Regan Wolfrom - After The Fires Went Out - Coyote

I knew he was right.

Once we reached the Porters’ cottage, I walked over to the wood door the led down into the cellar. The chain was completely off, curled up in the snow over a meter away.

“Goddamn it, Justin,” I said. “So what’s missing?”

“We don’t know for sure.”

“Then what do you think is missing?”

“Food. Apparently it’s a bag of sugar here or a box of salt there…if Rihanna’s right on her counts.”

“Come on,” Graham said, “do you really not know your own counts?”

“I don’t think we’re wrong. It’s just been hard to believe that someone would break in and steal one or two things every few days.”

“No one broke in,” I said, “since you don’t even know how to keep this place secure. Do you realize how much effort we’ve put into setting you guys up with this place? You had nothing when you got here…it doesn’t really look like you appreciate what we’ve given you.”

“What you’ve given us? Because we haven’t contributed at all, right? We didn’t bring back how many truckloads of supplies from Silver Queen Lake? I guess I should just drive that stuff over to the dump.”

“Don’t bother…just keep that cellar door wide open and someone else will empty your basement for you.”

“So we lock it up again,” Graham said. “And maybe we track down some wireless cameras or something to keep an eye on the approaches.”

“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.”