Months of waiting, months of planning, and it all came down to today. To this moment. Piper lit an entire book of matches, cupping it in her hand until the initial flare and hiss was over, then crouched to tuck it in a pile of kindling. She watched until fire snaked along the lines of accelerant she’d spread, watched until she was sure the wind had caught the fledgling fire in its arms and would run with it. Then, she ran herself. Smoke chased her all the way back to the tree-top sentry stand.
Up she scrambled, to watch and wait. This was her only opportunity, and timing was everything. If she alerted the others too soon, they might be able to put the fire out. Too late, and they wouldn’t make it out. An unusually warm and dry spring had accelerated her plans. Typically, June, July and August were the most likely months for wildfires, but who knew what the mercurial weather in Colorado would bring? Rather than risk a wet summer, she would act now. The wind had been blowing steadily out of the northwest for days, and they hadn’t had measurable precipitation in six weeks.
Besides, her mother was on the move – she could feel it – and the implications of that were going to push her off the edge her toes were already hanging over.
She didn’t let herself think about it during the day, but at night, the questions scrolled through her mind over and over, like a song she couldn’t get out of her head: Why would she leave the cabin? Had something happened to her father, or Macy? Why would she leave the cabin? Why?
She’d been star-gazing the first time she became aware that the bond-line connecting them had shifted, subtly, to the east. That night, she’d convinced herself that maybe an equinox had occurred, which might explain her disorientation in relation to the stars, but she’d looked it up the next day. The tiny passage in the antiquated Encyclopedia Britannica Ruth kept in the clinic didn’t contain much information, didn’t explain whether or not the appearance of the stars would change with an equinox, but it was clear on one thing: The vernal equinox occurred in March. They were solidly into April. She had double-checked that, too.
As the days went on, the shift became more obvious, and Piper became more frantic. She was having trouble eating and was reduced to dozing in fitful starts, tossing and turning. She had tolerated the waiting before, because she’d been secure in her belief that her family was safe, stable, waiting for her at the cabin. Something had changed, and she needed to know what. She had to get to her family. Now.
So anxious was she to not jump the gun, she very nearly waited too long. She had stacked this deck with meticulous attention to detail, had waited until she was assigned watch in this area, had watched the skies, had hidden the can of kerosene here last time she’d had this duty. She’d thought of everything, and made everything happen. As she scrambled down the tree and sprinted through the forest, it occurred to her that it would be the ultimate victory for Brody if she died after so much careful planning. The thought gave her feet wings, and she flew into camp with smoke billowing only a half mile behind her.
Straight to the mess hall she ran, to ring the bell. “Fire!” She bellowed the word with as much wind as she had left. “Fire!”
People started to appear, and Piper kept shouting, kept ringing. “Get your bug-out bags and get to a vehicle – it’s on top of us! Go, go, go!”
In minutes, the camp was mobilized – good old military training – with the exception of the patrols: Levi and Ethan to the west and Brody on his own, in the southeast. All part of the plan. If everything went her way, the fire might eliminate the last stumbling-block for her. They roared out of camp in the jeeps Tyler kept ready for just such an emergency, and the noise and speed were disorienting after over a year of foot-travel. Jenny was crying, struggling, screeching something about her babies’ graves, and Aaron was trying to hold onto her, his face slack with shock. Piper turned away from them, allowing her lip to lift in a sneer. She was looking forward to seeing the last of both of them. In the front seat, their son Caden was nearly buried in a pile of bug-out bags and supplies. All three vehicles were similarly loaded down.
Elise and her kids, though new to the group, had been some of the first to respond. Piper knew her instincts about them had been solid. Elise’s face was tight with worry, no doubt for Ethan, but Sam and Becca wore the cool, watchful looks that were typical of them both. Becca had taken Piper’s long-ago advice, and passed among them as a boy. Other than Piper, only Ethan and Brody knew the truth. Her head turned and her eyes met Piper’s as they bounced down the rutted drive towards the main road, and Piper gave her an encouraging thumbs-up, which was returned.
She and Ruth were bringing up the rear, with Max at the wheel. Their jeep was crammed with supplies from the clinic, supplies they’d been able to pack in under three minutes thanks to advance preparation. No matter what the future brought, Piper doubted she’d ever again be caught without a bag of essentials that could be grabbed in a matter of seconds, one of the many things she’d learned in the last year, and one of the few positives.
