After The Fires Went Out: Coyote (Book One of the Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Series) (25 page)

I don’t want the same shit happening again. I’ll work with the Porters, sure, but I can’t afford to like them.

Silver Queen Lake is a lot bigger than McCartney Lake, and it has enough cottages that I was already feeling winded when we arrived, thinking of how much work there was to do. Usually when you scavenge you spend more than half your time just wandering around looking for stuff, especially these past few months, so there isn’t that much loading in a day; it’s more like a scavenger hunt than helping someone move. I had a feeling this job was going to be quite a bit more intense in the amount of lifting and carrying.

“We’ve been working from the north shore around to the south,” Rihanna said as we dressed in our gear inside the cramped cab of the truck; she’d stopped at the junction right before the woods gave way to cottages. “We’ve done six, so that leaves just over fifty to go.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said. “There’s no way we’ll be done in the next few days.”

“It’s taking longer than we expected,” Justin said. “That’s good, actually. We’re finding more than we first thought.”

“I thought you already took inventory of the supplies.”

Justin laughed. “We checked out a couple of cottages, sure. But we haven’t even been inside more than a dozen so far.”

“So we don’t even know what’s inside.”

“That’s what makes it exciting,” Rihanna said. “Maybe we’ll find some videos or books or something. I’m getting pretty tired of watching the same six movies on my tablet.”

“To be honest, guys,” I said, “I’m worried about safety here.”

“You weren’t worried before,” Justin said. “Isn’t that what the helmets and vests are for?”

“How sure are we that these cottages are all empty?”

“The Smiths had a roadblock here. A big old Dodge truck. They would have noticed if there were other families trying to get in and out.”

“We don’t know enough about how the Smiths handled things,” I said. “We don’t really know what was happening up here.”

“We know the Smiths pretty well,” Rihanna said. “I’ve known that family all my life.”

“That’s not what I mean. There are probably two dozen families left around here right now. How do we know that someone else didn’t know the Smiths well enough to know they were leaving? Maybe someone else has already laid claim to these supplies.”

“We were here first,” Justin said.

“So you think. But I don’t think that would stop anyone either way. And considering that the Smiths weren’t at the last Supply Partnership meeting, I’m sure more than one person has wondered if they took off.”

“So what is it you want us to do?” Rihanna asked.

“Let’s take a tour around both sides of the lake, check for any vehicles or signs of life. Maybe we’ll be able to tell if there are different sets of tire tracks visible.”

“Other than ours?” Justin said. “There’s no way to know for sure if someone’s been here.”

“Well obviously. Look, just humour me for an hour, and then we can get back to work.”

“I didn’t realize bringing you along would suck up so much of our time.”

“I’m such an asshole wanting to keep us alive.”

Rihanna laughed. “Good point,” she said. “Guess I’d better check if we’ve got something to listen to that isn’t Green Day.”

We followed the road along the south shore of Silver Queen Lake, our vests strapped on and our helmets on our laps. There appeared to be more than a few sets of different tire tracks along the road; I climbed out at a few points and checked the impressions from the treads. There were at least two different vehicles, maybe more. It was hard to tell. And for all I knew they were from the Smiths. I just didn’t know.

It didn’t look to me like anyone had stopped in at the first few cottages. The first one had an overturned tree blocking the front driveway that would have been too big to drive over but small enough to move. A good number of them had their doors and windows boarded up, with no sign that anyone had tried to pry the boards off.

It made me uneasy. If another family had come to scavenge, I would have expected them to have stopped at the first cottage, or if the impromptu tree barricade had scared them off, they would have tried the others. I didn’t make sense to bypass the boarded up buildings; they had the best chance of having the most supplies.

In my little notebook I keep a list of all of the families we know about, whether they’re part of the Supply Partnership or not, along with where we think they’re living and what vehicles and weapons we know they have. Sometimes we’ve visited other families ourselves, particularly around Christmas and New Year’s, but other times all we know about a family is second- or third-hand knowledge. And even with that I know we don’t have a full list.

