“Why did you climb a maple tree when you were a kid?” she asked.
He turned to see his daughter standing at the base of the tree, spruce needles stuck in her hair and dusting her shoulders. He noted a small tear on the sleeve of her jacket.
“You’re safe,” he said.
“Yeah,” she replied, in a tone that said, Of course. “Why did you climb that maple tree?”
“I was…” He had to cast his memory back for a second. “I believe I was trying to rescue the neighbor’s cat.”
Tuck barked a laugh and flapped a hand in his direction. “There was no cat. He was showing off to his little buddies from down the street.”
“Okay, Dad, okay,” Greg said tightly. “Let’s drop it. Emma, what did you see up there?”
She turned to Eustace and said, “I spotted your pipeline. It’s almost looks like a…a scar or something cutting through the forest.”
Greg could tell by her tone of voice that she hadn’t meant this as an insult, but Eustace winced.
Scar, Greg thought. You chose the right word, Emma. Good job.
“It’s that way,” she continued, pointing off to her right. “Not far. It looked pretty big.”
“Oh yeah, she’s a beast,” Eustace said. “Good eye, kiddo. We’ll head off that way in the morning, guys. What do you say?”
“Best break camp right at sunrise,” Tuck said. “It’ll be a heck of a long day tomorrow, I imagine.”
And with that, the leathery old man turned and shuffled back toward his tent.
When Greg crawled out of the tent at first light, he’d already been awake a couple of hours. A long day of walking had worn on him, but the magnitude of what they were dealing with, of the long road ahead, of what his wife and son might be going through, had made it a restless night. He’d tried his best, tossing and turning until the forest around him emerged from the gloom. Then he’d given up any pretense of sleep and began packing up their gear for the long day ahead of them.
He made no attempt to be quiet, and the noise began to rouse the others. Tommy and Tuck had shared a tent, and they emerged together like two gnarled butterflies from the same cocoon. Then Eustace gave a deep rumble and joined them. Emma was last. She had finally removed the last remnants of makeup, and it made her look younger.
They ate a small breakfast in silence, everyone bleary-eyed and stinking, then tore down the tents and set off in the direction indicated by Emma. The ground here was carpeted with enough leaves, needles, and old twigs to give a bit of spring to each step.
Though Emma had pointed the way, Eustace quickly took the lead again, the compass in his left hand, the machete in his right. According to the compass, they were headed roughly southwest. Tuck and Tommy brought up the rear. They’d walked maybe a kilometer when Tommy suddenly called out and dashed to one side.
“Where you going?” Eustace said.
Tommy stopped and squatted down between two trees, pointing at something on the ground. “Guys, someone come and tell me if this is what I think it is.”
Greg and Emma walked up behind him. It didn’t take long to see what he’d spotted: a pile of animal droppings among the leaves. They were tubular and coiled, dark brown, and there was enough of them that Greg knew they had to have come from a large mammal of some kind.
“What do you say, guys?” Tommy asked. “Moose? Elk?”
But Emma stepped to one side and used the heel of her hiking boot to move some leaves aside. When she did, she uncovered a broad footprint in the soft soil. Five toes, with deep claw marks, the large toe on the outside. There was no mistaking it, and Greg’s stomach did a little flip-flop.
“Bear,” Greg said. “Definitely a bear. A big one.”
“And here, too,” Tommy said, pointing at shallow scratch marks on the side of one of the trees.
Eustace kicked leaves back over the footprint, as if the very sight of it made him nervous.
“Bears are supposed to be hibernating this time of year,” Tommy said, rising.
“No hibernating yet,” Emma said. “It’s still too early in the season. A lot of bears will still be looking for food to prepare for their long sleep.”
“We’re careful with our food,” Tuck said. “Keep everything packed away. If they don’t smell it, they won’t come rooting around for a snack.”
Despite Tuck’s words, his friend Tommy had a big smile on his face that suggested he was more excited than scared at the possibility.
