Chapter 26 The Best Laid Plans
THE BEST LAID PLANS
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!”
The metal saucepan handle burned my skin even through the kitchen mitten. Unsurprisingly so, since it was old and frayed, its padding thinned out to nothingness in several places.
“Coffee smells great, lass,” Finlay called out to me from the sofa where he was sprawled next to Albert and Jean-Luc whilst Einar and Russell sat in an armchair each.
I, on the other hand, was kneeling by the fireplace, sweat forming unpleasantly underneath my breasts and running down the crevice between them, my hair wildly frizzy from the combination of heat and moisture.
Not that I wanted to complain. The large fireplace not only meant that it was never cold in our little cottage, but owing to the portable metal grid, I could make hot drinks or simple meals without venturing into the communal kitchen.
For its convenience, our living room served as the new meeting place for Einar and his advisers.
Which meant that I could now attend without my presence being frowned upon.
Still cursing under my breath, I poured the scalding, dark liquid into six cups and took the tray of them over to the walnut coffee table.
“Thanks, darling,” Einar said. Noticing there was no room left on the sofa, he pulled me down to sit on his lap, one hand wrapped around my hip.
It was already dark outside, and strong wind rattled the frail, old windows in their wooden frames.
“It’s really simple, actually,” Einar said, ticking off on his fingers while stating facts. “We must get more supplies. We cannot get them by clearing further in the mountains because the paths are all snowed in. Therefore, we must clear somewhere lower where there is no snow.”
“Well, we wouldn’t need to get any more supplies if—”
“Albert, fer bollocks’ sake, mate, give it a rest already,” Russ groaned, burying his face in his hands.
“I’m just saying, we shouldn’t have pulled a Mother Theresa act when it meant we ourselves wouldn’t have enough for the winter.”
Just before the first snowfall, a group of twenty people from one of our partnered settlements from further up north arrived at our doorstep.
“Five men on bikes,” a woman called Helga told us, and a chill ran down my spine with a terrible sense of déjà vu. “They had shotguns and revolvers. They fired into the air to show us they meant business, and then they ordered us to give them all our food.”
I had always liked Helga. She was a woman of about fifty whose original nationality could not possibly be guessed since she had spent her whole adult life travelling, and her accent and vocabulary seemed to be an amalgamation of basically everywhere.
She had wild brown hair with almost no traces of grey and vivacious brown eyes with merry sparks in them.
When I first saw her, I am ashamed to admit that I questioned her presence at the daunting GR20 trek.
Not only did she dress in frilly clothes that didn’t even begin to resemble appropriate hiking attire, but she was also about my height and easily twice as heavy.
Short and rotund though she was, she could scramble uphill faster than most of us, scurrying up the steepest of slopes as if propelled up by an invisible jet strapped to her back.
“Then they says they be back,” she recounted the horrifying incident, “to take our women. Says they didn’t want any more mouths to feed over winter, but that come spring they be looking for company.
And they don’t mean just the young and pretty ones neither.
Imagine, one tells me he couldn’t wait to bury his face in my .
..” She vaguely indicated her abundant bosom.
“I says to him careful because he could die of suffocation that way, and good riddance too.”
Though the recollection was far from cheerful, I smiled at the memory of her face flushed with combatant indignation. But Einar’s resolute voice pulled me back to the present. I noted the steely edge in it, no doubt intended as a warning to Albert.
“Trust me, it was no Mother Theresa act. They are a partnered settlement. Their men joined our archers’ ranks in exchange for our assistance in a crisis, among other things.
To turn them away now would cost us the trust of all other partnered settlements.
And all their men,” he said slowly, utilising his talent for keeping his voice low but strikingly audible at the same time.
“Much as it is inconvenient, helping them is not up for discussion.”
Everyone sipped their coffee in silence.
Finlay stirred three spoons of sugar into his, curly dark hair falling into his startling green eyes.
Einar breathed hard through his nose, nostrils flaring, and an angry vein pulsating on his temple.
He had been livid about the bikers’ raid, all the more because there seemed to be absolutely nothing we could do to prevent it from reoccurring in the future.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I was thinking ...” I interjected carefully.
Einar’s hand squeezed my thigh lightly, but he let me speak. Albert groaned but didn’t protest my contribution otherwise.
