Coral had more sympathy for that than she wished. “I know. This place is doomed, but now? When people find out? There isn’t twenty-four hours of stability left here.”
“There ain’t four hours left here for me,” said Blake. “Sorry, Kathy. Good luck.” He thumped her shoulder and turned away, toward town.
“Don’t tell anyone else,” Coral called. “Please. Not until I have a chance to get away.”
He turned and continued to walk away backwards from them as he answered. “I’m not telling one single person. I’m getting while the getting is good.”
Coral forgot him immediately and turned again to Kathy. “Will you help me? At least—” She thought desperately. “At least give me your rifle so I have a fighting chance.”
“You a good shot?”
“I suck.”
“So three against one, and you trying not to hit Benjamin. Doesn’t sound like good odds.”
“Terrible.”
Kathy shook her head. “I never thought you appreciated what you had in that man.”
“But I do. And I’m sorry I can’t clone him and give you one. Truly, I am. I love him, and I won’t let him die today.”
“Neither will I.” Kathy slung her rifle over her shoulder and marched away. “We have a stop to make first.”
Coral was scurrying after her. “Food? I have a couple—”
“No. The weapons store. I need more ammo, and I need a weapon for you.”
“Thank you,” Coral said, catching up. “I owe you more than I can repay.”
“Don’t repay me yet. First, we have to catch up to them in time.”
Coral had been running on pure adrenaline since she had seen the meat on Chef’s counter. Now it was leaving her, and she felt shaky. The concern for Benjamin threatened to overwhelm her good sense.
Get hold of yourself. There’s work to do
. She tried to force slow, deep breaths. She had to be sharp, had to think, not panic.
“I know where the key to the armory is hidden,” said Kathy. “Never took advantage of that knowing until now, though. Never shared the secret. I guess that’s a good thing.”
“So Parnell didn’t keep it on him?”
“Only one key, too many people might need to get to it. Levi, Parnell, and two squad leaders know.”
“Not you?”
“Not officially, no.”
They walked in silence for two minutes, moving quickly but not yet running. Kathy said, “I can make it without a pack. But we’re bound to be out overnight. I need a sleeping bag.”
“My stuff is at the clinic. There are a couple blankets there for patients. Will that do?”
“It’ll have to.” She held up at the corner of a brick building. “Wait here, out of sight, until I check things.” She left Coral.
Coral waited a minute, and then another, wanting to look, but she made herself be still. A whistle sounded. She peeked around the corner and saw Kathy standing in front of a small building, waving her over to an open door. Coral scuttled across the distance and followed Kathy into a storage room. There were three rifles leaning against bare brick balls, one rack of five more, and wood boxes lining the floor.
Kathy opened a metal cabinet, with a squeak of tight hinges, and pulled out a handgun on a holster. She shucked off her jacket and put it on, then put her jacket on again without zipping it. Opening one of the metal boxes on the floor, she pulled out a small cardboard box of bullets and shoved them into her jacket pocket. Then she opened a different box. “For his rifle—Benjamin’s,” she said, and shoved that box into her left-hand pocket.
A third box held ammo for the handgun. That went into her pants’ pocket. She returned to the metal cabinet and reached into the dark depths and pulled out another long, thin....
Bow. Holy shit, a bow, a real one, manufactured, paint still bright. When Kathy handed it to Coral, she took it reverently. “I’m out of practice.”
“This is a recurve, a hunting bow. It’ll be different than what you’re used to. He said you made your own.”
“I did. Fumbled my way through.”
“Said you got good at it. He was proud of you.”
Coral fought back a rush of emotion. She could not break down. She had to get to him.
Had to
.
Kathy gave her a quiver of arrows, slammed the cabinet door and said, “Let’s move.”
“To the clinic.”
“Right. And we should hurry, in case Blake does talk.”
“Or Chef suspects and gets word to Levi.” She remembered the locked library. “At least he might be hard to find right now.”
“Not that hard. Let’s move.”
They skirted the center of town, but Kathy took them on a route that would keep them out of sight of the perimeter guards, too. Coral resented every second it took to get to the clinic, but she couldn’t run off without supplies.
“Go in the front, or sneak in the back?” Coral said.
“The back. We can’t know who’ll be in the waiting room.”
