After The Fires Went Out: Coyote (Book One of the Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Series) (51 page)

“Someone’s trying to steal my job,” I said, giving my blessing to letting the tension drop. There was no point in yelling at Justin for being an idiot; that never makes people any smarter, or at least that’s what all of my time spent on Matt has taught me. “We do need to figure out who’s been doing this.”

“I know who’s doing it,” Justin said.

“And?”

“Well... who else? Obviously it’s people from New Post.”

“Why is that obvious, exactly?” Graham asked. “You said they came from the north... not the south.”

“Look,” Justin said, “I don’t want to be prejudiced...”

“Just say it,” I said.

“They have a hundred and fifty people down there and we have no idea how they’re feeding themselves.”

“That’s true.”

He seemed surprised that I didn’t attack him. “So who else could it be?”

“There could be dozens of people hiding out around here that we don’t know about,” Graham said. “You just don’t know for sure.”

“We’ve got boxes of electronics from Silver Queen,” Justin said. “I’m sure there’s a camera in there somewhere.”

“If only we had inventory lists,” Graham said.

“I guess we’ll have those lists soon enough,” I said. “Right Justin?”

“Right,” Justin said. “I’ll talk to Rihanna.”

“Stop blaming someone else for your fuck up. You want to lead, don’t you? Then learn to be a goddamn leader.”

Justin didn’t respond. For once I think he knew he had no leg to stand on. If only he’d realize that he was legless most days of the week.

But I didn’t need to take shots at Justin Porter. I needed to do my job.

“Let’s go take a look at this stove,” I said. “Lisa’s not the most patient woman on the planet.”

No one argued with me on that.

Today is Wednesday, January 2nd.

Sara’s moved back into Lisa’s room. I guess that’s to be expected.

So instead of Sara, I’ve taken Sara’s new inventory to bed with me two out of the past three nights (the middle night having been taken up babysitting new year’s drunks), and I haven’t figured out what to do.

Some of her scenarios seem less inevitable now; New Post won’t be starting fights now that we have the Marchands on our side, and I don’t think Justin’s about to pack up and leave with half the supplies at McCartney Lake. But that leaves two scenarios, one that’s all “rainbows and unicorns” as Sara had called it, and one that was more possible and pretty bleak. She’d titled that other scenario “no crops possible”.

No crops. If we didn’t find the right equipment. If we didn’t get more fuel. If we just couldn’t figure out how to do things properly. If we did everything else right and the weather sucked.

There were too many paths that ended in no crops.

And we’ve wasted so much time being shot at and almost blown up...

Usually, when there’s a problem, Sara and I have a way to come up with a solution. We go for a walk together, or we sit on the porch together, or we lay in bed together until the wee hours of the morning.

But Sara and I are broken.

I told her at breakfast that we needed to come up with a plan for getting the farming on track. She told me I need to handle it myself.

I’m in no position to get mad at her for that.

So I took a walk up the road, but with Graham and Lisa instead. They held hands like high school sweethearts, and I held back the urge to vomit.

I wish I knew how to fix things with Sara.

“There’s equipment all over the place,” Lisa said. “Aren’t there farms along 652?”

“Not really,” Graham said. “There’s very little on this side of the river, at least north of Twin Falls. And diesel or gas tractors won’t help us; we’re so low on fuel we’ll need electric. Even on the other side of the river, electric farm equipment isn’t that easy to find.”

“We could go about this another way,” I said.

“We could leave?” Lisa said with a smirk.

“We could accept that we need to use diesel for now. I’m sure there must be a place around here that hasn’t been tapped for fuel yet.”

“It’s not like we’re going to know where to look,” Graham said. “And even if we find the fuel, we still need a pull type combine, a cultivator...”

“So let me ask you,” I said. “If we took the risk and went across the river, how long would it take us to find everything we need?”

“It could take weeks.”

“Weeks?”

“Getting a tractor is easy enough, but everything else is tougher. We need homesteader equipment, not huge fuel-guzzling machines meant for ten-thousand-acre agribusinesses; they don’t have much of the little stuff around here.”

“We’d be better off looking for a self-sustaining homestead,” Lisa said.

“Or preppers,” Graham said. “I guess that’s Detour Lake.”

“I don’t think they’d be willing to share any equipment,” I said.

“They wouldn’t have much. It’s not like you can grow crops up there.”

“So we need to find some prepper nutjobs, but not
those
prepper nutjobs...”

