by K. M. Fawkes
“Yeah, I can’t wait till we can get rid of him,” the second man agreed.
“He talks too goddamn much,” the first went on. “If we didn’t have to bring them back to Sarge first, I’d have already splattered his fucking brains out.”
Brad’s stomach clenched and acid rushed up his esophagus. It didn’t matter if the men were talking about Anna and Sammy or not; he needed to get the woman and her son away from those men.
“Get those cans down and put ’em on the table,” the first man said. “I’m gonna go check upstairs, see what they’ve got lying around up there.”
“Hang on,” the second man protested. “At least get the stuff from half. This is a lot.”
Brad scrambled through the first doorway on his left while he had the chance and eased the door shut behind him. The house, for all of its modern bells and whistles, seemed to be laid out much like his cabin a few hours away. Any room on this side should have a window he could use.
The room turned out to be a guest bedroom and he sighed in relief when he saw that the window opened right over the porch roof. He’d be able to go right along the roof and down if he did it carefully.
As he walked over to start down, he glanced into the yard and saw an army truck parked there. It looked just like the one he’d seen the soldiers loading with bodies back in Bangor. Was this the same regiment? It was possible, especially if they knew the backroads. With a vehicle to get around in, they could get anywhere in a fraction of the time it would take Brad on his bike.
He pressed his face to the window to try to see more of the yard. He didn’t see any other soldiers, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t any. There had been at least ten men in the regiment in Bangor and at least four in the group that had jumped him and stolen his supplies. He’d only heard two men in the kitchen here.
A floorboard creaked, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Whoever they were, he didn’t want them catching him, so he’d just have to take his chances. Brad eased the window up slowly, so that it wouldn’t make any noise, and climbed out onto the roof.
He crept along it to the very edge, listening for other voices. If anyone else was there, they were extremely quiet. Somehow, he didn’t think the men who’d come bursting into the house were that great at stealth.
He relaxed a little, but he knew better than to get too comfortable. He found the drainpipe and climbed down it as quickly as he could. He didn’t let his breath out until he saw that the porch was clear.
The only obstacle now was the truck. Would they have left someone inside it? Was that where they were keeping the woman and her son?
As he watched, his question was answered. The door swung open and a woman stepped out, holding a machete. It was Anna. Her face set in fury, she ran straight for the house without hesitation.
Brad hadn’t been a marathon runner for nothing. It had only been a second since his feet hit the ground, but he put on a burst of speed and caught up with her, grabbing her arm just before her feet touched the porch steps.
Anna whirled around from the force of his grip and he caught her other hand when she swung the blade. He yanked her back so that they were out of immediate view and swept her legs out from under her. He fell with her, holding both of her hands to the ground.
“Anna, it’s me,” he whispered. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Recognition dawned in her eyes, but she continued to struggle. “Let me go!” she hissed.
“So you can get yourself killed?” he demanded. “Are you crazy?”
Those green eyes practically shot sparks as she spat, “They fucking deserve to die!”
“I’m sure they do,” he said. “But you have to figure out what’s worth more right now. Do you want to try to get revenge, or do you want to run while you have a chance to save Sammy’s life?”
Anna turned her head and saw her son standing by the truck. He felt some of the tension drain from her body as she looked at Sammy.
“You’re not gonna kill them with a machete,” Brad said. “It’s just not going to happen.”
“You have a gun,” Anna pointed out.
“I’m not gonna kill them with a gun, either,” Brad snapped. “They’re soldiers, right?”
She nodded. “That’s what they say, anyway.”
“Then they’re a hell of a lot better at killing people than I am,” he said harshly. “You’ve got two choices, Anna. Go in there and die by yourself or leave with Sammy and me. And if you leave with me, we start over and we trust each other,” he informed her. “And you stop being so goddamn impulsive!”
A slight smile—a little hysterical, but mostly genuine—lifted her lips. “Okay. Fine. Let me go.”
“Not till I get a real answer,” he said.
“I promise not to hit you over the head with anything in the future,” she said. “And I’d very much like to go back to your cabin with you and Sammy.”
Chapter 19
Brad let Anna go and got to his knees, helping her sit up before he turned and grabbed his backpack again. “I’m sorry if I hurt—” he began, only to be cut off.
“Hey, why the hell is the truck open?” one of the men yelled from the house.
Brad grabbed Anna’s hand and yanked her to her feet, dragging her along as he ran for it. There was no time to be subtle now that the men had seen Sammy standing just outside the truck.
Brad shoved both of them into the back of the vehicle and then jumped in and slammed the door. He crawled through to the front. God bless the idiots; they’d left the keys in the ignition.
Anna screamed as a bullet punched into back door of the truck.
“Get over the seat and get down,” Brad shouted, turning the key and stomping on the gas. He thought that the truck was probably damn near bulletproof, but he wasn’t about to test it out. “And hang on!”
