She still wasn’t happy with his answer, not after what road pirates had done to her and her family.
He could see it in her eyes. “I understand why the road pirates operate as they do,” he quickly said. “Everyone in the world has gone into survival mode; those who don’t are almost certain to die. I just found a better way to stay alive than they did. But I also started preparing before the ice age. I didn’t know what I was preparing for back then: epidemics, an asteroid hitting, the ice age…whatever. Even just losing my job. I was just getting ready for any kind of catastrophe and the ice age came along.”
“But you’re saying you’d become a road pirate,” she said flatly.
“Only if I had to…really had to.”
She had to think about that.
“What would you have done if you’d become a road pirate and had you found me and Whoops on the road?
“I did find you,” he reminded her. “And I’d have treated both of you exactly as I’m treating you now.”
She was quiet, again.
“It’s a new world out there, isn’t it,” she eventually said. “A whole new set of rules and realities.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I don’t like it,” she said.
“After what you’ve been through, you shouldn’t.”
They were both quiet for a while. Gradually, without realizing it, she moved closer to him. Eventually, she was hugging him again.
“What are we going to do today?” she finally asked.
“We’re going to check the tomatoes downstairs and start making and canning relish using some of the green ones. We’re also going to check and see if the seeds I have near the window have dried sufficiently to save for next spring. And if you’re going to stay with me, you’re going to get one or two more shooting lessons. But we can’t have too many…”
“…because every shot is a round that’s gone forever,” she said finishing his sentence.
He smiled. “You’re catching on. So I’m going to show you how to shoot my air rifles. But I can already see you’re a natural, so it won’t take long for you to learn to shoot well.
“And you’re going to have to learn to ski, can, hunt…And you’re going to start reading some of the books I have here.”
“Am I going to have to do all this today?” she laughed.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes. Then there’s a pass/fail quiz at noon.”
“What if I fail?”
“Whoopsie said she’ll miss you.”
Δ Δ Δ
In the evening, he grabbed a rifle and went out the door. She figured, since it was almost dark, he was just going out to the outhouse.
She looked up at the bare mantel for a moment. She got up and carried Whoops to the desk. From the drawer she took the photograph of his wife and two children and returned it to its place on the mantel. She stared at it, and the woman and the kids stared back at her with their pre-ice age smiles. She tried to imagine what they were like before the world went to hell and before Sandra had murdered their children and killed herself. She looked at the children. They were beautiful. She looked at Sandra and wanted to hate her, but she couldn’t. But she couldn’t understand her either.
She went back to her chair.
He came back in and passed the mantel several times without seeing it.
One time, he started to pass it, but suddenly stopped. He took a step back, and stared at the photograph for a long time. He was surprised she had put it back up. She was telling him something. It was something important: She could live here with him and their ghosts, and she could be comfortable. He knew Sandra could never have done that.
He approached her in her chair, hesitated, leaned over and kissed her. It wasn’t a long kiss, but she knew what it was for.
Chapter 31
September 4
Since leaving the burning cabin behind, the LaCroix/Brady expedition had found nothing. They followed the verbal directions they’d received from the man Hank had killed, but came up empty. Arguments broke out between Abby and Raymond as to which of them had heard the directions correctly, but Raymond and several of the others were beginning to think the man had either intentionally or inadvertently given them erroneous directions to the Amaral cabin.
In the meantime, for the last two nights, they had, at Raymond’s insistence, pitched camp near one of the feeder creeks that fed the larger creeks that ultimately fed the Pistol River. Raymond hoped the sounds of the flowing water in the creeks would drown out the noises Hank made.
So, this morning, the Fourth of September, they awoke to the new day and another leaden sky of unbroken clouds that threatened to storm. But, with eight mouths eating, their provisions were disappearing fast and Hank insisted on, and received, the rations for three men. When Raymond pointed out that burning the cabin had destroyed food stores that would have made it possible for the party to have stayed out longer, without having to backtrack to a reprovisioning point, Abby chastised him for making a big deal over things that couldn’t be changed.
“Spilt milk, spilt milk,” she said to Raymond and walked away shaking her head.
Hank’s logic was, “Just eat what we got, then worry, Billy.” He laughed as he said it because he knew it annoyed Raymond.
Raymond asked, “If you were bringing the toboggan, why didn’t you load it up with more food?”
“Why didn’t you tell us to?” Abby asked from afar.
I didn’t know you were bringing the toboggan.”
“Why didn’t you ask?”
“Why would I have asked that?”
“See?” she said and walked further away.
They were cunning, not geniuses, he told himself.
“The next food stores we find will not be destroyed,” he told them both, but when they didn’t acknowledge him, he didn’t push the point because he couldn’t afford to lose another argument. His leadership was already tenuous.
The day wore on uneventfully except for Hank’s relentless baiting of Raymond and, as there was nothing to report, they maintained radio silence. No one in the party talked about the slaughter of the young couple and their child at the cabin, but it weighed on several of them. Today, however, Raymond was so tired he found he could push that atrocity to the back of his mind.
