She punched him. “I thought you were dead!” Then she fell over him and grabbed as much of him as she could, hugging him tightly to her.
“You should check Parnell,” he said. “Make sure.”
“Bastard. He had you out here to kill you, Benjamin.” She got up to make sure their enemy was dead.
“I kinda filled in the blanks on that.”
Coral tore at the fallen man’s jacket zipper and got her hand on Parnell’s neck. There was no pulse. She pushed open an eyelid and saw a fixed stare. Nothing was behind those eyes any more.
“Asshole,” she said to the body.
“He was doing what he thought was right,” said Benjamin. Then he turned to go to Kathy.
Coral trotted up behind him.
She had been shot. But she wasn’t dead. She was grazed. The wound went right along the side of her skull. Didn’t take more than a sliver of skin and a notch out the top of her ear, which was bleeding.
Benjamin got to his knees on one side of her while Coral did the same on the other side. “Idiot Parnell,” said Benjamin. “Always aim for center mass. Any fool knows that.”
“Maybe his hand was shaking too.” Hers was again as she checked to make sure Kathy was still alive. She was. Steady pulse. Pupils reactive to light. Even her breath was steady, coming out of her nostrils in a visible cloud.
“Never would have known you were nervous, standing there with the bow.”
“I was frantic! For a day! I thought we wouldn’t get here in time.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“She risked her life for you. I’ll do my damnedest to make sure she is.”
Just then, Kathy made a sound. Coral leaned forward. “Kathy? Can you hear me?”
“My head hurts.”
“Well, you got shot in it. So I guess it might.”
Kathy’s eyes popped open. “What?”
“Just a graze,” said Benjamin.
Kathy’s head jerked toward him. “You’re alive!”
“And so is everyone. Except Parnell.”
“There’s an outside chance,” said Kathy, “that the other two could have heard the gunfire.”
“I doubt it,” said Benjamin. “They left not long after dawn.”
“We passed them,” Coral said. “I hope they’re well away by now.”
Kathy groaned as she struggled up. “Still, they might have stopped to rest and heard. I’d like to get away from here ASAP.”
Benjamin helped her up. For a moment, she was unsteady, but when she had her balance, she pushed away from him and stood on her own.
Coral glanced over at Parnell. “What do we do with him?”
“Leave him,” Benjamin said.
“You sure?” Coral said.
Benjamin was obviously confused.
Kathy said, “She means, should we take the meat.”
Benjamin recoiled, and Coral felt relieved that he had. The world was harsh. It turned them into people they hadn’t been before, mostly for the worst. But a few—and Benjamin was one—it had not utterly ruined. He still had a moral center.
They went to the site where the men had left their gear, Kathy leaning on Benjamin as they walked. The tent was up. Benjamin’s rifle was there, and Parnell’s. There were still six MREs. With what Coral had, it could last the two of them several days.
Or the three of them a few days left.
It wouldn’t be an easy life, having Kathy with them. Not when she had a thing for Benjamin. Could Coral manage that?
Not easily. But they owed Kathy. “Will you come with us?” she asked Kathy.
She wasn’t sure which of them looked more surprised. “You’d want me?”
Coral nodded.
“Bullshit.”
“You’re a good soldier,” Coral said. “You’d pull your weight. And I know you’d do anything to protect Benjamin.”
Kathy glanced at Benjamin, who was staring at Coral like he’d never met her before. Somehow, it made Coral laugh. Then Kathy laughed too.
“No. But thank you. It’s a noble gesture on your part. Stupid, but noble.”
She was relieved Kathy was saying no. “Where will you go?”
“Back to Boise. See if there’s anything left of it. Help put it back together if there is.”
“You’d make a good replacement for Levi.”
“Wouldn’t want the job. I’d take Parnell’s though.” She winced and put her hand gingerly to her wound. “Don’t know if I can make it today.”
“You should probably rest up for a day. And let me put something on that.”
“I imagine the heat of the bullet cauterized it.” She looked at her glove’s fingers. “I don’t seem to be bleeding.”
“Your ear is. Which you’re missing a tiny bit of.”
She touched it and winced.
Benjamin said, “So what are you and I going to do?”
“We’re leaving,” said Coral. “Just as we planned. We can walk back tomorrow part way with Kathy. Make sure she’s okay.”
Kathy insisted they get going now, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Coral put a bandage on Kathy’s ear and doused the graze in her scalp with mercurochrome. They gathered the supplies here, including the tent. They retrieved the hatchet and the handgun off Parnell’s body, then swung by for Coral’s pack.
Kathy only made it a couple hours, but they got far away from Parnell’s body, leaving it lying uncovered for any scavengers who had survived the Event and the long winter—human or animal scavengers, didn’t matter much to Coral. Bugs would also be good. Bugs would eat the flesh, and bugs would feed the fish, and there’d be fish for the next person like her to come along next year to eat. It was nature’s way.
