Fighting Rough

25

“You feeling better?” said Mandy.

Max nodded. His whole body had been stiff with cold, but a few hours by the fire, and some venison, had made him feel limber once again. Not that he wasn’t exhausted. They all were.

“You weren’t serious about going out alone, were you?”

Max shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Why’d you say that?”

“I was serious at the time,” said Max. “The cold must have gotten to me… the adrenaline from the fight. It’s better to wait until there’s daylight.”

Max was glad he hadn’t rushed out into the night looking for Jake and Rose. He still thought there could easily be more enemies out there. And, frankly, the probability that Jake and Rose had died was high.

“Good,” said Mandy. “Because you know it doesn’t make sense to go all cowboy and try to do everything yourself. You’ll just get killed. You’re the one who’s always advising caution, after all. It wouldn’t look very good if you got killed by not following your own advice.”

Max let out a brief, muted laugh. Then he fell into silence again. Mandy too. There was, after all, nothing funny about the situation. Jake and Rose were missing. Probably dead.

“It’s weird,” said Mandy, speaking slowly. “It’s almost like I’ve gotten used to this.”

“To what?”

“To people going missing, turning up dead.”

Max nodded. “It’s tough, but…”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Mandy, cutting him off. “We’ve got to keep going.”

Max laughed again. This time, it was more of a real laugh. “I guess I say that a lot?”

Mandy’s eyes twinkled. “Sometimes.”

They were sitting close together, away from the fire, facing north. Most of the others were sitting by the fire.

Their guns lay beside them. The sun was rising slowly, making everything once again seem possible, giving them hope when they’d had no hope before.

Mandy leaned in, her mouth approaching Max’s.

Max, for a moment, didn’t move. He just stared into Mandy’s eyes, which seemed to be sparkling. They were deep and beautiful. He hadn’t had much time to look into her eyes in the last weeks.

This was a rare moment, one that Max promised himself he’d remember in the future, once things got rough again. They always seemed to, chaos coming rumbling in like a freight train, disrupting all their carefully calculated plans and schemes.

Max leaned in, his lips meeting hers. They kept their eyes open. For some reason, it seemed more natural that way.

“Hey!” came a gruff voice.

It was John. His boots tread heavily across the ground.

Mandy pulled quickly away from Max, quickly becoming busy removing her cap and rearranging her hair, which was had been a permanent mess for the last week. That was fine with Max. He happened to like that look.

“What is it?” said Max, turning to his brother.

John looked angry. Max could tell just by the way he moved, the way he walked. Sure, it had been a lot of years since they’d spent time together, but people didn’t change that much. At least not their “tells,” and the way they expressed their emotions.

“I thought you were going to strike out on your own, hunt down Jake and Rose all by yourself?”

“I thought you didn’t want me to go,” said Max.

“He’s not going alone,” said Mandy. “He just told me.”

“That’s right,” said Max. “We need to go out in groups. I wasn’t thinking clearly before.”

“I’m not sure you’ve been thinking clearly for a while,” muttered John.

“What was that?” said Max.

“You heard me.”

Max stood up, facing his brother. He didn’t have time for this. Whatever was bothering John probably had more to do with him than it did with Max.

“There isn’t time for this,” said Max. “We’ve got to get going.”

“But there was plenty of time to sit around, waiting until dawn?”

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

“What I’m getting at is that I don’t think you’re such a great leader,” said John, his nostrils flaring, his eyebrows narrowing. “Every decision you’ve made…”

“Every decision he’s made has been the right one,” said Mandy, interrupting him and standing up beside Max.

Max put his hand up, gesturing to Mandy that that was enough.

“I don’t always make the right decisions,” said Max, speaking slowly. “Sometimes there aren’t any right decisions. And when I’ve been wrong, when I’m way off, at least I admit it. I was wrong to want to go after them myself. There, I said it.”

John didn’t seem to know what to say.

“Now that it’s light,” said Max, “we’re heading out. Mandy, we’ll go together. John, you take Cynthia. Everyone else will guard the camp. That is, if you’re up for it.”

He stared his brother right in the eyes. John didn’t blink.

Finally, John nodded. Whatever his problem with Max was, he was willing to recognize a plan that made sense.

“Good,” said Max. “We’ll head that way, cutting a wide arc. You two can take the other direction.” He pointed as he spoke. “Keep an eye out for footprints. And tell Georgia what’s going on.”

John nodded again. He was silent, but the anger was still on his face.

Max nodded to Mandy, and they set off, leaving John standing there.

They’d gotten ready a half hour ago, but they carried minimal gear with them. They had a rifle and handgun each and a small supply of extra food and water that they were able to fit into their parka pockets. Backpacks would only weight them down, making traversing the snow more difficult.

If things ever calmed down, Max had plans for making rudimentary snowshoes. For now, they were stuck slogging through the snow in their boots.

The temperature had risen. Not enough to melt the snow, but enough to feel significantly warmer than last night’s frigid temperatures. If he’d had to guess, Max would have said it was in the high twenties. Maybe thirty.

As they walked, Mandy kept glancing at Max.

“What is it?” said Max, finally.

“Aren’t you going to say anything about what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“With your brother. With John.”

Max shrugged. “What’s there to say?”

“Aren’t you wondering why he was so upset?”

“That’s his business,” said Max.

Mandy huffed. “No wonder you two didn’t talk much after childhood.”

