“PUT THAT THING down,” growled a familiar voice.
“Is that you, Pete?” Nick questioned, still pointing his Springfield at the men.
“Are you going to put that down, or do we have to shoot you?” came Pete’s response.
Nick dropped his aim. He started to say something like, I’m sure glad to see you, but even his stress-riddled mind knew better than to speak those words.
“Let’s get out of the smoke,” Pete said plainly.
The three men with rifles turned and Nick hurried to follow them. Further uphill, the ring of fire was weaker, and the four of them easily stepped out of the camp and into untouched forest. The contrast was striking, and Nick felt like he’d been in this burning world for ages, fully forgetting what untouched greenery looked like and what clean air smelled and tasted like.
His personal revelation was cut short by Pete. Those stone-cold eyes were harder and fiercer than he’d ever seen them before. Pete maintained his gaze; it wasn’t a glare. It was too stoic, too emotionless. Finally, Nick broke the silence. “What happened?”
“I told you,” Pete answered. “They took her. They took all the women and children. The men were slain.”
Nick felt a flood of mixed emotions; he was shocked, confused, and elated all at the same time. Lusa might still be alive. “But where were…” He stopped himself.
“We were hunting,” Pete said. “Didn’t know anything was wrong until we saw the smoke. By the time we returned, they were all gone. The bodies are over there,” he pointed.
Nick looked toward what could have been a brush pile that had nearly gone out. It took a moment for him to realize Pete and the men had burned the bodies of their deceased.
“But why didn’t—” Again, Nick stopped short. This wasn’t his world or his people. They had their own ways of doing things. And Pete had just lost family and friends and maybe his daughter.
“Go after them?” Pete completed.
Nick nodded.
“There were more than twenty men slain,” Pete said. Nick expected him to go on, but he didn’t. Apparently, this was all the explanation Pete thought was necessary. Then Nick grasped his reasoning: if twenty were no match for these people, three didn’t stand a chance.
“I’m sorry,” Nick said, “but I still don’t understand what happened. How did crazies find this place? How many came? They don’t exactly partner up usually, and they certainly don’t take prisoners.”
“These weren’t ordinary crazies,” Pete offered. “First off, most of them were barefoot.” He walked a couple paces away and pointed to the ground. “See here? Those are human prints. Best we can tell, there had to be fifty of them, at least. And they attacked the village from all sides; they coordinated their attack.”
Nick let it all sink in. He realized Pete could tell such things by the tracks, by the signs in the woods, all the stereotypes about Indians that Nick had tried not to think were true.
“What’s the significance of them being barefoot?” Nick asked.
Pete shrugged. “When’s the last time you saw a crazy without shoes?” Then he added, “after the thaw.”
Pete had a point, Nick realized. The crazies that had survived the winter had all been fully clothed and holed up in shelters. At the last mining camp he and Jimmy had cleared, he hadn’t seen any of the barefoot nut-jobs he remembered seeing last summer. The cruel winter must have been hard on crazies just like it was on everything else, he decided.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Nick finally said. “These attackers would have gotten frostbite over the winter.”
Pete gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Whoever or whatever they are,” he said, “they acted with purpose, and they didn’t want us calling for help either.”
Pete gazed over Nick’s shoulder, back down at the camp. Nick turned and spotted the same building where Lusa had contacted him.
“So, the radio’s shot,” Nick concluded.
“Generators too,” one of the other men added.
Jimmy! Nick suddenly remembered that his brother was expecting him to call by radio. “I’ve got to go back,” Nick said.
“You don’t want to go after them?” Pete said with the first tone of emotion in his voice.
“It’s not that,” Nick said. “I’ve got to tell Jimmy what happened. Look, why don’t we all go back and get him. We’ll get more supplies and then go after them.”
Pete shook his head. “That will take too long. We must go to my cousin’s village. It’s the closest one, a day’s walk northeast of here. There we can get help. We can double back and track them to wherever these…” He stopped as if saying the word was difficult. “… these people live.”
Nick knew he was right, but every instinct inside said otherwise. Jimmy was waiting for him, might even try to mount his own rescue attempt if he didn’t hear from him soon. He couldn’t just leave Jimmy in the dark.
“What about radios?” Nick asked. “Does the neighboring village have shortwave?”
He could tell by Pete’s expression before he’d even finished asking that the answer was no. “Sorry,” Pete said simply. After a moment of Nick spinning his inner wheels, Pete offered, “Look, the choice is yours. Do what you want. I’m going after them the only way I can.”
This wasn’t a problem, Nick understood. Problems had solutions. All this situation had was tough choices. And the choice he had to make included abandoning his brother, leaving him with no clue about what had happened, where he was going, nothing. When he believed Pete would wait no longer, Nick said, “Okay. Let’s go get her.”