“A big old grizzly bear,” he said. “I’ve heard about them all my life, but I’ve never seen one up close. This isn’t a zoo here, folks. This is real, raw nature.”
“I doubt a bear would attack a whole group of humans,” Emma said with a shrug. She was clearly trying to be encouraging.
“If it’s a mama bear with cubs, or if it’s sick, then it’s a danger,” Eustace said. “Fortunately, we’ve got protection.” He gestured to the hunting rifle which was slung through a strap on his pack. It was a sleek, black bolt-action rifle loaded with a .270 Winchester cartridge. Greg knew Tuck and Tabitha had one just like it back at their ranch, but he’d never fired the thing. He wasn’t sure what it would do to a furious, charging mama grizzly.
“Hopefully, it won’t come to that,” he said, rising. “Let’s keep going, guys.”
They all backed away from the bear scat like they were backing away from a shrine. Then they turned and resumed walking. They’d gone maybe ten meters when a new sound came to them on the wind. It was faint, at first, almost musical, like an old reed flute. But then it took shape, and Greg knew exactly what it was.
“Wolves howling,” he said.
12
A week! An entire week of stress and silence. Tabitha couldn’t believe it. She’d always been fiercely self-reliant, but still, surely the government would have come up with a solution to the problem by now. Every morning, she had the same experience of slowly remembering that she was waking up in a new, dead world and reaching over to try the lamp on the nightstand. It never worked.
They’re not going to fix it, she thought, as she pulled on her boots. We can’t count on the government to make everything better this time. It’s up to us.
She washed her face and hands in a basin of water she’d placed on her dresser, brushed her teeth, then headed downstairs. Just preparing a cup of hot coffee had become an ordeal since she had to get the woodstove burning, so she decided to skip it for now. She would heat up some water later. When she stepped outside, she found Darryl standing at a corner of the porch, the old Winchester rifle slung over his shoulder. Thus far, her grandson seemed to have handled the situation fairly well. He didn’t complain much and was always willing to help. Though he was often scowling, that wasn’t unusual. She’d always known him to be a bit brooding—a trait he shared with his grandfather, whether he realized it or not.
“Hey there, soldier,” Tabitha said, softly shutting the front door behind her. “I’m here to relieve you. How’d your watch go? Anything unusual happen?”
He gave her a funny look. Clearly, he didn’t find the pseudo-military talk particularly amusing, but he also seemed half-asleep. He set the rifle down on the porch handrail and rubbed his eyes with his hands. It was still predawn, with only a hint of light coming over the distant trees to the east.
“Absolutely nothing,” Darryl said, stifling a yawn. “Except the cows making a racket, of course. Do they ever sleep?”
They’d brought the electric fence even closer to the house, limiting the cattle to a small pasture beside the barn. Of course, it was no longer electric. Without power, it was little more than a flimsy wire fence that wouldn’t do much to keep cows in or people out. She knew eventually she would need to build a sturdier fence, but she lacked the materials. Tabitha could see some of the cows lounging near a corner of the barn in the dimness. A small gas lamp sat on a table near the porch steps, but Darryl had turned it down as low as it would go. Tabitha picked it up now and twisted to knob to give them a bit more lig
ht.
“That’s what I like to hear,” she said. “Another quiet night.”
The words were scarcely out of her mouth when she heard a loud scream from somewhere nearby. She nearly jumped out of her skin, dropping the lamp back onto the table, as Darryl flinched. The scream didn’t last long, but the echo continued to reverberate long and far. Distressed, the cows, began dashing about and stamping the ground.
Tabitha started to pick up the lantern again, then changed her mind and grabbed the Winchester instead. As she rushed down the porch steps, Darryl took the lantern and followed. The scream had come from the barn, she was sure of it. As she ran toward it, dashing across the gravel driveway, she raised the rifle and tried to set the butt again her shoulder. Holding and aiming it while running was awkward, forcing her to check her speed.
