Just the cold. And the smell.
“Where are your friends, Rasheed?” I asked.
“In the freezer,” he said.
“Did you kill them?”
“There wasn’t enough food.”
“Open the freezer for me, would you?”
He flipped up the lid and the rest of the smell came; it was far worse than the bodies in Cochrane, where the sunlight had done its job. In the freezer was a soup of turgid corpses, so rotten and putrefied that I couldn’t be sure how many there were.
“The power went out last summer,” he said. “I wasn’t able to get it working again.”
“Close the goddamned lid,” I said.
He closed the lid and gave me another nervous smile.
“I don’t know what to do, Rasheed,” I said.
“Just leave me be, Mr. Baptiste. Take what you want and go.”
I heard Fiona cry out from the next room. “Oh my god!” she screamed.
I ran out to the living room to see Fiona stooped down over the sleeping girl. She’d pulled off the sheet; the naked girl underneath had her wrists pinned to her side and her ankles bound, all with layer upon layer of fishing line.
“I think she’s dead,” Fiona said.
“She’s sleeping,” Rasheed said.
I dropped down beside Fiona. “She’s still breathing,” I said.
Graham pulled out his pocketknife and slowly began cutting the fishing line.
I stood back up and walked over to Rasheed.
“Take what you want and go,” he said. His demeanor hadn’t changed.
“Do you know what you did here?” I asked.
He nodded. “There wasn’t enough food.”
I punched him in the mouth. He fell to his knees.
“Baptiste, please,” Fiona said. “He’s obviously not well.”
“We can’t leave him here,” I said. “He’s dangerous.”
“We’re not taking him with us,” Graham said as he kept cutting.
I knew what I had to do. “I’m sorry, Fiona.”
“Please,” she said.
I wanted to try to convince her, but we didn’t have time. The starving girl needed help.
“We can’t just stuff her full of food,” Graham said. “We need to renourish her carefully. She needs milk, I think... Lisa will know.”
I grabbed Rasheed by the neck and dragged him towards the front door.
“No,” Fiona said. “Please don’t...”
I pulled him onto the porch and down the steps. “Stay there, Fiona,” I said.
She didn’t follow me.
I dragged Rasheed to the side of the cabin, to where I was sure Fiona couldn’t see. I pushed him down on his knees and pulled out my gun.
I fired a shot and he fell, and I fired again to make sure he was dead.
I left his body where it lay, and ran back in to help Graham wrap up the girl and carry her to the cart. Fiona held open the door and helped us lift the girl into place, and then she rode beside the girl all the way home, doing her best to give comfort.
I’m sure all she wanted to do on the trip back was cry, but she didn’t. I’m proud of her for that.
I called Lisa with the handheld to let her know what had happened, and by the time we’d arrived she was waiting at the door with Sara and Kayla in tow.
We laid the girl on the couch in the living room.
“Kayla,” Lisa said, “pour some goat’s milk into a cup and warm it up by sticking it in a bowl of hot water. We want it close to room temperature. Sara, see if you can find some clothes for her.” She turned to Graham and I. “You guys get back to work. We’ll take it from here.”
“What should I do?” Fiona asked.
“Just sit here with her,” Lisa said. “You’re her oldest friend right now.”
I followed Graham back to the front door. “I don’t understand,” I said.
“You don’t know Lisa as well as you think,” Graham said.
“What does that mean?”
“She was a nurse up in Moose Factory.”
“She’s never mentioned that. And from the quality of the work she’s done on me...”
“I know. And you shouldn’t bring it up with her.”
I nodded. “So we head back to Arpin?”
“I guess so. Rasheed did say they might have what we were looking for.”
“They’d better. Or else we waded into a big pile of shit for nothing.”
“Not for nothing, Baptiste. We may have saved that girl’s life.”
He was right.
I’d had to kill a young man to do it. But for whatever reason it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it should.
The trip back was worth it.
We found exactly what we wanted at Arpin. They’d been trying to do what we hope to do, growing wheat and oilseed, and doing every bit of it with renewables.
We towed the tractor we’d found back to our place to charge it with the battery bank. Once that’s done it’ll take at least another day to tow the rest of the equipment back with us, and then we’ll want to take a look at all of the other supplies they have.
Rasheed may have bought us another few months of food by losing his mind and killing his friends.
I’m no Sara, but by cuddling up with her inventory doc I can tell that even after adding the Marchands and that starving young girl, we should be able to last long enough to harvest our first crop.
At least something’s going right around here.
8
Today is Thursday, January 3rd.
Fiona has been with the red-haired girl since we got back. Last night they moved the girl up to Fiona’s bedroom, and Fiona slept on the floor on an air mattress we’d had from happier times, when Marc Tremblay would show up drunk, or when Ant would kick Matt out of their room for his “Ant-on-Ant” time.
The girl hasn’t spoken. We don’t know her name.
