He laughed. “Of course not. No one wants to kill Bambi, but we don’t want to starve either.”
As for Charlie, when it came to deciding what to do each day he was like a kid in a candy store. He picked tasks as he liked, though everything he did was helpful. Some days he would help Ben and Jim, proving to be a competent mechanic and repairer of various machines. Other days, he helped Susan and Brian on their farm, and Susan quickly developed a crush on him. Though initially wandering into unfamiliar territory, Susan soon got the better of him. After all, she was a fun, vibrant fourteen-year-old who worked hard and enjoyed being outdoors. Andy and her friends were quick to like her; she had spunk and wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.
Despite the work involved to keep the town running, there was also time for fun. The habits of a generation born and raised during the age of online social networking, cell phones, and high-definition televisions were replaced by more old-fashioned entertainment. For the first time in years, Andy played games like tag and hide-and-go-seek with many of the younger children. Football, soccer, and baseball games became a regular occurrence after dinner during the longer summer and early autumn evenings. Storytelling around campfires would often follow, or they’d watch old movies shown on a big screen downtown in the park. All of it brought back a piece of childhood, something that had been missing during the years of pain, fear, and uncertainty. Sometimes Andy would think about Maria and her brother and sister, and how they would be much happier in Aspen. She hoped to see them again one day, but doubted she would.
The only consistent source of aggravation that marred an otherwise tranquil life was the very existence of Nataliya and her friends, all of whom seemed to believe they were somehow better than the rest of the town and therefore too good to do any real work.
“Can’t we just force them out of town at gunpoint?” Andy once asked Brian, partly joking but mostly serious.
“They have guns too, Andy.’”
“Did you ever think of leaving Aspen and going elsewhere?”
“Sure, but I would feel like I was giving into them if I left. They’d win out of forfeit.”
“I understand. I wouldn’t give in either.”
For the most part, Andy and her friends ignored Nataliya’s inner circle and their transgressions. As new residents of Aspen, it wasn’t their place to make waves.
***
Tensions escalated one snowy day in mid-November. As usual, Andy was working at the hospital. That morning, she gave Morgan another sonogram, and following an uneventful afternoon, she headed toward the main entrance of the hospital to end her day. As she passed one of the operating rooms, she heard a commotion from inside. When she entered the room, three boys were in the midst of a struggle in the far corner. One of the boys, Nathan, a rather frail kid of eleven that Morgan taught, was pinned against the wall by Mikhail and his friend Heath. They were threatening Nathan with the defibrillator and were about to shock him when Andy quickly intervened.
“What the hell are you doing? Let go of him!”
Mikhail and Heath immediately looked as if they’d been caught with their pants down around their ankles, though they maintained a firm grip on Nathan.
“Did you hear me? Let go of him!”
“And if we don’t, what are you going to do?” Mikhail sputtered as Heath sneered viciously at Andy.
Staying calm, she reached her hand inside the backpack she carried to the hospital every day and fished around until she found her loaded pistol. Using both hands to hold the weapon, she pointed the barrel back and forth between Heath and Mikhail.
“Let him go or you’ll both get a bullet to the leg, and I won’t pull them out.”
After a tense silence, Heath and Mikhail reluctantly released Nathan. Gesturing with her pistol, she ordered the two out of the room. Fuming with anger, Heath and Mikhail skulked to the door.
“You’ll regret this, bitch!” Mikhail said with a flourish as he followed Heath outside.
Wordlessly, she followed and watched them exit the hospital with her pistol grip remaining firm. Then she returned to the operating room and tucked the weapon back into her bag.
“Did they hurt you?” she asked Nathan, moving toward him.
He shook his head. There were tears in his eyes. She gently placed her hands on his shoulders. Only after touching him did she become aware that her own hands were shaking.
“What happened, Nathan?”
But he was too upset to answer. A tear that had been hanging on precariously to his left eyelid finally gave up its fight and fell to the floor.
“Nathan, it’s okay, you can tell me. I won’t let them get away with it. I promise.”
Wearily, he lifted his gaze to meet Andy’s. She took a step back to give him space. Huddled in the corner, Nathan appeared smaller than usual. “They thought I saw something that I wasn’t supposed to, but when I told them I didn’t see anything, they didn’t believe me.”
“What did they think you saw?”
He shrugged weakly. “I don’t know. I mean I don’t know exactly what I saw.”
“But you did see something. What was it?”
He bit his lower lip and his gaze went to the floor.
“Nathan, please. I can’t help if you don’t tell me.”
He wiped his tears and looked up. “It was last night. I was over at a friend’s house for dinner with a few others from school. It was Alison’s house. Her older sister makes the best hamburgers.” This remark brought a brief smile to his face, and Andy smiled in return. “Anyway, after dinner, I went to the store to see if Mark was still there and if he needed any help.”
Mark was Nathan’s older brother and a friend of Charlie’s who ran the grocery store in town. Andy would often see him there cleaning up after closing.
