They were headed after the Porters, just far enough behind that Justin and Rihanna wouldn’t know what was coming.
I grabbed my handheld and pushed for Justin.
“Justin... you there? Over.” I tried to speak softly in case someone was left in the cottage. A man with a shark helmet had died at the airport, but what about the one with the coyote?
“I’m here. Is everything okay there? Over.”
“The Toyota’s coming for you. They’ve got a bigass machine gun mounted on the back. You need to get out of there.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding. Step on the fucking gas. Over.”
“Shit.”
I readied my pistol and rushed the door of the cottage. I swept through as best as I could remember to do, checking each room on the main floor before making my way upstairs.
The first bedroom was empty, but the second was not.
I recognized both girls from before the fires. Tabitha Smith and Natalie Girard; the two of them were only a few years older than Fiona. Both had their wrists ziptied to the bedframe and neither of them had a shred of clothing on their bruised bodies.
“It’s okay,” I whispered as I held my finger to my nose.
Tabitha started to cry.
I left them there while I cleared the rest of the second floor.
I then came back and cut them loose with my leatherman.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
Neither of them answered right away. I wanted to ask if they were okay, but the question seemed ridiculous.
“It’s been around three days,” Natalie said.
“We... we were headed back to my parent’s place,” Tabitha said. “But everyone was gone when we got there.”
“They left?” I asked. “Uh... without you?”
“I don’t know what happened... the house was empty. They didn’t even leave a note. It doesn’t make sense.” She began to cry again.
“It’s going to be okay. We’ve got to go.”
I had the girls wrap themselves in bedsheets and I rushed them downstairs. There was no sign of their clothes or any boots, and unusually, no sign of any clothes in the entire cottage, so I had them wait on the front steps while I made my way to the garage.
The door was locked, so I kicked it open. There was nothing inside, no car, no ATV.
“Dammit,” I said. I walked back over to the porch.
“Don’t you have a car or something?” Natalie asked.
“I had a truck. But things have gotten a little messed up.”
I grabbed my handheld and pushed for Justin again.
“Justin? Rihanna? Are you okay? Over.”
I hoped that the silence was only because they’d driven out of range.
“Are you there?” I asked. I turned to the shivering girls, standing barefoot beside me. “We need to get moving.”
I led them silently across the road and into the trees, and we ran further up the road, the wrong direction from where I’d said I’d meet the Porters. Of course, I didn’t expect them to come back anytime soon, assuming they were still alive.
After five minutes of running in the woods I knew the girls would need to get out of the cold; it wasn’t winter yet, but it was cold enough to hurt.
I took off my riot suit and clothes, everything short of my underwear, and parceled it all out as best as I could between the girls. Each girl took a sock on one foot and a boot on the other. I had them lean together, hidden against a tree, and the two of them stood like shivering flamingoes as I made my way to the nearest garage.
I approached in a straight line up the driveway of an older cottage, right to the overhead door of the small single garage. Once there, I reached down to see if I could pull it up, but it didn’t surprise me that it was locked. I made my way towards the side door.
It looked old and flimsy enough that I might be able to bust it down. I had to take a running start, however, as I threw my shoulder against it, since I no longer had a boot left to kick the door in. I had to launch myself against it twice more before the door gave way; by that point I could barely move from the pain of repeatedly smashing my shoulder against the wood.
Inside the garage I didn’t find a car or an ATV, but I did find a riding lawnmower. I wasn’t sure if that was worth anything to me. I also found a smelly pair of work boots on top of a toolbox that I was barely able to squeeze onto my feet.
I went back and retrieved the girls, each one limping across the road with one boot and a wet sock, and we found our way inside the cottage with the help of a crowbar from the toolbox.
I didn’t know if the Spirit Animals would be able to find us, but luckily I still had a contingency holstered on my belt.
After scrounging up some musty clothes for Tabitha and Natalie to wear and some less than appetizing food for them to eat, I found myself a pair of binoculars on the lakefront veranda and peered out over the lake.
The way the shore wrapped around a bay, I could see a corner of the A-frame cottage and I could make out a thin wisp of smoke still rising from the chimney. I hadn’t taken the time to check, but my guess was that the stove was wood and not propane, and the small amount of smoke likely meant that they hadn’t returned to throw more wood on the fire.
It was still three hours until dark, so I had no reason to expect any lights to come on; the wood stove was the only guess I had.
I could expect once they’d returned that they’d come looking for the girls; and if they came looking, I’d see the truck. But if they didn’t give a shit that those girls had gotten away... well, then I guess they’d just get back home and stay there.
Either way, I wasn’t sure how we were going to get past them. It was too far to expect the girls to travel with me on foot and through the woods until we reached the nearest family I felt I could trust; even by car the Marchands were a half hour away. And trying to crowd three people onto the riding lawnmower would be even more ridiculous.
