Flare (47 page)

As they traveled, Courtney and Zeke noticed that the insects’ bodies seemed to be getting sweeter.

“We need to find what these insects eat,” said Courtney. “Next time we see a swarm, we should stop.”

/***/

They found a swarm the next night, and the fox showed them what the insects had been eating. The creature came back with an object in her mouth, and she dropped it at their feet. It was a fruit, half-eaten but still substantial, with a soft red interior and a thick outer shell that was as hard as rock.

Courtney smelled the fruit and then gave it to Zeke. Its scent was sweet like the insects’ bodies, but more so. They walked forward and found more fruits, most half-eaten. They saw the fox sniffing around, and soon she was playing with a whole fruit, pushing it over the rough ground with her nose. Courtney picked it up and put it in her pocket.

They continued to walk until they found the plants that yielded the fruit, a thick, woody plant that grew in flat bushes over the ground. The plant was unappetizing itself but held no thorns, so they walked easily into its foliage, mingling amongst the insects who were too busy feasting to pay them any mind. They found the fruits were covered with thick, protective sheathes, which wrapped over their rock-like shells to give them double protection.

Courtney put her hands on one, and the inner shell fell out of its sheath with surprising ease. She then poked the carapace at one edge and it cracked open, yielding fresh, thick red flesh bursting with moisture. She ripped off a piece and tasted it, and then gave the rest to Zeke, which he split with the fox. It tasted like a plum mixed with a coconut, but sweeter.

“If you don’t mind,” said Courtney, “I’d like to get as many of these as we can, so we can have a real meal tonight.”

/***/

Later that evening they camped out and experimented with their harvest. Courtney still roasted some bugs, but cooked the fruits alongside them. They both tasted good, and Zeke felt they could live on this for some time.

“Fruits are anything that carries a seed,” said Courtney, tapping a pod and breaking its shell. “Before the flare those little stickleburs that clung to your socks were fruits, because they carried seeds. You’d get annoyed and throw them off after a hike, and that’s how the seeds traveled. The sticklebur fruit did what it was supposed to do.”

Courtney looked at her fruit and then nodded.

“It takes a lot of energy for a plant to make a fruit that you eat,” said Courtney. “But it’s worth the cost, because animals willingly do the work to disperse the seeds. They come to the plant, eat the fruit and pass it miles away, usually giving the seed its own fertilizer to boot.”

The fox leaned in towards Zeke, as if she were listening to Courtney too.

“Times like this, ninety percent of the species of fruits are gone. Apple trees, watermelons and grape vineyards, all gone. It takes a lot to survive the flare now, and this plant, whatever it is, can do it. I don’t know where this plant came from. Maybe it was one I’ve never heard of, maybe it was from a plot of land in a scientist’s backyard, maybe it was designed by the people of the Salvation. But whatever the case, it works, and it works well. Two shells to protect it from the flare, and both shells open easily to make it accessible to everything else.”

Courtney took a bite out of the red fruit inside, and then spat the seeds onto the ground.

“In a few years, this fruit could be everywhere, feeding anything that can survive the day,” said Courtney. “Might be healthy too. The flare’s so intense, the fruit may be loaded with healthy antioxidants to protect it from sun damage. It took a perfect storm to make this happen, but it’s about time a perfect storm went our way, don’t you think?”

Zeke smiled and nodded. Courtney took one more bite of the fruit and then threw the rest to the fox, who nipped at it gingerly.

“But I’m not happy with eating fruit for the rest of my life, let alone insects that taste of it,” said Courtney. “This is a field of locusts, and it won’t guide us to our new home. Animals might, though. I still believe that.”

Zeke squinted. He half-understood her point.

“I’ve seen animals in the past month, and they’ve got to be eating these fruits too. I’ve never marveled at how the insects or plants survive, because tough shells protect them both. But animals? They don’t have shells, and I ask myself the question each and every time I see them in the distance:
Where do they go during the day?
The animals are just as soft as us, and yet they live. How?”

