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She didn’t know it had happened, not until she came to, with Benjamin lightly slapping her cheeks. She pushed at his hand and tried to sit up.
He pushed her back down. “You’ve had it for the day.”
“No. Just give me a minute.” But it felt so good to lie here, even with the cold seeping into the back of her legs and head. It would feel so good to close her eyes and go to sleep.
“Coral!” he said. He gave her a shake. “Are you awake?”
“‘Awake,” she said, without opening her eyes. She was watching the interesting little dots floating around on her eyelids. Like stars. As close to stars as she would ever see again. She liked the stars once. They were so pretty. Stars....
“C’mon.” He grabbed her arms and pulled her to a sitting position.
When he let go, she could feel herself starting to fall again, but the sensation seemed removed, it was as if it were happening to someone else. Then something cold was on her neck and her eyes popped open.
He had yanked off her bandana and was rubbing snow on her face and neck. Water trickled down into her sweater.
“Okay, okay,” she said, rolling over onto her knees. “I’m getting up.” She made it to one foot, but when she tried to put her weight on it, the leg collapsed. She ended up lying on her side, panting far more than the slight effort warranted. She had to focus even to keep her eyes open.
“I’m digging you in for the day.” He crawled a few feet away and began burrowing into a snow drift.
Her voice was steady when she said, “Digging my grave.”
“Don’t. Don’t say that.”
“I’m starving to death. Save yourself while you can.”
“I’m not in as bad as shape. You’re forgetting, the UFO cult fed the men more than the women. I’ve got a little more stored up.” The snow kept flying as he dug.
“If I die, will you eat me?” More pitiful-sounding than she meant that to come out.
“Stop it!” He whirled around to glare at her. “And no, I wouldn’t. But it’s not going to happen.” Back to digging, his arms moving like machines.
Coral closed her eyes again and drifted. She came to her senses again when Benjamin pulled her up and made her crawl into the snow cave.
“You stay here,” he said. “I’m going on alone for a few hours. I’ll be back by dark.”
It hardly seemed to matter. Coral didn’t think she’d be moving on tomorrow, either. Her muscles felt like overcooked pasta. Somehow, she made it into the cave, where Benjamin had already spread out her sleeping bag. She crawled in and was unconscious in no time at all.
* * *
WHEN SHE NEXT WOKE, it was dark outside. Benjamin was nowhere to be seen. She felt a little better, good enough to hunt around herself for bottled water, if he’d remembered to set any bottles next to her.
She wasn’t surprised when her hand found the smooth round shape of a bottle. He wouldn’t have left her unsupplied. She fumbled it open, drank a few mouthfuls, and decided her bladder could be put off for another few hours. It was cozy warm in here and it would be frigid outside. Besides, she was still so tired. So weak.
Benjamin wasn’t back: the thought came late. It was night, and he’d promised to be back by now. Worry overwhelmed her weakness, and she thought about going out to call for him, but wriggling out of her bag and crawling to the snow cave’s entrance proved to be enough to exhaust her. She crept into her bag again, worrying that he had run into more trouble.
Surely they’d had their share already. If they were going to starve to death, why couldn’t the last week of life be without danger and pain? If this is the end, let it be a peaceful end. That was her last thought for a long while.
Next thing she knew, she was outside, in the dim light, being slapped. Her hands flew to her face, and she tried to steel herself for a fight, but her muscles wouldn’t respond to the instruction to stand and fight.
“Coral! Wake up!” It was Benjamin.
She focused her eyes—even that was getting hard—and tried to say, “Good, you’re okay.” But it came out garbled.
“I have food. Sit up.”
Her stomach didn’t respond to that news at all. Probably a bad sign.
“Come on. It’s raw, but it’s food.” He offered a bit of something to her.
She could only lie there, mutely.
He sat beside her and pulled her half into his lap, so her head and shoulders were raised. He pressed his fingers to her mouth and tucked something inside.
Cold. A little salty. No smell. She tongued the morsel back to her molars and bit down. Ice crystals crunched under her teeth. Then the flavor came to her—raw fish. She chewed a half dozen times and swallowed, and then opened her mouth like a baby bird.
