by K. M. Fawkes
Yes, the building had been across a depression. So while they could go down the mountainside right now, they were eventually going to have to go back up. If his calculations were correct, that building had definitely been at a higher elevation than they were now tracking. The thought made his steps slow for several moments—even though he knew they couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down, or they’d been in big trouble.
“What’s wrong?” Marie asked. “Why are you slowing down? Did you think of something? Did you see something?”
“Just doing some calculations in my head,” he said quickly, lying through his teeth. “It’s not much farther.” No, he didn’t think that was completely true, but she needed the lie right now. And he needed her to keep going.
If she stopped, there was no way he was going to be able to drag her forward. He’d have to leave her there to die. One more death on his conscience.
One more thing he wasn’t willing to allow. One more person he wasn’t willing to lose.
“The first thing I’ll do is build a fire,” he muttered, trying to distract both of them.
“I’m going to lay right in it.”
“Not if I’m in your way.”
“Ha!”
Clump. Clump. Clump. Pete thought their slog through the snow last night had been bad, but this was exponentially worse. They were hungrier and more exhausted than they had been, and though he couldn’t be sure without a thermometer, he thought it was colder by several degrees.
He wondered if a human being could freeze in place. Like that wooly mammoth some Russian scientists had found in the Siberian ice. Minding its own business and then wham, welcome to the ice age.
“Someday a team of archeologists will find us perfectly preserved,” Marie said, as though she’d read his mind.
Or maybe he’d spoken aloud. He had no idea. He was too wretchedly cold to be sure.
“They’ll say we were a truly handsome example of twentieth-century humans,” she said, and laughed, but it sounded sad and broken.
“They might say that about you, but with me, it will be more like, ‘How’d a guy like him end up with a woman who looked like that?’”
She bumped her shoulder against his.
“Careful,” he scolded. “You’ll knock me over and I won’t be able to get up.”
After a couple of silent minutes passed, he said, “Thanks. For knowing when I needed to be cheered up.”
“I need you alive to start that fire,” she said. “I’m not kidding. I know the theory of fire-starting, but I’ve never done it.”
Eventually, even the chit-chat became too much effort, and they fell silent. The trees loomed all around, thick and green, and Pete imagined them slowly taking over the world, filling in all the places mankind had usurped. It would be beautiful and wild again. And he wasn’t sure that was the worst thing in the entire world.
Sure, it would mean humans had to die. And that included him and Marie. And that part sort of sucked. But it was starting to sound more and more like it might at least bring him some peace.
Time lost meaning in the agony of suffering, so he wasn’t sure how long they’d been moving when Marie fell over. She looked so comfortable lying down that it was difficult to convince himself not to join her. Instead, he forced himself to shake her shoulder and pat her cheeks.
“What?” she asked sleepily.
“You can’t stop. We’re close.”
“You told me that before.” Her words came slow and drowsy. “You’re a liar.”
“I am a liar, but I can see the building now.”
She sat up, blinking. “Where?”
“There.” He pointed.
And this time, he wasn’t lying.
A cleared area was visible through the trees, and from where they were standing, he could just see a corner of the building and a bit of roofline. He’d seen it about five minutes ago, but had thought that it might actually be a mirage. A trick of the snow. So he hadn’t said anything.
Marie started struggling to get back to her feet. “Crap, I almost gave up right before the finish line.”
For seconds, Pete only watched, wondering where in the world he’d find enough energy to help her and pull her to her feet. But then he remembered the kind of man he wanted to be, the kind of man he needed to be if they were going to survive.
He grabbed her hand and hauled her into a standing position. The simple action stole his breath away. Then they started forward again.
With the building in sight, they tried to hurry, but it was an impossible task. They were both too tired and cold, completely exhausted and frozen to the bone. And Pete couldn’t even remember the last thing he’d had to eat.
Whatever it had been, it hadn’t been enough.
“One foot in front of the other,” Marie said.
Pete nodded and started chanting in his head with each step. We’re almost there. We’re almost there.
Then Marie stumbled and dropped to one knee. “Fuck!” she shouted as he struggled to help her up again.
He thought about warning her to be quiet, but if her temper carried her the last hundred steps or so, she could yell and curse all the way to the front door. It was a testament to their utter fatigue that even with shelter in view, they couldn’t summon the energy to race to it.
The structure was built to look like an old-fashioned log cabin, though Pete doubted actual wood had been used. The logs had the look of the faux wood that had come into fashion in the last decade as a response to various pests having devastated the forestry industry. They were made of recycled materials, mostly plastic, so they were more environmentally friendly. Or something.
Resting on a two-foot-high river stone foundation, the cabin had a steeply pitched roof that overhung a front porch. The roof had mostly protected the porch, which was clear of snow, except where drifts had blown onto it.
And there, at the side of the porch, a tarp that looked like it was covering firewood.
Firewood, which meant they could build a fire. Warmth. Shelter. Pete almost started drooling at the thought.
“Vacation home?” Marie asked, and took his hand.