The cows had access to their pens from a sliding door at the back of the barn, but the bottle calves were kept in their own enclosed area in the barn. Tabitha decided to check there first, so she went through the front door and dashed across the large open storage area that took up the front half of the barn. As Darryl followed, bright lantern light sent her shadow cutting all the way across the room and up the far wall.
She moved through a gate to the cattle pens at the back of the barn. It didn’t take long to see the problem. Outside the first pen, a puddle of fresh blood glinted darkly in the lamplight. Tabitha squatted nearby and spotted what appeared to be animal tracks.
“It wasn’t a person screaming,” she said. “It was one of the calves.”
“One of the ones we rescued the other day?” Darryl asked, coming up beside her.
“I’m afraid so,” she said. She pointed at the trail of paw prints heading toward the sliding door. “Mountain lion. It was pretty bold to come right on property like that, especially so close to the house.”
“Poor little guy,” Darryl said. “What a way to go.”
“Girl,” she corrected. “It was a cow, not a bull. Either way, now the mountain lion knows the calves are an easy meal. It’ll keep coming back if we don’t find a way to stop it, and once the calves are gone, it’ll move on to the next prey.”
“The field mice?” Darryl said.
Tabitha shook her head. “The field mice are too small and hard to catch. The next prey will be…us. A person is a lot easier to catch and kill than a full-grown cow based on size alone. It takes a pretty big cat to take down a large heifer, but even a small mountain lion can take down a person.”
Neither Darryl nor Tabitha were particularly big. Her grandson took after his grandfather, with a wiry frame and smallish stature, and Tabitha had only gotten smaller over the years thanks to her bent back. She rose, set the Winchester over her shoulder, and began kicking dirt over the puddle of blood.
“What do we do?” Darryl said. “I’m not all that interested in being a snack for a desperate mountain lion.”
“You and me both, sonny,” Tabitha replied. “We’ll have to track down the animal and kill it. Otherwise, it will continue to be a problem for us, and since it found a nice meal today, it will be even bolder next time. I hate to shoot an innocent creature like that, especially when we don’t need it for meat, but I’m afraid it has become a very real threat to our safety. Come on.”
Once the blood had been covered by the dirt, she headed through the back door. The cows had scattered across the field, and she and Darryl spent the next hour or so rounding them up and coaxing them back into the barn. With no workers, it was a daily hassle milking all of the cows, so they went to work right away. The lack of electric milking machines meant she’d had to teach her grandson how to do it manually. They sat on stools with large buckets, like old-time farmers, though Tabitha kept the Winchester close at all times.
Sadly, despite all of the hard work, they’d already lost two cows to mastitis. Tabitha had worked hard for many years, and she thought she had a tremendous capacity for absorbing stress. However, she was really feeling it now. The constant pressing needs of the farm were weighing on her every waking moment until she almost felt sick with it.
The damned mountain lion is just one more thing to add to the ever-growing pile of problems, she thought sourly.
They worked until lunchtime, then headed back to the house. Marion had prepared some cold sandwiches and set out a bag of potato chips. Tabitha took her time, savoring each bite as she thought about the long afternoon that remained.
“Grandma, couldn’t we reintroduce the bottle calves to the moms?” Darryl asked. “That would save us a whole lot of work, and it might save the adult cows.”
Tabitha considered his suggestion. Theoretically, it could be done. “It may take work getting the moms to accept their calves,” she said, “but it’s worth a try. We’ll have fewer to milk. Plus, keeping the calves with the rest of the herd will provide them some protection from that big cat.”
“You have too many cows,” Marion noted, as she poured a big glass of iced tea. “Without workers, and without your usual supply chain, you won’t be able to keep up with them for long.”
It was a thought that had occurred to Tabitha, though she hadn’t wanted to speak it. She’d been holding on to the hope that the government would restore power before their situation slowly consumed her farm like a starved body eating itself from the inside. She took a big bite of her sandwich, chewed angrily, then washed it down with a gulp of iced tea.
“Well,” she said, setting her glass down roughly on the tabletop. “You’re probably right.”
