Surrender the Sun: A Post Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller (12 page)

Later that night, Maeve tucked Ben into a nearby cot next to Louna. The girl still slept. She checked over her many cuts and abrasions for any sign of infection but found nothing alarming. Whatever Jax had put on them was healing them well.

“Bishop, do you have a spare T-shirt or something we can put on Louna? When she wakes, she might be startled to find she’s undressed.”

He’d been staring at the fire too, lost in his own world, when she began to talk to him. He rose from his seat on a spare log. “Sure,” he said and rummaged around in the boxes. He handed her a grayish-white T-shirt that once was bright white but was now at least clean.

She slipped the crewneck over the girl’s head and pulled each arm through the too-large shirt and then slipped it down past her torso, the hem nearly reaching her knees. She covered the child again and wiped Louna’s hair out of her eyes after slipping a little more water between her lips. The only thing to do now was wait for her to wake up. There was nothing else she could think to do.

Perhaps she had relatives nearby who would take her. Maeve had only met the family down the road a few times. Anyone that lived out in the woods did so for a reason. Her reason was Roger and his need for peace. They weren’t hermits, not like Bishop and Jax, but they hadn’t wanted and didn’t need a lot of excitement in their lives while raising their son.

“Mom, when are we going home?” Ben asked sleepily.

“Well, I’m not sure. The snow is piling high out there. It might be a few days, but this is like camping out, don’t you think?” She didn’t want to tell him the truth. She wasn’t sure of the truth herself.

“Did those bad guys burn down our house too?”

She had no idea what was left of their house or how much Ben saw from the ridge that night Bishop led them to safety. She’d thought her son was asleep on the back of the horse with her.

Smiling, she pulled the blanket higher under his chin. “I don’t know, Ben, but if they did, we'll find something else. Don’t worry.”

Her attention turned to the door as Bishop stepped outside. She wondered where he was going. She tucked her son in and made sure he and Louna were warm enough. The cave was an ingenious shelter, but it was drafty and cold, so a fire was always needed to keep them from freezing.

“Maeve,” Bishop called suddenly when he opened the door a crack.

“What?”

“Put your coat on and come out here for a minute. I need to show you something.”

She looked over the children again, making doubly sure they were both warm enough, and went back from the cave entrance to the cabin addition and put on her coat and boots and gloves again. They were still damp from the day before, but there was no other option. She stepped out into the night quickly and shut the door behind her. He stood nearby. The moon glowed eerily through the clouds.

“Come here,” he whispered. “You have to see this.”

She stepped toward him, and he took her by the arm and led her into the woods.

“I don’t want to leave the children.”

“We’re not going far.”

He led her up to a rocky ledge where they could see the valley below. What she expected were a few home fires like before if the looters were still out. What she saw was devastating. Down below, the town of Coeur d’Alene looked as if it had been bombed by warplanes. Even from that far away there were shouts she could hear and sirens or alarms that wouldn’t soon fade. The whole town looked like it was on fire, and even the lake had burning boats lingering listlessly, smoke mixing with the night. Gunshots rang out in the distance as if war had been declared.

“This is what I meant,” he said. “Strip away humanity in its modern form and only savagery remains.”

She looked at his profile. The glow from the fires below reflected in his eyes. This man had seen war alongside her dead husband.

“We have to do something!” she said.

He shook his head. “No. I’m not doing anything to endanger you and the children in there.”

She pointed toward the blaze. “There are more people down there who need your help, Bishop.”

“I swore to protect you and Ben. That’s all. If I go down there right now, there’s a good chance you and Ben will die. After three days, I’ll go down. I’ll go down there and see what remains and what I can do, but for now, we wait and watch.”

“It’s all gone, isn’t it?” She began to cry for all the children down there. For all of her friends, the teachers, the entire town who had harbored her in the worst of her grief.

Without thinking, he put a hand on her back and then pulled it away.

She turned to him, surprised.

“Yes. It’s all gone from us now. Here and everywhere else. Let’s get back. There will be more people fleeing into the woods now trying to get away. We need to keep watch.”

He led her back inside the shelter and locked the door. She’d noticed he was always armed, always listening, and always aware of his surroundings. She supposed it was a habit that was hard to break after what he’d been through. Roger had said once that it was hard to turn off, and some veterans never did. She knew that he’d meant Bishop now.

