by Gary Chesla
As Fran looked around and stepped into the kitchen, she realized that except for the bathroom, being in the house wasn’t much better than being out in the yard.
Fran hated going outside, but now being in the house wasn’t much different than being outside.
She wasn’t much good at carpentry work but knew she would have to figure out something.
“I could nail something over the windows,” she thought, “but the doors are going to be a problem. Maybe I can nail something over the front doorway too, then move the bathroom door to replace the broken back door?”
“That sounds simple enough.” Fran laughed to herself, knowing nothing was going to be simple.
“I can’t even pound a nail in without bending it,” Fran sighed. “But what choice do I have?”
The only safe place she had was the bathroom and she couldn’t spend all day in a six by ten-foot room or she would go crazy, or would it be more correct to say she would be crazier than what she already was?
After looking out the windows, she put the puppy down on the floor.
The pup immediately began rummaging around through all the clutter on the floor.
The sight gave Fran an idea.
She had to call the puppy something, little fella was awkward and calling it dog just didn’t feel right.
The way the little dog had a habit of snooping through her things, she decided to call it Snoop.
She thought about Snoopy, but she wanted to be more creative than naming the dog after a cartoon strip character.
Snoop Dog was her other alternative, but that name made her think of Rap music and she hated Rap.
So far the only plus she had seen from the world ending was that she didn’t have to listen to Rap music on the radio anymore, however the little pup’s barking wasn’t much better than Rap.
So, Fran decided to name the puppy, Snoop.
If she couldn’t teach him to be quiet and he continued with that irritating high pitched barking, she would reconsider going with her second choice and start calling him Snoop Dog.
Fran nodded, satisfied with her choice, but Snoop didn’t appear to care one way or the other.
Fran’s stomach started to rumble as she watched Snoop, in his own little world, happily sniffing around.
She walked over to the open kitchen doorway and looked out past where the truck had been parked yesterday.
She saw the blackberry bush where she had intended to go and pick berries yesterday before her uninvited guests arrived and ruined her day.
“Come Snoop,” Fran said, “let’s go see if we can eat some blackberries.”
Snoop ignored Fran and kept sniffing the items trashed on the floor.
“OK, don’t come. But I’m hungry,” Fran said as she started to walk out into the back yard.
She hadn’t taken more than two steps into the yard when Snoop ran out of the house and ran into the back of Fran’s legs.
Fran just shook her head as she and Snoop walked over to the berry bush.
Fran picked a few berries off the bush and tossed them in her mouth.
When she bit into the berries, her face contorted into a comical twisted look as the sour taste of the berries exploded through her mouth.
“Wow, those were sour,” Fran said as she looked down at Snoop who was sitting and staring up her.
“You don’t want any of these berries,” Fran said. “They aren’t ripe yet. They’re too sour.”
Snoop looked up at Fran, his tail wagging and his tongue licked his lips as he danced around excitedly.
“OK,” Fran grinned, “don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Fran held a berry in the palm of her hand and put her hand in front of the dog’s mouth.
Snoop snatched up the berry, like he hadn’t eaten in a week.
Fran laughed as the puppy chewed the berry, shaking his head like a little kid that had just stuck a lemon in its mouth.
But after an animated few seconds, Snoop swallowed the berry, sat and looked at Fran as if asking for another one.
“God, you must be hungry,” Fran smiled and gave the dog another berry.
For good measure, Fran popped another berry in her mouth too.
Fran and Snoop stood in front of the berry bush for five minutes, forcing down the sour berries.
When they had finished the berries, Fran sat down in the grass and stared down at her trashed house.
The berries, as hard as it had been to force them down, had at least temporarily quieted down her rumbling stomach, but Fran knew that the rumbling would begin again very soon.
Fran began to wonder where her next meal would come from and remembered her conversation with John.
Fran looked up in the trees and saw the squirrels angrily chattering as they stared down at Snoop.
As much as Fran was enjoying the companionship of her little friend, she knew she would not be able to catch a rabbit or a squirrel under a box with Snoop around.
She could try locking him up in the bathroom, but she knew he would bark his little head off and the barking as much as the sight of him would keep the animals away.
“It looks like I’ll be eating sour berries for now,” Fran thought.
All the problems she was facing had her mind spinning.
Fran tried to decide what was the problem that she needed to find a solution to first.
As bad as her house was trashed and as hungry as she was, she knew the thing that bothered her the most was the feeling of being alone and isolated.
Her house was no longer secure, but she could survive by hiding in the bathroom for another day or two.
She was hungry, starving in fact, but she also knew she could live on sour berries for another few days.
But what she wanted the most right now was someone to talk to.
Talking to John on the CB was the only thing that had kept her sane for the past few weeks, the only reason she was still alive.
Right now, more than anything, she tried to think what she could do to get her CB working again.
