by K. M. Fawkes
Chapter 14
“Okay,” Brad said as he knelt down in front of the big fireplace in the living room. “First, we need to build a tinder nest. You want to make this out of anything that’s going to catch fire pretty easily, so you’ll want to look for dry leaves and pine straw, bark, paper, or dried grass in the summer. It needs to be really dry, otherwise it won’t catch.”
“Are you going to do that thing where you get a stick and put in into another one and twist it really fast?” Anna asked.
“No,” Brad replied, and she looked at him in surprise. “It can be done,” he went on. “But it is insanely time consuming, and if you’re trying to make a fire in a hurry, it’s not really worth it. Flint and steel are probably the easiest option.” He reached over to the box of kindling near the fireplace and pulled a flint out. “Okay, put your char cloth down to catch the spark,” he said, suiting action to words. “And strike the flint with the steel.”
“Why do I need the cloth?” she asked.
“It catches the sparks and then you put it in the tinder nest,” he answered, striking the flint again. A spark landed on the char cloth, but he quickly snuffed it out.
“What are you doing?” Anna asked.
“It’s your turn,” he said.
She took the flint from him and struck it sharply. Then, she did the same thing a few more times before frowning in frustration. “Why isn’t anything happening?”
“It’s sort of like skipping rocks,” Brad said. “It just takes practice.”
“I’m doing the same thing you did,” she said, frustration edging her voice as she lowered her head to look more closely at the flint. “It’s just not doing anything.”
Brad leaned back. “Getting the technique down sucks,” he admitted. “But once you get the hang of it, it’s usually pretty easy after that.” He gave her a smile. “And it’s not like either of us has anywhere to be, right? Or were you headed to work?”
“Very funny,” she said wryly, but he saw a smile tip the corner of her mouth and she went back to trying to start the fire.
“Oh!” Anna gasped about ten minutes later. “Brad, it worked!”
“Pick it up,” he said, leaning forward. “Get it in the tinder before the sparks go out. Then, blow on it as softly as you can. Fire needs oxygen to spread, but it’ll go out if you’re not careful.”
She did as he’d said, getting onto her knees and blowing gently. Gradually, the tinder caught and she leaned back. “Now what?”
“Add some of the smaller sticks of wood,” Brad said. “When they catch, you can add the bigger logs.”
When the fire was blazing away merrily, Sammy spoke up. “Can we go, now? I want to catch a fish.”
Once the fire that Anna had worked so hard on had been banked, they headed out the door once more. This time, Brad veered over near the orchard and into a small building that was set back from it just slightly.
“How many buildings does your father have scattered around?” Anna asked as Brad opened the door to this one.
He stopped to think. “Woodshed, cellar, tool shed, outhouse, and this one, which is just kind of all the stuff that doesn’t fit into any of those categories. So, five.”
“Outhouse?” Anna said, wrinkling her nose. “We’ve just been flushing with a bucket of water.”
“Yeah, Dad made sure to do the best he could with the plumbing,” Brad said. “But—and I don’t want to have to get into all of the gross specifics—something could always go wrong. It’s good to have a backup that doesn’t involve pooping in the woods.”
Sammy giggled and Anna nudged him, though she was fighting a smile, too. “I guess that makes sense,” she allowed. “So, this is the like the junk drawer if the junk drawer was a shed? What are we doing in here?”
“Getting these.” Brad opened a long box and pulled out three fishing poles. Then, he rummaged around until he found a tackle box. “We should have everything we need in here,” he said after a quick glance through the contents. “Let’s go.”
It was a fifteen-minute walk down to the lake, and with the day heating up already, they took it slowly. Anna stayed by Brad’s side. Sammy wandered either behind them or ran ahead, depending on what caught his eye.
“Sammy!” Anna called for the fourth time when he headed off the path. “Stay where I can see you!”
“I will!” he called back, and immediately vanished from sight.
