Gray (Book 1)

by Lou Cadle

  “No, that was upstairs. These down here were for me and guests. Here, let me show you this. Go through the closet and see what fits you. Remember, if you’re wearing layers, it’s okay if it’s a bit too big. Then start pulling everything else out of the closet in your room while I’m outside. Get it spread out, look through it, see what looks useful to you. Don’t hesitate about digging through this—I’m not worried about my privacy, at this point. While you do that, I’m going to go start work on building the sled. Let me know when you’re done.”

  When he left, Coral pulled out all the clothes and laid them out on the bed. The clothes were all too big for her, but she left the warmer stuff piled on the bed for Benjamin to choose from.

  In her room, there were two thick sweaters on the closet shelf. She held their softness to her face. They felt and looked expensive and smelled vaguely of an unfamiliar men’s cologne. The owner’s, she supposed. She looked in vain for a parka or gloves, and she finally decided that either there never were any, or they had been stored upstairs and destroyed in the fire. She held the sweaters up to herself. Big on her, probably a bit small on Benjamin. She’d use both of them.

  She found a pair of leather pants, maybe for riding a motorcycle, obviously too small for Benjamin. She’d ask if she could cannibalize them for gloves for them both, that is, if she could figure out how to hand-stitch leather gloves. It wasn’t only that she knew almost nothing about sewing—though she didn’t know anything beyond repairing a hem—but that she didn’t see any needles and thread, much less the sturdier needles she imagined she’d need to push through two layers of leather. Her one thin needle in her film-canister survival kit would not do the trick. And lining—wouldn’t that be the thing to do, to make the gloves a size too large and line them with absorbent material? Maybe mittens would be better than gloves. They’d sure be easier to cut and sew.

  A pair of terry bathrobes would be useful for something, padding or towels, though they had been baked to brittleness by the days of heat. A leather belt hung on a hook in the back of her closet. That’d be surely be useful, if only to hold something down on the sled.

  A box on the closet’s floor yielded pens, pencils, paper, stapler, and other office supplies. She’d have wanted these under normal circumstances, but they’d not be worth hauling on her back, or even on a sled. She found an open packet of utility knife blades among them. There were four left. She could lash those to the tips of her arrows, if Benjamin didn’t have a more important use for them. She shoved the package in her pocket so she wouldn’t lose track of it.

  Benjamin’s bed had a quilt on it and a wool blanket. He’d want those. She went through the hall closet, which held towels and a pair of spare pillows. She put the pillows on the floor and studied them. Whatever they were stuffed with had survived the heat without melting. The pillows could provide insulation for clothing or a sleeping bag. Maybe she could make one for Benjamin by doubling the quilt and sewing up the sides. That much sewing, a straight seam, she thought she could handle.

  Finally, she had several dozen items she thought were useful piled next to the stairs, including some small-enough jeans and tshirts for her. The rest of the clothes, Benjamin could look at for himself to see which he wanted. She supposed one change of clothes would be all the weight she’d want to carry. She was already wearing her jeans over her sweats.

  As to everything she’d spread out on the bed, she wasn’t sure if it could be used or not. She was out of her league here. She had packed for five-day camping trips before, but never for months in the wild. She’d wait to talk her ideas over with him. Two minds applied to any of these problems had to be better than her one mind.

  She went up to see what Benjamin was up to, and if she could help.

  *

  In the end, it took five days to get ready. Every day Coral had to stop in the early afternoon and go fishing. Benjamin insisted that they needed all the food they could find right now and her making that effort was worth their delaying departure. It was important to eat, she knew, even though she only caught six fish over the five days, and two of those were tiny. She found more grubs among the rocks and brought them back, too. They made soup every day, all of it tossed into water and heated with scavenged charcoal, but the few calories the food provided did little to replenish her energy. Like an appetizer, the fish-grub soup stimulated her appetite more than sated it.

