Gray (Book 2) (9 page)

Within moments, they were hauling the sled by force over another jagged patch of rock. When they were done, they both sat, catching their breath. Coral glared at the sled and, for a moment, hated the thing. “Maybe we should have stayed at the house, took our chances there,” she said. “Or found a place in American Falls. Or surrendered to the Army.”

“Maybe we should have. But we didn’t, and this is where we are now.”

“But—”

“Don’t. I hate that.”

“Hate what?”

“That should-have, could-have, would-have shit. If only I would have done that other thing, then life would have turned out like this, whine whine whine. I played poker for a while with a guy who talked like that, would count a dozen cards backwards after a hand was over, ask for the deck, look at the next five cards, then he’d announce, ‘if you two would have dropped out and I would have stayed and drawn to the inside straight, then I would have won.’ It was all I could do not to smack him. What a bunch of bullshit.”

She stood again, trying not to feel hurt by his words, and prepared to push the sled. She looked up, only to see him watching her, making no effort to move on. She waited, knowing more was coming.

“Listen,” he said, his voice gentler now. “I try to think of it this way. There is no past. There is no future. There is only this moment. It doesn’t matter how we got to this moment. We’re here now. We’ve made the best decisions we could, and we made them together. Now we deal with today, and with whatever shit today brings us, the best we can.”

The words made her feel no better, but she knew she had to stop dumping her worries and regrets on him. He was just as tired and hungry as she, and pulling more than his share. She had to quit speaking her every thought aloud. She had learned a lot from Benjamin over the past few months. It wouldn’t hurt her to learn how to shut up more often from him, too.

Back in the old world, she had learned that venting emotions was a good thing. Maybe, but even if it had been true back then, things were different now. It did no good to natter on about hunger or exhaustion. It just made her notice them more.

It took them nearly a full day to climb back out of the canyon, without finding a source of water, and when they were up to the next ridge, they were too exhausted to do any more that day. They set up camp early and hunted for fuel for a fire. That night, they finished the soup.

The next morning, they woke to no new snow. Skies were still gray with ash, but they agreed it might be a bit clearer than it had been a month ago—or maybe he was humoring her when he agreed. Benjamin left her and the sled in the overhang of a cliff while he searched for signs of game, promising to come back by midday. Unwilling to wait uselessly, Coral unpacked her bow and arrows and headed the opposite direction, stopping every so often to make sure that she could still see her own footprints. They would guide her back to the sled.

She recited to herself everything Benjamin had taught her about hunting. The first problem was to find any sign of an animal, few of which had survived the fire, the long heat, or the weeks since without green stuff to eat. Hunting, he had told her, was a game of patience. You walked quietly when you had to move, you stayed relaxed but alert, and you stood still until fate granted you your rare chance at a shot. When it did, you tried not to mess it up.

No sign of animals showed in the snow around her, neither track nor scat. She decided to turn back at a large boulder she could see up ahead. But when she reached it, she spied, filled in part way with a dusting of snow, tracks.

Human tracks. And not hers or Benjamin’s.

The snow softening the edges of the tracks told her it had been at least a day since someone had walked here. Yet she remained quiet for a long time, straining to listen for voices or movement. She heard nothing.

As she looked more closely at the prints, she realized that she was seeing more than one set. And one of them was small—a very small woman’s or a child’s, and she thought the latter.

So not the military guys. And they were so many miles distant from the train now, she couldn’t imagine that it was them anyway. If they had figured out the existence of Benjamin and Coral, and even if they had tracked them for a while, what was the point of chasing them this far? The train car of soup was theirs now. They had won, and without a fight. It made no sense to spend a week hunting her down.

She could think of one reason they might, though. She’d die fighting before she’d let herself be used that way.

She retraced her own steps, moving quickly but quietly and returning to the sled in a fraction of the time it had taken her to come this far. She wanted to get back to Benjamin and tell him. She debated following his tracks out, but decided against it, in case he was having luck on the hunt. They needed food as much as they needed to follow up on the signs of people. This time, she wasn’t going  scouting herself and risk having to hide without sufficient warmth again. She’d wait for him…and for the rifle.

As the light began to dim, he returned, his lack of success written on his face.

She waited until he was a dozen yards away to speak in a low voice. “I found tracks. People tracks.”

He stopped. “Where? How many?”

“Two or three, one maybe a kid’s. They’re a day old at least.” She pointed in the direction. “We should check it out. Together.”

He looked toward her but his eyes lost focus. She could see him working it through. “It’s a risk,” he finally said.

“And a risk to stay in the area tonight if there are others around.”

