by Misty Vixen
“Try not to finish that,” I said. “It’s our last one.”
The veggie soup had also been our last.
Delilah just nodded. I grabbed the thermos of last night’s dinner that I’d set near the opening in the chimney to keep it warm, as well as a bottle of water kept cold, and gently woke Elizabeth up. She came awake pretty quickly.
“Yeah?” she asked, looking alarmed.
“It’s okay. Just morning,” I said, and pointed to the thermos and bottle of water. “Breakfast. I need you to eat up and listen carefully while I lay out the plan. Then you can go back to sleep if you want.”
She nodded, rubbing her eyes as she sat up. The blanket fell away from her, exposing her bare, pale, wonderful breasts.
I made myself focus.
“Everyone listen up,” I said as I peeled open the can of beans. “Our main goal is to get across that river. Sooner we can do that, the better. Now, from what I saw, it’s just too steep on this side of the highway. The only way across is on the other side, where those cabins were, along the riverbank. So that’s where we’re headed. The ice should definitely be thick enough to hold us at this point. But we’re running low on food, now more than ever, and so I have got to go hunt something. Anything. I’ll be going alone, and I’ll go as fast as I can. Regardless, I’ll be back in an hour. If we need to, we can hunt on the move, or maybe get lucky and find some food in some of those buildings over there. Though I’m not sure what kind of time we’ll have. Your husband and his pals could be in the area, or long gone by now, and-”
I froze and Elizabeth barely managed to stifle a small shriek as someone pounded on the door downstairs.
“Shit,” Megan growled.
I pulled out my pistol and stood up, setting the beans aside.
“Elizabeth, get some clothes on and get in the closet,” I said. “Delilah, stay in here. Megan, you stay up here, near the stairs but out of sight, in case I need you. Understand?”
They all told me they did. Megan joined me while Delilah helped Elizabeth get her clothes on. Well, great.
This could be anything, but I thought it was her husband.
Time to face the music.
I came down the stairs nice and easy, boots sounding heavy, keeping a close eye on the front door while glancing quickly to whatever windows were in sight of the stairs. Just one, and no one seemed to be peering in. The front door was solid, no window there. I kept my pistol out and in hand, a reasonable precaution, I thought, but I kept it aimed down. I thought I was a quick enough draw for it to count, but don’t we all think things like that?
I got up to the door. “Who’s there?”
“My name is Jack Patterson,” came an amicable enough voice, and I knew at once I was dealing with Elizabeth’s husband. “I’m looking for my wife. She’s gone missing. I was hoping you could offer some help, tell me if you might have seen her.”
I paused. “You alone?”
“No, I’ve got two associates with me. They’re helping me.”
“Fine, I’m opening the door, hands where I can see them,” I replied.
“Fair enough.”
He sounded pleasant enough, but his tone rang hollow, like a politician or salesman.
Honestly, those were the same thing.
I opened the door and found three guys looking at me. One of them was a big dude, bigger even than me, and he looked dangerous. He was muscle, no doubt about it, so he was the obvious threat. The second guy was smaller, thin. I half-expected him to look furtive and anxious, but he didn’t. He was oddly calm, just looked back at me with a flat expression. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder. Hunter or sharpshooter. Great.
The guy in the middle was, I had no doubt, Jack. Elizabeth’s husband. Ex-husband. He looked to be in his late thirties, pale, dark hair, still wearing a nice coat and good pants and boots even with Armageddon having come and gone.
‘Nice’ as in expensive, not functional.
The smile he offered me was one that I think would have fooled most people. It rang hollow, though.
Again, I found myself thinking of politicians, or maybe lawyers.
“Thank you for opening the door,” he said, and offered his hand.
I almost took it, more out of reflexive action than anything else, but I stayed my hand. “All the same, I think I won’t shake. You understand.”
He nodded as if he did, lowering his hand, and if it bugged him, he kept it off his face successfully. I wondered if I should dial back the paranoia and suspicion, which bordered on open hostility, but then I thought no, this was natural. Three dudes, two of them openly armed, (I saw a pistol on the hip of the big guy), showed up unannounced on my doorstep. Grin or no, I thought I was right to be paranoid even if I wasn’t expecting them.
“I’ll cut to the chase,” Jack said. “My wife, who is quite pregnant with our child, has gone missing. I’m not entirely sure if she might have been kidnapped or run off on her own. I think it’s possible she ran off, though.” He stared at me for a moment, as though sizing me up, and an ugly smile replaced the politician’s smile. This one had more truth in it, and it was ugly not just because I recognized it for what it was, but because it was oddly collaborative, like he’d become aware of the fact that the two of us were in on a dirty little secret together.
Sure enough, the next words out of his mouth were: “I can assume that a man of your...stature, in this new world, knows how those fucking bitches can be.”
Ugh. Fuck. Here we went again. But I kept it off my face, even put a small, knowing smile on. Because here was an opportunity. If he believed that I was the kind of person who would help him out, he’d probably leave. That could backfire. If he thought I was the kind of person who treated women like he did, then he’d also probably conclude that I’d just keep his wife if I had her and lie to his face. But it was worth a shot.
