Regan Wolfrom - After The Fires Went Out - Coyote

As we passed the next road junction I noticed more tracks heading south.

“There’s other traffic here,” I said. “Probably The Souls. Helmets.”

Kayla passed me a helmet before she put hers on. “I hope you’re just being paranoid.”

“I’m not sure you can be paranoid when the whole world’s out to get you.”

We reached the end of the road. The tracks stopped.

I stopped the truck.

“Looks like they turned around,” I said. “But there’s supposed to be a turnoff.”

“There isn’t.”

“Check the map.”

“The map is wrong.”

“What?”

She handed me the tablet.

“There’s no road here,” she said. “Maybe there was a road at one point, like a couple of ruts or something…but it’s long gone.”

“We’ll have to get that much closer to Matheson.”

“Do we know what’s there?”

“Can’t be anything good. It’s too close to Timmins to be left alone. It’s no wonder The Souls seemed to know they were coming.”

“If that’s true, they’ll see us coming.”

“We’ll find another way.”

I switched the aerial view, and zoomed in.

“Machinery road,” I said. “Right there.” I pointed to a small line of brown the led all the way to 101.

“We don’t have a plow anymore. We’ll get stuck.”

“We might. Better than getting seen.”

“This truck weighs like a ton.”

“Well…it’s a one ton truck, but it probably clocks in at almost five thousand kilos.”

“If it gets stuck we can’t just push it out.”

“That’s true.”

If we got stuck, we’d be stuck. The only way to pull a one-ton truck out of trouble was with another truck. And we only had the one.

“We’re going to have to risk it,” I said.

“The machinery road?”

“Getting seen. For all we know, we’ve already been seen. Or no one was seen, and they keep that roadblock ready 24/7.”

I carefully turned the truck around and we headed back.

We took the other road heading south, following the tracks which now seemed to have belonged to the Marchands and Tremblays et. al.

We reached 101. I could see that The Fires had burned every tree and building along the well-plowed two-lane highway. I wasn’t sure if I should be relieved, if scorched earth and skeletons of pine and birch was a sign that there was no one there to spot us.

We turned left and headed toward the blockade.

It would be less than ten minutes before we met the first roadblock.

“We’ll need to surprise them,” I said. “Do you see a way to get close to 572 without being seen?”

Kayla peered over the tablet. “Another machinery road. I doubt they’re even guarding it.”

“They might not have to, depending on if there are any trees left over there.”

“No good?”

“I didn’t say that. Where do I go?”

“Turn right on Birch Road.”

“Where’s Birch Road?” I asked. We couldn’t rely on a legible sign still standing, not when everything else had burned away.

“Not this next one…the one after it.”

I kept driving to the next junction.

“This one’s plowed,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure.”

I took the gravel road toward the south.

“Now turn left,” she said at the next intersection.

The plow had turned left, too, leaving the other two directions to the snow.

I could see the green of living trees pushing through the black and gray stalks of dead pine.

Then I saw a yardsite.

“See any smoke coming from those buildings?” I asked.

“Yeah…I see some…”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Goddammit. That’s why they’ve plowed.”

The road curved up ahead, around what looked to be a lake.

“There’s a couple houses on this lake,” Kayla said with her gaze on the tablet. “Looks nice.”

“Looks like the perfect place for murderers to kick back and relax.”

“Oh…crap…”

“I need you to be honest with me, Kayla. Do you know how to shoot?”

She nodded. “My ex used to take me hunting. Wanted me to learn how…I never did hit anything.”

I stopped the truck. “Your turn to drive.”

As Kayla took the wheel I checked the Mossberg; I was saving the C12 for the roadblock. Or I was hoping to save it.

“We’ll drive right on by, like we belong here,” I said. “Speed up a little so it looks like we’re used to the road.”

“What if they start shooting?”

“We keep going. It’s not that easy to hit a moving truck from a good ways away.”

“But they’ll come after us.”

“They might. We’ll keep with the plan. We reach the machinery road, ditch the truck, and head toward the junction. Believe me, Kayla, there are enough Souls at the roadblocks that a couple more on our tail shouldn’t make that much of a difference.”

“You’re just oozing with confidence right now…”

“I’m expecting the worst and hoping to be pleasantly surprised.”

Kayla took us past the first yardsite. There was one pickup truck in the yard.

Nothing stirred.

We drove past the second yardsite. Smoke in the chimney, but no vehicles out front.

I had a feeling that the residents had rushed up to the roadblocks when they heard there was a big fish in the net.

The fact that they hadn’t come back yet meant that there was a chance the shooting hadn’t started.

We rode the bend around the lake and the road started to straighten out.

And then I saw the pit.

We’d arrested a man for scavenging back in the days of the Protection Committee, back when we’d considered scavenging illegal and not the only way to stay alive.

He’d told me about the big pit; he hadn’t been the first to mention it. He’d said that he and and the rest of his work crew had been ambushed on Highway 11 that November, on their attempt to make it home to North Bay. He’d said that Souls of Flesh had taken them out to an open mine.

To a pit that was filled with the rotting remains of other men.

“This is where you’ll die,” the Sergeant-of-Arms had told the men. “The only question is how long it will take.”

They were surveyors, the prisoner had told me, but that had been enough for them to be considered agents of a foreign government in the eyes of the Sergeant-of-Arms. One by one the men were interrogated, and one by one they had given nothing that had satisfied The Souls.

All three surveyors were chained up in the pit, he’d told me, chained by the ankle to eye screws, drilled and epoxied into the bedrock.

The Souls left them there to die.

It wasn’t cold enough to die of exposure. They had to wait to die of thirst.

The prisoner told me that he waited for three days, and by that point he’d started to hallucinate.

And someone came to see him. An angel, he said, a beautiful woman with blond hair so light that it was almost white. And she cut his chain and freed him, and she left a dead man in his place.

And she gave him a backpack full of supplies and she told him to run.

I’d never believed his story. Not all of it, at least.

He hadn’t been the first to mention her, but everyone knew that the legendary Dalya Blue didn’t exist. There was no angel rescuing men from the pit. If anything, the men who’d been spared had given something to The Souls, something that made them unworthy of ever being allowed back into society.

We’d released him, but only because we’d made sure he’d kept on his way to the West.

I don’t know if he ever made it someplace.

“Are there people down there?” Kayla asked as we drove by.

There were. Dozens if not hundreds of bodies.

From up on the road I couldn’t see the chains.