He rubbed his beard, frosted now with a thin coating of ice. “Track them? Or go on? What do you think? Any chance at all it was the guys you saw at the train?”

“No. I don’t know they ever discovered there was someone spying on them.” She considered their options. “You find any food?”

“No,” he said.

“These people might have food.”

His eyebrow twitched. “Which they would defend. Or they might see
us
as food.”

“I’d be damned stringy at this point,” she said.

“I’d take a stringy buck right now. Food is food.”

“I’m not ready yet to eat them, or even to steal from them. Particularly not if those were a kid’s prints, and it’s a family.”

“Family or not, I don’t think they’ll hand over their survival supplies.”

“Maybe they’d trade.”

Benjamin glanced at the sled, their gear piled on it, the ropes loosened. “We can’t afford to trade away much.”

“No. No, we can’t.” She thought it through again. “It might only be three people. We’ll be careful,” she said.

He shook his head. “I think I should go alone. No offense, but I can be quieter. You stay with the gear. Or, you can cover my tracks, so that if I’m shot, they can’t find their way back to you.”

“No, that’s wrong. I’m the one who is willing to risk checking them out, so I should go alone.”

He shook his head. “No way.”

“You’re trying to protect me.”

“It’s plain good sense for you to stay back here. Cuz I tell you what they might want to trade for—for you.”

“But you wouldn’t make that trade.”

“Don’t be an idiot. Of course not.”

“I know that. It was a statement, not a question. If they’re normal people, they may be slow to shoot an unarmed woman traveling alone. If we both go, I should go first.”

He shoved his hand into his hair, pushing it and his hood back from his forehead. “I can’t tell you how many things are wrong with this idea.”

“Look, I know that.” She felt the seconds ticking by and felt an imperative to decide quickly and to act. Hunger was a large part of her sense of urgency. The possibility that these people had food or knew where to find food—that possibility called to her starving body and made her willing to take risks she might not otherwise. “Think if it was you. How would you react to an unarmed woman approaching us right now? And how would you react to an armed man approaching? Let me go first.”

He considered and, after a minute, shook his head. “It’s too late to do anything tonight. Let’s sleep on it.”

He was right about the time. Dark was coming on quickly. They pulled the sled to behind a rock formation, checked to make sure it was hidden well, and dug a simple snow cave for the night.

In the morning, they climbed out of the snow cave to find a darker world than the morning before. By now, they knew this meant there were clouds up there, invisible through the ash, and that snow was likely coming. She said, “Before it snows again and covers those tracks, I should follow them.”

He took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “I don’t like this.”

“I know. But Benjamin, we have nothing but bad choices any more. We have those four emergency cans of meat from the Walmart, and nothing else.”

Without another word, Benjamin began to lash the load onto the sled again, keeping out only a minimum of gear out for each of them. If they had to leave in a hurry, the sled would be ready. Coral loaded her daypack with water and first-aid supplies and shouldered the light load. Benjamin carried the rifle, Coral her good bow and arrows.

Benjamin led them forward in the dim morning light. When they came to the boot prints, he stopped, looked at her, and shook his head at some unspoken thought. She could see him having an internal debate, but she knew to say nothing and let him work it out for himself. Finally, he motioned her ahead of him.

Coral moved past. Part of her wanted him to talk her out of this. But they couldn’t avoid every person forever. Not everyone would have superior weapons. Not everyone would rape then cook her. She imagined Benjamin’s voice responding to that: “Yeah? It only takes one.” She looked behind every so often and saw him trailing her by a few dozen yards.

She wished he’d hang back further and stay entirely out of her sight and therefore out of the sight of any possible enemies. She was the one pressing for this, so she should take most of the risk. It was only fair.

The strangers’ trails led away in a slow curve, sometimes crossing the prints of the same boot marks going the other direction. Increasing tension made it hard for her to breathe normally. Hunger, and the hope she’d find food, drove her on.

Ahead, the trail led to the right toward a dark rock wall. Coral slowed, darting glances all around. The tracks converged again here. Soon they joined other tracks, some quite small, then there was a trampling of a circle of ground near the rock wall. Pressing herself against the wall, Coral moved forward more and more cautiously, glancing from time to time at the dark rock shapes looming over her, worried one of them would move and show itself to be a human with a rifle.

She studied the tracks, trying to figure out what they were telling her. Then she smelled something, something faintly metallic. She peered at the ground, saw a hint of darkness. Poking at it with her boot, she felt a thin layer of ice crack. Luckily, it broke with hardly a sound. Moisture pooled in the indentation her boot had left.

