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IT WAS MORE LIKE FOUR days before Benjamin could move around again without wincing. Coral spent the mornings fishing and the afternoons digging through the burned out barn, looking for bits of tools and hardware. Each morning at the stream yielded fewer fish. Was she fishing out the stream that quickly, were they getting wise to her, or was something else going on, some weather or biological issue, killing more fish? She might go back to Mill Creek and try that river again.
Another reason for worry was the weather. Every morning it was cooler. Frost began to appear, and with the ash filtering the sunlight, it took hours to burn off. Inside at night, her bedroom was growing colder too, and climbing out from under the blanket every morning took a real act of will. She had washed out her sleeping bag in the stream, and when it had fully dried—it was taking forever—she’d pile it over her too. Each day warmed slightly, but even at the peak of sunlight, the air was still autumn-crisp.
And it was early July. They had both lost track of the date, but they agreed on that.
With little else to do at the house but check on a grumpy Benjamin, one evening Coral kept the lantern on and went through her back pack and reorganized. When she saw the pamphlet on survival skills, she pulled it out and read it through, paying close attention to the hunting section. If the fish stopped biting, she needed a second way to get food.
She thought she might be able to manage to build bird snares—but there wasn’t anything like grass or young willow to make a snare out of any more, and no birds to catch even if she had a snare. She also thought she could make a fishing spear from the directions, but since she had her rod and reel, that would be redundant. Pit traps looked like hard work but within her range of abilities, should game ever become plentiful again. Making a bow and arrows looked far more difficult. Not that there was a lot of ash wood left to choose from, and not that she’d know an ash from a willow without leaves to tell her. But there might be some sort of wood that had survived underwater in the stream that would work.
But were there any animals left to hunt? She hadn’t seen a track or scat or heard a noise that hinted at animal life surviving The Event. Still, it was a good idea to make a bow. Maybe the animals she’d need to hunt were humans, like the guy in town. Not to eat—she wasn’t ready to dwell on that possibility—but to defend herself against.
One afternoon, trying to distract Benjamin from his pain, she brought up the disaster again and asked what he thought had happened.
“It was a single event, for sure,” Benjamin said. “Odds are, a volcano wouldn’t just erupt once without warning. They would have known it was coming, or at least might come. Then there’d be waves of eruptions, maybe changes in the ash levels from day to day. But what we had was one thing. One event. Everything else followed. It must be an impact.”
“But if it’s an asteroid or comet or something, wouldn’t they have known that was coming too?” she asked. “Wouldn’t there have been some news?”
“Even if they did know, why would they warn anyone? Was there anything that could have been done about it if you’d known?”
“People would want to know,” she said. “I wanted to know.” Maybe she would have gotten back to Ohio if she had a warning. Or had a wild weekend of sex with a stranger. Or tried LSD or heroin to see what they were like. Something. She would have done something differently if she had been warned the world were about to end.
“Let’s say someone in the government knew only a day before. They’d have no reason to announce it and every reason to keep it secret from the public. People would have gone nuts. Riots, hoarding, clogging highways and airports, looting, and crimes worse than that. If you’ll never serve jail time, why not kill your boss or ex-wife, or rape, or burn? Not everyone, but some people would have. No one could have run from the thing, so what’d be the point of telling them it was coming?”
“Scientists would have known, though. Probably even amateur astronomers. With the internet, wouldn’t everyone have soon known?”
He shrugged. “Maybe no one saw it coming. Or maybe only a handful did, and quietly left their jobs and took their own families to a safe place.”
“What safe place?”
“You made it in a cave. Maybe a cave, or subway tunnel, or sub-basement to a skyscraper.”
“I guess.”
“Or maybe it was something else entirely, and not an impact at all.” He shrugged.
“You don’t seem to care.”
“I don’t. The what or how doesn’t matter. We have to live with the result.”
“Why don’t the cars work?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Benjamin seemed to take this uncertainty with equanimity too.
She did not. Coral wanted to know. She needed to know what had happened. One day, she promised herself, she’d find out.
By the fourth day after the roof was up, Benjamin was able to get up and down stairs, bend over and walk without pain.
She waited until their evening meal to bring up the subject. “I’m wondering if it’s about time for me to take off,” she said.
He said nothing for a time, just kept on chewing. Finally, he said, “You have somewhere else to go?”