“Sammy Carson,” she called in a warning tone. He popped back up, holding a squirming grasshopper between his thumb and index finger and wearing an enthusiastic grin on his face.
“Look at him!” he called happily. “He’s huge!”
“He sure is,” Anna called back. Brad shuddered and she glanced up at him. “The veterinarian doesn’t like bugs?” she asked with a smirk. “Don’t you guys take some kind of oath about taking care of all of the injured animals?”
“Insects aren’t included in the veterinary oath,” he informed her. “And even if they did, I rarely get asked to take care of someone’s pet bugs. Most people who collect them prefer them to be firmly attached to cards.”
“I have a feeling that’s where you’d prefer them to be, too,” she teased.
He pushed his hand through his hair and looked away.
“Wanna see it, Brad?” Sammy called.
“No!” he called back emphatically.
Sammy laughed and darted back into the bushes, probably looking for more creatures with more than four legs. Since it was summertime, he’d find them in spades. Brad just had to hope that he’d keep them away from him.
Anna caught her breath as the lake came into view a few minutes later. “Wow. It really is gorgeous up here. This might be a personal question, but how did your dad afford this place?”
Brad looked at the sparkling lake in front of them. “I don’t know how much it cost originally,” he said, “but it’s been in his family for a long time. My great-grandfather built the place. Over time, other family members added on and bought some more of the surrounding land. Our property stretches pretty far, now.”
“Were they all…um…”
“Crazy?” he supplied.
She looked down at her sneakers. “Well…I mean, obviously your dad ended up being right, but you know…”
“Yeah,” he said. “I do. But as far as I know, my dad was the only one who was convinced that the world could end at any minute.”
“Hey, can I go out on this?” Sammy called from ahead of them, pointing at a long wooden pier that went out into the lake.
Anna glanced at Brad and he nodded. “Sure. That’s where we’re going to fish from,” he answered. The two of them followed Sammy out onto the pier and Brad set the tackle box down carefully. “So, from now on out, we’ve got to be pretty quiet if we want to have a shot at catching anything.”
They walked out to the end of the pier and Brad showed them how to bait the hooks and cast their lines. Then, he leaned back and let the sun warm his face as he listened to the water lap at the pier. Sammy was chattering softly to his mother, but Brad didn’t mind. Fishing was all about playing the long game. He was more than happy to wait.
“Brad!” Sammy hissed several hours later. “Brad, I’ve got something!”
Brad sat up quickly, handing his pole to Anna. “Okay, hang on,” he said, keeping his own voice quiet. “Don’t pull too hard, yet.”
They struggled for a couple minutes, but finally, Brad and Sammy managed to pull it in.
“Largemouth bass,” Brad said eagerly.
“It’s huge!” Sammy said, his eyes wide.
“It sure is,” Anna agreed. “Good going, Sammy!”
“How are we going to cook it?” Sammy asked.
“We can grill it if your mom wants to try her fire-building skills again,” Brad said. “There’s a fire pit right over there.”
“Awesome!” Sammy grabbed the fish, dropped it, and grabbed for it again. Brad showed him how to pick it up by the gills and watched him
run off with his catch.
The sun had moved to the west by the time the fish was scaled, gutted, and deboned, but there would still be several hours of light left. Brad grabbed the plank he’d had soaking in the river and laid the fish on it. Then, he braced it over the fire.
“Do we have time to swim?” Sammy asked.
“Probably not,” Brad said. “This won’t take too long to cook.”
Sammy’s mouth drooped into a frown and Anna said, “You can go wade around the edge if you want to. Just remember to roll the legs of your jeans up and put your shoes back far enough that they won’t get wet.”
“Okay!” he called, running off.
“What did your mom think about all of this?” Anna asked as they watched Sammy head for the water’s edge.
