The Survivors (5 page)

“Not really,” Sarah says. “I was homeschooled, actually,” she explains, and rolls her eyes.

“So why'd you come here?” Mackenzie asks.

“I told my parents I'd sue them if I had to stay at home another year,” Sarah says.

The girls giggle.

“Well, since you're here, you clearly need to know stuff about this school,” Mackenzie says. She looks around the cafeteria. “See that cute guy with the buzz cut over there? That's Django. Isn't that the coolest name ever? He's really good at basketball, and we, you know, go out once in a while.”

“They're going steady!” one of the girls says, and everyone laughs.

“And next to him, that guy in the red T-shirt? He's Derek.”

Sarah lets Mackenzie rattle on and concentrates on her lunch. She scarfs down everything. She was never part of the clean-plate club BV (Before Volcanoes), but now, even bad cafeteria food is too precious to be tossed. She puts her tray on the conveyor belt, where all the other plates and dishes are as empty as if a dog has licked them shiny.

Ray catches up with her in the hallway. “Nice lunch?”

“Sort of.”

“So you're friends with Mackenzie now?”

“Maybe.”

“I gotta say, they just don't seem like your crowd.”

“What's my crowd?”

“I don't know yet,” he says. His dark eyes probe hers; it's as if he can see all the way through her. He reaches out and puts a finger on the ancient, faded NOFX patch stitched onto her backpack—and also brushes her arm. Her bare skin tingles.

“So what's
your
crowd?” she replies quickly. Her arm burns where his hand touched her, and she feels her face go hot, too.

“Probably not this whole school,” he says quickly with a glance around them. “I'd really like to be at the arts school in Minneapolis; I have my application in.”

She laughs.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she says quickly. “I mean, you do seem sort of … artsy. A guy who wears kilts.”

“It's my disguise,” he says.

She's totally warm and blushing and very short on words.

“What's yours?” he asks.

“My disguise?”

He waits for her reply.

“What makes you think I have one?” she throws back.

“Everybody does,” Ray says with his killer grin.

TUNK. TUNK-TUNK
.

At the sounds, Miles drops low behind some brush. He is following the wild dog's tracks along the riverbank away from his mother, but now he pauses to listen. On the river, coming closer,
tunka-tunk
: the noise comes from canoe paddles.

Clumsy paddling. Miles looks over his shoulder, back toward the cabin and the riverbank where his mother might still be having her morning swim. He eases backward to take a shortcut home so that he can call out to warn her. On the river, the woman's voice says, “I think I had a bite!”

“Did it jerk back and forth?”

“No, just kind of a tug,” she answers.

“Probably a weed. Check your hook.” The guy makes a clumsy cast with his fishing pole.

They're a youngish couple who clearly haven't fished much. They seem harmless enough, but at a bend in the river, Miles leaves the deer trail and angles straight across to get ahead of the canoeists. When he comes to the edge of the clearing, his mother is fully dressed. But she is sitting on the riverbank with a towel draped around her hair, and with a small bottle and brush she is doing her toenails.

He waves with both hands, but she's engrossed in her toes.

By then it's too late: A canoe paddle goes
clonk!
, and his mother suddenly looks up as the canoe comes around the bend.

“Hello!” the woman says as the canoe approaches.

“Hi there,” Nat says. She doesn't scramble or run, but glances around for Miles; she spots him but doesn't give him away. Miles shrinks farther back into the trees.

“What a surprise!” the young woman in the bow says. She has reddish hair, lots of it, tucked under a scarf, but her face is thin.

“Yes!” Nat says.

The man in the stern steers the canoe to the shore; its nose grinds into the sand. “I didn't think anyone lived way out here,” he says, looking up the bank. He has a short, dark beard and hollow cheeks and is wearing a baseball cap. Miles follows his gaze; luckily there is no smoke rising from the cookstove. The only sign of human life is the faint, narrow path leading uphill from the river.

“Live out here?” Nat says. She manufactures a laugh. “I don't think so. My family and I are just camping for a couple of nights. You know, get away from it all.”

“Same with us!” the woman says quickly. “We're just out fishing.”

“Trying to,” her partner adds. He keeps looking up the trail—trying to see what's behind the trees. “Must be a nice place to camp.”

Miles steps out from the trees.

“My son,” Nat says.

The woman reaches down to the bottom of the canoe; Miles tightens his grip on the shotgun, but she lifts up a bundle that emits a tiny, perfect wail.

“A baby—congratulations,” Natalie says.

“Thanks,” the woman says, holding her baby tightly as Miles approaches.

“Howdy,” he says.

“Hey,” the canoe couple say simultaneously to Miles.

“So how old is your baby?” Nat asks pleasantly.

“Four months,” the mother says. The baby is totally wrapped in a blanket; its face is not visible.

“Believe it or not, this guy used to be that small,” Nat says as Miles arrives at the river's edge. The fishing couple look warily at Miles's shotgun.

“Any luck?” Miles asks in the universal greeting to people in a boat with fishing poles.

“Nothing,” the guy answers. He seems defeated—as if he's totally out of his element.

“The fish are in the weed beds, not in the open channel,” Miles says. “For bass, use something silvery that looks like a minnow. Northern pike like to hang right on the weed lines. They'll hit a red-and-white spoon.”

“Thanks!” the woman says.

