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THREE DAYS LATER, HIDDEN in the tunnel from the men who had kidnapped and beaten Benjamin, Coral and he were still safe.
Benjamin was healing. He was still tender around the ribs, but when she helped him into the light, she could see the swelling on his face was going down. He looked like himself again and had refused any pain medication after the first day.
They were down to a couple doses each of mild codeine and ibuprofen. In this new, changed world, there was no medical care beyond what she could provide, with her year of pre-med courses and the knowledge she’d picked up during one summer spent as a hospital volunteer—though that had been spent mostly handing out magazines and books. No healing plants were left alive. The handful of drugs she had on hand were the very last drugs on earth—or the only ones the two of them would be likely to see.
So when he refused the pills, she was both guilty and relieved. Better to save them...for a broken femur, or pocket-knife surgery she’d have to perform on one of them.
As the light faded that third day after their escape, she crawled outside, taking waste to bury, reassuring herself no one had come near enough to leave tracks, and wiping out her own tracks before returning to their tunnel. He claimed he could help, but Coral refused to let him. If, in a day or two, he could simply walk alongside while she pulled the sled, that’d be good enough. Talking it over that afternoon, they agreed to wait for the next snowstorm to leave. Snow would cover their tracks.
“It’d be best to leave at dawn,” Benjamin said.
“If we can,” she promised.
It would snow again, and soon. Since The Event had poured ash into the sky and turned summer to winter, it had been snowing nearly every other day, a gray and sooty snow that covered the burned-out Idaho valleys around them and hid the signs of the scorching and of death.
“I hate to abandon the food at the Walmart, though.” They were eating from the cans she’d managed to steal from the Walmart while the group of dangerous men were beating Benjamin. It was the first time they had eaten well in a month, and they needed the calories, Benjamin in particular to heal his injuries. This past few days, she’d spent hours lying in silence next to him while he napped, trying to figure out a way to raid the Walmart one last time before they left without getting shot dead by the group who considered it theirs. She finally asked him what he thought.
“Not worth the risk. We’re down to one rifle,” Benjamin said. “There’s at least four of them, all armed, one with my rifle, damn him, and there’s only two of us, and your rifle.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s yours, now. I’m happy to let you have it—you’re the more experienced marksman—and keep my bows and arrows. But I’m not confident with those, either.” With the thin wood arrows alone, she didn’t trust that she could do enough damage to man—or beast—to bring one down. She couldn’t shake the image of an angry man coming at her, stuck in five places with her arrows, but still healthy enough to kill her bare-handed.
“You should practice more.”
“There didn’t seem to be time enough, before, when we were on the road.”
“We’ll make time from now on.”
It would mean slowing down even more, making no more than a couple miles each day. “I can do it while I keep an eye on the fishing line. And I grabbed up some hardware I might be able to use as arrowheads, make them more deadly.”
“Damn, I wish we’d gotten more fishing gear at the Walmart. But it’s lost to us now.”
She knew he was right. But it hurt to let go of the idea of the store, still filled with aisles of canned food. “At least I grabbed some ammo and the knife. And we still have a bit of food.” They’d been sharing a can of high-fat meat and eating a can of fruit or vegetable for each meal. Without the labels, turned to ash long ago in the great heat, every new can opened was a surprise.
She figured they might be taking in 1500 calories each. Still, it was more than they had been eating while doing much harder work than lying still and hiding.
“We only have a week’s worth left, at most, if we can’t hunt or fish for food.”
“It’s more than we had,” she said. “And at least there’s a variety for now.”
“I know.” He was about to say something else, but he stopped himself and shook his head.
“Thanks,” she said.
“For what?”
“For holding off on whatever pessimistic comment you were about to make.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said, and she could hear he was amused.
She was getting to know the way his mind worked. He was truthful, but she did not need to hear more depressing truths. She knew them well enough herself. “There’s no way you can think of to raid the Walmart? At night, maybe?”
“If I were them, I’d have moved in there. Or set two guards around the clock.”
“Maybe that’s why they haven’t found us. Not enough manpower to guard their food stores and hunt us down, both.”