“Just a little more right now.” He fed her another bite of the fish, and this one she barely chewed before swallowing.
She could feel the cool lump of food moving down her esophagus. It had been so long, it felt like a brand new sensation, surprising and awkward. The sense of the food being a lump dissipated, and a few minutes later, she felt something hit her stomach.
A moan escaped her as she began to cramp. Her knees drew up without conscious effort, curling her into a ball around the pain. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, could only lie there and try to bear it, try to get ahead of the pain. Ridiculous. It was only digestion. It shouldn’t hurt this much!
But it did hurt.
She forced herself to take deeper breaths, to try and relax. Forcing her legs to straighten out was a Herculean task, but the effort took her mind off her belly. Benjamin was making soothing sounds, as if to a baby. “I’m okay,” she managed to whisper.
“Of course you are. Give it a second more.”
She kept breathing slow and deep, and in another minute, the cramp did ease. “Wow,” she breathed, as she felt her whole body relax. “Man.”
“I know. It happened to me too, last night.”
She cleared her throat. “Water.”
“Just a little.” He steadied a bottle for her as she tipped it up and drank a mouthful of clear water.
It registered: there was not a grain of ash in the water. “Lake?”
“Or wide patch of river, hard to tell which. I caught a big fish right at sundown. I’m sorry I didn’t make it back last night.”
“S’okay,” she said. The cramp was backing off now. “Help me sit.”
Benjamin pulled her back into the V of his thighs, letting her rest her back against his chest. “Did you worry when I didn’t come back?”
She nodded, but then shook her head. It wasn’t important now. They were both safe. And there was food. “More fish?”
“Let’s give it fifteen or twenty minutes.”
He was right. Too much food could trigger vomiting or diarrhea, and then where would she be? Dead, probably, within the day, considering her weakened state. But now that her stomach was working at digesting, it was beginning to demand more food. “How’s your arm?” she said.
“Fine.”
Which is what he’d say if it were green and falling off. When she had the energy, she’d check it again. “How far?”
“To the water? Probably no more than three miles. Two hour walk, maybe three.”
She nodded and closed her eyes, tuning back in to her body, trying to get a sense of how it was handling the food. No urge to vomit—that was good. Diarrhea could kill her now too, no doubt of that. As much as she wanted to wolf down the whole chunk of fish he must have brought back, she knew to wait. Good thing he was here, keeping her from gorging. Of course, if he weren’t here, there’d be nothing to gorge on.
They sat like that, sharing warmth, barely talking, and waiting for Coral to be able to take another morsel of fish. When he gave it to her, there was another cramp, but not nearly as bad this time. She breathed her way through it.
Benjamin said. “Let’s give it another hour before you have more.”
“How much do you have?”
“It was a pretty big fish, a yellow perch. Maybe a pound and a half of meat, plus the bones and head, which I left buried there for later.”
She looked around, checking to make sure there was no new snow. He’d be able to lead them back to the exact same spot by following his tracks. “I’m the fisherman, here,” she said.
“Yep. We had to settle for second best this time.”
“You did great.” She struggled to turn far enough to face him. “You saved my life, I think.”
“Maybe we’re close to even, then. I owed you a couple.”
“No way,” she said turning back and resting against him once more.
“Let’s stop keeping score.”
“Okay.” But her mind did travel back anyway, trying to tally up the score. He rescued her unconscious body after she’d been attacked in a town—something Mills, but she’d forgotten its name now. She’d saved him from the Walmart gang. They’d saved each other from the cultists. He knew how to shoot game, she knew how to fish. And once upon a time, she’d had a bow and arrows. She could make more, if they found a source of wood. “Help me stand,” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“I do. Enough self-indulgence. Help me up.”
He rose and pulled her to her feet. Her heart pounded outrageously at the tiny effort, and she had to cling to his supporting arms to stay upright. “Damn, damn, damn.”
“Give your body a couple hours to turn the fish into energy.”
