***
Kinzer hit the gas in a compact car he’d stolen from a garage near where Dedrus had landed.
Branches and saplings slapped against either side of the windshield as the car bumped and jerked down an overgrown path that had been overtaken by the neighboring forestation. The car bounced into a clearing, where a cabin emerged from a cluster of woods, as if growing from them.
Trees hung over the roof. Kudzu hooked around the rails and steps on the front porch. Patches of stray boards and shingles lay at the foot of the cabin.
“Cute,” Maggie muttered facetiously. She sat in the backseat, her hand on her belly, as if preventing it from bouncing with the rest of the car.
“We sure those crazies aren't gonna find us?” she asked.
“This was one of Janka's hideaways,” Kinzer replied. “We always said that if there was an emergency, this is where we'd go. No one knows about this place. Not even the Leader’s Allies.”
“Hold up,” Maggie said. “I'm not having my baby in some cabin in the woods! I want to have it in a hospital. Doped up, eating good food, watching soaps.”
Dedrus chuckled. “We'll take care of you, Maggie.”
Kinzer pulled the car up alongside the cabin, and he, Dedrus, and Maggie headed inside.
It was a mess of dust and cobwebs. On a wooden beam just below the ceiling, a squirrel chewed on an acorn. As Kinzer shut the door, it scurried across the beam and hopped through a crack in the wall. In the opposite corner, a brown bat was affixed to the wall, clearly having decided it’d found the perfect place to take its daylight rest.
Dedrus flicked a light switch by the door. “No electricity.”
“Generator's out back,” Kinzer said.
He scanned the debris, recklessly spread across the floor—newspapers, magazines, table legs, and toppled bookshelves. Shitty as it looked, it only evoked good memories in Kinzer. He and Janka had spent several romantic nights in this cabin, groping each other by the fire, tearing through walls and furniture during their lovemaking, penetrating each other until the pain was too great for either to keep going.
They worked to clean up the pigsty, piling the garbage on the front porch and scavenging anything they could make use of.
Kinzer took the one mattress in the cabin and set it up in a bedroom for Maggie. Attempting to make the room a little more livable, he put a side table beside the bed and stacked magazines on it so she'd at least have something to read. It wasn't going to be easy being in the middle of nowhere, but Kinzer knew it was what they had to do.
***
“Y'all about ready to eat?” Dedrus asked.
He stood at the kitchen stove, a slab of meat sizzling in a skillet.
Behind him, Kinzer and Maggie sat at a table that had a chunk taken out of its side. It'd also had a broken leg, which Kinzer had repaired with two chair legs.
“Hell yeah,” Kinzer replied.
Dedrus lifted the skillet and walked over to the table, emptying the meat onto a chipped china plate between Kinzer and Maggie.
They didn't have any more dishes or silverware, so they were going to have to make do.
“What is it?” Maggie asked.
“Deer,” Dedrus replied.
“When did you get a deer?” she asked, bewildered.
“About two hours ago.”
After they'd straightened up the house, he'd grabbed his sword out of the back of the car and trekked into the woods to find them something to eat.
Maggie eyed it with apprehension.
Kinzer shoved a bite in his mouth. “It's perfectly healthy,” he assured her.
