After The Fires Went Out: Coyote atfwo-1

by Regan Wolfrom

“I will.” I gave her a smile. “We should head back downstairs…see what they’ll break next.” I climbed off the bed a little too quickly.

  She nodded. “I’ll bet it’s another chunk off of Graham.”

  They weren’t sober, but they were less drunk by the time dinner came around.

  So as we ate, I decided to give them the speech, the same one I gave at the start of last winter.

  “Winter is the most dangerous time of the year,” I said. “And this year may end up being worse.”

  “People are trying to kill us,” Sara said.

  “We don’t know that,” Lisa said.

  “We don’t,” I said. “But we do know that there are two guys with assault weapons who need to be handled.”

  “So fucking handle them,” Kayla said.

  “I will.”

  “Good. You go kick their asses, you…asshole.”

  “Come on,” Sara said, “can you at least pretend that you’re not a drunken whore for two minutes?”

  “Sara,” I said, “come on…”

  “Yeah, Sara,” Kayla said.

  “She’s right,” Lisa said. “We should take them out. Right now.”

  “Right now?” I said. “Or did you want a shot of Drambuie before we leave?”

  “The snow’s still falling. If it’s still falling in a few hours ―”

  “Once you’ve sobered up…”

  She nodded. “We head up to Silver Queen Lake and we find them.”

  “They could be anywhere,” Sara said. “There’s no way to know if you’ll even find them.”

  “That’s true,” I said.

  “But if we get there and find nothing,” Lisa said, “it won’t be a wasted trip. We’ll still get to balance things out with the Walkers a little, take a few choice items for ourselves.”

  “That might work,” I said.

  “It’ll work.”

  “So you guys want to try and hook the plow up to the new truck and drive to Silver Queen Lake?” Graham asked.

  “You’ll drive us,” I said.

  “What about Justin?”

  “What about him?”

  “You’re going to want Justin,” Lisa said. “I hate the fucker, and I still think we should bring him with us.”

  I shook my head. “No…this is an internal operation. No Porters and no Tremblays. Just us.” There was no way I could trust Justin.

  “So you want me to stay behind with one of the shotguns?” Matt asked, despite his mouth being stuffed full with a bit of cheese and potato perogy.

  “You and Kayla,” I said. “Six-hour shifts with the shotgun and the handheld, round the clock, until we get back. If this goes bad, you call Justin for backup.”

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Sara said. “Kayla’s never even held a gun.”

  “I’ve held a gun,” Kayla said. “You don’t even know me.”

  “This may be our best chance,” I said.

  “You really think we’re in danger?” Fiona asked. “You really think they’d come here?”

  “They wouldn’t come here,” Graham said. “We’re too strong.”

  “You’re overconfident,” I said. “But you’re probably right. There are way easier pickings out there. For now, at least.”

  “What do you mean?” Fiona asked. “You think they’ll go after Natalie and Tabitha again?”

  “I doubt it. The Girards have too many people and guns.”

  “Now who’s overconfident?” Lisa asked.

  “Well either way,” Graham said, “we’re not at risk.”

  “But someone is,” Fiona said. “Right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Someone is. So we go up to Silver Queen Lake and we take these guys out. And we do it when they least expect it.”

  “Tonight,” Lisa said. “Midnight.”

  I nodded.

  Sara shook her head.

  “We’ll be careful,” I said. “We’ll stay safe.”

  “You’d better,” she said quietly.

  I didn’t really need an excuse to get Sara alone after dinner, since I’d be leaving with Lisa and Graham just after midnight. We went for a walk down to the barn, and I reached out for her hand at great personal risk.

  She took it, but she didn’t seem too happy about it.

  “I want to talk to you about something,” I said as I caught the first whiff old the horses. “But I don’t want to make it a big deal.”

  “What a spineless way to start an intervention,” she said. “Just tell me.”

  “What’s the deal with you and Kayla?”

  “There’s no deal. I don’t like her.”

  “That’s not like you, Sara. You’re known for liking people.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve known Kayla longer than you have. I’ve known her long enough to know what she’s about. And I’ve known girls like her for much longer than that.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  She let go of my hand. “You really don’t get it, Baptiste. No man ever does. Women like Kayla go through life expecting to be treated special because they’re pretty.”

  “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, Sara, but you’re not ugly.”

  “How romantic.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s not like you aren’t treated better because you’re attractive.”

  “We’re all treated better because we’re attractive. Do you think a newcomer like you could have been voted onto the Protection Committee if you’d looked like crap?”

  “I do have some actual experience…”

  “But being pretty is not enough. We built this family with hard work and by taking care of each other. Kayla comes along for the ride because she has long, blond hair and big, perky boobs.”

  I sighed. I knew what I should say, that Sara was blinded by some kind of prejudice, that the only reason she couldn’t see all the good in Kayla was because she was putting all her energy into ignoring it.

  But what could I actually say that would change her mind? What could I come up with that would actually make a difference for Kayla?

  “I’ve been pushing Matt away,” I said. “He’s been getting on my nerves and I haven’t been working hard enough to let it go.”