Coral pushed up the window and the two of them climbed into the empty, cold room. The little bundle of pilfered medical supplies was in a drawer. Coral shoved it into her burlap pack, rooted through to find her empty water bottles, and said, “I’ll be right back with the blankets and water.”
She heard Edith’s voice in one exam room and went into the other, grabbed the blankets there, and took them back to Kathy, who was pacing the room. “Hurry,” Kathy said.
“One sec.” Coral went back to the empty room. The town would fall apart now. Maybe by tonight. Riots? Overthrow of the city government? Shootouts? There was no reason to leave all these good medical supplies sitting here. The first opportunist would come and steal them.
Coral was going to be that first opportunist. She loaded her pockets with the pain pills, a bottle each of anesthetic and antibiotic, and a bottle of mercurochrome. She poured warm water into her bottles. She paused outside the room Edith was in, thought through an excuse for leaving, and as she was reaching for the door knob, remembered Abigail.
If the city didn’t fall apart before sundown, if somehow she and Kathy and Blake all got away unnoticed, everyone would sit down to dinner.
And Abigail could be eating a stew made of her dead husband.
No. Just...
no
. She went back to the exam room, tore a nearly-blank page out of one of the medical books, found a pencil stub, and wrote a note to Abigail. It was short and to the point.
Do not eat the meat they are serving. It is Doug. They murdered him. I’m sorry. Please, tell as many people at once as you can, to protect yourself. Otherwise, they’ll kill you to keep the cannibalism quiet.
She folded the note and tried to think of a way to seal it. There was white tape somewhere in the cabinet. She found it and sealed the note, addressed it to Abigail and left it on the counter, where Edith would be sure to see it. She knocked on the door to the other exam room.
“I’m sorry, but there’s a medical emergency out on the perimeter line. I need to grab a blanket here and get right out there.”
“Do you need me to help?” Edith had been talking to Claire, one of the women with the shakes.
Coral felt a rush of affection for Edith and on the heels of that, a wash of guilt. Guilt for leaving her. Guilt for not warning her. But she ignored it. “I can manage.”
She had closed the door when the woman with the shakes registered. What if...what if one of the dead people they’d been eating had had a prion disease? Shakes, being unable to move your toes: those were symptoms, right? It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, and it’d explain why such a young woman was presenting with symptoms otherwise seen in people in their 70’s and 80’s.
Benjamin.
The image of him hammered at her, pushing her to hurry. She had to get to him, but she couldn’t leave without giving Edith a chance to survive. And she might need some evidence to convince others, which a prion disease could provide. She went back, tore open her note, and added to it:
Hand this immediately to Edith.
Edith: Claire and Megan, they might have prion disease from eating infected human meat—or brain tissue. Get the word out, and then save yourself, please. It’s going to get ugly here very soon.
She taped the note back up and this time walked back into the other exam room with it in hand. “One more thing. Find Abigail before dinner.
Before.
Hand her this, watch her read it, make sure you read it after she does, okay?”
“What’s wrong?” Edith asked.
“Nothing. I need to hurry off to that injury now.” She pushed back an urge to give Edith a hug goodbye.
Benjamin.
Kathy was still pacing and looking angry. “What the hell are you doing for so long?”
Coral tossed her the extra blanket, and immediately she began to roll it up with the others.
“I’ll carry that for you. You keep your hands free for the rifle.”
“What took you so long?”
“I wanted to give Edith a note—the truth and some evidence to back it up.”
“Are you crazy?”
“The note is sealed. I told her to read it tonight.”
“What if she doesn’t wait?”
“She will.”
“It was stupid,” said Kathy.
“Maybe it was,” said Coral. But she felt less guilt for having done this one thing to help the friends she had made here before she went on her way. “Let’s go.”
“We’d better move fast.”
“We will.”
Kathy climbed out the window and Coral handed her pack out. She climbed down, pulling the window shut after her.
They set out for the eastern edge of town. When they came near the perimeter, Kathy said, “Let me go first and see who’s on patrol.”
“Okay.” Coral took the opportunity to sling the bag onto her back. Benjamin had rigged up a system of straps, and she had to think about it for a few seconds to see how it worked. She got it up and on her back. The old feeling of carrying a lot of weight on her back was partly a comfort for being familiar, but it was physically painful. In a couple hours, she’d be feeling it all over.