There could be other families that we think are long gone, or new arrivals from Smooth Rock Falls who aren’t big on Ryan Stems and his Mushkegowuk elders, or even refugees from Timmins who’d rather scrape by up here than sign their lives away to Sons of Flesh back home.

I checked the pages for any mention of families up near Silver Queen Lake. The Barrs, the Shiers, the Vezeaus... all of them were stationed somewhere around here, but like Justin had said, the Smiths were supposed to have had full control over Silver Queen Lake.

“Could be the Chapleaus,” Justin said as he looked over my shoulder.

“I think they live on Bentley Lake,” Rihanna said.

“No, no... Bentley’s where the Barrs live now.”

“I don’t think that’s right...”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “There’s no way to be sure. But if someone’s living up this road, we’ll find out soon enough.”

“I think this is a waste of time,” Justin said.

“I don’t care. We’re doing it.”

“Let’s just do it,” Rihanna said. “It’ll be fine.”

Rihanna kept driving, slowly enough that we had time enough to scan each yardsite. Over a dozen empty cottages so far; I knew we’d be at the end of the road soon.

“There,” Justin said, pointing out ahead of us on the right. “A pickup truck.”

I looked at the truck, an old gray Toyota pickup, parked in front of a two-story A-frame cottage with a glass front. The bed of the truck was covered with a large green tarp, and under it was an uneven bulge that reached higher than the roof; it reminded me of Afghanistan and of a very different time. I already knew from what Matt had described that there was probably a machine gun mounted under that tarp.

“Looks like an old-fashioned technical,” Justin said. “That’s gotta be Stems.”

Rihanna stopped the truck.

“Put on your helmets,” I said.

Neither of them argued with me.

“They probably know we’re here,” I said.

“What do we do?” Rihanna asked.

“We need to go,” Justin said. “We’re not prepared for a fight.”

“Keep your heads down,” I said. “Let’s see if they come out.”

I couldn’t detect any movement aside from smoke rising from the chimney.

“They aren’t just scavenging,” I said. “It looks like they’re living here.” I noticed footsteps, not just heading from the truck to the door of the cottage, but in several trails leading around to a shed and back toward the lake. They’d been here for a few hours at the least; my gut told me they’d been here for at least several days. “So do we really have a reason to think this is Stems?”

“I think the Chapleaus have a Toyota pickup,” Rihanna said.

“Are you just saying that because you think the Chapleaus live here?”

“I’m not sure. I think that’s their truck.”

“It’s Stems,” Justin said. “I know it is.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter who it is,” I said. “I’m going to assume they’re dangerous.”

“We need to go.”

“This isn’t worth getting killed over,” Rihanna said.

“We’ll go back and bring up a second vehicle and some help,” I said. “We throw up a roadblock of our own on the north shore while we empty out those cottages.”

“So we waste more fuel we can’t spare?” Justin asked. “Let’s just go back to the north shore. There’s plenty of stuff up there.”

“It’s not safe.”

“It was safe enough before you came along.”

“Sure it was... do you even remember if there was smoke from that chimney yesterday? Or the first day you were up here?”

Justin shook his head. “We need those supplies.”

“We need to do this right.”

I started to think it over in my head. The little electric car could make the trip, but I’d feel safer finding something more sizeable to bring up. A new grain truck or maybe even bigger. And then we could fill one truck up while the other stood guard, and then we’d switch. Five or six people could get the work done quickly enough.

But I wondered if I was being overcautious. If Justin and Rihanna hadn’t noticed the Toyota and the chimney smoke before, whoever it was may have just arrived in the past day or so. Perhaps by the time we returned they’d have their own roadblock set up. I didn’t know for sure what was under that tarp.

But the outline was just too familiar.

Was I about to waste time and fuel for no good reason?

“I need to know more,” I said. “Rihanna, turn us around and head back up the road... slowly.”

She nodded and turned the wheel.

“I’ll meet you guys up at the mile road,” I said.

“Don’t do this, Baptiste,” Justin said. “You’re no good to us dead.”

“Have a little faith in me.” I looked to Rihanna. “Turn us around... please.”

