“Permission granted.”
Dani’s brown braids bobbed into view, the rest of her gangly frame followed, emphasized by the way the life jacket over her windbreaker hugged her body. He frowned. Bordering on too thin for a girl her age.
“We’ll check below. Cover me.”
Dani didn’t answer, just kept her oar out in front of her.
The cabin door was shut tight. He tried the handle.
“Locked.”
Dani peered around his shoulder. “Do you want me to get the pick kit?”
Mitch jiggled the handle again. There was just enough give to make him think . . . “Stand back.”
He brought the butt-end of the oar down on the handle, then once more for good measure. Metal popped, and the cabin door creaked open. The stench of rot—food, folk, and forgotten spaces—smacked them in the face.
“God, I hate this part,” Dani muttered behind him.
“Look sharp,” Mitch said as he pushed down the short flight of stairs.
Wall-to-wall wood paneling surrounded him. Not cheap veneers. The real stuff. Probably take a couple of days to strip it off the walls, bundle it back onto the Windfall. And then? The folks in Homer were rebuilding something fierce. He’d probably get enough foodstuffs and supplies to get the kids through winter.
“What’s that?” Dani pointed to the V-berth.
The door was half-closed. An arm was draped across the threshold.
Mitch stepped past the galley right off the stairs. Cupboards hung open. Empty cans, wrappers, used sugar and ketchup packets were strewn across the floor along with an upturned bag of flour. You could live on flour gruel for a while, but without potable water . . .
Vomit stains had soaked into the tightly woven carpet leading to the berth. He pushed the door open with the tip of his boot. The smell intensified, but each subsequent openmouthed breath made it easier to bear.
Mitch stared down at the body, recently dead. Male, middle-aged, wearing better quality outerwear than his own. Real down and lamb’s wool, not the synthetic stuff that itched as much as it kept you warm. They looked to be about the same size. Good. He could use a fresh set of clothes.
He eased out of the room. “Stay here.” He poked through another berth, then the chart and engine rooms. All empty.
Dani squealed. He wheeled around, clocking his head on the low doorway leading back to the main saloon. He shook off the pain in time to see Dani brandishing her oar against a gaunt young man a few years older and a few inches taller than her. Where’d he come from?
Shaggy brown hair shielded his eyes. An inarticulate cry escaped his wind-chapped lips as he lunged toward Dani.
She dodged and darted around the bar. Her eyes widened in relief when she spotted Mitch.
“Dad! He won’t listen to me.”
“Hey. We’re here to help if—”
At Mitch’s voice, the guy veered away from the bar and faced him. He seemed too scrawny to do much damage. Mitch revised that assumption when the guy’s fist flew out and caught Mitch’s shoulder. Agony lanced down his arm, short-circuiting the reasonable part of his brain. He reacted swiftly, smacking the kid in the head with his oar. Hard. He collapsed, knocking against a barstool bolted to the floor. It squeaked as the seat rotated around and around in counterpoint to Dani’s harsh breaths.
She came up next to him and leaned into his side. She hadn’t done that in years. “He was hiding in one of the lockers, I think.” She glanced up at him. “Can we help him?”
Too many times in the months right after things changed, they’d stumbled upon people stranded on their fancy boats that had suddenly stopped working. Most didn’t know how to really sail—the pure unadulterated way without radar, GPS, engine backup to get you back to harbor when the winds and the currents weren’t cooperating.
In the early days, they’d provided safe passage to the marooned. The law of the sea and all. That didn’t keep him from marking each ship’s position on his chart and returning to the spot to strip it down of anything remotely useful. Which was usually everything.
He glanced at Dani, then back at the young man. Still out cold. They’d come across folks half-crazed with hunger before, but something had been off about this guy. Mitch didn’t like it.
“Keep an eye on him. I’ll be right back.”
He found the locker Dani mentioned. Inside, bones and gristly joints were scattered across the floor. One bone was too big to be anything other than . . . Jesus. Nausea burned the back of his throat. He lurched back to where Dani hovered over that . . . monster.
He shoved her away and pulled his hunting knife out of its sheath.
“What are you—”
He ripped the blade through the guy’s trachea as if he was cleaning a halibut. Blood dribbled down the front of his thermal pullover. Mitch straightened. The barstool slowed to a stop on one last creak.
He faced Dani. “He wasn’t worth saving. Ate at least one member of the crew, and was probably saving the other for later. I may not go to church like your mom, but I know what’s unholy.” He took a deep breath. “You understand?”
Dani nodded. The shock in her eyes slowly shifted to grim resignation. Good girl. On a ship a few months ago, they’d encountered cannibalism, but Mitch had managed to keep it from the kids. No such luck this time. He forced himself to look away from the body. There was enough that needed done it wasn’t too hard.
“When we get your brother over here, we’ll dispose of the bodies.”
Normally they made a point of giving the folks they scavenged from a proper send-off. But Mitch didn’t want the taint of whatever transpired here looming over them as they worked.
“We’ll load up as much as we can before nightfall. Tomorrow, we’ll see how to get this stuff down.”
He rapped his knuckles along the paneling, and was rewarded with a beautifully solid sound.