Kathy would outdistance her. On the other hand, Coral was more motivated, so she’d find a way to keep up.
Benjamin.
She was ready, and now it was her turn to be frustrated waiting for Kathy. She had decided to sneak forward and try to see what was going on when she heard the whistle again. She hurried forward and Kathy was waving an arm,
hurry, hurry
.
Kathy led them through broken-down buildings, down a well-worn path. Benjamin had probably left this way in the morning, with his executioner. Coral wondered if the other two men on the team were in on it or not. Probably not. The information was too dangerous to share it widely. It might be only Levi, Parnell, and Chef who knew.
In a few hours, everyone would know. A few might not care. If they’d stuck to culling the outcasts, or strangers, the town might have made it through the crisis. But people liked Doug. Convincing them that had been for the best was going to be impossible. Strategic error. Arrogance. Desperation?
Poor Doug. Poor Abigail. Poor everyone.
Kathy led her well beyond the edge of town before she said, very quietly, “I think we’re clear.”
“Where were the perimeter guards?”
“I told them Blake had gotten sick, and I had to abandon my post to get the doctor, and for one of them to cover our section.”
“Good thinking.”
“We need to stick to these beaten-down paths, make it harder for us to be followed.”
“If Levi figures it out back there, he’ll know exactly where I’m going.”
“If we get lucky, we’ll have a few hours head start. Very lucky, and they won’t guess until dinnertime. If it’s that late, they can’t follow us at night.”
“I hope we find Benjamin before nightfall.”
“Keep hoping. It depends how far they’ve gone. Let’s quit talking and keep our eyes and ears peeled.”
“Right,” said Coral.
For long hours they marched without stopping for anything but refilling their water bottles with snow each time they emptied one. The pounded-down path disappeared. The tracks of the four men were still clear, despite the light snow falling now, but if they couldn’t find them by nightfall, they might lose the tracks to a heavier snowfall.
Despite weariness, despite the weight of the pack on her back, she sped her steps until she had gotten ahead of Kathy.
The woman hissed at her, and Coral turned to wait, resenting every second.
When Kathy caught up, she leaned in and whispered, “You’re not paying attention.”
She was right. Coral hadn’t been. “Sorry,” she mouthed.
“You have to pace yourself anyway.” Kathy shook her head and went on at the same pace as before.
As she walked, she thought back through her experiences with Boise, from the moment Kathy and Martin had walked up on them.
She remembered this. People said they were the first wandering survivors to arrive in town in months. Coral suspected others had been found, too—but they had gone into the stewpot. A sour taste filled her mouth. She swished her mouth out with water and spat.
Regret or guilt for eating human meat was a self-indulgence she didn’t have time for right now. She had eaten what she had been served. If there was moral blame, she’d take her share—but hers was by no means the biggest portion.
Think about it later
.
It seemed clear that, had she not been a person with value to the community, she and Benjamin might have ended up in the stew pot, too. But if that were the case, if the teams of scavengers were scavenging for human meat, then that would mean that Kathy was one of them.
It would mean that nothing Coral had told her today was news to her.
She looked sidelong at the other woman. Was Kathy bringing her out here to kill her? She slowed down, let Kathy get ahead of her and waited until she was passing a boulder. “I need a bathroom break,” she said, not loudly, in case Parnell was just ahead and she would warn him of their approach.
Kathy heard her. She nodded and slipped off the path to do the same herself.
Behind the boulder, Coral dropped her pack, took the bow and quickly looked it over. It was more than half her own height. She strung it, fitted an arrow to the bowstring, drew it back to test the draw strength, and let it ease back. She peered around the boulder, and saw Kathy in the path, adjusting her clothes. Coral took a deep breath and stepped out, the arrow pointing right at the other woman.
Kathy glanced up and did a double-take.
“Are you in on this?” Coral said. “Were you hunting for human food when you found us a month back?”
“Put that down before you do something you’ll regret.” Kathy’s elbow lifted an inch.
“Don’t go for your rifle,” said Coral. “Or your holster. Don’t.”
“What the fuck are you doing, you stupid girl?”
