by K. M. Fawkes
He didn’t dwell on that, but readied the Glock. He didn’t think he’d find anything here—if anyone had been in the place, they would have killed Pete and Marie while they slept—but his training wouldn’t allow him to proceed without caution.
He turned the knob on the door that led to the other part of the cabin, and pushed it open to reveal a single good-sized bedroom with an attached bathroom. The bed had a sheet draped over it to protect it from dust.
Marie charged over to a wardrobe and pulled the doors open.
“Bedding,” she announced, holding a set of flannel sheets in front of her. “And a nice heavy quilt.”
“We should probably stay in the main room so I can keep an eye on the fire,” Pete noted.
“Ugh. I really want to lie down in an actual bed.” Marie pleaded with her eyes.
“Then have at it,” Pete said. If he made the fire larger, and they left the bedroom door open, the heat would make it into the room. The cabin seemed very well insulated, which was a boon.
Marie cocked her head. “Did you hear that?”
Pete listened. “Toenails on the deck outside.”
“Is there nothing else for those bastards to eat besides us?” she whispered, her eyes growing wide.
“We don’t know it’s the same pack.”
Marie went to the main room, opened the other drapes, and pressed her face to the window. “I can’t see anything now except their tracks.”
Pete’s eyes flew to the front door. He knew they’d closed it—it would have been suicide to leave it open—but he needed to see for himself.
The door was closed. Thank God.
“Unless they’ve grown opposable thumbs all of a sudden, they can’t get in.” He wasn’t going to finish his thought, which was that the wolves couldn’t get in, but would absolutely prevent Pete and Marie from leaving if they continued to hang around.
“They’re going to make it hard for us to leave,” Marie said, in that uncanny way of hers.
Pete grunted.
“And that’s really not a problem until we want to leave,” she continued. “If we decide we want to leave at all. You go build up that fire, and I’ll make the bed.”
“Deal,” he answered.
A few minutes later, Pete was taking his boots off and climbing into bed next to Marie.
She went stiff before he even laid down. “Did you hear that?” she hissed.
“Hear what?” he replied.
“It sounded like muffled knocking or something.”
“Woodpecker?” he asked, laying down as quietly as he could, his ears alerted for any sound.
“Don’t they migrate?” Marie asked as she snuggled up to him. “Don’t get any ideas. This is strictly for warmth.”
“I’m too tired to…” he trailed off, slipping effortlessly into sleep.
Chapter 4
Pete was in that wonderful state of pre-wakefulness after a much-needed sleep, where memory hasn’t yet had a chance to chime in and ruin everything. He was warm and comfortable under a heavy quilt, and he tightened his grip on the woman next to him and pulled her closer.
“Theresa…” he murmured.
He received an elbow to his ribs for his trouble.
“The last thing the woman you just slept with wants to hear is another woman’s name come out of your mouth,” Marie said jokingly.
“Oh, shoot,” Pete said as his brain compiled the details of his life and their present situation. “Sorry, Marie. Though, it wasn’t that kind of sleeping together.”
“No problem, Jim,” she replied.
“Jim. Was he the last guy you were dating?”
“Dated. Once. It didn’t take.”
“Theresa didn’t either.”
A lance of guilt stabbed him for disrespecting her, even now, but he put that sharply to the side. Things hadn’t worked. That hadn’t been his fault.
“Just for that,” Marie said, snapping him out of his morose thoughts, “you can get up and stoke the fire. It’s gotten cold in here. As for me, I can’t move. I may never move again.”
Pete sat up and rubbed his hands over his face. After taking a moment, he got out of bed and made his way to the main room, where the fire had become nothing more than a few glowing embers. Judging by the light coming in the window, he thought they’d slept through the rest of the day and the entire night. It looked like it was just after sunrise out there.
And he was starving. But first, the fire.
He saw a set of long-handled fireplace tools hanging from a stand that he’d missed last night, and decided he’d clean the ash out of the fireplace. The less ash, the better the fire, he’d always thought.
He went looking for a bin, or some kind of container for the ash, and found an empty trash can under the kitchen sink. Using the broom tool and the miniature shovel, he scooped and swept the dusty gray ash, then dumped it carefully into the can. Luckily, one of the embers was still hot enough to get another fire going without using more tinder.
Within a few minutes, he had a good-sized blaze burning. The room began to warm up, and he took off his coat—which he’d been sleeping in all night—and draped it on the back of one of the kitchen chairs, somewhat astonished by the reality of the warmth, which had seemed like a complete impossibility yesterday.
He glanced down at his fingers, and then his toes, wondering if it was too late for his extremities. His fingertips were red and chapped, but there was none of the severe redness or blistering that would indicate frostbite. And when he wiggled his toes, they all seemed to be in working order.
One more thing he might not have to deal with, he thought. An amputation without anesthetic or antibiotics—hell, without a real doctor, for all he knew—was not his idea of a good time.
Marie came into the room and went straight to the cupboards. “I didn’t look through all of them last night. As soon as I found the food bars and water, I stopped.”
