by K. M. Fawkes
Anna walked over and put her arms around the girl, stroking her hair and letting her cry. “I won’t let them hurt you,” she said. “Come on. Let’s get you two back in bed.”
“Anna,” Brad said. “We need to talk.”
“There’s nothing left to say,” she said, herding the children ahead of her up the stairs. “You should have listened to me when you had the chance, Brad.”
Sammy and Martha cast him worried looks over their shoulders, but he forced a smile. “It’s okay, you two,” he said as Anna ushered them on. “I’ll figure something out. I promise.”
Chapter 14
Somehow, Brad wasn’t surprised at the note he found the next morning. He didn’t know how Anna had managed it without him hearing, but somehow, she had. She was gone. In fact, he had felt the emptiness in the cabin before he even found the note. It was only a confirmation of what he’d already known.
Brad,
Staying here was a mistake.
Best of luck, Anna
He crumpled the note in his hand, anger warring with fear. She’d left him. Again. She didn’t even know how to skin an animal and she’d taken off into the great wide open in the middle of a brutal early winter.
And she’d taken the kids. If he’d had a truck and a dog to steal, she probably would have done that too, and then he’d be living right in the middle of a country song. Brad gave a bitter laugh at the thought.
Perhaps it was simply the knowledge that there was nothing more he could do. He’d done everything he could to try to live happily with her and he’d messed it up. Or, maybe she had been the one to push things beyond repair. Or they had both screwed up at different times and ruined it for good. Neither one of them was exactly good at the whole relationship thing, apparently.
He got dressed and stepped out onto the porch. He could see the tracks they’d left in the snow and he followed them almost idly. What else was there to do?
In the orchard, he stopped where the tracks did and looked up into the big apple tree. They’d taken the emergency packs down from where Sammy had stashed them a few weeks ago. Brad didn’t begrudge the pack that Martha had taken. In fact, he was glad.
It probably hadn’t been her idea to leave in the first place, and he was glad that Anna was at least thinking clearly enough to outfit them properly. Secondly, she would need the supplies. There was no way that three people could have made do with the supplies in two of the packs. There was also the fact that packing and stashing another one for himself would give Brad something to do. He had a feeling that it was going to be a long day and he welcomed any task that would fill the hours.
He looked in the direction their tracks led. They’d gone into the woods and away from the direction the cult had arrived in. He wanted to feel good about that, but it didn’t mean a damn thing. Just because they’d arrived in one direction didn’t mean they didn’t have eyes all over.
He could try to follow them. And part of him desperately wanted to—in fact, he’d taken a few steps in that direction before he even thought about it.
But there was another, more stubborn, part of him that simply wouldn’t allow it. This was his place to defend and he wasn’t about to run away. If he left, he’d come back to a windowless, furniture-free cabin, and he knew it. There was no way in hell that he was going to let a bunch of nutjobs destroy everything his father had built up.
So, he went into the attic and packed himself a new emergency kit, filling it with the last of Lee’s supplies. After tucking it into the same apple tree he wracked his brain for more chores. He added more traps to the perimeter and made some more alarms. And then, when there was nothing else he could do to prepare for what he knew was coming, he went to the roof to wait.
It finally happened near sunset. Auntie and Uncle pulled up first, followed by two other trucks that pulled in as well. They knocked into the fencing and one of them skidded to a stop halfway into the garden. It pissed him off, but he reminded himself that he had bigger fish to fry.
That thought was confirmed when nearly twenty people got out of the assembled vehicles and lined up in front of his cabin. Some of them couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. None of them looked like they were prepared to back down.
“We warned you, Brad,” Uncle called jovially. “Now, you’ll pay the consequences for hindering the Lord’s work.”
Oh, it’s the Lord’s work now, Brad thought with a snort. He wondered if they were familiar with the “thou shalt not kill” section of the Bible, or if that was one of the parts they had conveniently left out.
“Martha isn’t here anymore,” he called back. “You can walk away. This doesn’t have to happen.”
“You made this happen,” Auntie shouted. “Uncle’s right, you know. We warned you.”
“And I warned you,” Brad yelled in return. “Even if you kill me, you’ll lose people. Just walk away,” he said again, trying not to let his desperation show. “I don’t want to hurt any of you.”
He really didn’t want to hurt anyone, especially since he knew that there would be children running around in the half-light of sunset, but his motives weren’t entirely altruistic, either. Now that he saw how many fighters the cult had, he had to work hard to fight back his panic. What would he do if he lost the cabin too? He couldn’t. He couldn’t stand to lose this along with everything else.
“I’m sorry, son, but I’m a man of my word,” Uncle called back.
Then he gestured and three of the kids stepped up. Each of them flung a brick through Brad’s front windows. The older followers raised guns and began shooting out other windows. Anger flooded Brad at the sound of the breaking glass. He raised his gun and took aim.
