Gray (Book 2)

by Cadle, Lou

  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 remain
ing 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 babysit 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, she thought. 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 wer
e 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.

  Chapter 2

  She spun around on her butt. There was a pair of animals, digging at the place the organ meats and fish heads were buried. Those scraps were going to be a much-needed meal for her and Benjamin. She scrambled over to the snowman, picked up her bow and stood to face the animals.

  She fit an arrow to the string and inched forward, toward the digging…coyotes? No, dogs. Regular house pets, one maybe part German Shepherd, his looks not far from a coyote’s, and the other smaller and not an identifiable breed. Both were terribly thin. They didn’t look up, but their growling intensified as she took a half dozen paces toward them.

  She whistled and said something cooing and gentle, the way she’d talk to any dog, pre-Event.

  The Shepherd mix whirled away from the other and showed its teeth at her, growling fiercely. The other continued digging, found food, threw its head back, and swallowed.