“We need to go today. Down to the lake.”
“We will. Don’t rush it. We have hours of daylight yet.”
“If we’re set up before dusk, I can fish some more.”
“Okay, okay. Sit and take it easy for now, though. Do you have to use the latrine?”
“Soon,” she said. Her legs buckled, and he eased her back down.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “In a couple hours, you’ll start to feel better. I felt a whole lot better when I woke up after eating last night.”
“I want to be able to walk now.” She slapped at the snow weakly, in frustration.
“Of course you do.” He patted her on the head, made sure she had her balance, and then he turned to crawl into last night’s shelter. He came up with her sleeping bag and wound it around her shoulders. “Pull it under your butt if you can.”
She could, but again, the small effort drained her for several minutes. “Tell me about the lake.”
“Well, it’s under three feet of snow, so I couldn’t tell for sure how big it was. Frozen solid for almost a foot. It took five minutes with the hatchet to punch out a fishing hole, and I was sure I’d scared away every fish for miles around by then.”
“Maybe I should go back into the snow cave,” she said. “I’m cold.” No sense in wasting the calories to keep herself warm.
“Sure. Let me help you.”
With his help, she reached the entrance and crawled in. He pushed her sleeping bag in after her. “Coming?” she called out.
“I’m going to hunt for fuel while you’re resting. I’ll be back in an hour or so, and we’ll eat again.”
She lay back and gathered her strength, willing the little bit of food to start fueling her muscles. It was whitefish, though, almost pure protein. Even a big fish like he had caught would barely be enough to keep them both alive for a day. She had to get herself together, quit being such a weakling, and get down there and catch more fish. Benjamin could hunt while she fished or hunt for wood for a fire. She could explain how she wanted to fashion a syringe to clean out his wound, and he could keep his eyes out for anything that would serve to build one.
She must have dozed, for it seemed like no time later when he was calling her name. She crawled out and he handed over a sizeable chunk of half-frozen fish, about half the size of her hand. She took off her glove to eat it. Making herself not wolf it down took an amazing amount of self-control, but she managed. After swallowing the last morsel and sucking off her fingers, she scrubbed them in the snow. She tugged her glove back on.
“Sorry it was still raw, but I didn’t find any wood.”
“Maybe there’s some at the lake or river.”
“It’s more likely. I’ll find the edges of the water and spend some time digging around there.”
“And hunt for animal sign.”
“Didn’t see any yesterday, but yeah, I’ll keep looking.”
Fish were better than nothing, but catching enough to keep them alive was an uncertain proposition. Red meat would be better. “Is there a town nearby, do you think? Maybe a store?” They hadn’t had much luck in searching through remains of individual houses. A store, filled with canned goods, not looted by anyone else since The Event, would be best.
“Once we’re fed up a little, we can hunt for that too.”
She nodded. She excused herself to use the latrine, managing to walk on her own power, and returned to sit on the corner of her bag, wrapping the rest around herself.
“You feeling better?”
“It’s coming along,” she said. “I don’t know how far I can walk, but I think I can manage a short hike.”
“We’ll go slow,” he said.
He carried the sleeping bag, leaving her with only a couple water bottles, packed again with snow, tucked next to her body to melt. Otherwise, all she had to manage was her own body weight. They went at hardly better than a crawl south along his tracks.
She had to stop in less than an hour. He fed her another couple ounces of raw perch. When she had gathered her strength she was able to go on again.
Instead of the two hours he had estimated, it took more than twice that time to get back to the place where Benjamin had fished and spent the night. Their gear was in his snow cave, and he pulled out the fishing rod and handed it over. “Back to the expert,” he said.
“What’d you use to catch the perch?” she said.
“It’s still on there.”
It was a plastic minnow, the simplest of lures, silver with a hint of orange paint on its belly.
He took her to the same spot as he had used and smashed through the accumulated ice of a day with the handle of the hatchet. He left her with the fish fillet too. “Eat some every hour or so.”
She nodded.
He turned to leave.
“Benjamin?”
“What?”
“Thank you.”
