After The Fires Went Out: Coyote (Book One of the Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Series) (22 page)

After dinner we gathered in the living room as usual. I would have rather heard another selection from Ant’s diary or played some poker, but I knew that it was time to talk about the problem everyone was hoping would go away.

“I’m concerned about the Tremblays,” I said as I paced around the room.

“They’re not pulling their weight,” Lisa said. “Everyone knows that.”

“Glad I’m not the only one.”

“But what the heck are we going to do about it?” Graham asked. “When those guys aren’t falling behind, they’re crapping on every idea we have.”

“I think you guys are being too hard on them,” Fiona said. “They’ve had a rough time.”

“We’ve all had a rough time,” I said.

“But they came to us because they weren’t going to make it otherwise.”

“That’s true,” Sara said. “They weren’t willing to take any of us in a year ago, so I can’t imagine it felt good for them to show up here begging for help.”

“I’m fine with charity,” I said. “But at some point the charity stops and reality kicks in. There are seven people over there, using up supplies faster than the rest of us and providing very little in return.”

“They know we don’t have any options,” Lisa said.

“What do you mean?”

“They know that you’re too nice to force them out. So they don’t have to work very hard. Hell, if they stopped working tomorrow I’m sure we’d still keep feeding them.”

“And giving them our firewood,” Graham said.

“Indentures aren’t seeming so bad anymore,” Lisa said.

“That’s not funny,” Sara said, almost growling as she spoke.

“I’m not joking... people like the Tremblays wouldn’t last a week in Timmins. They’d have been thrown into a pit mine so that nature could take its course.”

“We’re not even going to discuss that kind of garbage,” I said. “Let’s just put them in a situation where they either have to do the work or they have to admit that they’re not contributing. I seriously doubt they’d just give in and admit that they’re useless. They’ll have to come around.”

“But they already have plenty of work they’re not doing,” Graham said. “You already went through the list with them.”

“It’s too easy for them to half-ass-it when they’re working in their cottage. They could hide in that place all day pretending they're working and getting fuck all done.” That made me think of weekends on Sackville Street, the todo lists I conveniently misplaced and the mancave I'd built in the basement that was less a workshop and more a masturbatorium. I felt myself smiling. “I know what that's like,” I said, running my hand on my chin. “I happen to be an expert on that subject. My wife used to call me ‘the invisible husband’.”

Sara glared at me, probably more from surprise than anything else. She gets uneasy when I talk about Alanna, so I don’t do it very often.

“Invisible husband?” Lisa said. “Probably a reference to your missing manhood.”

I was surprised that she beat Kayla to the joke, but then I realized that Kayla wasn’t even paying attention. She and Matt were staring out the window toward the lake. Matt was sulking, still butthurt over what I’d told him half a week ago, but Kayla just seemed vacant, like she’d checked out for the evening. I’d seen her angry; I saw that last night. But this wasn't something I'd seen from her before.

“So we need to send them out somewhere?” Sara asked.

“Marc and Alain, at least,” I said. “I think they’re the root of the problem. It’s a safe bet that those guys aren’t the ones doing laundry or food prep, either.”

“So we do need to send them with the Porters,” Graham said.

“I say we split them up. We'll send one to Silver Queen Lake and take one with us to start gathering up farm equipment.”

“The Porters won't like that,” Sara said.

“So that’s one good thing about it,” Lisa said with a smirk.

“It’s a bad idea,” Matt said from his place by the window. He'd been listening, apparently; I guess his pity party wasn’t soundproofed.

“I’m afraid we'll need more than that for a counterargument,” I said, trying not to sound like more of a dick than usual.

Matt looked right at me; he seemed more angry than hurt. “They hate each other,” he said. “Putting the Porters and Tremblays together would be a disaster. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone accidentally got shot or run over on that trip up to Silver Queen Lake.”

“This idea is getting better and better,” Lisa said.

I smiled and nodded at her; Lisa being witty is a rare treat, at least when I’m not the target. “But seriously,” I said, “does anyone agree with Matt that we should keep spoon-feeding the Tremblays?”

“That’s not what I said,” Matt said, sounding a bit like a spurned toddler.

“Matt has a point,” Sara said. “Some of the relationships here are starting to come apart. As hard as it’s been trying to bring three families together, it’ll be impossible to come up with some kind of mutual settlement if people start splitting off.”

“Isn’t that the same argument I gave for not letting them in?” I asked.

“The solution was never to let people die. We just need to make sure that everyone stays together. So we need to decide where the real risk lies. Are we better off pushing people together and risking some kind of feud, or should we let the Tremblays keep on with their crap until we all want to drown them in the lake?”

