After The Fires Went Out: Coyote atfwo-1 Read online

  “Fuck you.”

  “Well, that’s your plan, isn’t it? Team up with Captain Useless and the guys with dirt-clogged starter rifles? That’s your backup against a man who’s seen more action than the two of us combined? Brilliant fucking plan. Oh…I guess you’ll have a handful of those prepper assholes from Detour Lake with you, too, eh? You’ll still get yourself killed. By Stems or by the guys you just hired to watch your back.”

  “Well I’d rather die on my feet than on my knees. You know, sucking Ryan Stems’ cock.”

  “That’s because you’re an idiot, remember?” I said, feeling the adrenaline and wishing I could turn off the tap. “Dying isn’t as much fun as you seem to think it is. Especially when you drag your family down with you.”

  “You’re making a mistake, Baptiste. You stand there and you call me an idiot, and meanwhile you’re risking all of our lives because you’re not willing to make something happen. That’s just fucking stupid. We need to kill him before he kills us. It’s that simple.”

  “It’s never that simple.”

  “Stems can’t argue self defense this time. There aren’t any excuses left. You can’t just let a murderer run wild. ”

  “We’ll get him,” I said, holding up my hands, almost like I was expecting that to shut him up. “But when we’re ready…when we know we can win.”

  “So come up with a timeline, then. Some kind of plan, for Christ-sakes.”

  “I’m not going to waste my time convincing you that I know what I’m doing. I don’t care what you think, Justin. I’m still in charge around here, no matter what kind of shit you’ve been pulling behind my back.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Secret trips to Cochrane…cutting keys…taking Matt down to the river and teaching him how to shoot…”

  “It’s a deep-rooted conspiracy,” Justin said. “We’re all in on it. We’re going to replace your morning tea with goat jizz.”

  “If you have a problem with the work I do you’d better start talking to me about it.”

  “What do you think I’m doing right now? I’m talking to you, Baptiste. I’m telling you right here, right now. You’re being stupid…you’re making bad decisions…and yes, we’re losing faith in you.”

  “So you’re losing faith in me. Big fucking deal.”

  “It isn’t just me, buddy. The only people still on your side are the ones you’re fucking and sucking.”

  That was the line. I felt like I was twenty again, inching toward the first punch. And probably about to get my ass kicked, assuming I didn’t just pull out my gun and shoot him.

  “Shit,” Justin said. “I shouldn’t be bitching at you, Baptiste.”

  “Too late for that.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I’m just…I’m pissed off, alright? With Marc and his crap, with what happened to Ant…”

  “Yeah…”

  “But I’m serious. You know…about Stems. We need to kill him. He’s going to come for us. It’s just a matter of time. I’d rather we chose the time and place, Baptiste. Preferably before you run out of pills for that fucked-up heart of yours.”

  “When I’m gone you can do whatever the hell you want.”

  “God, Baptiste. Let’s just get it over with. It’s him or us.”

  My chest was tightening. I couldn’t keep talking about it.

  “I’m heading back,” I said.

  “Too much?”

  “You’re pissing me off. I’ve got better things to do.”

  “I’m not going to drop this,” Justin said. “We need to retaliate.”

  “I’ll see you later.” I turned and started walking back towards McCartney Lake.

  Justin didn’t follow. “Whatever, Baptiste,” he said. “Just run away.”

  I didn’t bother answering. He’d be pissed at me either way.

  And I certainly wasn’t going to go along with his revenge fantasies.

  It didn’t make sense for Ryan Stems to be coming after us. For one thing, he’s not a marauder, despite what everyone seems to think around here. He works to keep his people safe, just like Justin and I try to do. It’s not like we’re running around killing people for a few extra supplies.

  Killing Ant didn’t make any sense. And then they made Matt piss his pants, and then they let him go. What was the point?

  Hell if I know.

  I made my way home to the cottage, relieved to be alone but still rolling into the anxiety. I looked up at the grey-and-purple sky, trying to find some birds to distract my thoughts and settling for another chatty squirrel scrambling along the tops of the full-figured white pines.

