A. R. Shaw's Apocalyptic Sampler: Stories of hope when humanity is at its worst

by A. R. Shaw

  His face reflected the whiteness outside until he shut the door again.

  He confirmed her suspicion when he said, “Blizzard.”

  “Great. Now, what do we do?”

  “Well, Jax will be back—I’d say in about two hours according to the fire. Unless he knew exactly what time we’d wake, which he probably did. And, in that case, he won’t be back.”

  “We need to get into town. This girl needs real medical attention, and we need to let the authorities know what happened.”

  He shook his head. “She’s going to be fine, and there’s no town to go to. Those guys who robbed your neighbor and killed her parents…It’s more than likely that same scenario is going on all around Coeur d’Alene as well as everywhere else. This is what happens to society when everything goes to hell. The evil prey on the clueless.”

  “What do you mean? This is just a national disaster. It’ll blow over in a few days. The police will arrest the looters and then we can go home.”

  “Your home was burned to the ground, Maeve. Don’t you remember that?”

  She remembered then…the girl’s home was smoldering, and her own house was ablaze with fire. “We can’t just stay here.”

  He didn’t say anything else for a while. The wood continued to snap and crack in the fireplace. “We’ll need water, food, and…facilities,” she said, trying to hint that she had to go.

  “We’ll go back to my place when the snow dies down.”

  “Where’s your horse?”

  “He’s out there under an overhang. Jax wouldn’t harm Jake or us. He just doesn’t like to interact with people.”

  She nodded but still didn’t think it was an excuse for him to put everyone to sleep for his own comfort level.

  Ben began to stir then. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. “Where are we?”

  She shook her head. “I have no idea, but we’re safe.”

  “Is Louna OK?” Ben asked.

  “We think so. Her breathing sounds better.”

  An hour later, when the fire died down, they gathered their belongings and Bishop wrapped the girl in the fur hide. Again, Bishop helped Maeve up onto Jake, and he handed the unconscious child to her. She smelled like winter berries, and Maeve wished Jax was a little friendlier so that he’d share some of his secrets with her because she had no idea how he’d made the child’s near-death condition improve to merely resting. As peaceful as she was in sleep with her long, dark lashes against her alabaster skin, her world would shatter when she woke. So as long as she could sleep, Maeve wanted her to, just to keep her life peaceful for a little while longer.

  The sun, dim as it was through the pouring snow, seemed to be behind the gray sky to the west. She figured it must be about two in the afternoon as they slogged through the cold. She worried about Bishop. He was frozen through, and snow clung to his hat and coat so thickly that he looked miserable. Bishop led them through the forest and finally stopped near a stack of boulders that she would have never noticed were a home unless Bishop had pointed it out. He opened a gate after swiping his thumb on a black pad and then took the bundle from her lap after helping Ben down from the horse. Snow that had accumulated on them dropped to the ground or froze in place on her hat and in her hair.

  They went inside the cave past a kitchen and then deeper into a large stone room filled with bunks and a lot of boxes. It reminded her of a hobbit hole, but she’d never say that out loud in his presence.

  Everything was perfectly laid out in straight lines. She could recognize an engineering man anywhere. Her father was one and wouldn’t condone curves or angles in home décor. The beds were in even rows. The utensils were laid out in lines and perfectly straight on his table. There were no extras or flourishes.

  “You live here?” Ben asked Bishop.

  “Yes,” Bishop said and handed the girl back to Maeve and averted his eyes while he cleared his throat.

  “I’ll put Jake away and be back in a minute.” His eyes looked at her warily. She wasn’t certain he trusted her in his home. After all, he was only a few hundred steps away from Jax. They were both hermits in their own pain living out in the woods. The comparisons were likely drawn.

  She laid Louna out on one of the cots and checked her breathing again. It was as normal as Ben’s was when sleeping. She removed the snow-covered blanket and covered her with another blanket that was lying on the end of one of the cots. Then Bishop returned and stared at her like she’d been up to something.

