Gray (Book 1) (13 page)

By the time they were ready to set out in the morning, more fresh snow had fallen.

“It’s good for us,” said Benjamin, who put on the harness and began to haul the loaded sled.

Coral wasn’t so sure. “Walking in this stuff is hard work.”

She turned her back to look at the house one last time. A layer of snow pressed down on their carpet roof. She smiled as she remembered the day of nailing down the carpet, up there alone, her fear of heights conquered by necessity. Now snowdrifts climbed halfway up the remains of the walls. She wondered if the house would become entirely covered by the end of winter, looking only like another rise in the hillside beneath its snowy blanket.

In her darkest moments, she wondered if winter would ever end. Maybe this was the start of a new ice age.

A twinge of regret surprised her as she turned her back on the house for the last time. It had been her home for a month. She wondered how Benjamin felt. He hadn’t expressed regret at any point. He had just done the five days of preparation in a businesslike way. Now, he didn’t turn to look back at the house once. Not a sentimental man.

They moved west at first, heading uphill, Benjamin donning the harness and pulling from the front, and her staying behind, pushing at the weight of it when he needed her to. She had to wrestle the runners over obstacles from time to time, and each attempt left her panting far more than she thought she should.

When they switched out jobs, Coral found out that breaking a trail in the gray snow was just as labor-intensive. Walking was awkward, as each booted step sunk below the new snow’s surface and had to be yanked back out. She apologized for needing to stop so often—but she did need to, to catch her breath.

“It’s the chronic lack of food on top of the cold,” he said. “My heart is tripping in my chest, too.”

Breathing had not been easy for Coral since the ash had first filled the sky. Now she was wrestling with a sled that weighed ten times as much as the gear she had been carrying in her pack. This was a new level of effort. She sucked air through her mask, and twice she nearly blacked out and had to kneel and wait it out until the world swam into focus again.

Benjamin never complained, not at pulling, or pushing, or her need to rest. She bit back her complaints and tried to match his stoicism.

She pulled until she wanted to stop, until her shoulders and back ached from the harness and the cold gritty air stung her lungs with each gasp. Then she pulled some more, forcing herself beyond the point at which she swore she couldn’t go a step more.
If you keep pushing yourself, Coral, you can accomplish far more than you think you can
. Benjamin was the one who called a halt and made them switch jobs again.

“We’ll have easier going on the flats, like along the highways,” he said.

“What about on real mountains?”

“We’ll aim for passes, but it won’t be easy. Still, it’s going to be easier pulling a sled than packing it on our backs.”

“We will have to unload and pack it all over streams, I guess.”

“At the rate the temperature’s dropping, they’ll be frozen over before too long. We’ll pull it right over thick ice. Soon enough, we’ll be wanting to see running water, having to chip through ice to get to some, or find fuel to melt snow for drinking water.” His brows drew together in worry. “I wonder how cold it’s going to get. And how fast.”

When the light of the first day began to wane, they came to a new stream. Coral pulled out her fishing gear. While she fished without success, Benjamin dug for grubs. That’s what they ended up eating, handfuls of raw grubs, saving the bit of venison for breakfast.

The next morning, after another fruitless hour of fishing, they ate half of the venison that was left, barely two stringy, dry mouthfuls each.

Pulling the sled kept her warm that morning, and that was the only bit of praise she had for the work. As the ground rose, it grew rockier, and the sled runners started hitting rocks. Some boulders were invisible beneath the snow, yet the weight of the sled was enough to run it into obstacles that were just out of sight under the surface.

Benjamin was pulling again, she pushing, when the runner got caught between two hidden rocks. Coral had to haul back on the sled to free it and then wrestle it aside as Benjamin pulled it around the obstruction. He stopped and looked at the runners. “I’m going to have to straighten this one out,” he said.

They had to unload part of the sled to get to the box of tools he’d packed. Coral was amazed at Benjamin’s calm. She wanted to curse—throwing things about might feel good, too—but his placid acceptance of the setback kept her under control, too.

Finally. Benjamin was done hammering out the runner. They loaded the sled again, continuing their trudge along the course up the stream. Finally, he pointed to a “good enough” place to cross the now-shallow stream. Together, they lifted up the front of the sled to get it over a scattering of rocks on the bank. They pulled it over the muddy stream bed and up onto the opposite bank. Again, Benjamin stooped to examine the runners. Coral thought she would scream this time if they had to unload the sled again. But he said, “They’re fine,” and they were able to move on to the north after refilling all the water bottles, leaving this stream behind.

They crossed a new stream mid-afternoon, then backtracked to the east, following the stream downhill as it grew wider. Coral dropped her fishing line in again. This time, she was rewarded with two trout.

They each ate a raw fish that night, still saving the little bit of venison that remained. Her hunger at the end of the meal sent a chill of worry through Coral. Burning off this many calories, they were going to have to find themselves a more plentiful source of food soon. The cold alone was taxing their metabolisms more than they could afford. Her rope belt needed retying again, tighter than it needed to be just a week ago. She was thinner than she’d ever been, and when it wasn’t a matter of fashion, it wasn’t in any way good news. Calories were survival. Her own flesh was survival. And she wanted more of it to live off of.

They stopped at noon the next day. Finding food was more important than making another mile, he said, and she didn’t disagree. Coral fished the stream while Benjamin went off with his rifle and hunted for animal tracks. The first bite of a fish on her line sent relief coursing through her like a drug. They would have food, for another meal, at least. This stream was kinder to her than the last one had been. She caught six fish, one a decent sized rainbow. As she gutted the fish, she found her hands shaky with relief—or desperate hunger—and was glad Benjamin wasn’t there to see her weakness. Truth was, she was terrified all the time of dying, now that the possibility was so real. So near.

