Gray (Book 2)
Copyright © 2015 by Cadle-Sparks Books
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is entirely coincidental.
Three days later, hidden in the tunnel from the men who had kidnapped and beaten Benjamin, Coral and he were still safe.
Benjamin was healing. He was still tender around the ribs, but when she helped him into the light, she could see the swelling on his face was going down. He looked like himself again and had refused any pain medication after the first day.
They were down to a couple doses each of mild codeine and ibuprofen. In this new, changed world, there was no medical care beyond what she could provide, with her year of pre-med courses and the knowledge she’d picked up during one summer spent as a hospital volunteer—though that had been spent mostly handing out magazines and books. No healing plants were left alive. The handful of drugs she had on hand were the very last drugs on earth—or the only ones the two of them would be likely to see.
So when he refused the pills, she was both guilty and relieved. Better to save them…for a broken femur, or pocket-knife surgery she’d have to perform on one of them.
As the light faded that third day after their escape, she crawled outside, taking waste to bury, reassuring herself no one had come near enough to leave tracks, and wiping out her own tracks before returning to their tunnel. He claimed he could help, but Coral refused to let him. If, in a day or two, he could simply walk alongside while she pulled the sled, that’d be good enough. Talking it over that afternoon, they agreed to wait for the next snowstorm to leave. Snow would cover their tracks.
“It’d be best to leave at dawn,” Benjamin said.
“If we can,” she promised.
It would snow again, and soon. Since The Event had poured ash into the sky and turned summer to winter, it had been snowing nearly every other day, a gray and sooty snow that covered the burned-out Idaho valleys around them and hid the signs of the scorching and of death.
“I hate to abandon the food at the Walmart, though.” They were eating from the cans she’d managed to steal from the Walmart while the group of dangerous men were beating Benjamin. It was the first time they had eaten well in a month, and they needed the calories, Benjamin in particular to heal his injuries. This past few days, she’d spent hours lying in silence next to him while he napped, trying to figure out a way to raid the Walmart one last time before they left without getting shot dead by the group who considered it theirs. She finally asked him what he thought.
“Not worth the risk. We’re down to one rifle,” Benjamin said. “There’s at least four of them, all armed, one with my rifle, damn him, and there’s only two of us, and your rifle.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s yours, now. I’m happy to let you have it—you’re the more experienced marksman—and keep my bows and arrows. But I’m not confident with those, either.” With the thin wood arrows alone, she didn’t trust that she could do enough damage to man—or beast—to bring one down. She couldn’t shake the image of an angry man coming at her, stuck in five places with her arrows, but still healthy enough to kill her bare-handed.
“You should practice more.”
“There didn’t seem to be time enough, before, when we were on the road.”
“We’ll make time from now on.”
It would mean slowing down even more, making no more than a couple miles each day. “I can do it while I keep an eye on the fishing line. And I grabbed up some hardware I might be able to use as arrowheads, make them more deadly.”
“Damn, I wish we’d gotten more fishing gear at the Walmart. But it’s lost to us now.”
She knew he was right. But it hurt to let go of the idea of the store, still filled with aisles of canned food. “At least I grabbed some ammo and the knife. And we still have a bit of food.” They’d been sharing a can of high-fat meat and eating a can of fruit or vegetable for each meal. Without the labels, turned to ash long ago in the great heat, every new can opened was a surprise.
She figured they might be taking in 1500 calories each. Still, it was more than they had been eating while doing much harder work than lying still and hiding.
“We only have a week’s worth left, at most, if we can’t hunt or fish for food.”
“It’s more than we had,” she said. “And at least there’s a variety for now.”
“I know.” He was about to say something else, but he stopped himself and shook his head.
“Thanks,” she said.
“For what?”
“For holding off on whatever pessimistic comment you were about to make.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said, and she could hear he was amused.
She was getting to know the way his mind worked. He was truthful, but she did not need to hear more depressing truths. She knew them well enough herself. “There’s no way you can think of to raid the Walmart? At night, maybe?”
“If I were them, I’d have moved in there. Or set two guards around the clock.”
“Maybe that’s why they haven’t found us. Not enough manpower to guard their food stores and hunt us down, both.”
“That. Or you did a good job of hiding us.”
It was rare praise from her taciturn partner.
* * *
The afternoon after that, it began to snow again. On the following morning, they left their hiding place at first light, coming out of the tunnel into a light but steady snow.
First, there was an argument about who would pull the sled. Coral had been anticipating it, and she was ready for him. “You need to let those ribs heal. It won’t kill me to pull for the next couple days. And, more important, I need you to have the rifle at hand, in case they do find our trail.”
At that, as she had hoped, he gave in. He watched glumly as Coral got into harness and began to haul the sled.
Though she mourned the loss of the goods at the store, she agreed to avoid the area of the Walmart entirely. At Benjamin’s urging, she aimed first north for a dozen blocks, then turned west for the edge of town. The snow fell, too slowly to hide the deep sled tracks quickly. But if it kept up like this, by midday the tracks should be impossible to see.
Benjamin told her he had two destinations in mind. Once they were a mile west of town, he wanted to turn north until they found railroad tracks. After following them west for a while, he said, they could cut north again to a big reservoir. “If there’s any game at all left, that’s where it’ll be, near water. We can spend a week there, fishing and hunting. There’s plenty of fresh water there, at least.”
“What about people?” Of her three encounters with survivors since The Event, two had been life-threatening. A month ago, her goal had been to find a town, some piece of civilization still intact, and a few friendly people. Now, she doubted such a thing existed any more. “If that’s where the game would go, maybe that’s where the people would go.”
