Gray (Book 1)

by Lou Cadle

  Goddamn it, she should have never left the rifle outside. Should she run out and get it? No. She had to see what was happening, first. Coral snuck forward along the aisle.

  “You two, go check the rest of the place.”

  Three of them, then, at least three. Terrified, Coral looked around herself. She was in a dim part of the store. Should she make her way past the searchers, try to get a jump on whoever held Benjamin? Try to hit him with arrows? She didn’t think they’d kill him quickly, even if she pumped four or five into him.

  The same voice, lower now. “Make a move, and I’ll blow your head off.”

  Gun vs. amateur bowman. Not a fair battle. Hating it, hating the necessity with every cell in her body, feeling herself to be a coward and a traitor, she looked for a way to hide instead.

  Under her feet was a light dusting of ash. If they had lights, they could see her tracks, follow them right to her.

  Coral looked over to the shelving beside her. Useless kitchen decorator items. Cracked porcelain, more melted plastic. She grabbed onto a high shelf and put her feet on the lowest shelf. She held her breath, hoping her weight would not pull the shelf over onto her. It stayed in place. She edged down the length of the shelf, making tracks in dust still, but on the shelf, where no one would automatically look for them.

  At the end, she peered around the corner. Seeing nothing, she reached around the end of the shelf. A sharp metal edge bit into her palm. She ignored the pain and held on. Pulling herself around, she kept her foot from touching the floor by pressing it against the metal upright. She pulled herself around a second corner. She had done it, had made the turn—she was hanging on to the same shelving unit, but in the next aisle over.

  That shelf was towels. Again, Coral edged her way down the shelf. She heard a noise, over in the main cross aisle where she had been. Carefully, she squatted down. One hand at a time, she let go of the higher shelf and grabbed a lower one. She squatted lower, rolling herself into as small a bundle as she could, then eased herself onto the pile of browned, cracking towels on a middle shelf. Her head hit the shelf just above and she froze in place at the muffled noise, listening.

  No sound of pursuit came. Had someone heard? Were they moving up on her in silence right now? Quickly, she inched her way back into the shelf, out of sight of the cross aisle, tugging towels ahead of her to hide her from searching eyes.

  She stayed in place, her heart thudding in her chest.

  Benjamin. What was happening to him?

  She hated this, hated having to hide, hated not being able to do anything to help him. But if there were three men, at least one with a gun, what else could she do? Frustrated, she silently cursed herself. She should have found Benjamin the instant she suspected someone else had been here in the food aisles. Hunger, and the idea of all that food so close at hand, had made her careless. Greed had made her careless.

  She heard a footstep nearby. Holding her breath again, she strained to listen.

  A dim beam of light flashed down the aisle she had just left. The footsteps moved on.

  The minutes dragged. Finally, she heard voices again, at first too low to make out. Then, “Well, was there someone or not?”

  “I saw some scuff marks is all, Toby.” The voice was male, whiny. “I think they were old. They didn’t go anywheres.”

  “Is that all?”

  “There was some food cans piled up.”

  “I told you, I’m here alone.” Benjamin’s voice, loud, overriding the other.

  Then a cracking sound. “Didn’t I tell you to shut the fuck up?”

  Coral’s blood went cold. She had to clamp down to keep her teeth from chattering. Benjamin was doing what he could to save her. And paying for it. She had to stay alive, still and secret. She had to wait for her best chance to get him away from these men.

  “Let’s go. You, dickhead, you can stay behind. Keep looking for anyone else. Take your time at it. If you don’t find someone, then you can follow. If they find you, try not to get yourself shot. But keep an eye out. Don’t fuck up, for once.”

  A mumbling reply, then nothing.

  Coral waited, but no other sound came. No sounds, no footsteps, no beams of light. She stayed still, ignoring her cramping muscles. How long was an hour? Could she risk waiting an hour? Could she risk moving before that?

  An urge to pound the shelving over her head in frustration made her shake her head at herself. Stay quiet, fool.

