After The Fires Went Out: Coyote atfwo-1

by Regan Wolfrom

  The Souls left them there to die.

  It wasn’t cold enough to die of exposure. They had to wait to die of thirst.

  The prisoner told me that he waited for three days, and by that point he’d started to hallucinate.

  And someone came to see him. An angel, he said, a beautiful woman with blond hair so light that it was almost white. And she cut his chain and freed him, and she left a dead man in his place.

  And she gave him a backpack full of supplies and she told him to run.

  I’d never believed his story. Not all of it, at least.

  He hadn’t been the first to mention her, but everyone knew that the legendary Dalya Blue didn’t exist. There was no angel rescuing men from the pit. If anything, the men who’d been spared had given something to The Souls, something that made them unworthy of ever being allowed back into society.

  We’d released him, but only because we’d made sure he’d kept on his way to the West.

  I don’t know if he ever made it someplace.

  “Are there people down there?” Kayla asked as we drove by.

  There were. Dozens if not hundreds of bodies.

  From up on the road I couldn’t see the chains.

  But I knew…that was where they’d died.

  “Keep going,” I said. “We don’t want anything to do with this place.”

  “They dump their bodies there. The Souls.”

  “No, Kayla. That’s how they kill them.”

  We parked the truck at the intersection with a road called Tamarack. The only sign of a machinery road was a lack of trees across the road from us.

  We were lucky; The Fires hadn’t taken the forest between us and Highway 101.

  We put on the snowshoes and loaded up with as much as we could carry. Kayla took the Mossberg and the backpack filled with grenades and shells, while I took out the C12 and stuffed the last four magazines into my small pack.

  We started walking due east, past an abandoned yardsite, into the trees.

  After a few minutes we reached a marshy stream, cattails poking above the snow.

  “We should keep going to the next stream,” Kayla said. “We can follow it up to the highway, look for our people.”

  “I’m guessing the fixed blockade is directly on the junction of 101 and 572,” I said. “It’s the first chance anyone coming from Quebec would have to turn off 101, so The Souls will try and stop that from happening.”

  “So the blockade is meant for people heading west?”

  “They were probably surprised to see a caravan travelling the wrong way. But not too surprised to keep them from throwing something together to box that caravan in.”

  “So the other roadblock is lighter.”

  “I’d guess so. So we hit the heavy one. We launch some of your grenades and we add some bullets to the mix. The guys at the other roadblock will think that there’s an assault from Aiguebelle or something.”

  “And all of the sudden that caravan won’t be so important anymore.”

  “Hopefully they’ll just push right past. I’ll let Alain and them know that once the roadblock behind them falls apart, they need to get moving back toward home.”

  “They won’t want to head back,” Kayla said.

  “They don’t have a choice. It’s that or die, isn’t it?”

  Somehow I knew they wouldn’t see it that way.

  We followed the second creek north to where the highway passed over it. We then took to the ditch, trudging through the tops of the snow-covered wigeongrass, trying to keep our heads low.

  The three trucks from McCartney Lake weren’t far away. I saw someone in matching armour…maybe Lisa, maybe Sky.

  I wondered if whoever it was would start shooting.

  “It’s me,” I said. “Baptiste.”

  “Thank Trudeau,” Lisa said.

  “And Kayla,” Kayla said.

  “Where’s Justin?”

  “Not here,” I said. “I can’t believe you guys are still in one piece.”

  “I can’t believe you guys are on foot,” Lisa said.

  “Have they tried to get in contact?”

  “They have a megaphone. They don’t have that much to say. Just ‘lay down your weapons and you won’t be harmed’. As if we didn’t notice their goddamn pit of corpses. So what’s your plan, exactly?”

  “You and I are going to hit the east roadblock from the other side,” I said. “We’ve brought enough firepower to keep them busy and to hopefully draw the guys on the other side of you into the fight.”

  “We don’t want to draw people up here.”

  “Everyone needs to get into the trees. If they come through they’ll see you’ve all run off into the bush. You guys don’t matter as much as the supplies you’re leaving behind. And we’ll make enough noise that they’ll come straight to the two of us.”

  “And once they’ve joined in on trying to kill us?”

  “Then everyone else gets the fuck out of here, heads back home.”

  “We’re not going home.”

  “Well you can’t stay here.”

  “We need a new plan.”

  “That’s the plan,” I said. “Take it or…well, you gotta take it.”

  “We’re going to Temiskaming.”

  “You can take the last concession road south to 572,” Kayla said. “Tamarack Road. That’ll get you to Hwy 11, and you can try your luck on there.”

  “There’s no way that junction’s unguarded,” I said. “It’ll be just as locked down as the one up the road here.”

  “We need to destroy the roadblock,” Lisa said. “It’s our only option.”

  “No…the smart option is to come back home with us.”

  “This isn’t up for debate.”

  “Well, here’s what we’ll do, then. You and I will try to kill every last man on that roadblock. And then we’ll try to kill the guys rushing to reinforce from the second one. Once we manage to murder two dozen hardened and well-armed bikers, we’ll go our separate ways.”

