After The Fires Went Out: Coyote (Book One of the Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Series)

by Wolfrom, Regan

  I pulled out my tablet.

  No messages.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kayla said. “We did sleep in.”

  “By a half hour, maybe...”

  “Message Graham... he still... um... doesn’t hate you...”

  “Thanks.” I queried for Graham’s whereabouts. He was up the road, between the Tremblays and the Porters. “He’s heading to see Justin,” I said.

  “That’s... odd...”

  “They’re going to have a meeting about us,” I said. “What to do with Kayla and Baptiste...”

  She smiled. “Nah... probably just an orgy.”

  I went along. “But you love orgies.”

  She chuckled. “So I’m the one who should be worried.”

  We put on our jackets and boots. I unlocked the chest by the door and found all three sets of vests and helmets. I didn’t put one on, but I can’t say I wasn’t tempted.

  We walked up the road toward the Porters. As we passed the Marchands, I tried to see if I could see anyone through the windows. I couldn’t.

  We passed the Tremblays; I couldn’t make out anyone there, either.

  Then I saw someone, at the Williams’ place, the next cottage up the road. The skinny Marchand kid, splitting firewood just outside the boarded up front window.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him.

  “Splitting wood,” he said. “For the girls.”

  “The girls?”

  He stopped splitting. “Uh... yeah...”

  “Gwyneth’s moving in here,” Kayla said. “Am I right?”

  “That red-haired girl...” the boy said. “And that pretty brunette... Fiona...”

  “That pretty brunette is only sixteen,” I said.

  “So? I’m seventeen.”

  “They’re moving out... fuck...”

  The door to the Williams’ place opened.

  I looked over to see Sara.

  “I’m moving out, too,” she said. “There’s no way I’m going to be living with the two of you.”

  “We can’t afford this,” I said. “We’re going to heat five cottages? This kid’ll be splitting a lot of firewood.”

  “This kid?” the boy said. “Do you even know my name?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry...”

  “Same as you. Robert. Robert Émile Marchand.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, really not caring. I turned back to Sara. “You can’t do this, Sara.”

  “I can’t do what, now?” she said. “I can’t fuck Kayla behind your back... oh, wait...”

  “You weren’t even talking to me.”

  “So you start screwing the local slut?”

  “Don’t you call me that,” Kayla said.

  “Don’t take this out on Kayla,” I said. “This is between you and me.”

  “There’s nothing between you and me,” she said. “Nothing. You get that? Now go home and leave us alone. We have a shit-ton of work to do and the last thing I need is the two of you.”

  “We should help,” Kayla said. “Fiona and Gwyneth deserve a nice place to stay.”

  “Don’t bother,” Sara said. “Just get out of my sight.”

  Kayla grabbed my elbow, like she was wanting me to back her up.

  I wanted to...

  “Let’s go, Kayla,” I said. “If people want to put themselves at risk that’s their deal. I’m not going to support this stupidity.” I spun around and starting walking home. “Good luck, Robert,” I said. “You’re going to need it with that bunch.”

  Kayla seemed hesitant to leave. I wasn’t about to wait on her. I just kept walking.

  “I’m sorry, Sara,” I heard her say. “I didn’t want things to go like this.”

  I did my best not to feel sorry, too.

  Kayla and I stayed in my bedroom for most of the day.

  I tried not to listen in to the sounds of the horde coming in to pack up all the clothes and food and dishes.

  We were losing three and keeping five, assuming that Matt was sticking around and not planning to camp out in the bushes outside the old Williams’ cottage. I’m not sure how they were planning on divvying things up, but for whatever reason I didn’t want to know.

  Kayla and I watched Anchorman: The Legend Continues and we laughed more than we oughta, since we were both doing our best to show that we were happy and perfectly unaffected by outside events.

  After the movie, I told Kayla about the first time I’d watched the second Anchorman, in a theatre in Pembroke, Ontario, with three buddies whose names I sometimes forget. I’d eaten the Perogy Pizza at Boston Pizza along with downing a few too many beers, and then we walked over to the East End Mall and saw it, and it was pretty good.

  That movie is practically ancient now, and I was about the same age then as Kayla is now.

  It’s funny how a thought like that can be so impressive and so depressing at the same time.

  Today is Sunday, January 6th.

  The two Porter children showed up just after midnight. They’re pretty young, the boy around ten and the girl maybe thirteen, so in my mind they’re nowhere near old enough to be wandering around on their own at any time of the day.

  The dogs had started barking before they’d even knocked on the door. As we’d practiced since the Lamarche brothers had shown up, Lisa and I went to the kids at the front door while Graham watched the side porch with his pistol.

  I could see who it was through the window, of course, but I opened the door with my gun in hand anyways, just in case.

  “What’s going on?” I asked them.

  The girl was upset while the boy seemed almost giddy.

  “My Dad’s caught someone,” the girl said. “In the basement.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  The boy started to giggle.

  I turned to Lisa. “Who’s staying here?” I asked. “You or Graham?”

  “I can stay,” she said.

  I turned back to the kids on the porch. “Wait here,” I told them.