As Rihanna drove the truck away from the cottage at a snail’s pace, I slowly opened the passenger door and lowered myself out onto the gravel, taking my pistol but leaving the shotgun behind. I ran in a crouch toward the trees, across the road from the cottages and the lake.

I waited there until Rihanna and Justin were well past the next few cottages. Then I threaded my way through the woods until I was about two hundred meters from the cottage. There I crossed the gravel as quickly and quietly as I could, sheltered from sight by a sharp bend in the road.

I wrapped my way around the garage and the shed, until I was crouched beneath a small window on the east side of the cottage. I waited there, listening for the people inside.

I heard a door open, and then several sets of boots walking down the wood steps. I peered around the corner to see two men walking towards the Toyota, dressed in black armour with painted helmets.

A tiger and a bear. Two of the men who’d shot Ant.

Both men had assault rifles slung over their shoulders.

One of them pulled off the tarp while the second man climbed into the box, placing his weapon down. The gun mounted on the back of the truck was much heavier duty than I’d expected; it looked closer to an anti-aircraft gun than something like the guns we used in Afghanistan. The first man then climbed into the cab, and backed the truck back down the driveway toward the road.

They were headed after the Porters, just far enough behind that Justin and Rihanna wouldn’t know what was coming.

I grabbed my handheld and pushed for Justin.

“Justin... you there? Over.” I tried to speak softly in case someone was left in the cottage. A man with a shark helmet had died at the airport, but what about the one with the coyote?

“I’m here. Is everything okay there? Over.”

“The Toyota’s coming for you. They’ve got a bigass machine gun mounted on the back. You need to get out of there.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not kidding. Step on the fucking gas. Over.”

“Shit.”

I readied my pistol and rushed the door of the cottage. I swept through as best as I could remember to do, checking each room on the main floor before making my way upstairs.

The first bedroom was empty, but the second was not.

I recognized both girls from before the fires. Tabitha Smith and Natalie Girard; the two of them were only a few years older than Fiona. Both had their wrists ziptied to the bedframe and neither of them had a shred of clothing on their bruised bodies.

“It’s okay,” I whispered as I held my finger to my nose.

Tabitha started to cry.

I left them there while I cleared the rest of the second floor.

I then came back and cut them loose with my leatherman.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

Neither of them answered right away. I wanted to ask if they were okay, but the question seemed ridiculous.

“It’s been around three days,” Natalie said.

“We... we were headed back to my parent’s place,” Tabitha said. “But everyone was gone when we got there.”

“They left?” I asked. “Uh... without you?”

“I don’t know what happened... the house was empty. They didn’t even leave a note. It doesn’t make sense.” She began to cry again.

“It’s going to be okay. We’ve got to go.”

I had the girls wrap themselves in bedsheets and I rushed them downstairs. There was no sign of their clothes or any boots, and unusually, no sign of any clothes in the entire cottage, so I had them wait on the front steps while I made my way to the garage.

The door was locked, so I kicked it open. There was nothing inside, no car, no ATV.

“Dammit,” I said. I walked back over to the porch.

“Don’t you have a car or something?” Natalie asked.

“I had a truck. But things have gotten a little messed up.”

I grabbed my handheld and pushed for Justin again.

“Justin? Rihanna? Are you okay? Over.”

I hoped that the silence was only because they’d driven out of range.

“Are you there?” I asked. I turned to the shivering girls, standing barefoot beside me. “We need to get moving.”

I led them silently across the road and into the trees, and we ran further up the road, the wrong direction from where I’d said I’d meet the Porters. Of course, I didn’t expect them to come back anytime soon, assuming they were still alive.

After five minutes of running in the woods I knew the girls would need to get out of the cold; it wasn’t winter yet, but it was cold enough to hurt.

I took off my riot suit and clothes, everything short of my underwear, and parceled it all out as best as I could between the girls. Each girl took a sock on one foot and a boot on the other. I had them lean together, hidden against a tree, and the two of them stood like shivering flamingoes as I made my way to the nearest garage.