“We don’t just need food supplies,” I continued, “but medicine too. Like thyroid medication.” I looked at Jean-Luc, whose wife, Madeleine, was a thyroid cancer survivor.
“Also, Monika’s due in March. She is worried about the birth since there’s a history of C-sections in her family.
We should be prepared for her needing one too.
Not to mention clothes and supplies for the baby. ”
“That’s actually a good point,” Albert conceded with about the same amount of astonishment in his voice that a dog playing a piano would have warranted.
Bastard.
“Agreed.” Finlay nodded with a casual smile cast in my direction. “Laura’d suire welcome some pain r’lief fer her endometriosis, the puir lassie. Any objections, chief?”
“None at all.”
“So do we target a hospital then?” Russ suggested. “They usually have them biggest pharmacies nearby.”
“Those are all in big cities. The nearest one is in Corte. Population over six thousand.” Jean-Luc shook his head sceptically. “That’s a suicide mission.”
“There may not be six thousand of them left,” I pointed out. “We’ve seen that most furies died weeks after the Outbreak of their own injuries.”
“Even if it’s a thousand, though,” Einar speculated, his breath tickling the hair above my right ear.
“That’s still impossible for us to clear.
Except ... excuse me, sweetheart.” He hoisted me up and walked over to the bookshelf by the fireplace, pulling out an old map of Corsica, the paper so frail that it nearly fell apart in his hand.
I made space on the coffee table by pushing the sugar bowl and everyone’s cups to the side. Einar spread the map in front of us and located Corte with his fingers.
“Where exactly is the hospital, Jean-Luc? Do you remember?”
We all leaned closer to the map, Einar and I kneeling side by side on the rug.
“I know almost exactly,” Jean-Luc said, his face creased with concentration like a dried prune. “It’s about there, at this edge of the city closer to us. Madeleine had her treatments done there.”
“Right. Well, we wouldn’t need to clear half the city to get there. That’s good. We could clear just the passage to the hospital and the hospital itself. Quietly, not to draw hordes. It could be doable, if only just barely. Do we have enough petrol to drive there with all the cars?”
We had six vehicles: Jean-Luc’s and five more we found abandoned but functional in Vizzavona.
“Not even close.” Jean-Luc shook his head. “But there’s a petrol station right about there.” He jabbed his finger into a spot close to Vivario, a nearby town en route to Corte. “With luck there’ll be some left there.”
“We can try to get more food anywhere on the way to the hospital, if not in the hospital canteen itself,” Albert pondered out loud. “It’s as good a place to look as any.”
“Sounds like we have a plan.” Einar nodded.
The night was very dark when our caravan of cars drove back through the gates of Vizzavona forty-eight hours later.
It had snowed intermittently throughout the day, and as Einar opened the door on the driver’s side, a gust of freezing, wet wind slapped me hard against the cheek.
Others followed Einar’s suit, letting even more numbing cold air in, but I sat there, in the middle of the back seat, unwilling to go out and face the elements.
As well as anything else awaiting me out there.
How had it only been two days since we came up with that mad scheme, the seed of all the day’s destruction?
The door to my left was wrenched open and strained its hinges against the relentless gale. Einar’s face came into view.
There was an ugly gash under his right jaw, the stubble around it dark with dried blood. Cuts and scratches showed bloody through his tee. He was pale, and the skin of his face stretched tautly over his cheekbones.
“Let’s go, Ren,” he said in a voice that didn’t allow for an argument, and yet I didn’t move.
I shook my head. Multiple times and fast like a child protesting.
“If you were a bloke, I’d slap you right now to make you snap out of it. But I don’t want to do that to you, all right? Please, just get out of the bloody car.”
And I did, reluctantly, upon hearing the note of desperation in his plea. Sparse, tiny snowflakes flew in all directions, and the wind howled as if in sympathy with our own desolation.
As I straightened up, I could see people emerging from their dwellings, blankets and shawls wrapped around their shoulders, eyes wide and shining in the dark. Some, no doubt, just as unwilling to hear the news as we were to deliver it.
“Where’s the last car?” Jean-Luc got to us first, looking as if he had just seen a disturbingly believable magic trick.
“Had to leave it,” Russ replied to him grimly.
“How did you all fit into five cars?”
“We didn’t all come back, Jean-Luc,” Einar said, his voice breaking a little.