Chapter 10: Cort
Deep Creek Lake, Western Maryland
December 14, 2012
There were two things that were causing Cort to be on edge on the drive to Cumberland. The first was he was driving Annalise’s car. In the history of them dating Annalise’s car had been her baby and as such, she had never let him drive it. One of the things she often joked about was the fact that she missed her calling as a precision driver in a heist team, and her car showed it. It was tricked out to provide the most capable handling at high speeds including tightened steering and a turbo on the engine. In truth, he had never driven a car like Annalise’s as he preferred safe, comfortable and most of all, affordable. He didn’t know how much she had spent on her car, but it he imagined it was more than he was willing to spend, or really anyone should spend. A car was to get you from point A to point B with minimal fuss. There was no need for all the bells and whistles.
The second part that unnerved him was the fact that Katy was sitting next to him. There wasn’t anything she was overtly doing to put him on edge but it felt strange, being that this was Annalise’s car. It smelled like her, a mix of cotton candy and cigarette smoke that had haunted him in his dreams. There were personal touches, like the football that hung from her rearview mirror and the little alien figurines that were stuck on her dash. He had bought those for her on one of their vacations out of a 25 cent machine and they had stuck them up there almost immediately. It seemed bittersweet that she had never removed them, and he wondered why should would keep such a permanent reminder of him in something that was so important to her.
Katy reached for one of them, poking it with her manicured finger. “I wonder where she got these?”
Cort inhaled deeply, trying to focus on the road. “Probably one of those 25 cent machines you see outside grocery stores,” he responded, hoping Katy wouldn’t put the pieces of the puzzle together in her head. He didn’t think he had ever bought her something from a machine, so she would have no way of knowing it was a habit of his. Hopefully.
Katy relaxed and looked out the window at the trees as they passed by. “They’re cheesy. Why would you waste money on something like that? Who carries change around these days anyway?”
Cort didn’t respond, instead letting his mind wander back to the days that he and Annalise were dating. He had never carried change, probably something that Katy thought made them a good pair. The truth was, Annalise had always been prepared for his random adventures into cheap toy machines. It didn’t matter what store they stopped at, in her pocket, in her car, in her purse, she would always manage to pull out those two magical quarters for him to indulge. It was one of the things he had always adored about Annalise. She had let his childish side take over and never judged him. She had always just smiled as if she was in on some kind of secret that was only between them as she handed him the quarters.
Katy would never be that kind of girlfriend, but then again Katy was never supposed to be his girlfriend. Katy was supposed to be a one night stand. His baser instincts to get laid had eventually caved under the pressure of her texts and calls though and eventually she had become a multiple night stand. The multiple night stand that just happened to be at his house that morning. He supposed in a way it might have been the hands of fate that caused him to dial her number that night, it was entirely possible he saved her life by having her spend the night given the current state of her apartment complex. He just didn’t understand why she had come back to him instead of running to her family and friends.
Pulling into Cumberland was like coming into a ghost town. The streets which should have had people teeming on them doing last minute Christmas shopping were empty. All the storefronts had big signs that read closed on them. There were no cars, or any sign of life. Cort could feel his own anxiety level rising even more. Even with the power out there should be people out. Turning the corner onto the main road through Cumberland he saw a police officer standing in front of a cruiser which was blocking his way.
“There’s a cop!” Katy exclaimed pointing at the car. “We can ask him what’s going on.”
Cort rolled his eyes at her excited outburst. Somehow Katy had the ability to annoy him with everything she said since they had left Ellicott City. Maybe it was because everything she said was so obvious, and he was hoping eventually she would discover a deeper layer in the world around her. He understood on some level that Katy just wasn’t built that way, so he suppressed the urge to say what he was thinking and instead slowed the car to halt in front of the officer’s car, and stepped one foot out, leaning on the open door.
“Excuse me sir, can you tell me what’s going on?”
The officer had been staring at their car with a dazed look in his eyes, and Cort realized his voice had brought him out of a trancelike state. “Son, you can’t be here,” the officer responded finally, pointing at the car. “You best get in your car and head back to wherever you came from. Haven’t you heard what’s going on?”
Cort shook his head, noticing that the officer looked like hell. His eyes were bloodshot, and his body looked weary like he had come to work off a three day coke binge. Things were obviously worse than they had initially thought, and he wondered how none of them had noticed on the drive out to Deep Creek. “No, my friends and I, we just got to our vacation home last night,” he lied. “There was no power and we hadn’t been watching the news.”
The cop sighed, taking off his hat and running his hands through his silver hair. “Y’all should probably get back there then, the word from the President is to stay in your house until they figure out what’s going on. Essential personnel on the roads only.”
Katy stepped out of the car, looking at the cop. She had pulled down her shirt a little to reveal some additional cleavage and was twirling her hair around her finger. “Until they figure out what’s going on?” she asked sweetly, leaning up against the door of the car. Cort was impressed by the way she maneuvered herself to get more information out of the man almost effortlessly.