“I’ve got a few of my own, I know what you mean.”
That damned smile of his only grew. “Fucking whores,” he said, and he said it with casual contempt that not only did it twist my guts, but it stamped out any and all concern I might’ve had about the validity of Elizabeth’s claims. “Have you seen her?”
“No,” I replied. “Haven’t seen anyone out this way for awhile. But I’ll keep an eye out.”
“I’d appreciate it. I’m very willing to offer a reward for her return, should she turn up.”
“What’s she look like?”
“A little on the short side, very pale, black hair, thin but noticeably pregnant.” His face soured very slightly as he said this last thing, and I suddenly had the intuition that Elizabeth’s own intuition about why he hadn’t slept with her for awhile was true. Not necessarily the cheating part, (although given how he seemed to feel about his wife of a decade, I was almost positive he was or had been), but about the pregnant part.
Still weird.
“I’ll grab her and hold onto her if I see her,” I said.
“I’ll come back and visit tomorrow or the day after. We’re going to keep searching.” He paused. “I’d appreciate it if you were careful with her.”
“Of course,” I replied. “No damaging the goods.”
He smiled his ugly smile. “Knew you’d understand. Well, good day.”
“Good day,” I replied, and closed the door as they started walking away.
I frowned, waiting, listening, coming down from the anger. Shit, I would have been a good actor. With a soft sigh, I turned and moved back upstairs.
“Are they gone?” Megan murmured softly from where she waited, just out of sight.
“Yeah,” I replied. “You heard that?”
“Yes.” She paused. “Sorry they believed you.”
I let out a small, bitter laugh. “Well, it served its purpose,” I replied. How many abusive assholes were going to look at me and see one of their own? But I didn’t have time to dwell on that, not right now, and even so, did it matter?
What I did mattered, not what I looked like.
>
I had to keep reminding myself of that.
We rejoined Delilah and Elizabeth. Delilah was carefully peering out one of the shuttered windows.
“See anything?” I asked.
“Yeah. They’re heading back towards the highway.”
“All three of them?”
“Yes.”
“Keep watching them.”
“Okay.”
I moved to the closet and opened it up. Elizabeth stood inside, hugging herself, wearing a t-shirt and some leggings. She looked frightened. Not angry or resolute or anything else. Just scared. I felt bad for her, worse than before now.
“Are they gone?” she asked in a quiet, unsteady voice.
“Yes. They’re gone. They don’t think you’re here,” I replied. I opened my arms. “Come here, Elizabeth.”
She didn’t hesitate this time. She immediately hugged me, and I enfolded her in my arms, hugging her back. After maybe ten seconds, she started crying. That hurt my heart, and I held her a little closer to me. Then I started stroking the back of her head, feeling her soft hair.
“Don’t worry,” I said to her. “I’ll keep you safe.”
She said something into my chest as she cried but I couldn’t understand. I guess it didn’t matter too much because she didn’t try to articulate herself. Just kept crying. We stayed like that, standing in the doorway to the closet, for close to five minutes. It wasn’t like I had anywhere else to go right now. Yeah, I had to hunt, but I wanted to wait at minimum a good half hour, maybe an hour, for those assholes to get farther away.
I did not trust them not to come back and try to assault, if not kidnap, Megan and Delilah. Even though I trusted Megan and even Delilah to put up a fight...I’d rather they not have to go through that again if at all possible.
Finally, Elizabeth stepped back and rubbed at her eyes. Megan appeared silently at my side with an old t-shirt she’d probably found somewhere in the room, and offered it to Elizabeth, who thanked her, took it, and blew her nose and tried to clean up with it.
“Fuck,” she muttered. Then she tossed away the dirty shirt when she was done. She looked up at me. “I’m sorry...and thank you.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” I said. “And you’re welcome.”
She let out a small laugh that was less bitter than I thought it might be. “I don’t know if you heard but...when you told me you’d keep me safe I said that I believe you. And I do. Maybe it’s stupid, but...I believe you, for better or for worse.”
I nodded knowingly. “I understand. You can never really know until that moment of truth comes. I don’t know what more to tell you than I already have.”
She smiled a slightly forlorn smile. “You’ve said all you can by now, Chris. I guess we’ll see how the next few days plays out. But I do trust you. The three of you. Whether that’s desperation speaking or intuition, I genuinely don’t know, but I just hope I’m right. But I don’t want to talk about trust anymore.”
I nodded and made way for her. She stepped out of the closet and walked back over to the bed, slowly, carefully. I guess you must feel even more vulnerable during times like these if you were carrying another life around inside of you. I know if I was pregnant I’d be fucking terrified of tripping even a little.
Something ugly occurred to me and I knew there was no denying it. I thought of putting it off, but knew that was a bad idea. Instead, I walked over to her and sat down on the bed beside her. “Elizabeth, there is something we need to talk about. Something I can’t put off. It’s ugly and miserable, but we need to discuss it.”
“What?” she asked, steeling herself.
“I may have to kill your husband.”
She didn’t quite relax, not exactly, but she didn’t react negatively to it. Instead, she just looked sad. Maybe a little defeated.