  “I swear I haven’t touched anything,” she said to him.

  “It’s OK. There’s nothing you can harm here.”

  “Look, I have a bookstore downtown. Ben and I can stay there. You don’t have to keep us here.”

  “I doubt your bookstore is still standing, Maeve, and if it is, it’s not safe.” He began removing his gear and then gathered a few utensils and a few bottles of water. She sat next to her son on a cot that leaned against a boulder as he started a fire in the woodstove. “I don’t mean to discourage you, Maeve. In a day or two, I’ll scout down there and see what’s going on. For now, we stay here,” he said.

  “I’m starving,” Ben said, and so was she.

  Bishop took three caramel-brown pouches out of a nearby box and tore the tops off of each one. After reshaping them, each pouch stood on its own while he poured boiling water into each one.

  “Something smells good,” Ben said as they watched steam rise from the bags.

  Bishop handed them each a packet.

  “What is it?” Ben asked.

  “Chicken a la King, according to the package label, but it could be anything.”

  Ben was right. She was starving too, and when she took a bite of the brown bag’s contents, it tasted like mushy chicken bouillon, and it was wonderful. She began to look at the contents and poked around with her fork. There were green peas in there, but the rest looked like reconstituted rice and chicken pieces.

  “I wouldn’t dissect it if I were you. Less appetizing that way,” Bishop said, and she smiled.

  He was probably right. So Maeve blindly scooped up spoonfuls into her mouth and swallowed.

  After she was through, she handed him the empty packet, and then he tossed them into the fire. She watched while the package shrank and sizzled. What am I going to do now? My home and all I’ve worked for is gone.

  18

  Later that night, Maeve tucked Ben into a nearby cot next to Louna. The girl still slept. She checked over her many cuts and abrasions for any sign of infection but found nothing alarming. Whatever Jax had put on them was healing them well.

  “Bishop, do you have a spare T-shirt or something we can put on Louna? When she wakes, she might be startled to find she’s undressed.”

  He’d been staring at the fire too, lost in his own world, when she began to talk to him. He rose from his seat on a spare log. “Sure,” he said and rummaged around in the boxes. He handed her a grayish-white T-shirt that once was bright white but was now at least clean.

  She slipped the crewneck over the girl’s head and pulled each arm through the too-large shirt and then slipped it down past her torso, the hem nearly reaching her knees. She covered the child again and wiped Louna’s hair out of her eyes after slipping a little more water between her lips. The only thing to do now was wait for her to wake up. There was nothing else she could think to do.

  Perhaps she had relatives nearby who would take her. Maeve had only met the family down the road a few times. Anyone that lived out in the woods did so for a reason. Her reason was Roger and his need for peace. They weren’t hermits, not like Bishop and Jax, but they hadn’t wanted and didn’t need a lot of excitement in their lives while raising their son.

  “Mom, when are we going home?” Ben asked sleepily.

  “Well, I’m not sure. The snow is piling high out there. It might be a few days, but this is like camping out, don’t you think?” She didn’t want to tell him the truth. She wasn’t sure of the truth herself.

  “Did those
bad guys burn down our house too?”

  She had no idea what was left of their house or how much Ben saw from the ridge that night Bishop led them to safety. She’d thought her son was asleep on the back of the horse with her.

  Smiling, she pulled the blanket higher under his chin. “I don’t know, Ben, but if they did, we'll find something else. Don’t worry.”

  Her attention turned to the door as Bishop stepped outside. She wondered where he was going. She tucked her son in and made sure he and Louna were warm enough. The cave was an ingenious shelter, but it was drafty and cold, so a fire was always needed to keep them from freezing.

  “Maeve,” Bishop called suddenly when he opened the door a crack.

  “What?”

  “Put your coat on and come out here for a minute. I need to show you something.”

