Although there was no one keeping track on any calendar, it was not long before spring quickly turned to summer, and the days inside the compound were soon hot and dry. Just as he had done at the school, Sawyer had gone to considerable effort collecting as much water as he could during the sporadic rains, and the Mission was now relatively well stocked with clean water. The group’s supply of food was also in fair condition, and along with the garden and a rebounding population of small mammals, they were in little danger of going hungry. Even Mason’s wiry frame was beginning to fill out, and the boy continued to put on pounds almost as fast as he was growing in inches.

Jacob appeared to be fully recovered from his illness, and he too was growing stronger. Nevertheless, the man’s gruff demeanor kept him isolated, and he seemed to wear a permanent scowl much of the time. While he did not outwardly disapprove of his daughter’s relationship with Sawyer, he was envious of the boy and of the respect that both Sara and Mason had for him. Most of all, Jacob feared the sway and influence that Sawyer now held over the group, and he was focused on finding a way to tilt the balance of power back into his own favor.

One night not long into the summer, Jacob was eating dinner with Sara in the kitchen of the main house when he looked over at the girl and offered a rare smile.

“You know, Sara, I had an idea the other day. Instead of continuing south, what would you think about staying here at the Mission and possibly adding to our group? It would be easy to accomplish; we could just build a big fire and see who shows up.”

Sara continued eating her rabbit soup, collecting the last slice of carrot with her spoon before tilting the bowl to her mouth and drinking the last of the warm broth. Jacob waited for her to answer, but after a few seconds he realized that she was ignoring him, and the smile quickly faded from his face. He used her name to clear his throat loudly.

“Sara. I asked you a question. What do you think?”

Sara looked up at her father and scowled.

“Oh, you’re being serious? I thought you were joking. What happened to your plan to head south to Mexico or wherever?”

“I have changed my mind and I’m one-hundred percent serious. It would be an opportunity to rebuild. Think of the possibilities.”

Sara made a face and shook her head.

“Think of the possibilities? What are you talking about? Last time we lit a big fire, I was nearly raped and murdered, and, oh yeah, I also had to kill a man. The only possibility is that it would put us all in danger. It’s reckless at best and suicidal at worst.”

Jacob smirked.

“What about Sawyer? You would have never met him if Mason hadn’t started that fire, am I wrong?”

Sara shook her head and frowned.

“No, you’re not wrong, you’re just transparent. I know that the only reason you want to risk bringing more people here is so you can try and play king or whatever. Really, it’s just sad.”

Jacob stood up in anger and left his half-empty bowl of soup on the table.

“I am sorry I even said anything to you, Sara, but now I remember why I rarely ever do.”

Sara shrugged.

“Fine by me. You can go ahead and keep your stupid ideas to yourself from now on; I don’t really care to hear them.”

Jacob slammed his fist down on the table and sent the bowl of soup tumbling over and onto his boots. His face was bright red.

“Jesus Christ, Sara! Now look what you have made me do!”

Sara could not help but laugh. Her father’s words seemed to carry less and less weight with every sentence that he spoke, and now she openly mocked him.

“Wait, let me get this straight. Is it my fault that your boots are soaked with soup, or is it Jesus’s fault? Is it also our fault that you come up with such terrible ideas?”

Jacob pointed at her face and took a step toward her. His voice echoed in the small area.

“That’s enough, Sara! I am tired of your smartass remarks, and I don’t want to hear another word out of your mouth!”

Sara stood up and looked straight at her father. She had seen him at his weakest, and she was no longer afraid of him like she once was. She pointed her finger straight back at his face and yelled even louder.

“That’s perfect, because I have nothing else to say to you except leave me alone from now on!”

Sara understood that it was all just a game between them—the arguments, the silent treatments, the power struggle—but she was growing tired of it, and she kicked her chair away and stormed out of the front door, leaving her father to clean up his own mess.

As was their routine, Sara did not speak to her father for several days, and when they did begin talking again, Jacob was certain to make no further mention of his idea. For her part, Sara had all but forgotten why they had begun to argue in the first place. The demands of daily life at the Mission kept her busy, and as a rule she spent as little time thinking about her father as possible. Not only had the small garden they planted nearly doubled in size, but they had also been able to catch four half-wild chickens, and their care was now her responsibility.

Mason sometimes helped her when he was free from his duties of collecting firewood and fresh water from the creek, but even then, Sara spent the bulk of each day inside the compound. She killed pests and pulled weeds, she cared for the chickens, collected eggs, prepared and preserved food, purified water, and basically ran the essential functions of the Mission. It was not fun work, but it needed to be done, and Sara did not complain. When she did have a few moments of free time, she would try to walk the interior perimeter of the compound, keeping a written ledger of anything in need of repair.

