Chapter 10
Come Sunday afternoon, Will and I were loading crates onto the trailer. Sam had already left for Maggie and Nora’s cottage, and Zeph was out checking the traps for game. The sun was past the zenith, but the air all but vibrated with heat. I had my hair pulled back in a braid, but the humidity had a few long strands tickling my cheek. I lifted a heavy crate from the ground and almost dropped it.
“Whoa, Killer. I got it.” Will caught the box before I let go and the two of us stood face to face, clinging to the wooden crate and staring into each other’s eyes. My heart pounded so loudly I was sure he could hear it crashing right through the box. Then he smiled and the earth teetered. “You can let go. I can take it from here,” he said. Sweat soaked his hair, darkening the strands that dripped down his temple. He’d shaved his face and his skin looked smooth and soft.
I let go of the crate and watched as he hefted it onto the trailer with ease. He was lean and strong, just a few days of healthy eating already having an effect on his body. He’d taken off his shirt an hour before, and every muscle in his torso was strung tight from the exertion of packing and loading the flat utility bed from back to front and top to bottom of its five-foot slatted side walls. He sprang nimbly up, lifted the crate into place, and then jumped down to face me.
“That’s the last of our cargo,” I said with a sigh.
Will examined our efforts and grinned. “We work well together.”
Hoping that Will wouldn’t notice me blush since my face was already beet red from the heat, I tried to act cool. But my mouth wouldn’t cooperate. “You’re a lot stronger than you look…I mean you’re so strong…what I meant to say is…”
“You’re stronger than you look, too.” He saved me from sticking my foot any further down my throat. “What’s next?”
“We cover the crates with a weatherproof tarp and tie it down.” I headed for Sam’s workshop, glad to have my back to the boy who was making it excruciatingly clear that keeping my distance was going to be impossible. He fell in behind me, but as we approached the outbuilding furthest from the house, I stopped. “I’ll get it. Um…Sam doesn’t like anyone in his workshop and that’s where the tarp is.” A loud buzzing emanated from the building.
“What’s that sound?” he asked.
“We keep our beehives around the outside of the building.” Surrounded by tall pines and sheltered by boughs, the bees buzzed happily, protected from the sun and the worst of the heat.
“I suppose if Sam doesn’t want anyone but you in his workshop, that’s a pretty good security system.”
“If you don’t smoke them out before you try to get to the honeycomb, I suspect you’d be pretty sorry, but they’re used to me.”
“What’s Sam trying to hide in there?” he asked lightly. A funny sensation flooded my stomach and my jaw tightened in response to his curiosity, but I brushed it off, not wanting to be suspicious or rude.
“He just tinkers with stuff. Mostly he doesn’t want Zeph messing around with his tools. You know how guys are about those things.” Before he could respond I turned toward the building. “Wait here.” I paused at the door, and punched in a security code, and then disappeared inside.
The high-ceilinged post and beam structure was cool, offering me instant relief from the stifling heat outside. The air was crisp and dry, made cleaner by the air filtration system Sam had installed to avoid contaminants interfering with his experiments. I passed a long steel table covered with mechanical bits and pieces that would undoubtedly make up some genius invention that would be used either to make our lives or the lives of our neighbors that much easier.
Sam was well liked by the locals and had outfitted several homes and businesses with wind turbines and geothermal temperature control systems. No one asked, but his connections to the Network gave him access to the surplus tech products left over from before the pandemic. Neighbors seemed to appreciate his innovative brilliance and generosity, probably a big reason people didn’t want to cause him any trouble by informing the government of our presence. For better or worse, we all needed each other to survive, and Sam had made himself an indispensable part of the community.
Overhead, a glider with a wide wing span and a small battery-powered engine hung suspended from the ceiling. I had only seen Sam try the glider once, and he had crash landed it in a nearby field. The memory of Sam cursing and trying to disentangle himself from the harness while upside down made me giggle.
I bypassed the robotics lab, which always gave me the creeps, half assembled androids, mechanical body parts, and human-like eyeballs staring at me from glass cases. I shuddered and made my way to the back of the building to the storage unit where we kept the more normal farm related items like tarps, gardening tools, and wood pellets for burning over the winter to supplement our heat.