Near noon he finally suggested they call in and turn back to get reprovisioned at one of the preselected rendezvous points, and while several of the members of the party were willing, Abby said there would be no turning back, not until they found the people who had murdered her Sweetie. Hank backed her up. Reprovisioning would split the party up, and Raymond wasn’t willing to do that.
Δ Δ Δ
The day’s dreariness deepened as the expedition journeyed further east into the backcountry. Jim De Angelis was forty yards ahead of the party while the other seven, including Brian Peterson, had now bunched up as they came through the trees and brush. Jerry Brady and Steven Ingram still struggled with the looted furniture they carried, while Hank towed the sled that carried Abby and the rest of the loot from the cabin they’d burned. However, with the load, the weather, and the bad nights of sleep, even Hank was beginning to tire. Those from the LaCroix compound, carrying lesser loads, were less tired, but still exhausted.
Hank’s barbs at Raymond and the others ceased because even Abby was getting tired of hearing them and she finally told him so. Besides, Hank had served her purposes and Raymond had to know, by now, he was no more than the titular head of the expedition and that, though he would never admit it, any order he gave only stood if she approved it. In effect, she was now in charge.
They marched on, each man and Abby lost in their own thoughts and Raymond was trying to decide how soon they should make camp and how to explain he was calling in for a reprovisioning rendezvous, regardless of Abby’s wishes, when, from ahead, Jim De Angelis came hurrying back through the trees.
“A cabin, a cabin, there’s a cabin up ahead,” he said in a low voice. It changed everything.
Hank perked up. “Cabin!” he exclaimed in a loud voice. This would be another opportunity to annoy Raymond and he opened his mouth to proclaim the sighting of yet another cabin but a voice beside him said simply: “Don’t do it.”
Hank hadn’t realized Brian Peterson was standing right beside him, Though he towered over the sniper, the reptilian look in Peterson’s eyes was unmistakable and the words Hank was about to proclaim died on his lips. Hank, never afraid of another man in his life, found Peterson eerily disconcerting.
Raymond witnessed this and again wished there was some way to enlist Peterson’s support so that his grip on the leadership would be secure. He’d have to wait and see. He turned his attention back to De Angelis and, as Jim reached the group, Billy asked him, “What did you see?”
“A cabin up ahead. It’s occupied. Smoke’s coming out of the chimney and there’s tracks all around the place.
Raymond turned to Abby, “Let’s keep it quiet,” meaning, let’s keep Hank quiet and he immediately wished he hadn’t said it. Reflexively, he was seeking her support—her permission—and he was acknowledging that he couldn’t lead the expedition without it.
Without waiting for her reply he said, “Brian, let’s go up front and see what it is.”
He, Peterson, and De Angelis made their way through about twenty yards of trees which abruptly terminated at the edge of a snow-covered field.
There it was: a cabin. Several yards away from it was a shed that likely housed an outhouse. Between the cabin and the shed was a well-worn path in the snow. Smoke languidly drifted out of the cabin’s chimney.
“What do we do?” De Angelis whispered.
Before Raymond could answer, the door to the shed opened.
Δ Δ Δ
Zach walked out of the shed. Stupid awaited him.
Zach was close to euphoria. He was happier than he’d been in over a year. There was a sudden sense of family and a purpose to his life. Danielle and Whoops were not replacements for his wife and children, but somehow they managed to banish the ghosts that had been living in the cabin. His home was no longer haunted. The memories of his family could stay, but the grief that had accompanied them was now easing itself out the door. He could move beyond their deaths and make a new life for himself.
Had he not been so euphoric he’d have been paying attention to Stupid who was staring across the field into the trees.
The dog let out a guttural growl.
Zach ignored it.
When Zack was just ten yards away from the door of the cabin, Stupid barked once and started off across the field. Zach froze.
“Stop!” he yelled at the dog, and he did.
Then Zach thought of how odd it was the dog had barked and he reached toward his pocket where he had the Model 60 as he scanned the tree-line at the edge of the field. There was something wrong with the way it looked; something unfamiliar in one spot where the trees and the field met.
He broke for the house.
Δ Δ Δ
“Take him!” Raymond said sharply to Peterson who had already unslung his rifle and was watching Zach through the scope and, though it was a difficult shot, he deftly pulled the trigger and Zach went down.
The dog started running toward Zach.
Working the bolt smoothly he took a second shot and the dog spilled over into the snow.
This was why Peterson was here.
He was beginning to top off the magazine when he realized Zach was up and lunging toward the front door of the cabin.
By the time he got his third shot off the door had slammed and the bullet splintered part of the wood.
Without thinking, Raymond shouted, “Let’s go!” and he started skiing across the field.
Behind him, De Angelis and Peterson followed.
Having come up behind them, Ingram and Jerry Brady started down though the field, too. They were still carrying the furniture, Fred Mayfield ahead of them trying to catch up to Raymond, and Hank was running as he pulled Abby on a wild ride across the snow. With his giant strides, Hank overtook Mayfield.
It was sheer inspiration that prompted Raymond’s charge and he was suddenly overcome with exhilaration and felt exonerated, he felt he’d reclaimed his position as the leader of the expedition as they charged toward the cabin.
