carrots. He hadn’t steered us wrong yet. We were alive, after all.
I took a long breath, sucking in smoke and wood and cold, then sat down in a chair next to the dining room table. The chair wobbled with my weight. I looked at Mom. She was chewing the inside of her lip like her teeth were trying to gnaw their way out.
Jeryl swung the heavy wooden door open, but it caught on the floorboards on the backswing as he left. It never closed right.
“You shouldn’t have gone to his house. You should have come straight back here and you know it,” Mom said.
“I should have stabbed Conrad in the face.”
Mom walked toward the door. Metallic light spilled in through the slit and onto Mom’s skin, making her look like the Tin Man. She watched outside for a second. “If it was me going, I’d come back with his head,” she said.
“If it was me, I’d come back with his balls.”
“Gwendolynn.”
I shrugged.
She grabbed the door’s handle and pulled as hard as she could. It slammed shut.
If life in Alaska was a dream, life in Chicago was a dream within a dream. Were there ever really buildings that tall? That many people crammed onto a street? That many cars driving late into the night? Sounds like an ugly fairy tale. We lived there till I was twelve, before we moved to Alaska, before the bomb hit New York, before the fires started, before the TVs went out, the planes stopped flying, and before everything south of the border felt like a war zone. Dad worked as a biologist for the University of Chicago. I think he did some teaching, mostly research. Chicago was where I watched the attack, the beginning of it all.
Ken and I were getting ready for school. I was eating a bowl of Golden Grahams when Dad, calling from the living room, said, “Mary, get in here.” We could tell from the sound of his voice that something was wrong, so we followed Mom in, my mouth still full of half-chewed cereal. The first thing I remember seeing was fire on the TV. Giant flames pumping black smoke. It was the Pentagon, Dad said. At first everyone thought that a bomb had gone off in the building. Later they learned that somehow a group of hackers had managed to take control of one of our drones. That’s when everything really started.
We moved shortly after that. But not because of the wars. Mom and Dad would never admit to it, but something bad had gone down at his work. I don’t know what, or whether it was related to the war. But from the way he and Mom avoided talking about it, and the looks they gave each other when I asked, I knew there was more to the story. So we had to move. I didn’t care much about the truth, or maybe I didn’t really want to know. Didn’t want my dad to have done something wrong. So I left it.
I remember the drive from Chicago. We left in a hurry. Like Dad was anxious to be out of there. I was crying because I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave my friends. “Don’t be a little cry-baby,” Ken said. The trip was a blur of hotels, passing mountains, small towns, and loud semitrucks. It felt like we were on the road for months. And along the way, news of the war followed us. On the radio, on TVs in run-down diners. The US was tightening the noose on terror. Bombs were being dropped. Lots of them. But it was still the early stages, before things got really bad. Before the flu.
When we crossed the border, the guard asked where we were going.
“Vancouver,” Dad said.
“What for?”
“Visiting family.”
“How long will you be in Vancouver?”
“A couple of weeks.”
It was the first time I’d heard Dad lie.
I sat on the stump in front of our cabin and repaired my wire trap, winding the broken ends together over and over again. It wouldn’t hold as well—a deer could probably pull it apart—but still, it was better than throwing the wire away. I’d have to set it lower to the ground, go for smaller game like a fox or a hare or a marten. All because Anthony Conrad was a selfish ass. My face throbbed, the wind stung my cheek, and I could still feel his weight pressing against my body. His hands on me. His fingers. I felt sick. If I’d told Jeryl about it, maybe he would have agreed to kill Conrad. But that would have required actually telling Jeryl—saying the words out loud. I didn’t think I could. My hands started to shake. I stuffed the wire into my coat pocket and looked south. Coming down the path I’d made in the snow was my brother, Ken, carrying what looked like a hare. His rifle was slung over his shoulder and his hood was zipped tight over his neck. When we first moved out here, the sight of him with that rifle made me angry and jealous at once. Jeryl wouldn’t let me shoot one. Our ammo was too precious, and I was too young and too lacking in the penis department. But I had my bow and I was a good shot. Ken would never admit it, but I was the best, better than him, better than Ramsey—though that’s not a surprise—and better than Jeryl. A woman’s weapon, Ken told me once. I didn’t care. I brought in just as much game as he did.
When he approached, he gave me a hard look. “The hell happened to you?”
Ken was never one for subtlety.
“Conrad.” No point in lying; he’d hear the truth soon enough.
“What’d you say to him?”
Oh, there was so much wrong with that question, I didn’t know where to begin. I tried to let the anger blow over me like snow on a car windshield—distant memories: Dad driving, Mom sitting up straight in the passenger seat, looking worried, Ken playing his DS, me watching the snow flash in the headlights and shoot over our windshield in a silver blur, like magic—but it didn’t work, shrugging my anger off, that is. Ken had a talent for making me pissed as hell.
“What did I say? He stole my kill. I told him to give it back. It was a buck too, probably a hundred times the size of that little bunny you got there.”
“A kill is a kill. Least I got mine. A bird in the hand and all that.”
“I’d have got mine if Conrad hadn’t stolen it.”
“Guess you should have asked nicely.”
“I did.”
“I bet you did.”
I looked down at my stupid hands. They were still shaking.
Ken just stood there, assessing me. “Well, Conrad’s an asshole anyway.”
I nodded.
“Jeryl know?”
I nodded again.
“He going to talk to him?”
Nodded.
“He’ll kick his ass. Buck up,” he said, then nudged me on the shoulder and turned around toward his cabin. It was as close to Sorry, Lynn, that sucks. Conrad deserves to be strangled by his own guts as I was ever going to get from Ken. It wasn’t very consoling, but, weirdly enough, I did stop shaking.
Some of the things we brought from Alaska to the Yukon:
Guns. The two rifles, the shotgun, and two handguns. One of the rifles was Dad’s, the rest of the guns were Jeryl’s.
Ammo. We brought a shit ton of ammo. Boxes and boxes stacked on the back of the horse. Most of it Jeryl and Dad bought honestly. But I know a good portion Jeryl took from an abandoned store after the looters started breaking windows and taking what they wanted. We were going to run out eventually, but we were careful with our shots.
Fishing equipment. Two poles, hooks, leads, lines, an extra reel, and power bait, which ran out the first year. We used