by Eric Keller
“I’m sorry too, I want to come with you, I just... I can’t, I know I can’t.”
Jacob held back tears and tried to sound confident as he said, “It’s ok, it’ll be ok.”
As he moved towards the door, he heard Griff calling from behind him, “Good luck Jake. Tell Emmanuelle she’s got to do all my chores now and you can give Sam my bow if he wants it.”
He wanted to tell him he would make it home too, that he could tell them all himself, but he knew that would ring far too hollow so he merely answered, “I will Griff.”
. . .
The door seemed to open shockingly easily for Jacob and Kinma watched him slip out. When it closed behind, Griff merely slumped back against the wall and put his head in his hands.
Kinma strained to listen for anyone yelling at Jacob or sounds of a commotion. She heard nothing and let out the breath she was holding. If he made it down the hall, he would make it outside and have a chance, not much of a chance but at least a chance. She sat back down on the hard floor.
The dark room felt even more painfully lonely with her own dire predicament closing in on her more closely. She told Jacob she would help Griff, sounding like she was somehow in control of her life when, in reality, that she was chained to a wall with no one coming to save her.
. . .
Following Kinma’s directions, Jacob hurried down the dim hallway, ignoring all his aches and pains as terror-laced adrenaline flooded through him. As he moved, he was certain Harrison or his massive yellow-haired beast would step out of shadows and grab him. But, he quickly made it to the metal door Kinma described without seeing or hearing a single soul. For a second he was confused as there was no knob, only a wide bar but, thankfully, when he pushed on the bar, the door smoothly opened, and he stepped out into the fresh air.
The sun was starting to set and, notwithstanding his fear, being out of the horrible tower was a relief. After taking a deep breath, he carefully turned left. He smelled the garbage bins before he saw them, however, now that he could see the trees in the distance, all he wanted to do was run at top speed to get under them where he could not be seen. But, he knew, with no supplies he would not make it very far, so he girded himself.
Creeping behind the foul-smelling bins, he managed to get close to the outbuilding Kinma said held the kitchen where he crouched and listened, hoping to hear nothing. After an immensely long minute, Jacob decided no one was in the building, so he moved along the wall and slipped inside.
In his rushing, panicked state, it was almost impossible to take in all items. Utensils hung from walls. Shelves held pots and pans. Thankfully, a canvas bag sat on the counter. Looking inside he saw dried fish and a dozen potatoes. Exactly what he needed, he plucked it up, threw a small pan and the largest knife he could see into the sack and turned to leave.
The door opened ahead of him, and Jacob’s breath caught. He silently watched as a petite woman stepped inside, humming a soft tune. At first, she did not notice him standing there, and Jacob rapidly pondered what to do. Hit her. Kill her. Run. Cover her mouth and tie her up.
Before he could decide on an action, she turned from the door and saw him. He recognized her and her freckles, either Alice or Andrea, one of the women who brought the food and lifted their dresses. For a heartbeat, they silently stared at each other, neither sure as to what to do.
The woman silently pointed to her left with her chin. It took a moment for Jacob’s worried mind to understand the simple gesture, but then he looked over. A box of matches sat on a shelf. He plucked them up. When he turned back, Alice or Andrea gave him a slight grin and a nod as she moved to the side. Confused but thankful, Jacob stumbled past her, making it back outside where he immediately ordered his sore legs to run faster than they ever ran before.
. . .
Harrison did not look up from his papers as he asked, “It work?”
Stepping into the apartment, Clarence stammered an answer, “Yes, the one called Jacob left. The other one with worse injuries, Griff, stayed behind in the cell with Kinma.”
Harrison had pondered letting Kinma escape too but she would be too much of a wildcard and unchaining her would make the ploy too obvious. Plus, Kinma was smart about life in the woods, she would be tougher to track and more likely to notice being followed. He had not been certain if the redhead would be able to flee, but Harrison did not care, one of them leaving should be enough.
“Ok. He find the supplies?”
“Some of them, he took the bag I left in the kitchen and some matches.”
“Nice, it’ll be even easier to follow the fool if he’s lighting fires every night.”
“For sure. The Viking and Walter are watching him now. They’ll leave markers like we discussed.”
“Good. Leave me. I need to get some sleep, we head out at first light.”
. . .
A cacophony of coyote yipping and howling filled the dark woods, but Louisa barely noticed the familiar sound. She followed close behind Sam, careful not to let her footsteps make a noise as she scanned the shadowy underbrush. When Sam abruptly stopped, Louisa almost crashed into him.
Knowing there was no point in asking Sam why they had stopped, Louisa stood and waited, peering about the shadows to see what he saw. But, instead of looking, Sam seemed to be testing the air, feeling it on his cheeks, smelling it, tasting it. She was shocked when he asked, “You feel that?”
“Huh?”
“Wind shifted, it changed.”
