by Noah Mann
To be left alone.
“What do you think, Fletch?”
“I’m not sure they’d appreciate a pair of armed strangers knocking,” I said.
A moment later any thought of approaching the cabin to introduce ourselves was made moot as a beautiful Doberman Pinscher appeared from the back side of the building and trotted our way.
“We’ve been spotted,” Neil said.
I brought my weapon up, ready to fire upon the dog should it attack. Quickly, though, my concern eased somewhat, as the animal was not running toward us, its demeanor stoic but not aggressive.
And, we both saw, it held something in its mouth—a rolled up piece of paper.
“It’s playing messenger,” Neil said.
The Doberman, a male we could now see as it neared our position, stopped just a few feet away and relaxed its jaw, letting the paper fall to the ground near the stream bank.
“Good boy,” I said.
The dog stared at me for a moment, then turned and ran back toward the cabin, disappearing behind it. Neil reached out and took the note in hand, unrolling it to read what was within.
“Do not approach our house. Leave the area. We only want to live in peace but we will defend ourselves. We have before.”
My friend handed the note over after reading it. It was simple and to the point, telling in only a few respects.
“More than one in there,” I said. “Could be two or ten.”
“Too small,” Neil said. “Not ten.”
I scanned the area in the waning light. The backwoods cabin was isolated, no road passing within a half mile, it seemed. Whoever had built it had done so with a purpose in mind. Maybe this very purpose—to ride out some apocalyptic catastrophe.
“Let’s leave them be,” Neil said, crumpling the note and burying it under a rock. “We don’t need another fight and they don’t seem eager to have one.”
I couldn’t argue with his logic, nor with his consideration toward the unknown individuals beyond the shaded windows. Despite that, there was the draw toward some understanding of how it was possible that an isolated group of people, with a dog, had survived when so many had perished. This was not a large community like Bandon, with a collection of resources and knowledge. It was more like my refuge north of Whitefish where I’d bugged out when the proverbial crap began to hit the fan.
But simply wanting to know something did not guarantee that answers would come. It was best, as my friend suggested, that we get moving and keep moving.
Neil stood and raised a hand in full view of the cabin, then he turned and began backtracking. I followed. We retraced our steps along the stream, then, a few hundred yards back, turned north before reaching the road that should be off to our right. With less than an hour of light left we passed the point where the cabin would be to our left and pressed on toward the lake, a wide field of blowdown slowing our progress a half hour later.
“How are you doing?” I asked my friend as he scrambled slowly over the stacks of decaying pines and firs.
“The needle’s on E,” he told me.
“Stop on the far side of this mess?”
Neil nodded at my suggestion, the decision to make some sort of camp made. As it turned out, that wasn’t to be.
“Plane,” I said, hearing the sound rise from the east, approaching from the direction we’d traveled.
Neil rolled over a log and pressed himself as far underneath it as he could. I did the same, the cover meager at best. We were just yards apart, eyeing each other through the space beneath a toppled tree.
“That’s not the same plane,” Neil said.
I shook my head. It wasn’t. Instead, it was familiar.
“That’s the plane we came in on,” I told him.
“You’re sure?”
“Unless there’s another one like it in the area, yes,” I said.
That meant that Perkins had finally gotten the captured plane into the air and was pressing it into service looking for us.
“This is not a good position,” Neil commented, trying in vain to burrow his body and gear deeper under the dead tree.
He was right. And that fact was about to work against us.
“He’s descending,” I said.
The Cessna was slowing, its altitude changing as it neared the field of blowdown. It passed over then circled the area in a wide arc before seeming to settle into an orbit directly above us.
“He might have us,” I said.
“Just stay still,” Neil said. “It’s dark.”
For a few minutes the plane remained over us before shifting its position to the east and south, orbiting a landmark we’d left behind.
“It’s got the house,” I said.
“Just don’t move,” Neil reminded me. “They have night vision and you can bet those optics are on that plane.”
I knew he was right. An observer, maybe more than one, would be scanning the landscape below, searching for anything that didn’t belong, like a house. Or us.
“It’s backing off,” Neil said.
We both eased our heads up and looked east toward the fading sound, the white plane gleaming in the last rays of the setting sun as it flew away from us.
“Let’s move,” Neil said. “Into the trees then due north.”
“That’s away from the lake,” I said.
“They expect us to be heading there for water,” Neil said as we began crawling over log after log, the line of still standing woods fifty yards away. “We’ve got enough in bottles for a day or two.”
“You’re right,” I said, following fast, both of us fueled by adrenalin now.
We reached the cover of the woods and, once we were fifty yards beyond the clearing, we swung right, jogging north, trying to put some distance between us and where we might have been spotted.
We weren’t the only ones who might have been spotted, however.
“Neil,” I said, stopping.
My friend halted and looked back to me, breathing hard.
“What?”
“We have to go back,” I told him.
“Fletch, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about doing what’s right.”
