The experienced woodsman kept a careful watch as he quickly finished with the rabbit, focusing mainly on the direction he had last seen the tracks heading. He knew, however, that if an attack came it was much more likely that he would be alerted by his companion, Beast, than that he would be the first to notice. Beast was now a fully grown 150-pound Tibetan Mastiff with a superb sense of smell and hearing, and he was a fearless protector of the entire family. While a cougar would need to be highly motivated to take on Tom by himself, it was almost impossible that one would be bold enough to brave the dog. In fact, it had been a difficult decision whether to bring him or leave him on guard back at the cabin. He was glad now to have him along. Nothing could harm the family as long as they stuck to his instructions to stay inside.
Tom placed the rabbit in a game bag tied onto the toboggan he was pulling along the trail. The toboggan wouldn’t be needed unless they got a deer, but then it would be essential. Normally Beast supplied the motive power, but once they saw the cougar tracks it was safer to have the canine warrior unhampered in any skirmish. They reached the outer limit of the trapline and headed back toward the lake, with Beast guarding the rear and Tom focusing on potential ambush locations in front. It looked like the haul for the day was going to be just the one rabbit.
Tom had little concern that his family would run out of food anytime soon. He had been able to drive the Suburban down to Golden last summer and restock all their staples with a comfortable three-year supply. There were fewer people in the town but the Save-on-Foods grocery store remained well stocked. However, he thought it was unlikely that the road back to town would be passable again this next summer, or even if it was, there might be limited supplies available. He preferred to think of their store-bought supplies as a reserve and to rely on fishing, hunting and trapping to provide their primary source of food. Tom had learned that the plan was to evacuate Golden but likely not for another couple of years. The railyard was to be kept open and so a skeleton staff would remain. The trains had been equipped with special snow-clearing equipment and ice-melting steam lances. They expected to be able to operate trains year-round for the indefinite future.
The family had thought a lot about their plans for the future. The winter of Peregrinus’s passage in 2030 was not very remarkable. They had firm snow at the popular Kicking Horse ski hill above Golden until early April, and good spring skiing until early May, an extra couple of weeks. The following winter was a little cooler and a little longer with snow still on the ground in town until mid-May, and later up on the bench. Neither Tom nor Trish wanted to leave their outdoor mountain lifestyle behind. Tom was confident that they could handle the cold and was keen to stay. They had decided it would be easier to hunker down in the cabin than in their Golden home. It was a smaller area to heat, with ample no-cost fuel for the woodstove, and ready access to hunting and fishing for food. So, the next winter they stayed up at the cabin, coming down once a month for supplies, social occasions and church. Tom had installed a satellite antenna and a twelve-volt battery with a stationary bicycle charging system in the basement. They now had the Internet for homeschooling, which Trish firmly enforced. By late winter the road down to Golden had become too snow-clogged and icy to attempt a drive into town until late June.
The couple expected that they would eventually have to pull up stakes and move either to Calgary or to the south. They had taken the precaution of filing an application to immigrate to New Zealand, and with their skill sets had been granted deferred entry visas for 2038. They hoped to be able to stay put until then and avoid uprooting the family twice. With overnight temperatures now plummeting to thirty degrees Fahrenheit or colder, Tom was beginning to have second thoughts. The cabin was certainly warm enough, though he was rising twice in the night to stoke the stove. They were consuming firewood at a rapid pace, but there was lots more waiting to be sawed and split, with Art a willing helper. Yet how much colder could it get? Of greater concern, what would they do if one of them got hurt?
Tom was mulling over this dilemma as he reached the lakeshore and turned onto the last short leg of the trail, looking forward to a warm cup of tea, or maybe something a little stronger. Although his mind had wandered a bit, he remained alert to his surroundings. Suddenly Beast let out a series of growls and short barks and bounded out in front of him on the trail, peering through the firs down toward the lake. A moment later Tom spotted a small group about a quarter mile out on the frozen lake and coming toward the cabin. He gave Beast the “go home” command and sprinted after him as quickly as his snowshoes and the snowy trail would permit.
The visitors they were about to have were likely harmless. There were a few other cabins on the lake and occasionally one of the other owners would skidoo in from Golden for the weekend, though it had been quite a while this winter since any of them had. He knew there was one other family wintering in a cabin on the far side of the lake and they had occasionally hailed each other in the distance, but there hadn’t been a convenient opportunity for any social interaction. Maybe this was a social visit, but it was late in the day for such, and Tom wanted to be prepared for other possibilities.
Tom reached the cabin with a few minutes to spare. Beast was down on the dock, barking constantly at the approaching group. The rest of the family were up on the deck outside the main room of the cabin, and Trish had a pair of binoculars out.
“Tom,” she said, “it looks like two adults and two children.”
“All right,” he replied, “I think it would be best if you all went inside while I find out what this is about. Let’s have some hot tea ready to go.”
The group of four reached the shoreline in front of Tom and stopped. The two adults removed their parka hoods and balaclavas while the children remained behind them. One adult was an older man and the other a young woman, probably close to Trish’s age.
The man spoke. “Hello,” he said, “I apologize for dropping in unannounced like this late in the day, but we are in a difficult spot and we need help.”