  She looked over the children again, making doubly sure they were both warm enough, and went back from the cave entrance to the cabin addition and put on her coat and boots and gloves again. They were still damp from the day before, but there was no other option. She stepped out into the night quickly and shut the door behind her. He stood nearby. The moon glowed eerily through the clouds.

  “Come here,” he whispered. “You have to see this.”

  She stepped toward him, and he took her by the arm and led her into the woods.

  “I don’t want to leave the children.”

  “We’re not going far.”

  He led her up to a rocky ledge where they could see the valley below. What she expected were a few home fires like before if the looters were still out. What she saw was devastating. Down below, the town of Coeur d’Alene looked as if it had been bombed by warplanes. Even from that far away there were shouts she could hear and sirens or alarms that wouldn’t soon fade. The whole town looked like it was on fire, and even the lake had burning boats lingering listlessly, smoke mixing with the night. Gunshots rang out in the distance as if war had been declared.

  “This is what I meant,” he said. “Strip away humanity in its modern form and only savagery remains.”

  She looked at his profile. The glow from the fires below reflected in his eyes. This man had seen war alongside her dead husband.

  “We have to do something!” she said.

  He shook his head. “No. I’m not doing anything to endanger you and the children in there.”

  She pointed toward the blaze. “There are more people down there who need your help, Bishop.”

  “I swore to protect you and Ben. That’s all. If I go down there right now, there’s a good chance you and Ben will die. After three days, I’ll go down. I’ll go down there and see what remains and what I can do, but for now, we wait and watch.”

  “It’s all gone, isn’t it?” She began to cry for all the children down there. For all of her friends, the teachers, the entire town who had harbored her in the worst of her grief.

  Without thinking, he put a hand on her back and then pulled it away.

  She turned to him, surprised.

  “Yes. It’s all gone from us now. Here and everywhere else. Let’s get back. There will be more people fleeing into the woods now trying to get away. We need to keep watch.”

  He led her back inside the shelter and locked the door. She’d noticed he was always armed, always listening, and always aware of his surroundings. She supposed it was a habit that was hard to break after what he’d been through. Roger had said once that it was hard to turn off, and some veterans never did. She knew that he’d meant Bishop now.

  “Go to sleep, Maeve. I’ll wake you in a few hours to take the next watch.”

  He looked exhausted by the firelight, and though she thought it might be better if she took watch first, she didn’t argue with him. She slipped into the cot next to the children’s, afraid the images from the past day would haunt her and keep her awake, but instead, she fell fast asleep. It was as if her mind couldn’t cope and switched off her consciousness like a light.

  19

  “Maeve, wake up.”

  At first, she didn’t know where she was. Then she heard a child crying.

  “I don’t know what to do with her. She needs you.”

  Someone jostled her arm again when she began to drift off. “OK, I’m coming,” she said, and the girl’s crying became louder.

  When she sat up, she found Bishop kneeling in the cave room next to the girl, who was huddled on a chair by the fire. “It’s OK. Maeve will be here soon. She’ll help you. No one’s going to hurt you,” he was saying to her.

  “Louna!” Maeve finally said when she realized what was going on.

  Bishop turned to her. He had a hold of his rifle and looked at her seriously. “Can’t you take over now and keep her quiet?”

  She nodded. Something told her more was going on than the girl making noise.

  “Hi, Louna. Do you remember me? I’m Ben’s mom. We live down the road from you.”

  The girl made no signs of recognition. She had her knees drawn up to her chest under the T-shirt with a blanket wrapped around herself. She shook her head and appeared thoroughly frightened. Maeve tucked the blanket around her exposed feet. “No one’s going to hurt you here. OK?” she said and ran her hand over the girl’s hair.

  When Louna tried to talk, her voice came out ragged. “Where’s my…mom?” she said, and large tears pooled in her eyes. Suspecting the tears were coming from pain as well as fear, Maeve did her best to soothe the girl.