“I want to get back to civilization, you know, to call relatives and friends. I want real roofs made of something that isn’t carpet, and grocery stores that will take my debit card. And I want to know what happened.”
“What makes you think there’s a civilization to get back to?”
“We survived The Event. Others must have too. Somewhere, farther away from where it happened, a lot more people must have. Boise. Maybe I’d have to go as far as California. Somewhere things are going to be better.”
“And maybe not.” His face was grim.
She felt a chill, from more than the cold air. She was counting on there being a normal world out there. “You don’t think so? Really and truly?”
“I don’t know what to think.” Putting down his plate, he leaned back onto his elbows. “I don’t know how to find out, either. If we were just dealing with a wildfire, we’d wait until it burned past, and soon there’d be planes overhead or trucks coming up the road. But nothing could fly in this dust and neither of us has seen even one working car, right?”
“But there have to be people. Somewhere, they have to be out there.”
He shrugged and went back to eating.
She looked up at the dim gray sky. “How far do you think it goes?”
“The ash? I think it might go all the way around the planet.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really. This long after whatever it was that happened, wouldn’t air currents have spread the stuff all over? They did after Krakatoa, I think. I suspect that at least the whole northern hemisphere looks just like that. Maybe Australia is clear. But you sure ain’t gonna be walking there.”
Even Boise sounded an impossible distance away. If he was right, she’d have to go where? South America? At maybe 5 or 10 miles a day, even if she could find food the whole route? That’d be years of travel. “How far do you think the fire burned?”
“Maybe straight through to the coast. Both coasts.”
She shook her head, unable to grasp the idea of a fire that big. “Surely not.” That’d mean her family was in trouble, or dead. She refused to accept that.
“I’m certain it wasn’t small, or limited, or something you’re going to hike out of any time soon. There’s just no way to know for sure.”
“Except to go look. You could come, if you want.”
He said nothing to that, and they finished their meal in silence. Coral was in bed when a knock came at the door.
“Come in,” she said. She had quit locking it every night. She trusted him.
Benjamin entered, carrying a candle. He blew it out when he came into the dim light of the lantern—really dim, by now, as the charge was nearly spent. “I want to say something before you decide to go.”
She sat up. “Okay.”
“You’re having problems finding fish. What if that doesn’t change? What are you going to do about food if you go walking off alone?”
“What are you going to do about it here?”
“At least I have a rifle. I can hunt.”
“Yeah, if you can find something to hunt.”
“Yeah.” He leaned against the doorjamb and lowered the candle to the floor, leaving his face in shadow. “Before you leave, let me spend a couple days at hunting. And if I find a big mammal, we’ll dry some meat and you’ll at least have something to carry along.”
“What if you don’t find anything?”
“Then we’ll both have problems worse than we have now, and we’ll know that’s so. We’ll deal with them when we need to.” He stood in the shadow. “Will you wait for me to hunt?”
Coral was anxious to get going, but she knew he was right about provisions. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll wait.”
The next morning, Benjamin gathered gear for a hunting trip.
“You sure your back can take this?” she asked.
“I’m better. As long as I don’t bend over and try to lift something.”
“What if you shoot a big animal? Won’t you have to lift it?”
“I should have such problems,” he said. “If I need help carrying meat, I’ll come back and get you. But I can’t imagine there’s any large game left. What the hell would they have eaten for the past few weeks?”
Good question. With nothing green on the ground, with not a single leaf on a tree, all the grazing animals would surely have starved by now. “Maybe you’ll find something on its last legs.”
He looked doubtful. “I’m going around the lake. I haven’t been there since the first week after. I’m hoping any animals will be drawn to its water. If I’m lucky, maybe there’ll be a bear doing some fishing.”
“A bear? Be careful,” she said. She realized there was something else she wanted to warn him about. “Stay away from Mill Creek too.”
He looked up from his packing. “Why’s that?”
She cleared her throat. Maybe she should have told him days ago. “There was this guy.” Her tongue went leaden. She had a hard time making herself speak again. She didn’t want to think about it. “Just stay away from there, okay?”
He stared at her for a long time. “That’s it? You’re not going to tell me anything more?”
She shook her head. “Just be careful. Of people.”
“I’m always careful,” he said.
“Good.”