“Tempting,” Lisa said, “but I don’t really want to drown anybody. If we’re going to run into trouble with people not getting along, it’s better it happens now and out in the open.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

“It does,” Sara said.

“Then I think we’ve got a plan. We’ll push and push until someone loses their shit.”

“This’ll be fun,” Lisa said. “It’s like a psychology experiment.”

“Like rats in a maze,” Sara said.

I grinned. I had another memory from Ant coming to me and I took a minute to let it play. It was where he channeled George Carlin, about how a rat will do a lot of gross things but that he will never fuck a dead rat.

We’d all known that the mouse in the trap was dead, the bar having snapped its neck instantly. But Ant had posed that second mouse so well... so lovingly... for a moment I had thought old Carlin was wrong.

Sometimes I think anyone who never met Ant will start thinking he was a psychopath, since everything he did was at least a little crazy. But he was a good kid, and he would never have done anything to hurt someone.

That’s more than you can say about me. Just ask Matt.

Some people call them pranks, but I think of them as life lessons.

So you thought that glass held some apple juice, but it was actually mineral water with a small sample of my freshly squeezed urine? Lesson: always give your drink a safety sniff before you pound it back.

So you cracked open your porn mag expecting some pretty girls, but some joker pasted in replacement parts from an old copy of Field & Stream? Lesson: if you don't lock up your fap lit you should come to expect that every playboy bunny you see will have been made into a tastefully-constructed reverse mermaid with the head of a lake trout.

My bro used to do the same for me, teaching sixteen-year-old Ant about life by jizzing in my shoes, and by pushing me to meet girls by sending them care packages consisting of a forged love letter and a pair of dirty gotch, complete with a skid mark of legendary size. I made a promise to both Almighty God and my child psychologist that I'd get my brother back one day.

That day was on his nineteenth birthday. Obviously being a good French Canadian Eduard had started drinking back before he had the need to shave, but we still had a family tradition of getting the birthday boy wasted on the cheapest beer available, and always on the first day it's actually legal to do so.

I planned the whole thing, and had him drive us a good hour away to friends in Val Gagne in his pride and joy, a 2006 Ford Mustang with the original gas motor. It was metallic blue with leather seats that had never seen a single stain. Eddie made it clear to me that there was no way in hell he'd let me drive us home afterwards; as far as he was concerned, we were in it for the duration, sleeping over even if we weren't wanted. That was fine by me; I'd worked it all out beforehand.

The thing about a really good single malt is that it tastes so bad to a beer drinker that they'd have no idea if you were to add a little something extra to the glass. That something was ipecac, and for those of you who aren't well-versed in inducing vomit, it made that feeling of “I need to puke” come to my brother much earlier and stronger than anyone would expect. It was so unexpected, in fact, that I was able to convince Eddie that we needed to get to the hospital. We took the Mustang... and I drove.

And for some odd reason, the trip was extra bumpy.

Eddie's car stank like nothing else for a good two months after that, and it's no surprise that I was never given a second chance to drive it.

But as my brother was kicking my ass the following evening, I could see in his eyes that he was proud of me. That's my favourite memory of him; not just because of how he looked at me, but because even eighteen hours after that very special single malt, he actually had to let go of my battered neck and run to the bathroom for one last puke.

That's a moment I'll never forget.

KAYLA

Ant's Cast of Characters:

Kayla is a little bit slutty... not in the bad sort of hand job for a dollar way, but in the good friends with benefits way, where she makes you feel desirable without wasting time trying to convince you that you're any sexier than all the other people she's slept with.

At least that's the impression I get; I am sexy, so I'm not part of her target demographic. She's talked about sleeping with me, I mean, hey, she is a woman, but I've never taken her up on it... not yet, anyway.

But why not, you may ask... well, first of all, gentle reader... just shut up and let me do this. And secondly...

I like the idea of unconventional sex, which doesn't only mean doing it in a hot air balloon or various activities involving whipped cream and mayonnaise... it also includes seducing women who haven't really given much thought to wild and casual sex, women who really do call it “making love” or “being intimate”... Kayla never calls it that, since she'd fuck you for hours without actually letting you get to know her.

I get to know her by watching her strike the arc on the welding table, or strip a bolt, or trip over her own feet. I love that girl, but I laugh every damned time she falls flat on that pretty face of hers.

I don't think Kayla feels much of a connection with any of us; I get the feeling that she shut down that part of her life years ago, that she decided that she was too self-sufficient to worry about friends or family. My father used to call that kind of self-loathing feminism, saying that it all started with the birth control pill and that women have been getting more mentally unstable ever since, that they are trying to be like men while still being women. I think my father's full of shit on that and all other subjects of any importance, but I do believe that Kayla's got some serious issues in that slutty little brain of hers.