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

by A. R. Shaw

  20

  Over the next few days, Maeve looked after the children as Bishop scouted their camp day and night, watching as refugees from the town below sought safer havens in the wilderness. He never confronted the people he detected in the forest unless they were at risk of finding their hidden camp. If they strayed too close, he would intervene, sending a few warning shots to encourage their circumvention of the area.

  Why they couldn’t help at least those families with children was something Maeve didn’t understand. They’d argued about the dilemma. “If we help more, that means one of those two kids in there will die of starvation one day sooner. You choose which one,” he’d said. She couldn’t, of course, and that was the end of their debate over helping strangers.

  Louna and Ben played quietly in the bunk room most of the time, but she sensed a restlessness in Bishop when there was too much noise going on. He would often leave the cabin without saying where he was going, returning empty handed. She encouraged the children to play quietly and tried to refrain from asking him too many questions in an attempt to help ease the man into having them there. After watching the town below from the view on the cliff, she too was shocked at all the violence she’d seen and heard. There was no going back home like this; she’d never want to endanger Ben or Louna, so she trusted Bishop’s plan to wait.

  On the third morning, she woke to find Bishop cleaning and then loading his weapons near the light of the woodstove. Without a shirt on, she could see his shoulder injury still seeped blood through the bandage. Though he rarely mentioned the wound, she knew he must still be in a lot of pain. Her eyes lingered over Bishop’s chest as he placed extra boxes of ammunition carefully in a pack along with a few MREs, a bundle of rope, and a first aid kit among other items. “Where are you going?” she said in a soft voice.

  “Down there. I told you, we’d wait for the first die off and then I’d go down and see what’s going on. From my observations, there’s organized looting and executions. Nothing good is happening. I’m going to go down and find out who’s in charge.” He said as he put on a shirt and then his outwear and then slung the pack over his shoulder. “I’ll be back tonight.”

  “Wait!” Terrified, Maeve got up and chased him to the front door. Scared that he might be leaving her and the children for good, she tried to stall him. “You’re not leaving-leaving us, right? I know you’re not used to being around people, but I promise we’ll try to stay quiet.”

  “Maeve…”

  “Seriously, Bishop, I…can’t keep watch and protect us the way that you do. I’m scared,” she whispered loudly, trying to keep her voice down with the children nearby.

  He put his hand on her shoulder as she stared into his blue eyes.

  “I’m not leaving you. I’d never do that. I swear I’m only going down to recon the area—get as much information as I can about what’s going on down there. In the meantime, do what I showed you. Keep the door locked and keep watch. If you detect anyone, hide unless confronted, and then you know what to do. Maybe you and the kids could also stuff the cracks in the walls with paper or whatever you can find to help keep the draft out. When the kids have to go out, take them to the same area as before and hurry them back. It’s snowing again, so there’s more cover.”

  “When has it ever stopped in the last three days?” she asked.

  “A few hours last night,” he whispered. “You’ll be fine. I’ll be back soon after dark.”

  She nodded, and he squeezed her shoulder.

  “Fear is good, Maeve. It’ll help you survive.”

  She wasn’t just afraid—she was terrified. But Maeve gave him a brave smile, and when he stepped out into the snow, she locked the latch and watched him through the cracks and fallen snow as he saddled Jake and left her and the children there in the cabin alone.

  21

  Bishop set out to scout the town of Coeur d’Alene, which meant he’d have to cross the lake at some point. The pitch-black darkness had lightened to a stone gray. He was betting that by now the weather had frozen the first eight inches of the lake water as it does during hard winters at the end of January.

  To the north of the highway was all urban sprawl. To the south stood the main town: lots of shops, residential areas, and one enormous luxury fifteen-floor resort hotel attached to a marina and a world-class golf course on the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene.

  The building itself stood as a hallmark over the lake for which the town was named. One family owned the hotel as well as many of the surrounding businesses, and if it weren’t for that family Coeur d’Alene would not likely be the gem of the town that it was. Of course, the beauty of the area was the major draw in the summer months, and in the frigid months, when the lake froze over, Coeur d’Alene became a winter wonderland.

  Bishop had visited the resort on occasion as a child, once for a wedding and another time for his parent’s anniversary dinner, where on the top floor he’d gazed out at twilight as the entire lake reflected a crimson sunset. There were few more beautiful sights in the world. Of course, those were only memories from a time before the war.

  He’d once heard his father describe the family who owned the place as being hardworking and generous. Those were attributes his father seldom used, so Bishop always held high regard for them. What had happened to the family now was a mystery. All he could glean from his spot on the mountain above and from the other south of the lake was that something had gone terribly wrong. Fires burned continuously, and there were occasional explosions. The lake itself held hostage a number of burned boats, now surrounded by a thick layer of ice. Gunshots rang out and echoed through the thin winter air with the sound echoing far. And dark smoke mixed and mingled with the already gray skies.

  The sounds of constant shooting only began to recede in the coming day. Bishop had guessed a three-day waiting period would likely tell him more. He couldn’t bring Maeve and the children down in these conditions, and he couldn’t keep her up there with the way the weather was going. Something had to give. Their rations wouldn’t hold out forever, and he needed to find a safer place for Maeve and the children for the long term.