“That. Or you did a good job of hiding us.”
It was rare praise from her taciturn partner.
* * *
THE AFTERNOON AFTER that, it began to snow again. On the following morning, they left their hiding place at first light, coming out of the tunnel into a light but steady snow.
First, there was an argument about who would pull the sled. Coral had been anticipating it, and she was ready for him. “You need to let those ribs heal. It won’t kill me to pull for the next couple days. And, more important, I need you to have the rifle at hand, in case they do find our trail.”
At that, as she had hoped, he gave in. He watched glumly as Coral got into harness and began to haul the sled.
Though she mourned the loss of the goods at the store, she agreed to avoid the area of the Walmart entirely. At Benjamin’s urging, she aimed first north for a dozen blocks, then turned west for the edge of town. The snow fell, too slowly to hide the deep sled tracks quickly. But if it kept up like this, by midday the tracks should be impossible to see.
Benjamin told her he had two destinations in mind. Once they were a mile west of town, he wanted to turn north until they found railroad tracks. After following them west for a while, he said, they could cut north again to a big reservoir. “If there’s any game at all left, that’s where it’ll be, near water. We can spend a week there, fishing and hunting. There’s plenty of fresh water there, at least.”
“What about people?” Of her three encounters with survivors since The Event, two had been life-threatening. A month ago, her goal had been to find a town, some piece of civilization still intact, and a few friendly people. Now, she doubted such a thing existed any more. “If that’s where the game would go, maybe that’s where the people would go.”
“We’ll keep an eye out.”
“If there’s anything useful about this damned ash in the air, it’s that it makes seeing a long way difficult.”
“Works both ways, though. We can’t see danger until it’s right on us.” He made a pained noise.
She turned to look at him, fast enough so that she caught him with his hands clinging to the rear of the sled. “You aren’t supposed to be pushing at all!” She planted her foot on the front of the sled, bringing it to a halt.
“It’s heavy with those extra food cans.”
“You’re hurt.”
“I’ll just do it until we’re out of town.”
He’d never heal up if he didn’t let those bones knit, but she knew she couldn’t talk him into obediently following the sled. “Why don’t you kick over our tracks instead, see if you can confuse anyone trying to follow. Seems a good time for it.”
“We’ve been going straight for eight blocks. If they can’t figure out to continue this way—”
“Then get rid of the tracks and we’ll go over a block. If you insist on doing something more than walk, I don’t want it to be pushing or pulling this load.” A vision of a broken rib puncturing his lung made the last few words sharp with anxiety.
He gave her an exasperated look, and she gave him one right back. “Fine,” he said.
“Don’t pout,” she said, motioning him away from the rear of the sled. She waited until he complied before she adjusted her harness and started pulling again. Three days of rest and adequate food had given her more energy, and while she wouldn’t classify the work as “easy,” it was doable, even without Benjamin sneaking up to help push. As long as the land was flat, she’d be okay pulling full-time.
At the next block, she turned right. Benjamin trailed behind, walking backwards, scuffing out the sled tracks and keeping a sharp eye out for anyone trailing them. But the road behind stayed empty.
She had to take a break midmorning, and again they argued over Benjamin’s taking a turn at pulling. She was adamant. “Look,” she said. “If we’re going to camp for a full week starting tonight or tomorrow at that reservoir, you can take a day off now. Then when we’re ready to move from there, your ribs will feel better. And you’ll be breathing easier, too.” His nose was broken, and she could hear him mouth-breathing most of the time.
“Then you have to have more food. You need the fuel to pull full-time.”
“Fine.” Better to let him win this argument, if it kept him from hurting himself worse. She let him open up a can of what ended up being chili with beans—ice cold, of course—and a second can that ended up being, they thought after studying the contents, palm hearts.
She popped one into her mouth. “Though I’m still not sure. I’ve never had them.”
“Me neither.”
“Here.” She handed him the can.
“No, you’re the one pulling.”
“You have to at least taste them. So you can say you’ve had them. I think they’re sort of rare, or expensive.”
“I’m not sure there’ll be anyone to brag about that to.” But he took one.
