Regan Wolfrom - After The Fires Went Out - Coyote

“My Dad’s caught someone,” the girl said. “In the basement.”

“Shit,” I said.

The boy started to giggle.

I turned to Lisa. “Who’s staying here?” I asked. “You or Graham?”

“I can stay,” she said.

I turned back to the kids on the porch. “Wait here,” I told them.

I unlocked the chest near the door and pulled out a couple of vests and helmets.

Graham came up beside me. “Isn’t that overkill?” he asked.

“Not these days it isn’t,” I said.

He didn’t argue further as we both got dressed. Once we had our helmets on, we headed out the door.

“We’ll take the truck,” I said. It felt like the right kind of emergency.

When we arrived at the Porters I noticed nothing unusual on the outside. Graham stayed back in the truck with the kids while I went in first, making sure that there wasn’t anything amiss.

Justin and Rihanna Porter met me at the door. They looked shaken but okay.

“What happened?” I asked, lifting the visor on my helmet. “Where is he?”

“In the dining room,” Rihanna said. “Matt’s watching them.”

I rushed into the dining room without another word. The two thieves were bound to chairs with zip ties, Matt standing over them holding a hunting rifle. They were younger than I expected, a boy and a girl, both around Fiona’s age. The two of them were native and they looked completely terrified.

“They’re from New Post,” Matt said. “Those bastards have been robbing us blind.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

“The Porters asked for my help.”

“And you kept it all pretty quiet.”

“That’s my fault,” Rihanna said. “I thought we were being a little overzealous and I didn’t want to alarm anyone…but I guess you can see that we weren’t overreacting about New Post.”

I took a closer look at the prisoners, at the scrapes and cuts on their faces. “They’re bleeding,” I said. “What happened here?”

“There was a scuffle,” Matt said. “Not a big deal.”

“They’re kids, Matt…you do realize that?”

“They’re thieves,” Justin said. “We caught them with a bag filled with painkillers and first aid stuff.” He pointed to a canvas bag lying on the floor and the spilled loot beside it.

“More than just a box of salt,” I said. “So let’s take them home so their parents can deal with them.”

“I don’t think so,” Rihanna said.

“You have a better idea?”

“They stole some of our food and now they’re after our medicine. That’s a big deal.”

“And?”

“And they need to make it up to us. They need to bring it all back and then some.”

“Restitution,” Justin said.

I wasn’t sure I had reason to disagree.

I walked back out to the porch and waved Graham in.

“You’re making some pretty big assumptions if you think everyone at New Post isn’t in on it,” Matt said to me on my return.

“Don’t worry about me and my assumptions. Let’s worry about the fact that somebody actually thought it was a good idea to let you hold their rifle.”

“It all seems clear to us,” Rihanna said. “New Post has been stealing supplies from us for months.”

“You sure it’s New Post? And not just a couple of kids?”

Justin held up a tablet. “Sugar, salt, baking soda, olive oil, yeast…not what you’d expect a couple of teenagers to steal.”

I walked over and grabbed the tablet. “There’s something odd about this list.”

“Were you even listening to me?”

“No flour on the list. No rice, no beans, no potatoes…”

“Maybe those are next week’s targets,” Rihanna said.

“Maybe,” I said. “But if I had over a hundred mouths to feed, I’d be focused on the staples. Sugar and salt are nice to have, but I doubt they’re the most important things to be carrying back home.”

“So they probably have enough flour,” Graham said as he checked out the zip-tied kids. “Maybe they found some old grain…all they’d have to do is mill it.”

“They don’t have a mill,” Matt said. He looked over to me. “Right?”

“Not that we know of,” I said. “But they could be doing it by hand. But even then…everything else they’d need. I know they have some gardens at New Post, but they don’t have enough to grow it all.”

Justin walked over to the kids, almost shoving Graham aside. “So where do you get your flour?” he asked them.

Neither of the prisoners answered; I wasn’t surprised.

“You’d better start answering me,” Justin said. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

As if on cue, Matt pulled the rifle up to the boy’s head.

That was enough of that. “Give me the rifle, dipshit,” I said, holding out my hands.

He looked over at me and hesitated.

“You’re going to kill someone,” I said.

He passed me the rifle.

I switched the rifle to safe and laid it on the floor. I looked over to the two terrified kids.

“I’m sorry,” I said to them. “I’m sorry these guys have been acting like this. They’re just scared. We’re all a little scared.”

The boy was motionless, but I could see the girl give me a slight nod.

“It would help if you’d tell us what’s going on,” I said. “Obviously you guys are stealing from us, but I don’t really understand why.”

“Don’t bother,” Justin said. “These piece-of-shit indians haven’t said a word to us.”

“Seriously?” Graham said. “You’ve got a pretty big mouth when Lisa’s not here to kick your ass.”

“Easy, Graham,” I said. I turned back to give Justin a glare. “Strange…you’d think they’d want to tell all of their secrets to a bunch of thugs that want to beat the ever-living shit out of them.”

Justin didn’t answer.

I looked back towards the kids.

“Do you hit up a lot of other places?” I asked.

No answer.

“They’re like those goddamned coyotes,” Justin said. “They started off by circling us, nipping at our heels, just grabbing a few things here and there…not enough so we’d notice. Then they started getting desperate, less and less places to steal from…and they started coming back here more and more. And now we’ve got ‘em.”

“Why wouldn’t you just scavenge like the rest of us?” I asked them.

“We can’t,” the girl said.

The boy turned and stared at her.

She ignored him. “We don’t have enough fuel to find everything we’d need out there.”

“So you steal from us? Why wouldn’t you just come and talk to us?”

“How should I know?”

She had a point. If we wanted answers, we’d need to get them from the people in charge.

“They send their children to us,” Rihanna said. “They send kids because they know we won’t kill them.”

“They don’t know anything for sure,” Justin said.

“Either way,” Graham said, “it’s cowardly.”

“We deserve some kind of compensation for this,” Rihanna said. “We need to confront Gerald Archibald. No more pussy-footing around.”

“I know,” I said. “We’ll talk to them. Obviously.”

“We should hold these two here,” Justin said. “New Post brings back our missing supplies, along with a little extra for pain and suffering, and these kids get to go home.”

“That’s insane,” Graham said. “We’re not going to hold people hostage.”

“It’s not your decision,” Rihanna said.

“That’s true,” I said. “It’s my decision.” I did my best to make it a quick one. “We’ll hold them up at our cottage until morning…and then we’ll meet as a team and talk this out.”