  He rode Jake down through the forest, stopping every now and then and using his binoculars to scan the area before him for people in the woods. That’s when he heard a yell for help and, leery of approaching any stranger, he kept his distance. But he was too close to whoever was causing the distraction, and he was afraid that someone else might come and spot him, so he tethered Jake nearby and scouted closer to the person who was urgently calling out.

  While walking through the snow, he saw many individual tracks, and a lot of the snowy prints were laced with blood. There was little other noise in the forest. An eerie calm had taken over since the weather turned. Dark gray skies were the new normal, and when he finally peered around a frozen ravine, he saw why the guy was calling out. Though the man could not see him, he could see the ashen hiker yelling with his femur puncturing through the skin of his leg and canvas pants. He was overweight and must have stumbled over the uneven terrain under the snow. You had to know these woods well enough to remember where obstacles hid underneath.

  Not only was the guy’s leg broken, but he was also bleeding from the chest. There was no way he would survive. Not in these present conditions. Bishop was about to move on, but perhaps he might be able to get a little information from the man. He went back to Jake and pulled his water thermos out offering the bottle to the man dying in the snow.

  The man had called out a few more times since he’d spied him, and besides information Bishop also wanted the man to stop screaming and drawing attention to the area leading up to his hideout. More people would come along this path and possibly follow his tracks.

  Bishop hiked back quickly to the man and revealed himself over the ledge of the narrow ravine between the trees, letting the near-dead man see him.

  “Hello there,” he said.

  The man’s pudgy face was startled for a second, not believing some
one had actually come in answer to his calls.

  “Hey, hey, I’ve hurt my leg. I think I broke my leg.”

  He wore a black-and-red scotch flannel jacket over jeans and a T-shirt. His large hands were blue from the cold. His big fingers stuck out at right angles from his hand like an opened glove. There was no way he could move them. Bishop thought they were probably frozen through. His goatee was ice crusted, but oddly enough he didn’t even shiver though he was stuck there in the snow and had been for a long time. He was a dead man, only he didn’t know it yet.

  “Looks like you’re bleeding there, too. What happened to you?”

  “Shot…” he said, bewildered.

  Bishop thought the guy was probably in shock. His speech was slurred, and he looked as if he was hallucinating.

  “Who shot you?” Bishop asked him while he carefully climbed down the ravine.

  “Those guys…security guys from the hotel, they’re taking everything. Said…they were running things now.”

  “Where are the police? Who’s the leader?” Bishop asked while he opened the thermos. The stranger eyeballed the container.

  “I don’t know. Can you help me? My leg’s broken.”

  He was repeating himself. Bishop gave him a tight smile. “Can you take a sip of water for me?”

  He nodded, and Bishop held the thermos to his blue lips. He eagerly drank down the liquid.

  “Do you have family down there?”

  “They shot them,” he said as he wiped his mouth with the back of his right forearm. Bishop could see his fingers were thoroughly frostbitten, so blue they were black at the tips. He wouldn’t last but a few more hours at the most. Even if he managed to get him to a modern medical facility, the guy was doomed.

  The man started to lay his head down, and Bishop knew it wouldn’t be long before he died. “Hey, what’s your name?” Bishop asked as he patted the dead man on the shoulder.

  “I’m Michael…Mike…I’m Mike…” He seemed to struggle for his last name. The cold did terrible things to the human brain. With his eyes staring straight up, his head slumped to the side.

  “That’s all right, Mike. Go to sleep,” Bishop whispered and closed the man’s wide-open eyes.

  Bishop examined Mike’s body. He had no weapons on him. He wore clothes typical for strolling the dry streets of the city below but not for slogging through the backcountry where he was now. No, Mike had run from something, and the blast through his shoulder had come from the back with the bullet exiting through the front. It wasn’t the broken leg or the gunshot that killed him, though; it was the cold. Although these residents lived in a typically hard winter area, they didn’t live in the cold, and Bishop suspected there would be many more deaths coming in the following weeks.

  Bishop pushed layers of snow over Mike’s body. It was the least he could do for the man. He’d given him information, but unfortunately, he was as good as dead when he found him. There was someone down there making life much more difficult in these tough times, and after Bishop found out who that was he would make a plan from there.

  After retrieving Jake, he continued down to the lake and crossed Albion Road. The snow had piled in drifts in the opened areas between the trees. The wind picked up and made traversing the terrain even more challenging, and yet there was no end in sight.

  He came to a stop near an old pier, looking out cautiously in the open. To his left, the lake widened substantially toward the marina. Gray skies coupled with the snow and thick gray smoke from fires made the area on the ice look like a war zone. He heard more sporadic shooting, but the smog was so thick in that area he couldn’t make out anything.

  The ice looked thick enough to traverse, but those were the famous last thoughts of many dead individuals. A small fishing boat stood captured in the center, the ice so thick it piled up around the hull as it expanded.

