Beyond the New Horizon (Book 4): Dark Times

by Conaway, Christine

  By the time all three puppies were on the blanket making tiny mewling noises, Lucky had settled down and was ready to see where Lucas had put her babies. She belly-crawled to the blanket. Her hackles didn’t settle down until she found the puppies and Bear.

  As soon as she’d crawled far enough on, Mary and Lucas picked up both sides of the blanket and hauled their canine crew back to the cave.

  Everyone oohed and ahhd until Mary shuffled them back outside to continue with the task of gathering.

  Lucas hung back until Mary reminded him of his promise to hunt rabbit for the dogs so armed with Evelyn’s 22, Lucas set off.

  “Keep an eye open for the onions and anything else we can possibly dry for food.”

  “Got it!” Lucas told her as he left. When Evelyn had given them all hand drawn pictures of the weeds and edible foliage he had thought they would never find anything resembling her pictures and had been surprised how accurate her drawings were. In tiny block letters, she had provided a description and precise colors as well.

  He and the girls had already found some Brookwell in the same area they had found the cattails in. The water hadn’t been polluted so they had picked all they could find. Evelyn had said they would dry everything for winter use. The Brookwell was medicinal as well as tasty and could be used when they finally ran out of vegetables. She’d said it was a good remedy to ward off scurvy. As soon as she had told them what scurvy was, they had set out to find all that they could and the slow moving water around the cattails was a prime location for the small plant. Lucas and the girls didn’t want to go through life with their teeth missing.

  His list contained, stinkweed, clover, wild mustard, mint, nodding onion. Some had instructions to bring the whole plant root and all as the roots or bulbs could be dried for winter use. They had been lucky and found almost everything on the list in the wet meadows on both sides of the creek.

  Lucas stopped walking and listened. Several times over the morning he’d heard the familiar beat of wings and thought the chances of finding a grouse or pheasant were higher than finding a rabbit. He’d also come across what he’d thought was a deer trail that morning, with the hard little pebbles of manure. Shooting a deer was not something he was prepared to do that day or equipped for. He really didn’t want to shoot anything with the .22 because the sound of it, while it wasn’t a loud gun, would be audible to anyone who was listening. He wished he still had his bow. If he were honest, he would have told anyone who asked that his proficiency with a bow exceeded his abilities with the rifle and he preferred the quietness of the bow.

  Evelyn had told him if he found anything that wasn’t on her list to pick it and bring it back for her to identify. She’d cautioned them not to taste or eat anything until she’d given the okay.

  When he broke through a thick stand of the brush into a clearing, he saw some tall plants with purple flowers running up the stock. He thought he remembered it was called fireweed and he had tasted the base of the flowers when he was younger. He remembered them being sweet. He picked one and put it in the satchel at his waist. He was going to bring anything he found back to the cave for identification because he remembered that a person could survive on wild plants and roots if they knew what they were eating.

  Lucas gave up on his rabbit hunt as the sun was beginning to set. He’d found the signs of rabbits and heard the beat of grouse wings and heard the chatter of chipmunks or squirrels, but his heart wasn’t in it. Lucas decided he would go without eating to feed the dogs. He was pretty sure his mother and Evelyn had already found a solution to feeding their canine guests. His thoughts were on the cattle, and he wondered if they wouldn’t be further ahead to butcher one of them and begin drying the meat.

  He was surprised at the pile of weeds Sherry and Maggie had gathered. Someone had stretched a sheet out on the ground and piles of different weeds lay on it. Some were already starting to wilt, and he realized how long he had been gone. Walking to the sheet, he pulled out the plants he wasn’t sure about and laid them down separate from the others. He saw lots of clover and dandelion and a few he didn’t know, but the piles were huge, so he figured they must be good plants.

  “You get us a rabbit or something to feed these dogs?”

  Lucas shook his head, “Not today, but I am wondering if we shouldn’t get one of those cows butchered. Don’t you think Dad would want us to do that?”