Kathy wanted the tent up, and she lay down in there alone while Coral and Benjamin dug a snow cave. He kept nagging her about asking Kathy along and what was she thinking, so she finally kissed him into silence.
The next day, they separated. Kathy let them have the two handguns. With the bow and Benjamin’s rifle and extra boxes of ammunition, they were better armed than they’d been in the eight months since the Event.
Coral reached to hug Kathy goodbye, but the woman stepped back and gave her a wry smile. “I wish you both the best.”
The two of them watched her walk away until she was out of sight.
“We should skirt the city,” Coral said. “I have no idea what’s been going on there the past two days, but I imagine it wasn’t nice.”
“Think we’ll run into people fleeing?”
“I think it’s a good possibility.”
“We have the woodcraft—so to speak, there being no woods—to avoid them.”
“Yeah, I hope. We should hunker down if we see anyone, let them pass.”
“So you’re not going to invite anyone else along?” He was teasing her.
“No,” she said. “And I’m done talking about that.”
“We’ll see.”
“Man, you are asking for it,” she said, nudging him.
“Two MREs per day, you think?”
“Sure,” she said. “Until we’re down to like four of them, then one.”
“You still have your fishing gear in there?”
“I do.”
“Good. My plan takes us by two lakes. I think the meals might last us to the first of them.”
They were a week on the road to the first lake. They saw only one group from the city, to the south of it. Coral watched them from behind a peak of snow drift and wondered how long they’d make it. She’d save everyone if she could.
But she would have a hard enough time saving the one person she cared about in this world.
Three days later, with a half-dozen trout in hand, they started a hard climb to the second lake. The air seemed thinner and colder. Or maybe the temperatures were still dropping. It was February.
“I hope this isn’t an ice age,” she said, as they dug the snow cave for the night three days after that. They’d made soup of fish bones from the first lake, and the old hunger had settled back on her. She was talking to distract herself from it.
“Humans survived the last one.”
“What’s the plan now?”
“After this, the land keeps rising into mountains. I was thinking, maybe we could find fish here, and stay here for the rest of the winter.”
“Winter could be two years. Or ten. Or ten thousand.”
“I doubt you and I will last ten thousand.”
Or two. But she didn’t say it. “Maybe the summer will warm things up. If the ice melts on the lake, the fish can feed. They’ll repopulate. We might be able to last for a while, if that happens.”
“We might.” Benjamin was able to live for the day. They were alive today, and that was what mattered most. Coral hoped she’d catch that attitude from him. Maybe she already had, a little.
She settled down to fish while Benjamin explored the area. It was the life she had been longing to get back to. And it was good.
Five days into it, Benjamin found the old man in his stone cabin.
For a month they stayed near the old man. His name was Jim, he was sick, and Coral got to expiate some of her guilt for abandoning Boise by nursing him. He had ice-fishing gear, and he talked her through how to use it. It helped improve her catch. She had enough fish to feed the three of them.
As the month wore on, he became sicker. Bad lungs, he explained, asbestos. The ash was only making it worse.
On the next to the last day, he had a terrible coughing fit while she was there. She hurried to his side and did her best to make him more comfortable. He had taught her a technique for clearing his lungs, slapping on his back with cupped hands, then on his chest. She tried it now, but it gave him no relief.
“Been trying,” he gasped. “The breathing.”
She nodded. He had a couple breathing techniques he could use, too. But they’d given him no relief.
“What can I do for you?”
He shook his head.
She sat with her hand on his arm while he fought his own body and tried to get enough breath to survive every minute. It was a battle, and she wished she could help, but the best she could do was sit and witness.
Finally, about an hour later, something seemed to clear, and he got some relief. He ran through a couple of his breathing tricks, and he seemed to rest more comfortably. But he was exhausted by the effort.
She tucked him in, and said, “Do you want soup?”
“Some stone tea.” It was what he called hot water.
She went outside and built up the fire from this morning’s embers. Most of Benjamin’s day was spent finding and hauling fuel. He swore that he’d be able to find enough fuel to last them a year. She thought he was being optimistic, but if he didn’t want her to worry, she would try not to. They could eat fish raw, easily enough.
Using a saucepan from the man’s kitchen, she heated up water until it was steaming, then carried the pan inside. She poured him a mug and herself one, then helped him sit up in bed so he could drink it.
It triggered some coughing, but he spat into a handkerchief, so it was useful coughing.
“I don’t know if I’ll make it much longer.”
She nodded. Pleasant lies weren’t necessary—or kind, she thought.
“I guess I better tell you this while I still can, then.”
She thought he was about to give a speech. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“I wasn’t intending to,” he snapped. Then he looked a little sheepish. “Or maybe I am, in a way. So I’ll tell you a story.”