“Good thing Kayla isn’t here,” Lisa said. “She’d kick you in the berries for that. She’d tell you, bub... preppers aren’t crazy, it’s everyone else who was crazy for not believing in creating a self-sustaining colony of blah, blah blah...”

“That’s it,” I said. “I need to talk to Fiona.”

I starting jogging back towards the cottage.

I remembered Fiona’s dream, that by the time she was sixteen she’d be living off-the-grid with other artists.

I remembered that she’d told me there were places like that right near us.

Everyone had gathered in the dining room before Lisa and I had even gotten our boots off.

“They call it Helena,” Fiona said, “It’s south of here, I think.” She pointed her finger to a blank spot on the map we’d spread out across the table. “Somewhere around here.”

“There’s nothing around there,” Kayla said.

“I don’t recognize the name,” Sara said. “Are you sure it’s called Helena?”

“It’s named for a Finnish painter,” Fiona said. “She was the first female painter or something... apparently the area was settled by Finns. But they’d all moved away, and it was a ghost town up until a few years ago.”

“Ahh... I think I know it,” Sara said. “Arpin... south of Norembega. One of the old farming communities that didn’t last.”

“That’s probably it,” Fiona said. “I remember reading that the land was farmed once before. I think I still have it on my tablet. I’ll go get it.”

She ran upstairs.

“I’ll bet no one’s gone down that way,” Graham said.

“New Post might have,” Lisa said.

“Ant and I went down that way once,” I said. “Norembega was hit pretty badly by The Fires; there wasn’t much worth scavenging. I’ll bet the road south of there hasn’t been cleared.”

“If they were really off the grid,” Sara said, “is it possible that someone’s still out there?”

“It’s possible,” Lisa said. “And it’s also possible that Helena is just as burnt to a crisp as Norembega.”

“Let’s be lucky this time,” I said. “I’d like a change of pace.”

Fiona came running back down the stairs, holding her tablet up to her nose. I was surprised she didn’t trip halfway down.

“This is the place,” she said. “They had over two dozen people living there. I used to chat with one of the guys who lived there.”

“You did?” Matt asked, roused from his drooling stupor. “Who was this guy?”

“I dunno... just some artsy guy. He’d have been cute if he’d washed and cut his hair.”

“Good thing they’re a bunch of artists,” I said. “I’d be more intimidated if it was a colony of survivalists.”

“I’m sure they could be both,” Lisa said.

“They’d have to be if they’re still out there,” Sara said.

“So Graham and I should go,” I said. “We’ll take the cart up there to take a look. Once we know what that road looks like at Norembega, we can figure out if we can get a truck all the way down there.”

“I want to go,” Fiona said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“But if there’s people there I might be able to help talk to them.”

“We can deal with them,” I said.

“But if Rasheed is there... I can convince them to help us.”

I could hear Sara chuckling. “You’d better go along, Fiona,” she said. “We don’t want Baptiste killing all your artist friends.”

“Maybe I should go, too,” Matt said.

“You’ve got work,” I said. “You promised the Porters that you’d help them with their monitoring.”

“That can wait.”

“No, it can’t. I need someone over there I can trust.” I couldn’t believe that I’d just said that.

Matt’s face widened with a big grin. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.” He looked over to Fiona and smiled.

She smiled back.

I felt a tinge of jealousy... which was ridiculous. I took a deep breath.

“Let’s get moving,” I said. “We’ll need to get that cart switched over to being a sled. And I’d like to be on the road before lunchtime.”

“Then you’d better get your ass in the kitchen,” Fiona said. “We have sandwiches to make.”

It didn’t take us long to switch the cart wheels for runners. We were on our way just about the same time we started getting hungry for the sandwiches.

The road to Arpin was blocked just south of Norembega by a downed tamarack. Graham, Fiona and I couldn’t move it on our own, so Graham figured out a way to get the mare involved, detaching the center shaft and jimmying up a contraption that looked like a cross between a net and a plow. The whole operation took him less than half an hour, and it’s times like that when I realize just how much he brings to the team.

We ran into a few more downed trees and other debris on the untravelled road, but there was nothing we couldn’t shove aside or pull around, and by late afternoon we reached a painted wood gate, a rather strange collection of red, gold, and white vertical planks with “Helena” slapped across it in blue.

The gate was closed but unlocked, and the trail behind it was just as unmarked as the road from Norembega. It looked like no one had come or gone since the snow had first fallen back before Christmas.

“Looks pretty empty,” I said to Fiona. “You may be wasting your time out here.”

“I’m still glad I’m getting a chance to see it,” she said. “Even if it’s long forgotten.”