The officer looked Katy up and down, oblivious to the assets which she was trying so hard to display, and continued to run his hands through his hair. Cort noticed that the hair was actually coming out in small chunks and he wondered how stressed the officer was before the events of yesterday. “Look kids, I don’t know. There’s something goin’ on out there and until the powers that be figure it all out you better stay inside.”
Cort opened his mouth to ask additional questions and the officer interrupted him. “You deaf boy? Go home! Skedaddle!” he barked, reaching for his weapon. Cort slowly sat back down in the car and stared at the officer, who had his weapon drawn and pointed directly at them. He had never had a police officer pull a weapon on him before, and certainly not for asking questions. Things must be bad. Things must be really bad. He looked over to the passenger seat to see Katy had already scrambled back in the car and had her seatbelt on. Putting the car in gear, he quickly backed up from the officer who relaxed a little upon seeing the car move, and appeared to start scratching something in on his chest and wavering against the car.
Katy was leaning forward on the dash watching his behavior. “He looks sick Cort,” she said slowly. He knew she was asking him if they should stop and help the officer. He did look like he was wasn’t going to last out there much longer. Cort wasn’t in the habit of sticking around after people who pulled guns on him though.
“He told us to go Katy, so we’re gonna go,” Cort said as he rounded the corner back onto the highway. The engine rumbled, accelerating the car quickly down the highway. He silently thought that he was glad they had Annalise’s car instead of his because of the speed with which he could get away from Cumberland as fast as possible. “If someone reaches for a gun while I’m talking to them it’s probably not a reason to stay.”
Katy braced herself against the door watching the speedometer climb as Cort continued towards the house. “We didn’t find out anything though, what about the power?”
/> Cort let go of the wheel with one hand reaching over to squeeze Katy’s free hand. He could hear the apprehension in her voice and understood how difficult this situation had to be for her. She hadn’t been preparing for this moment her entire adult life like he had. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll keep to the plan.”
Katy’s hand wasn’t squeezing his back, instead she was staring at the road in front of them with a resignation that he had never seen in her before. She looked like a person who had lost their way and was unsure of how they would get back. He supposed, in a way, they all were.
“I’ll figure it out Katy,” he repeated.
His voice broke her out of the vacant state she was in with a jolt, and from the corner of his eye he could see her looking at him. “What if you don’t?”
Cort pressed down on the pedal to make the engine speed up towards the house. He would talk to everyone about it. They would figure it out as a team. They had to. Survival was the name of the game right now and that was what he intended to do.
Part II
The Storm
“Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.”
Alice M Swaim
Chapter 11: Annalise
Deep Creek Lake, Western Maryland
December 16, 2012
It had been two days since Cort had arrived from Cumberland and discussed the events of the trip. He had done so in a factual manner, calm and collected, but the news had still left the entire group in a stunned silence. Each person sitting around the table and had retreated into their own heads while they digested Cort’s information. For Annalise, she was thinking about Meredith and wondering if she had made it to Tennesse. That drive was significantly longer than the one Annalise made and she was concerned she got stopped somewhere. Meredith could be somewhere she didn’t know anyone, holed up unable to leave. Annalise mentally chided herself for her thoughts. Since it didn’t look like communications or power would be coming up anytime soon and she wasn’t likely to be able to get an answer to those questions, and worrying wouldn’t do anyone here any good.
Katy’s emotions had been on the surface for everyone to see, which was disconcerting as well. For the first time since they had arrived, Annalise saw her as a person instead of something that was standing in her way. The trip had obviously scared Katy by the way her eyes stared at the table, and her hands clenched tightly in her lap. After explaining everything, Cort had immediately dismissed her towards their bedroom leaving Annalise, Kevin, Jake and Jenna to come up with a plan. After hours of debate, some of it fairly heated, the decision had been to stick with the original plan. They would stay at the house until they heard something else. In a week or two they would make another trip to Cumberland to see if there was any movement from the government if the power didn’t come back on.
Looking back on the conversation, there was something that seemed not quite right about the whole story though. When Cort had been talking about the officer they encountered, he seemed to be holding something back. His eyes had darted away from everyone at the table, and his voice had almost cracked. There was something, maybe just a suspicion that he wasn’t telling the group and Annalise filed that information away in the recesses of her mind to ask him about later.
That night, Katy finally emerged from the bedroom and they told her the plan they had come up with. She seemed to go along with it, and in the past two days everyone in the house had fallen into a comfortable routine. They scouted every two hours, and they took turns cooking and cleaning. For the most part, everyone managed to give other people space during the day, which Annalise deemed a necessity. If they didn’t, they would probably be at each others throats by the end of a week. That was one of the reasons why Annalise was out on the dock at seven-o-clock in the morning. She needed time to think about what her next move was, independent of the group.
