T Connor: Bitter Cold Apocalypse

Right now, getting Angie warm was my primary target. Anything else could wait. It would have to.

I dropped my backpack on a chair and made my way back outside, bracing myself against the suddenly cold air, to where Angie waited in the snow. Five minutes later I had Angie at the front of the cabin, and then in my arms. I carried her inside, laid her on the couch, and wrapped her in the quilts I found there.

“Okay, honey. There you go. Just give me a minute to get a fire going and warm it up in here. Then we’ll check your bandage and see how it’s looking.”

I made a quick route around the cabin, checking for anything I’d missed before, and realized that I’d missed something very important: a wood-burning stove in the kitchen. It was the kind that could be used as both a source of heat and a method of cooking, which made the oven seem rather extraneous, but I tossed that off as not my problem. I rifled through my backpack until I found a long-necked lighter and slipped it into my coat pocket. There was a stack of newspaper near the front door—presumably for this very purpose—and I shoved a handful into the oven.

Right. Wood. Must find wood.

“I’ll be right back. Just hang in there.”

I stepped quickly out onto the front porch of the cabin and found firewood on both sides, cut neatly and laid out here to dry. This was a covered porch, which meant the wood was actually still dry, and I grabbed an armful and rushed back toward the door. I was just trying to figure out how to get the door open with my arms full of wood when I was frozen in place by the ratcheting echo of a pump-action shotgun chambering a round.

“What the hell are you doing on my porch?” The voice behind me was low and rough, carrying an unmistakable threat.

“Okay,” I said, my heart in my throat. “Okay, just… don’t shoot. I’m moving real slow, here.”

I lowered the armload of firewood back onto the pile.

“I’m not armed.” I raised my hands and turned around very slowly until I was facing the road. “I don’t mean any harm. I’ve got an injured woman here, and I just needed some help. We found your cabin and I thought someone might be in here—someone who might be able to help.”

“So you decided to help yourself to my home, huh?”

The man was standing ten feet away, in the yard between the front porch and the thin line of trees at the roadside. He wore black tactical pants and a thick jacket of forest green camo. His pale face was red with wind burn and he wore a dark, moth-eaten beard. Heavy brows rose like mountains above the small pools of his sharp brown eyes, which held intelligence and hostility in equal parts. The full pack on his back didn’t seem to weigh him down at all, and he stood easy, the shotgun expertly cradled against one shoulder of his large frame.

This was not the look of a man who was going to be helpful, and I felt my muscles tense in readiness. If he meant to make trouble, he’d find it. I wasn’t going to let him anywhere near Angie until I knew we could trust him.

“Maybe I should shoot you where you stand for trespassing on my property.”

“We didn’t mean any harm,” I repeated, working to keep my voice calm. It wasn’t the first time I’d been held at gunpoint by an angry man who saw me as an intruder on his land. I knew the rules. Talk them down. Stay calm. Show them that they’re jumping to conclusions and that I’m not there to hurt them. “Just looking for some help.”

The stranger’s eyes narrowed. “You said you’ve got a wounded woman.” He motioned with his head toward the stretcher that lay in the snow near the front steps.

I nodded. “My wife.”

“Uh-huh. What happened to her?”

The shotgun stayed trained on my body, barrel steady, not weaving around in the slightest, and I cursed myself for having left my own gun in the house. What kind of soldier runs out into the snow without any way of protecting himself? I’d known there was a chance that whoever owned this cabin would find their way back.

I knew better than to let myself be caught out like this.

This guy had obviously had some experience pointing a weapon at people, too. My impression of him was growing less and less complimentary. I didn’t want him anywhere near Angie.

“We were attacked by a crazed black bear. Her leg is broken and she’s clawed up pretty bad. Our truck is dead and so are both our cell phones, so we had to walk. I thought I’d seen a cabin in this direction, and we came hoping we would find someone who could help.”

I was running out of words and this guy was just staring at me like he didn’t understand a word I was saying. Completely unhelpful.

Dammit.

“I just need to find a way to get her some help,” I continued, praying that he would understand. Praying that he would make some move—either to help or to attack. If he moved, I’d know who he was, what he was about. I’d know how to react.

The stranger stood without moving as I fell silent, his eyes narrowed as he processed my story. I held my breath, watching the man’s trigger finger, knowing I would have trouble getting out of the way if the guy decided to fire at me. Finally, though, the guy lowered his gun. I exhaled just as slowly, thinking that we might actually be getting somewhere.

“Your truck and your phones, huh? Tell me more about that.”

I didn’t know whether I could trust the guy, but I also didn’t have much choice. He had a gun pointed at me and my wife was inside his house, wounded and of little use to me when it came to things like backing me up in a firefight.

So I started talking. I told him about what had happened out there in the woods, and then about how we’d gone back to the truck to find that and our phones completely dead, for reasons that I still didn’t really understand—though I had guesses.

To my surprise, rather than arguing with me or asking for more details to this fantastical story, the guy nodded once and waved me into the house.

“Sit down,” he said, motioning toward where Angie was laying. He moved to put his shotgun on the hooks attached to the wall, and as he reached up, I saw a handgun under the bottom edge of his coat, maybe a Glock 29. I made a mental note of that, because it meant that although we had two guns—rifles—he was nearly as well-armed as we were.

And those were just the guns I knew about.

After unslinging his pack, the man went back out to retrieve the firewood I had started to carry in. I watched him move, observing the way he carried his large bulk and cataloging any potential weaknesses or vulnerabilities.

Hey, old habits died hard.

The large man seemed to favor his left side when he walked—a barely discernible shortening of his step, probably from an old injury that had never fully healed. I never would have noticed it if I hadn’t been specifically looking, but once I saw it, my brain immediately started thinking of ways to take advantage of it. Other than that, the man seemed strong and fit. Given his comfort with the cold and the way the cabin was set up, I thought he was probably accustomed to the rigors of off-the-grid living in a harsh climate.

This wasn’t a man who had just come out here on a vacation, or on a whim. It would be difficult to take him by surprise or find a weakness that had anything to do with the environment—if he turned out to be our enemy. I still hadn’t decided about that part.

As the man put the pieces of wood in the stove, he grunted, “So, electronics don’t work. Anything else unusual?”

“The animals.”

He gave me a doubtful look from beneath a heavy brow. “One angry bear that could have been protecting her cub…”

“It was alone. And it was already riled up when we found it. Before that, we saw a bird fall out of the sky like it was stunned.”