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  It pieced together slowly. Anna had taken Sammy into the cabin to put him in bed. And then, someone had tried to shatter Brad’s skull.

  There was only one reason that anyone would do something like that. They would want what he had. And Anna and Sammy would have been in the cabin. Defenseless.

  Brad dragged himself to his feet, doing his best to ignore the throbbing pain from the back of his head. He’d worry about the extent of his injury later. Right now, he had to know what had happened to them. The world spun once he was upright, but he managed to stagger in the general direction of the cabin.

  Everything he could see from the outside looked perfectly normal. The horse was gone, but he’d expected that. The front door was closed, which he hadn’t expected. They were either the most courteous looters he would ever encounter, or they had decided to stay in the cabin. The door swung open readily when he pushed on it.

  “Anna?” he called out as he stepped in. There was no point in trying to be subtle at this point. He didn’t have a weapon and his head was still spinning. There was no way he could take anyone in a fight right now. “Sammy?”

  No one answered his calls. When he forced himself to stop and listen, he realized that the cabin was completely quiet. He also didn’t see a single thing out of place. There was no way that a looter would pass up the food he had lined up along the counters so that they didn’t have to go to the cellar every day.

  Had it been Anna and Sammy themselves that the intruders wanted? Maybe Anna hadn’t been telling the truth about traveling alone. Or maybe she’d made an enemy along the way that she hadn’t felt the need to tell him about.

  “What the hell?” he muttered as he checked the living room and then stepped into the kitchen.

  The piece of paper he found on the table answered his question, but he suddenly wished that he’d been allowed to continue to wonder.

  Dear Brad,

  I’m really sorry to have to do this to you. I’m sure you’re a great guy. But you’re also a guy who can break a lock with an axe in one blow and I’ve got a kid to take care of. I’ve been thinking, and you’re right—we have to look out for ourselves. I took some of your food supplies and a fishing pole each for me and Sammy, but you’ll have plenty left to get you through the winter.

  Good luck with everything.

  Anna

  Brad let the letter go and watched it flutter back down to the tabletop. Then, he blew out the lamp that she’d left burning and locked up carefully and methodically.

  Upstairs, he opened the medicine cabinet, shook three Advil into the palm of his hand, and swallowed them dry. Then, he dipped a washcloth into the bucket of water they kept in the tub, washed the blood off of the back of his neck and his face as best he could, and went to bed. It seemed to be the only thing left to do.

  Chapter 16

  Ten Days Later

  Brad looked up from the wire trap he’d just finished assembling and wiped the sweat off his forehead. That was the tenth trap he’d set, despite the fact that he hadn’t seen even so much as a hint of another person in the last ten days. It was probably a pointless endeavor, as animals didn’t typically wander this close unless they were tempted by the garden.

  At the same time, more and more of his father’s teachings were coming back to him, and he couldn’t help but feel like he needed more protection around the cabin. There weren’t many people left in the world, but he didn’t want to take any chances. Especially now that he knew how quickly those people could betray him.

  He’d set up alarms at the entry points of the cabin a few days ago. They were a little more rudimentary than the traps he’d just finished with, but the cans and wires would make enough noise to wake him if anyone tried to get in, and that was all that really mattered.

  Now that the cabin was as secure as he could make it without getting supplies from the outside world, he couldn’t put it off anymore. He grabbed his gun and headed into the woods. He’d missed peak hunting hours, but it wasn’t like he was truly desperate for food. If he could find something, he’d use it, but this was mostly a way to distract himself. The cabin was too quiet and much too empty to stay in for long periods of time without something to do.

  The leaves crunched under his boots as he walked further out. Summer was dying slowly. He really needed to take a look at the solar panels and see if they were going to be salvageable. If not, he needed to recalculate the amount of firewood he’d need. Not that it would hurt to have a little extra. The woodshed was nearly full, but there was extra room in the toolshed and the all-purpose shed. He could always stack extra in those buildings, too.

