A. R. Shaw's Apocalyptic Sampler: Stories of hope when humanity is at its worst

by A. R. Shaw

  Ennis went back inside, and Tala followed him in to check on dinner. The days were short this time of year, and Graham could already see the light fading from the bitterly cold sky. One by one, the kids came in, having succeeded in making their snowman. They climbed the steps with rosy cheeks and drenched with melting snow. They knew the drill at the door by now, and Tala didn’t have to mention it to them again: boots in a row and all.

  Having finally run off pent-up energy, they welcomed the warm minestrone soup Tala put together along with her now famous warm biscuits. She even made soft molasses cookies, surprising them all after dinner. Though the chickens did not produce many eggs this time of year, they managed to get two before they ceased laying for the winter. Tala decided to use eggs in baking so they could all enjoy them together.

  “Bang, let’s you and I go feed the chickens and make sure they’re put up tight for the night,” Graham said.

  They rounded up the chickens and took them their warmed brick. They also fed them what few scraps and biscuits Tala saved for them. They kept fresh water and bedding for the birds, and hoped eggs would be plentiful in the spring with higher temperatures and more daylight.

  The next day brought a surprise warming trend, and the snow turned to a soupy melting mess outside. Tala threatened to have everyone start lining their boots up outside now, since she was constantly wiping up the melting snow in the cabin.

  For the lack of anything better to do and a good case of cabin fever, Graham and the boys began shoveling a trail through the melting mess to both the lake side and driveway entrances, so that when the slush refroze, they would at least have access to each.

  The snowman that the kids had built leaned at an angle now. They all gazed at it sadly, knowing its hours were numbered. After a while, the sun beamed down on them, warming their shoulders through heavy jackets. They began to sweat with the work, feeling invigorated with each heft of the shovel.

  The girls watched them from the porch. Since the guys were finished with the driveway side, Tala and the twins decided to take a walk. They waved to the guys as they made their way up the lane. Graham watched them and thought the only thing abnormal about the bucolic scene was seeing that all three were armed.

  He’d warned them about the wolves, and they promised to return in twenty minutes, timing it to ten minutes up the road and ten back. He relented and let them go, knowing they must be bored having stayed inside too long. He would have gone with them, but really wanted to help the boys finish the almost complete task of trail clearing.

  Trudging through the melting snow helped the women work their leg muscles. It was a joy to breathe the fresh air and get away from the cabin for a short while.

  Graham heard the engine and the shots at the same time. A chill ran up his spine before he even heard the screams. He grabbed his rifle and ran through the forest to where he thought Tala and the girls might be, jumping over fallen logs carelessly as fast as his might would carry him.

  Only eight minutes out, the dread fell over him. The intruders were coming for them by land, not lake. The girls ran as fast as they could, but with sinister intentions and stronger bodies, the intruders would win. Marcy raced for the tree line with Tala and Macy right behind. They might have made it had Macy not tripped over a chunk of ice. One of the intruders grabbed her easily. Then Tala turned and pulled on the girl, clenching Macy as the intruder yanked Macy’s pistol from her chest harness and aimed it at Macy’s temple.

  “Let her go!” Tala screamed.

  “We just want one of you, darlin’,” he said, making her skin crawl.

  He had his thick fat fingers entwined in Macy’s hair.

  “She’s a child. Take me,” Tala said, lowering her rifle.

  “No, Tala!” Macy screamed.

  The man pushed the girl down hard into the road in time to grab Tala harshly before she could fight back. Tala dropped her weapon to Macy’s side as he dragged her to their jeep. The intruders planned a quick getaway. Having already heard a vehicle breaking the silence, they made their escape.

  Their mission was simple: to pick up one of the three and get back to camp without any trouble. They didn’t care which, but the woman would be better than one of those scrawny girls. They needed someone to cook and clean for them and to take care of their “other needs,” as they had put it between themselves.

  “No!” Macy screamed again.