  “I’m aware that you’re an asshole,” she said. There was a hint of a smile.

  “I need to accept that I’m putting my crap onto him. That whatever faults he has are nothing compared to how I build them up in my mind.”

  She shook her head. “This isn’t the same thing, Baptiste. Matt’s a bit of an idiot, but he’s a good kid. Kayla’s not. And now this prepper garbage…”

  “I’m going to work on it. I’m going to do my best to go easier on him.” I took her hand and brought it up to kiss. “I’d be really grateful if you’d try to do the same for Kayla.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “If we keep pushing them away, they’re going to move closer to Justin.”

  “So?”

  “So come on, Sara. You don’t see what’s happening here? Justin is becoming a problem. We can’t risk giving him a couple of new allies just because we’re stubborn.”

  She nodded slowly. “I know. I’ll try.”

  I leaned in and gave her a kiss. “I love you, Sara.”

  She smiled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You meant it that time.”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes it sounds like you’re just humouring me, like you feel you should say it because we just had sex or you just said something stupid. But that one was real.”

  “Okay…”

  “I love you,” she said.

  She always meant it.

  Today is Thursday, December 20th.

  Graham and I hooked up the plow just before midnight without more than a small amount of trouble, and Lisa joined us a few minutes later, carrying the beat-up leather guitar case I’d kept in the basement.

  “What the heck is that for?” Graham asked. “Baptiste’s gonna sing th
ese guys to death?”

  “Sing them to heaven with some Mumford & Sons,” I said.

  “It’s not a guitar,” Lisa said.

  “Oh,” Graham said.

  She handed the case to me.

  I put it in the cab of the gravel truck, behind the bench.

  “Well,” Graham said, “what is it?”

  “Not here,” I said.

  Graham drove us through the first gate and then to the bridge, almost hitting 80 kph in the snow. There’s no way I would have been comfortable taking it that fast.

  He stopped at the gate and I opened the door to hop out.

  “Hold on,” he said. “What’s in the case?”

  “A gun,” I said.

  I hopped out and unlocked the gate.

  Graham didn’t drive through at first, so I waved at him to get going. He shook his head and drove up past the gate.

  I climbed back into the truck.

  “What kind of gun?” he asked as he started driving toward Cochrane. “You have a hunting rifle or something?”

  “A C12 light machine gun,” I told him. “It’s only semi-auto, but it does the job.”

  “What…the heck?” He turned to Lisa. “You knew about this?”

  She nodded.

  “But…we could have been using this,” he said. “The whole time…the attack at the airport…”

  “We didn’t need it,” I said. “It’s for emergencies only.”

  “If that wasn’t an emergency ―”

  “It wasn’t. And now we’re going to use it on those two cunts at Silver Queen Lake.”

  I watched Graham cringe at the language. I made a mental note to say ‘cunt’ more often. Alanna used to say it all the time; she said that it was part and parcel of being a post-feminist, whatever the hell that meant.

  “I can’t believe you guys kept this from me,” Graham said. “You don’t trust me?”

  “It’s not about trust. It’s about needing to know. Lisa and I are both trained to use it ―”

  “Wait…you showed her how to shoot it?”

  “It’s not that hard,” Lisa said. “Just hold on tight and shoot.”

  “So I know that if something happens while I’m gone, Lisa’s back at the cottage with the C12. That’s why she and I never scavenge together. Well…that and the sexual tension.”

  Lisa smiled.

  “This…” Graham said, “I’m not happy about this.”

  “You’re allowed to be angry,” I said. “You’re allowed to think I’m an asshole.”

  “That ship has sailed.”

  “Just don’t tell anyone.”

  “Why? Why is it a bad thing to have more people who know about that thing and how to use it?”

  “I don’t want Justin to know I have it.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re like a two-year-old,” Lisa said. “So many goddamn questions.”

  “Justin’s a problem,” I said. “That hasn’t changed.”

  “So why do we keep him around?” Graham asked.

  “Because he doesn’t need a semi-automatic to do the job. And just because he’s trouble doesn’t mean he isn’t useful. It just means that we can’t trust him.”

  “I don’t get the hatred,” Graham said.

  “It’s about trust,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “So it stays a secret,” Lisa said. “That’s why we’re taking a risk here. This is the first time in over a year that we’ve left people behind with no real protection.”

  “So what if Stems attacks?” Graham said.

  “He won’t,” Lisa replied.

  “He probably won’t,” I said. “But these guys will show up eventually if we don’t take them out. So we take the chance and hope to hell that we’re not making the biggest mistake since 3D television.”

  Graham nodded.

  He still seemed pissed. By that I mean angry, but I’m sure he was also still a tiny bit drunk.

  We drove through Cochrane with the lights off, relying on the glint of the moonlight against the snow. If there was anyone there they’d hear us, but they wouldn’t be able to see that much.