Now, it was all changing. From here on out, everything would be different.
By prior arrangement, they headed for the emergency rendezvous, a warehouse on the south end of the town of Walden the locals had been warned to leave alone. In the wake of the plague, the town’s population had fallen to just over 20 people, but it was nearly triple that now, with refugees from Denver swelling their numbers. As they roared through the town, people were starting to step outside, pointing to the northeast, faces lined and tight with concern.
Piper crossed her fingers that the winds wouldn’t shift and burn out the town, but if it did, que sera. If you lived in the mountains of Colorado, you’d better be ready for wildfires. Their compound was tucked in a forested area along the Michigan River, a few miles northeast of the town proper, and the river itself might act as a fire break if the winds cooperated. At least their compound had been located there, she corrected herself. Rather than waste her time worrying about the fate of the town, she should be concentrating all her hopes on the total destruction of the place they’d called home. If there was enough left to rebuild, she was screwed.
They pulled into the weedy parking lot by the warehouse just as a series of distant booms sounded. Tyler shut his jeep off and got out, eyeballing the black smudge that had joined the billow of white. “There go the propane tanks,” he announced. A few minutes later, another deeper boom. “And there goes the gas. Shit.”
Piper closed her eyes and bowed her head for a moment, light-headed with relief. If the fire had reached the tanks, the compound was certainly burning. She had to blink away tears when she opened her eyes, and bite the insides of her cheeks to keep her jaw from quivering. Tyler unlocked the warehouse, and they transferred their gear inside, then settled in to watch the smoke and wait for the patrols to come in. If they came in.
By late afternoon, the fire had swept well to the south, and appeared to have diminished as well. Tyler and Max took one of the jeeps to see if they could get into the area and check on the situation. They returned an hour later with grim faces, as well as with Levi and Ethan, who were so smoke-blackened it was hard to tell who was who. Not even half an hour later, Brody walked in, equally filthy, his eyes like arctic ice in his dirty face. Those eyes picked through the group until they found her, and locked on. After what felt like an eternity of scrutiny, he nodded, then went to get a drink and something to eat.
Okay, then. Okay. She was going to have to do this the hard way.
The compound, Max reported, was a total loss. “Nothing but smoking logs,” he said. He looked decades older, almost frail. “Some of the cabins to the north might be salvageable – we didn’t check all of them – but all the main buildings are totally gone, as well as the cabins to the southeast. The fire is still smoldering in spots – if we go back in, we need to be watching for the wind to change. It could flare back up any time. In my opinion, there’s no need to take the risk. It’s all gone.”
Silence met his words as the group absorbed the information. Then Jenny started to cry again, her wet sniffles the only sound in the room. Piper looked around, analyzed bond-lines and noted where people were standing. All was exactly as she expected.
Phase one of her plan was complete.
On to phase two.
“We should go to Woodland Park.” She said the words just like she’d practiced them, with quiet, calm conviction. She waited until everyone but Jenny had looked up – Jenny was irrelevant – then went on in a matter-of-fact tone. This was the most reasonable idea in the world. She needed them to believe that. “My family has a cabin on Carrol Lakes, and my dad is a prepper. There’ll be supplies, at least enough to get us started while we regroup.”
She’d thought long and hard about revealing that information, but when they left this place, the greatest threat this group posed would already have been eliminated. That was phase three.
People were exchanging looks now, shoulders were shrugging, and when their faces turned back to her, they were open. Curious. Interested in learning more. It was all she could do not to leap in the air in victory. She dug her nails into her palms and went on. “It’s about 200 miles south of here. If the roads are open, we could make it in a day, if we take the jeeps.” She looked at Jenny and Aaron, and did her best to fake compassion. “Some might rather stay here, settle in Walden.”
“Why wouldn’t we all stay here?” Max asked. Behind him, Ruth nodded. “Awfully long way to go for some supplies that may or may not still be there. And some of us weren’t exposed to the plague back in the beginning, those that got to the compound early and didn’t share nursing duties for Levi’s dad or Jenny’s kids. I know we’re hearing that it burned itself out, but it could resurface. Safer just to re-establish right here, maybe over by the reservoir.”