  “When your Dad returns we’ll leave it up to him which of the cattle he want’s butchered, but until we have a smoke house, there’s no point in jumping the gun.”

  Maggie came running up with the front of her shirt used as a basket. “Look what I found!” She dumped the contents on the sheet. Pine cones fell out and scattered as they hit.

  Lucas reached down and picked up the closest one, “These are from a sugar pine. The seeds from these would be about the size of a sesame seed by the time you got it out. Pinion pines are the ones with the bigger seeds, and they don’t grow around here.”

  “Hey Lucas! Can you give us a hand here?”

  Lucas turned to the voice and saw Sherry and Matt carrying a clear plastic tote between them. With Matt using a tree limb as a crutch, he hobbled along using one hand for the crutch and the other for the tote. Sherry was covered in gray drying mud up to her thighs and both arms clear to her shoulders. The basket was obviously heavy, and Lucas hurried to take Matt’s end.

  Seeing it was full of the tubers from the cattails, “Did you guys leave any behind for new growth?”

  “I don’t think we’re worried about any of these growing but yes we did. The mud on the bottom is full of them. Sherry kept getting her feet stuck in the clay. That’s how we discovered the bottom was covered in the roots even where there were no plants above the water.”

  “Great, it’s good to know there’s clay on the bottom because mom just said we need to build a smokehouse and we can use the mud to seal the cracks.”

  “Matt, how about you going and relieving Evelyn for a while? She’s been out there all morning, and we need her to come identify some of these weeds we’ve gathered.”

  Matt nodded and using his strange gait, he set off to the mouth of the cave.

  Lucas looked around, “What did you do with the dogs?”

  Mary pointed to the cavern behind her, “Lucky and the pups are in there, and Bear is with Evelyn. Lucas, we lost the smallest puppy and Evelyn thinks we might lose one of the others too, and maybe Lucky. They’re just too far gone. She made up some powdered milk to feed the other two, and she gave some jerky to Lucky, but we really need it for us. So either we’re going to have to feed Lucky and hope she produces milk or we’re going to be going without it.”

  Lucas thought of the grouse he’d heard and knew he had to find food for the dogs or risk losing all of them. He couldn’t imagine how they had been lucky enough to find them in the first place or how they had found their way to the valley.

  Bear and Lucky had disappeared when the earthquakes first started. Carlos had not been worried about them because he said they left all of the time and sometimes were gone for as long as a week. They had apparently hunted while they were gone and Lucas supposed that is what they were doing to last as long as they had. “I’ll go find something for them. If Dad finds out we’re feeding them our food, he probably won’t be too happy about it.”

  “No, he probably won’t. I was thinking about the smokehouse, and you’re right. We need to get it started too. If the men don’t return in a couple of days, we’ll go pick out one of the cows to butcher. I’m afraid our weather is going to turn, and we won’t have enough food dried or put away.”

  “What about all of that? Looks like a pile of food to me.” Lucas pointed to the piles of weeds and tubers laid out on the sheet.

  “By the time that gets dried, it will amount to nothing. We need far more than that pittance. That little bit won’t last three days.”

  “Really? It looks like a lot.

  “Not when it dries out it won’t. />
  Lucas groaned and walked away. He would rather begin building the smokehouse than dig for weeds, but he remembered his teeth and what Evelyn had said about them falling out. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, felt the familiar chip in his front tooth and realized how important they were. He remembered Carlos putting his dentures in to eat, and thought about not being able to see a dentist. Lucas hurried off to help the girls and Matt dig cattails.

  They’d heard no more shots after the men had passed by and Mary hoped the fighting was over. She was worried the people that had passed had been fighting with their men, but Evelyn didn’t think it was probable. John, Charlie, and Mark didn’t have enough ammunition to support a prolonged gun battle like the one they had heard, plus they hadn’t heard the distinguishable explosion from Charlies ‘Judge’ either.