“That’s a lot of hamburgers,” Darryl said.
He smiled when he said it, but she didn’t think he was really joking. After all, with the refrigerator and freezer incapacitated, they no longer had any meat. They were eating the last of it at that very moment.
“I’ve thought about it,” Tabitha said. “It’s better to slaughter them for meat than watch them die from mastitis or predators. Even if we use the meat for trade, we still need a place to store it. It’s getting colder outside, but we can’t bury meat in the snow. It’ll attract more predators. We could put the freezer outside in the cold and keep it locked shut. That might store some of the meat, but not all. Definitely not all. We’ve got too many head of cattle.”
“Could we smoke it or cure it?” Marion said.
“Possibly, but that’ll take a lot of work,” Tabitha replied. She could envision turning one of their small sheds outside into a smokehouse, though she wasn’t sure they had all the resources they would need to make the conversion. “Well, that’s not our biggest problem, anyway. If the power continues to stay out, sooner or later people in town are going to want what we have. Filmore already made his play at that damn town meeting. He hasn’t acted on it yet, but we’ve got the biggest dairy herd in the township. Eventually, Filmore and his cronies, and maybe other townsfolk working with them, are going to try to claim what we’ve got. Mark my words. They’ll say it’s for the common good, might even offer some pathetic compensation, but it won’t be optional.”
“Keep the cows in the barn,” Marion said, picking at her sandwich. She didn’t seem to have much appetite. Still worried sick about her husband. Poor Greg and Tuck were still up there on the mountain somewhere.
“We can’t lock up the cows,” Tabitha said. “They have to graze. They need pasture time.” She finished the last bite of her sandwich and took another long swig of tea.
“Build a fence,” Darryl said, piling chips inside the remaining half of his sandwich. “A really tall fence, with extra security features, like spikes on top and so on.”
It was a brilliant idea, though the amount of work it would take to build made her tired just thinking about it. Could they stay on top of milking the cows and still prioritize building a fence large enough to enclose enough grazing land for the cows?
“We have a shed full of scrap wood,” she noted. “Much of the wood from the old barn Tuck took down last year. He makes sure our tools are in good shape, and he’s got drawers full of nails—more nai
ls than you could use in a lifetime. We can’t use the electric post hole digger, of course, but there are manual diggers that’ll work just fine.”
As she thought about it, as she envisioned it, she got more excited about the prospect. A massive fence encircling the entire property would be ideal. She very much liked the idea of keeping out the world, but if they could just enclose the cows, it would be enough.
“That doesn’t solve the problem of storing meat and milk,” she said.
Darryl took a loud bite of his sandwich. He’d stuffed the chips in so high that they gushed out when he ate it.
“You know, Grandma,” he said, through a mouthful of food, “I might have an idea for that, too. Let me work it out a little bit, and I’ll get back to you.”
13
The natural gas pipeline was indeed as much of an eyesore as Greg had feared. The company had cleared trees on either side, which created a scar that slashed through the lush green of the forest. The pipeline itself was a dull gray, roughly ninety centimeters in diameter, and raised on enormous concrete posts. It followed the natural curve of the land, which meant following it wasn’t always as easy as Eustace had made it out to be. Still, it provided clear direction. No more meandering, no more sense of vertigo beneath the trees, or being turned around.
As the days passed, the landscape all flowed together. Only the slope seemed to change, though even this became a kind of rhythmic drudgery. They maintained the same order from day to day, with Eustace in the lead, holding the map, Greg and Emma behind him, and Tuck and Tommy generally bringing up the rear. Fortunately, they no longer had to push and slash their way through undergrowth or dense branches.
By the sixth day, resources were waning, they’d gone through most of their food, and their energy was flagging. With only a small amount of freeze-dried vegetables and trail mix left, they decided to set up camp early so they could search for water and food. Tommy, though he was near the back of the group, spotted some open ground near the top of a rise that seemed suitable as a campsite. They stumbled toward it and dumped their packs on the ground.
EMP: Return of the Wild West Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 9