  She had to get to Benjamin, had to get to him before—her mind sent up an image of him dead, lying in the snow, blood pooled around him. Wild dogs gnawing at his belly. No, wild men gnawing at his belly. But they wouldn’t, right? Not with all this food to choose from. She wouldn’t go cannibal if there was canned tuna…but that didn’t mean everyone else would make that choice, too.

  She waited as long as she could stand to, maybe fifteen minutes. Then slowly, she rolled off the pile of towels and onto the tile floor. She strung her bow, grabbed an arrow, and set out.

  Moving as silently as she knew how, her senses so alert that every footfall and breath of her own was painful to hear, Coral made her way toward where the voices had been. No one was there. She looked around in the dim light, trying to see any sign of what had happened. A display of hats was knocked over. If she had more light, she might see footprints in the dust, but there was too little light to see that sort of detail. If she hadn’t known otherwise, this would have been another empty aisle, innocuous. But standing there, she could sense the ghost of Benjamin’s recent presence.

  Inside a glass case, charred boxes of ammunition lay. Someone had been here before them, busting through the glass display case. And Benjamin had been here, too. This is where they had found him.

  She refused to let regret or despair freeze her, though they were both inside her, simmering. Instead, she found a spark of her anger and held to it.

  There wasn’t light enough to see much. The paper boxes had disintegrated. She’d have to unload her rifle and bring her one bullet to compare. She wanted to be prepared, well armed, and ready to fight for Benjamin’s life.

  If he was still alive.

  To keep him alive, she had to stay alive. Where was the fellow that had been ordered to stay behind? She couldn’t let him sneak up on her.

  Coral could hide herself again, or she could keep moving. She had the advantage of knowing for sure someone else was out there. The man who was still here did not know whether she existed or not.

  Hiding again was not an option she was willing to consider. It was time to act. She turned from the sporting goods display and made her way to the edge of the store, toward the wall that held the door where they had entered. She crept along, her heart thudding in her chest. Where light spilled from the breached ceiling, she made a wide circle through the darker aisles, stopping at every intersection to peek around the corners before crossing.

  She saw nothing, heard nothing. Her muscles quivered now with the tension of the hunt. She came to a side door. She pressed herself against a wall and edged toward it. From the angle she had, she could see a strip of the outdoors. After the long minutes inside, the dim daylight seemed bright. She blinked against the change in light. When her eyes had adjusted, she got down and crawled on hands and knees toward the doorway. Each inch she gained won her a view of a bigger slice of the outdoors.

  No one was out there. She let out a tense breath. Then she peered out of the door, looking both ways down the outside walls. Again, no one.

  She studied the snow outside the door. No tracks leading away.

  No, there were tracks, she saw, as she stepped outside. A pair of boot prints about ten feet away led to the right, toward the back of the building. Just one set. It could have been any of them, any time in the last half hour, but she thought it might be the one left behind.

  The one looking for her.

  She had to get going. But where?

  Stepping out onto the snow, she grimaced at the sound of her crunching footfalls. She
reached the man’s tracks and began to track him, hitting every footstep dead center, so as to avoid leaving her own obvious prints. At the front of the building, she looked around another corner. No one. But she was looking out at the parking lot now. The nearest car was only twenty, thirty feet away.

  The distance across the parking lot to her rifle made her pause. The last thing she wanted was someone spotting her when she was part way there, still distant from the rifle.

  She got to next corner of the building, pressed her bare cheek against the rough concrete, and inched around for a look.

  There was someone. A man.

  She whipped back and flattened herself against the wall. Coral forced herself to think about what she had seen. A man, heavy brown jacket, long gun—rifle or shotgun, she couldn’t tell which—about two-thirds of the way down the building. He had been standing just outside an open metal door. It was a loading area, probably, employee entrance, something like that. She thought he hadn’t seen her, but she couldn’t be sure.

  What to do?