  Mary said a silent prayer for the men’s safety and sat back against the rock wall with an AR resting across her legs. She could see the path the men had taken but figured that she would hear them long before she saw them if they returned. To her, the men didn’t appear to have any sense when it came to stealth, or maybe they just didn’t care and were comfortable moving around at will and making all the noise they wanted to.

  She hoped they were just as noisy if they returned.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Charlie had been right. It had taken them two days to find their way around and through the hills to the east. They had crossed over the trail from the overlook they had used to come down when Sham had fallen and knew they were almost to the hidden valley. They hadn’t heard any more gunfire nor any indication they were being trailed.

  When they reached the valley floor, John called quietly to Mark, “hold up Mark.”

  He and Charlie set the poles down. John flexed his fingers, and the pain reminded him of the blisters that covered his and Charlie’s hands. He had torn off the hem of his tee shirt and wrapped their palms, but it hadn’t helped much. The pitch from the poles had covered their palms as well as in the blisters. The pitch seemed to attract dirt and John wondered if they would become infected.

  Sitting down, he peeled the cotton from one of his hands, “I thought my hands were tougher than this.”

  Charlie sat beside him, with his palms face up in his lap, “Mine should have been. Mark’s hand is in worse shape than ours, and he only carried the damn pole a short way.”

  “If you remember he was a preacher. Probably never did a single hard day’s work in his life.”

  “I heard that,” Mark said as he walked to them. He cradled his injured palm in his good hand. “It’s hard work saving souls. Just because I chose to use my brain instead of my brawn, doesn’t make me a bad person. In fact, I think it just reaffirms I’m a smart person.”

  He hunkered down on his heels, “with so short a distance left to go, why are we still sitting here?”

  “Listen! Can’t you hear that?”

  Mark cocked his head to the side, “motorcycle?”

  Charlie held up one finger, “sounds like a two cycle engine. I’m betting it’s a four-wheeler.”

  As one they looked behind to see if the horses were out of sight. They were. Jack was tied in a thicket with Walker and Red still tied to him. John saw Red’s ears begin to twitch and before he could raise his head, John was at his side with his hand over the horse's muzzle. He suspected the animal had caught a whiff of Clyde and was going to call out to him. John’s hand muffled the snort, but he felt sure that whoever was on the bike wouldn’t have heard it over the sound of his motor.

  Charlie was wrong, it wasn’t a four-wheeler that zipped on past them. Someone had resurrected an old Honda three-wheeler. The man riding it never took his eyes off the path in front of him, and he had it wound up to its maximum rpm’s as if he were in a hurry to get somewhere.

  They listened until the sound disappeared. John let go of Red and cautiously walked out to the trail his eyes searching the ground. He turned and stared off to the west.

  Before Charlie could get up and walk to him, John shook his head and came back.

  The blacktop roadway may be gone, but someone is using this trail to move vehicles from one point to another. We’ve only been gone a couple days, but there’s been enough traffic to obliterate the tracks we made. I guess we’re lucky they didn’t see them.”

  “I don’t suppose one of you can whistle like the signal the kids used? I don’t want to take a chance on them not knowing it’s us.”

  Mark shook his head, but Charlie grinned, “Maggie showed me how it’s done,” and cupped his hands to his mouth. He tried to make the same series of hoots that Maggie had used, but it didn’t sound quite the same. They waited a few minutes, and when there was no return signal, he repeated it, and this time it sounded more like the noise Maggie had made.

  “So one of us could sneak across and let them know we’re here.”

  “I vote that you do it then Mark, seeing as both Charlie and I are injured worse than you, you should be the one to go.”

  “Oh, so you’ve got a couple of blisters on your hands. You don’t walk on them anyhow,” Mark scoffed.

  John held out his hands that were both devoid of the bandages and showed his raw palms to Mark, “I was thinking more that you could at least carry one of the rifles better than either of us.”

  Mark flushed, he had completely misunderstood John’s reasoning. “Oops…sorry. I guess I wasn’t thinking.” He got to his feet and dusted off his backside. “Should we wait…”

  His words were cut off when they heard the same call that Charlie had used to identify them.

