“Because coyotes aren't dogs.” Cage picked up the thread of her logic. “So that takes a good measure of cannibalism out of it. You have to eat within your species.”
Something about that last phrase nagged at her, but she couldn’t afford to get distracted. She’d seen a dog in the daylight. She’d seen a pack of them coming straight at her. Even though it was barely midday, she needed to be prepared. Just in case.
Nodding at her brother’s back, she followed him just off the trail to the previous cage. It took more effort than she would have liked to get it partially folded up. Broken and bent, it wouldn’t clip down into its planned, compact carrying shape.
For a while they carried it between them, each with a hand looped through the bars and holding up one side of the mess. But as Joule quickly pointed out, “I have only one free hand right now. If something comes up on us, I'm going to drop this and that's going to cause you problems. One of us needs to have the bow and arrow ready, and that means one of us needs to carry the crate by themselves.”
She figured it was pretty obvious which of them should do which part of her suggestion.
“I've got it,” Cage volunteered immediately, showing he understood their skills the same as she did. It looked awkward as fuck to walk with the crate bouncing against his leg each time he took a step, but Cage made it work somehow, not slowing his pace much at all. The dogs were good motivation to get home quickly.
Joule stayed behind him, swinging her gaze and her hands wide, keeping her arrow notched, if aimed toward the ground, always ready to go.
As they emerged at the edge of the woods, their dad was pulling up the driveway, probably having run errands while they were out. Everything had to be done during the daylight now. Nothing could happen after dusk—not getting a gallon of milk, not even watching TV.
Nate climbed out of the car and looked up at the kids. He stopped from where he was rummaging in the back seat and turned to face them, clearly picking up on their glum expressions. “It didn't work… What's that?”
“This one’s broken,” Cage said, lifting the folded metal a little as a gesture. “There was another one, also mangled, but so beyond repair that it wasn't even worth carrying home.”
Nate’s lips pressed together as he made an assessing nod. “Well, I guess we have to start over.”
Finally, Joule let her arms relax at her sides. She wasn’t ready to throw the bow over her shoulder and put the arrow back into the quiver—that was for when she was inside, or trying to impress her mother with how safe it was. How safe it was was always a lie, she thought.
“We don’t have to start over from the top,” she told her dad. “We think the bait worked.”
But they all headed inside, tired at the end of the day and with their results. As soon as he set his things down, Nate called into the space of the house, knowing Kaya was already home, even if he couldn’t see her. “We need all brains at the table!”
It was an hour later that they had a plan in place.
Kaya looked around the family, and Joule felt her mother’s gaze as if it were a physical touch. “If we split up into teams of two and go different directions, I think we could have the setup before nightfall tonight.”
Everyone agreed.
But, Joule thought, the timing would be tight.
17
Kaya was exhausted, but she wasn’t about to give up. She'd given the gun to Cage along with a holster she’d bought earlier this week. The idea was that he could clip it to the side of his jeans and have it at the ready without having to do something stupid, like tuck it into his waistband. The dogs were threat enough. She wasn't going to lose a child to something else.
That was why she’d put her foot down when Cage asked about a fully-automatic assault rifle. They were too easy to mis-use. The bullets went everywhere, and she could imagine firing at a dog and hitting a neighbor, or a family member.
Right now, all four of her family members were healthy. They were physically fit—able to run, jump, and climb. She’d always known she would love one of her family members through any disability, but now their health had become exponentially more important. Fitness skills were exactly the ones that had saved Joule’s life. Kaya wasn't going to put either of her kids or her husband in a situation—like unsafe gun use—that would put any of that in jeopardy.
“I don't like this one.” She said it to her family and to the woods in general.
Joule had her bow and arrow out and only nodded in response to her mother’s statement. They seemed to be silently betting on which trap would work best. Just then, Kaya realized that she and Nate were setting out the traps while the kids held all the weapons.
She would have preferred she carry the gun and take the responsibility of killing something. But her children were far superior at defense than either she or Nate. Kaya had to come to terms with this being the correct setup. She just didn't like relying on her children this way. The dogs left them no choice.
Nate was working to pry open the old-fashioned bear trap. Kaya could feel her adrenaline kicking up, but she didn’t want to say anything. The trap needed to be opened, even though it looked horrifically unsafe to do so. She didn’t want the kids doing it, so it had to be her or Nate. But they were chalkboard kind of people, and it seemed too way easy to dick up something like a bear trap. Too easy to catch one of them rather than one of the dogs.
With the jaws open, Nate slid the small latch into place and Kaya reminded herself that—while it was easy to slip the latch out—a combination of forces was holding it in place. Friction. Tension. Opposing forces were working—the latch wanted to go up, the notch at the corresponding piece held it down—until something put weight on the flat plate in the middle.
Nate eyed his handiwork and they both stepped back for a moment.
“Bait?” he asked into the air as he pulled the coat hanger hook out of his back pocket. He’d decided when they bought the trap that there was too much chance of putting the bait on wrong. He was not going get snapped into the trap. At least he worked hard to stay ahead of potential problems, Kaya reminded herself. She looked to her daughter, who was carrying the chickens today.