“I know,” she said quietly. She looked down at her ring, started twisting it on her finger. “He’s my ex-husband now. I knew that the moment I chose to walk away. To run away. I’d have gotten rid of this fucking thing, but it’s probably worth a lot to someone. Plus, that old rule still applies in this new world, though not as much, maybe. About how some women wear a ring in public, even if they’re single, just to keep guys from hitting on them. Doesn’t work all the time, but hey, I’ll take fewer guys bugging me, or, in this case, trying to fucking snatch me.”
“Yep,” Delilah and Megan said with a resigned bitterness that hurt to hear.
There were definitely things women had to deal with that I knew I never had to or would.
“I get it,” I replied. “So…”
She sighed softly. “I hate that it’s come to this, but yes. I won’t try to stop you and I won’t hate you if you have to do it. Honestly...I don’t think he’ll stop anyway. I think, unless I know he’s dead, I’ll always be looking over my shoulder. If it was just me, he probably would’ve let me go, but now that I’ve got our child in me...no. He won’t stop.”
“There’s another thing,” I said after a moment. She looked at me. I shifted uncomfortably. “There’s something about me that brings out the worst in some guys. I think it’s really easy for assholes to see me as ‘one of the guys’. The way he was talking about you...he definitely seemed like he was trying to get a piece of property back.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I guess I’m not surprised.”
“You want to talk about it?” I asked.
She considered, then shook her head. “Not right now.”
“What do we do?” Megan asked.
“Wait for another twenty minutes at least, see where they go. If they leave completely from sight, we stick to the plan.”
FOURTEEN
I ended up waiting about forty minutes in total, just to be safe.
They got up onto the highway and started walking back the way we’d initially come from, and walked out of sight of the house. I waited a little bit longer, then finally decided enough was enough. It was time to go to work.
Megan wanted to come with me, but I had her stay. I went alone, taking the rifle and the bare minimum of survival gear with me, wanting to move light. After double-checking that we were still secure, I made sure Megan and Delilah started getting everything ready. Make sure stuff was washed, water was replenished, basically that we could up and leave right away if we had to. And I think it was a testament to how much the past few days had drained her that five minutes after we wrapped up our conversation, Elizabeth crawled back into bed, and five minutes after that, she was fast asleep. Which was good, she needed her rest.
There were a lot of long days ahead of her.
The skies overhead were low and gray, and a thin mist clung to everything as I walked away from the house and into the forest behind it. This was probably what led me to comparing the stands of dead trees to collections of headstones. Nothing but dead wood and snow everywhere, all of it presided over by miserable slate skies overhead.
Rifle in hand, I stalked carefully through the woods, making sure to maintain my notion of where the house and highway were so I could find my way back. I was good with navigation, but it wasn’t impossible that I’d get lost out here, and now was really not the time for it. While I hunted for the deer with a little more desperation than normal, I thought about my situation. I’d traveled in groups before, but I’d never so clearly been in charge. In spite of her personality, I could tell by now that Megan saw herself as second-in-command.
Even if she might not admit that.
And that wasn’t me just chest-puffing and feeling important. At least, it didn’t feel like it. It was more just me recognizing reality for what it was. I didn’t necessarily want to get into a fight over who was in charge and I was willing to listen to and act on ideas if I thought they made sense, but I thought the true importance of someone being in charge and making decisions was that you ultimately got shit done. Right now was a lot closer to a ‘we don’t have time to argue, just do what I say’ situation than I’d been in for a littl
e while.
Although, thinking back to the past few weeks since meeting Megan and Delilah, maybe that wasn’t quite as true as I thought.
Regardless, however Megan might feel, I could tell Delilah and Elizabeth had fallen in line. They’d do whatever I told them. There was a power trip in there, I’ll admit, but there was also fear, because I knew that a good leader didn’t just tell people what to do, they also took responsibility for the consequences of their orders.
Their lives were now in my hands.
And that was a frightening thing.
Though not as frightening as I expected it to be. The world was a dangerous and shitty place, and I knew that, but I felt surprisingly confident in my abilities to see us through this. Was that just arrogance, or was that actual confidence?
I guess I’d never know for sure, but I also thought someone like Megan was a great barometer. She’d tell me if I was sticking my head up my ass.
I froze as I caught movement ahead and to the right. Staring between the trees, raising the rifle, I spotted a deer. Holy shit, maybe luck was with us after all.
I took aim.
~
It wasn’t all good, but it was as good as it was going to get, I thought.
The deer was small and a little undernourished, but I’d killed it clean, one shot, and that was fine by me. I hurried forward, scooped up my kill, and then started hurrying back to the house. It wasn’t going to provide a lot of meat, but it would probably be enough, I thought. It was going to have to be, anyway.
As soon as I got back to the house, I checked in with the others, who were surprised and happy to see me back so soon. Nothing had happened. While I started gutting and chopping and cleaning the dead deer, Megan and Delilah went about making final preparations to move out. I tried not to work too quickly, but I was starting to feet the pressure. I wanted out of this house, across that river, and out of this region. The sooner we could start putting distance between us and them, the better. If possible, I wanted to avoid a confrontation.
Because it was still all too easy for any of us to end up dead.