“I’m starving to death” wasn’t some exaggerated phrase she used before sitting down to a big family meal or a pizza with friends. It was the literal truth. These fish would stave off that fate for another day.

When the dim light was failing, Benjamin returned empty-handed. Seeing the fish piled on the snowy bank, he leaned down to squeeze her shoulder, in praise or thanks. Then he sat alongside her and cleaned his rifle before wrapping it back up and stowing it at the top their gear.

Sitting and fishing had been a cold job. Sitting and eating in the encroaching dark was colder still. She finally felt warm enough only when she had been wrapped securely in her sleeping bag for nearly an hour. Benjamin snored softly next to her. They were sleeping every night tucked under the loaded sled, snow piled up into a windbreak along three sides, for protection from the cold.

They kept going. Day after day they made their slow way. One day, without any food, not even grubs or worms, they built a fire with the little bit of wood they’d gathered along the way and made soup of the last leathery piece of venison. Over the course of a week, Coral would say there was maybe fifteen minutes when she wasn’t hungry—painfully hungry, and acutely aware of it.

They found the line of the state road and finally turned toward Pocatello, hungry, exhausted, and speaking little.

Benjamin decided to keep the road just within sight. “They’d have to chase us farther this way.”

She wasn’t sure who “they” were—there were still no signs of living people. As weak as she felt, “they” would be able to catch her with little effort. But as far as she knew, the two of them were the only people alive in the whole state of Idaho.

The road grew broader. Once again, they began to see an occasional car or truck pulled off or stalled in the center of the roadway.

“Where are the bodies?” she asked, as they left the sled behind a hillock and walked toward a spot where a pair of SUVs were angled off the road and abandoned. He didn’t answer. When they got there, she kicked around the edges of the cars and found no sign of bodies or bones. “Did they see the fire coming and just run in a panic?” she asked.

“You mean, turn off their cars and run from a wildfire on foot instead of driving away?”

She shook her head. “No, I know, that doesn’t make any sense at all.” Walking to the door of the nearer car, she pulled it open. It was unlocked. Nothing useful was inside. “Maybe one person would do something so irrational, but this is the hundredth car I’ve seen like this.”

“It has to be mechanical. The cars all died. Like you said yours did.”

“From what?”

He shrugged. “I guess the ash fall would eventually clog the air intake and stop them…but I don’t think that’s what happened. Whatever happened, I think it was sudden. Instantaneous.”

“That argues for an EMP, right? Like nuclear war, or a terrorist attack or something.” She opened a rear door and looked inside at the burned interior. The chances of finding canned food in a car were remote, but she had to look.

He was shaking his head when she turned back to him. “It has been weeks. We’d know if it were nukes. We’d have lost our hair and have sores and be bleeding and bruised all over, I think.”

She closed the car door again, then wondered why she had bothered—old habits, she supposed. “Where did they all go?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think they’re all dead? Burned up to nothing?”

“I think it might be better if they are.”

She wished he’d let up on the pessimism. “You mean, if they were alive, they’d be dangerous to us.”

“I think you and I have found each other, and we’re not violent or crazy, and we were both damned lucky for that. I’m not counting on any more luck from here on out.”

“I think I might have
gone
crazy if I hadn’t found someone to talk to,” she said.

As the next crossroads neared, he said, “Let’s detour down this side road and see if we can find any canned food in the ruins of houses or gas stations.”

“I don’t see any ruins of anything.”

“It was a pretty sizeable road. There has to be something. A ranch house or a gas station or something.”

They hunted down it all afternoon, both ways, finding some signs of burned homes but no food.

“We should get back to the stream. It still has fish in it,” she said.

“I’d give anything for some fruits or vegetables. Or baked beans. Or, hell, Spam. And I hate Spam.”

“Please, don’t.” Naming specific foods made it harder to bear the hunger.

They returned to the sled and aimed back for the stream, at this point a mile or so from the road. She caught enough fish to keep them alive, if barely, but none to take with them when they had to leave the stream to aim for Pocatello.

“Or we can stay with the water instead,” Benjamin said.

“I’d rather head toward town.”

He sighed. “I guess we need to try. But we need to be careful. I think we should approach at dawn, if we can, and then hurry back out before anyone sees us.”

She agreed. And for three days, they circled the town and did just that, darting in and scouting, rummaging through ruins, looking for food, and darting back out to the hidden sled before the day had grown very bright. They both carried rifles, and Coral carried her bow and arrows slung across her back, as well. They found plenty of human bones, but no living people. The second morning, they found a few cans of food in one burned out brick house, food that kept them on their feet for another day.

Benjamin shocked her by cracking open a human bone. “No marrow. Otherwise, I’d suggest we make soup of them,” he said. “But without marrow, there’d be no calories, I imagine.”

“I’m not quite ready for eating human bones,” Coral said.
But I’m getting close.

The fourth morning, both dizzy and weak with hunger, they finally had good luck.

Rounding a bend while Benjamin dawdled behind her, digging in the debris of what had been a gas station for useful items, she saw in the distance a large parking lot with over a hundred snow-splashed mounds, cars and pick-up trucks parked in neat rows. Behind it was the shell of a large building, still standing. As they neared, she could see the building was streaked with black and white, pitted concrete marked with fire and ice. She called for Benjamin.

“A factory?” he wondered aloud.

“I think,” she said, “I think maybe it’s a Walmart.”

He barked a laugh. “You’re right. So, Coral, you wanted civilization. Here it is. It’s the very definition of it.”