Zeke understood Courtney now, but he didn’t know the answer to her question.

“That’s what we need to look for,” said Courtney. “We need to find a pack of animals and follow them. We need to know their destination, and make it ours as well. So keep your eyes open, and if you see anything with four legs or fur, let me know.”

/***/

Zeke found a pack of animals two days later, a herd of deer grazing in the distance, far from the dirt road. Zeke could barely see them in the moonlight, but they were definitely deer. The fox jumped out of the truck and ran towards them, bounding through the flat bushes that yielded the strange fruit. The deer took scant notice of the fox’s arrival and resumed grazing. Zeke went into the back of the truck, got his tent and started to fill his backpack with supplies. He nodded at Courtney to do the same and she followed suit. They had to follow these deer, and the only way to do it was to get off the road and tramp into the bushes. Courtney oriented herself under the stars and made some notes about the truck’s location in her journal, and she was ready to go.

They followed the deer without a sound and soon mingled freely amongst them. 

/***/

Though the deer weren’t as friendly as the fox, they weren’t skittish like deer were supposed to be. They kept their distance and didn’t allow themselves to be touched, but they didn’t flee from Zeke and Courtney either. The fox weaved in and out of their legs, and the herd didn’t pay her any mind.

“They’re smaller than regular deer,” said Courtney, three feet away from a doe. “They don’t fear us, but we should still be careful. If they run, we’ve got to run with them.”

They followed the deer through the night, meandering through the brush and eating the thick fruits. Courtney noticed that the deer stopped to eat every bit of plant material that they could find, dug out thick tubers that grew in the ground, and foraged for rough-skinned berries that grew hidden in shrubs.

Courtney worried that dawn was approaching, but Zeke calmed her and they continued to follow the deer on their laconic, ambling path. An hour later they reached an abandoned ranch house, and the deer walked in as if they owned the place. Zeke took out his flashlight to see that the place was filthy, ripped up and covered with scat, but it had boarded up windows and was protected from the sun.

Zeke set up one of their tents behind what must have once been the bar. It was a cramped fit, but it gave them some protection in case the deer decided to stampede in the night. The room was dark enough to be safe from the sun, but Zeke set up the tent just in case. Courtney crawled in, but the fox stayed outside, choosing to stay with the deer on the scat-covered floor.

/***/

“You’ve got to see this,” said Courtney, waking Zeke up after the next sunset.

It was completely dark in the boarded-up room. Courtney pointed her hand-cranked flashlight forward and Zeke saw the shadow of some animals on the wall, but they weren’t deer. Courtney pointed the light down to reveal a mother wolf and her pups, huddled up in a corner and sniffing the air in response to the flashlight. Two more wolves came to join them from the darkness, and smelled the air before nuzzling the female wolf.

The wolves left the house and the pups followed them, bounding about playfully and nipping at each other’s tails. Zeke hastily packed up the tent with Courtney, and they went outside to join the animals. The herd had grown, and there were more deer in addition to the new wolves. The fox was amongst them and trotted back to Zeke, sniffing his leg before joining the herd once again. The pack of animals ambled away from the ranch house, and Zeke and Courtney followed.

/***/

The animals foraged for food together, predators and prey alike. The wolves preferred to eat the dead insects, which were inevitably near fruits that the deer ate. Courtney found another plant which had a round, thick shell like a coconut. Once they opened it up though, its flesh was thin and light like a melon. The melon’s flesh must have had quite a bit of water in it too, because after Zeke ate one he was no longer thirsty.

Food surrounds us now; there are shrubs filled with shelled fruits, and dead insects have fallen from the sky like hail.

Still, the animals ate their fill and moved on. There was enough on the ground to sustain the herd indefinitely, but they had a destination. They were going somewhere.