  When Bishop typically crossed the lake, he took the beat-up metal rowboat he kept tied to the pier, but it had sunk and half frozen into the ice under the pier. This was the narrow end of the lake, and unless he crossed here, he’d have to circle the lake and follow the highway down to the town, which would add hours to his trek. He shifted in his saddle, looking all around him. This place, once peaceful, now seemed haunted.

  Bishop dismounted and took a few steps. The ice was rough, and there were a few human tracks in areas. “Come on, Jake,” he said and nudged the horse out onto the ice. He watched for any fissures as he went.

  Crossing the lake in November was never done. Not in his lifetime, and he was sure it hadn’t happened since the last Maunder Minimum in this area. Midway through, they passed the boat frozen in time. There was no one aboard, though Bishop didn’t look deep inside. The faint tracks on the ice showed that someone else had checked out the boat and continued on to the other side.

  Constantly vigilant of cracking ice, Bishop kept moving and led Jake behind him, never standing in one spot longer than the time it took to take the next step. Continuously transferring his and Jake’s weight kept them from gambling against the ice’s strength.

  They reached the other side of the lake, and Bishop remounted while keeping watch for any other living person. Desperation hung heavy in the frozen air, and with the occasional shots ringing out in the distance he didn’t think it would be long before he saw much worse than human desperation. Human despair was the next step. He’d seen the signs in the South Pacific seas; humanity still strived in desperation, but in despair, they gave up entirely and no longer fought for the need to survive. Those in despair were already dead men, like Mike packed in the snow on the mountain.

  Bishop stayed to the shoulder of Coeur d’Alene Lake Drive, or rather the area right above where the road should have been because the road itself wasn’t visible. As he continued into more populated areas, the houses that lined the streets looked deserted. If there were people inside of them, they were hiding out. To the north, several more shots rang out only a few streets away, and before he realized it, he had his AR out by his side. “Come on, Jake. Just a little farther,” he urged. “Let’s get you to Tubbs Hill.”

  Tubbs Hill was the area’s requisite hiking trail region. The tall pines there were left intact, growing on a large round rocky peninsula covered in trees that seemed to float out from the mainland. Once in the wooded area, Bishop continued to the other side where he could stand and watch the south side of the resort area and still be hidden from view. The wind picked up off the south end of the frozen lake, and Bishop shuddered. Inside of his coat’s inner pocket, he broke open a large warming pack and shook the ingredients around, then replaced the thin bag inside of the nylon of his inner pockets. He wouldn’t freeze, at least. When he lifted the binoculars to his eyes, he found expensive boats haphazardly frozen in the ice. It seemed no one had had enough notice of the storm to stow them away properly. Then he saw something dark lying on the pier. And then there was another one. There were bodies out there lying in the open. Their clothes on their backs rippled in the wind, which was now coming in sharp gusts.

  A sudden flash of a weapon’s fire came from around the east side of the tower. A man in uniform shot at someone on the west side of the building, and then behind him a group of men all dressed in the same black uniform began shooting at the uniformed officer.

  Bishop watched as he lost his cover and ran out onto the ice and made it as far as the boardwalk of the main pier, but then he was out in the open with no cover at all. Bishop’s gloved hand squeezed his rifle, but not knowing who the bad guys were, he held back. More shots rang out as three men pursued the man running out on the ice. Rat-tat-tat…the man dropped down after shots stitched through his back. His weapon skidded out several feet in front of him.

  “We got him!” one of the men yelled to someone near the shore. “Tell Ramsey he’s the last of them. The town’s ours now.”

  Bishop moved his binoculars to the south as the three men patted down the body of their enemy, took his firearm, and walked back. Their voices trave
led easily over the frozen ice. They took short steps in an effort to not slip. One guy gave orders to the others, saying, “We’ve got this now.” Another man asked, “What about Spokane? When they hear, they’ll send someone.”

  “Spokane has their own problems. Ramsey knows what he’s doing.” He put his arm behind the other guy’s head. “Dave, don’t question him. Not if you want to keep your family alive. Understand?”

  The younger man hesitated for a moment but then nodded. They followed the third guy, walking back to the resort as another gust of sharp, cold wind blew by them. Bishop tightened his coat around himself.

  There was something screwed up in the way they were behaving. They wore black uniforms, but they were different from the police officer that they killed. Bishop returned his view to the body on the ice again and magnified the binoculars to get a closer look at the dead man. His uniform was also black, but stitched across the shoulder in gold thread was spelled Coeur d’Alene Police Department. “Damn.”

  He focused on the retreating men again, who were just entering the building. Were those guys just hotel security? Bishop wasn’t sure, and he’d never known them to carry arms before. The door closed hard. It was impossible to see inside of the hotel’s glass, but he knew they’d have an unobstructed view of him if he broke his cover.

  Now the streets were quiet. Bishop felt like he’d come at the end of a battle, and from the looks of the bodies lying in the open, he was probably right. Bishop wasn’t prepared for this. He knew now who controlled the city—their leader was a guy named Ramsey. Though he had the information he came for, he had to return to Maeve for now. Bishop needed to head back to camp before the short day turned to night so that he could keep her safe…and so that he could plan how to take back the town.