After The Fires Went Out: Coyote (Book One of the Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Series) (13 page)

I made my way up the road for about a klick and a half before stopping to wait for Graham, far enough that they wouldn’t be able to see the cart or hear the hooves. It was dark and the stars were coming out; I knew that everyone back at the cottage would start to worry about us soon. I gave Lisa a call on the handheld and told her that Graham was talking to Dave Walker; I didn’t bother mentioning Livingston or the exploding tire.

It had started to get colder with the sun down and the wind picking up. It wasn’t bad anywhere under the vest or my helmet, but even with the riot suit on I was starting to get a chill in my thighs.

I gave it a good half hour before I started to think about heading back to pick Graham up. I could still see the lights from the van in the distance; they hadn’t gone anywhere.

For a moment I wondered if something bad could have happened to him, but that seemed like a stretch. I’m pretty sure neither of those two would think of messing with Graham, not just because he’s protected and packing, but because they know I’m not that far away.

After another few minutes I turned the cart around and started toward the lights. As I came about a klick away, I saw the van moving away, heading back toward the south. Another light came on, the bluish glare of a headlamp.

By the time I reached Graham, he looked half-frozen; it was a wet cold hanging in the air tonight, and that’s probably the hardest to keep off of you.

But he’s still a wimp. What, do they have palm trees in Illinois?

He climbed up and sat beside me on the bench.

“So what’s the story?” I asked as I got us moving again.

“Livingston doesn’t like you very much.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Any idea what they were really doing out here?”

“No idea. The only thing I know is that they’re hiding something. I asked them point blank for a ride, and they said they didn’t have time. No time to take me up the road?”

“They had something they didn’t want you to see.”

“I heard what they had... in the back. I heard someone coughing.”

“Someone from New Post?”

“How should I know?”

“Well why else would they want to keep it a secret?”

“They have plenty of people already,” Graham said. “I’ve heard the Walkers have over three hundred indentures working for them.”

“Bullshit. Where the hell would they find three hundred idiots dumb enough to sign their lives away?”

“From all over the district. Even further. They may have brought people over from as far away as Kapuskasing.”

“I doubt Stems is pleased about Walker taking people from his fancy new nation.”

“Justin told me that they’re hoping to start exporting food to Souls of Flesh in Timmins... or down to Sudbury, even.”

“That’ll give them some powerful friends,” I said.

“Yeah. All on the back of their indentures. The world’s starting to look like the middle ages again. Manors and serfs. Well, worse, really.”

“Then I guess it’s no surprise Livingston’s in the middle of it. He couldn’t find any more babies to kill, so now he’s turned to slave trading.”

“A little harsh. You know it was an accident.”

“He killed those people, Graham. Led them out into the middle of nowhere and let them burn. You can call that criminal negligence or whatever you want, but they’re still dead because of that asshole. And I’m not about to forget that.”

Graham shook his head. “I don’t know what happened on that road, and I don’t know how Livingston could have made it out alive if everyone else was killed by the fires. But believe me... I could tell that Livingston’s not the one to worry about. It’s Dave Walker’s show... all the way.”

“Then they should both have their throats slit.”

“Yeah, whatever... I just want to get home and have dinner. Apologizing for you has made me pretty hungry.”

“You didn’t apologize --”

“I’m kidding.” He gave me a laboured sigh, before turning to stare off toward a line of trees at the side of the road, his headlamp bouncing against the fir needles.

We passed through the gate, Graham hopping off to let us through.

“We’re so late I think we’ll both go hungry,” Graham said as he retook the seat beside me.

“Oh, they'll keep dinner warm for me,” I said as I pulled off my helmet. “I'm the motherfucking king.”

Graham laughed even though I’m sure he didn’t want to. “You still need to fix this. I’m not just talking about Livingston. You’re not making any friends with the Walkers on this.”

“Dave Walker probably doesn’t like me pointing out that he’s a coward and a thief.”

“I don’t know why these imaginary boundaries are so important to you. We go scavenging all the time in Cochrane, yet somehow you think you have a right to everything within ten miles of our place. I wonder what the guys at New Post think of these rules of yours.”

“I know we can’t enforce it. Not a hundred percent. But we’re not like everyone else; you and I are outsiders here and that makes a big difference. We need that buffer to show these people we can’t be pushed around.”

“You know what we need? We need to keep some allies around here. No one's going to put up with us if you keep shooting out tires.”

“Don’t fret. We'll drop off a nice bottle of booze for the Walkers at Christmas. That should smooth things over a little.”

“I frickin’ hope so.”

“Buck up, sugarpie,” I said with a grin.

“You think that’s funny? You know... I’m getting really sick of this.”

“Sick of what, exactly?”

“You’re out of control, Baptiste. Making threats, shooting at people...”

“Fuck, Graham... I didn’t shoot at anybody.”

“Seriously?”

“I needed to show them that they can’t push us around.”

“You didn’t need to do anything. You want people to think you’re tough? Too late. They already know that. So maybe now you should focus on getting people to not hate your guts.”

“I don’t need any more friends.”

“You’re not going to keep any of the ones you have if you keep acting like this. Starting with me, Baptiste.”