/***/

The ground got thicker with life as they went forward. They first walked over a mesh of grey brambles that had rooted themselves into the earth with a ferocious grip and then spread outwards as if the land had belonged to them for a thousand years. The roots were hard on their feet, animals and humans both, but the animals stuck to a path that made the walk traversable, though just barely. There was always a place for their feet between the roots along the path, but the grey forest was thriving and threatened to grow behind them until they were trapped within these rock-like branches forever.

The branches’ colors were dull but they held life, fruits and insects both. Courtney even spotted a mouse running underneath a mesh of roots. She brought Zeke over to watch, but as the days progressed they found so many mice that they stopped counting. They found other creatures too, rabbits and raccoons, snakes and spiders. If a creature could crawl through a cluster of branches, it had found a way to survive. Courtney reminded Zeke to watch his step lest he be bitten.

/***/

They spent the next day in another shelter, an abandoned tunnel in a hollowed-out mountain, so long that the light couldn’t hurt them. It was dark inside and shone hot and bright at the exit to the underpass, but they were safe, human and animal. Courtney wanted to set up their tent just in case, but Zeke refused. He wanted to live as the animals did, and feel what they felt when he slept.

He woke up in the middle of the day to the sound of rain. The edges of their tunnel still burned with a threatening glow, but it was raining outside. The animals all stuck their noses up in the air, and one deer jumped around in circles and bleated. Every creature took notice, even the wolves.

/***/

The next evening the creatures all crept out and drank from the shallow puddles outside the tunnel. It was still drizzling out, and Zeke put out pans to gather all the fresh water that he could.

“It smells like it’s supposed to,” said Courtney. “Like rain. And it only smells like rain when plants are there to release their oils onto the rocks, and when bacteria are in the soil to release their spores into the air.”

Courtney looked up at the night sky, which was thick with clouds.

“I was with Ash in the desert during a rainstorm, and it didn’t smell like this,” said Courtney. “It only smells like this when things have found a way to live.”

Zeke squinted through the dim moonlight hidden by the clouds, and saw that on this side of the tunnel there was a forest. The woods were thick and foreboding, and most of trees were dead, but they were in a real forest with branches and leaves, and trunks that grew upward to greet the sky.

/***/

The ground cleared up the next day, and they found it easy to walk that evening. The trees provided a canopy, and the floor below was covered with dried leaves and pinecones instead of brambles. Most of the detritus on the ground had been burnt beyond all recognition, but some things had woody coverings and structures that were intact. Zeke even noticed a few saplings had sprouted from the ground, though they were stubby and reddish-black rather than thin and green.

They found another set of animals in the middle of the night. It was another herd of deer, a different species than the first, but both packs merged quickly and without any hostility. Zeke saw a pack of feral dogs on the periphery, and as soon as they caught his gaze one of them ran towards him and started to sniff. The dog’s pack followed and soon Zeke, Courtney and the fox were surrounded. One growled, but Zeke saw that it still had a collar on, so he held out his hand. The collared dog approached, sniffed and then jumped up to put his front legs on Zeke’s thighs. Zeke petted the dog, and soon the rest of the pack was barking for attention. Courtney laughed and then scratched the ears of another, while a third sniffed the fox.

Despite the commotion, the main herd of animals walked on, undeterred. They continued their slow march into the forest and Zeke went forward with them, followed by Courtney and the fox. The dogs ran about, choosing to stay on the periphery of the group, but following them nonetheless.

/***/

The ground soon had holes in it. They were clearly over some sort of cave, and there were natural tunnels below. Zeke saw creatures darting about under the earth, and saw what appeared to be a squirrel pop its head out of a hole at his feet. The creature had a fruit in his mouth, and its black eyes glistened in the moonlight.

Zeke heard the sounds of a rushing river, and then noticed that the noise was coming from below. He looked down and could see a sparkle of water beneath, but not much else. He noticed a patch of the wood-covered fruit and picked up a single pod, peeled off its two sheaths and ate it. He listened to the sounds of the river, and it seemed to get louder in front of him. He stopped Courtney and indicated that he wanted to find where the noise was coming from.