  She decided in a flash and ran back to the front of the building. She turned out into the parking lot and spotted the aisle she wanted. She wove her way once again between the pairs of facing bumpers of the cars, climbing over one, then ducking down. When she was back to the truck, she turned and looked behind. No one had followed her.

  Frantically, she dug into the snow bank under the truck where she and Benjamin had been reconnoitering. She grabbed her rifle and made sure it was loaded right, ready to fire. She sat against the truck, the rifle across her lap, and sucked in deep breaths, trying to calm herself and get her wind back for a sprint back to the building.

  She stood cautiously. The parking lot still looked deserted. Following the same path she had just broken, she went back towards the edge of the building. Still clear. She sped to the back corner. There, she stopped, listening. She took a deep breath and snuck a quick peek around.

  The man had gone.

  Coral felt a crawling sensation between her shoulder blades and whipped around. No one behind her, either.

  So where was he?

  Then she saw motion out of the corner of her eye. In the distance, there was a patch of skeletal growth, dead saplings and brush holding up sharp blades of snow. Beyond that, the brown jacket, moving away.

  He was too far to fire at. Nor did she want to fire, not unless she had to. If this man didn’t return to his friends, they would know for sure that Benjamin had not been alone. They might suspect it now, but they didn’t know for sure. Their ignorance was another weapon in her arsenal. Surprise was yet another. And she had few enough weapons. At least three men, Benjamin at gunpoint. She needed every advantage she could create.

  She went back into the store and ran to the sporting goods section, moving faster now that she didn’t have to hide from a searcher. She unloaded her gun, held tightly to the bullet, and fumbled in the scattered ammunition until she found a match. She kept hunting in the same area and had, soon enough, twenty or so matching bullets. The rifle held five. The others she put in her pocket. That’d have to do for now. She needed to move.

  Then she followed the tracks leading away from the store. Those single prints soon met up with other sets—the other two guys and Benjamin. She knew the tread of Benjamin’s boots.

  She followed the trail. The tracks would remain until the next heavy snow. Catching up to too quickly could mean her capture or death, so she stopped and listened every so often for the crunch of boots on snow. If she could hear the last man’s, he could hear hers and find her. Her death would surely mean Benjamin’s death, too.

  If she wasn’t too late already to prevent that.

  Coral forced herself to look around herself, trying to memorize landmarks in case a sudden storm came up and obliterated the tracks. They were walking through areas that had been inhabited just a few months back. Partial buildings, ruined houses, the bare tower of a stone chimney: these were her signposts. The footprints crossed one broad road, turned and followed the length of a curving street, then crossed a river on a concrete bridge. There the trail left the road and angled into the countryside.

  The afternoon wore on as Coral followed the tracks though the edge of a town then out again, aiming toward a charred stand of trees. She was on a path well-worn by many footfalls over probably many days. She wondered why they hadn’t just moved into the Walmart instead of making this trek every day.

  Faint voices came from ahead. Coral drew to a stop, straining to hear. She couldn’t make out words, but there was more than one voice. Looking around, she saw nothing that would serve to camouflage her from a guard’s eyes. She missed leaves.

  At least she could get off this well-worn path. Not without leaving new tracks, though. Those were her only two choices. She opted for finding cover, angling away from the worn trail. Trying to be as silent as possible, she walked until the voices faded, then corrected her direction, trying to circle around them, coming up opposite their path to the Walmart. She kept the voices barely in range, so that she couldn’t make out individual words but could hear the murmur of conversation. She hoped they kept talking so they’d not be able to hear her approach.

  She came to another path, also trodden down over the weeks, but less deeply. She wondered where it led to—another food source, maybe? Maybe they had found a safe place to live midway between the two. The snow had drifted and was nearly hip high at either side. Risk it? She decided she would.