  I got back just as a cold rain started to fall. I found Fiona making breakfast in the kitchen and I gave her a quick hug, barely brushing against her. I didn’t want her to notice that my hands were still shaking.

  “Want help?” I asked.

  “Always,” she said with a smile. “We’ll put you in charge of setting the table.”

  “That about matches my skill set.”

  She laughed. “I think you’re ready for it, Baptiste.”

  That made me smile. I was starting to feel a little better.

  Not really calm…but better.

  I grabbed the plates and the cutlery and got to work, Fiona telling me a story about her latest attempt to get Sara to admit she’s been sneaking off and reading some of the smutty romance novels from the bookcase in the upstairs hallway. One of these days she’ll nail that confession.

  Cassy was the one who used to calm me down, more so than any SSRIs or beta blockers ever could. When I had to go off my anxiety meds so I could take the Laneradine for my heart, it was Cassy who kept me grounded, kept me smiling, kept me going.

  That’s Fiona’s job now. She does it really well.

  I hope it’s enough.

  We spent the rest of today getting the yard ready for winter, Fiona, Sara and I in the garden, Lisa and Kayla by the chicken coop, and Graham and Matt with the goats. I don’t mind days like this, but that might be because I don’t have to do this kind of work all the time. I’m not chained to the homestead like they are.

  Graham grew up on a hobby farm in Illinois; as he likes to say, in the part of Illinois that has nothing to do with Chicago. He seems pretty happy being back to it, tending the goats and planning the big planting for the spring. It makes me wonder why he chose a career where he was always on the move, upgrading equipment for railroads that ran through places he’d never wanted to visit.

  But I guess that’s what we do when we’re young…we do the opposite of what we want, just to find out what that is.

  After dinner was cooked and eaten and the dishes were cleaned, we all gathered in the living room. Graham and Lisa were curled up together on a recliner, snarled together in a way that makes you sick even when you’re not the least bit jealous, while Sara sat in the rocking chair, Ant’s journal in her hands, sitting but not really rocking. Kayla and Fiona took the striped brown and white couch and Matt sat between them, either to keep them from fighting or to live out his fantasy of a sexy Matt sandwich. I sat on the floor, my head against Fiona’s couch cushion, my bald brown scalp occasionally brushing against her thigh.

  For a while we all just sat quietly. I looked out the window, staring into the night.

  Through that window and out past the side veranda there are mostly trees, but if you look a little left of centre you can see through those trees to the lake, the water cold and calm, glistening in the moonlight. On the far side of the lake it's still mostly forest, with a few patches of grass and some wood-frame cottages painted in unnatural colours.

  It’s been five months since the dust cleared. The view outside that window is December grey and full of the oncoming winter, but it’s still more beautiful than the best days from our first summer at McCartney Lake, when we wore sweaters in May and worried that there wouldn’t be a single blade of grass left alive by the time we saw the sun again.

  Looking out there now you'd
think we’re surrounded by never-ending forest, trees and more trees from here to Quebec. From here you'd have no concept of just how much of that forest is gone now, the black spruce and tamaracks burnt away, young stands of birch poking up through the leafy new undergrowth. I think we’ve lost more forest than we’ve kept.

  Places like McCartney Lake are little islands of the old world; a new and emptier place surrounds it, not just countless new clearings of saplings and low brush, but rubble-strewn villages and farmhouses and the ruined town of Cochrane itself, where there are still charred bodies that have never been buried.

  No matter how peaceful it seems out that window, I never manage to forget the dead emptiness gathered just a little further out.

  Everyone else seemed to be in a pissy mood like mine, so Sara decided to read us a passage from Ant’s diary, dated last February, about tapping two of the maple trees up north along the creek.

  It was time to prove myself, Ant wrote. Graham le bigshot knows everything about tractors and battery connectors and goat semen, but he's never made maple syrup. The last time my grandfather and I had sapped a tree was when I was still in elementary, but I knew enough to show off.

