After The Fires Went Out: Coyote
( After The Fires Went Out - 1 )
Regan Wolfrom
First came the comet. Then came the fires. Now we fight to save what's left.
Baptiste, stranded 500 miles from his wife and daughter, at the northern edge of civilization, has made a vow to protect a teenage girl from the chaos that surrounds them. But as food and fuel runs out, and even friends prove they can't be trusted, Baptiste realizes that this promise won't be easy to keep.
Regan Wolfrom
After The Fires Went Out: Coyote
Book One
To the various women in my life, starting with my wife, and moving backward and forward from there.
Acknowledgements
This book would have gone nowhere without the support of quite a few people, including a good portion of my family, some very helpful friends, and, of course, many hours of reading and watching stories where things go so nicely and completely to shit. Thank you everyone for working so hard to keep my own life from going to shit, at least long enough for me to pass this thing out of my system.
PROLOGUE
There was a moment right after The Fires went out when I thought Fiona and I were the only people left for a thousand miles around. It looked as though the whole world had burned, the air around us so hot that it felt like even the water of Lillabelle Lake was close to boiling. I had trouble imagining that anyone else could have survived.
She was laying beside me on the beach, where the rocky sand was still hot like a stovetop from the fire. Her eyes were open but she didn’t really seem to see me; I think she was still in shock.
I didn’t know her name then. I barely remembered Fiona and her parents from the sea of faces at the town meetings, back when the dirt blocked out the sky and it felt like might never see the sun again, back when I was the big man around here for some reason. I didn’t know how sweet and smart and funny she is; she was just some pretty fourteen-year-old girl who reminded me of the daughter I’d lost, and who was now just as alone as I was.
That was the moment when I promised the universe and Cassy that I’d take care of Fiona, no matter what. I thought I might be the only person left in the world to take care of her.
But it didn’t take long for us to realize that we weren’t the only ones left out here; we weren’t even the only people who climbed out of Lillabelle Lake that day.
That didn’t make my promise any less important.
1
Today is Tuesday, December 4th.
I think it’s time for me to keep some kind of record of our life up here at McCartney Lake. I’m sure we’re not the only place that got slammed with shards from the comet, that when the kicked-up debris came back down in other places it set the air on fire just as much, that the sky’s went dark all over the planet.
I’m sure most of the world has forgotten we exist.
I used to write a journal when I was in my twenties and even into my thirties; I wrote an entry almost every day up until my daughter Cassy was born, long-winded stories scrawled in little notebooks and probably illegible to anyone else. It helped me wind up the day, some kind of buffer between real life and falling asleep.
I wonder if any of those notebooks survived.
This time it’ll be on my tablet: the life and times of Robert Jeanbaptiste, village idiot. I guess this one is even less likely to last unless I print it out or share it or something, but I’m not sure I’d want people reading everything I feel like putting in.
I wonder if Ant had ever expected us to read what he’d written.
I was pretty surprised to find out that he kept a journal, and a handwritten one at that. I could see him writing out his sexual fantasies in nauseating detail, but a diary just didn’t fit. That isn’t the Ant I knew.
He wrote it in French for the most part, with patches of English here and there for slang and swear-words, and lines that maybe didn’t work so well in his native tongue. His English always sounded so natural that I would forget that he was born and bred speaking French, just like Sara and almost half the district. Ant’s French isn’t anything like the French my father used to use when he called back home to Port-au-Prince, or even the French they taught us in school. Sometimes I can read a whole sentence and not understand a word of it.
But let’s face it: I barely understood Ant.
He was kind and funny and completely shameless, and there was something about his baby-faced grin that let him get away with pretty much anything. He’d fiddle around with the world’s most dangerous shit, like blow torches and blasting caps, but I always had a feeling he was too smart to screw up.
It’s hard to believe he was shot to death yesterday.
I remember once Sara caught him in her bedroom; he had snuck in while she and Lisa were both downstairs and she came up to find him lying on her bed, with her photo album open right beside him. And Ant being Ant, he was completely naked with his hand on his dick, and he made no attempt to cover anything up.
I don’t know what that little perv was hoping for, that Sara would see him fapping to old pictures of her and her sisters and she’d decide she wanted to join in on the fun, or maybe that she’d simply take a good long look at his naked body and let the other girls know that not every part of Little Ant Lagace was smaller than average.
Whatever his plan, Sara just started to laugh, so loudly that all of us came running upstairs and saw a little too much of Ant that day.
It was only funny because Ant was the one who’d done it. There’s no way it would have been funny to see me lying there, my middle-aged cock in hand, rubbing one off using Sara and her dead sisters as inspiration.
I don’t really give off a funny vibe.
Today was pretty warm for December and it felt like being back home, like those days when Cassy and I would take the streetcar over to Eaton Centre for the painful tradition of finding Christmas presents for her mother. The crowds would crush against us so hard that I’d usually grab onto the sleeve of her sweater as well as her hand, just for the extra grip.