She realized, with a sharp intake of breath, that she was looking at a spring. Whoever the people were, they were camped near a water source. She went still and listened. A minute passed and nothing happened. Benjamin appeared out of the gloom behind her.

Waving him forward, she pointed at the ground. “You see the spring?” she whispered.

His voice was less than a whisper. “Shh.” He too scanned constantly around himself. She could see him straining to listen for approaching footsteps, or for voices. Holding up a hand to ask for her to wait, he crept around the area of the spring, moving in a widening circle away from it, bent far over, looking at the ground and studying the tracks.

He came back to her, leaned in, and breathed in her ear, “Three or four of them, at least one child.” He pointed with the rifle, mouthed, “From that way.”

They stared at each other, each waiting for the other to make a decision—go on, or turn back? At last, he shrugged and motioned her on.

She moved forward as quietly as she could, stopping to listen with held breath every few steps for voices ahead. A pile of fallen rocks jutted out from the wall and she had to skirt around it. From the trampling of snow, she knew the people had been here for a while, and she was drawing closer to their camp.

She edged around the outcropping and stopped, dumbstruck by what she saw.

On the sheer rock walls to her right, words were written across the rock, lots of words, a foot over her head. The rock was dark but the writing was darker. Drips from the letters had dried into teardrop shapes. Benjamin crept forward along the wall well behind her. She backed away from the wall to read the words. The first painted words read:

Lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon become as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth
.

She stepped to the side, reading. Then she looked around, thinking she might see the person who’d painted the message. But no one else was there. No sound came from ahead. Further along, there were more words:

The fire rained down and the third part of the trees were burned up and the third part of the grasses
.

She saw to a third grouping of words, a few steps on.

We have kept the commandments of God, and we are waiting for the last days, for our call to the blessed city
.

She kept walking, her eyes on the rocks, looking for more words. She stumbled over something.

Automatically, she threw her left hand out to catch herself. She hit the ground, her face staring into the dead eyes of a little girl. The body was covered with a dusting of snow. Coral’s impact has shaken most of the snow off the face, and the eyes were now uncovered, dull and iced over.

She didn’t realize she had made any sound. But she must have, for Benjamin ran over as Coral was pulling her legs away from a second body, the one she had tripped over. This one was a man, grown, his beard trimmed. Also dead.

Benjamin pulled the rifle, sighting down it, and turned in a slow circle, looking for enemies.

Coral backed away from the bodies. “I’m okay,” she said, as much to herself as to him.

“Sure?” he mouthed.

In answer, she gestured to the ground ahead. She could make out a third body and a forth now, lying all in a row in front of the rock wall. Two children. Two adults.

Cautiously, Benjamin approached. He stopped when he saw the other bodies, frowning. Then he did what she couldn’t bring herself to do, kneeling down and examining at the body of the man, brushing his face off then turning the stiffly frozen corpse this way and that. “He wasn’t shot,” he said into her ear. “No blood either. And there’s no meat carved off them.”

She opened her mouth, but no words came. Mutely, she pointed at the rock wall, and Benjamin grabbed his rifle and aimed at where she pointed. When he realized she hadn’t been pointing at a threat, his hands relaxed fractionally. She watched him scan the words.

“Revelation,” he whispered.

She shook her head, not understanding.

“The Bible. You know, the end of the world.”

“Oh.” A coughing fit took her. Damn, of all times. If others were around, that would bring them running. She pulled her sweater up over her head and tried to muffle the sound.

If anyone was around that would have surely brought them, but she and Benjamin remained alone.

When the coughing fit passed, and she had rearranged her clothes and pushed her mask away to spit out some ashy phlegm, she made herself walk back up the row of bodies and look more closely at each. A woman, around thirty years old. A boy, older than the girl. Call the kids nine and six years old. She risked speaking aloud. “It can’t be natural. They killed themselves. Or they killed their own children, then the adults killed themselves.”

“Look at the way they’re lined up. I wonder which one of them wanted it,” he said. “I wonder if the kids fought against it.”

What a horrible thought. She tried to imagine being a parent, holding a kid down while you—while you did whatever had been done here, to end its life. Her mind balked. “Why would they do such a thing?”

“Maybe they ran out of food.”

“But they had survived. And they had children. I thought parents would do anything to keep their kids alive.” Coral didn’t understand this at all. Was it a religious thing that she didn’t get?

She had barely glanced at the Bible or Koran, finding such a writing style tedious at best. At a friend’s urging in high school, she had made it all the way through the
Tao Te Ching
, which had the virtue of being short, and it was pleasantly devoid of hatred and violence and scenarios that violated the laws of physics, but it hadn’t changed her life or made any bright lights appear.