“If the world is bad enough, like you think it is, I doubt we’ll ever get a chance to eat anything tropical again. So enjoy stuff like canned pineapple and hearts of palm while you can. And forget seeing a banana for a long while.”
He pulled out a second piece of palm. “It’s good,” he said.
“Finish them.”
“You’re the one—”
“I doubt they have many calories. And I don’t love their taste. If you like them, go on.”
He frowned. But he also finished the can. He refused to take any of the chili until she had scraped most of it out. Then he relented and poured water into the can, sloshed it around, and drank what was left.
“How are we doing on water?” she said.
He checked their supply of bottles. “Low. But we’ll get to the reservoir soon enough.”
They hit the edge of town soon after and the rail line in mid-afternoon. The worry about being followed by the Walmart gang had faded, and now she was keeping an eye out for other dangers ahead—human dangers, in particular. She trusted Benjamin to guard the rear.
They followed the train track to the west, staying to its north side and out of sight of the interstate highway. Not that any cars were moving on it—or anywhere else, for that matter. But it was likely that anyone on foot might follow the most obvious routes, so they had agreed to avoid the interstates.
On a rail siding sat four boxcars, which Benjamin went to check out while Coral rubbed the ache at the small of her back and checked under her jacket and shirt. She was getting blistered right at the junction of arm and torso from hours in harness without a break. Grateful Benjamin wasn’t there to see, she pulled out her extra shirts and used them to pad herself better. When they stopped for the night, she’d dab antibiotic cream on those raw patches.
He came back ten minutes later, shaking his head. “The cars are filled with asphalt.”
“Yum.”
They hiked on but didn’t make the reservoir before the light gave out. She tried to sneak the first-aid kit away from the sled to doctor her blisters, but Benjamin caught her.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“A couple blisters is all.”
“Let me see.”
“I’d rather not. It’s cold, and I don’t want to strip my sweater and shirt off. I can deal with them.”
“You should have told me.”
“What’d be the point? We needed to get away.”
“Tomorrow, I’m pulling.”
“No, you’re not. And stop arguing about it.”
“You stop arguing.”
She started laughing. “God, it’s like being with my brothers. How old are you again?”
“Thirty-six.”
“Did you ever tell me that before?”
“I don’t think so. And I never asked how old you are, but I guess no older than 21.”
“What day is it?”
“What?”
“If it’s after July 27, I’m 19.”
“Geez. So I could be your father.”
“Yeah, definitely dump me because I’m too young. You have so many other options for surviving.”
“Oh, go fix your blisters, brat.”
As she doctored the raw spots with cream and the last of the Band-Aids, she thought about what he’d said. “I could be your father,” but, more than that, the tone of it. There was an implication there that she had avoided thinking about. She was a straight woman. He was a straight man. Maybe the only sane straight man for 100 square miles—or for the next year of travel. It made sense that eventually they’d hook up.
But she didn’t feel attracted to him. Grateful, yes. Fond, sure. Exasperated, occasionally. But did feeling anything more matter in this situation? When your choices were exactly one—or nothing—you really couldn’t be choosy. What if this were how her whole life would play out? The gray skies, the scrabbling for insufficient food, a winter that lasted months or years, a terrible death from starvation or freezing always one mistake away. Maybe she should be interested in sex, for that reason. But the truth was, she wasn’t. Not with him, and not with anyone. Her sex drive was gone. All she cared about was food and warmth and staying alive.
She was glad it was getting dark, because she could feel herself blushing when he glanced at her as she got ready to bed down for the night. She laid out her bag and crawled into it, feeling awkward sleeping next to Benjamin for the first time since the first night they’d slept side by side. Why had she let her mind go off in that direction?
“You okay?” he said, when she turned over for the third time in five minutes.
“Yeah. Pretty minor damage. How ‘bout you? Ribs, head, nose?”
“I have at least one of each.”
“Be that way.”
“I am.”
He was that way. Stoic, taciturn, and certainly not happy to talk about his weaknesses. Or, for that matter, his strengths. She wouldn’t push. “Night,” she said, moving away from him another inch.
“Night,” he said.