“Not with that construction,” he answered, his teeth chattering like mad. “That’s a ranger station. That’s shelter.”
Chapter 3
The front door had an electronic key panel that looked completely at odds with the rustic structure. It also seemed like higher tech than he would have expected for a ranger station, but what did he know?
Marie shot Pete a look, grabbed the door handle, and depressed the lever.
The door clicked open.
“Don’t barge in,” Pete told her while struggling to get the Glock out of his coat pocket. He should have had it ready before, but his brain was as frozen as the rest of him. It was highly unlikely anyone was inside. If there was, either he and Marie would already be dead, or they’d have been greeted by the occupant. Marie’s shouting would have given anyone inside plenty of notice that strangers had arrived.
The idea that this place had been deserted somehow made him even more nervous, though.
Glock finally in hand, he nudged the door open. “Hello?”
There was no answer, so he repeated the greeting, louder the second time. There was still no answer. He was about to push the door wide open when the sound of howls came to them from somewhere nearby.
Wolves? he wondered. Different ones—or the ones they’d already tousled with?
It didn’t matter. Wolves were wolves. He didn’t care to repeat their earlier experience, and this building offered them the only way out.
Pete shoved the door open, and he and Marie hurried inside.
When he slammed the door shut behind them, they were thrust into darkness. But in the moment before he’d closed the door, he’d seen the layout of the cabin. Marie must have as well, because she moved carefully away from him and drew open the drapes that covered one of the two front windows.
Though the light was scant, it was
easy enough to now see the single large room, with a kitchen on their right, a table and four chairs in the middle, and a floor lamp with a sofa and a couple of armchairs on the left side. There was a closed door on the left that probably led to a bedroom and bathroom. There was also a fireplace, with a small stack of cut wood piled beside it.
Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust.
“I guess I didn’t need you to start a fire after all,” Marie said jokingly, and headed for the kitchen area.
Pete engaged the front door’s mechanical backup lock and sent a heartfelt thank-you into the universe that the electronic pad hadn’t been activated when the EMP struck.
Marie was rifling through the cupboards, so he went to the fireplace, which was made of the same river stone as the deck outside, except for the hearth, which was black slate. There was a full box of long matches and a basket about two-thirds filled with tinder. He put together the makings of a fire, starting with tinder on the bottom and a teepee of smaller pieces of wood above it.
“Oh my God!” Marie exclaimed. “The pantry is full of food. Is this real? Are we dead and this is Heaven?”
Pete’s stomach growled, but he ignored it and set a match to the tinder. It caught easily… but the room immediately began to fill with smoke.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered. “The flue.”
At least he hoped that was all it was. If the chimney was actually blocked by something, they were going to be in trouble.
He stuck his hand up the chimney, gritting his teeth against the heat and sparks of the fire, and desperately searched for the lever. When he found it, he pulled it forward.
The smoke raced up the opening, leaving behind only the pleasant scent of a wood fire, and the tinder started catching the smaller pieces of wood alight. Once they were burning steadily, Pete tented a couple of the larger pieces over the structure. They were nice and dry, courtesy of having been inside for who knew how long, and caught fire quickly.
Marie appeared beside him and handed him a bottle of water. Then she held out two military ration bars.
“Peanut butter, or peanut butter?” she asked.
“I’ll take peanut butter.”
The fire crackled merrily, a weird contrast to the reality of their situation, while Marie inspected the bar’s packaging.
“Holy crap. There are a thousand calories in one of these.”
“These aren’t even the highest-calorie ones,” Pete responded. “I’ve seen some with upwards of three thousand. They were chocolate-flavored and didn’t melt in the sun.”
“Yikes,” Marie said. “Probably some government experiment.”
“I didn’t eat it, so you shouldn’t have to worry about me turning into a zombie or something.” Pete took a big bite of his bar.
“Super soldier would be more helpful.” Marie held her hands closer to the fire. “Though zombie apocalypse seems totally possible. I guess we don’t have to worry about global warming anymore.”
Pete guzzled the whole bottle of water before answering. “Well, it’s probably still going on. It’s just a matter of whether we die of something else before we can worry about it again.” He added one of the largest logs to the first, and the heat intensified.
Marie moved closer and moaned ecstatically. “Nothing has ever felt this good.”
Pete finished his ration bar, not sure he’d even tasted it, which was just as well. In his experience, peanut-butter-flavored meant peanut-butter-ish paste combined with sawdust. Then, with his belly somewhat placated and the warmth of the fire pummeling him, his head began to nod.
Marie laid on the floor next to him, her head resting on her arm. “I’m just going to rest here for a few minutes. Then I’ll see if there’s a bed.”
Pete thought about checking the rest of the building, but the thought was all he could manage. Getting up to do it was so far out of reach, it might as well have been scaling Mount Denali, Alaska’s highest peak. He joined Marie on the floor and assumed the same position, resting his head on his outstretched arm.