  The doe appeared so suddenly that Brad caught his breath. It moved along slowly, grazing contentedly. He brought it down in one shot.

  Once he was back at the cabin preparing to gut the deer, he found himself remembering his first kill. It hadn’t been anything nearly this impressive. It had been a squirrel, and as he’d held its limp, warm body in his hands, he’d begun to cry. Lee had told him that he wasn’t eating anything if he wasn’t eating what he’d killed. Brad had gone to bed hungry.

  He’d been furious at his father for expecting him to eat that poor little animal. And now, he was up to his elbows in deer blood and glad of it because it would extend his food supply. If Lee hadn’t been so damn stubborn about how he taught his lessons, maybe things would have turned out differently.

  Brad remembered the very last confrontation. He’d been fourteen and he’d only been in the cabin for about a week of that summer when his father had suddenly vanished. Brad had hiked out into the surrounding areas as far as he’d dared, calling for Lee. He’d checked the lake and all the nooks and crannies of the property and he’d debated calling the police, knowing full well that his father would never forgive him for bringing law enforcement to the cabin if he was in fact all right. Late one evening, after six days had gone by—days in which Brad had barely been able to eat anything due to fear—he’d made the decision to call his mother and ask for help.

  The next morning, reassured that his mom was on her way to get him, he’d come downstairs to find Lee at the breakfast table. “You did okay, kid,” he’d told him. “But there are a lot of things that you screwed up. We’ll go over it so you don’t make the same mistakes if this happens again.”

  Brad had lost it. For the first time in his life, he’d yelled at his father. Really yelled, until his voice was hoarse. Then, he’d stomped up the stairs, locked himself in his room, and waited for his mother to arrive. When she did, things didn’t proceed any more calmly.

  “I’m not letting him come back here again!” Brenda shouted.

  “What are you talking about?” Lee demanded. “I was just—”

  “You were just gone for an entire week!” Brenda hissed. “I’m sick of leaving him with you and never knowing if he’s going to survive whatever stupid thing you decide that you’re going to do this time!”

  “Teaching him to survive is stupid?”

  “Look around you, Lee! This isn’t the fucking Wild West!” Brenda drew in a long breath through her nose and exhaled audibly, clearly striving for calm. “That’s it. No more. He isn’t coming back.”

  “You can’t keep him from me,” Lee said after a moment of silent shock. “You can’t give in to his rebellious teenager crap, and anyway, the judge said—”

  “You want him, you can take me back to court,” Brenda said. “I don’t give a damn what the judge said and I feel like they’ll say something completely different if I tell them what shit you pulled. Bradley, get your stuff. We’re leaving.”

  As they walked out, Brad caught a glimpse of his father’s face. It was pinched and his mouth was a firm line. Brad had a sudden flare of remorse. Had he done the right thing by calling his mother? Or should he have known that it was a test?

  Then, all of the anger he’d felt from seeing his father at the table that morning—calmly drinking coffee and criticizing his best efforts to find him—bubbled up again. No.
That was crazy.

  This way, there wouldn’t be any more insane tests. And he would never have to feel embarrassed when it came time to tell the class what he’d done on his summer vacation, because it wouldn’t include learning to gut anything. He’d hardened his heart, raised his chin, and gotten into his mother’s car. He hadn’t looked back once.

  That had been the summer he’d turned fourteen. It had also been the last time he’d seen his father. His dad hadn’t remarried. Brad had never even met any of the man’s friends. Had he whiled out the rest of his days out here alone, preparing for the end of the world? If his father was dead, was it the loneliness that had killed him?

  Would it be loneliness that killed Brad, too?

  He thought about Anna and Sammy all the time. He couldn’t get Anna’s green eyes out of his head. And he wanted to know that Sammy was doing okay. Had he figured out how to stay quiet while fishing without being prompted? Were they managing to eat enough out there? The boy had needed to put on a few pounds and he hadn’t had the chance in the short time he was at the cabin.