“Go to sleep, Maeve. I’ll wake you in a few hours to take the next watch.”

He looked exhausted by the firelight, and though she thought it might be better if she took watch first, she didn’t argue with him. She slipped into the cot next to the children’s, afraid the images from the past day would haunt her and keep her awake, but instead, she fell fast asleep. It was as if her mind couldn’t cope and switched off her consciousness like a light.

“Maeve, wake up.”

At first, she didn’t know where she was. Then she heard a child crying.

“I don’t know what to do with her. She needs you.”

Someone jostled her arm again when she began to drift off. “OK, I’m coming,” she said, and the girl’s crying became louder.

When she sat up, she found Bishop kneeling in the cave room next to the girl, who was huddled on a chair by the fire. “It’s OK. Maeve will be here soon. She’ll help you. No one’s going to hurt you,” he was saying to her.

“Louna!” Maeve finally said when she realized what was going on.

Bishop turned to her. He had a hold of his rifle and looked at her seriously. “Can’t you take over now and keep her quiet?”

She nodded. Something told her more was going on than the girl making noise.

“Hi, Louna. Do you remember me? I’m Ben’s mom. We live down the road from you.”

The girl made no signs of recognition. She had her knees drawn up to her chest under the T-shirt with a blanket wrapped around herself. She shook her head and appeared thoroughly frightened. Maeve tucked the blanket around her exposed feet. “No one’s going to hurt you here. OK?” she said and ran her hand over the girl’s hair.

When Louna tried to talk, her voice came out ragged. “Where’s my…mom?” she said, and large tears pooled in her eyes. Suspecting the tears were coming from pain as well as fear, Maeve did her best to soothe the girl.

The child of only five years was utterly confused, and for good reason. Maeve wasn’t certain five-year-olds could understand their conditions. “Sweetheart, there was a fire. Do you remember anything?”

She shook her head no.

Maeve didn’t know where to begin. “There was a fire at your house, and the man from earlier saved you. He brought you to me. I live down the road from you. Ben is my son. Do you remember Ben?”

A flicker of recognition appeared in her eyes, but she cried still. The only thing Maeve could do was hold her and let the tears fall.

Bishop stuck his head in the door. “Can you keep her quiet? There’s movement out here.”

Maeve picked her up and took her back into the cave, farther from the door. “Louna, please try to be quiet for me, sweetheart,” she whispered.

Louna buried her face into Maeve’s neck and held on to her as if someone were trying to pry her away. Soon her sobs quieted, and when Maeve checked, the girl had fallen asleep.

The door to the cabin opened an hour later, and Maeve was still sitting against the cave wall with Louna clutched to her chest.

Bishop’s shadow lingered on the pavement, stretching into the cave room before he entered. “She OK?”

Maeve nodded, though she wasn’t sure any of them were OK. “What was going on out there?”

“Some people, a family I suspect, were roaming through the woods. They had backpacks. I didn’t want to confront them if they went around our camp here. I kept an eye on them until they were clear through to the south. I don’t know where they think they are headed—there’s nothing that way, and they’ll probably try to backtrack in a few days when they realize their mistake. I suspect we’ll see a lot more people roaming through these woods soon.”

“Why not help them?”

“Maeve, you see these boxes?”

She looked at the far wall where there were at least thirty large containers. “Those are filled with what you had for dinner. In another two days, people will kill for what’s in those boxes.”

She wasn’t sure she believed him. “There’s food down there in the stores. There are ranchers and farmers nearby.”

“Maeve, this snow that’s falling isn’t going away for a long time. We’ll be digging ourselves out of this for years. It’s not going to end or blow over, and there will be no spring. There will be no harvest next year or any year for a long time to come because this isn’t going to end.”

She looked at the boxes again. “We don’t have enough here then, if what you say is true.”

“Now you’re beginning to grasp our situation.”

She stared at him awhile longer. She couldn’t make out his features as he stood in the doorway, the fireplace shadowing his features. “Is it my turn to take the watch?”

“I let you sleep through the night. It’s daytime, Maeve.”

She couldn’t believe it. It was still dark as ebony outside. “What time is it?”

“Nine in the morning,” he said.

She laid Louna down on the cot carefully in order not to wake her and then walked past Bishop. He stood to the side as she slipped by him. She peeked out into the darkness. “It can’t be nine a.m. It’s pitch dark out there.”