The first cult member dropped, clutching his chest and clawing at the ground in pain as Auntie and Uncle moved back behind the truck they’d arrived in. Out of range. Brad’s lip curled in disgust.
It didn’t matter that they weren’t in the fight, though. Not really. Because as he shot, taking down everyone he aimed at with a proficiency that surprised even him, he realized that he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t win. He wasn't sure that he hadn’t been a little crazy even trying to beat them.
Had Anna been right? Had he let this cabin and what it represented grow to be so important to him that he’d risk everything else in his life for it? Or was it simply that there were some things in this fucked-up world that were truly worth defending?
He didn’t know. All he knew was that he was losing this fight. And that was when he smelled the smoke rising through the air. Some of the kids must have been equipped with Molotov cocktails.
His mind raced to the lake. If he managed to get down to it, he could… But no. The lake was frozen. Even if he managed to kill every single one of them, he had lost. His cabin was burning down and there wasn’t a damn thing that he could do to stop it. His throat went tight and he gave a yell of rage and loss. That seemed to be the thing that they had been waiting for.
“Come on,” Uncle called when the flames grew enough to light the night. “You did good work tonight, Family.”
As the surviving cultists ran for their vehicles, Brad took out three more, meaning that he had gotten every adult except Auntie and Uncle. They had remained hidden and out of range for the entire fight. They had watched their own people die without any sign of pity. In a series of carefully aimed shots, Brad shattered every bit of glass he could hit in the vehicles before they could get going. He heard Uncle swear.
“Karma’s a bitch,” Brad muttered, grinning to himself. He was probably going to die either way. Might as well have some good last words.
“Not in front of the ladies, Uncle!” he yelled over the growing roar of the flames below him. “Remember that God’s always watching!”
The hatred on the man’s face was worth every second of the taunt. After all, what else could the cult do to him? Brad made sure that they heard him laugh.
As they drove away, he ducked back down into the house through the hatch h
e’d built into the roof. He knew that they were convinced that they’d left him to die. Truthfully, when he hit the floor and opened the door into the hallway, he thought that they might have.
It was as hot as Hades and the smoke that blanketed the room made him choke. His eyes watering, he pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth and got as low as he could when he got out into the hallway. He had to crawl down the stairs to have even a bit of smoke-free air.
A wall of fire blocked the front door and he stopped to recalculate. He’d have to go out the window in the kitchen. It would be the closest exit. He did just that, coughing and choking and trying to blink the tears out of his eyes so that he could see to make his escape.
He sliced his palm open on a huge shard of broken glass as he jumped out, but the pain in his hand didn’t touch the pain that flashed through his chest when he heard the wooden beams beginning to creak. The cabin was starting to collapse. Brad stumbled away from the house, holding his hand against his chest, feeling the blood soak through his shirt.
He stopped when he got near to the edge of the frozen lake and turned back. There was a huge crash as the top floor of the cabin crashed down. Ashes and sparks shot up into the night sky, swirling into the snow that had begun to fall again.
Brad went to his knees, coughing up ash and trying not to gag. The coughs turned into sobs that he couldn’t hold back.
He’d lost everything.
Anna. Sammy. Martha. His home. His supplies. His sense of security. His sense of purpose. For the first time since the world went to shit, Brad truly felt as if he had nothing.
TO BE CONTINUED
Book 3: The Survivors
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
Flames leapt into the sky, sending heat and ashes up into the cold air. It was bad enough watching everything he’d had—everything he couldn’t replace—as it burned. The cabin had been as much a part of his life as his parents had been. It had represented safety and security even when everything else fell apart around him, and it wasn’t fun to watch it burn because of some insane cult leaders’ grudge. But that wasn’t the worst part.
No, that honor went to the screams that filled his ears. Panicked and pained, they rose even over the crackling of the flames that were destroying everything. He knew who they belonged to. Anna. Sammy. Martha. He heard Anna scream his name, begging him to come save them.
The three of them must have snuck back in at some point. Maybe Anna had had a change of heart once she got far enough away. Or maybe Sammy and Martha had pleaded to come back home. And now, they were trapped inside, dying as they screamed for help, and there wasn’t a single thing that he could do about it. The flames were too high for him to get into the cabin. He could hear the structural supports coming down inside already. But what else was he going to do? Listen to them die? They were all he had left now.
“Anna!” he shouted, running toward the cabin. “Anna, I’m coming!”
As his feet touched the first porch step, the cabin exploded in a rain of debris that hurled him backward. He was suddenly deaf and blind in a wave of agony.
Brad jerked upright with a gasp. His head bumped against the low roof of the small tent he was sleeping in, reminding him of where he was. He caught his breath, rubbing his hand down the front of his shirt. His chest ached and he wondered if he’d been breathing during the dream. It certainly didn’t feel like it.