Tom replied “Is it an emergency? Is someone injured or ill?”
“No,” the man said, “it is not that immediately dire, but we are backed into a corner. My name is George McCormack and this is my daughter-in-law, Melissa, and those are Melissa’s two daughters.”
“If it isn’t an urgent matter, then why don’t we all go inside and warm up a bit while you explain your difficulty? My name is Tom Svenson and my wife Trish is inside with our three children. I think I recognize you, George, from around town.”
Soon the adults were all seated comfortably in the snug living room of the small cabin, and the five children were up in the loft sipping hot chocolate and chattering away. Melissa’s two daughters were aged sixteen and twelve. The twelve-year-old was between the ages of the Svenson’s two girls. The sixteen-year-old, named Nancy, was an attractive girl with long blond hair and elfin facial features. Tom couldn’t help but note Arthur’s sharp intake of breath as her parka and toque came off. Trish had surreptitiously slipped another pound of venison stewing meat into the pot bubbling on the woodstove, along with four more potatoes and a couple of onions. George began to explain their situation.
The McCormacks were in serious trouble. George’s son had passed away in a car accident several years ago and his wife even before that. He and Melissa were making a go of it in Golden and doing their best to raise the two girls. Melissa was a school teacher with a steady income, George a retired locomotive maintenance foreman with a good pension. For similar reasons to the Svensons they had decided to den up for the winter at George’s cottage at the far end of the lake. Things had been going reasonably well until about three weeks ago. Then calamity struck. First, their skidoo, which George had been relying on to make occasional runs down to Golden, had broken down, followed not long after by his chainsaw seizing up.
George had tried to replenish their food supply by spending more time hunting, but he hadn’t been able to take a deer and they were nearing the en
d of their supplies, even with tight rationing. He had also tried to keep up with their consumption of stovewood using a Swede saw, often working well into the night. With the increasingly cold days and even colder nights, he had not been able to do it.
For the last few days they had been burning just enough wood to keep their cabin above the freezing point and wearing their parkas and mitts inside. Even so, George was exhausted and they were down to burning small branches that Melissa and the girls could scrounge from under the deep snow. George finished the story and slumped down, a beaten man.
“I realize now how foolish I was to bring my family here. I look at all the firewood that I saw stacked up around your place as we walked up, and curse myself for how poorly prepared I was. I have tried to deny it for the last week, my pride insisting that I could find a way, but there isn’t a way. My pride is gone. My family will freeze or starve to death unless you can help us. Could I buy some food from you? Do you have a skidoo? We could pay you for some stovewood if we could haul it across the lake?” As he finished, Melissa consoled her weeping father-in-law.
“He did the best he could for us,” she said.
Tom looked across at Trish. He knew they had ample food, but sharing it with this family would cut their safety margin nearly in half, potentially risking the safety of his own family. Yet there was no doubt in his mind what they should do, and he knew Trish would feel the same, as her slight nod confirmed. They were firm followers of Christ’s teaching and knew his clear message of charity, as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter twenty-five, verses thirty-four to forty, but they had never expected their beliefs to be put to the test in such a way.
Tom swallowed to get his own emotions under control and then said, “George, you have been a hero and a pillar of strength for your family. You’ve had some bad luck and that can happen to anyone. You’ve done absolutely the right thing to come here this afternoon. I have a better idea than selling you food and wood, which I would gladly do if we had an effective way to get it across the lake, but we don’t. I could really use another man with your kind of drive and toughness around here; and Melissa, if we’d known there was a teacher in the neighborhood, we’d have sought you out much sooner. So, what we’re going to do is move you all in here with us. You will be warm and well-fed, starting with dinner in a few minutes, and you’ll all contribute your own skills and efforts to our little community.”
It would be a tight fit for nine of them in the cabin, but it was workable. The four young girls would easily all fit in the loft, which had three double beds. Arthur would move out of the second bedroom and he and George would sleep in the living room, which had two couches. Melissa would have a room to herself.
Tears of relief and thankfulness ran down both George’s and Melissa’s faces. Life came back into George’s eyes and posture. He said, “I’ll do anything you need to earn our keep.”
From up above they heard, “So is it true, Grandpa? Are we really going to have a sleepover like Nancy and Arthur say we are?”
The adults all began to laugh, having realized firstly that the background chatter from the loft had been absent for several minutes as the children eavesdropped on the living room conversation. Secondly, the children had figured out where this was all going well before the adults had.
Tom had no doubts about his decision to open his home to this family in need. If he had, they would have been quashed by the smile that shone on his wife’s face when their eyes met as the nine of them sung grace around the dinner table minutes later.
Outside the cabin it was now fully dark and the reading on the thermometer visible from the kitchen window was falling steadily. Inside, the three propane gas lights were lit, the curtains closed on the two large picture windows overlooking the lake, and Arthur was demonstrating to Nancy the proper technique for feeding another log into the woodstove as Trish began ladling out large steaming bowls of venison stew.