On days like today I can feel that same little nub of anxiety balling up in my stomach, even though streetcars and shopping and my daughter seem so far away now.
We’ve decided to take things easy; we're all still pretty messed up about losing Ant, and it just feels like we need a break.
Sara came up with the idea of a hayride and drafted me into helping her; she figured we ought to do something fun together .
Together means the whole cottage when Sara says it. To her we’re a family, even if our family is made up of eight random people who are only here because they don’t have anywhere else to go.
Actually, there’s only seven of us now.
I managed to convince myself that it was okay for all of us to go; we’d lock up the cottage and we’d be back soon enough. After what happened on Sunday I’d prefer to keep everyone together today; I doubt anyone would show up at just the right time to rob us blind. I was also looking forward to the idea of making some good memories with that cart, something better than carrying Ant’s body north to the stand of sugar maples along the creek.
We’d gotten the two horses and their cart by way of a good-hearted family a couple klicks east of Cochrane. They didn’t leave on the advice of that sack-of-shit Fisher Livingston…they waited it out for a couple months after The Fires, but eventually they packed it in. They’d known that Graham and Fiona and I had chosen to stay behind, and I guess they took pity on a couple of outsiders, so they gave us a quick lesson on hitching and driving before they hopped into their truck and hit the highway, never to be heard from again.
The horses make
a good team, a mare and a gelding, both saddlebreds. The cart is built completely of wood, even the wheels, with railings and a bench; it’s a little clunky at times, but the horses are used to it and now we are, too.
We threw some bales onto the cart and then I hitched up the horses, the mare first as always. She backs into place on her own, always on the right, and all that’s left for me to do is connect the harness traces and the centre shaft. The gelding goes second, and he’s just as quick. I can do it all now in less than ten minutes; Graham can do it in under five.
I stood and watched Sara as she spread a little loose hay around the box. She was dressed pretty light for the weather, but I’m not complaining; I could watch her forever.
There’s something different about beauty up here, in the landscape and in the women…they’re all more striking, I’d call it. You’ll notice the flow of the lines, soft and hard, angled and rounded, gentleness mixed with tough. For Sara, it’s pale blue eyes and coffee-coloured curls, and her sexy clenched-lip smile that makes me forget pretty much everything else.
She noticed me watching her and I could see her blush a little.
“Oh, and make sure you let Graham drive,” she said, as if we were right in the middle of the discussion. It might have been something we talked about twenty minutes ago; Sara just picks up where she left off, and I’m left without any clue of what she’s saying.
“You have a problem with how I drive?” I asked, not really sure if I should act playful or offended.
“I want you on the cart so I can throw you off. Isn’t that the whole point of a hayride?” There was a cheery sound to her voice that I’d longed for over the past few days.
“There’s no way you’ll be able to lift me over the railing,” I said. “You have weak little girl arms.”
“They’re not that weak,” she said with a smile. “And besides, I’ll have plenty of help. I’m not the only person around here who fantasizes about seeing you face-down in the dirt.”
“I think most people want to see me face-down in the Abitibi River.”
She chuckled. “Yeah…that or a toilet bowl. Maybe when we get back I’ll see if my little girl arms can hold your head under the yellow water long enough to make all our dreams come true.”
I laughed at that.
The hay in place and the horses hitched, I started to load up the waggon with everything we’d need for the trip. I threw in a couple thermoses of water, my binoculars and headlamp, and of course my constant companion, the defibrillator, charged from our battery bank and ready to go. I’d recommend it for anyone over fifty, but obviously for me it’s pretty much required; the only two reasons I'm still here at all are my trusty defib and the six months of heart pills I still have left.
There’s nothing like heart disease to remind you every goddamn day that you’re not invincible anymore. And there’s nothing like slowly running out of pills to make sure you never forget what’s coming.
I grabbed the shotgun too, checking to make sure it was loaded but that the chamber was still empty. I know this twelve gauge Mossberg pretty well, but I’m not always the last one to have carried it and I really don’t like the idea of an accidental discharge taking a chunk out of someone’s ass.
I have my service pistol too; at least it’s mine now, a SIG Sauer issued by the Ontario Provincial Police and definitely not issued to me. I have it holstered as always, along with my handheld transmitter, in the belt that I only take off for sleeping, showering and screwing.
I may also want to take it off when I’m being thrown from a hayride…I’m not sure on the procedure for something like that.
I placed the shotgun in the cart, up by the horses where the spotter sits. Where they “ride shotgun”, I guess you could say.
“You’re not on lookout, either,” Sara said.
I sighed and nodded. She knew all my tricks by now.
Sara gave a loud shout and people started to wander outside. Graham and Lisa came out first, and together, which was usually a sign that they’d agreed to another ceasefire. Lisa was dressed lightly, like Sara, with a knit hat hiding most of her short and nearly spiky dark hair, and wearing what I’d term a spring jacket. But Graham had his parka on, and while it looked like Lisa had talked him out of a scarf for plus five, he had his black toque pulled down as far as it could go, right down to the upper fringe of his close-cropped hipster beard.