Neil took a few steps and stopped, facing me from just a foot away. He stabbed a finger past me, pointing in the direction we’d just come from.
“Perkins may just have his entire force swarming back there any minute,” he warned me.
“We won’t be there,” I said. “But someone will.”
Part Four
Enemies and Friends
Twenty Two
“The people in the cabin?” Neil challenged me.
I nodded.
“The people who told us to leave them alone,” he recounted. “Who wanted us gone.”
“We just led a maniac and his followers to them,” I told my friend. “That plane may not have spotted us, but it sure as hell spotted that cabin.”
Neil couldn’t counter that statement, but he still seemed reluctant to venture back to where there would almost certainly be a fight. That wasn’t the Neil Moore I knew, or had known. But enough time had passed, and enough had transpired that my friend had changed. If not in total, then by some noticeable degree. Noticeable to me.
“You want to get home,” I said. “I know that. I—”
“No, Fletch! You don’t know! You CAN’T know! You can’t know what I’ve been through, what Perkins did to me, and you damn sure can’t know how much I just want to...how much she...”
His burst of rage faded quickly away as his diatribe shifted toward thoughts of her. Of Grace. The woman he’d loved, and now lost to another.
“You can’t know,” he repeated, his head bowing. “You...”
I stepped toward my friend and pulled him close with one arm, my wounded hand pressed against his back as he wept quietly. I’d never seen such a flood of emotion burst from him. But, as he’d stated, I couldn’t know what he was feeling, nor how much he was hurting. In his mind I imagine he saw so
me reunion in Bandon with Grace, and Krista, and Brandon. He might even allow some fantasy to rise where they could put back together what had existed before he died.
“I just want to see her, Fletch,” he said as he eased back from me, dragging a sleeve across his face. “I want to hold Brandon and Krista. I want things to...feel like they used to, even if that’s only for a minute or two. That’s all I want.”
I nodded, understanding as much as I could, which wasn’t nearly enough to let me know what that possibility meant to him.
“We’ll get there,” I said.
Neil looked to me, then looked behind, through the trees in the direction of the house some two miles distant now.
“We have to warn them,” Neil said, accepting the reality of our situation. “Those people are going to pay the price for us stumbling upon them.”
“We have time,” I said. “But we need to move now.”
I glanced up through the decaying trees at the greying sky, storm clouds swirling in the near distance. Mother Nature was bearing down on us.
As was Earl Perkins.
* * *
It took us ninety minutes to reach the backwoods cabin, avoiding the blowdown clearing as night settled fully upon the landscape. When we were within a hundred feet of it a pair of red laser dots appeared on each of our chests. Our weapons were already slung, and we raised our hands.
“We’re not a threat,” I said loudly, chancing revealing our position to any of Perkins’ people who, however unlikely, might be in earshot. “But we have a warning for you.”
The laser dots held steady, dancing only slightly, each marking the spot where rifle rounds would tear into us should those in the cabin decide to fire. No response came. No verbal response, that is.
“The dog’s back,” Neil said quietly.
Resolving through the darkness, the silent beast walked toward us, its black coat shimmering like a moving shadow. It stopped twenty feet away and stared at us, making no move.
“Please,” I shouted. “You have to believe us.”
“Why?”
The question came from behind us and to the left. We turned slowly and saw just the silhouette of a man standing next to a tree, a pump shotgun in hand, the muzzle pointed at us.
“We don’t have any reason to lie to you,” I said.
The man took a few steps toward us, revealing more of himself in the thin moonlight that filtered through the threatening clouds above, the first cool sprinkles beginning to peck at my cheeks.
“You have every reason to lie to me,” the man countered. “If you’d like I can show you the graves of a few others who lied to try and take what we have.”
“That’s not necessary,” I said.
He was not hard, but was hardened. The beard he wore was neatly trimmed, and on his left hand where it gripped the shotgun’s pump I noticed the brief glimmer of a ring. A wedding ring.
We hadn’t intruded upon some group of survivors—we’d stumbled upon a family.
“We told you to leave,” he said.
“We can’t,” I said.
He raised the shotgun and pointed it at me. Neil moved quickly, bringing his AK up. The dog began to advance, preparing to launch itself at my friend.
“STOP!”
Another voice cut through the darkness. A woman’s voice this time. The man, as surprised as we were, looked toward it as we did. Within seconds a woman in her thirties emerged from the shadows, the laser sight of her M4 still fixed on Neil’s chest. She approached and stopped next to the dog, which had heeded her command before going fully into attack mode.
“Just, please,” the woman said, her gaze shifting between the man who was, presumably, her husband and us. “No killing. No more. Please.”
Her husband looked back to me and waited. Neil lowered his weapon first, followed by the man.
“You said something about a warning,” the woman said.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“What kind of warning?” she asked.
“Marcia,” her husband said, admonishing her for entertaining what we were saying.
“Steven, we can listen,” she said.