Louisa looked at the leaves, they shimmered slightly in the moonlight but did not seem to be moving much at all. “What wind?”
“It changed.”
Confused, she asked, “Yeah? Changed for good or bad?”
He started moving again, shaking his head. “Never know.”
Following, Louisa took in a chest full of air and thought it did feel different, fresher maybe. She decided she would decide it was a good omen regardless of what Sam said.
. . .
Morreign startled awake, breathing hard. Paul turned beside her, coming awake as well. He muttered, “You ok?”
It took her a moment or two to decide if she was, her heart pounded, and her skin felt clammy, but the sensations were fading. A dream, only a bad dream. She answered, “Yeah, think so. Had that dream again.”
Wrapping an arm around her, he asked, “The resort?”
As usual, it felt as much a memory as a dream. Her parents took them to a beach resort when she was eight, not long before commercial air flight became restricted.
Overflowing buffets, tables covered in plates of half-touched food. Obese Americans with too much-tanned flesh barking at the harried waiters. Massive pools of gleaming water to splash in. Huge glasses of sugary drinks abandoned to spoil in the sun once they grew too warm. All of it made her heart hurt, so much excess for the sake of excess.
“Think so.”
“Normally that doesn’t wake you up.”
Paul was right. The dream of her family happy, safe and secure and playing, was bittersweet but it did not frighten her.
“This time it was different.”
“Different how?”
Morreign was concerned it might unnecessarily worry Paul if she told him, her instincts having been given mythical status at Malden, so he merely said, “I don’t know. Scary somehow. Don’t really remember.”
“Ok, try to get back to sleep, Leo will want your help supervising to get that new A-frame up in the morning.”
As she heard Paul’s breathing deepen as easily fell back asleep, Morreign stared at the ceiling, jealous of his ability not to worry. She knew she would not be going back to sle
ep anytime soon. She did remember the nightmare, remembered it perfectly.
They were at the resort as usual, eating hamburgers in the sun and laughing when they came. Filthy men with tangled hair and matted beards rushed in, climbing over the walls, wading across the pools, and pushing through the carefully groomed hedges. A growling, snarling horde swinging massive, bloody axes as the sunbathers ran futility in every direction. People screamed as they were slashed down and Morreign could only stare with her childhood eyes at the slaughter. The whole time a voice in her head whispered through the yelling and silly music, they are coming, they are coming, they are coming.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-Seven
JULY 4, 2046
DAY THREE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FIVE
It must have been a huge caribou. Morreign watched the men walking out of the trees, each carrying a load of meat to the smokehouse. Large game near Malden was practically nonexistent, their only non-fish protein coming from squirrels, porcupines and the occasional beaver or wayward goose, along with tough coyote meat which everyone hated. Only a handful of times over the last decade had Sam brought down a skinny caribou or a scrawny deer. Recently though, the hunting began to improve. In the last few weeks, they bagged a calf moose and a mule deer and now this caribou.
Paul and Leo, both grinning widely, walked over to her. Paul, his jacket sticky with blood, wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said, “It’s about five hundred pounds field dressed.”
Morreign smiled back. Despite living off the land for over ten years now, she still got a kick out of her nerdy accountant husband, who used to spend his free time playing fantasy football and reading spy novels, talking like a lifelong woodsman. She said, “Can’t believe it, the smokehouse will be bursting at the seams.”
“Yeah, we were thinking we should alleviate some of that storage pressure with a good old fashioned barbecue.”
While she did not feel like sitting around with everyone happily feasting, she could not think of any rational reason to oppose the plan. Morreign nodded. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”
Within the hour, the smell of roasting caribou filled the Clearing. Everyone ate their fill of the rich, gamey meat, waited for a minute or two and then ate their fill again. The sun took forever to set in the summer, and those at Malden took full advantage of the lengthy, northern dusk, sitting outside the Lodge in chatty groups.
Paul sucked grease off his fingers before leaning over to Morreign and saying, “That was a great idea I had. We should do it more often.”
“If the animals are really coming back like it seems they are we might be able to.”
“Yeah. Have to say, things feel more, well, settled around here these days.”
She turned and glared at him, but he was focussed on the remnants of his third helping and did not appear to notice the angry look. When Huck died of fever, she resented Paul for getting over the tragedy first. He grieved, crying himself to sleep and raging at the unfairness of it, but the lengthy depression that enveloped Morreign seemed to have passed him by. When Jacob disappeared, Paul put all his energy into trying to find him and, when it became clear his son was gone, he grieved but the dragging depression passed by him again as he got back to living his life while Morreign continually wallowed in the all too familiar fog which only seemed to worsen as time passed.
Without looking up from his plate, he coldly said, “I can feel you giving me that look. You give me that look a lot. I don’t like it.”