Pete also began opening and closing drawers, finding cutlery, a set of sharp knives, a can opener, spatulas, etc.
“Ooh,” Marie said. “I wonder why these are here.” She held up a stack of notebooks. “No one makes handwritten notes anymore, do they?” Sadness washed over her expression and she added, “Or, no one used to make handwritten notes. Now, it’s back to the old ways.”
“I’m sure even out here the rangers would have used tablets,” Pete replied. He went back to one of the drawers he’d opened and held up a box of pens. “But it looks like someone out here believed in being thorough.”
Marie took them from him, and he was surprised to see excitement on her face. “I’m going to write down what’s happened so far. This story could win me a Pulitzer.”
He snorted, annoyed. Marie’s obsession with winning an award for her writing was almost as annoying as her need to insert her nose into every single thing happening around her. Her relentless belief that the prisoners in Mueller hadn’t been all bad had cost him at least a few of his men, if not most of them. Of course, the solar flare and resulting electromagnetic pulse hadn’t helped. And David Clyde had definitely played a part.
So maybe it wasn’t all her fault, after all. But that didn’t mean he didn’t find her frustrating.
He knew he shouldn’t say anything, but couldn’t stop himself.
“Do you really think there are going to be Pulitzers anymore? That kind of shit is finished. At least for the time being. Maybe for the rest of our lives. Maybe in a couple hundred years, mankind will claw its way back to where we were, but we won’t be alive to see it. We have to focus on surviving, Marie. Not winning awards that might not even exist anymore.”
She glared at him for so long he wondered if she’d reply, and then finally said, “You’re so damned negative. About everything. What’s the point of surviving if you’re going to be nihilistic?”
“You say negative, I say practical,” he replied, and went to a cupboard to inspect the contents. “It’s time for you to get with the program.”
/> “And just what program is that?” Marie huffed.
“Are you sure my men were dead, or was it just a story to keep me from wanting to go back for them?”
“Fuck you, Pete Marshall. I’m not the one who thinks most people are a waste of space. I’m the one who advocated for the prisoners. Don’t you think I’d want to save your men?”
Rather than answer, Pete pulled a can from the cupboard, checked the expiration date, and frowned.
“What is it?” Marie said.
“These cans are expired, but the military rations were relatively new, based on the dates stamped on the packages.” He grabbed one of the ration bags and showed her how there was a manufactured date and an expiration date stamped on the back in the lower left-hand corner.
“That’s weird.” Marie came over, picked up a can, and checked the date. “What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know.” Pete’s brain was still too foggy from the aftermath of hunger and exposure, and from a long sleep, to operate properly. But he knew they needed more food. They were certainly going to if they were going to stay here much longer. “Let’s open a few. Everyone knows those dates are more of a suggestion than a hard line.”
He regretted starting the fight and regretted questioning her motives even more. It wasn’t fair. If he truly believed she was that kind of person, he would have left her behind.
Hopefully, she’d take his silence for what it was: an offer to stop arguing about nothing. Who cared if she wanted to write their story down? If it brought her pleasure, let her have her dreams. He suspected there were going to be very few opportunities for pleasure in this new world.
Now that he’d calmed down, he recognized his reaction for what it was: the transference of blame. It was easier to be angry with her for her role in what had happened at the prison than to hate himself for the choices he’d made, and for the orders he’d given.
Marie went to the drawer where the cutlery was stored and got the can opener.
“Try this one,” Pete said, and passed her a can of beef with barley soup. His mouth filled with saliva just thinking about hot food, even if it came from a can.
No sooner had she broken the seal, though, than the sour stink of turned food wafted into the room. “No good,” she said. “Give me another one.”
There were at least twenty cans of the same soup, and Pete handed her another. The next one had gone over as well, but the third and fourth smelled fine, and he went looking for a pot in which to heat them. Marie moved closer to the fireplace and began inspecting it, though for what, Pete had no idea.
The pots and pans were all modern, with aluminum bottoms that weren’t suitable for the induction cook top on the stove. Which was disappointing, because they didn’t have the right kind of handle to suspend them over the fire. He supposed he could do something with one of the oven racks, using it like a grate and setting the pot on top of it. But he wasn’t quite ready to give up on his quest.
He squatted down, trying to see into the far back corner of the cupboard. It was where the pots he rarely used wound up, so it wasn’t such a stretch to think someone might have done the same thing here. His knees weren’t happy about it, but he was rewarded for his effort when he found an old-style camping pot with a half-loop metal handle stored behind a roasting pan. The pot looked both well used and well cared for. He thought about the ranger that had probably left it behind, and wondered whether the man or woman missed it, and where they were now.
Regardless, he was grateful they had left it behind.
“Do you think we can use the fireplace poker to hold the pot?” Marie asked, holding up the tool.
Pete shrugged. “Won’t know until we test it out.”
He hoped it would work. Because they were going to need more food, soon—and then they were going to have to figure out what the hell they were going to do next.
She passed him a pair of kitchen gloves to protect his hands from the heat and he poured the cans of soup into the pot and carried it over to the fire.