He shook his head at her, as if thanks were beside the point, and he went off to hunt for game and fuel.
Ice fishing felt different than it had been two months ago. Either the temperature had dropped significantly, or her emaciated body was worse at fighting off the chill, but she was cold.
Benjamin had passed from sight, and she was about to put the pole down and take a short walk to warm herself, when she felt a tickle at the line.
Something down there, some creature of the cold water, was nudging the minnow. Involuntarily, her hands tightened, and that must have twitched the lure, for it got hit, hard.
If she had any line, it’d be singing out. As it was, she was in a fast fight for the precious length of line, the lure, and the fish. She couldn’t afford to lose any of them.
She lurched to her feet, braced herself, and pulled, hard and steady. The fish resisted for a heartbeat and then flopped out onto the ice. It tried to flop back in, and she gave a hard flick of her wrist, sending it skating six feet away from the hole.
It was a decent-sized one, over a pound. Yellow perch, its color still bright despite the ashen skies. And it was still flopping around so much, it had a chance of finding the hole again and getting away. She took out her pocket knife and thumbed out the long blade, then plunged the steel tip into its head, over its eye. It took a few seconds for the perch to understand it was dead, but finally it quit twitching.
She picked it up, worked the lure from its mouth, and kissed it right on the mouth, out of love and gratitude. She and Benjamin could live for another day.
It would barely keep them alive another few hours. Better would be to catch three this size every day. Triple that for a week to start to make up for the week without food.
There was a lot more work for her to do here. She hoped there were fifty hungry perch down there. Coral sat and got back to it.
When Benjamin returned a couple hours later, she could see he was carrying one of the duffle bags, and that something was in it. Food? Fuel? Either would be wonderful.
He dropped it at their campsite and made his way to her, taking care to walk quietly as he approached the hole in the ice. When he caught sight of the two fish she had caught by then, he nodded his approval. “Want me to clean them?”
She matched his quiet tone. “Thanks, yeah. Did you find game?”
“No, but I found charcoal. I think I might be able to find you some wood, at the water’s edge, for using your torture device.”
“Syringe,” she said dryly.
“Sure,” he said. “Whatever you say.”
She handed over her pocket knife so he could clean the fish. “Maybe I should look at your arm now.”
“Tomorrow is soon enough.”
“You’re not feverish, are you?”
He shook his head. “Hungry.”
“Start supper without me if you want.”
Without answering, he grabbed the two fish and carried them to their campsite.
At dusk she got another brief nibble, but nothing more than that. While she could still see Benjamin in the gloom, she gathered up her gear and walked over, stiff from sitting for so long and numb from the cold. He had cooked one fish over a small charcoal fire, and they ate it. Then they crawled into the snow cave and fell asleep to the familiar sound of each other’s breathing.
* * *
FOR FOUR DAYS, THEY stayed in place and fell back into their familiar routine. Benjamin’s arm continued to be hot and tender. It didn’t seem to get worse, but it was getting no better.
Every morning they ate raw fish, and every day while she fished, Benjamin explored. At night they lit a small fire and made soup of the bones and heads, adding fish flesh if they had extra. The second day he returned with some willow and other branches from bushes, hacked from the ice at the water’s edge. They had their soup early that night, and she defrosted the branches by the small fire. The months in the water and ice had done the wood no good. She wouldn’t know if the willow would be strong enough for arrows for several more days of drying it. And without a bow, it seemed senseless to carry it with her, though she probably would, in case fate should bring her some bow-making material. At worst, it could be used for kindling.
The hollow branches were in even worse shape than the willow. She laid them out carefully by the fire, but not too near, turning them every fifteen minutes. As they dried, they felt terribly fragile under her fingers. One crumbled the instant she picked it up.
The following day—a good fishing day, with five fish in all, four perch and a trout—she spent more time with the wood he’d found her, matching up sizes of hollow and solid wood. She thought that she might be able to form a syringe using one of the bigger hollow pieces, and then carving a willow branch to use as a plunger. If she could get a tight enough fit, she might be able to work up decent water pressure. If she got too tight a fit, she’d tear right through the more fragile hollow tube.