  “You don’t think we can do it.”

  “I don’t think we can. Because we’re not John Rambo.”

  “What?”

  “Fuck, Lisa. You’re going to get me killed.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Kayla said. “We have three sets of armour. We should use all three.”

  “Then we’ll get Alain to suit up,” I said. “You’re of no use to us, Kayla. We need someone who can shoot.”

  “Alain needs to stay with his family…and all I need to do is lob some grenades at anything that moves.”

  “And you think you can do that why?”

  “Because I know how to throw a ball, Baptiste. Haven’t you ever heard of a strip club softball league?”

  “I thought you were a free agent. Touring the north or whatever.”

  “You know a lot about it for someone who never came to see me dance.”

  “Maybe I managed to sneak in a show. We’re going to need another set of snowshoes.”

  “I don’t need snowshoes,” Lisa said. “You’ve got Justin’s phone?”

  “I do.” I pulled it out of my jacket pocket and checked. “We’ve got a signal. Works better down this way.”

  “So we’ll call Alain once it’s done.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And we’ll tell him to keep on down 101.”

  “Shit, Lisa,” I said. “If we actually pull this off you can tell Alain whatever the hell you want.”

  After Lisa passed the plan on to the caravan, the three of us followed the creek back into the forest. I could tell that Lisa was having trouble keeping up with her boots sinking into the snow, but I wasn’t about to mention it.

  Once we were at least a klick in, we turned east.

  We crossed followed another stream it led us to a plowed gravel road.

  “572,” I said, not that there was much doubt.

  We kept as low as we could as we crossed the highway.

  I could see a large truck at the i
ntersection with 101. It looked like an old military cargo truck, the kind of deuce-and-a-half you’d pick up from army surplus.

  I couldn’t tell if they could see us.

  We headed into the forest on the far side of the road, just deep enough that we couldn’t see the highway from the trees.

  Then we turned north.

  We slowed down once we started to hear voices.

  The voices were in French. It’s nice that The Souls are functionally bilingual.

  We crept toward the edge of the trees. Within throwing distance.

  There were two men in kuttes standing by the truck. Both were armed with shotguns like ours.

  The rest of the men were spread along 101 facing east by their bikes, but they were more involved in drinking and talking than keeping an eye on the caravan.

  I couldn’t see well enough what weapons they had.

  “Grenades,” I whispered to Kayla. “We’ll each take a couple to start things off.”

  Kayla opened her pack and pulled out a wrapped bundle. She held up a grenade for us to see.

  “There’s no fuse,” she said. “Hard contact does it. So throw it hard and hope it doesn’t land gently in a snowdrift.”

  I took two pipes and Lisa took two.

  I nodded and then I threw the first grenade.

  It landed just to the left of the two men by the truck.

  And it exploded.

  The blast threw them both to the ground; it didn’t look like they were about to get up.

  The other men took a moment to stir, but then they were up and moving around the far side of the truck.

  A few took their first shots, but I doubt they could tell where to aim.

  Lisa lobbed her first grenade at the truck.

  Hard contact.

  I saw two men fly out onto the pavement, their bodies mangled.

  The other men started moving back toward their bikes.

  Kayla threw hers next.

  I don’t think she caught any of them.

  I passed my second grenade to Lisa and picked up my C12. I started shooting.

  The Souls went into full retreat, heading west on their motorcycles.

  I hung the C12 on my shoulder and pulled out my SIG.

  I found four men lying on the road. I gave each one a head shot.

  “That was too easy,” Lisa said as she joined me on the highway.

  “I know. They aren’t done with us.”

  I took out the phone and called Alain.

  “They drove right by,” he told me.

  “Then get your people together and get over here,” I said.

  Sky and Katie drove Kayla and I back toward our truck while everyone else kept moving east down 101. The four of us squished into the cab, with Kayla sitting mostly on my lap.

  “We weren’t expecting a roadblock there,” Katie said. “I would have thought they’d be blocking the road closer to Quebec.”

  “It’s easier to control a roadblock close to home,” I said. “Smaller perimeter…just like our own little Green Zone back in Cochrane.”

  “But what’s stopping Aiguebelle from taking over everything between that roadblock and the provincial boundary?”

  “There’s nothing there. It’s pretty hard to hold a big block of empty shield. Have you ever tried winter camping?”

  “So we should be clear for awhile, at least,” Sky said.

  I shook my head. “I didn’t say that.”

  “I think you did,” Katie said.

  “Just because they don’t have roadblocks doesn’t mean they don’t have patrols. You keep a defensible perimeter and patrol the immediate area.”

  “We don’t do that,” Kayla said.

  “Maybe that’s why we keep getting our asses kicked.”

  “So Souls of Flesh patrols toward Quebec and Aiguebelle patrols toward Matheson,” Sky said. “So they’d keep running into each other?”

  “There’s probably some kind of no man’s land between their lines,” I said. “Obviously we don’t know where, but we might be there already.”

  “So that’s why there’s no one out here?” Katie asked.