After considering for a moment, he stuck the poker through the handle, lifted the pot with it, and rested the point of the poker against the back of the fireplace. It was awkward to hold it in place, and he guessed he’d be fatigued by the time the soup came to a boil, but he also knew it would be well worth it.
Marie dragged one of the kitchen chairs over and sized up the situation. “I have an idea,” she said. “That’s not quite right. Hang on.”
She went to the kitchen and started yanking pots and pans out one at a time, eyeing them for size. When she returned, she had a small one that was only a couple of inches deep. She set it on the chair upside down so that its base made a platform. “Can you jam the poker into one of the mortar seams?”
Pete thought he knew where she was going with her idea, and carefully lifted the pot out of the fire and set it on the stone hearth.
He took in the height of the chair with the pot on it and chose one of the mortar seams that would allow him to make a level beam with the poker, and then rammed the poker point into the mortar as best he could. He had to be quick, because the fire was hot, and he had to repeat the motion a couple of times to create a good-sized divot. When he judged it to be deep enough, he hung the pot on the poker, put the point in the divot, and then rested the other end on top of the pot that was on top of the chair.
The poker was barely long enough, but it was level. So long as they didn’t bump the chair, they’d be good to go.
“Good thinking,” he said.
“Does that mean I’m with the program?” she asked, then quickly added, “Sorry. The bitch kicked in. I couldn’t help myself.”
“I deserved it.”
“I accept your half-assed apology.” Her smile said she was teasing, but her eyes showed that she was still hurt.
He almost said more, but given what he knew about women, she wouldn’t believe him at this point anyhow. So he kept his mouth shut.
Instead, he kept an eye on the soup. It came to a boil, and he let it continue bubbling for a few minutes. Considering the expiration date stamped on the bottom of the cans, he thought he’d better make sure any bacteria had been destroyed by heat; the last thing they needed was food poisoning.
He carried the pan to the counter and poured the soup into bowls. When Marie sat down at the table, he took his cue and sat across from her.
“It’s like we’re civilized,” Marie said, then blew on the steaming hot soup.
“I know it’s going to burn my tongue,” Pete said, “but I can’t wait to eat something besides ration packs. Before we got to Mueller, we’d been in Anchorage, cleaning up after the quake, and we ate nothing but those for days.”
“They’re not great, are they?” Marie said. “The best you can say about them is that they’re edible.”
“Exactly.”
The moment the soup was cool enough to eat it without scorching their mouths, they dug in.
Pete was sure he’d never had a better bowl of soup, not even in a four- or five-star restaurant. Restaurants. They might still exist in big cities, but they couldn’t be what they’d once been. Not now. They probably looked more like the pubs that showed up in movies. Oil lamps. One dish served a day. Ale.
If they still existed at all. If there was anyone out there to care.
Normally he’d be embarrassed to be so boorish, but now he scraped his bowl clean, noticing that Marie was doing the same. She looked like she was thinking about whether to lick it, and if she did, he wasn’t going to judge.
He set his spoon down. “I’m going to take a look outside. See what’s out there. Find out if there’s anything we can use.”
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to stay inside,” Marie said. “I can’t face going out there just yet. But if you scrub out the pot in the snow and bring it in full, I’ll melt it down for hot water. We should be careful not to use up the bottled water. Don’t know when we might need it.”
“Deal.”
Pete put on his boots and coat, grabbed the Glock, and opened the door, peering out at his immediate surroundings.
“Can’t see anything notable,” he called back to Marie.
“Wolves?”
“The paw prints aren’t fresh anymore, so hopefully they’ve moved on.” He hoped.
He didn’t want to face them out here alone. Not that he’d have much choice.
“Watch your back out there,” she said.
He almost laughed at how closely that had followed the conversation in his head. “You know it.” He paused. “Do me a favor and fill my pack with food and water. Like a to-go bag. In case.”
If they had to run, he didn’t want to do it knowing he’d left a cabin full of food and water behind. And he didn’t want to have to take the time to pack.
“Sure. Just in case.” The way she said it made it sound talismanic, like a way to ward off having to flee.
And it was insane that he’d even had that thought.
He went out, scrubbed the pot with several handfuls of snow, and when it seemed to be about as clean as he would ever get it, he filled it to overflowing with snow because it would shrink as it melted.
Marie was ready for him when he cracked opened the door, and quickly took the pot from him. He caught a glimpse of the kitchen table, where she had one of the notebooks and a pen laid out on the surface, and reminded himself not to share his shitty opinions about Pulitzer Prizes.
Was she right? Was he a nihilist? He’d never thought of himself that way. He considered himself practical, pragmatic, and level-headed, but it was possible those qualities had become exaggerated after dealing with one too many disasters and the rotting corpses that went along with them.
He used the stairs to get back down to ground level and started clomping through the snow, filled with anxiety as his mind rehashed the horrible details of their interminable journey to the ranger station. Really, it was a wonder they’d made it at all. There was something to be said for human will.
When the negative voice inside him tried to remind him how close he’d been to giving up, he told it to shut the fuck up.