Chapter 31
May 2033
Lake and Sonoma Counties, Northern California
Peter Poplinski was cruising south on State Route 175, just past Cobb, with four other members of the club behind him. They were dressed in casual clothes rather than club uniforms, in keeping with Peter’s strategy of maintaining a low profile. It was nearly eight thirty on a sunny but cool May morning, about fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit, which was still chilly enough on a cycle to need a heavy jacket and gloves. The bikers had been on the road for almost an hour.
Peter was feeling good about the club’s situation. Although they were under no particular law enforcement pressure, he had decided to relocate their main base from their Idaho farmhouse to their backup base, in the hills above Clear Lake, California, the summer before. Central Idaho was still livable but tending toward the cold side, and the California base, though definitely also experiencing colder winters, was a more comfortable location. The majority of the club’s members were now housed in a newly constructed hunting lodge on six hundred acres of bush and trails, including a small private lake. Peter had left a small garrison and one of his lieutenants back in Idaho to handle their drug distribution business. He would rotate a new crew in over the summer.
Today’s mission was a combination of reconnaissance and recreation. Peter liked to have a thorough understanding of the general area around their base, and he liked to see it for himself. It was also good sense to give some of the guys an opportunity to spread their wings a little. Peter was planning a 120-mile circuit today, which he had laid out on a state road map. He had no particular objective. They would just keep their eyes open and stay out of trouble, though he was confident that five of them were more than enough to handle any trouble they might encounter short of a patrol from the local club on whose territory they were encroaching.
The boys were all seasoned and hardened players and all were well armed with untraceable handguns and, in some cases including Peter himself, a backup gun; plus they had a couple of buckshot-loaded, sawed-off twelve-gauge automatic shotguns hidden in saddlebags.
The group turned off the highway onto the Socrates Mine Road, heading now roughly west, though it was a hilly, twisty road threading its way through the Mayacamas Mountains, and not paved. They slowed down considerably to keep their bikes under control. Peter thought it would take them a good half an hour to cover the eight miles over to Geysers Road via Mine Road, Dillingham Road and then Big Sulphur Creek Road and Geysers Resort Road. Then they would decide whether to continue west on Geysers Road and pick up U.S. Route 101 at Cloverdale, or turn south and pick it up at Geyserville, making for a little longer circuit.
Another group of four were heading north from Santa Rosa, nearing Cloverdale on U.S. Route 101, in a two-vehicle convoy. Carlos and Helen were in front in Carlos’s half-ton truck with four stubby white-water kayaks lashed down in the truck bed. John Forsythe was riding behind with Fiona in her Jeep. Following their victory in the California/Oregon Spring Classic Adventure Race five years before, the four had become even closer friends than before.
Not much had changed in the lives of the four Santa Rosa police officers since the passage of Peregrinus. Winters were colder and longer, summers cooler and shorter, but there was still lots of opportunity for their favorite outdoor fitness pursuits, which they more often than not did together. They continued to compete in the occasional adventure race and were pretty well established as the team to beat in Northern California. The two women had talked the men into taking on marathoning. In turn John and Carlos had introduced Helen and Fiona to white-water creeking. The women had taken to the wet and wild sport with interest and enthusiasm. After mastering a series of progressively more challenging routes, they were now a close match for the men in guiding their maneuverable little boats down the wild creeks of Northern California. The same could not be said of the level of proficiency achieved by the men at marathoning.
John and Carlos had been planning today’s white-water run in Little Sulphur Creek for several years. It was the most diff
icult in Northern California at eleven miles of mostly Class V white water. It was a steep, technical course with eight portages around unrunnable sections, taking a good ten hours and requiring a high level of skill and stamina. There was only one possible intermediate take-out point along the route as the creek runs far away from any roads most of the time from put-in at a little bridge on Geysers Road to take-out where the Little Sulphur Creek runs into Big Sulphur Creek, adjacent to another section of Geysers Road.
John and Carlos had considered taking on Little Sulphur Creek together several years ago, but, even though they were risk-takers, they decided that they needed four boats to have sufficient backup if something went wrong. Then, when Helen and Fiona began challenging the sport, the two tactical team officers decided to postpone the Little Sulphur until their teammates were sufficiently skilled. Today was the day. All four were extremely fit and well-polished on their technical skills. They were all either in the gym or doing roadwork six days out of seven, and the men also continued to hone their karate skills, always striving to advance to a higher level of dan black belt.
The plan for the day was to drop off the jeep at their take-out point on Geysers Road about five miles east of Cloverdale. Then the four of them would all continue in Carlos’s truck further east and then south on Geysers Road to the Little Sulphur Creek south branch bridge. There they would park the truck on the shoulder and unload the kayaks, hoping to be on the water by nine o’clock in the morning and finished by seven o’clock at night. Things were on plan and on schedule as they crossed the north branch of Little Sulphur Creek heading south.
Just before the abandoned hamlet of Mercuryville, they passed a lithe young woman running along the side of the road headed in the same direction, ponytail bouncing up and down in time with her stride. Carlos slowed the truck and gave her a wide berth. John, riding in the back behind Carlos couldn’t help but look closely at the shapely girl as they passed her. She was concentrating on foot placement and didn’t even glance at the truck.
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