The corners of Dani’s mouth drooped. “That’ll take forever.”
“That’ll keep us fed for months,” he countered.
That shut her up as they tromped back up and waved to Eddie, duly keeping watch on board the Windfall. She had one leg hitched over the gunwale, ready to climb back down to the canoe to bring him over.
He didn’t blame her for wanting to get away, but he couldn’t afford to coddle her. “Hold up, hold up. Don’t want to waste a trip.”
He cast about the deck, finding a fishing rod locker set against the wall of the wheelhouse. Gleaming graphite rods and reels with stainless steel bearings. “Jackpot.”
* * *
HOMER COOPERATIVE, SOUTH CENTRAL ALASKA
OCTOBER 15, CHANGE YEAR 0/1998 AD
Dixon Moore, the elected head of newly formed Homer Cooperative, fingered the wood, satin finished tongue-and-groove oak, turning it over and over again against the table with stubby fingers.
The tap-slide-tap made Mitch’s skin crawl, although it could have just been the itchy hemmed-in feeling he got whenever he bundled up the kids with some choice goods to trade and reluctantly rejoined civilization for a few hours. He couldn’t stomach it for much longer. Even if the new Homer was more pleasant than most of the communities that had cobbled a life from the ruins.
Dixon, all six and a half feet of him, crowded the end of the mahogany dining room table that must have been scavenged from one of the million-dollar retirement homes that dotted the coast. The room—a converted hangar on the opposite side of the Kachemak Bay from where the original town of Homer sat—served as the Cooperative’s chambers. Chairs lined the walls for overflow attendance, Mitch guessed. Metal-folding, factory-assembled, and even one hand-carved wooden throne shaped to look like you were sitting in a grizzly bear’s lap—probably taken from some kitschy bed-and-breakfast the tourists used to flock to in the summertime.
Right now, though, it was just the two of them, underscored by the e
mpty woodstoves on either end of the room. At least the chill in the air dulled the smell of old diesel. Mitch regretted taking off his hat when he first arrived and went through the obligatory pleasantries with Dixon and his second, Tom. But Mitch refused to put it back on in the middle of a negotiation. Weakness to a second-generation Alaskan like Dixon. Instead, he kept his hands jammed into the pockets of his down parka.
“You say you have more of this?” Dixon’s words created cloudy puffs above their heads.
“Yep. Brought two crates with us. More if you want it.”
“Where did you find it?”
Mitch smiled. “Now, you know I can’t tell you that.”
Dixon knew the rules, knew that too many questions and Mitch would just go to the next buyer on his list. But Dixon was always a touch too suspicious of just how Mitch managed to procure the range of items he had for trade. Mitch billed himself as a go-between for a larger crew, negotiating trades and drop-off points for goods if they were too numerous to carry inland between the three of them.
It kept things simple. But as he met Dixon’s gaze across the table, nothing was ever simple.
Dixon snorted. “Trade secrets? Bullshit. We’ve been working hard to ally ourselves with other communities. Imagine my position if I learn this wood came from one of them. So you tell your boss we need answers.”
Mitch forced back a frown. Most communities rolled out the red carpet when he came—desperate enough not to question the origin of the goods he brought with him. But the Homer Cooperative was doing better than most, and could afford to be . . . ethical? No. Careful, cautious.
Some of the folks here thought Dixon was a visionary. Mitch didn’t know about all that, but he did know the Cooperative was the first community to request glass, the real stuff, or if not that then Plexiglas, to build greenhouses. For a diet that went beyond fish and elk and wild berries. They were thinking of the future when so many other communities could afford only to take things one day at a time.
Mitch raised his hands. “I can try, but they’ll just say if you’re being difficult to take it to New Whittier or Soldatna.”
He let that sink in, pleased to see the slight panic that crept into the other man’s eyes. Dixon was a tough SOB—forest ranger from before—but a terrible poker player. Mitch shrugged.
“I hear they have an influx of refugees from Anchorage and nowhere to house them.”
Dixon frowned, suddenly looking tired. “The city’s still smoking, if the rumors can be trusted.”
In those first few weeks right after, Mitch and the kids sailed up and down the coast, watching everything burn. And while they waited it out, Mitch had to find a way for them to survive.
He’d even considered sailing across the gulf to the mainland, but by then stories of the West Coast going up in flames had reached Alaska. He thought of Kathy in her swanky loft in Seattle—the absolute opposite of their life together in Valdez. She probably never had a chance before the fires found her. Not that he’d tell the kids that.
Dixon finally set the wood sample away from him with a soft snap against the table. For a brief moment Mitch could see the large “H” branded to the inside of his wrist before Dixon’s sleeve covered it once more. Every member of the Cooperative had one.
“Winter’s not too far off. Folks are wising up, realizing they can’t do it all on their own. It’s beautiful, really, watching people come together to rebuild.”
Mitch raised a brow. “Alaskans working together?”
“This is bigger than you or me. What about your kids?”
“What about them?”
Dixon’s eyes widened slightly at Mitch’s tone. That was rule number one. No one laid a hand on Danielle or Edward. So far, no one had tested him on that.