  It was warm enough today that I figured I’d get as much as two hours before my nuts froze off.

  I packed up the cordless drill, an 11mm leader bit and six large buckets and then I took one of the ATVs and the utility trailer up to the creek. I’d scavenged four spiles, so I figured on drilling two holes each into the two biggest trunks I could find.

  Kayla and Fiona went with me, which was terrific. They would surely be turned on by my manly work with the mighty maple trees. They both ran along beside me as I drove, and I felt like an American President flanked by my secret service bitches. That's the taste of power, my friends. Everyone should suckle that teet at least once in their lives.

  I drilled the holes into the trees and attached the spiles, and the sap drained into the buckets. We had all six buckets filled long before I could convince either of the girls to conserve body heat with me through upright and pants-free spooning.

  Kayla and I loaded the buckets onto the trailer.

  “How much will this make?” Fiona asked as she watched us do all of the work.

  It takes serious guts to be that unhelpful.

  “Tons,” I said. “We must have over a hundred litres of sap here.”

  We took it back to the cottage and we boiled the sap on the stove. I lost interest after twenty minutes or so.

  I came back after a couple of hours and found that the syrup was ready to sample. The girls had poured it into a rinsed-out milk jug. It didn’t fill up the full four litres but it was more syrup than Graham would have been able to get. He probably would have tapped a squirrel in the nutsack and wondered why the sap was thick and white and tasted so goddamn gamey.

  The girls know how to make more of it now, so my work was done. I rewarded myself with a joint, a fap, and a nice, long nap.

  “I loved that,” Kayla said once Sara had finished reading. “I honestly felt like he was right here with us.”

  “It reminded me that we still have Ant’s collection of fine herbs curing in our basement,” Matt said.

  Kayla grinned. “One of us is going to have to go full-pothead to get through all of it,” she said.

  “I nominate Baptiste,” Sara said. “If anyone needs to mellow out…”

  “I’m perfectly mellow,” I said. “When I’m not surrounded by idiots, that is.”

  “You love these idiots,” Kayla said. “I know I do.”

  Matt then suggested a toast to the idiots. Kayla brought out a bottle of rye and six hiball glasses; I guess she’d given up on offering any to Fiona.

  We had the toast, a drink, and a good laugh. And Sara read the next entry, about the time Ant drew a twelve-panel comic strip depicting Graham and Lisa as nymphomaniac zombies. Lisa still had it, and once she’d retrieved it from her bedroom we passed it around and talked about the sequel Ant had always promised to do.

  Tomorrow morning Matt’s going to find a frame so he can hang the “Chronicles of the Erect Undead” in the middle of the living room. Hopefully it’ll help us feel like part of Ant never left.

  SARA

  From Ant’s “Cast of Characters”, scrawled over several pages at the back of his diary:

  Sara, Lisa, Kayla and Fiona. I love every single one of those ladies. And yes, by love I mean I squeezed one off for each of them, and often in sets of two or three…

  Let’s start with Sara, since she’s the oldest and according to science doesn’t have that much time left before she goes from delicious to dietary supplement. I think she’s into Baptiste, actually, so she must think she’s already too old and saggy to do any better.

  But she’s probably the prettiest one, with white, white and white skin, creamy brown hair and light blue eyes, and just the right amount of late twenties plump. She’s also the kindest and I’ll bet the smartest, not just because she sees through most of my bullshit.

  Legend has it she was married once. It wasn’t that the guy died in The Fires, he just left her because he found some chick with bigger boobs. That’s the kind of stunt you pull when you’re dating maybe, but you ought to have your act together by the time you sign up to be someone’s husband. I’d never pull that kind of crap on anyone.

  Ant’s secret is: never get married.

  But Sara, as smart as she is, she’s still hoping to get married again someday. I can smell it on her, that commitment stench.

