worrying about it.
What happened to his father didn’t interest him very much. Not when he couldn’t even work up any interest in what fate had in store for him.
Chapter 11
The truck ground to a halt some thirty minutes later. Brad felt it slide just a bit on the snow and he braced himself so that he wouldn’t go tumbling over again. The driver really did have a heavy foot.
I should complain to his manager.
The thought was so unexpected that Brad found himself grinning as the back door was jerked open.
“What’s so funny?” one of the men who’d tossed Lee into the van demanded.
Brad only shrugged. Then he stood under his own power and walked over.
“Get down!” the man shouted, reaching for his gun.
Br
ad rolled his eyes. “I can, but only if you want to make it harder for us both. Your buddy didn’t have an easy time getting me in here. You guys don’t look like you’ve been eating too well lately.”
The man reached in and grabbed the back of his jacket, hauling him forward out of the back. Brad smirked. He’d pissed the guy off and that should have concerned him, but it didn’t. The followers had no real power and there was no way that he was getting out of here alive anyway. Why not be a little bit of an asshole about it?
As he and his father were pushed forward, Brad could see that there were more followers milling around the little tent city that had been set up in the quarry. Their numbers had nearly doubled from what he could see.
Where the hell were they finding all of these people at the end of the damn world? And what hold did they have over them to make them stay? Was it just the sense of safety in numbers or did they really believe in the bullshit that Aunt and Uncle spouted?
His thoughts turned away from the followers suddenly. There were a lot of people—was it possible that Anna was here? Were Sammy and Martha hidden somewhere among those willing to sell their souls for security?
At last, Brad remembered the reason for surviving he’d been holding onto all this time. He might not care what became of him, but he sure as hell cared about the kids. He wanted to help them, to raise them. To be an example of what was possible even without laws to keep a person in check. He didn’t exactly think he stood a hope of making that happen, but he wasn’t going to go out without a fight.
The sun was sinking low in the sky as they were shoved toward a cellar door beside a ramshackle cabin. Although he had resigned himself to his fate, Brad couldn’t help but push back as they were pushed forward. Nothing in the vicinity looked the least bit sturdy. Dying was one thing, but being buried alive because of shoddy workmanship was something else.