SURVIVING ABE: A Climate-Fiction Novel (23 page)

They knew as soon as they were in the house
a tragedy had just taken place.  A trail of bloody drag marks led from the front door toward the back of the ransacked home.  The amount of wet, sticky blood on the floor shocked all three of them as they tried to avoid walking through it to enter the home.  When they passed by a door to the kitchen they saw the room had been raided and the floor was littered with contents of some of the cabinets and drawers.

Ela
jerked her mom’s hand, "I hear something," she whispered.  She saw by the look on Con’s face that she didn’t understand.  Ela pointed to her own ear, then pointed to where the sounds came from, and then shrugged.  Con nodded and turned back to the front to see Gus looking back at her.  He nodded toward the sounds, Con nodded back.  They proceeded cautiously following the blood trail to the doorway at the end of the entrance hallway.

Gus waited
until Con was right behind him.  Then, as fast as possible, he popped through the doorway and moved to its side, looking over the AR's sights, as he scanned for any threats.  He found horror instead.

Judging by the furnishings Gus realized he had en
tered the living room.  Today, however,
dying
room would be a more appropriate term.  In the corner, opposite from the television, sat a medium-sized gun safe with two bleeding bodies in front of it; the pool of blood much larger near the man than the woman.

"Oh, no!"  Con came into the room and went to the woman first, checking her pulse.  "She’s still alive, but barely conscious, just moaning."

Gus was at the man’s side with his ear near the man’s mouth.  After a moment he sat up and said in a rush, "I can feel his breath, but I can't find a pulse."

Ela
unbuckled the man’s belt, slid it out of his pants, and started putting it around his leg, trying to keep it above where the bleeding seemed to be the worst, but the wound was almost in the hip, making it difficult to apply enough pressure in the right area to stop the bleeding.

Con went in search of some clean towels to wrap the woman’s head wound, which was bleeding a steady flow.  She thought she’d seen some towels on the floor in the kitchen, just to the side of the front door
, where they had entered.

In the k
itchen Con saw a drawerful of dishtowels, which had been thrown on the floor, and a roll of paper towels on the kitchen counter.  As she reached for the paper towels it gradually dawned on her that the sound she was hearing wasn’t the normal tinnitus or ringing she usually had in her ears.  She turned her head back and forth in an effort to localize the source of the sound.  Having just one hearing aid confused her, but she thought it sounded louder when she was facing the kitchen window—the one with the missing glass.

She reached the window just in time to see a snowmobile whip past
, as it headed toward the front door of the house; its rider was dressed the same as the man she'd just shot, and he had a rifle slung over his shoulder.  She ran out of the kitchen toward the front door, drawing her pistol on the way.  At the front doorway she went down to her knees and then prone as fast as she was able.  From inside the front doorway she had an angle through the open door allowing her to see the snowmobile stopping, as the rider looked first at the body in front of the house, and then at her.

Both of them started firing at the same time.  Con saw her first shot kick up
some snow behind the man; she re-steadied her hands and concentrated on the M9's front sight.  Her second shot hit the man causing him to duck behind the snowmobile.

She fired two shots at the machine hoping that penetrating bullets or shrapnel would hit the man.  A black rifle came up spraying bullets without aim, and Con held fire, waiting for a shot.

When Con stopped firing, the man popped up behind his semi-automatic, and using the snowmobile's seat as a rest, started firing a more effective barrage.

As soon as the man's upper body appeared Con fired three more shots
, as rapidly as she could bring the front sight back on target.

It took seven total shots from Con
before the attacker quit firing and toppled over beside the snowmobile—two shots of his final volley hit Con.  She took one in the shoulder and fired again.  The last shot from the attacker, fired as he fell, struck her in the middle of her forehead, killing her instantly.

A heavy silence momentarily descended over the scene
, until Ela screamed, "MOM!" and started running to find her.  Gus, with rifle in hand, took off running after Ela, catching her just before she rounded the corner toward the front doorway.  He grabbed her arm and stopped her.  "Ela, wait!  Let me go first, stay behind me!"

Gus took a quick look around the corner, spotted Con lying next to the front door
, and ran to her, with Ela right on his heels.  Even before he made it halfway he could see that the back of Con’s head was missing.  Behind him a low keening from Ela began, as she too saw her mother, and she pushed past Gus.  He took a quick look out the front door and saw a body laid out flat, with both arms outstretched, alongside a snowmobile.  Then he ducked back inside.

A second or two later he burst through the doorway
, aiming the rifle on the body as he ran toward it.  For the second time in his life he prodded a human body with a rifle barrel, checking to be sure no life remained.  He picked up the dead man’s AR-15 and ran back to the house carrying both rifles.

Ela
held Con's body and wailed by the front door, screams from the woman in the living room added to the torturous soundscape in the house.  The riot of sound, sickening odors, and sight of the floor, now tracked with even more blood, cranked up Gus's neurology to the point he wanted to scream,
SHUT UP
!  Instead, he crossed the bloody floor into the living room.

The woman had regained consciousness and was attempting to get to her husband, repeatedly crying out to him not to die.  When she saw Gus enter the room she screamed even louder at Gus to stay away.  Gus stopped, knowing his presence was making the situation worse for her.  He retreated from the room
, going back toward the front door.  He tried to think of what to do, while watching a devastated Ela.

Ela
felt hands on her, lifting her away from her mother's body.  She resisted, but was subdued by an overpowering, yet gentle strength.  Ela stopped fighting and tried to control her breathing.  She felt like her world had just ended, it couldn’t exist without her mother in it.  The only person in the entire world that had been there for her, no matter what; now wasn’t.  In the blink of an eye she just
was not
, anymore.