Gravel and dirt flew as the wheels caught traction and Brad sped away. He could hear more shots in addition to frustrated yells as the men chased after them, but he knew that they wouldn’t be able to catch up.
“Don’t go back to the cabin,” Anna gasped out.
“No shit,” Brad snapped, too stressed to be diplomatic. “I’m gonna head north. I hope you two are good with a long walk back.”
Once they were past the danger of being shot, Brad glanced over at Anna, who had moved into the front seat next to him. “I’m sorry that I snapped at you back there.”
She gave a small laugh. “It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” She glanced at him quickly before refocusing her gaze on the road. “And you’re not the one who needs to apologize. I knocked you out and ran out on you, for Christ’s sake.”
Brad shrugged and pulled up his shirt sleeve, showing her the stitched-up gunshot wound. “Not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Her eyes went wide. “Is that…did you get shot? What happened?”
“Not much. Just some scavengers.”
“Not much?” she repeated. “They shot you!”
“Uh, yeah.” And what would she think when she knew what he’d done to them? Especially now that she’d been in a truck with people willing to shoot a kid in the head. “So, tell me what happened while you were gone.”
“We were okay at first,” Anna said, her voice defensive. “We fished like you taught us, so we ate a whole lot better this time around.”
“Did you build fires, too?” A flint and steel set had been missing from the fireplace after she and Sammy had taken off.
“Mom got really good at that,” Sammy said, speaking for the first time since Brad had seen him.
He was leaning from the backseat as close to his mother as possible, and Brad found himself worrying about the effect being abducted like that might have had on the kid.
“I bet she did,” was all he said. It wasn’t the time, for one thing. For another, he didn’t have any delusions of grandeur. He was a veterinarian, not a child psychologist. If Sammy wanted to talk, he’d jus
t have to trust that the kid would get it out eventually.
“They found us three nights ago,” Anna went on. “They showed up in the middle of the night and grabbed Sammy while I was sleeping.”
“They shot Bo,” Sammy said, his face crumpling. “So we couldn’t run away.”
Brad’s grip was too tight on the steering wheel. He forced his muscles to relax.
“Anything else I should know about these guys?” he asked.
“They said that they had a base,” she went on. “That’s where they were taking us.”
“Did they say where it was?”
She shook her head. “No. But they said that once we got there, it’d be up to me to cut a deal for mine and Sammy’s safety.”
Brad grimaced. Anna and Sammy were safe for now, but if the soldiers came looking for them, how the hell would he defend the three of them? He fell quiet, thinking deeply about what to do next.
By the time they were far enough away for Brad’s tastes, Sammy had fallen asleep with his head resting on his mother’s shoulder.
“Sorry to have to wake the kid up,” he said. “But we’re here.”
Anna looked around, blinking. She’d been nearly asleep herself. “What…” she began.
Brad pointed to the edge of the road. “There’s no good reason to leave this thing in working order,” he said. “Not the way they’re using it. And I really don’t want to take it back to the cabin and connect myself with the house.”
“But we could park it somewhere else,” Anna said. “It might be good to have a backup mode of transportation in case we need to go somewhere in a hurry, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But this thing shouldn’t have held up to the EMP, but it did. Who knows what else the military can do? They might even still have some way to track the damn thing. So, it’s going over the edge, and we’re going home, and hopefully they’ll think I drove us off of a cliff like an idiot.”
Anna nudged Sammy awake and they stood back as Brad rolled the truck to the edge of the cliff. After making sure that everyone had everything important to them out of the back, he shoved the front tires over and let gravity do the rest. Sammy ran to the side, whooping as the truck sailed over the edge and crashed hundreds of feet below them. Then, they started their long walk home.
Chapter 20
The sun was starting to rise before they got back to the cabin. Brad gestured at the fireplace.
“If you get that going, I’ll get something for us to eat,” he said, his voice rough with exhaustion. “It’s too late to get the stove hot enough again.”
Anna nodded and pulled out a flint. Brad went into the kitchen and opened the cans of chicken noodle soup he’d gotten from the ransacked house. This would be the fastest meal option, and he simply wasn’t up to making anything else.
He poured the soup cans into a pot and took it to Anna, who hung it on the hook above the flames that were just starting to lick at the kindling. Brad walked back into the kitchen and grabbed a cup. He dipped it into the bucket of purified water that he kept on the counter and gulped down the whole glass as he leaned back against the sink.
He sighed in relief and filled the glass again the minute it was empty; he’d given his water bottle to Anna and Sammy, and it had been empty before half of the walk back was over. He filled two more cups and brought them into the living room. Anna took them with a grateful nod.
About twenty minutes later, they all sat around the fire with their bowls of soup. Everything was gone in about five minutes. Five minutes after that, Sammy was stretched out on the couch, sound asleep. Anna tucked a blanket over him carefully.
