August Ansel - Shadow Road

“After two days, he told me he had to go find someone. He left me. He gave me the gun.” Kory wept in earnest now, but silently. Arie put her arm around his shoulders.

“Come on,” she said, leading him to the steps. “Let’s go upstairs awhile. It’s been a long day already, and I could use a cup of tea.”

“Me too,” said Renna. “I’ll get the stove cranked up.” She went up ahead of them, favoring her bad hip on the risers.

“Give Renna a hand,” Arie told Kory. “She might need extra kindling split, yes? I’m right behind you.”

Kory scrubbed at his blotchy face with one sleeve and nodded, looking much relieved to have a task. “C’mon girl,” he said to the dog. Talus loped up the stairs and Kory clambered after her.

Arie drew alongside Curran and beckoned Handy close. Curran had resumed his frequency search. “Stay down here awhile if you want to,” she told him. “But not too long. We have no idea what kind of power storage he has here, and I don’t want to draw the batteries down dead.”

“Hell, I could sit in the dark and do this,” Curran said.

“No doubt, but Handy will need the light,” she said. She leaned close to her brother. “I want you to do a solid search down here,” she said. “They had food and supplies stashed everywhere else, but I have a hunch this room was Papa’s domain.”

“Looks like it.”

“Be quiet about it, though. We don’t need to rub it in the boy’s face that we’re digging. I want to keep his trust.”

“While we can,” said Handy. In the LED blaze, a few wiry strands of silver glimmered through his hair and beard and brows. The grind and spatter of radio static rose and fell as Curran moved the dial bit by careful bit. Upstairs, Renna laughed at something Kory said, and Talus woofed once.

“While we can,” she agreed. “But see what you can see.”

When Arie was upstairs and it was plain by their voices that Kory was occupied, Handy went straight to the lockers. The first two contained various work clothes and useful wearables: coveralls, a lined flannel shirt, dust masks, protective goggles, and a heavy canvas carpenter’s apron that had seen hard use. The third locker had been fitted out with three shelves. Each one was lined with notebooks—tall, short, spiral-bound, hardcover, some with whimsical designs on their covers and two with faux leather and gilt-edged pages. He pulled out the first, smallish with a mottled black-and-white face printed with the word “Composition.” He flipped it open. The flyleaf read, simply: Journal of Tom Wallace. The next page was covered top-to-bottom and side-to-side with the same block print, small but elegant.

“May 17, 2038

I’ve determined to make a record of our journey and the establishment of our new life…”

Handy riffled the pages; the whole notebook was filled. He plucked several more from the shelves at random, careful to replace them in the same order. There were thirteen in all, the pages dense with Tom Wallace’s account of their life. Twelve volumes were meticulously completed from cover to cover. The last journal ended about two-thirds of the way through with a mid-page entry. Handy read the entry with a miserable sense of déjà vu.

“April 4, 2050

Jaimee is in the ground. My head hurts, achy. So I’m getting it, too. Fuck. Kory doesn’t seem sick, not yet. Confused though. Scared. All over the radio they’re screaming about biol. attack. From where? Who? Sounds like N. America, all right. One channel, dude consistently taking cred. for everything, calm & steady asshole: strategic air/water/ground infection on a scale that can’t be real. Have to get down to Webbs—they’ll take care of K if I can’t. Will leave the rifle with my boy, in case.”

From the journals of Tom Wallace

May 17, 2038

I’ve determined to make a record of our journey and the establishment of our new life, here in the great state of New Hemings. Yes, we really made it. It’s unreal to write those words after all the planning, scheming, and busting our asses to get here. But we’re at our home place! Jaimee would laugh if she heard me call it that, since there’s not much more to it than any of the other rough places we camped in on our way north. A banged-up canvas tent, plus lots of rocks, trees, cold mud. Even this late in the spring, it’s chilly and wet. It’s supposed to warm up soon, but for now I really don’t care how much mud and fog we have. This piece of land is ours. OURS—it feels so freaking good to write those words. I felt it when Brandon Webb walked the boundary line with me last week, like something was coming right up from the land, up through the soles of my boots and grabbing me, tying me to it. Jaimee and I spent most of yesterday exploring and plotting, and today we got started sketching a floor plan for the house. She looked better today than I’ve seen her since we first left San Diego—it’s real now for her, too, I guess.

June 3, 2038

Fifteen trees felled and bucked. Sure enough, it’s getting warm just like Webb told me it would. There’ll be at least a little drying time before the build. Not sure yet how many more trees we’ll need, but there’s plenty on the land. Seems like Jaimee changes things around with the cabin plans six times a day, but I don’t care—she’s into it, heart and soul. The move was her idea to start with, but there was a point when we were on our way here I started thinking she’d back out. Don’t know what the hell I would have done if she’d changed her mind, and I didn’t have to find out.

She’s been back to her regular self since we pitched the tent, and it seems like the warmer weather flipped a switch in her. While we’re out bringing down timber, she’s everywhere at once—cooking meals, roaming the woods with her edible plant guide, and generally scoping out the land. The second day Webb and I came back from tree cutting we found her up to her chin in a hole, digging a latrine by herself! She’d worked out exactly the right spot, downhill from the spring and house, and just gone to it. Both her hands were blistered, but she wrapped them in clean rags and went back to it after we ate.

I was beat to hell after working trees, but I couldn’t sit on my butt watching my wife shovel the shit pit by herself. We took turns and damned if we didn’t have it dug out before full dark. I climbed out of the hole and was knocking dirt off the shovel when I heard the telltale sound. I turned around and there was my beautiful wife—pretty much raised in an Orange County country club—hanging her tail over the pit, taking the inaugural piss and grinning like a fool. I don’t remember ever laughing that hard. We crawled into the tent without even washing up and I’d bet we were both asleep before we landed. Love it here. Love her.

July 4, 2038

No rest for the weary around the Wallace homestead. Today felt weird, knowing it was a big holiday somewhere else, that back home they were firing up the gas grill and watching TV to see someone, somewhere, put a match to some fireworks. New Hemings has its own holiday, though—Nov. 3 is Sovereignty Day, and we can’t wait. True citizens!

Brandon Webb has been here for a week with his two older sons. Lyle is seventeen, Simon fifteen. They’re big boys, built like their dad—which is to say, young giants. The two of them dug out a cellar in four days and are damned near done laying the floor and walls. Getting the bags of cement here was a ball-buster—a trip into town and back in Brandon’s pickup, then loading their two ATVs and trail-riding in from the road. The last part has to be done on foot, nearly three miles. We’re beyond grateful. These people are like family already.

Brandon’s wife Sarah is way pregnant, plus they have a toddler at home, so for her the trip to our place is too big a struggle right now. Instead, she sent along their daughter Merry. I think they mostly figured Jaimee would enjoy some female company, and it looks like they were right. Merry’s nineteen, but despite the eight-year age gap, she and Jaimes have hit it off like old friends. Merry’s happy to throw in making meals for the crew and keeping the pile of split firewood stocked, leaving my wife free to work on her five zillion projects. Once the privy was built, she marked out a garden plot, dragged in a massive pile of branches she intends to use for a fence, and rigged up a spout system at the spring that made fetching water a whole lot quicker. When Brandon and I took off for the woods this morning, Jaimee was heading the opposite direction, down to the river for more stones to add to the growing pile she intends to use for our fireplace. It’s a huge job—she’s extremely particular and can only bring back one at a time—and we don’t even have a house yet. But she has a vision for the place, and god help anyone who gets between that woman and a goal.