Though all he wanted to do was to sleep, he was cold, which meant he should be doing something besides keeping his eyes closed. It wouldn’t do to die of hypothermia now, inside a building in front of a fireplace. They had some heat, but it still wasn’t enough. They needed better protection. So he forced his eyes open again—and saw that the fire had burned low.
“Damn it,” he breathed.
They’d already been asleep for some time. And he hadn’t even noticed. Probably a couple hours, if he was guessing right. Marie muttered something, rolled onto her back, and began to snore.
His shoulder was stiff as hell, he realized, and he sat up and rolled it a few times, feeling like a rusty old machine. When he got to his feet his knees actually creaked, but he made his way to the stack of firewood and threw more onto the fire, which soon took to blazing pleasantly.
Just as he was working on convincing himself to go through the rest of the cabin, do the things he should have done before he fell asleep, Marie woke herself with a particularly loud snore. She looked at him.
“Yes,” he told her. “That was you.”
“Wasn’t,” she answered, and sat up. “Did you get the license plate of the truck that hit me?”
“I feel the same, though I was thinking more along the lines of a train.”
“You’re right. It must have been a train.” She frowned. “I could barely sleep for wondering how this place is so untouched. No graffiti. No vandalism. I know the government defunded park rangers a couple of years ago. How the hell has this place been untouched since then? Why isn’t anyone living in it?”
“Ryan told me a story like that, about his kid brother,” Pete said, but then got too choked up to continue. Ryan O’Connell had been his friend and National Guard unit-mate for years. Then he’d turned on Pete in the prison. Sent Marie to do some really stupid stuff, and basically created a situation where she’d been captured by that psychopath David Clyde.
But Ryan had come through in the end, and saved Pete’s life. Pete still wasn’t sure which had been the real Ryan: the one who had been his friend for so many years, or the one who had sold him out at the end—and then saved him anyhow.
The whole thing was almost too painful to touch.
Marie must have sensed Pete’s emotional struggle because she got up and left him alone while he recovered, returning a moment later with two more food bars and two more bottles of water.
“Okay.” Pete cleared his throat. “So. The kid brother.”
Marie nodded and took a bite from her ration bar.
“Ryan’s kid brother and some friends thought it would be fun to break into an abandoned ranger station near where they lived and turn it into their very own private party palace.”
Marie snorted.
Pete took a huge bite of his bar, chewed a few times, and then continued his story. “They packed supplies and set out, and by supplies, I mean beer and potato chips. The cabin was a several hours’ hike away, but they arrived without encountering any trouble.”
“No wolves or convicts,” Marie remarked.
Pete gave her a bit of a grin. “Exactly. So they’re whooping it up and congratulating themselves on a well-executed plan as they move closer to the building. Then an ear-splitting alarm shrieks out over the landscape.”
Marie’s eyes went wide.
“Like really ear-splitting,” Pete said, eyeing Marie’s half-eaten ration bar. He’d finished his in about three bites, and it hadn’t been nearly enough.
Snorting, Marie passed it to him.
“One of the boys actually crapped his pants,” he continued.
“Oh shit. Literally,” Marie said, chuckling.
“I bet he never lived it down,” Pete said, hoping the kid was still alive to be razzed about that time he had crapped himself. He sipped from his water bottle and continued. “Yeah. Then a recorded warning played, telling them they were on federal property and blah, blah, blah. The boys bac
ked off and the alarm stopped.”
“Did they give up?” Marie asked.
“Not on your life. Teenage boys are nothing if not persistent. Ryan’s brother decided that there had to be a control panel inside the building, and if one of them could break a window… You can figure out the rest.”
“I can. But what happened when they did that?”
“One of the boys stuffed his ears with paper and wrapped a thick sweatshirt around his head.”
Marie nodded. “Good idea.”
“So it would seem,” Pete said. “The kid approached the station. The alarm went off. The other boys had their hands pressed over their ears, but this kid kept going. He made it to the door and turned to give his companions a thumbs-up. Meanwhile, little nozzles came out from around the door and window frames and shot pepper spray at him. He dropped to the ground and began to scream. Ryan’s brother sprinted up and dragged him away from the building.”
“And they went home with their tails between their legs.” Marie polished off her bottle of water.
“Exactly. The Department of Parks and Recreation were evidently protecting their property, in the hope that some future government might take preservation seriously enough to rehire the park rangers.”
“And now this place is going to preserve humans,” Marie said.
“I guess it is.” Pete rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m going to check the rest of the building. I should have done it before, but—”
“I’ll come with you.”
Pete got to his feet without arguing. Yeah, it might be dangerous for her to be with him—but no more dangerous than it was for her to stay here alone.
Every bone, ligament, tendon, and muscle in his body hurt. Hell, even his blood cells hurt. His ribs were still bitching about the guy in Mueller who’d struck them with the butt end of a rifle, and he had serious doubts about a couple of his toes.
“I sure hope there are spas in this post-apocalyptic world,” Marie said. “I need a massage and some time in a hot tub.”
“I’d settle for a hot shower,” Pete said. Except, in an instant, humanity had been transported back to the mid-nineteenth century, to a time before piped hot water was a thing.