Piper lost a wager with herself – she’d bet Ruth would be the first to suggest that plan. Again, as she’d practiced, she shrugged and looked down. “I would like to know if my family is still alive. I know some of you have family you’re wondering about.” She made eye contact with Adam, then Ethan, and both of them nodded their understanding. “It would ease my mind, to know they’re okay.”
Throughout her carefully planned recitation, she’d avoided making eye contact with Brody. She had taken a calculated risk; he might take this as forcing his hand again and deny her suggestion just to teach her a lesson. She could feel him watching her now, his eyes pressing into her skull relentlessly. Against her will, her eyes jerked to his, but the contact told her nothing. His face was immobile, unreadable. Without looking away from her, he spoke.
“We’ll stay the night here, then make our plans in the morning. Adam, you’re on first watch with Elise. I’ll take second. Piper, you’ll be with me.”
Piper nodded, but a chill of warning skated down her spine. Was that suspicion in his eyes? Or was she just being paranoid?
She busied herself with the tasks of settling in, but couldn’t shake the chill of foreboding. Conversation was subdued as they suffered through a dinner of MRE’s, and Piper quietly worked herself into a state of panicked despair. They weren’t going to bite. It made more sense, to stay here; she knew that. She was going to have to implement plan B, which meant walking out of here on her own, as soon as an opportunity arose. Much as she hated to admit it, the thought made her weak with terror. She knew what could happen to a woman on her own in this changed world, and as awful as her situation was, she was certain it could be worse. Before she could force herself to start working out the logistics, Elise sat down beside her.
“We’re in. Me and Ethan, and the kids.” She smiled. “He told me, how you spoke up for us. And I’ve never forgotten your advice that first day. I owe you.” She shrugged. “Besides, I’ve always loved Woodland Park. My husband and I used to take the kids camping down on Rampart Reservoir, and we always stopped for breakfast at the Hungry Bear on our way out. Did you ever have their Cranberry Nut French Toast? God, it was to die for.”
Piper’s eyes were suddenly swimming with tears. She tried to say something, but her throat felt like it had swollen shut. Finally, she just nodded, swallowing. Elise smiled again, squeezed her hand and headed out to stand watch with Adam. Piper looked around. Tyler nodded at her – he’d be in, she was sure of it, and Adam with him. Max and Ruth were huddled with Jenny, Aaron and Caden. No way Jenny would leave the graves of her children, and Max had never really stopped taking care of the little bereaved family. Ruth would stay with Max. And Levi would stay with his sister; weak as she was, she was the only family he had left.
It was all coming together. Just one thing left to take care of.
Nobody slept well. At midnight, when she and Brody rose to take their watch, the single cavernous room was still restless with murmurings and rustlings. Caden cried out, apparently in a nightmare, and was shushed by his mother. In a far corner, a low light illuminated the smooth young faces of Sam and Becca as they played cards and waited for their mother to come off watch. Ethan lay on a sleeping bag nearby, but his eyes, too, were open, the bright white bond-line that had connected him to Elise since the first day they met glowing steadily. Piper and Brody pulled on outerwear and armed themselves, then stepped out into the night to relieve Adam and Elise, both of whom were drooping with spent adrenalin and fatigue.
The night was clear and cold, bright with a fat, full moon, and the wind had risen to a steady, insistent whine. In the distance, orange light rose and fell as the fire pressed southward, and the smell of smoke, though fading, was still pronounced. When Piper started towards her position on the north side of the building, Brody caught her elbow.
“We need to talk.”
Piper’s heart started pounding. She tried to pull her elbow free, but Brody’s hand was like an iron cuff. He steered her towards the parked jeeps, letting her go when they were sheltered between two of them. They stared at each other, and Piper felt like she couldn’t move, frozen by his eyes. If she so much as twitched, she’d give herself away. A thousand years later, Brody spoke.
“Do you have anything you want to tell me?”
She nearly laughed. Her mom had always offered her that out, and she’d never once taken it. Let him make his case. She wasn’t going to stick her head in a noose. “No.”
Another eternity of locked eyes. Then, he reached into his pocket. He pulled out a familiar baggie, filled with powdered sulfur tuft mushrooms, and set it on the hood of one of the jeeps. A charred book of matches joined it. Finally, he removed the syringe and tiny glass vial of morphine that should have been hidden in the lining of her personal go-bag. He held up the last, and though the corners of his mouth tilted up, it was not a smile.
“If the overdose didn’t kill me, the anaphylactic shock would have.”