  Furthermore, Brad had liked them. He had honestly, genuinely liked them, which was pretty rare. He wasn’t a total hermit, but the list of people he actually wanted to spend time with had always been pretty short. Anna and Sammy had added themselves to it faster than anyone else had ever managed to. And now, he didn’t even know where they were or how they were doing.

  It was like looking for his father all over again, except this time, he felt twice as helpless.

  He finished with the deer and washed up, packing some of the meat in salt before preparing to cook the rest. But nothing fully took his mind off of the people he’d known so briefly but cared for so surprisingly much.

  Chapter 17

  Brad yawned widely, looking at the water heating on the stove. They said that a watched pot never boiled, but maybe the heat of his aggravation would help. He’d had a restless night filled with furtive dreams, and all he wanted was a gallon of coffee. It wasn’t too much to ask for the damn thing to go ahead and boil.

  His day had started off on the wrong foot because he’d had to go down to the cellar first thing to grab the coffee in the first place. Dipping into his supplies always put him in a bad mood. Especially in this case, because he knew that he needed to slow down on drinking the stuff. Coffee was a luxury that couldn’t be replaced. But at the moment, he didn’t give a crap. He just wanted caffeine.

  The water was just beginning to bubble and he was considering that good enough when a scream ripped through the morning air. Brad went still for a moment, his hand out for the handle of the pot.

  The scream had been human.

  He remembered the traps that he’d set. And he remembered Sammy’s tendency to run ahead of his mother.

  He bolted for the cabin door and yanked it open as fast as he could. “Sammy?”

  “Help me!” a deep male voice screamed. “Oh, God, please! There was a trap and I… My leg! Help me, please!”

  So, it wasn’t Sammy. Brad felt nearly sick with relief at that. He ran out and saw a man crouched on the ground some fifty feet from the cabin, his body bowed over and his hands clamped around his leg.

  “Hang on,” Brad called. “I’m going to help you; I just need to get some tools.”

  His mind was already racing. What was the quickest way to extricate a man from a wire trap? The axe wouldn’t work; he wouldn’t be able to trust a panicked person to hold still and if he moved at wrong time…well, Brad preferred not to think about it. The wire snips would be the best option, but they were so small. He really didn’t want to leave the guy tangled up for longer than he needed to, but he also didn’t want to mangle any more flesh than necessary.

  The gunshot that rang out broke his concentration. The burning pain in his shoulder came a split second later and he spun around in shock. Blood bloomed over the shoulder of his white T-shirt. The man that had been behind him raised the gun again.

  “Wait!” the man on the ground called. “We need him!”

  Brad’s mind was screaming at him, but his body was too sluggish to obey. In the seconds it took him to untangle what had happened, the “trapped” man jogged up behind him.

  “Don’t just stand there, Will. Grab him,” the guy with the gun snapped in disgust.

  Will grabbed Brad’s injured arm, giving it a sharp jerk. “So, now we just go into the house, Grayson?”

  “Yeah,” the gunman said with a laugh. “I kinda thought this would be harder, honestly.”

  Will laughed, too, and Brad heard relief there. The man’s hand was shaking slightly. “Nah, I knew it’d be fine,” the guy lied.

  “You know, if you’d just asked,” Brad began.

  Grayson’s face twisted and he gave a very different type of laugh. “What? You’d have helped us? Given us a slab of that deer you killed yesterday? Is that why you put up all those traps? Because you’re such a helpful guy who’s willing to share his stuff? Don’t insult my intelligence,” he went on, pressing the gun into the back of Brad’s neck. “Nobody’s handing anything out, these days.”

  “Yeah, we didn’t start out like this, man,” Will said. “We’re not bad guys.”

  “You don’t have to end up like this, either,” Brad said. “We can—”

  “There ain’t no ‘we’, pal,” Grayson cut in, digging his fingers into the gunshot wound in Brad’s shoulder as he shoved him forward.

  Brad’s knees went weak and he couldn’t help the ragged yell that escaped his throat at the burning pain.

  “Get moving or I’ll drop you right now and figure it out for myself,” Grayson snarled.