She was doing exactly that one mid-summer afternoon, checking on a new crack in the wall near the main entrance, when she suddenly stopped writing and lifted her nose to the sky. It was not uncommon to smell smoke at different times during the day, depending on their needs, but Sawyer was off at the coast, and she had not seen either Mason or her father inside the compound the entire day. She scented the air again. It was so familiar, but the smoke did not smell like wood. She took another breath, and suddenly she could taste it in the back of her throat. It reminded her of hot asphalt, of traffic jams, and of honking horns. She was right. It was not wood that was burning. It was rubber. She thought out loud.

“Rubber? Who is burning rubber?”

Then she looked up. Just beyond the tree line, not far from the south wall, a thick column of black smoke was suddenly rising into the cloudless sky. Sara stared at the smoke for several seconds before she finally dropped the pencil and pad and started to run.

Within a minute, she was standing before her father, the man grinning from ear to ear as an enormous stack of burning tires spewed black smoke into the sky behind him. Mason was standing beside him with his back turned, the boy oblivious to her presence, his eyes locked on the flames. Sara could barely control herself, and she screamed at her father above the roar of the fire.

“What the hell are you doing, Jacob? Have you lost your mind?”

Jacob threw his head back and laughed out loud as he rolled another tire into the fire. Sara reached over and grabbed Mason by the arm. The boy spun around quickly and tore his arm free.

“Mason, you come with me right now! I can’t believe you would make him do this with you!”

Jacob laughed out loud again and smacked Mason on the back.

“Did you hear that, kid? She thinks that I made you do it! Hell, once he heard my idea, he insisted that he help.”

Sara spun the boy around to face her.

“Tell me what he said isn’t true, Mason. Tell me that you didn’t go along with this. Don’t you remember what happened last time? I could’ve been killed!”

Sara looked at Mason, but the boy only lowered his head, and she knew that her father was telling the truth. She looked at the fire. The flames were already at least twenty feet tall, the smoke another one hundred feet above that. There was nothing she could do. She glared at Jacob as she grabbed Mason and dragged him away, her father ignoring her as he smiled and sent another tire into the burning heap of rubber.

 

 

 

 

At that exact same moment, more than five miles away, Sawyer was headed back from the coast, a huge smile plastered across his face. For the first time since before the blackout, he had managed to catch a few fish, and he was thinking about just how delicious the three halibut were going to be when he casually glanced into the sky and saw a dark plume of smoke rising from the northeast. He stopped in the middle of the trail and stared at the smoke.

“What in the hell is that?”

The smoke was too far way to know for certain, but he could tell that the plume had to be coming from somewhere very close to the Mission, and by the time the adrenaline rush caught up to him, he was already running toward the compound at full speed.

As he came near, the smell of burnt rubber was as unmistakable as it was inexplicable, and even when he saw Jacob standing beside the pile of burning tires he still did not understand.

“What the hell is going on, Jacob? What is this?”

Jacob was covered in black soot, with his revolver on his hip and the 30.06 rifle slung across his back. He saw Sawyer and waved him over. He had wrapped a shirt around his face and head, and only his eyes were visible, his disembodied words coming from behind the mask.

“What does it look like? It’s a damn signal fire, boy! Help me throw another tire on!”

Jacob rolled another radial in the direction of the fire, but Sawyer intercepted it midway and kicked it to the ground. Jacob pulled the shirt from his face and laughed out loud. Sawyer had to stop himself from going after Jacob with his fists, and instead he spun around, looking for some way to douse the flames. Jacob laughed again.

“Good luck putting this fire out. It will burn as long as I want it to.”

Jacob reached for another tire to roll into the flames, but Sawyer stepped over and grabbed him by the shoulder.

“No. You’re through here, Jacob. I’m ending this right now.”

Jacob turned and slapped Sawyer’s hand off his shoulder, the veins on his forehead bulging.

“Get your hands off me, boy. Now get the hell out of here, or else.”

Sawyer took a step closer to Jacob. The boy was half a head taller and heavily muscled in comparison to the older, weaker man, and he stared straight into Jacob’s eyes.

“Or else what, Jacob? What are you going to do?”

Jacob’s face was now crimson, his jaw clenched tight. He said nothing. Sawyer tilted his chin back and laughed.

“That’s what I thought, Jacob. You’re all talk. Now, unless you want me to drag your ass back to the Mission, it’s you that needs to get the hell out of here.”