It wasn’t that she was thinking about leaving - quite the opposite actually. In the past two days she had found a peace out here that she rarely felt in her life. She just needed to evaluate and control her feelings for Cort, which was a task easier said than done. Everything about being out here with him screamed and tugged at her emotions. She wanted him, and she wanted him by her side. It frustrated her that since the first morning, when they had talked at the sliding glass doors, she hadn’t had any alone time with Cort. In fact, she didn’t think anyone in the group had over the past two days. Katy had been attached at his hip like a parasite.
Rationally she could understand why Katy was attached to him. Katy had been scared by whatever happened on that trip that Cort wasn’t telling them. She was scared, and alone. Sure, there were other people, but Katy didn’t know them like Annalise did. She was an outsider. The only person who was really making an effort to get to know Katy was Kevin, and that was largely because that was the type of person he was. He was nice to everyone. Cort was the only person here Katy actually knew, and she was clinging to him. Logically she could understand that, in fact she could actually relate because it wasn’t like Jake, Kevin or Jenna were her best friends either.
That’s one of the reasons why this situation was so hard. Logically, she understood Katy, but emotionally all she felt was jealousy and anger. Every time she saw Katy run her fingers through his hair, or hold his hand while they sat in the living room, Annalise would feel rage swell inside her heart. Katy should have never come. It should be her holding Cort’s hand, and her running her fingers through his hair. This was their survival plan, and Katy was the interloper who managed to steal her place when she wasn’t looking.
The worst part was at night though. Her and Cort had ended up getting rooms right across from each other, and she spent the last two nights staring at her door and thinking about the fact that they were tangled up in the sheets together. Her treacherous brain worked feverishly to imagine that every creak, cough, or noise that came from the room was Cort and Katy in the throes of passion. Every night when she finally managed to fall asleep the thoughts assailed her in her dreams, turning them into nightmares.
So when she finally woke in the mornings, she found herself out on the dock trying to sort through her thoughts and jealousy to find a way to make it bearable. She would get everything under control, and make herself able to get through another day. It was a sort of torture, knowing what would happen the following night, but it was important she managed to maintain a leveled appearance. The one thing she wanted to avoid was letting her emotions bottle up until they came out in a fit of rage directed at the wrong person, or causing her to run away. It had taken her no time to admit to herself that Cort was her motivation in staying, and now that she had, she wasn’t giving up.
It didn’t escape her that she was in a situation that she might be considered a ‘homewrecker’. In fact, the thought managed to sneak up on her every morning while she controlled her anger, adding an extra layer of guilt. She knew Katy was here with Cort now and it wasn’t like she could just go confess her feelings to him. Even if he reciprocated her feelings there would be nothing that could be done. Katy was too fragile right now, and that is what Cort would argue. The situation wouldn’t change, so it was better to stay silent. In her mind, this was a short battle in a longer war towards getting Cort back at her side where he rightfully belonged. All she had to do was deal with her emotions internally until they figured out what was going on. Katy would eventually leave the group and she would have Cort by her side.
She laid back on the end of the dock and closed her eyes. Maybe they would still be here this summer and they could spend time skinny dipping together in the lake under the moonlight. When they had talked about their plans before they had jokingly talked about the sex they would be able to have when they didn’t have to worry about work or the tedious things in life. Now that the time was here she wanted to make those nights and days of ecstasy in his arms occur. Thinking about all the things she wanted to do with Cort and the future she wanted them to have,
she didn’t notice the sound of four paws coming up on her and was surprised when she felt something cold and wet nudge her cheek. She shot up from her position laying on the dock and looked towards the side she had felt the wetness.
A wolf. Holy shit, a wolf was standing right in front of her. They hadn’t seen any on their scouting missions but that didn’t mean they weren’t out here. She frozen, staring at the wolf in it’s eyes. She would win this show down.
The wolf nudged her hand, twisting its neck in a direction which made her hand make a petting motion against it’s head.
Not a wolf. Wolves don’t let you pet them, and wolves are not this well groomed. Running her hand slowly over it’s head, she felt for a collar. Not finding one, she put her other hand on it’s back feeling for it’s ribs. It was a husky, a beautiful black and white husky with blue eyes, no collar and apparently, no food judging by the emancipation she felt on it’s rib cage.
“What’s your name?” she asked out loud, getting to her knees.
The dog’s tail started wagging and it’s front paws clawed at the ground in front of Annalise’s knees. It was obviously domesticated and had some sort of human interaction which caused the dog to think it was about to either get a treat or start playing a game. Smiling, she picked up a twig near her and threw it to see if it would fetch.
The dog just sat in front of her, wagging it’s tail.
Laughing, she rubbed it’s head again. Okay, so fetch was out of the question. What other tricks could dogs typically do? It was already sitting… moving her hand out in front of the dog, she said in a firm voice, “Shake!”
The dog obeyed, placing it’s paw in her hand. She shook it firmly and patted the dog’s head again. Looking around, she searched the edge of the woods and the lake for anyone the dog might belong to. Not finding anyone, she stood up and brushed off her knees. “Let’s see if you can follow,” she said at the dog and patted the side of her leg indicating it should follow her. “If you can, you might get some food.”
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