She was desperate and would do almost anything to be able to talk to John on her CB again.
“God, I would give anything for my CB to work again,” Fran thought, then her eyes grew large as an idea came to mind.
Tears started to run down her face as she began to imagine the sound of pounding against the building walls and the panic she felt as she desperately shook her foot to get the snake off her foot.
“No! There has to be another way,” Fran sobbed. Her sobbing attracted Snoop’s attention and he jumped up on Fran and started licking her face.
“I can’t go back there,” Fran sobbed as she looked at Snoop, but the little puppy kept trying to console her, or he just wanted to play, Fran wasn’t sure what his motivation was.
But as Fran thought over her situation, she knew the only place she could find another battery for her CB was up at the sawmill in one of the trucks.
She could walk to Twin Falls, but according to John, the cities were a war zone that was crawling with the walking dead.
John said under no circumstances should she try to go into the city, it was suicide.
The sawmill was dangerous, but if she was careful, Fran knew she could survive one more trip to the sawmill.
Fran tried to talk herself out of going back to the sawmill for ten minutes, finally Snoop’s big brown eyes pushed her towards the decision she knew she had to make.
Snoop was relying on her to take care of him, maybe she could find more berries along the road up to the saw mill and it was the only way she would get her CB working again.
Fran sighed, resigned to what she had to do, stood and started walking back to the house.
If she was going to go to the sawmill to get another battery, she had better go check the CB before going.
If Chad had smashed her CB, there was no reason to go through hell to drag another battery back to the house.
Fran walked into the house.
She moved t
he table that laid on top of the CB.
After examining the radio, Fran decided that it looked to be still intact, it should still work.
The only way to be sure it still worked was to hook it up to another battery.
Fran rummaged through the broken furniture until she found the wrench and pair of pliers that she had used to take the battery out of her dad’s truck.
Next Fran went out behind the house and looked around until she found the old rusted garden rake that had been leaning against the back of the house for the last two years.
She thumped it against the ground a few times, to be sure it was sturdy enough not to break if she had to kill a snake.
She felt satisfied as it dug into the ground, but her body still trembled at the thought of again coming face to face with another six-foot long rattlesnake.
“Damn those things are terrifying,” Fran shuttered.
She walked back into the house, leaning the rake against the doorway, and walked into her sister’s bedroom.
There was one more thing she would need to make the trip back to the sawmill.
Fortunately, it didn’t take Fran long to spot it.
Her sister had a fancy bookbag for school, one with wheels on it and a handle to pull the bookbag along behind her as she walked down the school hallway.
As much trouble as Fran had dragging the battery into the house from the truck that was only fifty feet away from the door, if she could manage to take a battery out of one of the trucks at the sawmill, dragging a battery for almost a mile would be impossible.
Her sister’s pink and yellow bookbag was gross looking, but hopefully it would make an impossible job possible.
As Fran looked over the tools she planned to take with her to the sawmill, her eyes settled on her legs.
“Maybe there is one more thing I need,” Fran thought.
She pulled her shorts down and tossed them on the chair as she walked into her room.
She grabbed a pair of blue jeans and pulled them on.
“Too bad I don’t have a suit of armor,” Fran thought seriously.
As she sat down to put her tennis shoes back on, she decided that the shoes had to go too.
The two indentations where the snake had latched on to her shoe were still clearly visible.
Fran walked into her dad’s room, got down on her hands and knees and looked under the bed where he always kept his shoes.
She pulled out his old worn work boots, the ones with steel toes that he always wore to work, and slid them on her feet.
She stood and took a couple steps.
“It feels like I’m wearing snowshoes,” Fran grinned, but the smile quickly faded as she focused on why she was wearing the sturdy boots. “But there is no way a snake can bite through these.”
Fran stumbled back out into the living room, where she had left her sister’s bookbag, grabbed the handle of the bookbag and went outside.
“I know,” Fran smiled as she looked down at Snoop, “I look like a homeless person with bad fashion sense.”
As Fran looked at the bookbag, she added, “I understand that dogs are color blind. Consider yourself lucky you can’t see this thing like it really looks, it would hurt your eyes.”
Snoop wagged his tail as Fran spoke.
“I don’t have any choice but to take you with me,” Fran said. “If I locked you in the bathroom, you would bark and attract who knows what to the house. So, you had better behave yourself.”
Snoop wagged his tail and let out a little yip.
“I’ll take that as a maybe,” Fran sighed. “Let’s go Snoop.”
Fran grabbed the rake in one hand and pulled the bookbag with the other hand.
Snoop trotted along, following her up the road.
They stopped a few times and ate more berries, most were sour, but they lucked out and found a few sweet berries too.
They slowly moved on, after thirty minutes, they arrived at the sawmill.