  “What the hell do you even want to know?” Brad demanded through ragged breaths.

  “Where the rest of the traps are, for one thing,” Grayson said, beginning to steer Brad toward the house. “We know you’ve got some more tricks up your sleeve. You’re one of those crazy prepper types.”

  “If I was a real crazy prepper, I wouldn’t have come running out to help you,” Brad said flatly. “I’d have left you there to die and then I would have skinned you and used you for jerky.”

  There was a slight stutter in both Grayson and Will’s steps at hearing that. Will’s hand began to tremble again.

  “But I didn’t,” Brad pointed out. “I came out to help you and you shot me. Who’s the asshole here?”

  “Yeah, well…” Will muttered. “We just…”

  “It’s still you,” Grayson said. “The problem is that you didn’t learn that it’s every man for himself out here, now. You can—” he broke off suddenly, yanking Brad to a stop.

  Brad’s heart sank as he realized what had caught the other man’s attention. He hadn’t closed the cellar door in his early morning shuffle for coffee. Maybe he really was too stupid to survive.

  “What’s that?” Will asked.

  “Nothing,” Brad said, trying to not to sound desperate. “It’s just—”

  “How about we go check it out?” Grayson said. “We’ll be the ones to decide if it’s really nothing.”

  Brad didn’t need to look at the man to know that he was smiling—he could hear the triumph in his voice. He might not know exactly what was down there, but he knew that Brad didn’t want him to find out. That was enough a man like Grayson.

  They shoved him down the stairs more quickly than he’d anticipated and he lost his balance. Grayson let him go and he landed hard on his hands and knees at the bottom of the steps. His right arm buckled in a flash of pain, but he sank his teeth into his lower lip rather than yell out again. He wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction.

  “God damn,” Grayson said reverently as he walked down. “Look at all of this.”

  Will didn’t seem capable of speaking as he stared at the shelves in front of him. He looked down at Brad. “How did you…where did all of this come from?”

  “It’s called being prepared,” Brad said, not exactly in the mood to give a lecture on sustainable farming and harvesting m
ethods. “Maybe you should have tried it. Then you wouldn’t have to be a fucking scavenger.”

  Grayson kicked Brad in the ribs, toppling him over. “Shut up. And what are you standing around for?” he snapped at his companion. “Get one of those bags and start filling it up!”

  “With what?” Will asked, seemingly paralyzed by the selection around them.

  “Whatever you want,” Grayson said gleefully. “We’re gonna go back to that cabin and have a fuckin’ feast!”

  Brad laughed until he had to lean back against the wall. Once he’d gotten started, he didn’t seem to be able to stop, even though it hurt his ribs like crazy. Grayson wore steel-toed boots and Brad was almost certain one of his ribs was cracked from that kick. Will stopped packing the bag and both men stared at him in confusion.

  “What’s so funny?” Grayson demanded.

  “Yeah, is the food poisoned or something?” Will asked, looking from Brad to the jar of plum jelly in his hand.

  “A man of sophisticated tastes,” Brad said, nodding to the jelly jar as he continued laughing. “But what’s really funny is that you jackasses think that you’re actually going to survive this thing.”

  “With all your stuff—” Grayson began triumphantly.

  “You’re not gonna do shit with all my stuff!” Brad snapped, anger finally eclipsing his sense of humor. “You find a cabin and a survivor and your first thought is to lie to them and to shoot them! Then, you find a stockpile of supplies and you want to have a feast?” He laughed again, bitterly this time. “All of my stuff isn’t gonna do you a damn bit of good because you’re too dumb to know how to use it!”

  “Fuck you,” Grayson shouted. “When we need more stuff, we’ll just take it!”

  “From who?” Brad demanded. “I mean, think this through! Most of what your average Joe had in his kitchen is already rotted by now! Even the canned goods won’t last forever. Have you ever planted a garden? Or harvested one? Have you ever purified your water? Do you know how to start a fire without matches? Hell, have you ever done anything besides wander around and take what you don’t deserve?”