Δ Δ Δ
Inside, Zach lay on the floor bleeding. Danielle rose from her chair with her sister in her arms. She was confused and horrified.
Zach tried to get to his feet but couldn’t, something inside was broken; his pelvis? his hip? his femur? He wasn’t sure. Getting to his feet was all but impossible, but he tried.
Bullets started coming through the walls and he fell again and screamed at Danielle to get on the floor.
She did.
They lay there, about ten feet apart while large caliber rounds splinted the wood in the walls around them.
It suddenly stopped.
“Come out here or we’ll torch the place,” a voice from outside yelled.
Zach stared across the floor at Danielle who looked terrified.
“Come out on the count of three or we’ll fill the place with bullets and burn it down,” the voice outside commanded.
“One…” the voice began.
“…two…”
Δ Δ Δ
The door opened and Zach, hanging onto the jamb, emerged limping from the cabin, his right pant leg was matted with blood. He used all his effort to stand.
“It’s him! It’s him!” Ingram cried. Making a positive ID made his day. “He’s the guy I hunted with. He’s Zachary Amaral.”
That was exactly what Abby wanted to hear and she smiled a sinister smile as she got off the toboggan and approached him.
Zach hopped down the stairs onto the snow and Mayfield and his cousin, Jerry, each grabbed one of his arms and he groaned in pain as Mayfield frisked him and found the Model 60 in his pocket.
“This is a beauty,” Mayfield said looking at the little .357 revolver and he pocketed it.
“Do you have that bitch Danielle here?” Abby demanded.
“Please leave us alone,” Zach begged.
“Is the bitch here?” Abby screamed.
Danielle appeared in the doorway with Whoops in her arms and wearing a dress that once belonged to Zach’s wife.
Abby smiled again. “You’re both going to pay for what you did to my Sweetie,” she said. “All three of you are going to pay!” she screamed.
“Leave Danielle and her sister alone,” Zach pleaded. “I’m the one you want.”
Abby just couldn’t get rid of her smile.
“What are we going to do with them?” Jerry asked.
Abby suddenly yelled, “Hank! No!”
He had his rifle leveled point-blank at Zach, but he hesitated at Abby’s command.
“Not yet. I want him to see what happens to his girlfriend for what they did to my Sweetie. They gotta pay,” she said. “They gotta know,” she added, her voice rising. “They gotta suffer for what they done!”
Hank snorted a laugh at Abby. He looked at Zach, leaned his rifle against the side of the cabin, then with a flourish he undid his Sam Browne belt from around his waist and let it drop to the ground as if he were dropping his trousers. Zach knew what the gesture meant.
Raymond had nothing to say. He knew what was coming. He hoped the girl’s and the baby’s deaths would be swift. He tried to detach himself from the scene.
As Hank’s approached, Danielle retreated inside with Whoops tight in her arms.
“Get out!” she screamed.
But Hank ascended the stairs in a single bound, stepped inside, and slammed the door behind him. The door and walls couldn’t contain the muffled voice of Danielle alternately swearing and screaming. “Leave my sister…No!…stop…leave my sister…” Hank’s lusty laughs and insults were mixed with Danielle’s defiance and Whoops’s desperate cries. There was a sickening thud.
Zach struggled and got a rifle butt in his face, from Jerry,
for his efforts. He wasn’t sure if his jaw was now broken or not. But his strength was gone. He couldn’t help Danielle anymore.
She was screaming again.
“She’ll learn,” Abby said to Zach, then she spit in his face. “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. It’s the last thing she’s gonna to learn. Then you’ll learn it. You’ll learn what it’s like to have something taken away from you…just before you die.”
There was another sickening scream from within the cabin and Abby smiled.
Then it was silent. The snowflakes came down like fairies floating around them, unconcerned with the human drama unfolding in their midst.
Neither Raymond nor Peterson could look at the cabin. Still holding onto one of Zach’s arms, Fred Mayfield just stared at the snow at his feet.
“Wait’ll you see the surprise Hank has for you,” Abby hissed at Zach. “You’ll regret what you did to Joel, what you did to my Sweetie. It’s the last regret you’re ever gonna have…you goddamned son-of-a-bitch!” she screamed.
As those words came out of her mouth, the cabin door was flung open.
Danielle stood in the doorway bathed in blood from her hair down to the hem of her dress. She held something in her hands.
Δ Δ Δ
Inside the cabin, Hank had dragged Danielle around the room by her hair while she screamed and swore. She held onto Whoops with every ounce of her strength. But she didn’t have a quarter of Hank’s strength and he threw her to the floor as he laughed.
“Whore,” he called her.
She desperately rose to her feet like a boxer trying to last out the final round of a title bout and Hank threw a punch she tried to shield the baby from, but part of it caught her and part caught Whoops whose desperate screaming and panic filled the room. He threw another punch and knocked Danielle off her feet again. Miraculously she got up, once more, still clutching her sister. She desperately fought her way to “her” chair and fell into it.
Danielle Kidnapped: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Ice Age Page 33