She’d give a lot for a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Benjamin’s arm wasn’t healing like it should. Last night, it had seemed a little hotter, a little redder. It worried her.
He took her ministrations stoically this night.
“I’m still working on the syringe, to try and clean that out.”
“Maybe you should leave it alone.”
“Maybe I should,” she said, probing at the edges again. No pus leaked out—that was good. “I might screw it up more. But there’s something in there, some little core of infected tissue, I think. If I could get that out, now that we’re getting some nutrition it should heal pretty quickly on its own.”
“If you’re so bent on cleaning it out, you could cut into it.”
“I could. I could boil my knife for a half hour and dig around in there. But I could hit a nerve. And your brachial artery is in there too.” She scooted away.
“I like when you talk doctor-ese.”
She laughed. “I’m all talk, I’m afraid.”
He rolled his sleeve back down. “No, I’m complaining, but you’re doing good.”
“If there’s a town near here—”
“Must be. All this water, something would have sprung up around it years ago.”
“—then it’s worth digging down into anything that looks like a building. If I could find rubbing alcohol, or even booze-alcohol.”
“Or antibiotics.”
Coral puffed out a frustrated breath. “Chances of that are slim. Damn plastic bottles all melted. It’d have to be stored in a deep basement, ideally in glass. Was any pill still stored in glass in the 21st century? Even then, I’m not sure it’d be safe to take, not after all the heat.”
“Maybe we can find moldy bread. That’s penicillin, right?”
“Can mold grow in sub-zero weather?” She shook her head. “Not that I know what to do with moldy bread anyway, how to turn that into penicillin that could cure an infection.”
“Maybe a person can just eat the mold.”
“Gah,” she said, her neck glands spasming at the thought.
“I wouldn’t mind some bread, moldy or not,” he said wistfully.
“Oh now. It can’t beat fish head soup.”
“Hmm. Speaking of which, is it ready?”
“Yeah. Let’s eat before it gets too dark.”
* * *
THE NEXT DAY WHILE fishing, she took all the surviving branches, both the hollow and solid ones, with her, and she spent the day fashioning a syringe, depending on a bobber to signal her about fish strikes.
Using her pocketknife, she whittled away at a short solid stem until it barely fit in the end of a hollow stem. She doused them both with near-freezing water to lubricate them, and pushed slowly. The hollow stem split. Taking it apart with care, she tried to see where the problem had developed. Water was already freezing onto the split branch. Maybe warmer water would make a difference—and she’d have to boil water before irrigating Benjamin’s wound to sterilize it anyway. She planned on the water being body temperature for the debriding.
Coral set to work on another plunger, using a larger branch this time and whittling it down to near perfect roundness before trying to make it fit. She used her drinking water, warmed against her skin, sprinkled some down the hollow, and tried to suck water from her bottle up into her homemade syringe. It started to work, and then her plunger stuck.
Darned thing was swelling from the warmer water.
She capped her bottle and shoved it back up her sweater and stared at the pile of sticks, trying to work it out. So maybe, you get it wet fifteen minutes before, let both swell, and then new water can’t make it swell any worse? But would both swell the same amount? Wouldn’t the tube get more fragile, the more saturated it was?
Damn.
She spent all day at it, experimenting, failing, but getting closer to a working device as the day wore on, feeling like some medieval inventor, trying to make a stupidly simple machine work. In fact, that’s really what she was. With the exception of a few surviving items from the technological age—like her boots, looking sadder every day—they were sliding from the jet age back to the stone age. They’d slid past medieval some time ago.
By late afternoon, she thought she had a syringe that would work—once. She figured she’d get five to ten minutes with it, and then the tube would disintegrate. Maybe it would be enough time.
Or maybe it’d drive the infection deeper and kill Benjamin.
She hated having this responsibility. When planning for a career as a doctor, she’d never really considered having life and death powers over other people. Or if she had considered it, maybe she’d even felt a thrill at the idea. Saving a life—that’s a godlike power. It had sounded great.