She has smiled at Fiona a few times, as if to thank her, and each time I’ve seen it happen Fiona’s face brightens and she looks like she just won the lottery.
And I think it makes her a little less angry with me for killing Rasheed.
I tried to talk to Sara again today, about us, or about anything, really, and she shut me down right away.
I just needed her to be my best friend again. Just for a few minutes.
That wasn’t going to happen.
So I checked my pockets to see how many tablets I had left. I’d hide in my room after dinner and I’d find a way to cope.
But I didn’t have the little plastic baggie.
I realized that I hadn’t had it since before Christmas. Since Kayla had caught me.
I found her outside checking the water in the chicken coop.
“I need you to not lie to me, Kayla,” I said.
“Okay... you’re old and bald.”
“Did you take my pills?”
“Your heart pills?”
“Come one... you know which pills.”
She gave me a little shove on my shoulders. “Took you awhile. You obviously weren’t using them very often.”
“Why would you take them from me? You could have asked for one.”
“You have quite a few, don’t you...”
“Why did you take them, Kayla?”
“You never did anything like that when you were in school, Baptiste? Taken the pretty girl’s scarf so you’d have a reason for her to come and find you?”
“I’m not that pretty.”
She chuckled. “I know you’re not. Old and bald, remember?” She grabbed my left hand. “But I like you, Baptiste. You know that.”
“This isn’t a joke?”
“No joke.”
“Well... okay then... but I’m still pissed at you for stealing my drugs.”
“I’ll give them back,” she said. She stuck her right hand in her pocket.
“You don’t need to do that. I have another bag.”
“That’s good. ‘Cause I think
I may have lost them.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Still... no joke...”
“Fuck, Kayla... we can’t just have that stuff lying around.”
“Yeah... sorry... anything I can do to make it up to you?”
“Help me find the goddamn pills.”
She pouted a little, as though she’d thought that would be the end of it. Then she gathered up a few eggs from the nesting boxes and we went inside to search her room.
It felt a little weird, since it’s Fiona’s room, too. The best way to admire teenage girls is to do it from afar. If you spend too much time in their bedroom you’ll realize just how ridiculous they are.
I searched Kayla’s side, while she checked under Fiona’s bed, behind Fiona’s desk.
“Should I search her drawers?” she asked.
“I don’t see why,” I said. “She’d tell someone if she found some pills.”
“You don’t know teenagers.”
“I had a teenager.”
“Oh, right...”
“They’re not here. So you dropped them somewhere else in the house, or somewhere outside...”
“They could be anywhere.”
“Shit.”
I heard a knock on the door.
The door was already open, and I saw Matt peering inside with his stupid Matt smirk. “What are you guys doing?” he asked.
“Something private,” I said.
“Sounds hot...”
“Shut up, Matt,” Kayla said.
“Kinda looks like you’re looking for something,” he said.
“Don’t you have work to do?” I asked.
“I’m done my work... I’m ready and willing to help you find those little pills with the maple leafs on them.”
I had to groan. “Great... just great.”
“They’re your pills, Baptiste? You’re a tabber?”
“What the fuck is a tabber?”
“Oh... sorry... I’ll translate that into old man... a ‘drug addict’.”
“I’m going to kick your ass, Matt.”
“No,” Kayla said, “I’m going to handle this one.” She walked over to the door. “Give me the pills, Matt.”
“What’ll you give me for them?”
She shoved him against the wall. “Give me the pills.”
“Easy, Kayla... calm down already.”
“Just give me the pills.”
“I don’t have them.”
“You swallowed ‘em without even knowing what they are?”
“As if I don’t know... you think I’ve never seen Bronson and Zach’s maple leaf soda before?”
“Well that was all I had,” I said. “And you just used them. You piece of shit.”
Matt laughed. “Nice try, Baptiste. I know you’ve got more of those hidden somewhere. You found their lab and some huge stash.”
“You really are an idiot.”
“Sometimes... but not this time. I know what I’m talking about. The Walker boys used to make unregulated E with maple leafs on them... they had a lab somewhere outside town... Bronson Walker heads off to Montreal for some kind of business and never makes it home... and meanwhile, no one seems to have found the lab...”
“But Zach Walker was still here,” Kayla said. “What kept him from coming and cleaning out this giant stash?”
“Maybe Zach didn’t know where the lab was... or maybe he was going to go but couldn’t figure out a way to get past our gates...”
“Maybe you’ve swallowed too many pills,” I said.
“Whatever Baptiste... I know what I know...”
“Not all that much,” Kayla said.
“Whatever,” Matt said again.
He gave another smirk and left down the hallway.
Kayla came back in and sat down on her bed. “Is this as big a mess as I think it is?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “The problem is that Matt’s ass is directly attached to Justin’s prick, so...”
“Come on, Baptiste... that homophobe shit again...”
“I’m old and out of touch, Kayla. You should have heard the things my grandma would say about black people...”
