That was a new voice coming from off to my right. The kid said, “Dad,” and ran across the clearing into the man’s arms.
Another little family, surviving in the wild, just like us. I put my hands in my pockets, feeling more than a little nervous.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare anyone,” I said, taking a step back.
This other man almost made me feel ashamed of myself. He was clean-shaven, with his hair buzzed short; his clothes were clean, and neat, not covered with stains; he had a pair of sunglasses on his face, so that he wasn’t squinting at the glare of the snow, and a rifle slung over his shoulder. He had a big wad of gum in his mouth, and he was chewing with loud smacks.
He came toward me fast, hand extended in greeting. “No problem,” he said. “You’re that guy who’s been camping up on the ridge with his two boys right?”
“Yeah—” I said.
But as soon as his hand closed on mine, I felt something snag in my coat. Looking down, I saw the tip of a hunting knife at my stomach.
He looked me straight in the eye. “Peace, okay?”
I said, “Okay.”
He said, “I just want to be clear. We’re not friends. If you or your boys do anything to hurt my daughter, or even attempt to hurt my daughter, I will kill you without a moment’s hesitation.”
I looked over at the kid. Now that he said something, I could see she was definitely a girl—the longer hair, the small chin, the thinner body—probably the same age as Josh. Her dad lowered the knife, let go of my hand, and took a step back. “Are we clear?” he asked.
I pulled my hand out of my coat pocket and showed him the .38 that I had aimed at him all along. “I feel the same way about my boys. So I think we have an understanding.”
A small grin twitched at the corner of his mouth. Like he was a man who’d used a gun, and knew how to recognize one who hadn’t. Holding up his knife, he said, “You should save those bullets. They may be hard to replace.”
“I figure I won’t use them unless I absolutely need to.” I hoped that I was implying, Don’t make me need to.
He blew a big pink bubble and let it pop. “You boys make an awful lot of noise up there.”
The guy’s name was Mike, Mike Leptke, and his daughter’s name was Amanda. She was a year younger than Josh, but about ten years more mature in that way that girls have.
Mike would have been just as happy if we walked away and he never saw us again, but Amanda was bored with her dad’s company, and used to getting her own way, so by the end of the week she was coming over to our camp every day to play with the boys. Nick came out of his shell, and would run off after Amanda and Josh, throwing snowballs at them. She got all big-sisterly around him.
One sunny morning, on a day the temperatures shot up to above freezing, we were sitting in our camp eating venison that Mike had shot and cleaned. Mike had built a good-sized fire, without much smoke, and for the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel cold. The kids ran off into the woods pretending to be Indians.
“Have you ever seen the rapeworms?” I asked, voicing something that had been on my mind for a while. “What if they aren’t real?”
“Oh, they’re real. I was stationed at Fort Benning when they fell on Atlanta.”
“No shit?”
“They look like dandelion fluff coming out of the sky. They’ll hitch a ride on anything, but they only do shit to people.” He shook his head. “I went AWOL—so did a lot of other guys after that—and came back to Ohio as fast as I could. Stole Amanda from my ex when she wouldn’t give her up.”
“Ah.”
“It’s us or them, us or them. I hope they nuked ’em all straight back to hell.” He looked away. “What if,” he asked, and then stopped.
“What if what?” I said, helping myself to another plate of stew. I had done my best to shave, and had melted enough water to wash most of the things in our camp, including myself and the boys.
“What if we’re the only people left?” Mike asked, in a tone that said it was painful for him.
“That’s crazy,” I said around a mouthful of the best food I’d had in over a month.
He had his sunglasses on, so I couldn’t see his eyes, and he always had a smile at the corner of his mouth. He lowered his head and spit between his feet. “What if it isn’t?”
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t ready to think about Josh and Amanda as some kind of Adam and Eve.
“You were smart enough to get out of the cities,” he said, and then didn’t say any more, seemingly on the principle that if you couldn’t say something nice, don’t say anything.
“Yeah?”
He shook his head. Then after a while, he said, “You mind if I take your older boy, Joshua, out in the woods and show him how to use a rifle?”
I was torn. I didn’t let the boys touch the guns we had—my old beliefs were too ingrained. But I could see his reasoning.
Before I could answer him, Josh came running back into the camp. “Dad! Mike! Nick, he found—”