by K. M. Fawkes
“December first,” Brad grunted. He obviously hadn’t been able to bring his calendar with him when he’d set the facility on fire and run for his life, so he was back to this method of timekeeping. Saying it out loud every day hadn’t failed him yet. Remington, who was lying on the seat beside him, looked up at Brad, quirking first one eyebrow and then the other.
“You’re right,” Brad said. “It is going to be getting pretty close to Christmas soon. Do you have any requests? I’m hoping for a new form of electricity, myself.”
He held up a pair of crossed fingers. Remington closed his eyes and curled up a little tighter.
Brad decided in that moment that he was very glad he’d brought Remington with him, and not just for the inhumanity that it would have been to leave the poor thing behind in a war zone; now, rather than look crazy when he spoke his thoughts out loud, he could just say that he was talking to the dog. Not that there was anyone around to explain it to.
He’d driven to the edge of Baxter State Park. He’d last hiked the trails there just over a year before. Now, he was going there to bury the body of a kid who’d trusted him.
At least, burying Jamie had been his original intention. The frozen ground didn’t cooperate, so Brad built a pyre instead, using the lighter his father had given the boy to start the blaze. He’d found it in Jamie’s pocket when he was frantically searching his body for a weapon yesterday.
He knew now that it was definitely Brad’s father that Jamie had met in the store. If his intuition hadn’t told him, the lighter would have—the initials engraved on it read L.F. Lee Fox.
It was true that L.F. could have been anyone. Leonard Fitzwallace, maybe. Or Leona Fuller. Or… Brad shook his head. He was way too easily distracted these days. The point was, he’d flipped the lighter over the moment it was safe to, and there it was. A small fox paw print engraved on the back in the left-hand corner. His father had the symbol engraved on everything he could get it on.
Brad sat down on a log to watch the blaze, resting his hand on the dog’s head. Remy leaned against him with a gentle low bark and Brad began to scratch behind his ears. Lately, it seemed that everything around him had ended in fire, he mused. His cabin had gone up in a blaze. Then, the complex had followed.
The fire had been spreading through the facility pretty rapidly when he’d left. There had been families there. If they’d survived the soldiers’ panicked shooting, would they have anywhere to sleep that night?
For a moment, Brad felt incredibly guilty. Then, he looked back at Jamie’s body on the pyre. It was just starting to really catch and burn. He looked so small up there. He’d never have the chance to see a better world now.
No matter what those people thought of him, Brad wouldn’t change what he’d done. He’d killed a madman. He’d torn up a community that had stood by and let an innocent kid be murdered.
Once snow joined the ashes raining down around them, Brad pulled the dog back into the truck. After sitting for a few more moments, just watching the fire die down, he cranked the truck on and headed off down the road.
“Where do you think we should go?” he asked Remington. “Do we take our lives into our hands and go back into Bangor? I mean, who knows what the soldiers did to those people. The fact that they were shooting at us might have been perfectly justified. Or, should we…” It hit him like a thunderbolt out of the blue. The perfect answer. The most obvious damn solution. “We should go to Island Falls.”
Didn’t it make so much more sense for Anna to have gone back to her hometown rather than to his? Hell yes, it did. He dug through the glove compartment and smiled in relief when he found a map. Then, he turned the wheel and headed for Island Falls.
The drive didn’t take too long, much to his relief. There were only a few spots on the road where he’d been afraid that he’d get stuck, and the road signs, miraculously still in place, helped him find the place without too much trouble. He’d managed to get all the way through with the vehicle, the dog, and his sanity intact.
He remembered Anna telling him that it was a small town, but as he drove in, he wasn’t even sure that town was the right word. It was more like a cute little village. Cute, but completely empty, as far as he could tell.
In fact, the place was a ghost town. Brad’s heart sank, even though he’d told himself the whole way there not to expect to find anything. The soldiers hadn’t destroyed anything, but there were no people in sight. Brad drove aimlessly, until he saw a sign for the street Anna had said that she’d lived on. He turned down it, remembering her story about the girl who’d been shot right in front of her.
He pulled up to a house that could well have been Anna’s, based on her descriptions. It had probably been a nice little home at one point, but neglect had taken it just as it had taken every other house on the street. He called to the dog and they walked up the cracked walkway and into the house.
The place had been looted, that much was clear the moment he walked in, but nothing had been damaged. For some reason, it made him feel better. He would have hated for Anna to lose the things she’d been so proud of, even if they wouldn’t do her any good anymore.
His breath caught in his throat as he saw the pictures hung on the wall. Sammy’s school pictures. This was the right house after all.
Alongside the pictures were examples of his artwork, each piece dated and framed. Apparently, the kid had always been pretty creative. There was a drawing called “My Friendly Monster” that showed real promise when it came to color theory. Another one wasn’t titled, but it seemed to involve some sort of car chase. There was also a helicopter involved. All of them were done in the boldest colors a kid could find in the crayon box.
The kitchen was empty and it had the grime that accumulated when a house sat empty for a long time, but other than that, it looked nice. There was a roll of paper towels in the holder over the sink. They had a print of blue teddy bears and little pink bows.
Brad smiled as he looked at them. It seemed so unlike Anna to have something so frivolous. He noticed gradually that the blue theme carried around the whole kitchen. It wasn’t overwhelming, but there were small, almost hidden touches of it all around the room. It was on the drawer pulls, the napkin holders on the small table, and on the towels that were hung near the sink.
He walked back out of the room. He guessed that the bedrooms were down the hall, but he stopped in the living room. It was one thing to snoop through someone’s house, but it became very strange knowing the people it was once home to.
Brad sat down on the living room floor and leaned back against the couch. He probably would have been more comfortable on the sofa, but he really wanted to be able to stretch his legs out. Brad pulled open one of the packs he’d brought in with him and pulled out a ration bar. He clicked his tongue and Remy joined him quickly. He broke the ration biscuit in half and shared it with the dog. His rations wouldn’t as far now, but he was past caring. It was better than going through the whole thing by himself.
Once they were done eating, he pulled the lighter from his pocket again, desperate to distract himself from the pain in his chest. He’d enjoyed being in the house at first, but now it felt like it was closing in on him. He would have sworn that Anna was just around the corner. That Sammy and Martha were just out in the backyard playing one of the crazy games they’d made up.
But they weren’t and he felt his throat start to tighten in spite of his desperate struggle to hold back the tears that wanted to come. If they started, he was afraid that they might not stop. He was simply overwhelmed, he told himself.
“And falling apart won’t help.”
Ordering himself around wasn’t doing much good. Neither was the lighter trick. He still sucked at it. In fact, he thought that he might have gotten worse.
Brad dropped the lighter with a smack and sighed. Yeah. He’d definitely gotten worse at it.
He leaned down and grabbed the lighter, flicking it open when his fingers brushed against something odd on
the hardwood floor.
It was a carving, hewn into the floor in that spiky lettering Brad knew so well. “S+A+M.” Below that was carved, “Nov 2026.”
Brad let out a shocked whoop that startled Remington into standing. Brad flung his arms around the dog and laughed. He laughed until he felt his throat tighten too much and the tears came. This time, he didn’t mind.
To be continued…
