The Last Tribe

by Brad Manuel

  “I thought we’d find someplace.” She told him.

  They were at the top of Choate road and about to make a left towards their home when Greg stopped.

  “Wait, I have an idea.” He suddenly blurted.

  “I’m not moving. What do you mean ‘wait’?” Rebecca enjoyed using Greg’s sarcasm.

  “Funny.” He said, acknowledging her attempt. “During one of my summer visits I had to go to this museum. My mom never let us just hang out, she always wanted to do something, you know, give us culture, whatever. Anyway, there is a cottage, Daniel Webster’s House or something like that. It’s a museum, kept in the old style, fireplaces, woodstove. I think it all still works too.”

  “Are you serious? Why didn’t we start there?”

  Greg looked at her. “Because I didn’t think of it until now, that’s why. I assumed my father was sending me to the best place.”

  “So where is this museum?”

  Greg turned and pointed to a white sign twenty feet away. “It’s right there.”

  Rebecca smiled and held up her hand for a high five before turning and walking to the front of the tiny museum.

  “It’s a two story house, but it’s small. You can tell it doesn’t have ten foot, or probably even eight foot ceilings. This house was built to heat from a fireplace or woodstove, and to keep heat in the rooms. Look how small the windows are.” Rebecca made initial observations.

  “Don’t forget, we can move and use our own furniture. We’re just looking for heat and cooking sources. We can move rain barrels to collect water, and if you don’t think I’m going back to that house and getting that awesome couch? You are wrong. Did you sit on that green one? OMG, it was so comfortable. Incredible. I liked that small dining table they had in the sunroom too. It was perfect for two or four chairs.” Rebecca continued to talk about furniture as they made their way to the front door.

  The door was unlocked. “That’s a good sign.” Greg said to her as he pushed it open.

  The front opened into a small mudroom with benches on either side. It was set up for guests or owners to sit and remove their muddy boots before entering the house. It kept warm air in the house and cold air outside.

  “This is kind of like a space ship airlock. You have to close the outside door before you get into the main ship.” Greg said as they entered the house.

  “What are you talking about?” Rebecca responded. “Are you telling me that you’re actually a SciFi geek. You were able to keep it a secret, but now it’s out there. You’re a geek. The whole world dies and I get stuck with a 14 year old Trekkie.”

  “Whatever.” Greg smiled back. “I’m not a geek, and I refuse to be called a geek by a 13 year old college freshman. If you want to step up and get measured on the nerd-o-scale, be my guest.”

  The second door opened into a short hall. To the left was a living room furnished with old style chairs and a couch. To the right was an open door leading into a bedroom with an old fashioned four poster bed. A fireplace was visible on the far wall of the bedroom.

  The ceilings were low. The two rooms were small. It was dim in the house, partly because of the small rooms and low ceilings, but also because the windows in each room were tiny with deep window boxes.

  “The bedroom has a fireplace. We could put twin beds in there, and it will be perfect.” Rebecca sounded hopeful.

  A staircase led to a second floor. It was a steep staircase that was shorter than a modern set needed accommodate ten foot ceilings and duct work between floors.

  Greg ignored the stairs, turning to his left and into the living room. A fireplace with a wood storage cut-out sat in the center of the wall. Three small windows let in light, trapped heat, and kept cold air out. The windows were old with wrought iron panes separating imperfect glass. The walls were thick. The glass was set on the far side of eight or ten inch window frames.

  “This is another great room. These windows could use some help. Have you ever seen the plastic stuff at the hardware store you can put up on windows to keep drafts out? We need a hair dryer to finish the job. I bet we can figure something out.” Greg used the plastic insulation in his dorm room last winter, preventing the draft in the old dorm window from blowing on him at night.

  “I’m getting that couch from the other house. This stuff is all hitting the curb.” Rebecca shook her head. Greg got the sense she had already decided on the house. Instead of inspecting each room for viability, she was re-decorating.

  “So you think this is a fit?” Greg asked her.

