by K. M. Fawkes
Using the axe, Brad cut down a couple branches from a nearby birch tree and used them to light a fire in a clearing through which a stream was running. He was pleased to see that the stream contained an abundance of shad and freshwater trout; not having any bait or tackle, he was obliged to catch them with his hands by lunging into the stream as they drifted past.
By the time he had finished, Anna was returning from downstream, where she had been washing her face and arms in the shallow water. They were both shivering violently as they knelt down in front of the fire and prepared to eat their first proper meal in two days.
“You want to hear something weird?” Anna asked. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I used to worry about the earth—about what we were doing to it—but it doesn’t worry me now.”
“How many of us are left, honestly?” Brad asked. “I guess we can’t be sure since we have no idea whether the virus made it overseas. We may never know.”
“We can assume it did. The world was so interconnected, before. They always told us that in the event of a real pandemic it would only take about twenty-four hours for the virus to spread across the world, because of air travel. That might have been what doomed us.”
Brad reflected grimly that this wasn’t the most cheerful of dinner conversations. “So assuming the rest of the world got it as bad as we did, there might only be a couple hundred thousand of us left. Maybe a million, at most.”
“It’ll take thousands of years before the human population returns to its pre-collapse levels,” said Anna glumly. “I don’t know if it ever will.”
“And how is this good news?”
Anna set the half-eaten fish down in her lap. “Because we’re no longer destroying the climate, tearing down natural habitats, driving the animal population to extinction.” Raising her arms over her head, she yawned and popped her back. “I used to think it would take a nuclear war to save the planet.”
Something in the tone of this last remark made Brad uncomfortable, as if she had been quietly hoping for a human extinction event.
“If there’d been a nuclear war, we could have all died,” he replied. “Not just the humans—everything on Earth.”
Anna shrugged. “The planet’s resilient. It would have recovered. We survived—what was it—the Permian extinction that wiped out 98 percent of all life on Earth. I sometimes think a war might have been the best thing that could have happened to us.”
Now, Brad wasn’t just unsettled; he was deeply offended.
Tossing the bones of his fish back into the fire, he said angrily, “You realize when you talk about a war wiping out most of humanity, you’re talking about human beings—me and you, people we cared about. We’re a hell of a lot more important than whatever creature you’re hoping will replace us.”
“I know,” said Anna, not very convincingly. She seemed tired and not entirely present. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
It was the kind of tone she had used before whenever she sensed she had offended Brad and didn’t feel like arguing. This time, though, Brad wasn’t going to let the subject go so easily.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I would prefer that every single person on Earth who had died was still alive today.”
He had thought about this—had thought hard about it—and while he knew the collapse had likely been good for the environment, in the end human life was too precious to be thrown away so casually.
“Humans were made to rule the earth,” he said. “That was our job. And I’m sorry we screwed it up so badly, but we didn’t all deserve to die like that.”
“I don’t know why you’re yelling at me—” said Anna warily.
“I’m not yelling,” he said, “I just want you think before you say crap like that. Being human is a good thing. Civilization was a good thing, even if we didn’t know how to manage it. We would have figured it out; we just needed more time.”
He didn’t get a chance to continue making his case, however, because as he spoke, Anna keeled over where she sat.
Seeing that she had collapsed, Brad rose with a startled cry and ran toward her, oblivious to the scorching heat of the flames. She was still breathing, though she had hit her head hard on the top of a hollowed-out log.
“Anna?” he whispered, slapping her face lightly. “Anna, wake up.”
One good thing about it: her collapse confirmed that she hadn’t been in her right mind when she said all those things. Maybe she hadn’t been getting enough oxygen to her brain, or maybe she hadn’t been getting enough food, or maybe the wound was getting to her; but the Anna he had known before the shooting would never have said those things. Maybe in a few days she would feel better. Maybe, once she had rested and recovered, she would start behaving normally again.
That was assuming he could even get her to wake up. How long had it taken him to revive her the day before? Five minutes, ten at most. But another six minutes passed and she still hadn’t come to; she remained lying flat on her back with eyes closed like someone in a profound sleep.
No longer able to ignore the nagging doubt that he hadn’t cleaned the wound out properly, that an infection might have been silently killing her all day, he dragged Anna’s prostrate body closer to the light of the fire, peeled back the improvised bandage, and examined her thigh.
There was no sign of discoloration or infection, that he could tell. It seemed to be mending properly. So why had she fainted again, and why wasn’t she coming to?
Beyond putting an end to things, as she had implored him to, Brad had one option left.
There was at least one other person in this forest, he knew, because earlier he and Anna had been startled by the sound of gunfire in the woods no more than half a mile distant. Brad could call after that person and hope they heard him, but it would be easier just to fire his one remaining bullet, the one he had been saving for an emergency such as this one.