“I don’t really know,” Brad said. “By the time I was really old enough to remember things, they were already split up. She was always…tense about it. I guess that’s the best way to describe it. Dad said she hated it because she couldn’t get all of her conveniences, but the one nice thing I remember her saying about the cabin was that she liked how far away from everything it was. I think my mom’s least favorite part about the place was that she had to share it with my dad, honestly.”
“My parents were divorced, too,” Anna said. “But they didn’t split up till I was in high school. Pretty typical story. My dad was having an affair and my mom tossed him out.”
“Do you know what happened to them?” Brad asked delicately.
She shook her head. “No, actually, I don’t. We weren’t close and I lost touch with both of them when Sammy came along.”
“How do you avoid someone in a town with a population of less than a thousand people?” Brad asked.
She smiled. “I’m not actually from Island Falls; that’s just where I ended up.”
She didn’t volunteer more information and Brad didn’t press her. Instead, he turned back to the fire.
“The fish is almost ready,” he said. “If you want to grab Sammy, I’ll cut it up. We can just eat off of this, if that’s okay.”
“Sure thing,” she said as she headed down to the water.
Once they were done eating, Brad leaned back, stretching his legs out and tilting his head up to look at the sky. It was finally starting to turn a burnished gold as the sun began to set. Now seemed like a good time.
“Hey, Sammy, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“What is it?” he asked eagerly.
Anna looked quizzical, too, but she didn’t ask any questions. She simply watched.
“Close your eyes,” Brad said, wanting to draw out the moment.
After a quick glance at his mother for permission, Sammy did as he was asked, and Brad put the bag of marshmallows he’d found in the cellar into the boy’s outstretched hands.
“Okay, you can look now.”
“Oh, wow!” Sammy said when he saw what he was holding. “This is awesome!”
“Are you sure they’re still okay to eat?” Anna asked. “They look a little…faded.”
“Yep,” Brad said with a nod. “They’ve been down there awhile, but sugar doesn’t go bad.” He turned back to Sammy. “If you bring me a few sticks, we can roast some before it’s time to turn in.”
“And tell ghost stories?” Anna asked as her son ventured out for sticks.
Brad smiled. “If you’re up for it, it’s fine with me. Do you happen to know any good ones?”
“Sorry, I can’t tell them without a flashlight to shine underneath my chin,” Anna said, shaking her head firmly.
“A woman with standards.”
Her mouth quirked. “A few, anyway.”
Sammy came back and handed Brad a few sticks. He’d finished one and was in the middle of sharpening the next when Anna said, “So, tell me more about your dad.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Well…anything. I told you a lot of stuff last night. You owe me.”
“I thought you told me because you felt like you owed me,” he said.
“I’m changing the rules.” She leaned forward, grabbed a marshmallow, and put it on the sharpened stick. She held it over the fire, watching Brad as she rested her chin in her hand. “Come on. Spill. Campfire stories were your idea, anyway.”
Brad handed the stick he was working on to Sammy and began the last one. It wasn’t until he’d finished sharpening it and grabbed his own marshmallow that he answered. “It’s kind of hard to know where to start. The truth is that I don’t remember nearly enough of what my dad told me.”
She looked at him, tilting her head. “Really? You seem like you’re doing pretty well.”
“Having the two of you here is helping me a lot,” he admitted. “But if I’d really listened to the stuff he tried to teach me, I wouldn’t have needed a soldier to pry me out of my apartment; I’d have been out here six months ago.”
“What? Why so early?”
“So I could have gotten the garden stuff together. I knew better than to stay in the city through all of this.”
“What exactly happened in Bangor?” she asked. “I know that the military wasn’t insane, but why did they come and pack you all up? Were there riots?”
“No, nothing like that,” he said, turning the marshmallow to get an even burn. “I mean, maybe there were in some places, but I didn’t see any of it.” He shrugged. “My part of town was pretty calm, and even if it hadn’t been, I was always kind of a loner. I wouldn’t have known until they tried to burn my clinic down with me in it.”