* * *
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, they moved down a gentle slope to a river that widened steadily as they walked along its banks, and Benjamin said they were nearly there. They made the reservoir at late afternoon, and the two of them built up three snow walls to hide their sled while they reconnoitered the shore to either side. “Look for tracks,” Benjamin said. “Human or game. And any holes in the snow that suggest there’s fresh scat.”
“And you look for likely fishing spots. Coves or—well, I guess there won’t be any docks left.” Looking over the water she wished now, more than ever, that she had more line. She’d sure like to be able to cast out away from the bank.
She settled for dangling her line for an hour at the end of the day but caught nothing.
The next morning, Benjamin prepared to go off on his own, looking for game.
“You okay with just the bow for protection?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine. And I’ll scream bloody murder if I get into trouble I can’t handle. And run in your direction fast while I scream.”
“Good. If I’m not back by nightfall, either I found a track to follow....”
“Or you’re in trouble. And in that case, I’ll follow you tomorrow morning.”
“No. Give it a couple more hours than that, in case I am tracking an animal. If I’m not back by midday tomorrow, then start to worry. You’ll practice with your bows, right?”
“Right.”
He left, her daypack on his back, and his sleeping bag tied with nylon rope onto it. With the weather this cold, it would be stupid not to be prepared for every possibility.
After he left, she walked south along the shore, scanning for animal tracks, paying close attention to the shape of the snow, looking for lumps that might be snow-covered scat. The hunt might fail today, but tracks or scat would mean on another day they might find some meat. The few remaining cans wouldn’t last them for long.
Thin ice had formed at the reservoir’s edges but didn’t go out very far into the water. Whatever insects there might have been a month ago were likely now in hibernation, or existed only as larvae or pupae or eggs. There might be a few midges left in the cold water, but surely any fish surviving in there would be hungry.
She found a flat rock to sit on, brushed it clean of snow, and settled down to fish. She was out of the salmon eggs, but she still had lures. And she might be able to dig for worms or grubs if they didn’t work.
As she let the line sway in the mild breeze, she looked around her. As the morning wore on, she could see to the south a vague shape, barely visible. As she stared at it, she went from thinking it was only an illusion to thinking she was looking at something real. Finally, she stood, pulled her fishing line out, and began to walk toward it. As the shape solidified, she decided it was a silo, one of those breast-shaped ones. She debated with herself about checking it out and realized it’d still be there tomorrow, whatever it was. It’d still be there when Benjamin returned with the rifle, and it would be smart to approach it only once a weapon was at hand.
If they could find a silo full of grain, it would have been cooked by the great heat. Maybe only the outside layers, though. Maybe they could dig and find edible grain. Or maybe it had been full of silage, not raw grain. Was that edible, or could it be turned into human food by cooking it? She knew little about silage except that it existed. For now, whatever was in the silo, she’d leave it alone until Benjamin returned.
She turned back north, scanning across the water as she returned to her rock. The reservoir looked fairly full, maybe a foot below its highest. As the weather cooled more, and the snow piled up on the mountains, the water level would surely drop, and more of the reservoir would freeze. Eventually, she’d have to ice-fish, which she’d never done before.
She moved her fishing line several feet from where she had been and watched it for ten uneventful minutes, then let it dangle untended, pinning her rod between two rocks so no big fish would take off with it if he went for the lure. She built a gritty snowman to use as a target, and spent time practicing her archery skills. She only missed twice at 25 paces, and it was with the same arrow both times. She demoted the arrow, putting it with her first—and worse—bow. There had been no trees or bushes lately to use for making more arrows. A world without wood was a hard world. Fuel was hard to find, too. She wouldn’t mind heating tonight’s meat and vegetables, to warm up a cold evening.
And they were all cold evenings now. And cold days. Her fingers were going numb from having her mittens off for so long to practice her archery.
She wondered if, after staying here for a week, they could risk going back to that Walmart to hunt for supplies. She could not get the place out of her mind. She’d like more fishing lures—she’d lost one to an underwater snag a couple weeks ago and would surely lose more, no matter how careful she was. But no, if she were the leader of that group back there, she’d have moved the whole bunch of them in there, to be on hand to defend it. There’d be other towns ahead of them, with other concrete Walmarts or supermarkets that had survived the fires.