  She dropped to hands and knees, then onto her belly. Crawling directly toward the voices, she pushed the rifle ahead of her. Coral stopped every few feet to listen. It was taking too long, she kept thinking—but she couldn’t rush it, or she’d get caught. Her eyes were strained from staring ahead into the gloom. The moment she could see them, they could see her.

  “But what’s the point, Toby?” A voice raised in irritation, a high-pitched man’s voice.

  A response, too low to hear.

  Coral crawled forward another body length.

  A different voice, in a lower range: “Am I in charge here, or what?” They were off to her right.

  She could see a ridge of snow ahead, off the track, a high drift peaking at her right. She might be protected from their sight if she could stay behind it. She changed course, wriggling her way toward the drift.

  “We have to know what he knows. He’s the enemy. What if he has confederates? Supplies?”

  In what way was Benjamin an enemy to these people? If these people would have asked for his friendship, for his help, Benjamin would have given it willingly. He was that sort of person—or had been with her. What the hell was wrong with people?

  A female voice. “I think you should stop hitting him. It’s not getting you anywhere.”

  Corals’ stomach lurched.

  “Go back inside,” said the lower voice. “Reena, get that kid out of here. You too. This is men’s business.”

  Coral forced herself to crawl forward again. She climbed to the top of the drift. She was on the windward side of it. Setting the rifle to the side, near to her right hand, she pushed herself slowly up the slope, inching up.

  Another male voice, a new one, said something too low for Coral to pick up. At least three men, an adult woman, a child. Five enemies. She had to get a glimpse to see if there were more.

  She stopped just below the top of the drift and steeled her courage. Fumbling for the rifle, she pulled it a few inches closer. She didn’t want to attack directly, but if she was spotted, she would only have a second to start firing.

  Taking a breath, she eased one finger over the lip of the snow bank and made herself a notch to look through. Just three men, none looking her way. One sat on a rock, cleaning a handgun. She didn’t think he could shoot her from this distance, but she could shoot him. Or theoretically, she could—he was in range. Was her aim that good? She didn’t want to have to test it. There was a tent, and the shell of a building behind it, with a chimney and brick wall.

  Rubble h
ad been collected into two low piles, like a woman’s breasts, near the building. Those mounds could provide cover for her.

  One of the standing men was young, maybe only a teenager. He wore a brown jacket and held a rifle. Coral thought he was the one she had followed, the one who the man Toby had called “dickhead.”

  Which of the other two was Toby, the apparent leader, she didn’t know. She thought the voice from the Walmart was the same voice she had just heard, ordering the women inside. Inside what? The tent? Or was there a basement to this house where they were staying? If they were in the tent, she might only be dealing with five people. If there was a hidden living area, there could be a dozen or more enemies. She’d have to do some damned accurate shooting to kill that many, and since she’d only done the dry-firing, she thought it was unlikely that was going to happen.

  The older standing man shifted, and that let Coral see Benjamin. He was on the ground, sitting up. His hands were tied behind him. His ankles might have been bound, too, though she couldn’t see for sure. She knew his clothes, but his face was distorted beyond recognition. He had been hit in the face, many times. Blood had spilled onto his beard. Swelling had turned his face into a stranger’s, and he’d be swollen even worse tomorrow.

  If he were alive tomorrow.

  She willed him to look her way, to raise his head and see that she was okay, that she was here to help him. He did not. The man shifted back and Benjamin was hidden once again from her view.

  She inched back out of sight. She had been lucky so far, staying out of sight of these people, but she wasn’t going to push that luck—not yet.

  What were her chances if she simply stood and shot? Only one had a rifle in this hands. She could shoot him first, then go for the guy cleaning his handgun.

  And a dozen more men might erupt into view. Or the one next to Benjamin might kill him instead of firing back at her.

  Add to that the fact that she had never actually shot a gun at a person in her life. Hell, she could just as easily shoot Benjamin instead. She wasn’t a soldier, had no training at this sort of thing. And she knew her opponents were very likely a good deal more skilled with guns than she. Males from Idaho? It was probably a law they had to shoot well.