Our best chance would be to wait until I knew they’d left their cottage again and start looking for some other form of transportation, hoping to find it and then to escape before they returned.
Of course, I couldn’t actually see where their truck would be parked from where I was standing. All I could see was that little billow of what I’d guessed was wood smoke.
I went from the porch back into the cottage to check on the girls. It was warmer there than it was outside, but since we couldn’t light a fire without giving ourselves away, it still wasn’t much above zero.
Tabitha and Natalie were huddled together on a couch, neither of them doing much other than shivering.
“You girls doing alright?” I asked.
“We’re okay,” Natalie said. “Thanks.”
“I wish I could be more help right now... this isn’t really going according to plan.”
“I just wish I could have a shower,” Tabitha said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I could probably try heating some water with the lawnmower battery, but I think there’s a good chance I’d set myself on fire.”
Both girls nodded; neither one seemed close to a smile.
“I’ll get you girls out of here. It’s just going to take me a little while.”
“We know,” Natalie said. “We feel safe with you, Mr. Jeanbaptiste... probably safer than we’d feel with anyone else right now. I know you’ll take care of us.”
I nodded, unsure of how to respond. I certainly didn’t want those girls to know just how little faith I had in me.
I heard the noise of the engine at least an hour after the sun had set. I looked outside to see the pickup truck, its lights off, barely visible aside from the glint of the moonlight.
The girls were sleeping; I felt no need to wake them. We were better off being as quiet as possible.
I watched and waited as the truck drove by, not slowing down or stopping as it passed us by.
Once it was gone, I waited by the window, knowing that i
t would come back our way soon enough, as they turned around at the end of the road.
It was back within twenty minutes, but by that point they’d sped up and the headlights lit up the road in front of them.
The rest of the night passed and morning came without any further sign of the Spirit Animals and their Toyota. The wood smoke had faded completely now, and it was starting to look like they had not bothered to stay.
Natalie found us some cereal for breakfast, and even some powdered milk and bottled water to complete the meal.
“This tastes much better than it should,” I said as I sucked up the last of the milk.
“I’ve been drinking powdered milk for months,” Tabitha said. “I’m not sure I’d even like the real thing anymore.”
“Well all we’ve got is goat’s milk,” I said. I quickly realized that I sounded like a jerk. “Just ignore me.”
“We’ve got goats, too,” Natalie said. “But we still use powdered milk to make up the difference. And like everything else, we’re starting to run low on it.”
“I’ve wanted to ask you girls about something, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“Go ahead,” Natalie said. “Just ask us.”
“Did you know the men who attacked you? Did you recognize them from before?”
“I didn’t know them. Normal-looking guys... uh... white...” She looked over at my half-Haitian face. “Not that white is normal...”
“I’m just special,” I said.
“I don’t think they were from here,” Tabitha said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they came from another province. Or even the States.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know... they just seemed different.”
“Different how?” I could see that she was becoming more upset. “You don’t need to answer right now.”
“I think I know what she means,” Natalie said. “Everyone around here walks around like they’re still a little in shock. We all lost people in the fires, even those of us who still have our families. But these guys... they seemed more excited than heartbroken... like this was almost a game to them. A game where they seemed to have learned the rules long before the rest of us.”
“That explains their equipment,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“They might be ex-military. I’ve known guys like that. Sometimes the guys who come back really aren’t okay...”
“Like PTSD?” Natalie asked.
“Kind of... we all lose something when we’ve been deployed. Some guys never really came back in. This might have seemed like an opportunity for them.”
“An opportunity,” Tabitha said. “So that’s what you’d call it.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to minimize what they’ve done.”
“It was a roadblock,” Natalie said. “After we realized that Tabitha’s family had left... we were almost back through Clute when we ran into them... they had those animal helmets on, and one of them was standing in the back of the truck, pointing that mounted gun right at us. He started to laugh and he took off his helmet so we could see the grin on his face. That’s when I knew they weren’t going to let us go.”
“They would take shifts,” Tabitha said.
“One of them liked to wear his helmet,” Natalie said. “Visor tilted to dark. He kept it on the whole time, like he was the only one who didn’t want us to know who he was. Maybe we would have recognized him from before the fires. I’ll never forget that helmet. The coyote...”
“I’d know him if I saw him again,” Tabitha said. “I’d know.”
I wondered if I’d know him, the man with the coyote helmet. Was it Ryan Stems himself? It’s no secret that he’s always liked them young; everyone in the district has heard about that.
“I don’t want to be an ass,” I said, “but why were the two of you out there on your own?”
Tabitha shook her head. “It was stupid. I got into a fight with my parents and I took off on my bike.”
“Your bike?”
“My bicycle... I know, I’m an idiot. I rode all the way into Cochrane, telling myself that I’d be better off on my own. That’s when I ran into Natalie’s uncles. I stayed with the Girards for a couple of days, and Natalie was driving me back home. Since I hadn’t run into any trouble on the way down, we thought we wouldn’t run into any problems heading back.”