  The child of only five years was utterly confused, and for good reason. Maeve wasn’t certain five-year-olds could understand their conditions. “Sweetheart, there was a fire. Do you remember anything?”

  She shook her head no.

  Maeve didn’t know where to begin. “There was a fire at your house, and the man from earlier saved you. He brought you to me. I live down the road from you. Ben is my son. Do you remember Ben?”

  A flicker of recognition appeared in her eyes, but she cried still. The only thing Maeve could do was hold her and let the tears fall.

  Bishop stuck his head in the door. “Can you keep her quiet? There’s movement out here.”

  Maeve picked her up and took her back into the cave, farther from the door. “Louna, please try to be quiet for me, sweetheart,” she whispered.

  Louna buried her face into Maeve’s neck and held on to her as if someone were trying to pry her away. Soon her sobs quieted, and when Maeve checked, the girl had fallen asleep.

  The door to the cabin opened an hour later, and Maeve was still sitting against the cave wall with Louna clutched to her chest.

  Bishop’s shadow lingered on the pavement, stretching into the cave room before he entered. “She OK?”

  Maeve nodded, though she wasn’t sure any of them were OK. “What was going on out there?”

  “Some people, a family I suspect, were roaming through the woods. They had backpacks. I didn’t want to confront them if they went around our camp here. I kept an eye on them until they were clear through to the south. I don’t know where they think they are headed—there’s nothing that way, and they’ll probably try to backtrack in a few days when they realize their mistake. I suspect we’ll see a lot more people roaming through these woods soon.”

  “Why not help them?”

  “Maeve, you see these boxes?”

  She looked at the far wall where there were at least thirty large containers. “Those are filled with what you had for dinner. In another two days, people will kill for what’s in those boxes.”

  She wasn’t sure she believed him. “There’s food down there in the stores. There are ranchers and farmers nearby.”

  “Maeve, this snow that’s falling isn’t going away for a long time. We’ll be digging ourselves out of this for years. It’s not going to end or blow over, and there will be no spring. There will be no harvest next year or any year for a long time to come because this isn’t going to end.”

  She looked at the boxes again. “We don’t have enough here then, if what you say is
true.”

  “Now you’re beginning to grasp our situation.”

  She stared at him awhile longer. She couldn’t make out his features as he stood in the doorway, the fireplace shadowing his features. “Is it my turn to take the watch?”

  “I let you sleep through the night. It’s daytime, Maeve.”

  She couldn’t believe it. It was still dark as ebony outside. “What time is it?”

  “Nine in the morning,” he said.

  She laid Louna down on the cot carefully in order not to wake her and then walked past Bishop. He stood to the side as she slipped by him. She peeked out into the darkness. “It can’t be nine a.m. It’s pitch dark out there.”

  “It hasn’t stopped snowing all night.” He looked at his watch and again said definitely, “Nine in the morning.”

  “Still, I’ve never seen it so dark at this time. Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “Because the hikers were coming through. I doubt there will be many now, though. I’ll try to sleep a few hours if you can keep watch now.”

  “I will,” she said and pulled the Glock out from her coat pocket.

  “Is that still loaded?”

  “Yes.”

  “When’s the last time you shot it?”

  “I don’t know. Two, three years ago?”

  “If you hear something, yell at me first before you do anything. Just sit right here,” he said, pointing to the chair by the door. “Don’t move from this chair unless you hear something, and wake me before you act. Understand?”

  She nodded again.

  He started to walk toward the cave room.

  “What if it’s just people walking by?”

  “If you hear any noise out of the ordinary, wake me. Even if it’s just people walking through.”

  His voice was gruff and lacked patience. She decided not to ask any further questions.

  She heard him settle on the cot closest to the doorway, and when she glanced over, he had one boot on the ground. She had no idea how he was going to sleep like that, but she wasn’t going to say anything. Instead, as his snores became louder and the children still slept, she sat there gazing out into the darkness for any signs of danger.