This startled her. While it did happen on rare occasions, Paul generally did not get terse with her. Slightly rattled and also slightly angered, she responded, “I don’t… I don’t know how you can go on being all jokey and carefree, after all that’s happened. Jacob’s only been gone a month, and you’re already kidding around as if he never existed.”
He turned his head and looked up at her, his eyes piercing above his scraggly beard. “Because I choose to, that’s how, because I bloody well choose to. We’ve been married for a long time and our marriage has gone through more than either of us could’ve ever imagined, more than anyone could’ve imagined. I know you think of me as perpetually happy and, perhaps, foolish. And, to an extent, that might be true, but it’s true because I choose for it to be true.
“Every morning I wake up before you, and every morning I lie there with you breathing beside me, and I remember them, Jacob and Huck. I wish they were still here, I wish long, and hard they were still here, that I’ll get up, and they’ll be sitting at the table playing games or eating porridge, but then I choke back the tears before they can take too powerful of a hold. I force my body to climb out of bed as I silently tell them how I miss them both, and then I start my horrible day. Taking care of you and the others, working and joking, keeping the encroaching thoughts of my sons out of my mind and spending all of the day fighting to keep those thoughts at bay until I can wallow in them the next morning, by myself, in solitude.
“Because I don’t brood about in public, full of self-pity and pointless weeping, doesn’t mean I don’t miss my sons every day. I do. More than you can imagine.”
He stood up and took her empty plate from her lap. Before he could take the dirty dishes inside, Morreign grabbed his wrist. Weak tears trickled down her cheeks when she looked up at him. Beard and unruly hair covered most of his face, but she could still see the boy, the cute boy she fell in love with a thousand years ago, the boy who lit up her life and then became her life. Through all of this, he truly had taken care of her, and she did not think about caring for him as he did not seem to need help. Instead, she choose to cruelly resent his perceived easy endurance.
“I’m sorry Paul. I am, I should have thought more about how you are actually dealing with all this. I realize that my being so difficult only makes this harder for you. But I don’t know, I don’t know if I can do that, force the thoughts away like you can. I can’t get past pitying myself, it’s become… I think it’s become ingrained, become part of me.”
He sat back down and rested his hand on her thigh. “I don’t want to tell you how to feel, and I know it’s not been long since Jacob left, but, one thing, for me at least, that helps is to remember the fun times.”
She immediately shook her head and said, “I’ve tried that, I have, but it’s too hard. It hurts, it physically hurts when I realize there’ll be no more times like that.”
“I know. Nothing about this is easy though. With Jacob I’ve found starting with thoughts about him as a little kid works best,” he looked around the Clearing, seeing all the people clustered about, “Maybe you should tell the story about Bear.”
Morreign knew others, at least in the past, viewed her as a decent storyteller. And, in the past, she had greatly enjoyed the attention and liked entertaining everyone. The story was an old favorite, and the thought of it put a tiny smile on her grim face. Maybe Paul was right. She supposed she owed it to him to at least try.
She nodded and said, “Ok, I’ll try, but if I can’t do it, you have to step up and rescue me, deal?”
Paul seemed surprised by her pleasant agreement, but he nodded back. “Deal.”
She carefully got up on the Lodge’s porch and gently knocked on the railing so all eyes in the Clearing turned to look at her. Her voice started off soft, but she pushed it louder as she said, “The second winter after the war erupted. A miserably cold day. The kind of cold that freezes nostrils closed and makes skin burn.”
She noticed people looking at each other as if they were seeking confirmation of what they were seeing. They probably had expected a speech about work duties instead of a story. She continued, “Jacob, nine years old, impossible to keep inside no matter the weather.”
Everyone moved close, ringing the porch.
Using her best kid voice, Morreign exclaimed, “A bear, a bear. There’s a bear.”
Everyone laughed at this, giving her a chance to take a breath before continuing, “Well, it was the middle of winter, so if there were any bears around they were fast asleep. But, as a mother, the excited words sent a chill down my spine despite the logic. Remember, back then, we were new to this and bears were our monsters under the bed. We thought they were always out there, waiting to maul us all and we jumped anytime we saw anything bigger than a squirrel in those days.”
That got a few more chuckles as fear of deadly predators had waned greatly over ten years in the woods.
“Griff said Jacob was fighting it off, so we bolted outside. Crashing through the drifted snow, like a herd of crazed cats. The wind whipping around made it impossible to hear anything, and it blew sharp, stinging snow into our eyes.
“I knew where they’d been playing, working on one of their snow forts, and ran that way, cursing myself for not keeping a closer watch. The wind died for an instant, the blowing snow cleared and I could see Jacob.”
The memory old but strong, she could recall the picture easily. “He was heavily bundled making him appear spherical. His tiny arms swinging a pine branch and, at the end of the branch, jumping back and forth, biting playfully at the offending stick, was a dog,”
Even though they all knew the story, everyone laughed. A laugh even escaped Morreign’s throat.