by Misty Vixen
In the end, I managed to get perhaps two days’ worth of meals out of the deer for all four of us. Well, maybe two days, if we stretched and fortified it with extra stuff, or rationed it a bit hardcore. It was going to have to do for the moment. Once I got it all squared away, packed into the plastic containers we had with us, I headed upstairs and found the others just about ready to go.
“You should really finish this,” Megan said, handing me my can of beans.
My stomach growled as I took it. “Fuck. Yeah. Forgot about that.” I hastily began eating it and looked at Elizabeth. “How are you feeling?” I asked between bites.
“Better,” she said. “Going back to sleep really helped. I thought I wouldn’t be able to but…” She looked anxiously at the window. “He hasn’t come back, has he?”
“I haven’t seen any sign of him or anyone else,” I replied, and glanced at Megan.
“Nothing. I’ve been watching the highway.”
“Do you think he’s still around?” she asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s possible he left, it’s possible he’s hanging around. And one of his friends had a rifle and looked like he knew how to use it.”
“So what’s the plan, exactly?” Megan asked.
“Delilah and Elizabeth are going to bundle up and hide their faces.” While I had been out, Delilah had gone through and searched the house, coming up with a few more articles of clothing, two of which were quite useful. “Elizabeth, you’re going to wear that ski-mask, Delilah, you’re going to wrap that scarf around your head and pull your cap down low. You’re both almost the same height, and if we bundle you up in the right way, it’ll be too hard to tell from a distance if one of you is Elizabeth. Megan, you’re taking the rifle, since you’re the best shot. Be ready to use it. We’re going to head up over the highway, down through the buildings, and across the river. We’ll go for as far as we can before finding a place to stop. Keep a very sharp eye out for anyone following us. If we’re lucky, we can get out of here without a problem.”
“And if we’re not lucky?” Elizabeth asked unhappily.
“Megan and I are very good shots and…” I hesitated, frowning. “We have experience killing people that need killing.”
“I see,” Elizabeth murmured. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. Come on, sooner we move, the better.”
~
As I stepped outside, I felt a wave of frustration and even fear hit me.
“Fuck me,” I groaned, looking up as a burst of frigid air smacked into me.
“What?” Elizabeth asked, fearful.
“It’s probably going to storm soon,” I replied.
“Do we want to just stay here, wait it out?” Megan asked.
I stared into the gray skies, considering it for a long moment. This is what it meant to be a leader: the one to make the choices and then deal with the consequences afterwards. And often you had no fucking way to tell if you were making the right call or not. All I truly had to go on was intuition. Just my gut and experience.
“We need to get across that river,” I replied, and started walking.
“But what if we get caught in a storm?” Megan asked. “Or if there’s nothing over there?”
“We’ll get to the riverbank and reassess,” I replied, relenting a little. “But something tells me we don’t want to linger here. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so. Worst case scenario, we hole up in one of the other buildings over there.”
Megan knew for a fact that wasn’t the worst case scenario, but she glanced back at Elizabeth and Delilah. Our redheaded friend had been tasked with helping keep Elizabeth upright and mobile. The sleep and food, (and probably sex), had done her good, but it was too easy to fall in snow even under great conditions. I didn’t think she’d shatter if she fell down once, but...let’s just say I wanted to risk as few falls as possible.
Staring at the other two a bit longer, Megan apparently decided to keep her peace. There was enough to worry about and I guess she trusted me to figure it out. That was a good feeling and a bad one. I might be wrong. I might fuck this up and we all freeze to death. As we kicked our way through the snow, towards the highway, I considered how I’d approach this. Really considered it. Because Elizabeth added in a new level of caution. She had been speaking the truth last night, although...I glanced back at her briefly.
I didn’t think she was as much of a burden as she thought she might be.
Well, that’s a classic sign of abuse. How much had her ex-husband worn her down? How much had he belittled and insulted her? How much had he insisted she rely on him for shit? She was obviously pretty tough, even now she was keeping up with us. I went over the plan while I scanned the highway and my half of the area. Megan and I were the lookouts, with Delilah pitching in whenever she could. We’d get up to the highway and spare a moment to take a look around, see if there was anything to see on the other side, or if there was anyone about. From there, we’d get down to the riverbank, which would be a journey on its own.
Once at the riverbank, I’d make the call whether we stop and hole up in one of the buildings down there, or press on.
Shit. I hated this.
But this is what it meant to help people. This is what it meant to lead people and make decisions. And I had absolutely no intention of backing down or choking. Of course, no one ever intends to fuck up, they just do.
We managed to make it back up the ramp and onto the highway without a problem. I sent the women over to the other ramp to scout it and wait for me while I hurried over to the ruined bridge. I took a moment to double-check the semi, (it was a great place to hide, at least temporarily), but there was no one in it. I went on to where I’d stood yesterday and scoped the situation out. The winds were worse now, colder and stronger and more consistent. I looked as best I could at the area beyond the riverbank on the opposite side.