  “Run, Macy!” Tala cried out before her captor covered her mouth with one hand and pulled her onto him in the passenger’s seat of their jeep, which then sped away.

  Macy did run. She grabbed the extra rifle and took off following the jeep as far as she could when she heard Graham behind her, yelling, with Marcy following him.

  He knew he’d failed. He wanted to shoot at the vehicle speeding away in the distance but couldn’t risk hitting Tala. The next thing he knew, Mark pulled up, driving the truck from the opposite direction, “Get in,” Mark yelled when he pulled up to Graham and the girls.

  “No, you get out,” Graham said. The boy began to protest, and Graham reached in and yanked him out of the driver’s seat.

  “I need you here,” Graham said, throwing the truck into gear and taking off after Tala.

  “Come on, he’s right. Let’s get back,” Mark said. Both girls were crying, and he embraced them, hurrying them back to the cabin.

  44

  A Walk in the Snow

  Reuben switched from one camera to another. One minute all was well, the next it was not. The women went for a walk and the guys were working outside, maintaining trails. Ennis did what old men do on cold winter days; he napped. The scene was like something out of Little Women, which Reuben had read to his daughters.

  After he had seen the girls leave on the north camera, he watched as they faded into the distance. He was happy for them to get some fresh air for a change. The south side camera showed the guys working and joking together.

  Then he heard the shots on the audio and looked at the screens frantically to find where it had come from. The boys stood momentarily frozen, but Graham had already sped off toward the sound.

  “Something’s up,” Reuben said.

  He started switching through cameras and found Mark running into the cabin and retrieving keys.

  Reuben radioed Dalton, “The girls and Graham are off camera to the north. It looks like Mark’s going for a drive, speeding north in the truck.”

  “Coming in,” Dalton said.

  Reuben turned up the volume when Bang and Sheriff stormed into the cabin and Bang called for Ennis.

  “What’s up, lad?” Ennis asked.

  “Someone’s shooting. Tala and the twins went for a walk. Graham ran after them, and then Mark drove the truck. I don’t know where Graham is,” Bang said, clearly scared.

  Ennis patted the boy, knowing he and Graham had a special bond. To reassure him, he said, “Graham will be all right. I’m sure whatever it is, he’ll be right back.”

  Bang’s lower lip trembled. “You come warm up by the fire, boy,” Ennis said. You’re too cold.”

  “No! We need to help them!” Bang urged.

  “Sounds like Mark has it all under control. I think we should stay here. If everyone goes off, no one will be watching the cabin and I know Graham would want you to keep an eye on it. I can’t do it all by myself anymore,” Ennis said, hoping that would keep the boy from worrying.

  They heard footsteps running through the snow and coming to the door, so Ennis grabbed his shotgun and peered out the window before he opened the door. He saw the twins with Mark, so he let them in.

  “What’s going on, son?” Ennis asked Mark.

  “The intruders from the lake took Tala!”

  The girls were sniffling, and now that Bang knew he blubbered too. “Where’s Graham?”

  “He went after them. He wouldn’t let me go with him. He said he needed me here.” Ennis could see that the teenager felt like he’d somehow failed Graham.

  Ennis was at a lo
ss in a situation like this. He knew there was nothing he could do to help Graham. The only thing he could think of was to try to keep the children calm and stop them from doing something stupid.

  “Graham’s right,” he said to Mark, “you need to be here. I can’t take care of them on my own. I’m an old man. Graham can take care of himself. He’ll get Tala and come back, don’t you all worry. You girls come dry off by the fire. Warm up your hands. You’re shivering.”

  The girls were still sniffling. Ennis could see that Mark’s internal wheels were spinning, and he tried to comfort him. “Son, there’s nothing you can do but wait. Have faith in Graham; he’s a smart man.”

  “Are they going to hurt Tala?” Bang asked.

  Macy was the first to snap out of it. Kneeling, she hugged the little guy. “I don’t know. Hopefully Graham will get her back. She saved me,” Macy said, and instead of comforting Bang, she burst into tears again.