“I’m just saying life as traders must be hard on them.”
True enough. The kids always brightened when they came to Homer to trade. Mitch tried not to get defensive when they’d dash off without a word to him and tag after the other children their age they’d gotten to know on past trips. Some sort of weird kid radar that must short out when you got older. He might keep them safe and well fed, but in the end he was still Dad.
Mitch shook his head. “Life’s hard period. Get to your point.”
“Look, we want good people here.” Dixon licked his lips and leaned forward. “You’ve always dealt fairly with us, even if you leave out more details than I’d like. We could use someone like you.”
“Sorry, not interested.” He slowly got to his feet. “You want the wood or not?”
Dixon nodded without hesitation.
“Then we’re done here.” He turned to leave, but Dixon stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Word’s getting around, Mitch. People are starting to wonder. One of these days . . .” He shrugged.
“Is that a threat?” Mitch forced out.
“A warning. You’ll have to throw in one day. And I hope it’ll be with us.”
* * *
“Geez, Dad. Did we have to get so much?” Eddie struggled with the straps of his bulging pack. Danielle’s shoulders bowed under the extra weight, but she hadn’t complained since they left the Cooperative and hiked into the forest to the southeast. A cold drizzle trickled down through the trees, liberally soaking them before the moss cushioning their steps absorbed the rest.
“You want to eat for the next four months?”
The words came out sharper than Mitch intended. He’d been on edge as he and the kids packed up the supplies they’d negotiated for and gave Dixon the coordinates for the cache of paneling—in the opposite direction of the route they’d take back to the Windfall—that they set up before even approaching the Cooperative.
Eddie sucked in his cheeks. “Does this mean we’ll take a break from salvage for a while?”
Mitch frowned. They probably could afford a break, considering all they carried and the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach that Dixon’s parting words had created. Maybe they should lie low for a while, let the curiosity die down.
“I guess we could spend a week at camp once we stow everything in the cave.”
Eddie beamed at him. “You promise?”
“I don’t see why not. But remember, we’re like ants. We work hard spring, summer, and fall so we can survive the winter. We can’t afford a grasshopper mentality for too long.”
Dani rolled her eyes but for once did not make a snide comment.
They pushed through the forest of spruce trees. The fresh evergreen smell had a way of calming the mind, but Mitch fought it, his head on constant swivel. After all, a healthy dose of suspicion had kept them alive. As a bonus, all his precautions kept the kids on their toes.
They had maybe two hours of daylight to find a defensible camp. He made a point never to stay the night in any community they traded in, always camping out of range and keeping watch to ensure they weren’t being followed.
Like they were right now. It took a half mile to be sure. Mitch had to swallow his first impulse to tell the kids. But they needed the practice.
It was Kathy’s fault they were so far behind. Years lived in Alaska mattered; if you could trace your residency back a generation or more, even better. Mitch had learned that early on when he was subjected to all kinds of questions related to his parents’ retirement home on the Prince William Sound, the summers he spent in Alaska growing up, learning her secrets. He liked to think his experiences were enough for most of those born and raised here—the grizzled types at the bar or the marina who were always on the lookout for folks from “back east.”
Kathy, on the other hand . . . Too many people took him aside and told him it was only a matter of time before she hightailed it back to the lower forty-eight. He didn’t believe them, of course. But she couldn’t handle the eternalness of winter, the isolation that forced you to look deep inside yourself, or the way
life and death were separated by the sharpest of knife-edges here. A land constantly in negotiation with its extremes.
She took the kids with her. He got them summers and two weeks every March. And since that fateful spring break he had promised them a fishing trip they’d never forget, Dani and Eddie were catching up—learning the land, the sea, growing more confident in the nature around them, and more respectful of it at the same time.
The back of his neck prickled. Mitch just hoped it’d be enough.
Eddie glanced back the way they came, a small frown on his face. He kept walking, holding his pack’s straps to rest his arms. Dani faced forward, her steps precise and controlled, despite the fatigue that left smudges under her eyes. Then she cocked her head the same time Eddie shot another look over his shoulder. Mitch held his breath, willing them to make the connection.
“We’re being followed, aren’t we?” Dani asked.
Mitch nodded, his shoulder relaxing slightly under the weight of his pack. He was nearly at the point where’d he have to cut the experiment short.
“You two keep going. I’ll see if I can get behind him, see what we’re up against.”
He scanned the trees. This was as good a place as any. Shot through with the occasional aspen, spruce surrounded them. But bark beetles had kept the trees from thriving. Resulting in less cover, but more space for a confrontation.
“But—”
“I mean it, Dani.”
That they figured it out was enough of a lesson for today. He’d handle the rest. He had to.
“Take your brother, and go on ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”
A brief flicker of fear passed over her face, then she nodded. Eddie opened his mouth to protest, but Dani pushed him ahead of her.
“Come on.”
You can take the man out of the wilderness, but you can’t take the wilderness out of the man.
That was something Kathy said to him right before the divorce. She hadn’t intended for it to be a compliment, but he thanked God the kids had been with him when everything changed. Otherwise . . .
Tales of Downfall and Rebirth Page 11