I shook my head at him.

“I’m not joking,” he said. “I can’t trust you when you do things like that. It’s too much.”

“You’re right.” He had a point. I was already starting to realize how embarrassed I’d be if Sara were to find out how I’d acted. “I went too far... I get that. Sometimes I lose perspective on this stuff.”

“It’s a problem.”

“I know. That’s why you’re here. You balance us out, make people think we’re not so bad. That’s why we’re a team, Graham.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “That’s why I respect you.”

“Yeah... okay. Just... just tone it down, alright? I need to know I can count on you.”

“You can count on me, Graham. You should know that by now.”

“Yeah... okay.” He turned back to the trees.

I didn’t ask him not to tell anyone about the tire; I just hoped he’d only tell Lisa.

I was starting to feel the shame again.

We reached McCartney Lake a couple of minutes later. Lisa was waiting for us when we arrived.

I stopped the cart and looked over at Graham, waiting to see what was going on between them; I can’t say I wasn’t curious.

“You’re late,” she said.

Graham hopped down and walked over to her. “Blame Baptiste.”

“I always do.”

Graham gave her a hug and then a kiss. “I love you,” he said to her.

They kept kissing.

I climbed down the cart and hurried inside.

I really didn’t need to see that kind of thing right before dinner.

Today is Sunday, December 9th.

When I was growing up, so a long time ago, I used to watch all those movies about the end of the world. I stayed away from anything with zombies, partly out of respect for my father, but also because that shit is just so stupid.

But everything else was fair game.

I remember some of those movies pretty well. Most of them had Kevin Costner in them for some reason, and most of them were all kinds of suck. People would mope around starving and getting sick... that or they would just go out and murder each other. It was like those were the only two settings available for post-apocalyptic societies, sad sack or crazy-eyed killer. The end would come and civilization would drain away in an instant, people forgetting to bathe and wash their clothes, even forgetting how to use a goddamn fork at the dinner table.

None of it made any sense; I think the entire genre was just a refuge for wooden characters and plot holes you could drive a tractor-trailer through. I couldn’t get into any story where there wasn’t a plausible attempt to explain just how things got so messed up in the first place. Something more concrete than “global warming” or “monkey pox”, something that set up a little thread of how we got from normal to fucked in X number of years. You’d be surprised how rare that kind of explanation is.

But there was one movie I liked, or at least it was better than the one about the mutant with fish gills or the one where Denzel Washington carries a crime-fighting bible. It was called
Testament
, and while it did have a little bit of Kevin Costner in it, it didn’t suck like the others. It just made the end of the world suck.

In it the world ended with a nuclear war, and people began to die from the radiation, starting with the little kids. There weren’t any grand adventures, or bad guys on Jet Skis, or idiot-savants with homemade helicopters. There was just an endless stream of bad things happening and no way to stop them from coming no matter how hard you tried. It’s not like the main character actually has the power to fix the end of the fucking world.

In real life things happened differently than it did in any movie, but my world still ended. Things started spiraling out of control until one day we realized that we were on our own.

I’d come to Cochrane for the same reason I’d gone to every other little nowhere in Ontario, to consult on community safety, as if the problems in small towns are anything like what we’d done in big bad Toronto. I’d shown up and given my presentation, and then an army reserve regiment closed both highways to Timmins. I wasn’t going to make my flight home.

And things went downhill from there.

Over the next couple of days they called a state of emergency provincewide, to deal with the riots in Toronto. They transferred out pretty much all of the local police detachments, sending them down to reinforce the crowd control on Yonge Street.

I’d known the moment our airport shuttle was turned back that the chaos wasn’t temporary. There wouldn’t be any more police, or government, and there definitely wasn’t going to be any more fuel shipped in. Whatever we had now was all we could hope for, and we knew that eventually what we did have would run out.

That all happened before the comet had even reached us, before they’d even tried (and failed) to divert the thing. The world was falling apart ten months in advance.

Cochrane didn’t have it too bad at first, better than places like Timmins, where the wrong people took over, or Iroquois Falls, where they learnt first-hand just how bad cholera can get when you mix shitting and drinking. We worked together and tried to keep people safe, and for a while it seemed to be working.

But things got worse and people started to die, not character actors and reams of underpaid extras, but real people like Fiona’s father, who used to coach her in hockey and had actually met Don Cherry at a restaurant in Montreal once, and Ant’s older brother who used to drive an old Mustang and taught him everything he knew about being the centre of attention, and Sara’s two little sisters who served as joint maids of honour at her wedding and three years later as joint shoulders to cry on during her divorce.

Those people and a crapload more are dead now, from disease, from The Fires, or by the hands of people who didn’t have their own supplies but did have their very own guns.

But I think it’s worse not knowing what happened to the people you love. Obviously the networks are down. Any phone that isn’t equipped to talk to European or Nigerian sats is a brick as far as calling anyone; my fancy phone’s useless since every satellite system on this side of the Atlantic has gone offline. Justin managed to get his hands on a phone that can reach the Nigerian array for voice-only on a good day, for a few minutes at a time, if he angles it right... but that hasn’t done much to get us out of the dark.