Minutes later, he was gone, disappearing into the gray air. Coral was left alone. As the minutes wore on, she regretted not forcing herself to tell him more about the attack on her. He needed to know why to stay away from Mill Creek. She resolved to tell him when he came back, no matter how painful it was to remember.
She didn’t have to wait days to do it. No more than an hour had passed when she heard him calling her name.
Coral trotted upstairs. Benjamin was outside the burned out back door. He moved into the kitchen, leaned against the counter, and folded his arms.
“What’s wrong?” she said. “Did you hurt your back again?”
He reached onto the counter, picked up his rifle, and extended his arm, offering it.
She didn’t reach out to take it. “What do you want me to do with that? You need it to hunt.”
“Look at it.”
Reaching her hands out, she accepted the rifle, then looked at it. She knew very little about guns, hadn’t had an interest in hunting, though her brother had offered to teach her. She shook her head and offered him the rifle back.
He didn’t take it. “That’s not mine.”
Perplexed, Coral shook her head. Then she understood. “It’s the one I had?” She looked at it more closely. “You finally found it. Good.”
He frowned. “I didn’t finally find it.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t get what you’re saying.”
“I found it when I found you.”
“But why—?” She shook her head, trying to clear it. “I’m not getting this at all. You found the rifle and then lied to me and said you hadn’t?”
“I lied to you.” His voice was flat, but there was anger etched in the lines around his mouth.
“Are you pissed at me?” Coral clutched the rifle to her chest. “I should be pissed off at you!”
“And why’s that?”
“No, I should be afraid of you. I am afraid of you. What is going on here?”
“You tell me.”
Coral backed up a step, ready to turn and run if she needed to. “You found the rifle, you hid it from me, and you lied to me about finding it. Right so far?”
“I didn’t lie, actually, if you remember. I just didn’t answer your question. That’s half the story.”
“So tell me the other half.”
“No. The other half is yours. A story about whoever hit you in the head. The story about what you were running away from. It’s time to tell me. Did you turn on a partner? Or kill someone for their food?”
“I—” She was so stunned, she couldn’t formulate a full thought for a moment. “Wait. You think I’m dangerous?”
His face was stony.
“Then why did you just hand me the rifle? If I were dangerous, I’d just shoot you right now.”
“I unloaded it. You were down to one round anyway.” He reached into his shirt pocket and held up a bullet, then tucked it back in the pocket.
“I didn’t even know that. No, forget that. If you thought I was a killer, then why did you take me in? I could have stabbed you in your sleep at any point.”
“I kept my door locked until I got hurt on the roof and needed your help. And I was watching you pretty closely even then.”
She was incredulous. It was impossible to imagine herself as a violent person, as a threat. “You really think I’m going to hurt you?”
He shook his head. “You still haven’t told me what happened. And when I left today, well...I realized I needed to know. That I deserved to know.”
She shook her head, dazed. “I’ve been half afraid of you all along. And now you tell me that you didn’t trust me either.” Looking at the rifle, she suddenly felt repelled by it. She set it down. Then she turned and walked out of the kitchen, back down the stairs. She didn’t know what to think.
Or she did know what to think. Maybe it was wrong not to tell all that had happened in Mill Creek, but he had been wrong to keep his finding the rifle a secret from her. That seemed downright weird to her. She didn’t understand it, and she was frightened by it. She didn’t understand Benjamin...and she had the sense she might not have understood him before The Event, either. What kind of man was he?
She turned on the lantern again. In its dim silver glow, she could see the few of her belongings not packed away. It would be best to shove them into her pack and leave. Food or no food, clear destination or not. Benjamin was freaking her out.
Benjamin’s voice came from the doorway, simultaneously with the door latch clicking open. “I want to know.”
“Know what?”
“What happened. Who gave you that crack on the head. What you’re afraid of telling.”
“I think I should just go.”
“You owe me the story first.”
That made her look at his face. Nothing in his posture was friendly, and his expression was not one that inspired the sharing of confidences. Her first urge was to refuse.
But maybe she did owe him. He had taken her in, shared his venison, given her a safe place to sleep, given her a break from walking.
“Okay,” she said. She stared at the open doorway instead of him. “I was attacked. In Mill Creek.”
“By someone you knew? Your boyfriend or something?”
“No, no, a total stranger. I don’t know what the hell was wrong with him. He was violent. Crazy.”