  “If the kitchen has a woodstove, you’ve struck gold. This house is perfect, literally perfect for living through a no electricity Hanover winter. Did you notice the house next door has about a cord of firewood stacked against the outside of the house? It looks like a dorm or something. Whatever it is, that starts our wood collection.”

  “I haven’t seen a woodstove. Let’s hold off on declaring this our new house. It does seem pretty perfect though. If we hang one of our wool blankets to block off the second floor, we can keep even more heat on the first floor.”

  At the far end of the living room there was an archway into a dining room. The opening between the rooms was the size of a door, not like a modern home with the entire wall removed for an open concept. Another door on the far wall looked into a study. It was a small room with a desk and bookshelves. They would shut the door and leave that room closed in the winter, use it for wood storage if necessary.

  The dining room was a good size with its own fireplace. On the other side of the dining room was an open door that led into a kitchen. Greg saw a woodstove and a large farm sink.

  “I think we’ve found our new home, check out the stove. It has an oven on the side, four burners on the top. We are in business. We should try to start fires in each fireplace, make sure these are all working heat sources, then walk back and get the van. Starting fires means we come back to a warm house. It’s a little chilly and damp in here.” Greg walked around the dining room table and into the kitchen as he spoke. There was a pantry to the side of the kitchen, and a back door that led to a large sunroom they could use to store wood.

  Rebecca looked down at her watch. It was 1pm. There would not be time to get the additional furniture today. They needed to make fires, get the van, unpack food, boil water, and get settled for their first night. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get the single beds and the couch today. Let’s focus on the basics. We’ll start the fires and unload the van supplies into the pantry. We’ll do a full house set up tomorrow.”

  “Hey Greg,” she said to him as they walked back to the front room to check the flue and light the pre-made fire left by the museum staff.

  “Yes?”

  “This was a great find, and a better situation than we left at my house in Concord. You probably saved us for the winter.” There was no sarcasm in her voice. She wanted him to know that he was the hero.

  “Thanks, I think this house will work out. I mean, it already has fires made in every fireplace. It’s destiny or fate or whatever you want to call it.” He moved cobwebs and heard a creak from the hinges as he pushed opened the flue of the fireplace in the living room.

  The fireplaces and woodstove worked. Greg and Rebecca spent the rest of the day unloading supplies and moving wood from the house next door onto a covered side porch of the Webster Cottage. They constructed the chicken coop next to the back door of the kitchen. The birds were happy to be free from their small cages, clucking and scratching around their new home.

  The sun set at 6:00pm. Greg made dinner while Rebecca made camp in the living room. They fell asleep in sleeping bags on top of a woven rug next to a roaring fire, exhausted from the stress and work of the day.

  21

  Greg’s eyes opened to a dimly lit room. The sun rose on the kitchen side of Webster Cottage. The living room was bright in the afternoon and dark in the morning. He could hear Rebecca in the kitchen. He rolled over and got out of his sleeping bag. The fire kept the room
warm through the night. He checked the outdoor thermometer they set up the night before, 28 degrees. Not too bad an indoor temperature for a freezing outside temperature. He walked towards the kitchen rubbing his eyes.

  He swung open the door to find Rebecca boiling water. The kitchen temperature was above 70 degrees.

  “We only have two eggs. The gals are upset after the move. I suspected as much. Ramen noodles with scrambled egg for protein. That should get us going.” She spoke while concentrating on the stove before looking over her shoulder at Greg. “And you need to make some bread for dinner. I want my morning toast tomorrow.”

  “You’re in a good mood. We have a lot of work to do today. Why so chipper?” Greg enjoyed the light hearted Rebecca, and wondered why she was cooking.

  “We are in Hanover. We found a great house. Your family is going to show up in a few months. This is the best scenario we could have hoped for when you ran into me a week ago. It might be our best scenario possible when the world ended, period. Sure, there are challenges ahead, but team Rebecca/Greg stumbled into a great find. If we fix the furniture situation, we’ll be good until spring.”