Fran nervously looked over the area and finally set her sights on the closest truck.
“Snoop, don’t you go running around here,” Fran said. “There are snakes here and most of them are bigger than you, so you stay close to me so nothing eats you.”
Fran and Snoop slowly approached the truck.
Fran nervously studied the ground in front of her as she walked.
When they reached the truck, Fran let go of the bookbag and grabbed the rake with both hands.
She carefully approached the truck and began to push the rake under the truck, sweeping the area under the truck looking for snakes.
After a few probing sweeps with the rake, she had to stop and grab Snoop.
Fran had to hold him with one arm while she used her free hand to drag the rake because the puppy thought this was a great game and kept trying to chase the rake underneath the truck.
After deciding there weren’t any snakes under the truck, Fran breathed a sigh of relief.
“I should have left you at home,” Fran said looking at the ornery pup in her arms. “I can’t keep you out of trouble and get this battery both at the same time, so you are going to sit in the truck so I know what you’re up to.”
Fran opened the truck door, pulled the hood lever until the hood clanged as the lock disengaged.
Fran set Snoop down on the seat of the truck and quickly closed the door.
“I’ll be right back,” Fran said as Snoop stuck his nose against the driver’s side window, sliding his nose across the window, following her movements as Fran moved towards the front of the truck.
As Fran reached under the hood, feeling for the latch so she could lift the hood, Snoop started barking frantically.
“Snoop, stop that,” Fran said as she began to look up at the windshield to get the puppy to stop barking.
Snoop had his back to the driver’s side window looking scared as he sat barking fiercely and growling.
“Snoop?” Fran called out.
But Snoop didn’t look at Fran, his eyes were locked on to something on the other side of the truck’s cab.
As Fran began to turn to look at the other side of the truck, her eyes caught the motion of a large rattlesnake climbing up on the dash out of the defroster vent.
Fran froze for a second, then grabbed her rake and ran to the passenger’s door.
She yanked open the door and in the same motion, rammed the rake into the truck’s dashboard.
She dropped the prongs of the rake on top of the snake and began to drag the snake out of the truck.
When the snake fell out of the truck and landed on the ground in front of Fran, she raised the rake and began to pound the snake with the rake’s metal prongs.
Her heart raced and pounded against the inside of her chest so hard she thought she was going to have a heart attack or pass out.
Fran finally began to breathe again when she realized that the battered snake was no longer moving.
Fran dragged the snake away from the truck door, reached inside and grabbed Snoop.
She trembled nervously as she checked the puppy for any signs that the snake had bit him.
“Sorry Snoop,” Fran said as she hugged the trembling puppy. “I told you this place is dangerous. It’s even worse than I remembered.”
Fran walked back to the front of the truck and put Snoop on the ground and made him sit.
“Stay,” Fran said holding up her hand.
The puppy sat and just looked at her.
“Now just stay there for a few minutes,” Fran said. “Just be good long enough for me to take the battery out of the truck so we can get the hell out of here, OK?”
Fran looked at the dog for a few seconds, when she was satisfied he wasn’t going to run off, she turned back to the truck and reached under the hood until she found the latch.
When she pushed the latch, the hood bounced up a few inches.
Fran was just about to grab the hood and push it open, when she jumped back away from the truck as the sound of a rattlesnake
’s rattle started from somewhere under the hood in the engine compartment.
Fran nervously stared at the front of the truck as the sound continued.
“Damn it,” she swore. “All I want is just one battery and to go home.”
Fran glanced across the parking area at the other trucks.
The sun was shining brightly, beating down on the trucks and the parking lot.
Heat waves rose up off the trucks and the gravel.
It was a hot day, just the kind of day that brought out the snakes who loved the heat.
Fran sighed a frustrated sigh.
For a moment, she considered letting the snake have this truck and moving on to one of the other trucks.
“I should just go and try another truck, but it will probably be the same damn thing,” Fran said to herself. Her inner voice telling her to just turn around, run and go home.
But Fran desperately didn’t want to go home without a battery for her radio.
“I’ve killed one snake, I can kill one more,” Fran said to herself. “But I’m not opening that hood until I know the battery is still good.”
Fran thought for a second, then walked to the driver’s door and pulled it open.
She took her rake and reached in and pushed the end of the rake against the horn button in the middle of the steering wheel.
The truck’s horn let out a loud blast.
“OK, the battery is still good,” Fran said as she looked at Snoop who was still lying on the ground where she had put him.
Determined to get this over with, Fran walked back in front of the truck and placed the rake under the front lip of the hood.
The horn blast had the snake worked up and the warning rattle sounded more intense and menacing than before.
She stayed as far away from the truck as she could, then Fran began to push the hood up with the rake.
She pushed until the hood was fully open and Fran could see the large rattler curled up on top of the air filter.