“I like your stories,” she said, which wasn’t a lie. He had a wry humor she liked. She thought Benjamin might have ended up something like Jim, had the world not changed and he had kept to his hermit ways.
“When the heat passed, a few months back,” Jim began. Then he cocked his head at her. “What’s the date today?”
“March...twentieth, I think,” she said. Benjamin had kept track after Boise, and she let him be the official time keeper, so she might be a day or two off either way.
“Nine months, then?”
It surprised her to realize he was right. She nodded.
“When the heat passed, nine months ago, I went to check on my neighbors. There were a dozen cabins around the lake. One was stone, like mine. The rest were log or wood frame. No one had survived. But some of their gear had. Once I knew they were all gone, I figured I may as well have it as someone else finding it. So over the first month, before the snow started sticking, I hauled back things every day.”
“Sure. Makes sense.”
“Hush, now. I’m talking.” But he wasn’t saying it meanly.
Coral hushed.
“I have a root cellar. So did some of them. I cleared them all out, and I filled up my pantry, then put the rest in my cellar. The snows got deeper, I got sicker, and I quit digging down there to get more and worked my way through what I had brought up here. But there’s food down there. Plenty of it.”
“Oh.” If true, it’d give them more time. And nutrients. And much-missed variety.
“And if...well,
when
I pass, you and your man can have it. Won’t be doing me any good where I’m going. Probably to the hot place, all things considered.”
“I doubt it. But maybe your telling us about the food will change that.”
He shook his head. “I could have been a better man.”
“Who of us can’t say that? I could have done better, too. Been kinder. More generous. Listened to people. Befriended a lonely person. Found some way to help people along the way.”
“Staying alive’s the first thing. Can’t do no good works without being alive.”
“True,” she said. “So where is your root cellar?”
He hesitated. She could see him not wanting to give up this last piece of information.
No matter. She knew it was there. Benjamin could start shoveling snow and he’d find it, eventually. “It’s okay,” she said. “Rest, now. I’m going to get dinner started.”
The next afternoon, she came back from fishing, and the old man was dead. He must have had another bad spell. She should have been here. Probably nothing she could have done to help him, but she wished she had been here to keep him company while he passed from this life.
She checked his pulse again, checked his eyes, making sure he was gone. She wrapped him in a blanket and eased his body to the floor, then pulled it outside. He was thin and the effort wasn’t hard.
Benjamin had been digging for the root cellar for two days, starting outside the back door to the kitchen, which seemed the most logical place for it to be. There was plenty of snow piled up from that. Afternoons, he still went to gather fuel, and he was out doing that now.
The shovel was leaning against the cabin, and she picked a place twenty yards out from the cabin and began digging a hole in the snow. No way could she dig into the ground, which was frozen solid, but she’d get him down a ways in the snow, try to make it as respectful a burial as possible.
She had Jim buried and was packing snow around him when Benjamin came back.
He must have checked the cabin first. He came to her and put his arms around her. “He’s dead?”
“Yeah.”
He pulled back and studied her face. “You okay?”
“Sad, but not devastated. We didn’t know him long. But I did grow to like him.”
“You did good by him.”
She said, “I did little enough.”
“At least he had a friend before he died.”
That brought a lump to her throat. She turned and finished smoothing the grave, and handed the shovel to Benjamin. “I’ll get supper on.”
“I think I’ll work on finding the root cellar while you do, if that’s okay.”
“Good idea.”
It took him another three days. Benjamin came out to where she was fishing and said, “I found it.”
She jumped up, her heart thumping in excitement. “Really? What’s in it?”
“I thought I’d wait for you. It’s like a Christmas present. Seemed like we should open it together.”
She pulled Jim’s fishing gear out of the lake and followed him back to the cabin. There was an exposed hole in the ground, at the center of the back of the cabin. Benjamin went inside the cabin to get a crank flashlight the old man had kept by his bed. There were a couple steps missing at the top of the cellar entrance, so he lowered her down to where the first step was, held on while she made sure it was sturdy, then handed down the flashlight. He turned and slid himself down.
Together, they turned to look at the supplies. Shelves held cans, some still with the labels, and glass jars were filled with home-canned food. It was like a magical horde. There were even bags of root vegetables. Coral went to check one. Filled with potatoes, shriveled, with eyes, but not rotten.
“Jeez,” she said. “It’s months of food.”
“You keep catching fish like you have been, it’ll last a lot longer than that.”
“I had no idea it would be this much.”
“He told you he’d cleaned out a dozen places, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess out here, probably fifty miles from the nearest store, they kept more around.” He was shaking his head. “I guess I should have liked old Jim more.”
“You can tell him that, if you like. At his grave.”
“He’s not there.”
“No, but if it makes you feel better, it’s a place to say it.”
“I’ll say it to you. I’m in debt to the old man.”
“Let’s celebrate.”
“How?”
“Are you kidding? With food!”