  He hugged her back and said, “Don’t cry, Macy. Graham won’t let them hurt Tala. He loves her. He kisses her.”

  Ennis looked at the back of Macy’s bent head as she wept on the little boy’s shoulder. Blood dripped down her back and stained her long blond hair. Ennis pointed, and Mark jumped forward.

  “Macy, you’re hurt,” he said, reaching for her.

  She stood up too fast and swayed, her knees buckling, tilting her dangerously toward the woodstove. Mark pulled her away from the fire, and half carried her to the kitchen table, where he propped her up on a chair. Marcy took off her coat to search for the source of the blood. They found a handful of hair falling away as they searched her head. A part of her scalp was ripped up, with rivulets of blood pooling into a stream down to the floor.

  “Ennis! What should we do?” Marcy cried as she snatched a clean dish towel and placed it against her sister’s head. Ennis helped lay Macy across Mark’s knees, then cut away the hair still hanging on the tab of torn scalp. “Those sons of bitches! Press down on that bleeding spot again,” he instructed Marcy.

  Bang pulled off Macy’s wet boots. Marcy wiped away the blood and pressed on the wound again, holding it still.

  Macy tried to sit up. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s happening?”

  “You have a cut on your head,” Marcy said. “We’re just trying to stop the bleeding. Then we’ll put some ointment on it and give you something for the pain.”

  Hearing this as he returned with the new first aid kit from the preppers, Ennis thought she sounded a lot like Tala would have in the same circumstances. “He has to get that woman back safe,” he muttered, and Mark nodded.

  The men must be real brutes to have pulled Macy so hard by the hair that they had yanked out a fistful of her lovely curls and hurt her so badly. It only made Ennis more worried for Tala’s safety.

  “I want to kill them.” Mark’s low comment sounded like a growl. “How could anyone hurt a girl like that?”

  “There are plenty of bad people in the world, still, I guess,” Ennis said as he handed Marcy a tube of antibiotic cream. When she’d applied that, he passed her a sterile dressing and some short strips of tape. His police first aid training was coming back, but his hands weren’t steady enough for this kind of work.

  “It’s okay, Macy, I’m sure Graham will get Tala back and make those guys pay,” Mark said as he and Ennis helped Macy up and steadied her. They walked her to the front room and Bang took her a cup of cocoa, as Tala would have done.

  “The only thing we can do now is sit and wait,” Ennis said, dragging his chair closer to the door with his rifle ready, just in case.

  Mark checked the monitors, but he knew the intruders were long gone by now. “Ennis, what if I were to take the other truck and go see if I can help Graham?” Mark whispered.

  Ennis didn’t want to tell the young man what to do. He just said, “If you did and something was to happen to you, what would become of these guys?” Ennis said as he pointed to the three. “Graham wanted you to stay here for a reason, Mark.”

  “You’re right, I know. I just want to do something. I hate not knowing,” Mark said in frustration.

  “You are doing something. You’re keeping them safe. He needs you to do that,” Ennis said, then added, “I’m an old man. I can’t chase bad guys. I can only watch the door.”

  Mark paced in front of the woodstove with his hands braced behind his head.

  Bang sat down by Sheriff on the floor and picked up one of the many sticks he was carving into arrows after Ennis showed him how it was done.

  “That’s a good idea, Bang,” Mark said, and continued to work on his own since they might need them.

  45

  A Plan

  “What the hell happened?” Dalton asked Reuben.

  “The girls went for a walk up the drive. Said they’d be back in twenty minutes. They were armed. They went off camera to the north. Everything was fine. The guys were shoveling the south trails and the old man was in the cabin. Shots were fired, and Graham took off through the west forest toward the north drive and off camera. Mark ran in the cabin and grabbed the truck keys and drove—I presume toward the shots. Then the next thing I saw was the twins and Mark return on foot,” Reuben said, taking a breath.

  “In the cabin, they said something about the lake men taking Tala. I figure Graham must have taken the truck from Mark and gone after her. Macy’s injured, but she seems okay,” Reuben said.