Max said nothing but he picked up the pace. His leg was, strangely, feeling better. Maybe it was the weather. His head, however, hadn’t stopped hurting since he’d fallen, and now the pain had developed into a throbbing, intense headache. He’d take that over something worse.

“Fine,” said Mandy, unprompted. “I’ll tell you.”

“It’s fine,” said Max. “I don’t need to know.”

“No, no, I can tell you want to know. It’s nothing you did, really. It’s just that he was trying so hard to find you. He thought you’d have it all figured out. You’re his brother, and he looks up to you. Basically it’s his own expectations meeting reality. And it’s not your fault, Max.”

“I didn’t think it was.”

“It’s that no one can conquer all this… madness… this chaos. The EMP changed everything. I guess he was trying to find a way back to his old life in a sense. By finding you.”

“How much of that did he tell you, and how much of that is your own analysis?”

“It’s a mix of both.”

That wasn’t really what Max had asked, but he let it drop. John would learn in time to confront whatever he was going through. He’d have to face reality, like the rest of them. And the reality was that Max wasn’t anyone’s savior. He was just a guy who knew how to keep going.

Max’s eyes hadn’t stopped moving since they’d left camp. He kept his gaze shifting between the ground and the surroundings. There were footprints everywhere that made paths back to camp. What Max was looking for was a set of footprints that didn’t belong.

“It’s harder than I thought to distinguish between these,” said Max. “It’s too bad we couldn’t have followed their original prints, from when they left camp. But too much snow’s fallen.”

“Why didn’t we at least set out in the direction they did?” said Mandy.

“Not much point,” said Max. “They could have gone any direction a minute or ten minutes later after leaving. We’re as likely to find signs of them out here as in any direction.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’re holding out much hope we’ll find them.”

“Unfortunately not,” said Max.

“I don’t want to go blaming them,” said Mandy. “But it’s kind of their fault. I mean, I feel terrible just having said that, knowing they might be dead.”

“Probably dead,” said Max, correcting her.

“That makes me feel even worse.”

Max didn’t say anything. He was trying to make sense of the footprints.

“Why are you carrying that rifle, anyway?” said Mandy, after a few minutes.

“You’re asking me why I’m carrying a gun? You are too.”

“Yeah, but you know how to use the semi-automatics from the dead guys. I thought they were better guns.”

“Not better,” said Max. “Just different. And while I may know how to use it, I feel more comfortable with one of Georgia’s rifles. Sometimes the best tool is the one you know how to use the best, rather than how it looks on paper. Unfortunately, I spent too much time at the target range with my Glock, and not enough with anything else.”

“Seems like you’re doing fine with it.”

Up ahead, Max saw something. He stopped in his tracks, and raised his binoculars to his eyes.

“What is it?” said Mandy.

“Looks like a dead animal,” said Max. “But it’s hard to tell. It’s pretty far off. Come on.”

They continued forward, through the snow, in silence. Max’s finger rested outside the trigger guard of his rifle. But he was ready.

“Can you see it now?” said Mandy. She sounded nervous.

“Yeah,” said Max, using the binoculars again. “I think it’s a dog.”

“A dead dog?” said Mandy. She sounded upset.

Soon enough, they were close enough to see the dog with the naked eye.

“Someone shot it,” said Mandy, bending down to examine it. “I wonder what it was doing out here.”

Max touched the dog. “It’s still warm,” he said.

“It’s horrible,” said Mandy. “Why would someone shoot a dog?”

Max didn’t answer.

Max kept his eyes on the surroundings. He doubted whoever had shot the dog was still here, but he didn’t want to take his chances. He used his binoculars again, but he saw nothing.

“Maybe it was the same men who attacked us,” said Mandy.

“Maybe,” said Max.

‘You think it was someone else?”

Max didn’t say anything. He was looking at the ground now, at a pair of very clean footprints that began not far from the dog.

“Where are you going?”

Max bent down, examining the prints.

“Look at these.”

“Look like boot prints. It must have been those men.”

“The dog wasn’t shot long ago,” said Max. “It means there’s someone else out here. Could be more than one.”

“There’s only one set of footprints.”

“No,” said Max, pointing. “There’s two.”

“But what’s that over there?”

Mandy walked slightly ahead of Max, pointing to a strange pattern in the snow.

“Looks like the mark a sled would make,” said Mandy. “But that doesn’t make sense.”

“It wasn’t a sled,” said Max, following the strange tracks. “Take a look at this.”

“What is it?”

It was a mound in the snow about the size and shape of a body.

“Give me a hand,” said Max, starting to dig at the snow with his bare hands.

“I have a feeling we’re not going to like what we find.”

Mandy suddenly let out a gasp, standing up and backing away from the mound.

Max looked. It was Rose. Mandy had been digging by her head, and had revealed her face. Her eyes were open wide, and the color was gone from her.

Max continued digging. Whoever’d buried Rose had done so hastily. The snow wasn’t packed in tightly.

“Keep an eye on our surroundings,” said Max. His hands were cold and numb, but he kept digging.

It didn’t take him long to reveal the whole body.

“Someone cut off her ear!” said Mandy. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Max examined the corpse, thinking he’d find a bullet wound. But there was nothing. Not until he pushed Rose over on her stomach did he find the knife wounds.

“This is my fault,” said Max. “We should have left earlier.”