“We’ll keep an eye out.”
“If there’s anything useful about this damned ash in the air, it’s that it makes seeing a long way difficult.”
“Works both ways, though. We can’t see danger until it’s right on us.” He made a pained noise.
She turned to look at him, fast enough so that she caught him with his hands clinging to the rear of the sled. “You aren’t supposed to be pushing at all!” She planted her foot on the front of the sled, bringing it to a halt.
“It’s heavy with those extra food cans.”
“You’re hurt.”
“I’ll just do it until we’re out of town.”
He’d never heal up if he didn’t let those bones knit, but she knew she couldn’t talk him into obediently following the sled. “Why don’t you kick over our tracks instead, see if you can confuse anyone trying to follow. Seems a good time for it.”
“We’ve been going straight for eight blocks. If they can’t figure out to continue this way—”
“Then get rid of the tracks and we’ll go over a block. If you insist on doing something more than walk, I don’t want it to be pushing or pulling this load.” A vision of a broken rib puncturing his lung made the last few words sharp with anxiety.
He gave her an exasperated look, and she gave him one right back. “Fine,” he said.
“Don’t pout,” she said, motioning him away from the rear of the sled. She waited until he complied before she adjusted her harness and started pulling again. Three days of rest and adequate food had given her more energy, and while she wouldn’t classify the work as “easy,” it was doable, even without Benjamin sneaking up to help push. As long as the land was flat, she’d be okay pulling full-time.
At the next block, she turned right. Benjamin trailed behind, walking backwards, scuffing out the sled tracks and keeping a sharp eye out for anyone trailing them. But the road behind stayed empty.
She had to take a break midmorning, and again they argued over Benjamin’s taking a turn at pulling. She was adamant. “Look,” she said. “If we’re going to camp for a full week starting tonight or tomorrow at that reservoir, you can take a day off now. Then when we’re ready to move from there, your ribs will feel better. And you’ll be breathing easier, too.” His nose was broken, and she could hear him mouth-breathing most of the time.
“Then you have to have more food. You need the fuel to pull full-time.”
“Fine.” Better to let him win this argument, if it kept him from hurting himself worse. She let him open up a can of what ended up being chili with beans—ice cold, of course—and a second can that ended up being, they thought after studying the contents, palm hearts.
She popped one into her mouth. “Though I’m still not sure. I’ve never had them.”
“Me neither.”
“Here.” She handed him the can.
“No, you’re the one pulling.”
“You have to at least taste them. So you can say you’ve had them. I think they’re sort of rare, or expensive.”
“I’m not sure there’ll be anyone to brag about that to.” But he took one.
“If the world is bad enough, like you think it is, I doubt we’ll ever get a chance to eat anything tropical again. So enjoy stuff like canned pineapple and hearts of palm while you can. And forget seeing a banana for a long while.”
He pulled out a second piece of palm. “It’s good,” he said.
“Finish them.”
“You’re the one—”
“I doubt they have many calories. And I don’t love their taste. If you like them, go on.”
He frowned. But he also finished the can. He refused to take any of the chili until she had scraped most of it out. Then he relented and poured water into the can, sloshed it around, and drank what was left.
“How are we doing on water?” she said.
He checked their supply of bottles. “Low. But we’ll get to the reservoir soon enough.”
They hit the edge of town soon after and the rail line in mid-afternoon. The worry about being followed by the Walmart gang had faded, and now she was keeping an eye out for other dangers ahead—human dangers, in particular. She trusted Benjamin to guard the rear.
They followed the train track to the west, staying to its north side and out of sight of the interstate highway. Not that any cars were moving on it—or anywhere else, for that matter. But it was likely that anyone on foot might follow the most obvious routes, so they had agreed to avoid the interstates.
On a rail siding sat four boxcars, which Benjamin went to check out while Coral rubbed the ache at the small of her back and checked under her jacket and shirt. She was getting blistered right at the junction of arm and torso from hours in harness without a break. Grateful Benjamin wasn’t there to see, she pulled out her extra shirts and used them to pad herself better. When they stopped for the night, she’d dab antibiotic cream on those raw patches.
He came back ten minutes later, shaking his head. “The cars are filled with asphalt.”
“Yum.”
They hiked on but didn’t make the reservoir before the light gave out. She tried to sneak the first-aid kit away from the sled to doctor her blisters, but Benjamin caught her.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“A couple blisters is all.”
“Let me see.”
“I’d rather not. It’s cold, and I don’t want to strip my sweater and shirt off. I can deal with them.”
“You should have told me.”
“What’d be the point? We needed to get away.”
“Tomorrow, I’m pulling.”
“No, you’re not. And stop arguing about it.”
“You stop arguing.”
She started laughing. “God, it’s like being with my brothers. How old are you again?”
“Thirty-six.”
“Did you ever tell me that before?”
“I don’t think so. And I never asked how old you are, but I guess no older than 21.”
“What day is it?”
“What?”
“If it’s after July 27, I’m 19.”
“Geez. So I could be your father.”
“Yeah, definitely dump me because I’m too young. You have
so
many other options for surviving.”
“Oh, go fix your blisters, brat.”
As she doctored the raw spots with cream and the last of the Band-Aids, she thought about what he’d said. “I could be your father,” but, more than that, the tone of it. There was an implication there that she had avoided thinking about. She was a straight woman. He was a straight man. Maybe the only sane straight man for 100 square miles—or for the next year of travel. It made sense that eventually they’d hook up.