  “We just haven’t seen anyone yet. I would expect someone to be out here somewhere. If you allow the enemy freedom of action in no man’s land, you’re basically letting them show up at your doorstep unannounced.”

  “Are they really enemies?” Kayla asked.

  “Aiguebelle is a provisionally autonomous region within the Province of Quebec. Sons of Flesh is a criminal organization that has subverted the legal government of the city of Timmins. I doubt they’re best friends.”

  “So we keep going,” Katie said. “One more gauntlet to run.”

  “Don’t you get what’s happening? We just attacked a roadblock and killed four men. They’re not done with us.”

  “Do they know it was us?”

  “Doesn’t matter. You guys aren’t safe.”

  “Well we’re not going to try and head back that way. So what else can we do?”

  “The same thing Kayla and I are going to do,” I said.

  “Am I supposed to know what that is?” Kayla asked.

  “We’re going to Aiguebelle.”

  We said goodbye to everyone at the junction with Highway 672.

  They wouldn’t listen to reason, and I knew that Kayla and I wouldn’t make it home if we kept on with them.

  Graham and Lisa and everyone else would no longer exist for us, whether or not they somehow made it through. Like Cassy and the rest of the world, I wouldn’t know what became of them.

  The only thing I could do was hand Lisa a bundle of six pipe grenades.

  “You’ll run into them again,” I told her.

  “I know,” she said.

  “If these can’t get you through…you might want to use them to…”

  “To control my destiny. Thanks, Baptiste.”

  She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed.

  I hadn’t expected that.

  We drove the truck toward Quebec, expecting to run into Aiguebelle at any moment.

  We drove by the “Bonjour, Quebec” sign without seeing anyone.

  The highway was still just as clean and plowed as it had been in Ontario. Someone was keeping it open.

  We drove past a clearing in the woods that was likely meant for plows to turn around. The clearing wasn’t plowed.

  “They have a gate well into our side back home,” Kayla said.

  “We’re not a threat to them, so they don’t worry that much, I guess.”

  “So where are they?”

  We passed a driveway. No signs that anyone had used it.

  And another.

  “I don’t like the looks of this,” Kayla said.

  “Don’t worry…”

  “What if The Souls have pushed into Quebec? What if the next roadblock is a pile of angry bikers who know exactly what we just did?”

  I decided to ignore her for a while. I didn’t have an argument to make.

  I had no reason to believe she wasn’t dead on.

  Then we came to the first real intersection.

  “Roads are plowed,” I said.

  “I don’t see why…”

  “To draw us in.”

  “What?”

  “They want people to go deep inside their territory.”

  “Why?”

  “Because then they have the advantage. They know we’re here. I’m sure they’ve been watching us.”

  “We’ll be coming up on some cottages soon. Lac Hébécourt. Do you think they’ll stop us there?”

  “We need to ditch the truck.”

  “But we don’t even know what they’ll say.”

  “We won’t get a second shot, Kayla. Once they stop us, that’s it. They might just tell us to turn around, or they might take everything we’ve got and send us back on foot. It’s not like we can ask for a do-over.”

  “So we dump the truck and then what? We go live in the woods?”

 
; “We’ll find another truck,” I said. “We just need to get off the road and past their defensive lines.”

  “Which we haven’t even found yet.”

  I stopped the truck.

  “Dammit, Baptiste…this is seriously our worst date yet.”

  “I’m sure it can get worse.”

  We packed up for the trip, shoving what little food we’d brought into our packs. That was when I realized that we hadn’t even eaten since we’d left McCartney Lake.

  The sun was maybe a half hour from setting. I was surprised the day had held out that long. It felt like it had gone on forever.

  We headed southeast, still wearing our vests and helmets, and with our snowshoes strapped to our boots, toward what we hoped were still just cottages.

  For all we knew, the entire lakefront had been converted into a military base.

  We came to a section of marsh at the edge of a good-sized lake.

  I could see a house on a spit of land where the marsh met the open water.

  I took out my binoculars.

  “I see smoke,” I said. “Someone lives there. Wish I knew who…”

  “I should go.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll go take a look. No one feels threatened by me. If they catch me, they aren’t going to shoot me.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “No…I am sure of that. People do like me, Baptiste. Well…people who aren’t Sara.” She clasped her hand against her helmet, where her mouth should be. “Sorry…”

  I nodded.

  She took off her helmet and her vest, then slowly peeled off her riot suit. She pulled her jacket out of her bag, followed by her pink toque and scarf, and her light blue mittens.

  “See?” she said as she dressed. “I’m all sweet and innocent.”

  “You’re beautiful,” I said. I took of my helmet and gave her a kiss. “Be careful, Kayla.”

  She smiled and started walking. She kept her head up and her pace was casual, and she looked exactly like someone who should have been there.

  She peered into the window of the cottage, then looked back at me. She held up two fingers and then pointed back to the cottage.

  Two people.

  She held up her index finger, then ran her hand through her hair.

  I was pretty sure she meant “one woman”.