Joule swept her gaze one last time, but neither of the adults said anything about her taking a moment she clearly needed. Then she shrugged her backpack off and unzipped it with one hand the other still holding the bow, finger across the shaft, ready to go. She pulled out a gallon bag and tossed her father raw chicken already stuffed with broken pieces of bittersweet chocolate.
“Chocolate?” He looked up at her.
“I read it online. Store bought mushrooms may not be a threat. That’s dark chocolate. It has a better kill rate,” she told him.
It took him a few minutes to pull the bait out, hook it onto his makeshift wire and set it ever so carefully into the trap. With an uneasy exhale, they all stepped back.
“That was the last one,” Kaya announced. “Good work, Nate.” She almost expected as they walked away that they would hear the trap snapping behind them. She didn’t expect that a dog had been stalking them or anything so sinister, but that they were rank idiots and the trap would simply snap shut on its own because they’d done it all wrong.
She didn’t hear it, and her breathing got easier with each step she took toward home.
The day was wearing on and they all needed dinner and now showers, too. In the end, though, she liked this better than the original plan. Originally, they had hoped to catch a live animal. Their intent had been to then either tranquilize or kill it.
They now owned tranquilizer darts for the rifle—one of the errands from earlier today—and more bullets for the 9mm handgun. She and Joule had gone on that errand, as Kaya had thought it might help her daughter sleep better if she had a sense that they could stop the animal, if need be.
Kaya had invested in hollow points. Joule had nodded her agreement and the clerk at the gun shop hadn’t questioned a mother and teenage daughter buying bullets that had or
iginally been designed to pierce Kevlar.
When she’d asked the kids, could they kill a live animal? Both had said yes. She’d tried to explain that it wasn't always the kind of thing you understood until you had done it. By then, it was too late. Neither of her children seemed to have any qualms about taking out one of the dogs, though, and Kaya had let it stand. At least it wasn’t like zombie movies where the characters had to decide to shoot a parent in the head.
Of the four traps they had set out, two would kill the animal on contact. One trap was a simple snare: a net laid out on the ground, strong and sturdy enough to hold up to a fighting dog. Or at least, they thought it was. After all, they’d been wrong about the dog crates serving as a suitable cage.
The net was much stronger, it’s flexibility a point in its favor. At each of the four corners a nylon rope tied it up to a pulley system in the tree above. A counterweight had been set to pull the animal up high and out of reach of any other dogs.
They’d made all these decisions thinking through a live scenario. The dogs traveled in packs; they might catch two. So they’d made the counterweight heavy enough for that scenario. The pack might try to get a member back, so they’d made the lift high enough that they shouldn’t be able to jump and snare it. But it was overall a simple design. Snap the trigger and up goes the net—a live animal captured. “Just like Wile E. Coyote,” Joule had commented.
Another trap had earned the nickname “the Venus flytrap.” Should an animal step into it, full planks would zip down from both sides. The added weight would crush a ribcage enough to kill the animal, they hoped. This was the one Kaya almost wished wouldn’t work.
“That Venus flytrap,” she started off, “is going to mangle the animal it catches. Which means we might lose information.”
“That's the whole point,” Cage replied with force. “We're trying to get information.”
Kaya didn’t follow his reasoning. “Exactly, and crushing it will lose that.”
Her son shook his head as he lead the way back through the woods, on track to get them home well before dark. “Not catching animals is what's losing us information.”
Kaya couldn’t find an argument, now that she understood his point.
“Once we get one,” he continued, “we can get some information out of it. We can look at most, if not all, of it. Maybe we can figure out a better way to trap it or design better bait. Learn how much force is necessary to not mangle the next one, that kind of thing. Then we can use that information to catch a live one.”
Behind her, Nate muttered, “Besides, the more of them we take them out in the process, the better off we’ll all be.”
They were almost home and the children's phones beeped simultaneously, making Kaya’s head snap up at the sound. They should have had them off in the woods, but she hadn’t thought of reminding them. All their phones were programmed to go silent at dusk, in case they forgot to turn them off. Another thing to add to the list, she thought.
The noise didn’t worry Nate, as it was broad daylight. She talked herself down: Even the one dog the children had seen in the daylight had been solo, which gave the four of them much better odds, and that might have been a fluke, anyway.
She looked at the kids then, when she noticed they didn't say anything, though both had looked at their phones. The expressions on their faces made her stop cold. “What is it?”
When neither child replied right away, Kaya waited. She knew her kids. Nate stayed silent behind her, also waiting as though with no agenda. They had learned a long time ago that sometimes the children just needed a moment to process and then they would talk. Somehow, that trick had carried almost into their adulthood. She had no idea if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
But eventually Cage looked up at her. “It's Mitchell from school.”
“He wasn't in class on Friday,” Joule added, and Kaya felt her heart drop. It couldn’t be good news. She just hoped it wasn’t the worst.