“It hasn’t stopped snowing all night.” He looked at his watch and again said definitely, “Nine in the morning.”

“Still, I’ve never seen it so dark at this time. Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Because the hikers were coming through. I doubt there will be many now, though. I’ll try to sleep a few hours if you can keep watch now.”

“I will,” she said and pulled the Glock out from her coat pocket.

“Is that still loaded?”

“Yes.”

“When’s the last time you shot it?”

“I don’t know. Two, three years ago?”

“If you hear something, yell at me first before you do anything. Just sit right here,” he said, pointing to the chair by the door. “Don’t move from this chair unless you hear something, and wake me before you act. Understand?”

She nodded again.

He started to walk toward the cave room.

“What if it’s just people walking by?”

“If you hear any noise out of the ordinary, wake me. Even if it’s just people walking through.”

His voice was gruff and lacked patience. She decided not to ask any further questions.

She heard him settle on the cot closest to the doorway, and when she glanced over, he had one boot on the ground. She had no idea how he was going to sleep like that, but she wasn’t going to say anything. Instead, as his snores became louder and the children still slept, she sat there gazing out into the darkness for any signs of danger.

Over the next few days, Maeve looked after the children as Bishop scouted their camp day and night, watching as refugees from the town below sought safer havens in the wilderness. He never confronted the people he detected in the forest unless they were at risk of finding their hidden camp. If they strayed too close, he would intervene, sending a few warning shots to encourage their circumvention of the area.

Why they couldn’t help at least those families with children was something Maeve didn’t understand. They’d argued about the dilemma. “If we help more, that means one of those two kids in there will die of starvation one day sooner. You choose which one,” he’d said. She couldn’t, of course, and that was the end of their debate over helping strangers.

Louna and Ben played quietly in the bunk room most of the time, but she sensed a restlessness in Bishop when there was too much noise going on. He would often leave the cabin without saying where he was going, returning empty handed. She encouraged the children to play quietly and tried to refrain from asking him too many questions in an attempt to help ease the man into having them there. After watching the town below from the view on the cliff, she too was shocked at all the violence she’d seen and heard. There was no going back home like this; she’d never want to endanger Ben or Louna, so she trusted Bishop’s plan to wait.

On the third morning, she woke to find Bishop cleaning and then loading his weapons near the light of the woodstove. Without a shirt on, she could see his shoulder injury still seeped blood through the bandage. Though he rarely mentioned the wound, she knew he must still be in a lot of pain. Her eyes lingered over Bishop’s chest as he placed extra boxes of ammunition carefully in a pack along with a few MREs, a bundle of rope, and a first aid kit among other items. “Where are you going?” she said in a soft voice.

“Down there. I told you, we’d wait for the first die off and then I’d go down and see what’s going on. From my observations, there’s organized looting and executions. Nothing good is happening. I’m going to go down and find out who’s in charge.” He said as he put on a shirt and then his outwear and then slung the pack over his shoulder. “I’ll be back tonight.”

“Wait!” Terrified, Maeve got up and chased him to the front door. Scared that he might be leaving her and the children for good, she tried to stall him. “You’re not leaving-leaving us, right? I know you’re not used to being around people, but I promise we’ll try to stay quiet.”

“Maeve…”

“Seriously, Bishop, I…can’t keep watch and protect us the way that you do. I’m scared,” she whispered loudly, trying to keep her voice down with the children nearby.

He put his hand on her shoulder as she stared into his blue eyes.

“I’m not leaving you. I’d never do that. I swear I’m only going down to recon the area—get as much information as I can about what’s going on down there. In the meantime, do what I showed you. Keep the door locked and keep watch. If you detect anyone, hide unless confronted, and then you know what to do. Maybe you and the kids could also stuff the cracks in the walls with paper or whatever you can find to help keep the draft out. When the kids have to go out, take them to the same area as before and hurry them back. It’s snowing again, so there’s more cover.”

“When has it ever stopped in the last three days?” she asked.

“A few hours last night,” he whispered. “You’ll be fine. I’ll be back soon after dark.”

She nodded, and he squeezed her shoulder.

“Fear is good, Maeve. It’ll help you survive.”

She wasn’t just afraid—she was terrified. But Maeve gave him a brave smile, and when he stepped out into the snow, she locked the latch and watched him through the cracks and fallen snow as he saddled Jake and left her and the children there in the cabin alone.