“I’m trying to figure out if you’re in on it. There are scavenger teams of four. If they all are scavenging for human meat, then you know. If they aren’t, how has the human meat been getting back here? If you split into teams of two, at least two of you on each team knew.”
“Does that make sense?” Kathy said. “Look, when you met us, Doug was with Jamie. Say they were off hunting people while Martin and I looked for other supplies. If that were so, Doug would have been in on it, right?”
“He might have,” said Coral, but doubt had begun to creep in. It seemed so unlikely. True, she didn’t really know him, and he was a great shot by all accounts, but he didn’t seem the type. “People will do strange things when they’re desperate.”
“Do you think he’d have turned his back on Parnell out there if he knew?”
“Then the killing team was you and Martin.”
“Why didn’t we kill you?”
“Because you saw what I was doing. And you wanted a doctor.”
“We had Edith. As highly as you seem to think of yourself, you were not a big step up. And yeah, it influenced what we did with you. But mostly, you were asked to join us because you weren’t batshit crazy.” She shook her head in frustration. “Or so I thought. You have to stop this. Or kill me now and get it over with.”
Coral’s hand was steady. But she didn’t shoot the arrow. She was beginning to doubt herself.
“A minute ago, you were way ahead of me on the path. I could have drawn on you. I’m a good shot, honey. I’d have taken your head off your shoulders before you suspected anything was wrong.”
It was the most convincing argument she had heard. She let her arms drop. “Okay. I’m sorry. I had to know, though.”
“I don’t like you much, but I do like your husband. And I’m going to go rescue him now. Are you coming, or not?”
She hadn’t thought out the plan this far. She had been working out of terror, afraid to let a potential enemy live for one second longer. She hadn’t thought how Kathy might be more than a little pissed off at her for pointing a weapon at her. “Are you going to shoot me when my back is turned?”
“I don’t know. Are you going to shoot me?”
“No. And I apologize. But you can see how it looks.”
Kathy’s anger seemed to drain at that. “I can. I’ve been thinking about it as we hiked, too. Assuming we’ve been eating human meat all along, that it has been from solitary wanderers, or the people who died of that illness, or Deena or Will or Doug...”
“Who are Deena and Will?”
“The two who have gone missing in the past two months.”
“Right.”
“So somehow, Parnell must have gotten them alone.”
“Chef has to know.”
“Yeah, and Levi. But it’s possible that they are the only three who know for sure. Others suspected—obviously Blake has for a while.”
“Not you.”
“No.” Kathy’s posture eased, returned to normal. “I’m not in league with Parnell, and I was clueless about all this until a few hours ago. Now can we get back on the trail? I hope your attack of paranoia hasn’t cost Benjamin his life.”
Coral refused to let herself be goaded. She had to know about Kathy. And now she was reasonably sure she did. “Let’s go.”
“Side by side, if you don’t mind. But not too close. Humor me.”
Coral nodded.
They did not speak again until the light began to leach from the world. In the dimmer light, the tracks were getting harder to follow.
“We need to camp,” Kathy said finally.
“I know.” She had so hoped they’d find him before nightfall. Coral dropped the pack where she stood, folded her legs, and sat next to it. The fear for Benjamin came rushing back full force. She had failed him.
“Don’t wimp out on me now,” Kathy said.
“I’m not.”
“I wish we had a tent.”
“Snow cave,” said Coral. “Better anyway.” She spied a mound of snow that looked good, crawled around it most of the way so the opening wouldn’t be pointed toward the tracks they were following, and began to dig.
Kathy came over. “What can I do?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve done this a hundred times.”
“I can make dinner.”
“MREs are at the top of my pack.”
Coral dug fast, tunneling out a space big enough for the two of them, and smoothed and grooved the ceiling so that as they warmed the cave, the snow wouldn’t melt and drip on them. It felt strange to do this without Benjamin. She knew their patterns, the habits the two of them had developed over the months. She missed him. His absence was a deep, dark ache.
If she didn’t find him in time, it would get deeper and darker. She didn’t know if she’d survive the grief. She hadn’t thought about that, when she’d thought about being the last one standing. Even now, it was hard to focus through her worry, through her loneliness. Kathy did nothing to ease it. Coral was lonely for Benjamin, and no one else could fill that void.