“Sure it was… do you even remember if there was smoke from that chimney yesterday? Or the first day you were up here?”
Justin shook his head. “We need those supplies.”
“We need to do this right.”
I started to think it over in my head. The little electric car could make the trip, but I’d feel safer finding something more sizeable to bring up. A new grain truck or maybe even bigger. And then we could fill one truck up while the other stood guard, and then we’d switch. Five or six people could get the work done quickly enough.
But I wondered if I was being overcautious. If Justin and Rihanna hadn’t noticed the Toyota and the chimney smoke before, whoever it was may have just arrived in the past day or so. Perhaps by the time we returned they’d have their own roadblock set up. I didn’t know for sure what was under that tarp.
But the outline was just too familiar.
Was I about to waste time and fuel for no good reason?
“I need to know more,” I said. “Rihanna, turn us around and head back up the road… slowly.”
She nodded and turned the wheel.
“I’ll meet you guys up at the mile road,” I said.
“Don’t do this, Baptiste,” Justin said. “You’re no good to us dead.”
“Have a little faith in me.” I looked to Rihanna. “Turn us around… please.”
As Rihanna drove the truck away from the cottage at a snail’s pace, I slowly opened the passenger door and lowered myself out onto the gravel, taking my pistol but leaving the shotgun behind. I ran in a crouch toward the trees, across the road from the cottages and the lake.
I waited there until Rihanna and Justin were well past the next few cottages. Then I threaded my way through the woods until I was about two hundred meters from the cottage. There I crossed the gravel as quickly and quietly as I could, sheltered from sight by a sharp bend in the road.
I wrapped my way around the garage and the shed, until I was crouched beneath a small window on the east side of the cottage. I waited there, listening for the people inside.
I heard a door open, and then several sets of boots walking down the wood steps. I peered around the corner to see two men walking towards the Toyota, dressed in black armour with painted helmets.
A tiger and a bear. Two of the men who’d shot Ant.
Both men had assault rifles slung over their shoulders.
One of them pulled off the tarp while the second man climbed into the box, placing his weapon down. The gun mounted on the back of the truck was much heavier duty than I’d expected; it looked closer to an anti-aircraft gun than something like the guns we used in Afghanistan. The first man then climbed into the cab, and backed the truck back down the driveway toward the road.
They were headed after the Porters, just far enough behind that Justin and Rihanna wouldn’t know what was coming.
I grabbed my handheld and pushed for Justin.
“Justin… you there? Over.” I tried to speak softly in case someone was left in the cottage. A man with a shark helmet had died at the airport, but what about the one with the coyote?
“I’m here. Is everything okay there? Over.”
“The Toyota’s coming for you. They’ve got a bigass machine gun mounted on the back. You need to get out of there.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding. Step on the fucking gas. Over.”
“Shit.”
I readied my pistol and rushed the door of the cottage. I swept through as best as I could remember to do, checking each room on the main floor before making my way upstairs.
The first bedroom was empty, but the second was not.
I recognized both girls from before the fires. Tabitha Smith and Natalie Girard; the two of them were only a few years older than Fiona. Both had their wrists ziptied to the bedframe and neither of them had a shred of clothing on their bruised bodies.
“It’s okay,” I whispered as I held my finger to my nose.
Tabitha started to cry.
I left them there while I cleared the rest of the second floor.
I then came back and cut them loose with my leatherman.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
Neither of them answered right away. I wanted to ask if they were okay, but the question seemed ridiculous.
“It’s been around three days,” Natalie said.
“We… we were headed back to my parent’s place,” Tabitha said. “But everyone was gone when we got there.”
“They left?” I asked. “Uh… without you?”
“I don’t know what happened… the house was empty. They didn’t even leave a note. It doesn’t make sense.” She began to cry again.
“It’s going to be okay. We’ve got to go.”
I had the girls wrap themselves in bedsheets and I rushed them downstairs. There was no sign of their clothes or any boots, and unusually, no sign of any clothes in the entire cottage, so I had them wait on the front steps while I made my way to the garage.
The door was locked, so I kicked it open. There was nothing inside, no car, no ATV.
“Dammit,” I said. I walked back over to the porch.
“Don’t you have a car or something?” Natalie asked.
“I had a truck. But things have gotten a little messed up.”
I grabbed my handheld and pushed for Justin again.
“Justin? Rihanna? Are you okay? Over.”
I hoped that the silence was only because they’d driven out of range.
“Are you there?” I asked. I turned to the shivering girls, standing barefoot beside me. “We need to get moving.”
I led them silently across the road and into the trees, and we ran further up the road, the wrong direction from where I’d said I’d meet the Porters. Of course, I didn’t expect them to come back anytime soon, assuming they were still alive.
After five minutes of running in the woods I knew the girls would need to get out of the cold; it wasn’t winter yet, but it was cold enough to hurt.
I took off my riot suit and clothes, everything short of my underwear, and parceled it all out as best as I could between the girls. Each girl took a sock on one foot and a boot on the other. I had them lean together, hidden against a tree, and the two of them stood like shivering flamingoes as I made my way to the nearest garage.
I approached in a straight line up the driveway of an older cottage, right to the overhead door of the small single garage. Once there, I reached down to see if I could pull it up, but it didn’t surprise me that it was locked. I made my way towards the side door.
It looked old and flimsy enough that I might be able to bust it down. I had to take a running start, however, as I threw my shoulder against it, since I no longer had a boot left to kick the door in. I had to launch myself against it twice more before the door gave way; by that point I could barely move from the pain of repeatedly smashing my shoulder against the wood.
Inside the garage I didn’t find a car or an ATV, but I did find a riding lawnmower. I wasn’t sure if that was worth anything to me. I also found a smelly pair of work boots on top of a toolbox that I was barely able to squeeze onto my feet.
I went back and retrieved the girls, each one limping across the road with one boot and a wet sock, and we found our way inside the cottage with the help of a crowbar from the toolbox.
I didn’t know if the Spirit Animals would be able to find us, but luckily I still had a contingency holstered on my belt.
After scrounging up some musty clothes for Tabitha and Natalie to wear and some less than appetizing food for them to eat, I found myself a pair of binoculars on the lakefront veranda and peered out over the lake.
The way the shore wrapped around a bay, I could see a corner of the A-frame cottage and I could make out a thin wisp of smoke still rising from the chimney. I hadn’t taken the time to check, but my guess was that the stove was wood and not propane, and the small amount of smoke likely meant that they hadn’t returned to throw more wood on the fire.