And maybe those would have other dangerous people. Crazy people. Cannibals, even.
How was Benjamin doing? The thought had barely crossed her mind when she heard the distant report of the rifle. She was caught between fear and hope: fear it was a person he had shot at, and hope it was an animal. Should she run toward the sound? No—either way, he’d want her to stay put, and by the time she reached him, any human fight would be over. She waited for a half-minute, breath held, but heard nothing else. Her fear eased off a fraction. If it were a battle with people, there’d be more noise, right? There’d be lots of gunfire.
Still, if anyone dangerous was anywhere around the reservoir, the gunfire would draw them to it. She kicked over her snowman, scattering the gray snow back over the ground. The snowfall had ended this morning, so anyone following Benjamin’s tracks back would have no trouble backtracking to find her, too.
The thought that there might be someone out there, coming, tracking toward her began to seem more real an image, like the silo solidifying out of the hazy air. Her neck began to tingle, and she glanced behind to make sure she was alone. No one was there. Even as she told herself she was being paranoid, she was pulling out her fishing line and breaking down the rod to stow away.
She backed up to the sled, climbing behind the snow wall they’d built to protect it, and sat on guard, bow and one of her best arrows gripped in her left hand. She could shoot within a second, if she needed to. The minutes ticked off, but nothing happened. She felt a little foolish for being so worried, but not so foolish that she wanted to climb from behind her protection and go back to business as usual.
When she peeked over the snow and saw a blurry form coming from the north, her heart sped in fear again, but soon she was sure, from the shape, and from the way he moved, that it was Benjamin. She ran out to meet him.
“I was worried.”
“I knew you would be. But it was only this.” He held up a rabbit by its hind legs, a sad, skinny thing.
“Fresh meat.”
“Yeah, but we can’t eat this raw like we do the fish. In fact, it’s a bit dangerous to clean it with bare hands. I wish I had latex gloves.”
“There’s still a plastic bag from my big pack, one I kept in there for trash. You could stick one of your hands inside it.”
“Good. We need fuel, too, to cook it. I think I’ll need to go north to find any. It’s all farm land around here, trees cut down long ago.”
“That reminds me.” She told him about the silo to the south.
“Definitely I should check that out after I get the rabbit gutted.”
“We’ll go together.”
“How’s the fishing?”
“No nibbles yet, but I wasn’t working very hard at it. I was focusing more on this.” She lifted the bow and arrow.
“Great. I have to get this rabbit cleaned.”
She looked at it, lying in the snow. “Awfully skinny.”
“I’m surprised it survived at all. It must have been living off digging roots. I’ll clean it.”
“I’d like to watch and learn more. I can clean fish, but I’ve never cleaned game.”
“Sure.”
“Good.” She wanted to learn more, to depend less on him. What if he left for hunting one day and never came back? Not to be heartless about it, but every survival skill she could learn from him, she needed to learn and to practice. She reeled her line in, found her backpack, and brought him the old plastic bag and the new knife. He hunkered down, thrust his right hand into the bag, and kept his left mitten on while he worked at cleaning the rabbit.
“If we can preserve the skin, it might be useful,” he said. “Moccasins, gloves, line a collar.”
“Damn, I should have looked for needles at Walmart.” Her list of missed items was growing longer. At least she’d remember needles next time she had the chance. She’d chant a list to herself every night, memorizing it through repetition so she’d not forget again. With no more pencil and paper, she couldn’t write a list.
He cut into the rabbit’s fur at the neck and forearms, then tore it and peeled it back down to the hind legs in one smooth motion.
It surprised her that it wasn’t a very bloody job. “Wow, was that as easy as it looked?”
“Yup, they come right off.” He stuffed the pelt into the snow. “Cool it out immediately, if you want to preserve it. And always clean and cook or freeze game right away. Even when it’s cold out like it is today, we’re doing this about as late as you’d want to after its demise.”