Sam was always prepared—a motto he’d learned from being in Boy Scouts and a lesson driven home in the Army. I grabbed the tarp and rushed back outside, feeling a bit guilty for leaving Will out in the heat when it was so nice and cool inside. It wasn’t like Sam had some deep dark secret hidden in his workshop. At least as far as I knew, but the less the government knew about what he was up to, the better. Sam took privacy seriously and I wasn’t about to question it since he’d kept Zeph and me safe all these years.
I closed the door behind me and enabled the security system. Will didn’t ask any more questions about the workshop, but he continued to push his curiosity, making me uncomfortable about the lies I had to tell him.
“What’s in that building over there?” He pointed to the garage—another area Sam had specifically said was off-limits. There were remnants of several older model cars and trucks in various states of disassembly and decay lined up on both sides of the garage.
“Just a bunch of old junk,” I said, which wasn’t too far from the truth. The Land Rover was an antique, but it ran like a champ thanks to Sam’s upgrades. I was itching to drive it, but Sam had only let me try it a few times—just enough to teach me in case I ever needed it to escape. We also had an old quad that Sam had retrofitted with a solar-electric motor and a few extra axles so that there were four tires on each side. He called it the “Crawler” since its eight wheels extended out from the body, giving it an insect-like appearance. He had just taken off the winter tracks and put on the mud tires for spring and summer. It came in handy for trips into town when the weather was bad, or the mud was too much for the horses.
“I see your uncle likes the classics. Do any of them run?” Will was checking out the cars, trucks, and motorcycle parts with interest.
“Like I said, just a bunch of junk Sam keeps around for parts.”
I noticed that our one usable motorbike was missing and made a mental note to remind Zeph that he wasn’t supposed to be using it for chores. The vehicles were assets that weren’t wise to advertise, and my brother knew better than to waste battery time or fuel for his amusement.
I changed the subject back to the trip, while we busied ourselves covering the crates and tying down the tarp. “There. That ought to hold it.” I clipped the last corner and made sure no rain could get to the cargo. We would hitch the load to the horses to get the supplies into town and then transfer the trailer to the tandem caravan that would make the slow trip into Albany.
Will looked at the sun sinking behind the trees. “Shouldn’t your brother be back by now?”
I hadn’t thought about how much time had passed but he was right. Zeph was late and an uneasy flash of anger rose inside me. “He’s probably down at the pond fishing or sitting on some log whittling another flute or something.” As much as I loved Zeph’s talent for wood carving, it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d forgotten his chores and flaked out about the time.
I wiped sweat from my face onto the shoulder of my shirt. “I suppose we should go check on him.” We didn’t have time for my brother’s goofing off. Sam would be waiting for us and we needed to get to the cottage and load up their supplies before dark. I f
elt a sudden apprehension that I couldn’t dismiss. An idea struck me and held fast. I knew I shouldn’t even consider it, but we were running out of daylight and I didn’t have time to waste. “Wait here.” I said.
Five minutes later, the Crawler rumbling beneath me, I pulled up to where Will stood, a look of astonishment on his face and an excited spark in his eye.
“Hop on. We’ll find Zeph a lot faster this way,” I said. Will climbed onto the back of the machine. “Hold on!” I said as we jerked into motion. Will grabbed me around the waist to keep from toppling off the back. He slid closer and clung to me tightly, sending all kinds of warm fuzzies to my brain.
We rode for about ten blissful minutes, my mind ping-ponging between thoughts of Will’s body pressed against mine, and how my brother would be in big trouble when I got my hands on him. I passed several snare traps set to catch small game—invisible to anyone who didn’t know where they were set. The traps were all empty so I knew Zeph had already been this way. I veered off toward the pond.
The electric motor purred as we skimmed along the forest floor, moving at enough of a clip to create a refreshing breeze. If I wasn’t so annoyed with my brother and worried about getting back, I would have been having the most fun I’d had in a long time. Up ahead, the motorbike lay on its side. I pulled up to a pit trap, noticed it had been sprung, and turned off the motor.
Will and I climbed off the Crawler. A strained animal cry rose from inside the pit. When we approached the edge and peered into the twelve-foot deep hole, we both froze. Down below, a large antlered buck lay on its side, legs broken and twisted. Zeph knelt beside it with his hands at the throat of the deer. I stood watching in horror as Zeph’s hands lit with a red glow and the life in the eyes of the frightened buck drained to blackness.