  She was right. Things were looking up from when Greg slept under his cot at Hightower.

  “I was thinking, you know, before I passed out from exhaustion last night,” he paused, deciding whether to mention his idea. “Do you think we should light some kind of signal fire? Maybe when we are all set up? If there are other survivors in the area, we might be able to help them and they might be able to help us.”

  Rebecca’s rules were clear, and her number one rule was to trust no one.

  “I don’t know, Greg. I just don’t know if that is a good idea. It’s easy to think that everyone will be like us, friendly and helpful. What if they’re not? What if we bring a desperate person, cold and hungry, and they see our house, and our food, and, well, they haven’t been around a woman in a long time. I have more to worry about than you.” Greg could see fear in her eyes as she spoke. Rebecca did not appear to be afraid of anything, but rape was not just ‘anything.’

  “Okay, I get it. It was just an idea. Let’s work over the next few days, get our living situation finished, scout out the town, and then we can talk about it again. I would never do anything unless we both agreed.” Greg left the door open for further discussion. He believed adding people could help them survive. He also understood the risks involved with engaging strangers.

  “First things first, we get our beds. We can use the van. I don’t want to sleep on the floor for one more night.”

  “Agreed” Greg’s back agreed too. He was stiff after two days of loading and unloading supplies, driving, and sleeping on the floor.

  They ate breakfast and drove the van down Rope Ferry Road. They struggled mightily to load a green couch and two single bed frames into the van. They nabbed an additional leather couch when Greg declared he wanted his own napping spot for snowy afternoons. After the furniture was secured, they systematically grabbed the food neatly boxed by each front door.

  At the end of day five their house was set up with couches, beds, and enough fire wood to last several weeks. They had a half of a tank of gas left in the van.

  Greg lit the fire in their bedroom and walked back into the warm living room. Rebecca sat on her green couch, contently watching the fire in the living room.

  “I hope it doesn’t get too hot in there, I like to sleep cold. Not 30 degrees cold, but not hot either.” Greg began.

  “I doubt being cold will be an issue in a few weeks, particularly if the fire goes out while we are asleep.” Rebecca said back to him. “Man is this couch comfortable. This is the nicest piece of furniture I have ever sat on, seriously, hands down the nicest.”

  “I’m excited to sleep in a bed with sheets. It’s been a while.” Greg sat on his brown leather couch running parallel to Rebecca’s and perpendicular to the fire. “Couches are comfortable, but those beds we picked up this morning? They looked really comfortable.”

  Thirty minutes later they were tucked into their new comfortable beds. The bedroom did not get too hot. Rebecca and Greg had been together for two weeks. It felt like summer camp, sleeping in twin beds next to a fire in a log cabin type structure. They talked into the evening, facing each other, elbows bent, heads in hands.

  “What do you miss most about the old world, aside from family and friends, of course?” Greg wanted to know more about Rebecca’s life.

  “Well, I miss school, the structure of my life. I’m all about routine.” She started.

  “No, no, not that kind of stuff. I mean, what kind of frivolous thing do you miss? I miss take-out food. I know that at private school I didn’t have to cook, but the best nights were when a few buddies would order pizza, and we’d get it delivered to the front entrance of the school. It would be hot and smell so good. We’d eat the pizza, and tell other kids they couldn’t have any, and laugh and joke for hours. Ordering take-out with friends was one of my favorite things. That’s what I’m asking, what do you miss that we are never going to be able to do again?”

  “I miss going to the movies. I loved the movies. I had a subscription to Entertainment Weekly, and I was up to date on all the new releases, when the sequels were coming, who was starring in what. I loved Hollywood and movies. I would go on Sunday afternoons, always hitting the 2pm showing of the latest release. I’d sneak in a box of candy, because my parents owned a store, and just soak them in. I don’t like to think about never seeing them again, because maybe we can get a projector working. It makes me sad. It’s been twenty-one Sundays since I went to a movie.”