But losing the life of someone you cared for, and depended on, and would risk your own life to save? That was a terrible, awesome power no sane person would want. She would just as soon hand it off to someone else. Better yet, she’d rather hand it off to a well-equipped hospital and a team of eight skilled professionals.
The world was, however, what the world was. And she was as close to a doctor as Benjamin would likely ever find.
Fishing was done for the day. One fish had snatched at a lure while she devised her debriding syringe. She couldn’t claim to have caught it, exactly—it caught itself. But still, it was enough for one person’s food for one day. They had a couple extra fillets from the last two days, and some heads and bones, so they’d be okay for the next two meals.
Back at the campsite, she pulled out her makeshift pot, the doubled aluminum cake pans stolen from the cultists, now with a pair of heat-hardened willow branch handles woven through the top inch of the sides. She gathered the charcoal and kindling—all the broken reeds and branches—and lit it with her magnesium fire-starter. While she waited for water to boil, she took what water bottles they had and filled them from her fishing hole. It was almost clear water, now that the ash had fallen to the lake bottom and the ice protected the water from accumulating more every day.
When the water was at a healthy boil, she shook the pan, getting boiling water into every corner. She took out the last shirt Benjamin had worn and the bandages she’d made from one of the dead cultist’s torn shirts and poured the water over them. She filled the pan again, and when the cloth had cooled so that she could barely stand to touch it with her bare hands, wrung the hot water from the shirt and bandage. Soap would be so much better to clean them and her hands, but boiling water, poured over them a few times, would have to do.
Benjamin returned a couple hours before dusk. The bandages she had dried out near the fire, on rocks she had sterilized with more boiling water. When she saw him, she nudged the water closer to the smoldering fire.
“Operation time, huh?” he said, dumping the bag of the charcoal he’d collected that day.
“Sorry.”
“I trust you.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Shirt off, huh?”
“Not until I’ve boiled and cooled this water. Don’t want you freezing to death before I can—” She’d almost said “kill you myself,” but realized just in time this was not the time to make jokes. “Get ready,” she finished. While the water cooled, he paced along the lake’s edge. When she was ready for him, she called him over.
“Let’s get it done, then,” he said.
“You must have a good immune system,” she said, looking at the wound again. “It’s worse every day, but it could have gone bad much faster.”
“I guess I get sick less often than most. I thought it was because I was a hermit and wasn’t catching germs from anyone else.”
She lined up her equipment. “Yeah, we people are filthy creatures.” She wished for a nurse, to talk and distract him. But she was all there was. “Tell me something while I do this.”
“What?” he said.
“Anything. A happy memory from childhood. A story. About your favorite motorbike.” She dipped up some water and washed her hands again. It was body temp. “Go on, talk.”
“I remember the first time I rode on a motorcycle.”
“Tell me that.” She prodded at his wound with a knife blade, as sterile as she could make it under the circumstances. She scraped off the scab that had formed over the exit wound.
His breath caught, and thin blood trickled from the hole. The wound looked like a little flat volcano, with the skin at the edges raised, and the center part a bloody, pulpy crater. She tuned out his words and focused on the job at hand. Loading her syringe carefully, she brought it to the wound and pressed the plunger.
The stream that came out was thin and not as forceful as she’d hoped. She’d have to be less delicate when she pressed the plunger—but that would tear up the device sooner. Well, screw it. She could build another tomorrow if she failed today.
She loaded the syringe again, heard Benjamin say, “But I didn’t really have a good grasp on left and right yet,” and she tuned him back out. She held the tube steady and slid the plunger as quickly as she could. The stream was much stronger. Water spurted into the center of the blood “volcano” and what dripped back out was red. A clot of thickened blood tumbled from the hole, and blood began to flow more freely after it.
She glanced up at Benjamin’s face. His eyes were closed and his head turned away. She cradled his arm and steadied it to get a better look. “And of course I fell,” he was saying.
And then another voice came, from behind her. “Don’t move. And don’t go for that rifle.”