“Your grandma?”
“Yes... my Scottish grandma... she taught me all about Drambuie, black pudding and how to not trust the darkies. I was a confused teenager...”
Kayla grinned. “You always know how to make me feel better.” She tapped on the bed beside her. “Come sit.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
“Just close the door first... then come sit...”
“I don’t think so.”
“What is it? I don’t understand.”
“What about Sara?”
“I’m not interested in a threesome. Not today, anyway...”
“I’m serious. We’re still together.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“Come on.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Just sit down and talk to me...”
“Maybe later, okay?”
“Yeah... sure...”
“No... really, Kayla. Later.”
She nodded and stood up. “Later, Baptiste. And when you pull your next batch out of that secret drug stash of yours... save some for us to try out together.”
Kayla Fucking Burkholder. She wanted me for some ungodly reason.
And Kayla isn’t the type of girl who gives up.
I knew Matt would be a problem, that it was only a matter of time before he told Justin about his suspicions. I couldn’t even guess what would happen when Justin found out about a hidden drug lab, but I had a feeling whatever it was wouldn’t bring us all closer together.
He’d either use it to score points, telling anyone who’d listen about Baptiste the unstable drug addict, or, more likely, he’d start searching, and not give up until he’d found the underground school bus and the treasure inside.
And then, knowing him, if he had drugs he’d sell them, especially the meth. He’d send it to Detour Lake, to The Souls in Timmins, to anywhere that had something to trade, and in the process he’d probably get us thrown right into the middle of a drug war. Assuming that one of his customers didn’t simply decide to drop in and take his supply and leave two dozen corpses floating in McCartney Lake.
The more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed that Justin would find a way to get us all killed.
I had to make sure he didn’t find the drugs.
And I’d need help.
Lisa and Graham still hadn’t returned from their trip to Helena to tow back the combine harvester, and I was tempted to just tell Sara and see if she’d help me for the greater good, but I heard her arguing with Fiona of all people, so I knew she wasn’t in a charitable mood.
I thought of telling Kayla the whole story, what little she hadn’t already put together, but I wasn’t as confident as I needed to be that she wouldn’t pass the information on to Matt. Truth is I don’t know her as well as Sara does, and there must be something to how much Sara hates her, even if I can’t see it.
There must be something. Otherwise... if Kayla’s as good as she seems lately... well, things won’t end well with Sara and I.
So I waited, finding menial tasks do keep myself busy and to try and look less like a man trying to keep a secret.
Lisa and Graham didn’t return until the sun had already set, and Fiona was already trying her hand at black bean enchiladas.
I wanted to pull them over to the side and talk to them, but one thing I’ve learned is that there’s really no way to do that when everyone’s downstairs waiting to eat.
So I waited, and we all waited, and then we ate, and as I stuffed my face full of black beans, goat cheese, and window-box cilantro, I thought about just how much colder it was getting outside as evening headed into night.
I got my chance at Lisa when she quietly excused herself from the table and headed toward the stairs. I made up a lame excuse about needing to check something o
n my tablet I’d left upstairs, and followed her up.
“You after something?” she asked as we reached the top.
“I need your help,” I said quietly. I nodded toward her room.
She laughed. “I don’t help with that kind of thing.”
She led me to her bedroom, but stood just inside the door.
“What’s today’s drama?” she asked.
“I have a drug problem.”
“I know. Just stop taking those heart pills and life will improve for the rest of us.”
“I found a school bus buried up Murphy Road. Some kind of lab, filled with MDMA and meth. Kayla told me it belonged to Dave Walker’s boys.”
“You told Kayla where to find a crapload of narcotics?”
“She doesn’t know I found the lab. But she did find some of the ecstasy.”
“So you brought it back here?”
“I took a bag of each... just to have it... in case of... uh...”
“In case of you’re an idiot?”
I nodded. “And Kayla saw the ecstasy.”
“And so you need me to kill her and dump her body in a snowbank? I can do that...”
“We need to bring the rest of the drugs back here and hide them.”
“Because you’re an even bigger idiot than I could have imagined?”
“Because Matt found the ecstasy Kayla took. And somehow he’s figured out where I got it.”
“So Kayla told him you gave her drugs? Your reputation’s taking a godawful shit-kicking.”
“I know...”
“And if Justin Porter finds out about this...”
“Can you help me, Lisa?”
She tilted her head, thinking it over.
“I’ll owe you one,” I said.
“You owe me so much...” She smiled. “Are you wanting to do this right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Does Sara know?”
“We’re not really talking...”
“I’ve noticed. So how do you propose we move however many bags of drugs without anyone noticing?”
“I have no idea.”
She shook her head. “Well obviously we’ll use Helena as an excuse...”
“We’ve got more to bring back from there?”
“Supplies. Bags of flour, plastic tubs filled with sugar and coffee...”
After The Fires Went Out: Coyote (Book One of the Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Series) Page 34