  We didn’t run into anyone; all we saw were forgotten and dead buildings, covered in a fresh blanket of snow. Most of the buildings in Cochrane were damaged in the fire; the south and west sides were hit the hardest, and looking around those neighbourhoods now looks like those old photos of Hiroshima after the A-bomb fell, blackened skeletons of brick and concrete that used to be churches or schools or hockey arenas, and every once in a while there’ll be a tree or a hydro pole that’s still standing, and you wonder just how it survived when even the cars burned up so much that they just look like bundles of metal sticks.

  The rest of town didn’t get hit as badly, but there aren’t that many buildings that didn’t catch some of it. Sometimes when we scavenge I’ll walk up a flight of stairs wondering if they’ll collapse from some unseen damage, or I’ll walk through the front door before realizing that a back wall has caved in and there’s nothing left inside but rubble.

  The polar bear habitat is still standing at the southeast edge of town; we walked through it once and could still see where someone had shot and butchered the four bears that had been housed there. The whole town looks like a carcass that’s been picked over.

  We turned north on Western and head up to Clute, where we found a trailer at the bottleneck just like the one the Walkers had brought up to Silver Queen, but it was dark with a drift of snow blown halfway up the door.

  “Guess they weren’t lying,” I said. “They’re sticking close to home.”

  “No tracks anywhere,” Graham said. “No one’s out today.”

  “So if we’re lucky those Spirit Assholes are bundled up by the fire,” Lisa said. “Just waiting for a couple of pretty little head shots.”

  “Like shooting them with a gun,” Graham said, “or posing their corpses for a photograph?”

  “That was totally something Matt would say,” I said. “You sure you two aren’t related?”

  “Shut up,” Graham said.

  We kept on driving toward Silver Queen Lake, along a road that was as lifeless as everywhere else.

  Once we were at Silver Queen I told Graham to take the south road, without any solid reasoning; I had no evudence thay’d go back to the cottage where I’d first found them, since most of the cottages at Silver Queen had enough supplies leftover to keep a couple murderers comfortable.

  “So let’s keep it simple,” I said. “I’ll take the front with my SIG and Lisa will take the back with the Mossberg. You’ve got your SIG, Graham, and a one-ton means of vehicular homicide. You see anyone who you haven’t slept with…” ― I motioned to Lisa ― “or wish you could become…” ― motioning to me ― “you know what to do.”

  “ Takay, ” Lisa said. “Stop the truck.”

  Graham took his foot of the gas.

  “I told you to stop,” Lisa said.

  “Hold on,” Graham said. “It’s not as simple as slamming on the brakes. This plow messes up the whole weight of this thing.”

  He let the truck slow for a moment before I could feel the brakes slowly kicking in. It took about thirty seconds and an extra hundred meters, but we stopped.

  Lisa elbowed me in the ribs. “Get out,” she said.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Snowmobiles. Saw the lights out in the trees to the south.”

  I nodded and climbed out.

  “Are you sure?” Graham asked.

  “I grew up in a town where there are less than a hundred cars for five thousand people. I know what a goddamn snowmobile looks like.” She turned to me. “They should catch up to us any second.”

  “What do you expect us to do?” I asked. “Shoot them?”

  “I don’t know…maybe.”

  “Okay.” I lifted my SIG and fired into the air, toward the north. Whoever it was should get the message, not to fuck with us.

  “You’re a terrible shot,�
� she said.

  “Not sure they’ll even hear it.”

  I could see the lights now, poking out from the trees. Two machines.

  And then I heard the engines slowing.

  We took aim.

  “Don’t shoot,” a voice called out.

  “Why not?” I yelled back.

  “Baptiste?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Zach Walker…Dave Walker’s son. Sky’s here, too.”

  “How do I know you aren’t full of shit?”

  “It’s a badass name,” another voice said. “Isn’t it?”

  I lowered my gun.

  Lisa followed my lead.

  “What the hell are you guys doing out here?” I asked as they stepped out of the forest.

  “Looking for you,” Zach said. “Justin called us and said you were on your way up here.”

  I wasn’t sure who told Justin, but I could take a guess. And I could kick Matt’s ass when I got home.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Justin wanted us to turn you around and send you home. He says you’re going to get someone killed.”

  “I don’t take orders from Justin Porter.”

  “Neither do we. We want to help.”

  “So wait…your father sent his kid up here to fight?”

  “I’m not a kid.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “We don’t need any help,” Lisa said. “We’ll handle this.”

  “No,” Zach said. “You won’t. This is a partnership. We’ll do it together.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “We could use another couple guns. But I’m in charge of this operation, so you’ll defer to my judgement.”

  “Absolutely.” He gave me a grin.

  Exactly what a kid would do.

  I had Zach and Sky ditch the snowmobiles and hop in the back of the gravel truck. They both had hunting rifles that they’d slung over their shoulders.

  Graham took us farther up the road, toward the bend.

  I could see the woodsmoke in the moonlight.

  “They’re here,” I said. “We’ll come in quick, since they may have already seen or heard us. Assuming they’re not drunk or fucking…”

  I realized what I was saying. I thought of Natalie and Tabitha, and the bruises on their wrists from trying to free themselves from the bedframe.

  “Fuck,” I said quietly.