“Go on.”
She closed her eyes and forced herself to speak past the knot of nausea the memory still gave her. “He was going to rape me, I think. Maybe kill me, maybe eat me. I don’t know. He came out of nowhere. I managed to fight him off. That’s it. It’s not much of a story. But it’s the only one I’ve got.” She had to sit down on the bed.
“How’d you get away?”
“I fought back. I had some luck. Got the rifle away from him. Knocked him out. Ran.” She tried to keep the images from crystallizing in her mind. They came anyway, in short bursts: a flash of his sour smell, a whiff of his awful breath, the memory of the feel of the ash under her hands as she scrambled on the ground, the muffled thump when she kicked him. The memory made her feel sick and shaky.
“You didn’t start it, then? Attack him?”
She shook her head. “What have I done to make you think such a thing of me? I don’t even understand such behavior. I’ve never been around violent people, not ever. Why the hell did he attack me?” Tears built behind her eyes, and she let her head fall to her chest, not wanting to expose the weakness of the threatening tears. She retied her boots, though they didn’t need it. It kept him from seeing what she was feeling. Benjamin said nothing. When she had herself under control, she glanced up at him, dry-eyed. “Why are people like that?”
“Some people are just assholes. Evil.” There was no sympathy on his face.
“That’s a hell of a philosophy.”
“It’s a hell of a truth,” he said. “You’re lucky you lived so long without having to know it until now.”
Like he knew what her life had been like. She thought about spitting out some of the painful details to him but she repressed the urge. Let him think she lived in some sort of suburban bliss all her life, SUV heaven, if he wanted. What did she care what he thought of her? She said, “There’s always a reason people do what they do.”
“No there isn’t.”
“Of course there is. Child molesters only molest because they themselves were victimized, and—”
“That is such a bunch of pop psychology bullshit. They have a choice. They make an evil one.”
Why couldn’t she make him understand? “There has to be an explanation.”
“No there doesn’t. A lot of stuff, it just is.”
“If violence in people just is, then I’m not safe. Not anywhere. Not out there. Not with you, either.”
His jaw worked, but he said nothing for long minutes. “You’re safe with me. You should know that by now.”
She didn’t feel safe. She felt cornered, and angry, and inexplicably ashamed. “You satisfied with my story?” she asked him. “Think I’m telling the truth, or am I just another evil stranger?”
“I think you’re telling the truth. But I wish you would have from the first.”
“So I’m supposed to trust you even though you don’t trust me.”
“Do you trust me?”
“No.” Not now, she didn’t. Three hours ago, yes, she had.
“That doesn’t make any sense. If I were a bad guy, why would I have taken you back here? You were unconscious for hours. I could have robbed you and left you where you were. Tied you to the bed right here and had my way with you. I didn’t do any of that.”
“You also didn’t tell me about the rifle. Where was it?”
“I had it stashed in the ruins of a neighbor’s house.”
“Maybe you’re right about me. I might have killed him.” She wasn’t sure how to feel about that. With so few people left, it seemed every one should be precious. Even the crazy and dangerous ones.
“You don’t know if you killed him?”
“I hope I didn’t.” She shook her head. “And sometimes, I hope I did too. It’s an awful goddamn way to feel, but sometimes I can’t help it.”
“He might be dead by now without your killing him. He might have starved. Or run into someone meaner than himself.”
“You say that, and for a second I think ‘good.’ I hate that feeling. I’m not that kind of person.”
Benjamin sighed. “It’s hard to know what kind of person you are when the rules change on you. Any of us could do almost anything under the right circumstances. And the rules have changed, Coral. Changed completely. Make no mistake.”
She pulled her pack over and began to pack her things. He watched her without comment. Only when the pack was filled again and zipped tightly did she speak again. “That’s why I need to get away from here. I have to get back to a city. I want to get to where people haven’t changed. I want normal, polite people who are decent to each other.”
“Haven’t I been decent?”
“I thought so, until today. Are you asking me to trust you again?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think you can ask for trust. I think you can only earn it, wait for it.”
They stared at each other for a long time. Finally, he cleared his throat. “I’m going hunting. I’ll be gone at least overnight.”
She nodded.
“Will you be here when I get back?”
“Do you want me to be?”
He reached up and rubbed his neck. He took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. “Yes.” Without another word, he went back upstairs.