“Well, we'd better keep fishing,” the man says. “Have a nice day camping.”

Miles and his mother watch the pair head downstream. The man paddles, and the woman bends closer around her baby. It cries once more with the same little wail; the mother glances over her shoulder as the canoe slides out of sight around a bend.

“Where did
they
come from?” Natalie says to Miles.

“Upriver. Clanging their paddles and talking loud all the way.”

“Sorry,” his mother says. “I had the towel over my ears.”

Miles shrugs. “What if they'd been squatters?”

His mother shrugs and takes his arm. “I've got a scary-looking son in the woods with a gun,” she says.

“I can't be around all the time.”

“I know,” she answers. “But they weren't squatters or bad guys, were they? Just a nice young family.”

Miles glances behind. “The fewer people who know we're here, the better.”

“You're starting to sound like Mr. Kurz,” his mother teases.

“And look what happened to him,” Miles mutters. “One trip to the big city for his sister's funeral and his family slaps him in an old folks' home.”

“Hey—where are we going?” his mother says as Miles steers her off the trail.

“Let's not use the same path all the time. The more we use it, the more obvious it becomes.”

“Yes, Mr. Kurz,” his mother says.

When the cabin is in sight, he pauses. “I'm gonna head back to the woods for a while.”

“Be careful,” his mother says automatically.

When she is out of sight, Miles hurries down a deer trail along the river. There was something slightly off about that little family of three. Something weird that he can't put his finger on.

It takes a few minutes before he catches a glimpse of the canoe through the riverbank brush, but in another minute he's ahead of it and crouched behind a fallen tree only a few yards from the water where they will pass.

“—be camping way out here?” the woman asks.

“They're not camping,” the man says harshly. “I told you—they gotta be living there. They're probably Travelers. Or squatters.”

“So?” the woman says.

“We should threaten to turn them in,” the guy says. “I'll bet they've got food stashed for winter—and they'd give us some.”

“That scary-looking kid had a gun,” the woman says.

The man is silent.

“And anyway, we've got something better than a gun,” the woman says. She reaches down. The baby cries again—the same perfect little wail.

Miles swallows a grunt of recognition: He remembers that sound. It's from a doll, a You & Me brand, fourteen-inch, battery-operated crying doll; Miles knows, because Sarah used to have one—and the stupid thing drove him nuts.

“Baby's got to eat,” the woman says. “They love you at the grocery store, too, don't they?” she says, faking baby talk.

The guy ignores her. He swings the canoe sideways in order to look upstream. “I still say we should go back and case the place. Sneak up and see what they got.”

“But who would watch the baby?” the woman asks; it's supposed to be a joke, but it's clear that she wants no part of this.

The man doesn't answer; he paddles backward so that the canoe holds steady in the current.

“Please, Jeremy,” she says. “We're not, like, thieves.”

He sets his jaw. “Yeah, well, the world is different now.” With a couple of hard thrusts of his paddle, he turns the canoe toward shore and beaches it on the sand with a scraping sound.

“I'm not going with you!” the woman says.

“Fine!” the guy says. “Stay here.”

“Jeremy—you don't know who they are or what's out there!” the woman says.

The man ignores her and puts one leg over the side of the canoe. Which is when Miles fires—a warning shot—into the river beside him. Water sprays the couple, and the woman sucks in a shriek as the man topples backward into the canoe. Miles steps into the open and trains the gun on them. His .410 holds only one shell, but he would have plenty of time to reload.

“She's right!” Miles says. “You just don't know who's out there.”

“Please! Don't shoot us!” the woman whimpers.

Miles is silent.

The man's Adam's apple bobs up and down like a crazy yo-yo. He's lying on his back in the canoe like an upturned turtle.

“Show me some ID,” Miles says.

“ID?” the man asks. His voice is thin and quaky.

“For God's sakes, give him your wallet,” the woman breathes.

The man digs into a rear pocket, then tosses the wallet to Miles; keeping one eye on the canoeists, he crouches on the bank, fishes out the guy's driver's license, looks at it. Then he tosses back the wallet.

“Aren't you going to rob us?” the woman says weakly.

“Please—just shut up,” the man whispers at her.

“No. Just want to see where you live,” Miles says. “So I know where to come. You know, in case—”

“Hey, we were just blowing smoke!” the man says. “We won't turn you in or cause you any trouble.”

“We'll forget we ever saw you!” the woman adds in a rush of words.

Miles pauses. “Promise?”

“Yes!” the couple say at the same time.

“Cross your heart and hope not to die?” He looks once more at the address on the license. “Jeremy Barchers?”

The two are white-faced now and can only nod up and down.

He pockets the driver's license—keeps it.

“Okay. Works for me,” Miles says. Gun in hand, with his left boot he pushes their canoe sharply off the sand and into the current. “Have a nice day.”

The couple's canoe paddles clang and bang rapidly as they head downstream.

“And take good care of your baby!” he calls after them.

When the canoe goes around the bend and out of sight, Miles lets out a long breath. His hands are shaky. He puts down the gun and sits on the riverbank. It takes a few minutes before he's ready to head home.

Back at the cabin, his father is out by the sawmill, actually working. He and Nat are sorting boards per Miles's instruction. They look up as Miles comes out of the woods. “I heard you shoot,” his father says. “Did you get anything?”