“Brad?” she asked softly.
“Yeah?” he said, pushing himself up and into the chair behind him. His whole body was sore and sitting on the hardwood floor wasn’t making that any better. The leather of the recliner conformed to every sore muscle, and he let out his breath in relief.
“What happened to the scavengers?”
He swallowed hard. He should have known that she would ask. He didn’t blame her; he was the one who’d said they’d go forward together and trust each other. She deserved the truth. Which didn’t make it any easier to say.
“I let one of them go with some supplies.”
“And the other one?”
“I shot him,” Brad said, his voice flat. “I shot him in the cellar and then I burned his body on the beach and buried the bones near the pier.” While I ate a bag of beef jerky.
Anna didn’t say anything. Brad looked over at her, tense. Would she leave again? He wasn’t sure he could handle it if she did.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” he asked raggedly.
“What do you want to hear?”
“I don’t care,” he replied. “Anything! I killed someone, Anna. He was alive, and then he wasn’t, and it’s all because of me. He survived everything…except for me.” He pushed his hands through his tangled hair and looked at her. “What do I do with that?”
“Would he have killed you?” Anna asked.
“Yes.” There was no doubt about that. Brad had basically handed the guy an invitation to do it. He remembered the click of the gun. And then the click as the guy had tried again.
“Then you did what you had to do. If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have done my best to kill those soldiers back there.”
“But they kidnapped you and Sammy! You had good reason. As for me…”
Anna shook her head. “Those scavengers would have taken everything you have and lived off of it. I think we both have pretty damn good reasons for doing what we’ve done.”
Brad thought back to his resolution when he’d left the safe house. He’d just talk it out with his fellow man, find the common ground that they all shared as human beings. He would make them see that even though some things had changed, they could still interact respectfully.
It was insane that he’d ever thought that. It was even crazier that he’d genuinely believed it could work. But he had. And now, he’d killed someone. He’d shot him in the face. What did Brad believe in now?
“Is that it?” Brad asked, making a helpless gesture with both hands. “That’s what life is, now? We kill people so that we can keep our stuff? Every man for himself, like my dad said?” Like everyone seems to say.
“No,” Anna said, to his surprise. “You don’t believe that.”
“How do you know?” He didn’t even know what he believed anymore. How could she?
“Because you would have let me run right past you back at that house if you did. You would have used me as a distraction so that you could get back here. You would have let them murder my son. And you didn’t. And, really, what are we even going to do for you? Eat your supplies? Make you worry about two extra lives? We don’t contribute.”
He wasn’t the only one with guilt, then. “You built the fire,” he said.
She smiled. “Yeah. And I also knocked you out and lost two of your fishing poles when I ran away like a moron.”
“We all make mistakes,” Brad offered.
Anna stood and dropped down in the chair with him. It was a big recliner, and they were both lean people, but the fit was still a little tight. She rested her head on his uninjured shoulder and he put his arm around her. It wasn’t anything sexual and he knew it. Both of them simply needed the comfort of a human touch that didn’t demand anything.
“Don’t worry about it right now,” Anna said. “We’ll figure out the moral code as we go.”
Brad nodded and watched the fire dance and spark, content to let that be the only sound for now. She was right. She was here, and they were safe. And, for now, that was enough.
TO BE CONTINUED
Book 2: Dead of Winter
Copyright 2018, 2019 by K. M. Fawkes
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or
in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.
All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
“Slow down, kiddo,” Brad called, but there was no real urgency in his voice.
They hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary the whole time they’d been out. There had been no sign of human disturbance during their hunting and he didn’t hear anything strange now. He was only calling Sammy back because he knew Anna would want him to. She didn’t like for her son to be out of arm’s reach.
It wasn’t that Brad didn’t understand why, but he also knew that Sammy had to learn things on his own. He didn’t lecture Anna, but he tended to let the kid test boundaries when they were out without her. There had been several times today when he’d hung back, letting Sammy lose sight of him.
The boy hadn’t panicked. He’d stopped and listened each time and then followed the trail Brad had been sure to leave. Just a few twigs broken or leaves rustled, but that had been enough. He’d been proud of the kid.
He hadn’t been worried of losing sight of him—Sammy was wearing the bright red T-shirt he always wore when they went out hunting together. Since it was the spoil of a looting trip Brad had made a few weeks ago, it didn’t fit exactly right. However, it made him easy to spot and Sammy didn’t seem to mind that it was a little long for him. It probably wouldn’t be too big for too much longer, anyway. The growth spurts that had made Brad’s mother sigh in frustration had started happening when he was around Sammy’s age.
“I’m just excited to show Mom!” Sammy said, running back to Brad with an ear-to-ear grin on his face. He was practically bouncing up and down as Brad knelt to tighten his bootlace. “Come on, it’s fine! Can’t you walk faster?”