  “That’s a good one. I didn’t think about movies. See, you probably didn’t think about take-out food as something to miss. It’s funny how we have grown up the same, but miss different things.” Greg smiled at her. Rebecca was doing a long stare, looking through Greg.

  “I don’t know how similar we grew up. I’m an only child, and my father ran our store most nights. He’d come home for dinner, that was a rule, but my mom and I spent a lot of time together. The three of us were close, a tight unit. At the end, when they knew they were going to die, and worse, that I was going to live, I think that was hardest on them. Can you imagine? Dying, and knowing your 13 year old daughter is going to be alone in this harsh world.” She spoke in a distant voice, not necessarily to Greg.

  “Well,” Greg said in response, “My dad had to tell me to survive until he got here. I’m not comparing our two situations, because your parents are dead. I still believe my father is coming, but I think we have a similar story. Your parents knew you were going to live, and mine knows I’m alive and he can’t get to me for another five months. Both are agonizing situations. Both affect us, meaning you and me.”

  Rebecca came back from her stare and looked into Greg’s eyes. She nodded. She thought about his father, on the phone, telling his son to stay safe, stay alive, how horrible that must have been. Her parents are at peace. His father was alive somewhere, thinking about Greg constantly.

  “I’m a middle child. We get ignored. I am sort of the opposite of you. I talk loudly to be heard, I speak my mind. I went away to school because I didn’t want to follow my brother through high school, always living up to his accomplishments.” Greg yawned.

  “Okay chatty Cathy, let’s call it a night.” Rebecca replied. “Geesh, you do prattle on.” She said it with a smile. She spoke non-stop since he found her. She was surprised Greg’s ears had not fallen off from her constant yammering.

  “I apologize for rambling.” He said in a deadpan voice before yawning again.

  “Goodnight, Greg.”

  “Night, Rebecca. See you in the morning.”

  And just like that, they fell asleep in their new lives together.

  The room was warm when Rebecca woke up the next morning. Greg silently placed a log on the smoldering embers when he woke an hour earlier, and the fire came back to life, heating the room after he left. He was in the kitchen making breakfast. The back
side of the house was warm from the woodstove. Rebecca walked in wearing a robe.

  “In our weeks together, you’ve never gotten up before me.”

  “I thought I’d shake things up a little.” Greg said back. “I have French toast cooking in the oven, and warm tea if you would like some. It’s colder today, but you can see, the oven heats this room nicely.” He handed her a mug of warm tea.

  “Um, thank you. Wow, get you a bed and you become a whole new person.”

  “I’m excited to explore town today. I want to see what the condition of the area is. I need some new pants, and I want to see what supplies we can find. I bet there are some great lanterns at the hardware store we can use, and there are three or four sporting goods stores over in West Lebanon, about five miles away. There’s even an LL Bean. There have to be solar power options for lights, and other stuff to make our lives more convenient.” Greg was eager to get moving.

  Greg wanted to find an animal trap. Thanksgiving was in a few days, and he wanted to catch a turkey. He could keep it in the cage they used to transfer the chickens. He found some sweet potato vines growing in pots at a couple of the houses they passed, and he had bread for stuffing. He knew he could make a great feast for the two of them. Getting a turkey would be a great way to celebrate their new life.

  “Um, okay” It was the second time Rebecca said ‘um,’ conveying her confusion at the new Greg she encountered that morning.

  “You know what I want to find?” She said after a few sips of her tea.

  “I want to see if we can catch some fish. I bet there are fish in that pond. Fresh fish? That would be great right now. That pond is going to freeze over in a little while if it hasn’t over the last two nights. We need to find a fish and tackle shop.”

  “My grandfather belonged to a fishing club over the bridge in Vermont. I don’t think I could find it, but if we got a map there is a chance. It was some private lake stocked with rainbow trout. They almost jumped in the boat when we went. You can fish from the pier and catch some whoppers. I’m not a big trout guy, but fresh fish does sound good. I have this fish stew recipe that will knock your socks off.”