  “Woot woot! Woot woot! Woot woot!”

  John moved from the cover of brush and waved. He only had to wait a few seconds until he saw a hand waving back from the shelter of bushes that he didn’t remember being there when they’d left.

  “Guess I’ll be more than happy to go over first,” Mark said.

  “Stop!” Charlie said. “No sense not taking Red and the barrels over first.”

  Charlie untied the horses from each other's tails and tied his two horses to separate trees. He walked to Red and grimaced when he realized he and John would have to carry their end again. His hands felt like they were on fire. The blisters had broken again, and it hurt just to bend his fingers. He knew John’s hands were in just as bad a shape, and it was both hands because they had traded sides, multiple times during the treck.

  John picked up the tee shirt material and looked at it. It was not only covered in pine pitch, but dried blood, and dirt as well. He shoved it into his pocket and Charlie did the same. Gingerly they picked up their poles and hurried across the open ground to the brush and small trees covering the cave entrance.

  Matt and Lucas met them just outside of the opening and hurried to take the poles from the men. Mark, with Evelyn tucked under one arm, led Red through the cave and out into the sunshine.

  Matt and Lucas made short work of unloading the barrels and turning Red loose to find his way to Clyde.

  As soon as John told the boys where Jack and Walker were tied, they hurried out to bring them across. John couldn’t help but notice that both boys were armed, as well as Abby and Sherry, and wondered what had happened to them to make them so cautious.

  Once the horses were taken care of, and the hugs and kisses were over, John couldn’t help but notice the smokehouse or the piles of wilted vegetation, but it was the aroma of roasting fowl that drew his attention back to the smokehouse. Saliva began building in his mouth. “What’s that I smell?”

  “Smells like chicken to me?” Mark replied.

  “Nope, not chicken. I’d recognize the aroma of a game bird anywhere. The question would be, is it Grouse or Pheasant?”

  “Pheasant!” Maggie crowed. “Lucas got seven of them. Some for us and some for the dogs,” and slapped her hand over her mouth. Her blue eyes widened as she realized her mistake.

  “Dogs?” John said, drawing the short word out. Before he could say another word, Bear came
hobbling out of the cave. His lips were pulled back showing his teeth in a grin. The dog’s tail wagged feebly, but it was clear that he was happy to see John.

  “Where the hell did he come from?” John asked as he dropped to one knee and held his hand out, “Bear? Come here boy.”

  “The kids found them,” Mary said.

  He looked up from where Bear had rolled onto his back for a tummy rub. “Them? Lucky too?” He looked around expecting to see the female dog.

  “That’s something we need to talk about John. Remember when you took Lucky to the vet?”

  John flushed, and he chewed the inside of his lip, “Yeah, but it didn’t work out, so…”

  “Well, come inside and meet your new grand-puppy.”

  “Oh crap! I was going to take her back but…”

  “I know, the timing wasn’t right, and now it never will be. There was three, but we only have the one now, and we’ll be lucky if it can survive. Lucky is in bad shape. She probably wouldn’t have lasted another day if Lucas hadn’t found them.”

  Mary looked at the young people who stood grouped together, “Isn’t there something you guys are supposed to be doing right now?” she looked pointedly at the piles of weeds.

  “Yes ma’am,” they chorused and turned as a group and headed out across the grass.

  John watched the kids head off and turned to stare at Mary. With a frown, he asked, “How did you do that? Not one of them complained or whined.”

  “You might say that I’m holding something over their heads.”

  “The puppy,” Evelyn said, “I call it blackmail or bribery. They’ve already given up the milk for their cereal to feed the puppy, and the pheasants in the smokehouse are courtesy of Matt and Lucas. They have dedicated themselves to keeping the dogs fed.”

  Mary laughed softly, “I was going to tell them that we would find a way to feed them, but Lucas volunteered to hunt for them before I had the chance to say anything. Who am I to turn down a freshly plucked pheasant?”