Still, she waited. Probably the hardest part of being a parent for her was letting her two kids arrive where they needed to be in their own time. It was Joule who spoke up again and said, “His parents found evidence.” She didn’t specify what that “evidence” might be.
A few years ago, Kaya would have thought that statement meant he was cheating on tests or there was indication of drug use. Not anymore.
“He was out too late and…” Joule didn’t finish.
That was all Kaya had needed to hear to know their friend Mitchell would not be coming back to school. Mitchell had been caught outside after dark.
Just like Joule.
Only Mitchell hadn't made it home.
The Mazur family trudged across the wide yard, and Kaya was beyond grateful that all four of them were still together. But she turned and looked over her shoulder. These traps had to work.
18
Cage walked through the woods trying to make as little noise as he could. He wanted to stomp out his anger but knew that wasn’t smart.
The gun sat on his hip, a heavy weight reminding him of what was at stake every time he walked out here. With the weapon holstered, he had both hands free. In case he had forgotten the consequences, his father now carried a machete.
Cage hadn’t failed to notice that they were slightly more armed each week.
“What about Tennessee?” he asked his father. They’d continued looking for places to move. And there was still the question of where he and Joule would go to college.
He could almost hear Nate shaking his head on the path behind him. “Too many rivers. It’s the same all the way down into Georgia. The land is too soft to hold back the flooding. We can't move there now, anyway,” his father said, as though it might have been an option a while ago.
Cage heard one swift hack as the machete hit branches that Nate must have decided were in his way. Or maybe he was just angry and taking it out on the foliage. “Besides, can't get a house anywhere near Nashville anymore. And that's where the think tanks would be. That's where your mother and I could work.”
“Why not?” Cage asked, even though he assumed he wouldn't like the answer. He didn't.
“Mud slides,” were the only words that came back. His father hacked another branch or two and Cage ignored the sound.
“California?” he asked. It was a one place he and Joule had been looking at college.
“Tidal waves.” Only this time Nate said it with a tone that asked Why would Cage have even asked? Everyone knew about the tidal waves.
They weren't full tidal waves, but they were more than big enough to wash into the middle of town and take out homes and some of the less sturdy buildings. The waves had taken out bridges and roads, turning the LA/San Diego area into a royal mess.
“I meant inland,” he told his father. But all that followed was a deep sigh.
“Sinkholes, big ones. The random kind they used to show on the news about Florida. Those are now in the places where they aren’t having the tidal wave problem.”
Cage could hear his father's frustration leaking out in every word, and he opted for a little bit of positive. “Joule and I have decided we're going to go to school together.”
“Oh, thank God.” The breathed relief in the words made Cage realize the conversation he and his sister had a few days earlier had been spot on.
When he and Joule had talked, he’d told her, “I think mom and dad will breathe easier if we're together. There will still be two people for them to call if anything goes wrong, but we’ll be in one place. I'll be able to vouch that you're safe and you'll be able to vouch that I am.”
“I really thought we'd go different places.” Joule had been digging a tiny hole in the yard with the end of her bow. Despite the afternoon sun, she’d held onto it. “We've always been together, and that's good. But I thought maybe it was time to go somewhere different… to each become our own person, separate from our parents and from each other…” But she’d trailed off.
She didn't have to say it.
And Cage didn't say it either. The night that she had spent out alone had changed everything.
So, as simply as that, they had decided to go to the same college, and to push on as though there weren’t wildfires and blizzards and droughts. They still needed an education. What Cage and Joule hadn't decided yet was where to go.
Staying together was one thing. There were a handful of schools they had both gotten scholarships to. Cage figured that was due to the time they had spent in Curie, Nebraska. The town they had lived in for a handful of years had an IQ requirement and a high school so advanced that it shot students into the stratosphere. Even now, he and his sister were almost entirely enrolled in advanced classes. They'd wailed on their standardized tests and had full scholarships to most of the schools they’d applied to.
Initially, it had felt a bit excessive to him. Now, he thought it was a good thing. His parents could spend their money finding somewhere else to live, rather than paying tuition and textbook fees and such. His brain wandered, but as he and his father walked up to the last of the traps, he saw it was just like the other three. Empty.
Both of the Mazur men swore at it like sailors.
Hands on his hips, Cage turned to his father. “This isn't working any better than the last one.”
His father stood over the net trap, the one that would have lifted a dog that walked across the path high into the air. Looking up and down, Nate started talking. Cage wasn’t sure if he was telling his son what was going on or talking to himself. “Either they're not walking here or the trap isn't working.”
They both looked at each other. “Gotta test the trap.”
They would have to reset it but it would suck if dogs had been walking through here and the trap simply hadn't worked.
“What do we got?” Nate asked, looking around.
“Neither of us!” was Cage’s reply. It would take both of them to set it back and they couldn't risk one of them getting tangled and caught if it worked after all. If one of the dogs died while hanging in the trap, that was fine. It was not okay if it was either of them. Cage had no desire to get stuck and spend the night as swinging bait above a pack of hungry dogs.
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