  She might settle for Baptiste if his gimpy heart doesn’t explode like a fucking briefcase nuke. Or maybe one day she’ll realize that she could steal Graham and his douchey yellow beard away from Lisa if she would just put a little effort in.

  You see, I happen to know that ‘Muricans love French girls. All the things that piss me off about the crazy bitches I used to date are somehow alluring to hipster idiots from Illinois.

  Sara’s not that bad, really, for a French girl. I wouldn’t say she’s not a little high-strung and little bit self-absorbed, but she’s better than most of the women I’ve known. And I’ll bet she treats a man right. And unlike Lisa I doubt she’s the type to shoot you in the face for checking out another girl’s assets.

  I'm not sure who Sara will end up with in the end. But for now I’d be more than willing to give her a slice of my boudin blanc*.

  * According to Sara, boudin blanc means “white sausage”. It’s a rather unfortunate visual, but then again it wasn't something we hadn't already seen from him time and time again.

  Ant never believed in bathing suits, bath towels, or the proper use of that little button on the front of his boxer shorts. It makes me laugh now to realize that out of all his many flavours, I might miss “naked Ant” most of all.

  Today is Thursday, December 6th.

  Justin showed up at breakfast time; I’m sure he’d planned it that way for dramatic effect.

  Just as he chose to wrap the dead coyote over his shoulders like it was a forty-pound gold medal.

  Fiona and Matt were downstairs with me; Sara was upstairs taking a shower, and I had no idea where anyone else was.

  Fiona stared at the creature like she expected it to jump onto its feet and attack; they don’t see a lot of fur stoles down in the GTA.

  “One down,” Justin said with a wide grin.

  “And two to go,” I said as I held open the door. “At the very least.”

  He tossed the coyote off onto the floor, barely missing the rug. I’m not sure why he thought we’d want it in the house.

  Matt walked over and stared at it; if he’d had a stick I’m sure he would have started poking it.

  “Two coyotes doesn’t make a pack,” Justin said. “I doubt they’ll be any trouble.”

  “Tell me you didn’t bait them.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I told you not to do it, Justin.”

  He sat down on the couch in the living room, throwing his boots up o
n the wicker coffee table.

  Fiona sighed, and of course she rolled her eyes. “You didn’t take your boots off,” she said. “How many times is that?”

  “Real men don’t take their boots off, sweetness,” he said.

  “Just take off the boots,” I said.

  He kicked them off, doing his best to spread more dirt than if he’d kept them on.

  “So now we have two coyotes waiting just outside for their next meal,” I said.

  “How is that different than yesterday?”

  “I don’t understand why you can’t just listen to me?”

  “How long have you been up here, Baptiste? A couple of years?”

  “Long enough.”

  “When I was five years old I used to go out and check the trapline with my uncle. What did you do back home in Toronto? Hunt for the lowest price on tampons? I’d say I’m more qualified than you to catch a few coyotes.”

  “That’s not the point,” Fiona said. “Baptiste is in charge.”

  “At least Justin gets results,” Matt said.

  “Kid’s got a point,” Justin said. “I do get results.”

  “The cockiness isn’t helping,” I said. “We’ve given you a chance here, Justin. After what you’ve done…”

  “Don’t start.”

  I knelt down and picked up the coyote with one hand. It was heavy enough for two, but I’d already committed myself to only using one. I carried it out and threw it onto the porch.

  “So now you’re the one baiting,” Matt said. “What will that bring us, anyway? Bears?”

  “I don’t know why I bother asking you not to do something, Justin,” I said.

  “Don’t bother,” Justin said. “Because I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep us safe.”

  “That’s not how it’s looking to me. I see a guy who’s doing his best to undermine me just for the fun of it.”

  He stretched back on the couch, wrapping his arms around his head. He was trying to show me just how not-worried he was.

  “I’m not trying to undermine you,” he said. “I’m honestly trying to help. Do you remember the conversation we had? I’ve got three guys lined up who are ready to go.”