  “She get shot?” Dalton asked.

  “No, it looks like the intruders manhandled her a bit, nothing too serious,” Reuben said.

  “So the rest are in the cabin but, as we predicted, the intruders took Tala and now Graham’s in pursuit?” Dalton asked.

  “That’s right. It’s just what we predicted and tried to prevent,” Reuben said.

  “All right, dammit, what can we do?” Dalton was asking himself the question more than Reuben.

  “Logically, we shouldn’t do anything,” Reuben said, then they both looked at the cabin screen, seeing the old man and four anxious kids waiting for news.

  “Did you pull up the tracker?” Dalton asked.

  “Not yet, I thought I’d wait for you. Plus, this is Rick’s department; I’m not fluent in human tracking devices.”

  “Shit, he has three more days in the box,” Dalton said, and then added, “Patch in Clarisse.”

  One moment later, Clarisse rigged in a patch for Rick to walk them through activating the trackers on Tala and Graham. Rick hadn’t a chance to activate them yet, thinking he’d have time once he was sprung from quarantine.

  Three minutes after Rick told them how to activate the tracking, they could track the series of numbers on the screen indicating Tala being sped away, presumably to the intruders’ base camp, while Graham’s icon followed more slowly. Dalton knew Graham would follow the tracks to locate them. At least there would be a trail. But night was descending fast, and it would hinder his progress.

  “Dammit,” Dalton said.

  “What? What’s going on?” Rick demanded to know. His disembodied voice resounded through the tent. “God dammit, what’s happening?” he yelled again when no one responded.

  As news got out about the situation, several of the preppers now hung in the background watching the situation unfold. For once, Rick wasn’t the one in the know, and it drove him crazy.

  “They got Tala, and Graham’s in pursuit,” Dalton said.

  “Kids all right?” Rick asked.

  “Yeah,” Dalton answered.

  “You got to go help him, Dalton. They won’t make it. You know that.”

  “The risk of exposure is way too high at this point,” Reuben interjected.

  “You look at those kids and tell me that,” Rick shouted back to Reuben.

  “I am looking at them, and I’m looking at mine too, Rick. You know the rules, man,” Reuben said.

  “Let me out, I’ll go,” Rick said after a pause.

  “No. Dammit, Rick. No way!” Dalton said.

  “Well, someone�
�s got to go. What’d we do all this for? You’re wasting time!” Rick yelled.

  “I’ll go.” A determined voice spoke from the back and when Dalton looked behind him, he saw Sam already heading for the door.

  Two minutes later, Dalton and Sam were suited up with Reuben’s help. They would intercept Graham and converge on the enemy camp, retrieve Tala, and be on their way. It was that simple—or so they hoped.

  46

  A Violation

  Tala fought the man holding her. They hadn’t slowed since they’d left and drove at breakneck speed along the slushy road in a small jeep. She was terrified, but thought that perhaps if they did crash it might be a better fate than what she knew awaited her.

  Already the man holding her, grabbed her through her jeans and sweater. When she resisted him, he’d punched her from the left so hard that her lip bled freely down her chin. Tala tried to wriggle free from the beefy monster. “Please don’t,” she pleaded, but it was no use.

  “Don’t let her freeze. Remember, I’m first,” the driver yelled to the bigger man. Tala shivered and cried, but he wouldn’t stop.

  “I think we’re good. No one’s following us,” the driver said and reached one hand under her sweater.

  She knew what was coming and could only take solace in knowing she’d saved Macy from these horrible beasts. Somehow she had to start calculating how she could escape—or kill these bastards. Tala closed her eyes and tried to detach herself from her body, thinking instead of the eagles she loved to watch, soaring over land and sea.

  47

  The Chase

  Graham raced, stopping every now and then to make sure he was on the right path. Thank God the icy snow tracks left an undeniable trail. With so few vehicles these days, he knew this was the right trail to follow and they did indeed go in the direction of the other side of the lake.