After The Fires Went Out: Coyote (Book One of the Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Series) (44 page)

Graham made some kind of growl and shoved me square on my shoulders. I felt my head strike the wooden staircase.

“Don't start something with me,” I said as I took position with my fists out.

“You're right. I've seen what you're capable of. I don't want to end up like Marc Tremblay. People seem to keep dying around you, Baptiste.”

He turned away again, and I didn't say a word as he walked back up the basement steps. I looked up the stairwell to see Lisa waiting for him at the top. I’m sure she heard some of it.

I found an old wood step stool and sat down. I wasn’t ready to go upstairs, not yet. I wasn’t ready to face any of them.

 

Sara chaired the meeting between the seven of us, apparently hoping that if everything seemed official that we’d all spend less time yelling across the table at each other.

We all sat around the pinewood table, Sara at one end and Graham at the other, and the rest of us clustered around them based on our little orbits, Fiona and I on one side and Lisa at the other, with Matt and Kayla smack in the middle.

“Things might get a little heated,” Sara said. “I know a lot of us have pretty strong opinions on the topic of whether to stay or go. So let’s all raise our hands like in school, without any interrupting.” She said it in a half-joking way, but I think everyone knew not to fuck with her. “I’m going to start.”

Graham raised his hand.

“You can go next,” Sara said. “All I really want to say is that we all have our jobs around here. I’m in charge of inventory and Fiona runs the kitchen. That doesn’t mean that Kayla can’t speak up if she thinks we’re too low on firewood, or that Matt shouldn’t care if we don’t have enough cutlery. But what it does mean is that each of us owns a specific part of our collective responsibilities... and in that one area that person will have the final say.”

Graham was shifting violently in his chair, but he held his tongue.

“Baptiste is in charge of security,” Sara said. “That’s his expertise and I don’t think anyone here truly questions that role. But we’ve had a series of incidents lately that have made us all a little uneasy.” She paused for a moment, biting her bottom lip. “Ant wasn’t doing the most he could, and it killed him. Marc Tremblay slipped and hit his head, and he didn’t make it, either.”

I glanced back to Graham. He was staring directly at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, if he was considering telling the truth about Marc and what had really gone on out there.

“We know what happened to the Girards,” Sara said. “And we have reason to believe that the same thing may have happened to the Smiths and the Lamarches. And now Ryan Stems is trying to close us in to this side of the river.”

“And Ryan Stems was able to sneak up on us,” Graham said. “And could have killed every last one of us if he’d wanted to.”

“Hold on, Graham... I’m almost done. Stems came when we were vulnerable, when maybe too many of us were away from the house at the same time. That’s something we’ll need to fix going forward.”

She nodded to Graham.

“I respect Baptiste,” he said, “I really do. He’s done a lot for all of us. Just as we’ve all done a lot for him. But it doesn’t matter how much you like or respect someone... if a situation is unsafe, it’s unsafe. Baptiste can’t change that, no matter how hard he works at it. It’s not safe here... so we need to find somewhere that is. It’s that simple.”

Matt spoke next. “I really don’t know who’s right on this,” he said. “Today was too close. Too fucking close. I don’t know what I would’ve done if something had happened to... the girls. Maybe that’s all of our screw-up, not just Baptiste. I should have been there --”

“The point?” I asked.

Sara scowled at me, but all I gave in return was a shrug of my shoulders. Someone had to remind Matt that we were all just humouring him.

“I think we should listen to Baptiste,” Matt said. “He’s the expert around here. He was on the Protection Committee so he’s got to have a better understanding of what we’re up against. If he says it’s not safe to leave... well, I believe him.”

For a second I almost felt bad for being hard on Matt; that happens sometimes, but usually he’ll remind me just a few minutes later why I want to hit him on the head with a mallet.

It was Lisa’s turn next. “If Baptiste wants us to listen, he needs to give us something to work with.” She looked straight at me. “If you have information that you’re not sharing, you can’t really blame us for not trusting your judgment.”

I knew Graham must have told her, and now she wanted everyone to know.

Fiona stuck her hand up, waving it much too eagerly.

Sara gave her a quick nod.

“That’s not fair, Lisa,” Fiona said. “Baptiste isn’t hiding anything from us. He’s not pretending that there’s no risk to staying here.”

I stood up as Sara nodded to me. “I’ll lay it out for everyone, okay? There’s no question that most of the families that left town and tried to make it to Temiskaming or Timmins or Aiguebelle were killed en route. The Protection Committee expected some violence, but we believed that it would be limited to a few incidents, and it wasn’t like we were going to force people to stay in Cochrane. We’d thought there were a handful of marauders at most. But reports were coming in much faster than we could check them. We revised our estimates upwards to the point that we believed that there were over two dozen armed groups in total, including The Souls and the Angels, most in and around Timmins and the rest along Highway 11. At their height, there were probably over one hundred marauders in the area, responsible for as many as fifteen hundred deaths.”