Perhaps the invisible hunter would recognize the sound as a distress signal and come to their assistance. Brad might not like this person, he might come to regret having summoned him, but Anna was dying and he didn’t have time to worry about the potential ramifications of his actions. At present, all that mattered was ensuring that she lived to see the next sunrise. He could deal with the consequences later.
By the light of the fire Brad knelt and gingerly removed the gun from its ankle holster. He held it in his hands for a minute or two, almost feeling like he ought to be praying but not even knowing what he would say. Then, bracing himself for the noise, he rose and fired it, once, into the air.
An unseen creature stirred uneasily in a nearby grove of trees—probably a partridge or turkey vulture—but otherwise the woods remained calm and still.
Three minutes, then five, passed in silence. There was no indication that anyone had heard him. He was alone in this dying world with a dying woman, and for the first time he felt the appalling loneliness in which Anna had lived much of her life. She had lost her father, her mother, her twin sister, her son, and now she was close to death herself. It seemed absurd to mourn anyone, now, when everyone alive had lost someone, but Brad couldn’t help it; he pitied her. She had deserved better than this.
Brad flung the now-useless gun down on the ground next to the prostrate form and sat down on his haunches in front of the fire. He thought he heard branches snapping in the thicket at some distance, which would suggest that a large animal had wandered into the vicinity. Deer and stag and the occasional moose were known to roam these woods, and although he had wasted his final bullet, he might still be able to build a trap that could catch whatever it was so that he and Anna—assuming she lived through the night—could eat tomorrow.
Or on second thought, maybe not. He couldn’t be sure at first—he assumed his eyes were playing some cruel hoax—but he thought he had glimpsed a light bobbing toward him from behind a screen of trees. That was absurd, though: no one had flashlights that he knew of, not since the disaster.
The skin
on the back of his arms prickled; he felt something akin to the eerie sensation he had felt in the dream when he glimpsed the lights of the city in the distance. Only this time the light was coming toward him. And the nearer it came, the less he was convinced he was making it up.
Standing to his feet, Brad struggled to repress the flutter of fear and curiosity in his stomach. “Hello?” he called into the darkness. “Hello? Who’s there? If you’re a friend, say something!”
He knew the gun wouldn’t protect him at this point; he had already fired his last bullet. But whoever was approaching didn’t know that. Picking it back up off the ground, he stood to his feet and waited.
Chapter 10
Brad stood motionless in the silence, the light of the fire illuminating his worn face. Someone had heard him; someone was coming toward him; he could tell by the sound of footsteps and the slender beam of light that was slowly bobbing toward him. The question of whether or not they could be trusted had become, for the moment, irrelevant. He just wanted to know how they had acquired electricity. He wanted some assurance he wasn’t just dreaming this.
“Who’s there?” he said again, weakly. “If you can hear my voice, tell me your name!”
It was a ridiculous petition, he knew—what stranger, alone in the woods, was going to yell out their name to another from a distance? And yet, amid the scuffle of boots and the casual snapping of twigs, a voice came in reply.
“Is someone there? Are you alone?”
Brad was so overcome with emotion that he answered without hesitation, his hands raised as though in surrender.
“My name is Brad,” he said, “and I’ve got a woman here with me. She’s injured. I think she might be dying!”
“Armed or not?”
Brad pondered the question for a second and then quietly lowered the gun to the ground. “No. Unless you count an axe.”
There was no response. But presently a flood of light shone into the clearing, and when Brad’s eyes had sufficiently adjusted he saw a man of about thirty years old, with a slender build, bearded and wearing a wide Panama hat, standing about twenty feet away. He surveyed the scene quietly as if assessing for himself the veracity of the story that Brad had just told him. Brad fervently hoped he didn’t ask about the gun.
“What’s the girl’s name?” the man asked. He wore a cocky expression, and was smiling slightly.
“I think you had better tell me your name first,” Brad replied.
The man shrugged as if to say it made no difference to him, either way.
“Name’s William. William Beeman. I was out hunting when I heard what sounded like a gun being fired and thought I would come investigate. We don’t get many other hunters, out here. We don’t get much of anyone, really.” He nodded at Anna. “She doesn’t seem to be in the best condition. You said she was injured?”
Brad decided it was probably best not to mention his father, for the moment.
“She hurt her leg pretty badly while we were hiking into town,” he said. “Fell about ten feet while descending the cliff-side, and now she has a gaping wound in her thigh.”
“Really?” said William in that same sardonic tone, shining a flashlight over the sleeping figure. “Because it looks to me like she was shot in the leg.”
“She needs medical attention,” said Brad, ignoring this observation, “which I’m not currently in a position to give her. If there’s anything you could do to help us—or if you know anyone who could—”
“I know some people who can help you,” said William, suspiciously quickly.
Brad eyed the man uneasily. After wandering for two days through the snowy wilderness, it seemed almost too much to hope that someone would come wandering into the glow of the firelight and offer to take him to a place where Anna could receive proper medical treatment.