“I didn’t see Mark inside the store when I got there, but I saw that the lights had been left on. I figured Mark must have forgotten, so I went inside to turn them off.” He paused and wiped at his eyes again. “I heard noises coming from the back of the store, like people talking or something. So I went to the back and saw that the back door was open, and that all the freezers were empty. I figured that the store was getting robbed, so I hid behind one of the shelves near the freezers. I should’ve just left the store, but I wanted to see who was robbing us. I saw three people standing in front of a truck outside. It was Heath and his brother, Garrett, talking to someone else. I didn’t recognize him, which I thought was strange, because I know everyone in town.”
Another pause and a trembling breath.
“Then I decided to leave before they saw me, but when I moved, I accidentally knocked over a jar of applesauce. It crashed and broke on the floor. They heard the noise and came running inside the store. I turned off the light switch so they couldn’t see and went out the front. When I got outside, I ran as fast as I could all the way home. I didn’t think they saw me, but they knew it was either me or Mark. We’re the only ones with keys to the store.”
“Did you tell Mark?”
“Yeah, when I got home. He went down to the store, but no one was there. The back door was closed and the jar of applesauce had been cleaned up. The freezer was still empty, but its doors were closed.”
“And you have no idea who the third person was?”
Nathan shook his head firmly. “Never seen him before.”
“But what does Mikhail have to do with this? He wasn’t there.”
“I don’t know, but he’s friends with Heath.”
Andy glanced briefly at the room. “What were you doing here anyway?”
He lifted his right pant leg and revealed a bloody bandage on his shin. “It happened when I ran from the store. I thought the bleeding would stop but it hasn’t. I guess Mikhail and Heath followed me.”
Andy bent down to get a better look at the wound. “That’s a nasty cut. Let me take a look at it now.”
After mending his shin, she escorted Nathan out of the hospital. “Do you want me to walk you home?”
&nb
sp; He hesitated before nodding sheepishly. “If you don’t mind. I feel like Heath and Mikhail are waiting for me somewhere.”
“Okay,” she replied tenderly as they set off along the snowy road.
***
After safely dropping Nathan off and explaining to his brother what had happened, Andy returned home. Mark was visibly shaken by news of the incident, and his expression was an intense mixture of worry and anger.
As she walked home, Andy couldn’t shake the image of Nathan being pinned against the wall by Heath and Mikhail, each holding charged defibrillator paddles mere inches from the boy’s chest. The last thing she wanted was to disrupt the fragile balance of power that existed in Aspen, even as unfair and absurd as it was. Being banished as winter approached with Morgan more than five months pregnant was not an option. But she didn’t want to sit by while kids like Nathan were being bullied.
Distracted by her thoughts, including how to take better security measures at the hospital, she nearly missed seeing Ben on the street outside their home.
“Didn’t you hear me calling your name?” But upon seeing her face, he immediately recognized that something was wrong. “What is it?”
“I’ll tell everyone inside,” she replied after an exhausted sigh. “Right now, I just want to get warm.”
As they walked up the driveway, Ben put a reassuring arm around her shoulder. Grateful for the gesture, she allowed herself to lean into him all the way to the front door.
Both Brian and Susan were over for dinner, so everyone heard the story. When Andy finished, everyone looked to Brian, whose expression had grown increasingly tense as he listened.
“And he had no idea who the third person was?” was his first question.
“No. Nathan said he never saw him before.”
“Have there been any other robberies or anything like that lately?” Ben asked.
Brian thought for a moment and started to shake his head when Susan stopped him. “Remember back in the spring when Gracie’s sister lost her snowmobile?”
Brian scratched his head, slowly recollecting the memory. “You mean Cathy? Yeah, I remember.”
“Yeah, she kept saying that she didn’t lose it but that someone took it right after the last snow storm. Remember how no one believed her?”
“Yeah, she wanted me to bring it up at the next council meeting, but I didn’t think it was anything serious, especially since it happened to Cathy–she’s a nice girl but she’s pretty spacey and is always losing things.”
“Maybe Cathy was telling the truth?” Morgan suggested.
“I know she thinks she was telling the truth. Cathy may be a lot of things, but she’s not a liar,” Brian said.
“Are snowmobiles rare enough in Aspen that people would want to steal them?” Andy asked. “I don’t see that many around.”
“They used to be everywhere. A lot of homes had them, and of course the ski patrol had a ton for the slopes, but most of them either broke down or disappeared the first winter after the virus. That year was pretty rough, and a lot of kids left to go to other towns and took snowmobiles with them.”
“Are you going to say something to Nataliya about her brother?”
He pursed his lips together. “I’m sure she knows whatever Mikhail’s up to, so she probably knows about what happened with Nathan. I’ll say something to her tomorrow.”
“What about Garrett and Heath?” Charlie piped in, angry on Mark’s behalf. “They can’t get away with this. Someone has to say something to them.”
“I’ll say something to them, but only if you say so, Brian. This is your town. We’re just visitors,” Ben said.
The word “visitors” sounded odd to Andy. She didn’t think they were temporary residents anymore, not after nearly four months.
Brian obviously didn’t think so either. “You’re all part of the town now. But let me talk to Garrett and Heath, though I’d be more than happy to have you and Jim back me up.”
“Happily,” Jim said.
“Nathan’s the sweetest boy,” said Morgan with a sad frown, and Jim gave her hand a consoling squeeze. “I can’t believe they would do that to him.”