The meat was light colored, not far in appearance from chicken thighs. Coral had dissected enough animals in biology class and cleaned enough fish that watching this didn’t bother her. Without the pelt, it didn’t look like a bunny anymore, anyway, just more and more like supper.
“Cut behind the sternum next. And hold the skin away from the entrails, like this, as you keep cutting.”
He stopped cutting most of the way down the rabbit’s torso and dug into the belly, pulling up the liver, deep red and glistening. “Good. I can take the glove off. I’ll wash off the bag to use again later.” He dropped it, peeled off his remaining mitten with his teeth, and grabbed the carcass with his bare hands.
“Why? You said it was dangerous, I thought.”
“Tularemia is pretty common in rabbits. But it’s obvious on the liver, as white spots. This here is a very healthy-looking liver.” Barehanded, he continued slitting the belly open. “The important part of cleaning is right here—you don’t want to contaminate meat with urine or feces. With small animals like this, break open the pelvis, and you can lift it all out like this.” He pushed the rest of the organs onto the snow, pointing with his knife. “Heart, liver, kidneys, all edible. The rest, not edible. We’ll bury the good organs in the snow and let them freeze overnight.” He plucked them out from the rest of the guts and put them to the side.
“What next?” she asked.
“You could toss the rabbit whole into boiling water, or spit it—if we had spits—but for now I’ll part it out, like a chicken.” In moments, he had five pieces. It looked even more like chicken now. “I’ll clean it up next. I’ll leave the lungs, stomach, all that, for you, for fish bait.”
She helped him bury the pieces in the snow.
“I’ll go check out the silo now, or whatever it is.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“If there’s a silo still standing, maybe there’s a farm or ranch house that survived. I’d like to be sure there aren’t people around there, and I can move more quietly alone. Don’t wander far.”
“But you can wander.” It was a little condescending of him and irrationally irked her. Sure, he was the better hunter, but she hated that he felt he had to watch after her. When they pulled together, they felt like equals. When he needed rescuing, she had managed to do that alone. But sometimes, she felt talked down to, like now.
His voice was reasonable, patient. “The person with a rifle should do most of the reconnoitering. If you want, you can take the rifle and check out the silo.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Okay, you do it, and I’ll fish. And I’ll baby-sit the rabbit.”
“Pretty easy babysitting. It’s not going anywhere.” He adjusted the rifle on his shoulder and said, “See you in an hour or so.”
She took her arrows back out and fiddled with them while she waited.
Benjamin returned in good time. “Lucked out,” he called.
Her heart lifted. “There’s food there?”
“No, but I found some charcoaled wood. Enough to cook the rabbit, at least.” He took off the daypack and unloaded the wood.
“Great. I have water clearing.”
“We’ll have rabbit stew.”
“We can add a couple of mystery veggie cans to it.”
“Sounds good.
“I’ll get the fire started.”
In a half-hour, she had a small fire going and decanted clear water into the biggest pot they carried, added a pinch of the dwindling supply of salt and opened another can with no label. It was peaches, so she set it aside to have as dessert and tried a second can—peas and pearl onions, much better for stew. She stuck her finger in the icy liquid and tasted it. It had salt, better still. The liquid from the can she poured in the pot, along with most of the onions. She’d add the rest of the veggies when the rabbit had cooked partly through. She had at least an hour until that happened. Maybe two.
It was a good thing her grandmother was into cooking from scratch. Coral had learned enough from her to manage the survival cooking. She knew people at school who thought all food came from plastic trays or drive-through bags.
When Benjamin was done cleaning up, he asked for her pocket knife. “To sharpen.”
He sat down to hone all the knives and the hatchet, too. She returned to fishing, using the gut bait, and was rewarded soon with a bass. Not a tiny one, either—it was three inches longer than her hand. She stuck it on a stringer, jammed that into the ground, and put more bait on her hook. It took a half-hour, but she caught a second fish, nearly as big. She hadn’t seen fish this big in a long while, since before The Event.