The man must have sensed the desperation in Brad’s face and heard it in his voice and known how easily they could be persuaded to leave if help was offered. But there was no way of knowing what really awaited them at the other end of the journey, or why this man seemed so eager to help, or what he wanted.
“Thanks, but I don’t know,” Brad said slowly. “I think maybe we had better take our chances alone.”
“You’re joking, right?” William’s tone was incredulous. “I’m no doctor but I can tell when a lady needs help. If you don’t come with me now, your friend isn’t going to make it through the night. I don’t want you kicking yourself in the morning when you’re having to dig a hole in the ground with that axe.”
He spoke the words in that brutally honest manner men sometimes use with each other, in private, that doesn’t allow for further discussion. Brad could sense that he was probably right. If they followed him back to his encampment—this stranger whom he hadn’t known until about ten minutes before—they could be abducted, or killed. But if they didn’t go with him, death was a certainty.
Brad studied the beam of light with his eyes, thinking.
“Where’d you get that?” he asked.
“You mean the flashlight?”
“How is it working? Tell me that.”
William flicked the light absently on and off. Brad felt an irrational pang of worry every time the light went out, as if fearing it might not turn on again. “We have a whole roomful of these, actually.”
“A roomful. Right.” He was beginning to think the man really was lying to him; that or he was insane.
“Look, where do you think I got this?” William gestured with the flashlight, already sounding exasperated by Brad’s cynicism. “You can either come with me or not.”
“Where is this miraculous place you keep talking about? You can start by telling me that.”
William shook his head slowly, shining the light directly into Brad’s face. “It’s not safe for me to talk about. I can’t tell you, but I can take you there.”
“And do what, exactly?”
“Save your friend from a pretty unpleasant death, for one. Of course, it’s up to you. If I leave, you’ll never see me again. And you’ll never find us.”
Brad was unnerved by the stranger’s spooky manner and his habit of answering questions with enigmatic statements that only raised further questions. It sounded like he and his companions had a hidden base somewhere in the woods, one that they had successfully concealed from the rest of the world. Maybe William and yesterday’s hunter were both part of this group.
Having been betrayed by seemingly everyone he had trusted since the disaster, Brad was reluctant to place Anna’s life into the hands of strangers. He might have declined altogether if it hadn’t been for the flashlight.
He couldn’t explain how a random hunter, late in the year 2026, had come to be holding a flashlight that shone with electric light. He had assumed all battery-powered devices had been rendered useless by the EMP.
“Again, it’s your choice,” said William. “We’re not going to murder you if you decide to come with us.”
“And once there, we’re free to leave if we want?”
William raised his hands in a display of sincerity. “Whenever you want. Though I wouldn’t recommend your friend leaving for a while, the way she’s looking. And if we’re being honest, you’re not looking so great yourself. When’s the last time you had a place to sleep?”
“We slept in the back of a car last night.”
“We’ve got beds to spare at the encampment.” William turned and began heading back the way he had come, not even turning around to ensure Brad was following. “It’s not a five-star hotel, but we’re working on it.”
“Would you help me?” Brad called after him loudly.
William paused and turned slowly around. Brad motioned to the unconscious Anna with a helpless gesture.
“Normally I could carry her on my own,” he said, “but I haven’t had a decent meal in days and I’m exhausted.”
“Sure, no problem.”
Stepping back into the warmth of the fire, William stooped and took Anna’s le
gs in his arms. Brad grabbed her around the shoulders and together they began carrying her along the path William had followed, occasionally pausing to step over a low-hanging branch or around a dangerous-looking pit that Brad certainly wouldn’t have seen in the darkness. Now, as always, he marveled at how much easier the simplest tasks were rendered with the addition of electricity.
“How far do we have to carry her?” Brad asked, when they were about a hundred yards from the fire.
“Not more than a quarter mile,” said William. “I’ve got a vehicle waiting a little further up in the woods.” He didn’t specify what kind of vehicle, and Brad was left to speculate. “How long have you and the girl been wandering out here by yourselves?”
“Just a couple days,” Brad replied, sweating under the strain of having to carry Anna. “Before that we were living with some other folks, or she was. We realized we couldn’t stay there any longer, so we left.”
He didn’t want to explain that Anna had been living in a compound with religious fanatics, in case William already knew about the Family and decided to rescind his offer of help. William had obviously sensed there was a story here that Brad didn’t want to tell him, but to his relief he didn’t press the issue further.
“Are you out here every night?” Brad asked.
“Most nights,” William said. “There’s a few of us that go out hunting each night at around sundown. It takes a substantial amount of food to keep everyone fed from day to day.”
“How many of you are there?” he asked, realizing that in spite of himself, he was already getting his hopes up.
“About a dozen right now,” William said slowly, as if weighing how much it was wise to say. “We had a few more, but Bill and Vince went out hunting one night and never came back. We think they must have been killed; they would have been fools to leave.”
William seemed deeply proud of this mysterious encampment, as if he couldn’t conceive of any safer place to live with the world in its present state.