I heard the gasps from everyone as Graham rose to his feet. “How many marauders do you believe there are now?”

Sara bristled, but she didn’t intervene.

“There are probably six or seven groups left around Cochrane,” I said, “but I’ll bet half of those are copycats, and aren’t doing much killing. I think these three Spirit Animal crews with the Toyota technicals are the only major threat left within thirty klicks of Cochrane.”

“They’re a pretty big threat, aren’t they?” Graham asked.

“They are, but it’s no better farther down the highway. We know that Timmins is fully run now by Souls of Flesh. I’ll bet if it wasn’t for the Protection Committee having organized people into patrols in the early days, we’d’ve had them up here. That same thing probably happened in a lot of other towns. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the towns between here and North Bay are being run by criminal organizations.”

“What are you saying?” Sara asked. “Is there really nowhere left to go?”

I took a deep breath. “I don’t think there is,” I said.

“What about Temiskaming?” Kayla asked. “It’s safe there, isn’t it?”

“We don’t know... there’s nothing to prove that Temiskaming isn’t just as bad as everywhere else. If we could even get there.”

“They’re pretty quiet,” Matt said.

“What do you mean?” Sara asked. She’d apparently given up on any semblance of order.

“On the radio... in the Tremblays’ truck. If you scan the channels you only get a few groups here and there... and none of them talk about Temiskaming.”

“That doesn’t mean much,” I said, wondering why Matt was spending so much time playing with the radio. “I doubt people mention their location often enough for you to pinpoint it. And that radio is digital; you wouldn’t even pick up on any encrypted chatter.”

“You think people are using encrypted radio signals?” Lisa asked.

“We use them on our handhelds, right? And I’d guess The Souls are using them in Timmins... otherwise Matt would be picking up on their conversations. Same for Aiguebelle. You’d probably need an analog scanner to even notice the signal.”

“Well, there’s no mention of Temiskaming on shortwave, either,” Matt said. “Whenever they talk about us on the BBC or that news station out of Boston they talk about Toronto, obviously, but they also mention Ottawa and even Aiguebelle once in a while. But no Timmins, and no Temiskaming. It’s a black hole out here.”

“They talk about places that are getting aid,” I said. “They probably have people on the ground in Aiguebelle to distribute food or fuel, and a correspondent here and there. I don’t think they’d bother with a place as small as Temiskaming. It’s probably no different than the way it was in Cochrane before The Fires, just a few dozen families trying to hold on.”

“They’re out there,” Graham said. “And we can make it to Temiskaming if we go now, before the next attack.”

“They’re not going to attack,” Matt said. “They’re not strong enough.”

“They want to attack,” I said. “But they’ll wait until we let our guard down... until we stretch ourselves too thin.”

“Like this morning,” Lisa said. “We’re lucky it was Stems and not those assholes pretending to be him.”

“We got back in time... and I won’t let that happen again.”

“So you know they’re coming for us,” Graham said. “But for some stupid reason you still want to stay?”

“We’re stronger than they are,” I said.

“That’s not true.”

“Trust me. We play it safe and we wait. That’s our best chance.”

“I can’t let this go,” Graham said. “We aren’t safe here.”

“We should vote,” Kayla said.

“It doesn’t matter what everyone wants,” I said. “It matters that we stay safe.”

“We’re taking a vote,” Sara said. “But you’re still in charge of security, so you’re in charge of whether or not we stay. You’ll make the final decision.”

“Then what’s the point of voting?” Lisa asked. “He’s already made up his mind.”

“Someone make a motion.”

“I’ll do it,” Kayla said. “I move that we stay at McCartney Lake.”

“Okay,” Sara said. “There’s the motion. Show of hands... all in favour?”

I didn’t know what to expect. I raised my hand and watched as the other hands shot up, Fiona, Kayla and Matt, four against two.

“Motion carried,” Sara said.

“Tell me, Baptiste,” Graham said. “What would you have done if they’d all wanted to leave?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I don’t think I would have given up. I don’t think I’d ever be willing to take us on the highway.”

“So we’ll never agree.”

“We don’t have to agree on everything. I’m not against looking at this again in the spring.”

“Whatever,” Graham said.

“No, seriously,” Lisa said, “I cannot wait until the snow melts so we can talk and talk all over again while you just ignore us and do whatever the hell you want.”

“I think we should adjourn,” Sara said.

But by the time she’d said it Lisa and Graham had already left the dining room, on their way upstairs and away from the rest of us.

“It’ll blow over,” Kayla said.

“I don’t think it will,” I said.

“It has to,” Fiona said.

“I know.”

I left for my own room, and I think for the first evening since we moved into that cottage on McCartney Lake, the whole downstairs emptied out as everyone went to hide from everyone else.

 

Today is Friday, December 28th.

The weekly meeting was held at our place, which is exciting and wonderful pretty much if you’re Fiona and no one else. She’d baked up something she called a dutch baby, and she’d laid out the fancier plates, alongside cloth napkins folded in triangles.

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