Mostly carrying her into the kitchen, and away from Con's body, Gus picked her up and sat her on the kitchen counter and stood in front of her.  When she started hitting him he grabbed her wrists and held them steady.

Gus came into her focus through her tears, as he stood in front of her, still holding her wrists.  "Please, let go of me," she said through her sobs.  He did, but he still stood there looking at her.

"Ela
, I’m so sorry this has happened.  I only just met your mom, but I found her to be a truly remarkable person.  I can't help but think about how your mother saved us both today—twice.  She didn’t think about it, she just instantly did what needed to be done.  She had strength . . . she had courage.  She gave her life for ours.

I can’t think of a better way to honor that . . . to honor her, than to try to be as strong as she was; and pay it forward.  Two people in the other room need our help,
right now
.  Please Ela, they . . . I . . . need your help,
now
."

Ela
watched Gus grab a roll of paper towels and rush back to the living room.  She remembered thinking how brave her mom had been for her.  She dried her eyes and considered that Gus was right; her mother
had
shown her how to be brave.  To give in to the urge to cry, when others were dying, would dishonor her mother’s spirit.  Ela slid off the counter, gathered some dishtowels, and went to help.

When Ela
walked into the room she saw Gus kneeling beside the man, opening his bloody pant leg to look at the injury, trying to stem the flow of blood.  The wound was high on his leg, too high for a tourniquet, only direct pressure had any affect.

The woman was against the couch screaming, trying to
get further away from Gus.  Ela went to her, talking calmly, trying to get the woman to understand that they meant them no harm.

The woman settled down when Ela
got down on the floor right in front of her, blocking the view she had of Gus leaning over her husband.  "Your head is bleeding badly, please hold still, and let me help you," Ela said as matter-of-factly as she could.  The woman complied.

"My name is Ela
, and that's my friend Gus helping your husband, we are going to get you fixed up.  What’s your name?"

"Beth, my name is Beth
, and my husband is Al.  Is he alive?"  The woman slurred her words making it difficult to understand her.

"Yes, but he has lost a lot of blood.  Gus is working on that.  Can you hold this towel against your head?"

"Yes."

"I’m going just over there to help with your husband
," Ela pulled some pillows and a jacket off the couch, putting them around and over her.  "Please, just rest and stay here for a minute, I’ll be right back."

"Hurry."

When Ela knelt down beside Al, after walking through a puddle of his blood, and saw how pale he looked, she tasted bile and swallowed desperately.  When she looked at Gus he appeared nearly as pale.  Looking at her he said, "Hold this and push hard, I’ll be right back."  He took Ela’s hand and placed it on the roll of paper towels on Al’s upper thigh; blood had saturated most of the roll.

Gus went to the front door and shut it.  If the living were going to have a chance he needed to warm the place up.  Al had no chance, he'd nearly bled out before they got there, and they would only be able to slow the process a few minutes at best.

He needed to focus on taking care of the living, and that meant shelter.  The extreme cold and the possibility of another attack; both had to be defended against.  That thought prompted him to do a careful check of the approaches to the house as he looked for any movement.

Next
Gus found a bedroom and pulled the bedspread from the bed, using it to cover Con’s body; all he had time to do for her at the moment.  Then he went to the kitchen sink and filled a bowl he found on the floor with water from the faucet.

He took the bowl and more
towels into the living room and knelt next to Ela and Al, "Ela, please take this and see if you can clean Beth up enough to see the extent of her wounds.  We need to find out if she is still bleeding, I'll take over here."

After Ela
left, Gus checked Al's condition and found no breath or pulse, and he noticed the wound had finally stopped pumping out blood.  He went back to the bedroom and got a sheet to cover Al.

As Ela
cleaned some of the blood from Beth’s head, she asked her if she was injured anywhere else, and Beth said no.  The head wound was severe looking to Ela; she asked Beth what happened, while she gently blotted the area around a dent in Beth’s skull with the wet towel, in an attempt to see the extent of the wound.

Bet
h's slurred, weak voice made Ela lean in closer.  "They came up to the house last night, a man and a woman on a snowmobile.  The woman asked to use the bathroom and a phone; they said they worked at the dude ranch.  Being neighborly Al let the woman in, later he said he smelled booze on her when she passed by him.  Al stayed at the door watching the man while she was here.  After closing the door behind her he continued to watch, as they stood by their snowmobile talking, instead of leaving.

The man shouted he wanted to use the bathroom and started toward the door.  Al was ready for something like that; he had tucked his pistol in his belt, hidden under his shirttail, when he first heard them pull up in front of the house.  He stepped out of the house and fired a shot
in the air to run them off.  They started to go, but stopped a ways out, pulled out a rifle, and shot up the front of the house before leaving.  Al thought maybe the woman came in to see if we were worth robbing, and saw the gun safe.

They came back on foot
before daylight this morning, two men this time, and busted into the house, even though we tried to fight them off.  When one of them shot Al at the front door and knocked him down, the other one rushed into the house and hit me with his rifle.  Next thing I know we're both on the floor in the living room and these guys are tearing the house apart, screaming at me to open the gun safe, but I don’t know the combination.  They kept screaming and hitting me until finally one of them said he was going to go get the snowmobile.  He told the other one to keep trying."  Beth managed to tell the story, but her slurred words became weaker and very faint by the time she had finished.

"Do you know what they planned
to do when they left here?" Ela asked.