I turned to look at Natalie. “And your parents just let you go off on your own?”
Natalie’s cheeks turned red. “I didn’t tell them we were going. I was going to take Tabitha home and then I was going to head over to see you guys.”
“To see us? Why?”
Natalie blushed some more. “To see Antoine. I wanted to see how he was doing.”
“Ah.” I felt my heart drop.
“How is he doing?”
I hesitated. “Oh, Ant? He’s doing good.”
“Has... has he mentioned me at all?”
“Let’s talk about that later. Right now I think we should think about getting out of here. I think those guys left last night, and I’m not sure when they’ll come back.”
“So they’ve just given up on finding us? Don’t they care that we know what they look like?” Tabitha asked.
I didn’t feel the need to answer that. “We need to find a car or an ATV... something that can get us away from here.”
“I think I know where there’s a car we can use,” Tabitha said. “The Blackwells left a couple of old cars at their place... it’s only a few minutes away.”
“What about keys?” I asked.
“I’ll bet the keys are just where I last saw them. On their key rack.”
“And fuel?”
“They’re both gas engines... we were going to eventually drain them for one of our generators, but we never got around to it. There should be something left in the tanks.”
“That’s probably all too good to be true,” I said. “But I’m overdue for some good luck.”
“We all are,” Natalie said.
And I felt like an idiot all over again.
We travelled together on foot to the Blackwell’s old cottage, Natalie and Tabitha a few paces in front and to the left of me, closer to the trees.
We passed by the cottage where the girls had been kept, but the truck wasn’t there. There was no sign that the Spirit Animals had stayed the night.
We got to the Blackwell’s without seeing or hearing the Toyota, and once I broke in we found the keys just where Tabitha had expected them to be. After some impromptu siphoning from one car to the next and emptying a half-full gas can in the garage, we had a rusty old Honda Fit with three quarters of a tank.
I had Natalie drive, while I sat in the passenger seat staring out with the binoculars I kept from our hideout. Tabitha laid down in the backseat, clearly exhausted but nowhere near sleep.
I wasn’t just looking for the Toyota; I was watching for any sign of the Porters, not sure I wanted to find anything. Hopefully they were back at McCartney Lake, telling the sad story of how I got left behind, and hopefully doing their best to make sure that no one came rushing back to find me.
As we neared the bottleneck near Clute, I could see Natalie tensing up.
“Don’t worry,” I told her, “if they’re up there, I’ll see them long before they know we’re coming.”
“I know,” she said. “I just can’t help it.”
I put my hand on her shoulder.
“Please don’t do that,” she said sharply.
“Sorry.”
I went back to scanning the road ahead.
“Something’s there,” I said.
“Oh, god...”
“It’s not a roadblock... I see a couple of vehicles...” I strained my eyes to see more. “A white van and a green truck.” I knew both of them. “That’s our truck... and I think the other is the Walkers.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know that I’m not looking at a gray Toyota. I’m sur
e about that.”
I heard Natalie sigh. She looked over to me and shot me the slightest of smiles.
I wasn’t surprised to see that it was Dave Walker and Fisher Livingston that were eyeing us as we approached. Justin and Rihanna were there, too, standing alongside the other two and looking no worse than before.
“You girls don’t need to get out of the car,” I said. “You can just wait here if you’d like.”
I climbed out of the passenger seat and walked over to the Porters.
“You guys are okay,” I said. “I really didn’t think you would be.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Justin said.
“Ryan Stems,” Livingston said. “A gray technical with a mounted machine gun.” I was expecting more sneer from him.
“Only saw two of them,” I said. “With assault rifles and that mounted gun. Did you know they carried those kinds of weapons?”
“I thought you knew, Baptiste.”
“Who are those girls?” Dave Walker asked.
“Natalie Girard and Tabitha Smith,” I said. “They were being held against their will up there.”
“You saved them.”
“I guess I did.”
Dave Walker frowned at me. I could tell that he wanted to keep hating my guts.
I appreciated the effort.
“So what happened, Justin?” I asked. “Did they come after you guys?”
“They started to,” Justin said.
“There’s no way you could have outran them.”
“We didn’t... we outgunned them.”
I almost laughed. “Bullshit.”
“They turned around once we got in sight of the Walkers,” Rihanna said.
“They just let you go?”
“I don’t think they’re stupid,” Livingston said.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“If they knew who you are, they would have known that you wouldn’t be an easy target. Once they saw us coming up the road they must have decided not to take on an even larger group. I’ll bet they’re a little scared of you, Baptiste.”
“They have two assault rifles and an anti-aircraft gun, Livingston... even with my armour they could have turned me into confetti. Had I even been there.”
After The Fires Went Out: Coyote (Book One of the Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Series) Page 17