  The little bit of dried venison—both dried and frozen, now that the temperatures were steadily below freezing—that was left would have to feed them the first day on the road, Benjamin said, and they’d be burning a lot of calories being out in the cold temperatures, pulling a loaded sled like dogs.

  It snowed three times during their preparations. The snow accumulated to more than a foot deep.

  She was helping him build a box for tools the last afternoon when she said, “The whole time we’ve been doing this, I’ve been thinking about the way people lived before. The Indians. Or not just them, but everyone, if you go back far enough. All this stuff takes forever. Fishing. Building stuff. Sewing clothes. Washing by hand.”

  “Yup.” He rubbed his beard. “Bet they didn’t have a lot of time for getting depressed.”

  She wondered if that were so. “Not existential angst nor ennui nor any of those 20th century diseases.”

  “Or old age complaints,” he added. “Hard to have old age complaints when you don’t live to old age.”

  “Now there’s a cheerful thought,” she said.

  “I’d be an old man to those people. Damned old, in fact.”

  “And I’ve have six kids by now.”

  “Or be dead of trying. Childbirth can be a dangerous thing without drugs and surgery.”

  She thought about that life for a while in silence. “I wonder if they actually tried for children. Some women must have never wanted any kids, but what could they do?”

  “People always want kids.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You don’t?” He sounded as if he’d never heard of such a thing.

  “A lot of women I know don’t want kids. Besides, I half-raised my little brother the last few years. I did my bit as a mother already.”

  “I bet you don’t want kids because of the world you lived in. College and career and all that. In a subsistence life, you’d want them.”

  Coral didn’t think so. It seemed to her that subsistence living required fewer children, not more. She certainly wasn’t yearning for any now.

  *

  Finally, they were packed and ready to go. The sled was cobbled together of spare parts, cannibalized furniture, and metal brackets pounded into runners and sharpened with a file—her shoulders still felt the strain of that work. The runners were screwed to the bottom of a platform. That was surrounded by metal rails, including two in back he’d pounded into curved handles. Supplies were piled on top and covered with a blanket. It was all lashed together with electrical cabling he’d ripped out of the downstairs walls.

  “I’m impressed,” Coral said, looking at the loaded sled. She was telling the truth. Engineering had never been one of her talents, and she was always amazed to find people who could figure out at a glance how things worked. The sled wouldn’t win any beauty competitions, but it was sturdy and functional, and he’d done it all with hand tools.

  He was appreciative of her own efforts, particularly the sewing. She had to admit, his new sleeping bag made of his quilt and pillow stuffing turned out well. Lined, padded, and cozy, it wouldn’t be the match of her own down bag, but it wouldn’t be far inferior to it, either. The leather mittens she had made them were less beautiful. Her one needle had bent several times by the time the first one was done, and guiding it through the layers of tough material from then on was no easy task. She had muddled through anyway. By the end, the magnetized needle wasn’t going to be able to function as an emergency compass or even much of a needle any more. But their hands would be protected from the cold and from frostbite. Without hospitals,
frostbite could kill.

  But she kept the dulled, bent needle—she didn’t want to have to do any surgery that involved stitching, but she might have to, and this was all she had. She’d be on the lookout for another needle.

  Benjamin’s plan was to strike north until they caught the line of a highway, move west parallel but out of sight of it until it ended, then keep moving west, at least until they crossed the interstate highway. “It’s not worth making plans beyond that. We don’t know yet how food will go. Or if we’ll find any at all. We could be dead in two weeks of starvation.”

  “Or maybe we will find food, along with other people,” Coral said.

  “We don’t know what they’ll be like if we do find some,” he said.

  “Can’t you spare a little optimism?” she said.

  “One of us has to be a realist,” he answered.

  Chapter 13

  By the time they were ready to set out in the morning, more fresh snow had fallen.

  “It’s good for us,” said Benjamin, who put on the harness and began to haul the loaded sled.