“Not that I’m ungrateful to have you here,” Anna hedged, “because you’ve really helped us out a lot…but why leave? I mean, you said you ended up in an apartment with a bunch of other people. Wouldn’t that be a ‘safety in numbers’ situation?”
“No,” he said flatly. “A large group of desperate people is way more likely to get you hurt than keep you safe. They’re more likely to panic, for one thing. Then, there’s the possibility of a mob mentality, for another. In certain situations, people just weigh you down.”
“Is that why you left?” Sammy asked from across the fire as he shoved a marshmallow into his mouth and chewed messily while pushing another one onto the stick.
“No,” Brad said. “I left because we ran out of food.” The minute the words left his mouth, he knew how awful it sounded, so he hurried to explain. “I went on a supply run for the people in the complex. But…it didn’t really work out. I found plenty of stuff. But then a couple of guys in fatigues beat me up and took it.”
“I thought you said that your soldiers were nice,” Anna said.
Brad shrugged. “Six weeks ago, they were. These weren’t the same guys, so maybe that had something to do with it.” He frowned slightly. “They might not have even been soldiers at all. They were pretty disorganized.” He shook the thought from his head. He might be onto something, but it didn’t make much of a difference right now. “Anyway,” he said. “Basically, I just wanted to come home because I realized that things weren’t getting better.”
“Yeah,” Anna said quietly, her voice a little bitter. “It really wasn’t.”
He pulled a perfectly toasted marshmallow off of the end of the stick and popped it into his mouth. “I don’t know. It’s a little better, now.”
About an hour later, as they watched the stars come out and the fire die down, Anna glanced over at her son. He was nearly asleep.
“I’ll be back,” she said. “I’m going to get him into bed.”
Brad moved to stand up. “Want me to go with you?”
“No, no,” she said quickly, waving him away. “It’s a gorgeous night; you should stay out here and enjoy it.” She scooped her son up and smiled at Brad over Sammy’s head. “Hang around, okay? I’ll be right back.”
He leaned back slightly to watch her head to the house. He suddenly felt warm in a way that didn’t have anything to do with the summer air or the fire. That was the first time he’d seen that smile. It was full and open and
somehow, it made him feel like he’d known her for much longer than he had.
He shook his head. Definitely too soon for thinking like that. He didn’t want her to think that she needed to stroke his ego to be safe here. But it was nice to know that there was at least one woman he could manage to talk to—he’d barely been an idiot in front of her all day.
Brad was leaning forward, nearly dozing off when he heard a rustle in the grass behind him. Only a split second later, a flash of pain lanced through his head and everything went black.
Chapter 15
When Brad woke up, he knew that something was wrong, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. His head was killing him. Had he gone to bed sick? No, because he wasn’t in bed at all.
He was lying on the ground by the fire pit. His clothes were soaked with morning dew and clinging to his skin, and the morning bird calls and songs seemed to be drilling a hole in his brain.
He sat up slowly and pain lanced through his skull like lightning, making him groan. He lowered his head into his hands and tried to figure out what the hell had happened.
It pieced together slowly. Anna had taken Sammy into the cabin to put him in bed. And then, someone had tried to shatter Brad’s skull.
There was only one reason that anyone would do something like that. They would want what he had. And Anna and Sammy would have been in the cabin. Defenseless.
Brad dragged himself to his feet, doing his best to ignore the throbbing pain from the back of his head. He’d worry about the extent of his injury later. Right now, he had to know what had happened to them. The world spun once he was upright, but he managed to stagger in the general direction of the cabin.
Everything he could see from the outside looked perfectly normal. The horse was gone, but he’d expected that. The front door was closed, which he hadn’t expected. They were either the most courteous looters he would ever encounter, or they had decided to stay in the cabin. The door swung open readily when he pushed on it.
“Anna?” he called out as he stepped in. There was no point in trying to be subtle at this point. He didn’t have a weapon and his head was still spinning. There was no way he could take anyone in a fight right now. “Sammy?”