“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.
There could be other families that we think are long gone, or new arrivals from Smooth Rock Falls who aren’t big on Ryan Stems and his Mushkegowuk elders, or even refugees from Timmins who’d rather scrape by up here than sign their lives away to Sons of Flesh back home.
I checked the pages for any mention of families up near Silver Queen Lake. The Barrs, the Shiers, the Vezeaus… all of them were stationed somewhere around here, but like Justin had said, the Smiths were supposed to have had full control over Silver Queen Lake.
“Could be the Chapleaus,” Justin said as he looked over my shoulder.
“I think they live on Bentley Lake,” Rihanna said.
“No, no… Bentley’s where the Barrs live now.”
“I don’t think that’s right…”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “There’s no way to be sure. But if someone’s living up this road, we’ll find out soon enough.”
“I think this is a waste of time,” Justin said.
“I don’t care. We’re doing it.”
“Let’s just do it,” Rihanna said. “It’ll be fine.”
Rihanna kept driving, slowly enough that we had time enough to scan each yardsite. Over a dozen empty cottages so far; I knew we’d be at the end of the road soon.
“There,” Justin said, pointing out ahead of us on the right. “A pickup truck.”
I looked at the truck, an old gray Toyota pickup, parked in front of a two-story A-frame cottage with a glass front. The bed of the truck was covered with a large green tarp, and under it was an uneven bulge that reached higher than the roof; it reminded me of Afghanistan and of a very different time. I already knew from what Matt had described that there was probably a machine gun mounted under that tarp.
“Looks like an old-fashioned technical,” Justin said. “That’s gotta be Stems.”
Rihanna stopped the truck.
“Put on your helmets,” I said.
Neither of them argued with me.
“They probably know we’re here,” I said.
“What do we do?” Rihanna asked.
“We need to go,” Justin said. “We’re not prepared for a fight.”
“Keep your heads down,” I said. “Let’s see if they come out.”
I couldn’t detect any movement aside from smoke rising from the chimney.
“They aren’t just scavenging,” I said. “It looks like they’re living here.” I noticed footsteps, not just heading from the truck to the door of the cottage, but in several trails leading around to a shed and back toward the lake. They’d been here for a few hours at the least; my gut told me they’d been here for at least several days. “So do we really have a reason to think this is Stems?”
“I think the Chapleaus have a Toyota pickup,” Rihanna said.
“Are you just saying that because you think the Chapleaus live here?”
“I’m not sure. I think that’s their truck.”
“It’s Stems,” Justin said. “I know it is.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter who it is,” I said. “I’m going to assume they’re dangerous.”
“We need to go.”
“This isn’t worth getting killed over,” Rihanna said.
“We’ll go back and bring up a second vehicle and some help,” I said. “We throw up a roadblock of our own on the north shore while we empty out those cottages.”
“So we waste more fuel we can’t spare?” Justin asked. “Let’s just go back to the north shore. There’s plenty of stuff up there.”
“It’s not safe.”
“It was safe enough before you came along.”