Regan Wolfrom - Coyote

Yesterday I decided to ride up to Silver Queen Lake with the Porters. I didn’t want to be anywhere near McCartney Lake and the mourning Tremblay family.

I remember Justin and his wife Rihanna from before the fires, when they would come to the town meetings at Tim Horton Centre and sit near the back. I hadn’t known more than their faces, since they’d never raised their hands to speak and they’d always left right when the meeting adjourned, ducking outside before most people had even stood up from their chairs.

I think the first time I’d spoken to either of them was on the morning they’d come to the gate asking for our help. I didn’t even know that Justin had served in the Forces, and I certainly had no idea what he was capable of. Back then I didn’t even know about the things he and Marc Tremblay had done.

It’s over an hour and a half to Silver Queen Lake, and the route the Porters took was on gravel that was in pretty bad shape. We skipped Cochrane entirely, but we didn’t have the same option for Clute; there’s only one road to Silver Queen Lake and it goes through Clute and whatever roadblock that might be there. It’s the same road Matt and Ant were taking on their way to bring eggs to the Smiths, the same road where Ant was killed and the man with the tiger striped helmet laughed his head off.

I don’t miss that truck.

The Tremblays’ truck also had only the front bench, so it was pretty tight up there with all three of us, especially since we all wore riot suits and I insisted on keeping all three helmets and vests up front along with my shotgun and their hunting rifle.

We were ready to suit up and run through whatever opposition or barricades we found.

But Clute was quiet, and we continued on.

We listened to Green Day of all things on the way up, with Rihanna quietly starting to sing along every once in awhile as she drove, before she’d catch herself and glance over to me with a slightly embarrassed look in her eyes.

We didn’t really talk at all, and I was okay with that. The truth is, I know full well that Justin and I would still get along if I wasn’t careful, that I’d start forgetting how much I wanted to stay angry with him. I remember how much I hated them both before, when all I knew of the Porters was that they’d turned Sara away when she’d begged them for help.

Justin hadn’t even made the offer to take her somewhere else, to trade her for diesel or a box of condoms. I still wonder why he hadn’t. Maybe he’d thought Sara wasn’t worth anything. Maybe he’d known enough about Lisa to stay clear of the whole bunch.

I know Sara’s done her best to let the past go, not that it doesn’t flicker back from time to time. At first I’d hated them as much as humanly possible, like I was hating them double because Sara didn’t. But it didn’t take long for Justin to start acting like a friend, and after a little while I guess we were friends.

I don’t want the same shit happening again. I’ll work with the Porters, sure, but I can’t afford to like them.

Silver Queen Lake is a lot bigger than McCartney Lake, and it has enough cottages that I was already feeling winded when we arrived, thinking of how much work there was to do. Usually when you scavenge you spend more than half your time just wandering around looking for stuff, especially these past few months, so there isn’t that much loading in a day; it’s more like a scavenger hunt than helping someone move. I had a feeling this job was going to be quite a bit more intense in the amount of lifting and carrying.

“We’ve been working from the north shore around to the south,” Rihanna said as we dressed in our gear inside the cramped cab of the truck; she’d stopped at the junction right before the woods gave way to cottages. “We’ve done six, so that leaves just over fifty to go.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said. “There’s no way we’ll be done in the next few days.”

“It’s taking longer than we expected,” Justin said. “That’s good, actually. We’re finding more than we first thought.”

“I thought you already took inventory of the supplies.”

Justin laughed. “We checked out a couple of cottages, sure. But we haven’t even been inside more than a dozen so far.”

“So we don’t even know what’s inside.”

“That’s what makes it exciting,” Rihanna said. “Maybe we’ll find some videos or books or something. I’m getting pretty tired of watching the same six movies on my tablet.”

“To be honest, guys,” I said, “I’m worried about safety here.”

“You weren’t worried before,” Justin said. “Isn’t that what the helmets and vests are for?”

“How sure are we that these cottages are all empty?”

“The Smiths had a roadblock here. A big old Dodge truck. They would have noticed if there were other families trying to get in and out.”

“We don’t know enough about how the Smiths handled things,” I said. “We don’t really know what was happening up here.”

“We know the Smiths pretty well,” Rihanna said. “I’ve known that family all my life.”

“That’s not what I mean. There are probably two dozen families left around here right now. How do we know that someone else didn’t know the Smiths well enough to know they were leaving? Maybe someone else has already laid claim to these supplies.”

“We were here first,” Justin said.

“So you think. But I don’t think that would stop anyone either way. And considering that the Smiths weren’t at the last Supply Partnership meeting, I’m sure more than one person has wondered if they took off.”

“So what is it you want us to do?” Rihanna asked.

“Let’s take a tour around both sides of the lake, check for any vehicles or signs of life. Maybe we’ll be able to tell if there are different sets of tire tracks visible.”

“Other than ours?” Justin said. “There’s no way to know for sure if someone’s been here.”

“Well obviously. Look, just humour me for an hour, and then we can get back to work.”

“I didn’t realize bringing you along would suck up so much of our time.”

“I’m such an asshole wanting to keep us alive.”

Rihanna laughed. “Good point,” she said. “Guess I’d better check if we’ve got something to listen to that isn’t Green Day.”

We followed the road along the south shore of Silver Queen Lake, our vests strapped on and our helmets on our laps. There appeared to be more than a few sets of different tire tracks along the road; I climbed out at a few points and checked the impressions from the treads. There were at least two different vehicles, maybe more. It was hard to tell. And for all I knew they were from the Smiths. I just didn’t know.

It didn’t look to me like anyone had stopped in at the first few cottages. The first one had an overturned tree blocking the front driveway that would have been too big to drive over but small enough to move. A good number of them had their doors and windows boarded up, with no sign that anyone had tried to pry the boards off.

It made me uneasy. If another family had come to scavenge, I would have expected them to have stopped at the first cottage, or if the impromptu tree barricade had scared them off, they would have tried the others. I didn’t make sense to bypass the boarded up buildings; they had the best chance of having the most supplies.

In my little notebook I keep a list of all of the families we know about, whether they’re part of the Supply Partnership or not, along with where we think they’re living and what vehicles and weapons we know they have. Sometimes we’ve visited other families ourselves, particularly around Christmas and New Year’s, but other times all we know about a family is second- or third-hand knowledge. And even with that I know we don’t have a full list.