  I unlocked the chest near the door and pulled out a couple of vests and helmets.

  Graham came up beside me. “Isn’t that overkill?” he asked.

  “Not these days it isn’t,” I said.

  He didn’t argue further as we both got dressed. Once we had our helmets on, we headed out the door.

  “We’ll take the truck,” I said. It felt like the right kind of emergency.

  When we arrived at the Porters I noticed nothing unusual on the outside. Graham stayed back in the truck with the kids while I went in first, making sure that there wasn’t anything amiss.

  Justin and Rihanna Porter met me at the door. They looked shaken but okay.

  “What happened?” I asked, lifting the visor on my helmet. “Where is he?”

  “In the dining room,” Rihanna said. “Matt’s watching them.”

  I rushed into the dining room without another word. The two thieves were bound to chairs with zip ties, Matt standing over them holding a hunting rifle. They were younger than I expected, a boy and a girl, both around Fiona’s age. The two of them were native and they looked completely terrified.

  “They’re from New Post,” Matt said. “Those bastards have been robbing us blind.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

  “The Porters asked for my help.”

  “And you kept it all pretty quiet.”

  “That’s my fault,” Rihanna said. “I thought we were being a little overzealous and I didn’t want to alarm anyone... but I guess you can see that we weren’t overreacting about New Post.”

  I took a closer look at the prisoners, at the scrapes and cuts on their faces. “They’re bleeding,” I said. “What happened here?”

  “There was a scuffle,” Matt said. “Not a big deal.”

  “They’re kids, Matt... you do realize that?”

  “They’re thieves,” Justin said. “We caught them with a bag filled with painkillers
and first aid stuff.” He pointed to a canvas bag lying on the floor and the spilled loot beside it.

  “More than just a box of salt,” I said. “So let’s take them home so their parents can deal with them.”

  “I don’t think so,” Rihanna said.

  “You have a better idea?”

  “They stole some of our food and now they’re after our medicine. That’s a big deal.”

  “And?”

  “And they need to make it up to us. They need to bring it all back and then some.”

  “Restitution,” Justin said.

  I wasn’t sure I had reason to disagree.

  I walked back out to the porch and waved Graham in.

  “You’re making some pretty big assumptions if you think everyone at New Post isn’t in on it,” Matt said to me on my return.

  “Don’t worry about me and my assumptions. Let’s worry about the fact that somebody actually thought it was a good idea to let you hold their rifle.”

  “It all seems clear to us,” Rihanna said. “New Post has been stealing supplies from us for months.”

  “You sure it’s New Post? And not just a couple of kids?”

  Justin held up a tablet. “Sugar, salt, baking soda, olive oil, yeast... not what you’d expect a couple of teenagers to steal.”

  I walked over and grabbed the tablet. “There’s something odd about this list.”

  “Were you even listening to me?”

  “No flour on the list. No rice, no beans, no potatoes...”

  “Maybe those are next week’s targets,” Rihanna said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But if I had over a hundred mouths to feed, I’d be focused on the staples. Sugar and salt are nice to have, but I doubt they’re the most important things to be carrying back home.”

  “So they probably have enough flour,” Graham said as he checked out the zip-tied kids. “Maybe they found some old grain... all they’d have to do is mill it.”

  “They don’t have a mill,” Matt said. He looked over to me. “Right?”

  “Not that we know of,” I said. “But they could be doing it by hand. But even then... everything else they’d need. I know they have some gardens at New Post, but they don’t have enough to grow it all.”

  Justin walked over to the kids, almost shoving Graham aside. “So where do you get your flour?” he asked them.

  Neither of the prisoners answered; I wasn’t surprised.

  “You’d better start answering me,” Justin said. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  As if on cue, Matt pulled the rifle up to the boy’s head.

  That was enough of that. “Give me the rifle, dipshit,” I said, holding out my hands.

  He looked over at me and hesitated.

  “You’re going to kill someone,” I said.

  He passed me the rifle.

  I switched the rifle to safe and laid it on the floor. I looked over to the two terrified kids.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to them. “I’m sorry these guys have been acting like this. They’re just scared. We’re all a little scared.”

  The boy was motionless, but I could see the girl give me a slight nod.

  “It would help if you’d tell us what’s going on,” I said. “Obviously you guys are stealing from us, but I don’t really understand why.”

  “Don’t bother,” Justin said. “These piece-of-shit indians haven’t said a word to us.”

  “Seriously?” Graham said. “You’ve got a pretty big mouth when Lisa’s not here to kick your ass.”

  “Easy, Graham,” I said. I turned back to give Justin a glare. “Strange... you’d think they’d want to tell all of their secrets to a bunch of thugs that want to beat the ever-living shit out of them.”

  Justin didn’t answer.

  I looked back towards the kids.

  “Do you hit up a lot of other places?” I asked.

  No answer.

  “They’re like those goddamned coyotes,” Justin said. “They started off by circling us, nipping at our heels, just grabbing a few things here and there... not enough so we’d notice. Then they started getting desperate, less and less places to steal from... and they started coming back here more and more. And now we’ve got ‘em.”