Piper didn’t think; she just reacted. She had her pistol out and pointed at his face before her heart beat one more time. It wanted to wobble, and she clamped down on her nerves savagely, steadying her arm through sheer force of will. “How long have you known?”
“From the beginning.” He didn’t seem to notice the pistol pointed at his face. To her shock, the bond-line flared between them, as bright as she’d ever seen it. He set the syringe and vial beside his other damning evidence and let his hands hang at his sides. “I knew from the first moment I saw you. This is the path. It always has been.”
It took her a moment to process the import of his words. Her arm wobbled again, and she brought her other hand up to steady her wrist, as her mother had taught her. Not a good time to get sloppy, her mother’s voice intoned, and once again, she nearly burst into hysterical laughter. Of all the times for her mother to break her silence.
“Are you saying you see the future? That’s how you’ve changed, like my bond-lines and Tyler’s thing with the cards, or Ethan’s intuition?”
“I see possible paths. Likely paths.”
That would explain a lot, she realized. Why he was such a brilliant tactician. How he’d blocked her so completely, way back in the beginning, using Noah’s death and the reactions of the group to trap her. But it didn’t explain a few very important things…
“Why are you telling me this? And while I’m asking, if you could see all this, why didn’t you stop me? The mushrooms. Or the fire. Why let those things happen?”
“I had my reasons.”
For the first time ever, she gave him her very best Piper eye-roll. “Really? If that isn’t the most lame, fakey-fortune-teller answer ever, I don’t know what is. Isn’t it a little too late to be cryptic?”
He smiled. A real smile, the first she’d ever seen on his face. It was transformative, a boyish grin that tilted rakishly at the corner and lit his eyes. She blinked, taken aback. And in that moment, he acted.
The pistol was jerked out of her hand, and his fist closed on the front of her shirt. He jerked her forward, until they were nose to nose. His calm expression was so much more terrifying than anger would have been.
“Let me tell you how this is going to happen: You’re going to get your escort to Woodland Park. I will be part of that escort. And for your information, if I should die under unexplained or suspicious circumstances, both Tyler and Adam have been instructed to kill you. We served together, in Afghanistan. You can’t compete with that bond. They won’t even hesitate.”
As he talked, he systematically disarmed her, stripping her of her rifle, the knife strapped to her wrist, the one strapped to her ankle, even the one hidden in an inner pocket of her coat. Piper was so frozen with fear, she couldn’t make a move to stop him.
“Just as you planned,” he continued, “Jenny and her family will not accompany us. Neither will her brother, or Max, or Ruth. We’ll leave one of the jeeps with them, and the rest of us will go on in the other two.” His eyes fixed on a distant horizon she couldn’t see. “We’ll make it to Breckenridge before we run into trouble. We’ll have to leave the jeeps there. We’ll walk a couple of days – two? Three? It’s not clear. But we’ll find other transportation, and we’ll be in Woodland Park inside a week.”
She stared at him, transfixed in spite of her terror. “What a terrible thing.” The words surprised her when they came out of her mouth, but she found she meant them. “How awful, to be able to see like that. I feel sorry for you.”
The look on his face. She would never be able to find words to describe it, though she’d spend the rest of her days trying, when the memory of this would come upon her. Anguish. Love. Desperation. Adoration. Despair. He was a twisted, broken monster of a man, and in spite of her hatred, she wondered for the very first time what had made him that way.
Then his expression contorted into something she was more familiar with; seeing the heat, the burn, made her stomach roll in greasy waves. He stripped her outer jacket off with rough hands, then shoved her back a few paces and lifted his hands, twitching his fingers at her.
“Fight me.”
She shook her head numbly. “I won’t.”
He stepped in close and put a hand on her throat, fingers hooked just beneath her skull on her spine, thumb on her chin. “Fight me,” he said hoarsely, “Or I will snap your neck. What will happen in Woodland Park doesn’t require your presence. Not anymore.” Again, his eyes fixed on a faraway place it was his burden to see. “I’m not sure if it ever did.”
Out of the ashes of her plans, a desperate phoenix soared. If he felt like he no longer needed her, she could walk away. Would walk away, find a way to get to Woodland Park ahead of them, warn the people there…
“I’ll find you. If you leave. Know that.” He shoved her again. “Fight me.”
What was there left for her to do? She fought.