  Coral wasn’t so sure. “Walking in this stuff is hard work.”

  She turned her back to look at the house one last time. A layer of snow pressed down on their carpet roof. She smiled as she remembered the day of nailing down the carpet, up there alone, her fear of heights conquered by necessity. Now snowdrifts climbed halfway up the remains of the walls. She wondered if the house would become entirely covered by the end of winter, looking only like another rise in the hillside beneath its snowy blanket.

  In her darkest moments, she wondered if winter would ever end. Maybe this was the start of a new ice age.

  A twinge of regret surprised her as she turned her back on the house for the last time. It had been her home for a month. She wondered how Benjamin felt. He hadn’t expressed regret at any point. He had just done the five days of preparation in a businesslike way. Now, he didn’t turn to look back at the house once. Not a sentimental man.

  They moved west at first, heading uphill, Benjamin donning the harness and pulling from the front, and her staying behind, pushing at the weight of it when he needed her to. She had to wrestle the runners over obstacles from time to time, and each attempt left her panting far more than she thought she should.

  When they switched out jobs, Coral found out that breaking a trail in the gray snow was just as labor-intensive. Walking was awkward, as each booted step sunk below the new snow’s surface and had to be yanked back out. She apologized for needing to stop so often—but she did need to, to catch her breath.

  “It’s the chronic lack of food on top of the cold,” he said. “My heart is tripping in my chest, too.”

  Breathing had not been easy for Coral since the ash had first filled the sky. Now she was wrestling with a sled that weighed ten times as much as the gear she had been carrying in her pack. This was a new level of effort. She sucked air through her mask, and twice she nearly blacked out and had to kneel and wait it out until the world swam into focus again.

  Benjamin never complained, not at pulling, or pushing, or her need to rest. She bit back her complaints and tried to match his stoicism.

  She pulled until she wanted to stop, until her shoulders and back ached from the harness and the cold gritty air stung her lungs with each gasp. Then she pulled some more, forcing herself beyond the point at which she swore she couldn’t go a step more. If you keep pushing yourself, Coral, you can accomplish far more than you think you can. Benjamin was the one who called a halt and made them switch jobs again.

  “We’ll have easier going on the flats, like along the highways,” he said.

  “What about on real mountains?”

  “We’ll aim for passes, but it won’t be easy. Still, it’s going to be easier pulling a sled than packing it on our backs.”

  “We will have to unload and pack it all over streams, I guess.”

  “At the rate the temperature’s dropping, they’ll be frozen over before too long. We’ll pull it right over thick ice. Soon enough, we’ll be wanting to see running water, having to chip through ice to get to some, or find fuel to melt snow for drinking water.” His brows drew together in worry. “I wonder how cold it’s going to get. And how fast.”

  When the light of the first day began to wane, they came to a new stream. Coral pulled out her fishing gear. While she fished without success, Benjamin dug for grubs. That’s what they ended up eating, handfuls of raw grubs, saving the bit of venison for breakfast.

  The next morning, after another fruitless hour of fishing, they ate half of the venison that was left, barely two stringy, dry mouthfuls each.

  Pulling the sled kept her warm that morning, and that was the only bit of praise she had for the work. As the ground rose, it grew rockier, and the sled runners started hitting rocks. Some boulders were invisible beneath the snow, yet the weight of the sled was enough to run it into obstacles that were just out of sight under the surface.

  Benjamin was pulling again, she pushing, when the runner got caught between two hidden rocks. Coral had to haul back on the sled to free it and then wrestle it aside as Benjamin pulled it around the obstruction. He stopped and looked at the runners. “I’m going to have to straighten this one out,” he said.

  They had to unload part of the sled to get to the box of tools he’d packed. Coral was amazed at Benjamin’s calm. She wanted to curse—throwing things about might feel good, too—but his placid acceptance of the setback kept her under control, too.