  “Why wouldn’t you just scavenge like the rest of us?” I asked them.

  “We can’t,” the girl said.

  The boy turned and stared at her.

  She ignored him. “We don’t have enough fuel to find everything we’d need out there.”

  “So you steal from us? Why wouldn’t you just come and talk to us?”

  “How should I know?”

  She had a point. If we wanted answers, we’d need to get them from the people in charge.

  “They send their children to us,” Rihanna said. “They send kids because they know we won’t kill them.”

  “They don’t know anything for sure,” Justin said.

  “Either way,” Graham said, “it’s cowardly.”

  “We deserve some kind of compensation for this,” Rihanna said. “We need to confront Gerald Archibald. No more pussy-footing around.”

  “I know,” I said. “We’ll talk to them. Obviously.”

  “We should hold these two here,” Justin said. “New Post brings back our missing supplies, along with a little extra for pain and suffering, and these kids get to go home.”

  “That’s insane,” Graham said. “We’re not going to hold people hostage.”

  “It’s not your decision,” Rihanna said.

  “That’s true,” I said. “It’s my decision.” I did my best to make it a quick one. “We’ll hold them up at our cottage until morning... and then we’ll meet as a team and talk this out.”

  “Oh and so then we’ll vote on it?” Graham asked. It sounded like he was mocking me.

  “And then I’ll decide what comes next. That’s how it’s going to be.”

  “That’s fair,” Rihanna said.

  “What a surprise, Baptiste,” Graham said, “it’s all up to you again.”

  “I thought we’d discussed this,” I told him. “All matters of security... or have you forgotten?”

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Then don’t get in the way, Graham. Trust me on this.”

  He left it there for the moment, but I don’t think he trusts my judgement anymore.

  Matt stayed on shift overnight, so ridiculously eager to play jailer that I didn’t bother to argue; to be honest, I liked my chances of him sleeping right through the meeting. He was still pacing around the living room couch when I went upstairs to sleep, watching over his prisoners as they huddled together with their jackets as pillows, their wrists now zip-tied in front.

  I wasn’t sure what I could do for them. No matter what decision I made, someone was going to fight me on it. And I wasn’t sure if these kids were going to make it home in one piece.

  By the time everyone started to arrive around seven the next morning, Matt was still going strong.

  We met in the dining room, with Alain and Suzanne Tremblay, all of the Porters, and Eva and skinny Robert Marchand. Kayla had taken it upon herself to make breakfast, with a little nervous help from me, but it didn’t take long for the hot food to start running out.

  Since it was a meeting about security first and foremost, I chose to run it. Sara sat quietly at the table, pretending that she wasn’t still wanting me dead, but doing it so poorly that I’m sure even those two kids from New Post knew I was on her shitlist.

  “So I’m sure everyone knows what’s happening,” I said as I stood from my chair, “but I’ll take a moment to explain it so we don’t leave anything out. These two teenagers from New Post have been caught attempting to steal supplies from the Porters. There have been other thefts, most likely by these kids, too. And I’m afraid that based on what they’re taking it seems pretty clear that New Post’s Chief and Council planned the whole thing. So the question is how we should react to these thefts. We may want to hold onto
our prisoners until New Post provides us with adequate restitution.”

  “One minute,” Eva Marchand said. “So they give us our food back or we kill their children?”

  “No one said anything about killing,” Rihanna said.

  “But that would be the threat if they don’t do what we want, would it not? Otherwise there is no reason for it.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” Graham said.

  “It sounds like a great plan,” Lisa said with a smirk. “Maybe we should cut off an ear to let them know we mean business.”

  “That’s enough,” I said. “There’s no room for sarcasm here, okay? This isn’t a joke.”

  “It seems like a joke,” Graham said. “This isn’t self defense here, Baptiste... just holding these kids hostage is a violent act. It’s inexcusable.”

  “He’s correct,” Eva said. “You held these children here last night... you could try to argue that you did it to keep them safe and out of trouble. But now we need to take them home.”

  “This is life or death,” Rihanna said. “Having our supplies stolen could cost us our lives one day. It’s an act of violence.”

  “That’s a stretch,” Lisa said.

  “We just want our food back,” Justin said. “Is that too much to ask?”

  “Then we should ask them,” Graham said. “Let’s go to New Post, bring these kids home, and ask for our food back. That’s all we can do.”

  Justin pounded both hands on the table. “That’s bullshit. Those fucking natives have been double-crossing us from day one, letting Stems tromp on through, stealing our hard-earned supplies... and you want to go down there and ask them for a favour?”

  Lisa stood up from her chair with so much force that it slammed backwards against the floor. “This fucking native would love you to keep shooting your mouth off,” she said.

  “Calm down,” I said. “Everyone needs to take a breath here.”

  “Baptiste is right,” Alain Tremblay said. “We won’t all agree on what to do. So let’s figure out what our choices are and come up with some pros and cons.”

  “Just shut it, Tremblay,” Justin said. “Just leave this to people who actually contribute something around here.”

  Alain rose from his chair, too.

  “Easy,” I said.