“You guys don’t match,” Sara said. “And you’re going to die of heat, Graham.”
“I’m not used to this,” Graham said. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this.”
“He’s a pussy,” Lisa said.
Sara scowled at the word.
Lisa laughed. “But he’s my pussy.”
Matt and Kayla came out next. Together they looked almost too perfect, Matt with his dark hair and broad smile, wearing a navy blue peacoat, and Kayla dressed about the same style but in a colour closer to robin’s egg blue, with a pink scarf and a matching pink toque, with tufts of her pretty blond hair spilling out.
“Who’s driving?” she asked.
“Why does it matter?” I said.
Kayla gave me a mischievous grin. “Your presence is required in the rear.”
We all waited for the joke to come, probably something about Kayla’s rear and just how many invites it sent out per annum. But Ant wasn’t there to make it.
It took a good ten seconds for all of us to recover.
“Sara’s already made it clear that you all hate me,” I said.
“She’s sort of our spokesperson,” Kayla said, still with the grin.
Graham took his place on the front bench and Lisa found a spot beside him, gripping the shotgun as it rested on her leg like she was itching to use it.
Our inside dogs hopped up front with them, little Juju nestling at Lisa’s feet while Des stood up on the bench, his thick tongue hanging out as he stared at the back of the horses.
I always wonder if big old Carcassonne is jealous when we leave him behind with the chickens and goats. Somehow I doubt it. Some dogs were bred to live with the livestock.
Everyone else took a place near the back of the cart, leaving a nice big hole in the middle, open just for me; it’s great to feel wanted, even as a target.
“Just waiting for Fiona,” I said, still standing beside the cart. I rapped a fist against the railing, trying to appear impatient. The truth is, I kind of like it when Fiona takes a little longer…I’m not sure why.
“Fiona makes us wait again,” Lisa said, tapping her left hand on the forestock of the shotgun. “Big surprise.”
“I don’t think she’s coming,” Matt said.
“She can’t stay here alone,” I said.
“Well you’re not staying behind,” Sara said to me. “We have plans for you, Baptiste. Evil plans.” She hopped down from the cart. “I’ll go grab her.”
“She went out for a walk,” Matt said.
“By herself?” I asked, already feeling my control slipping.
“Yeah…so?”
I glared at him. “What the fuck are you thinking?”
“Hey…I told her not to.”
“You told her not to? What the hell good is that?”
He rolled his eyes at me and gave me one of his little smirks. “She doesn’t listen to me,” he said, like none of it was his problem, that it didn’t really matter that Fiona was out there alone.
That was the same goddamn attitude he’d had about Ant, like he wasn’t the least bit responsible for what happened, that he shouldn’t feel the least bit guilty that he’d made it back alive and Ant hadn’t.
I wanted to grab him by the throat and start twisting ‘til something popped.
“Seriously…” I said, trying to slow my breathing. “You need to grow up and take some goddamn responsibility.”
He scowled at me. “If you don’t want me around I’ve got plenty of places to go.”
“Bullshit.”
I felt Sara’s hand gripping mine; s
he didn’t say anything, but I got the message. Losing my shit wasn’t going to help.
“Which way did she go?” I asked.
“South,” Matt said. “Along the lake.”
I ran around the cottage to where the path that traces around the lake begins, Des running in front of me like he knew just where we were headed.
I saw one set of fresh footprints in a patch of wet muck. I ran along the trail as it cut through the leafless trees, holding my right hand close to the handle of my pistol. I didn’t expect that I’d need to use it but I had to be prepared; you never know what’s hiding just beyond the bend out here.
“Fiona!” I called. I tried to conceal my panic, but I knew it was deep in my voice. “Fiona!”
I saw a red wool mitten floating on top of a pile of brown leaves. Fiona’s. I bent down and picked it up. I couldn’t see any tracks aside from hers, no signs of anything. She must’ve had it shoved in her pocket or something, not noticing when it fell out.
She had to be okay…
I kept running, all the way to where the creek drains into the lake, and up across the two logs that were lashed together to bridge the marshy stream. There were new tracks here, three sets of paws in the mud. They were narrower and sharper than what Des would make: coyote tracks. And they were fresh, in places landing on top of Fiona’s footprints.
Des was sniffing madly at the tracks and shuffling his feet; he could smell them, and I wondered if he could also smell Fiona through her boots.
She should have brought the dogs with her.
I called her name again, and picked up my pace even at the risk of tripping on loose rock or an upturned root. I was pretty sure she had no idea the coyotes were out there, stalking her.
I drew my SIG and without giving it a thought I asked God to help me.
I came to a low spot where I noticed the coyote tracks veering off into the woods; Fiona’s footsteps kept to the trail, steady and straight. There was no sign of violence, no change in her gait. The coyotes may have heard me and Des coming. They may have run off, or else they were watching us from just behind the trees.
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