She retrieved her sharpened pocketknife from Benjamin, cleaned both the fish quickly, and set them both by the coals to cook. It’d be great to eat cooked fish rather than raw tomorrow. It’d freeze equally well raw or cooked. She stirred the rabbit stew, decided the meat needed another half hour, and returned to fishing. As she was ready to quit for the day, a third fish struck her line, but it was clever and unhooked itself with a twist and a splash.
The sound was loud enough to attract Benjamin’s attention. “Feast or famine,” he said. “And I’m done with the sharpening.”
She tested the edge of the big knife she’d taken from Walmart. Dangerously sharp—she’d have to remember that. “Thanks,” she said, still feeling regret for the lost fish—but not the despair she would have felt over it just a week ago, but a smaller twinge. They had fresh food for the day, some canned food left, and a promise of more fish to come. She said to Benjamin, “I buried the fish heads with the rabbit heart in the snow. We can have those tomorrow as soup.”
“If I can find more fuel.”
“At least fish is edible raw. Though I’d rather have them cooked.”
“I think I should take an overnight trip up north, see if there are more rabbits.”
“We can go together.”
“No. You’re catching fish here now. Stick with it.”
“True, but it’ll still be here in a couple days, and they might be biting better elsewhere.”
He thought it over. “Okay. Give me tomorrow to check things out on my own, find the ideal spot for the next camp, make sure there are no human tracks up that direction.” He unconsciously drew his hand over his sore ribs.
She wished he were healing faster, but she supposed the chronic undereating would make all their injuries heal slowly. Their bodies had eaten through all their fat stores and, for every day they had insufficient calories, they would be breaking down bones and organs and healthy muscle to keep them alive. Injuries were only going to be more and more stressful.
“As least we aren’t going to be catching head colds or the flu this winter,” she said.
“What?”
“I was thinking. It’s a silver lining in the cloud of all this death. Diseases will have a hard time staying alive. Not enough hosts to move them along.”
“Huh,” he said.
The rabbit stew turned out great. The onions from the can made the broth richer-tasting. She could have eaten twice what she did but, without discussing it, they stopped halfway through the pot.
Benjamin left at dawn, taking the cooked fish with him to eat while he was hunting.
She felt a twinge as he disappeared. She’d come to a point where she’d rather not have him out of her sight for long. Whatever hesitation she’d felt about him back at his house, when they’d argued over her rifle, had entirely disappeared since the incident at the Walmart. He was her partner, something akin to her wolf pack, now. They might skirmish over alpha position now and again, but they had become a good team.
It made her nervous when he took the rifle away, too. She didn’t want to have to confront an aggressive group of survivors without one close at hand. Never bring a novice’s homemade bow and arrow to a gunfight, as they said—or someone should have said at some point in history. But that was the situation she was in whenever Benjamin left her to hunt.
Coral was left with cold rabbit stew for the day’s eating. The weather was cold enough that thick ice had formed on its surface overnight.
She cracked the ice and had a few spoonfuls of cold stew. Setting up water bottles to clear was next. The weather continued to get colder daily, and if it dropped much more, the water bottles would freeze before the ash could precipitate out. She’d have to sit with the bottles between her thighs, she supposed, while she fished.
She started her work day by tipping arrows with screws she had grabbed at the Walmart. Soon she realized that she should have gotten tiny nails instead; those, she could have pushed through the wood. The screws were as thick as the arrows and needed to be tied on. She couldn’t afford any monofilament for the job. Her paracord would be too thick. Finally, she sliced through the thread at the hem of her jeans and worked out the length of it.
After she had four arrows tipped, she set up a snowman target and practiced her marksmanship with both sorts of arrows: plain wood and metal-tipped. After watching the new arrows’ wobbly flight, she took off the tips and reattached them. Another round of target practice, and they still weren’t right. She tried again.
Finally, she put two together with screw tips, balanced so that they worked okay. The flight still had a wobble she didn’t like, but they did fly further than the wood-only arrows. It must be the extra weight. After another half-hour of practice with them, she leaned her bow and arrows against the snowman and sat down to start the day’s fishing.
Not much later, Coral’s animal sense told her something was wrong, but not what. Hair rose on the back of her neck.
Though there wasn’t any sound, somehow she knew that someone was watching her.