  Finally. Benjamin was done hammering out the runner. They loaded the sled again, continuing their trudge along the course up the stream. Finally, he pointed to a “good enough” place to cross the now-shallow stream. Together, they lifted up the front of the sled to get it over a scattering of rocks on the bank. They pulled it over the muddy stream bed and up onto the opposite bank. Again, Benjamin stooped to examine the runners. Coral thought she would scream this time if they had to unload the sled again. But he said, “They’re fine,” and they were able to move on to the north after refilling all the water bottles, leaving this stream behind.

  They crossed a new stream mid-afternoon, then backtracked to the east, following the stream downhill as it grew wider. Coral dropped her fishing line in again. This time, she was rewarded with two trout.

  They each ate a raw fish that night, still saving the little bit of venison that remained. Her hunger at the end of the meal sent a chill of worry through Coral. Burning off this many calories, they were going to have to find themselves a more plentiful source of food soon. The cold alone was taxing their metabolisms more than they could afford. Her rope belt needed retying again, tighter than it needed to be just a week ago. She was thinner than she’d ever been, and when it wasn’t a matter of fashion, it wasn’t in any way good news. Calories were survival. Her own flesh was survival. And she wanted more of it to live off of.

  They stopped at noon the next day. Finding food was more important than making another mile, he said, and she didn’t disagree. Coral fished the stream while Benjamin went off with his rifle and hunted for animal tracks. The first bite of a fish on her line sent relief coursing through her like a drug. They would have food, for another meal, at least. This stream was kinder to her than the last one had been. She caught six fish, one a decent sized rainbow. As she gutted the fish, she found her hands shaky with relief—or desperate hunger—and was glad Benjamin wasn’t there to see her weakness. Truth was, she was terrified all the time of dying, now that the possibility was so real. So near.

  “I’m starving to death” wasn’t some exaggerated phrase she used before sitting down to a big family meal or a pizza with friends. It was the literal truth. These fish would stave off that fate for another day.

  When the dim light was failing, Benjamin returned empty-handed. Seeing the fish piled on the snowy bank, he leaned down to squeeze her shoulder, in praise or thanks. Then he sat alongside her and cleaned his rifle before wrapping it back up and stowing it at the to
p their gear.

  Sitting and fishing had been a cold job. Sitting and eating in the encroaching dark was colder still. She finally felt warm enough only when she had been wrapped securely in her sleeping bag for nearly an hour. Benjamin snored softly next to her. They were sleeping every night tucked under the loaded sled, snow piled up into a windbreak along three sides, for protection from the cold.

  They kept going. Day after day they made their slow way. One day, without any food, not even grubs or worms, they built a fire with the little bit of wood they’d gathered along the way and made soup of the last leathery piece of venison. Over the course of a week, Coral would say there was maybe fifteen minutes when she wasn’t hungry—painfully hungry, and acutely aware of it.

  They found the line of the state road and finally turned toward Pocatello, hungry, exhausted, and speaking little.

  Benjamin decided to keep the road just within sight. “They’d have to chase us farther this way.”

  She wasn’t sure who “they” were—there were still no signs of living people. As weak as she felt, “they” would be able to catch her with little effort. But as far as she knew, the two of them were the only people alive in the whole state of Idaho.

  The road grew broader. Once again, they began to see an occasional car or truck pulled off or stalled in the center of the roadway.

  “Where are the bodies?” she asked, as they left the sled behind a hillock and walked toward a spot where a pair of SUVs were angled off the road and abandoned. He didn’t answer. When they got there, she kicked around the edges of the cars and found no sign of bodies or bones. “Did they see the fire coming and just run in a panic?” she asked.

  “You mean, turn off their cars and run from a wildfire on foot instead of driving away?”

  She shook her head. “No, I know, that doesn’t make any sense at all.” Walking to the door of the nearer car, she pulled it open. It was unlocked. Nothing useful was inside. “Maybe one person would do something so irrational, but this is the hundredth car I’ve seen like this.”