“I’m Eric Fletcher,” I said. “This is Neil Moore. We’re from Bandon on the Oregon coast. There’s an entire town of survivors there. We have the cure for the blight, seeds that grow, trees, fruits and vegetables. There’s livestock.”
“None of that sounds like a warning,” Steven said. “It does sound like a tall tale, however.”
“We’re trying to get back there,” Neil said. “But the man who was holding us captive isn’t keen on letting that happen. He has a good-sized force out looking for us on this mountain. And there’s every chance one of his aircraft spotted your cabin a while ago, just before sundown.”
Worry bloomed on Marcia’s face and she looked to her husband.
“Don’t listen to them,” Steven told her.
I glanced off into the darkness toward the north.
“There’s a road that way,” I said. “He had a truck running up there today. I’m guessing you had to hear that.”
“We did,” Marcia confirmed.
“Marcia!”
She lowered her M4, its aimpoint no longer on Neil’s chest. The other laser dot remained on mine.
“Steven, not everyone is a danger. Not everyone is out to hurt us.”
“That’s not a chance we can take,” he said.
“Actually, it’s a chance you have to take,” I told him. “Because if you don’t listen to us you’re going to be annihilated. The man who’s after us, his name is Earl Perkins, and you’re either on his side or you’re dead.”
Steven didn’t respond to that fact I’d shared. We didn’t need him to believe it was true, only that it could be. That way he would be more likely to accept that Perkins was more of a threat to him and his family than we could ever be.
“Eric, Neil,” Steven said, lowering his shotgun. “Let’s get inside before the sky opens up.”
Twenty Three
We entered the dim cabin and left our rifles just inside the door, which closed and locked behind us. Steven had instructed us to do so as we approached his family’s remote home. A single small candle burned at the center of a rectangular gathering table at the front room’s center, with four chairs spaced around it. Two doors led from the space, one on each side of the cold stone hearth, presumably accessing bedrooms and some sort of kitchen at the back of the house.
“Have a seat,” Steven said as he moved to the far side of the table with his wife. “Go ahead.”
She’d put her M4 in a rough wooden rack next to the fireplace, but he still held his shotgun. It wasn’t pointed at us anymore, but it didn’t need to be to send a signal—we weren’t fully trusted and likely never would be.
Neil and I sat at the table and Marcia lit a larger candle after making sure that the room’s blackout shades fully covered the windows. The tripling of light in the space revealed more, and less. There was little in the way of hominess. No pictures or décor to mention. It was impersonal. Even cold. And from that I realized something I suspected our reluctant host didn’t want known.
“You have more cabins,” I said. “More hideouts.”
Marcia looked to her husband, then to me, wary and surprised all at once.
“How can you know that?” she pressed me.
I didn’t really need to answer. I simply needed to soak in the look Steven was giving me. With the simple observation I offered I demonstrated to him that whatever plans he and his wife had carefully crafted they were not entirely sufficient to stand against all threats.
“You think this Perkins fellow will find us if we move to another location,” Steven said.
“Until he finds us he’ll leave scorched earth,” Neil said.
Steven considered that for a moment.
“The smart thing might be for me to hand you both over to him,” the man said.
It wasn’t bluff, nor was it bluster. The words were sp
oken by a man confronted with a situation which was testing the necessities of his existence—protecting his family and honoring his personal values.
“We’re not going to do that,” Marcia told me, fixing on her husband next. “We’re not going to do that.”
Steven stood silent for a moment, then lowered his shotgun and let it lean against the hearth. He sat, and Marcia joined him at the table, placing her hand over his as they faced us.
“No matter what happens you can’t stay with us,” Steven said. “I just want that to be clear. We put aside nine million calories.”
“More than,” Marcia corrected him. “Nine and a half million. Stored in a safe spot nearby. Enough for four people at twenty-five-hundred calories a day for ten years. And Willow’s needs.”
“And you didn’t plan on any extra for strangers,” I said.
“No we did not,” Steven confirmed. “Just us and our dog.”
I noticed right then that the Doberman we’d encountered multiple times was not with us.
“Where is your dog?” I asked.
“Willow’s out doing his job,” Steven said.
“Steven trained him,” Marcia shared proudly, squeezing her husband’s hand. “He’s our lookout. He’ll roam all over listening and watching and smelling.”
I understood, even if what she was describing seemed slightly farfetched.
“Willow’s your tripwire,” I said.
“In essence,” Steven confirmed. “That’s how we knew you were coming.”
“Trained him not to bark,” Neil said. “That’s some serious conditioning. He doesn’t give himself away. Just comes back and alerts you, I imagine.”
“Something like that,” Steven confirmed. “Except the silence. You can’t train the bark out of a dog.”
“Steven was a veterinarian,” Marcia shared. “Is a veterinarian.”
She didn’t have to explain the particulars of why Neil had been wrong about that aspect of the Doberman’s performance.
“You debarked him,” I said.
“The preferred term is devoiced,” Steven corrected me.
The conversation quieted for a moment, the storm building outside, rain drumming on the heavy roof above.