It was hard to tell if there was anything worthwhile. There was just a frozen, rocky shore and a trail leading up into some woods, and the rest was blocked by the rise in the land the bridge was built into. I thought I could just barely make out some kind of structure at the edge of where I could see into the woods, but that might have been my imagination. I glanced skywards, then began hurrying back. I guess we’d find out.
The problem with a storm like this is it might take five or forty five minutes really get going. Sometimes up to an hour.
So basically you were gambling each time.
It was rare, but it might also collapse back into nothing. I wasn’t counting on that. I never counted on that happening, for obvious reasons.
“Anything?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the winds.
“Nothing,” Megan replied.
“I think I see a building on the other side, in the woods. Can’t be sure. Let’s go.”
They nodded and we started making our way down the other ramp. I looked over at the little section of civilization that we were heading for. Not much there. A gas station. A restaurant. Those string of log cabins I’d noticed earlier along the riverbank. A few other places. I’d seen a hundred little pit stops like this, maybe two or even three hundred by now. Sometimes they held people, converted into small settlements, but I think that was becoming a little less popular now. The highway gave people easy access to your settlement if it was just off the ramp, and that kind of thing cut both ways. And I think for a lot of people it had cut the wrong way once too often as a group of assholes with guns came screaming down from the highway.
I didn’t see any movement but I was paranoid that anyone could be in any of those buildings. And we didn’t have time to stop and search them. Damn I hated rushing. If anything was antithetical to this new world, it was rushing. The cold, dead world had taught me, often through brutal means, to take my time with things.
Patience was crucial to survival now.
But sometimes you ended up with situations like this where you just had to hurry up. I looked back over
my shoulder at Elizabeth for several seconds as we hit the road and began making our way down it. If I had it right, we could just follow it to the end and make a right turn, and it would take us to the riverbank. I tried to assess Elizabeth, see how she was doing, but it was tough given that she was covered head-to-toe and all I could really see was her eyes and her mouth. Seeing her lips gave me a flash image of her sucking my dick, something that had yet to happen and something I really wanted to happen, and I shook my head and forced myself to focus, feeling guilty. All our lives were on the line right now.
I thought she was winded by now but still going fairly strong.
There still wasn’t anything to see. No movement among the buildings, but it was hard to see into most of the windows. We trudged on, and on, and then further, making our way down the lengthy road. It wasn’t terribly long, but it was still quite a walk, especially in the snow. Or at least it felt that way. As we got to the turn at the end of the road that would lead us down to the riverbank, which sat a mere football field’s length away, I looked at the sky again. I thought that the fact that snowflakes hadn’t started falling by now was a decent sign, even though the winds hadn’t really let up. It was pretty fucking cold by now.
“Chris, we need to take a short break,” Megan said. I looked back and saw that Delilah and Elizabeth were lagging behind.
I considered it, then nodded. It’d buy me some time to think. There was an abandoned car nearby and I worked to get the front door open, then the back door. I performed a quick search and found nothing, but it would make for a decent resting place.
“Here, sit,” I said. “Both of you.”
“Thanks,” Elizabeth replied, panting. I felt bad but we had to keep moving. God fucking knew where her ex-husband and his two asshole cronies were. They both had the feel of hired muscle. Lots of that going around nowadays. Part of me didn’t want to stop at all because I couldn’t help but imagine that rifle trained on me from a quarter mile away.
They sat in the car and I leaned against the trunk with Megan.
“What do you think?” she murmured, first glancing up, then looking around.
“I think we should push on,” I said after a few seconds. “Weather feels stable. Could be wrong, but I really want to get across that river.”
“What if they’re ahead of us?” she asked.
I was silent for a few seconds more. “I don’t know,” I admitted finally. “But if they are, we’ll take them. Guess I’d rather be in the woods than out in the open like this.”
She sighed. “Yeah.”
I expected her to say more, and glancing at her, I thought she wanted to. But she just looked at me very briefly, then looked back the way we’d come, scanning the highway. Again, I thought she didn’t want to upset Delilah or Elizabeth. I looked at the sky one more time, took one more long look around us all the way and, upon seeing nothing obvious, stood back up. It’d been about five minutes now and we had to keep moving.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, coming up to Elizabeth.
She smiled up at me, a little grimly, I thought. “I’m okay. I can keep going.”
I decided to take her at her word. “All right. Let’s move it out.”
They got up and we moved on. The walk down the snowy road was quick and smooth enough, but I was growing more and more anxious as we drew closer and closer to the riverbank. It looked steady, the ice looking thick, but it could be hard to tell. Not everywhere had so thoroughly frozen over. I considered how best to handle the situation as we made our approach, and I didn’t exactly like what I was coming up with. I wanted to go first, but I wasn’t sure that was the best idea, given I was the heaviest.
The river itself was, right here, perhaps thirty feet across.
The other side seemed irritatingly close and yet hauntingly distant.
“Who goes first?” Delilah murmured unhappily.
“I’ll do it,” Megan said. “I’m lighter than you, Chris. And quicker. If the ice is bad, I’ll have a better chance of getting away.”
I nodded reluctantly. It was the same conclusion I had come to.