“I can,” Ben countered. “Look how they treat everyone in broad daylight.”
No one said anything for a moment, and Andy noticed that Brian had become particularly pensive. “What is it?” she asked him, rousing him from his thoughts.
“Nothing,” he began, shaking his head. “But I was just thinking about some things I’ve noticed recently that seemed odd, but now I think they might actually be related to all of this.”
“Like what?”
“Well, at the end of last year we didn’t have any gas in town. I mean no one was driving anywhere. Susan and I came into town only once a week, on horseback, to pick up supplies and check on how things were going. It wasn’t until the refinery outside of Denver started producing gas that we were finally able to start using our cars again. But about a month before that, I noticed Garrett driving around in his SUV, and I asked him where he got the gas. He told me he had some stored in his garage at home, but at the council meeting a few days before he was complaining how there was no gas left in town. At the time I just figured he’d traded for some.”
“Remember the liquor at Juniper’s birthday party last spring?” said Susan, referring to one of Nataliya’s friends and another member of the council.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that,” he replied before explaining to the others. “Nataliya likes to have birthday parties for her friends, big surprise. And she also likes to have tons of liquor at these parties. Bourbon, scotch, vodka…you name it. Except at Juniper’s birthday party in April, her supply ran out, and so had everyone else’s by then.”
“Nataliya was pissed,” Susan said with a giggle.
Charlie turned to her and asked, “Why did you go to a party for someone you abhor?”
“Are you kidding? I didn’t go, but Brian did,” she replied.
“She invites everyone on the council. I only go because it would create more problems if I didn’t. Anyway, after Juniper’s party, all the liquor in Aspen was supposedly gone.”
“But then June comes, right before you all got here,” Susan continued, “and it’s her sister Sparrow’s birthday. I went to that party, but only because my friend Karen really wanted to go.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Andy thought she saw Ben flinch after Susan spoke, but she ignored it and continued to listen.
“I kept trying to convince her not to, but she’s always trying to make friends with the ‘popular’ people. So I go to the stupid party, and Sparrow, Juniper, and all their close friends were drinking liquor and getting drunk. But this time they weren’t sharing it like they’d always done in the past. Instead they were keeping it for themselves and hiding it from everyone else until they got too drunk to care.”
“So where did it come from?” Charlie asked.
“Who knows?” Brian replied flatly. “The simple explanation is that one of Sparrow’s friends had some liquor in their house that they’d forgotten about, but I doubt it. They must’ve gotten a fresh supply from somewhere between April and June.”
“Is liquor something the town tries to resupply when it runs out?” Andy asked. “I gave your friend some whiskey when I pulled that bullet out of his shoulder, but it was a small bottle that I happened to find in some desk drawer at the hospital.”
Brian shook his head. “No, liquor is the least of our priorities. It’s not something we ever worried about when we ran out. And I could care less if Nataliya and her friends have a large stash of liquor. I’m just worried about how they got it.”
Chapter XII
December 2022
In the six weeks since the incident at the hospital, little had changed. Work continued as usual, though everyone tended to stay indoors more during the cold, snowy days. Ben spent more time gathering and chopping firewood to keep everyone warm than doing any of his normal work. The electricity, tho
ugh fairly dependable, was still temperamental, and a day without heat was not uncommon.
Brian spoke with Nataliya the day after Andy saved Nathan. Though she defended her brother and denied involvement in robbing the store or any other nefarious behavior, she knew her comfortable living depended on residents like Brian and his friends, so she promised to confront Mikhail about what happened at the store. Wary of her promises, Brian raised the incident at the council meeting two days later where a full-fledged war of words erupted.
“You have no proof!” Garrett barked at Brian. “Nathan will deny anything that Andy told you.”
“That’s because you’ve made him too scared to talk!”
The meeting spiraled out of control even further, with old feuds resurfacing until they peaked into threats of violence. The only thing that prevented actual blows was Garrett recognizing that he was outnumbered, both physically and numerically. But before storming out of the meeting, he came within inches of Brian’s face and snarled at him, “Get ready to pay for this!”
No one saw much of Brian after that. Susan still came by the house often, but mainly to spend time with Charlie. She told him her brother was making himself scarce until everything blew over. When Charlie asked if anything like this had ever happened before, she shook her head firmly.
Two days before Christmas, Brian finally came over to the house for dinner. It had been two weeks since anyone but Susan had seen him.
“Well, look who’s at the door,” Jim said as he moved aside to let him in.
“Yeah, I know. Sorry,” Brian said.
Everyone couldn’t help but notice how tired he looked, as though he hadn’t slept in weeks.
“Sorry we’re late,” he added as he took off his coat. “It took us a while to get all the cows and horses water. Our pipes froze, so I had to take care of that while Susan melted the snow one bucket at a time.”
“It’s too bad you two can’t just move in here with us,” Andy said as she entered the living room momentarily from the kitchen. “Or at least move your livestock somewhere closer, like Scott’s farm.”
“He and I talked about that,” said Brian. “Unfortunately, his farm isn’t big enough for both his cattle and mine.”
Schism Page 10