Jacob spit on the ground and turned as if he were going to walk away, but then, without warning, he suddenly spun around and threw a right cross straight at Sawyer’s face. Sawyer was caught almost completely off guard, and the blow hit him hard just below the eye. He stumbled back, but before Jacob could land another punch, Sawyer stepped to the side and dropped his shoulder, sending an uppercut squarely into Jacob’s chin.

The man saw a flash of white light as the punch connected, and when Jacob awoke a minute later, he was on his back, and his face and shirt were soaking wet. Both the rifle and the revolver were gone. Jacob sat up in confusion and looked to see Sawyer standing over him with an empty bottle of water in his hand. Sawyer tossed the bottle at Jacob and touched the newly-bruised skin around his eye.

“How was your nap, Jacob? I’ve got to say, not a bad sucker punch. If you didn’t have such a soft chin, you might have been a decent fighter.”

Jacob slapped the bottle away and stood up on wobbly legs. He rubbed at his sore chin. Then he looked up at Sawyer and let his hand slide toward the knife in his waistband.

“You little bastard. I’ll kill you for this.”

Sawyer shook his head and scowled.

“You know if you pull that knife out then it’s all over, right, Jacob? I promise, you won’t walk away. But right now, I’m giving you a chance. I suggest you take it.”

Jacob looked down at the knife and then back to Sawyer. He pulled his hand away and spit on the ground again.

“Go to hell, Sawyer. You’re not going to do a damn thing to me. Sara would never forgive you, and you know it. Now get the hell out of here like I told you before.”

Sawyer took a step closer to him and balled his hands into two fists. The fire was raging only a few yards away.

“No, you’re the one who needs to get the hell out of here. Walk away while you still can. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Jacob?”

Jacob stepped forward, raised his arm, and extended his middle finger only a few inches from Sawyer’s face. He smirked.

“Do you understand what I am saying to you, Sawyer?”

Sawyer sighed and stared off into the distance.

“I do, Jacob. I hear you loud and clear. Now let me reply.”

Without another word, Sawyer suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Jacob by his collar, lifting the man off his feet and throwing him to the ground like a ragdoll. Jacob tried to stand up, but the air had been knocked from his lungs, and he could only gasp as Sawyer grabbed him by the leg and began to drag him toward the fire. The smoke was swirling around them, and Jacob could feel the heat from the fire bearing down on him. When they were only a few feet from the flames, Sawyer finally released his grasp, and Jacob rolled to his back and tried to sit up, his lungs stinging from the toxic smoke. He screamed up at Sawyer.

“I hope you know that you are finished with my daughter. When she hears all about this, she will never forgive you.”

Sawyer’s face reflected red in the flames as he looked down at Jacob and spoke, his face calm, his voice quiet.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Jacob. Sara is not going to hear anything about this.”

Jacob scoffed.

“And why is that?”

Sawyer smiled.

“Because Sara doesn’t even know that I’m here, Jacob. She thinks I’m miles away, fishing on the coast. No one knows that I’m here right now. Just you and me. And the fire.”

Sawyer looked up at the stack of tires burning overhead.

“Be a hell of thing for Sara to have to find her father’s dead body underneath a pile of burning tires tomorrow morning, don’t you think, Jacob? But accidents do happen sometimes. I’m sure she would get over it eventually, but even if she didn’t, she would have no reason to blame me in the first place. Like I said, I’m not even here right now.”

He leaned down and whispered just above the roaring of the flames.

“Do you get what I’m saying to you now, Jacob? I’ve killed better men than you and haven’t lost a minute of sleep. Do you really want to try me?”

Jacob stared up at Sawyer, and for the first time, he truly did understand. The boy was not bluffing. Utterly defeated, Jacob finally held up his palms and nodded once. Sawyer looked down at the miserable, soot-covered figure cowering below him, and he shook his head in disgust.

“Good. Now stay away from me, and don’t come asking for help when all of this blows up in your face. And if you tell Sara one single word about what went on here today, you’ll regret it. I’ll hold onto your gun and the rifle for now. In the meantime, get the hell out of here, Jacob. I won’t ask again.”

Jacob struggled to his feet and wiped the dirt and soot from his face. He kept his eyes on the ground as he walked past Sawyer, but as soon as he was a few feet away, he turned and yelled.

“You really think that you have won here today, Sawyer? The smoke is already in the air! You are too late. Things are going to change around here, and you will see that you haven’t won a goddamn thing.”

Jacob knew better than to say any more, and he turned and walked away, limping back toward the Mission with his tail between his legs, both of his weapons and much of his pride left in the toxic smoke behind him.