Regan Wolfrom - After The Fires Went Out - Coyote

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“If they knew who you are, they would have known that you wouldn’t be an easy target. Once they saw us coming up the road they must have decided not to take on an even larger group. I’ll bet they’re a little scared of you, Baptiste.”

“They have two assault rifles and an anti-aircraft gun, Livingston…even with my armour they could have turned me into confetti. Had I even been there.”

“I doubt that,” Dave Walker said. “I’m sure you would have taken one or both of them with you.”

“They’re not about to risk being wiped out,” Livingston said.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “They lose a guy at the airport, and now there’s just two of them? Ryan Stems decides to cross the Driftwood River and start a war with just two of his closest friends?”

“Who knows?” Livingston said.

“Well we have no proof either way that it was Stems,” Dave Walker said. “Not yet.”

Not until I ran into the man in the coyote helmet.

“Is that what this roadblock is for?” I asked. “Are you hoping they’ll just fall into this clever little net of yours?”

“It’s not a roadblock,” Walker said. “Not yet.”

“We were actually trying to figure out if you were worth saving,” Justin said.

“You guys’ve been here all night?” I asked.

“The truck’s been here all night,” Rihanna said. “We don’t really have enough diesel to be tromping around the district. But Fisher drove us home last night.”

I wasn’t pleased with the first-name basis. “So how did you get back? Don’t tell me Livingston stayed the night.”

Rihanna chuckled. “You didn’t notice our little shitbox,” she said. She pointed to their little electric car parked a little up the road. I noticed a familiar idiot sitting in the front seat.

“And you brought Matt,” I said.

“He wouldn’t stay put.”

Say what you will about Matt, he still seems to want me to like him, enough that he’d want to help. Or perhaps he had just hoped to see my dead body for himself.

“Don’t tell me you guys were actually planning on coming back for me,” I said.

“We weren’t going to leave you there,” Livingston said.

“You’d have loved that, eh, Livingston? Saving my ass so I can’t keep telling you to kiss it?”

“That was one of the perks.”

I shook my head. “I appreciate the idiotic sentiment.” I looked back to the little rusted Honda. “I’ve got to take those girls home.”

None of us spoke much as we made our way south towards the Girards.

I had Natalie take the extra long way around Cochrane, since I didn’t have the energy to deal with whatever we might find in town.

I knew I had to deal with the two remaining Spirit Animals, assuming that there wasn’t still a coyote to make three. It wasn’t about revenge for what they’d done to Natalie and Tabitha; those men would strike out again at someone…probably not us, not yet…but someone.

I won’t be able to sit by and hope someone else kills them first.

At one point I’m pretty sure I could hear Tabitha snoring, and I was glad that one of us was getting some sleep.

“I need to ask you,” Natalie said to me as we neared Bondy Lake.

“What is it?”

“Would you ever consider letting us come live with you?”

“Why would you want to do that? You have your family.”

“I don’t want to be with my family.”

“Hold on…when you were on your way to see us…were you hoping to move in with us?”

She started to cry. “I don’t know how Antoine feels about me…but I’ve always wondered if he loves me.”

“I don’t ― ”

“I don’t expect you to know if he actually loves me,” she said, giving me a warm smile. “I just want a chance to ask him.”

I knew Natalie didn’t want to go back home to her family, but where she hoped to go instead was a place that no longer existed, not the way she wanted it to be.

I had to tell her that.

“I need to tell you something,” I said.

“What?”

“Why don’t you pull over for a minute so it’s easier to talk.”

I waited until the car was stopped; I then reached over and pulled out the keys.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“It’s about Ant,” I said. “We lost him.”

“What do you mean you lost him? Where did he go?”

“There was an accident, Natalie…Ant didn’t make it.”

She collapsed against my shoulder, pounding her fists against me. Then she started to weep.

And I wept, too.

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt worse for anyone.

I don’t know why that is.

Today is Tuesday, December 18th.

Justin and Rihanna stopped by just before lunch, their two kids in tow. My first thought was to try and figure out how to keep them from staying over to eat, but Fiona seemed perfectly happy adding a few extra mouths, so we extended an invite and they accepted.

I can’t tell if they’re trying to win me over.

Having somewhat reliable electricity with the new solar plant has made a big difference for how we eat. Last year we had one small upright freezer on the geni, and we treated the microwave like a luxury item, only using it when we had no other choice; that meant the most meals were planned to provide just enough, with no expectation of leftovers, and oftentimes that actually ended up being not quite enough for everyone.

But now Fiona always makes extra at dinner, and seals the remainder into one of over a hundred unused plastic food containers in our stockpile, adding the date and her own four-star rating before shoving it into one of the three chest freezers we now have on the go in the basement.

So while she still loves to cook, or at least she tells me she does, there’s about a 50/50 chance these days that lunch will be “a la carte”, as she puts it, and we’ll all just grab our own entree from the freezer and wait our turn to heat it up. We should probably bring over a second microwave.

The Porters are lucky that today happens to feature a fresh meal of grilled cheese sandwiches and cream of vegetable soup.

We sat down around the long pinewood table, and with the four Porters we filled up every chair but Ant’s.

By now everyone seemed to have gotten used to what had happened yesterday, but I could still tell that there was a strange reverence for me from a few people that I didn’t really deserve. I tried to keep the details of what happened unsaid, particularly when Kayla and Fiona were around…I just said that there were two girls who were stranded up there, and left it at that. I know there’s something patronizing about my urge to cover things up, but I’m not sure I’m sorry for it.

“So there’s a reason we stopped by,” Justin said as he eyed me eating my soup.

“I figured,” I said. “I just assumed it was something about Silver Queen Lake.”

“Yup…”

“I haven’t really had a chance to process it all. Right now I’m having trouble imagining how we can get at those supplies without exposing ourselves too much.”