“Pay attention to where she’s walking,” I said. “After her, Delilah, you go, and then Elizabeth. Stay a few feet apart, move carefully, but as quickly as you can. I’ll be behind you, Elizabeth.”
They all nodded and Megan got right to it, diving in, so to speak.
That woman did not lack bravery.
I watched her, tensing as she set out, preparing to hurry forward and somehow pull her out of the frigid waters without going down myself if necessary. I listened for that telltale cracking, but it was hard to hear over the heavy winds. And I also forced myself to keep a lookout. Now would be a perfect time to attack, while we’re all distracted.
Megan kept going, one foot in front of the other, making a good enough balance between keeping up a good pace but also being cautious, that I wondered how many times she’d done this before. Finally, she made it over to the other side.
“Seems fine!” she called.
“Okay, Delilah, go now,” I said.
“Yeah,” she murmured anxiously, and headed out. She was hesitant at first, and just as I was about to tell her she needed to pick up the pace, much as I didn’t want to, she started going a bit faster. I turned to Elizabeth.
“Go now,” I said.
She looked at me and for one awful second I was convinced she was going to say ‘I can’t do this’, and something would have to give. Instead, she just nodded, paler than before, and stepped out onto the ice.
While she got going, I took a look around. It was getting windier, and the skies had definitely grown a bit darker than when we’d first set out. I still didn’t see anyone or anything behind us, and Megan looked like she was doing a good job covering her side of the river. I turned my attention back to the others.
Once Elizabeth had moved past the halfway mark, Delilah about three quarters of the way there, I set off. The ice had a decent bit of snow layered atop it, so it wasn’t terribly slippery, but I felt my muscles tense and my guts shift as my body truly registered that I was stepping out onto ice. It was a miserable feeling.
Taking my own medicine, I made myself walk forward.
I put one foot in front of the other, measuring the ice. I was heavier than all of them and now I was a fourth person who had gone over this particular path. I could break left or right, and would if I had to, but so far this path had held true. It just had to hold true for one more person. The seconds went by very slowly over the wind-tortured, icebound river. I kept my eyes ahead, watching the others as I went foot by foot.
Delilah reached the other side and joined Megan, turning to face Elizabeth, who had lagged a little behind. It was getting windier. A particularly strong gust hit me and almost caused me to lose my balance. I saw Elizabeth stumble and felt my whole body freeze in fear. She waved her arms briefly, then found her footing.
Fuck. I hated this.
Even for me a fall on the ice could be very bad. Potentially fatal, if I broke something and caught an infection. We had antibiotics, but they were old, and they weren’t always a certainty anyway. I kept going, forcing myself on, and finally hit the halfway mark. Elizabeth was now maybe three quarters of the way over. I kept expecting a bullet to shriek out and hit me in the back of the head, or maybe just my back.
I’d been in tenser situations before, but this was probably up there.
Finally, Elizabeth made it to the other side. I let out a sigh of relief and kept on walking. As I reached the three quarters mark myself, I felt the ice shift noticeably under me and an ominous cracking sound reached my ears.
“Oh fuck,” I whispered, freezing for just a second.
“Chris, move it!” Megan snapped.
I took another step forward and the ice cracked again. Preparing myself for the worst, I kept going. But the ice held. I took another step. No cracking. Another step and suddenly another particularly strong gust of wind hit me. This time it sent me
sprawling. I cried out as I went left, twisting, trying to break my fall. I expected my hands to break straight through the ice, and though I heard an ominous, sharp crack as I hit the ice, nothing happened but pain. It was closer to landing on the ground.
The women shouted my name and Megan actually took a step out onto the ice.
“Stay!” I snapped as I carefully got back up to my feet. It was a laborious process, but I managed it. Pain ebbed and flowed from my hands, my wrists, my shoulders, and one hip and knee, and my neck was hurting a bit too, but otherwise I thought I was okay.
I started walking again, all three of my companions staring anxiously at me.
After way too long, my feet finally hit solid ground, and I let out a long sigh of relief.
“Fuck,” I muttered, standing there for a minute with them all, my legs shaking, body pumping with adrenaline, head pounding.
“Maybe we should take a break,” Elizabeth murmured.
“I think-” I began, then fell silent as, all around us, snow started to come down.
FIFTEEN
“No breaks, keep going,” I said immediately, and started up the snowy embankment.
Right now, the snow was coming down in little flakes. Lots of them, but they were small. And there was a lull in the winds, but that wouldn’t last. I knew what was coming: a storm. A bad one. The kind you didn’t want to be caught out in.
“Let’s go!” I called.
“Where are we going?!” Megan yelled back.
I glanced over my shoulder. She was at the back, behind Elizabeth and Delilah, who were following after me as quickly as they could.
“I thought I saw a building ahead,” I replied, and then kept going. I wanted to confirm or deny that possibility. I wasn’t sure what the fuck we were going to do if I couldn’t find a building. I guess huddle up around a fire at fucking anywhere we could build one where the wind wouldn’t blow it out. There were a lot of trees around, so that was a plus, at least. But I had to act fast. I was at least relieved that we were over the fucking river.