When he pushed his hands through his hair, he discovered that ice had formed in the sweat on his forehead. It made sense; it was cold as hell, and that was the only part of him that stuck out of the mummy-style sleeping bag.
He began to count as he forced himself to inhale for a count of five. How many times had he had this dream? How many times had he heard their dying screams in his head?
Too damn many. It was the only answer he could come up with in his groggy state and it wasn’t exactly satisfactory.
“They left, remember?” he whispered, trying his hardest to speak to the part of his brain that controlled dreams.
Was it his subconscious? Or was there a deeper part that he needed to reach? Maybe he needed to ask to speak with the manager. He shook his head at his typically black-humored wandering thoughts and went on. “They never even saw the fire. Anna ditched you like an unpopular prom date and ran for the hills.”
His heart rate slowed slightly as he talked himself through it. He had never thought that he’d come to see Anna leaving him as a good thing, but with the onslaught of the dreams, he’d changed his mind. It didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt—because it still clawed at him when he couldn’t find enough to distract himself with—but he was relieved that she had vanished.
If you’re so relieved, why are you out here chasing after her? If it was his subconscious, and his subconscious was a real asshole. “Because there’s a fucking cult hiding out in these woods,” he answered himself. “And I really don’t want Anna running right into their arms.”
Brad also had a sneaking feeling that he owed Anna an apology. She hadn’t handled certain things well, but there were things he’d screwed up too. He should have listened to her when she talked about leaving. Not in the beginning, but certainly once the Family had found them. Even a run for it in the woods would have been better than what had ended up happening. And they all would have been together.
If Anna had stayed, he wasn’t sure how things would have played out. He’d run the scenario over and over in his head and he had to admit that he wasn’t even sure that he would have been able to get them all out when the Family had attacked. He’d barely gotten himself out alive. And the cult would probably have found a way to come in and grab Martha in all the chaos, anyway. Running would have been the right choice. He hoped that he would have a chance to let Anna know that one day.
He lay back down slowly, pulling the small blanket over his head to keep out the cold and trying to finish regulating his breathing. It was still a little too choppy for him to be able to get back to sleep. In hopes of distracting himself, he went back to the original question. How many times had he had the dream? He began calculating, keeping his thought process slow and deliberate.
When the sun rose in a few hours, it would be his seventh morning in the woods. Which meant that this was his sixth time having some variation of the dream. He had it every time he managed to sleep deeply enough for his REM cycles to kick into high gear, which was more often than he’d thought that it would be.
The first night Brad had spent in the small tent had been dreamless, but that was only because it had also been sleepless. He thought back to the morning that had preceded it, inviting the pain once again. It was almost like continuing to poke at a sore tooth. It hurt, but it hurt in a familiar way that told you that you hadn’t gone numb.
The cold, pale winter sun rose over the ashes of his cabin and he got up slowly, cold to his very bones. He was so stiff from the hours by the frozen lake that he could barely move, but he didn’t really care. There wasn’t really any rush, after all.
He walked stiffly over to the tree where he’d stashed the extra pack, moving almost on autopilot. He knew what he needed to do, but there was no real drive to save himself this time.
The Family would probably come back, just to make sure that he hadn’t managed to salvage anything. They would probably rake through the ashes of the cabin and look for his bones. They seemed like a thorough group. The fact that they wouldn’t find anything sent
a quick burst of warmth through his chest. They hadn’t managed to kill him. In the end, they’d failed.
He glanced around the orchard. Parts of it were badly singed; some trees probably wouldn’t bear fruit for several years, at least. Some might need to be cut down completely.
Brad knew that the garden up front would be totally destroyed. If the fire hadn’t gotten it, then the people and trucks that had trampled through it would have finished the job. There would be seeds and bulbs in the cellar but… Brad shook his head firmly. “No,” he whispered, speaking almost desperately into the frigid air. “No, I don’t care what survived.”
Nothing that mattered had made it through the Family’s attacks. What was left was no longer his concern. He slung the pack over his shoulder and headed into the woods.
Brad closed his eyes and they popped right back open again. With a sigh, he had to acknowledge that he wasn’t going to get back to sleep. He sat up, bringing the extra blanket with him. He draped it over his head to try to cover the parts of him that the sleeping bag didn’t. Even with the extra effort, he still wasn’t exactly warm.
In fact, he hadn’t been warm since the night he’d lost the cabin. He wondered how long he could keep it up. The winter was turning out to be just as brutal as he’d been afraid it would be.
Anna, Sammy and Martha had gear just like his, so he wasn’t too worried about their ability to survive. Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t worried. So many things could go wrong, even to a well-supplied group of people. The hundreds of climbers who perished on Everest were a perfect, morbid example.
His brain took up that line of thought and ran with it eagerly. What if they tried to light a fire and ended up burning their supplies, or themselves? What if they happened upon a bear’s den in their search for shelter? What if they grew so desperate for food that they took chances and ate something that would kill them? There were plenty of options there.
