Suddenly, startling them all, came a loud, obnoxious noise from the south end of the valley. Journey jumped up along with Gina. This was a sound they had been missing since the tunnel at the north end had collapsed. Both women had thought they had lost him, but the braying coming toward them affirmed they hadn’t. Gus was coming up the valley herding two large horses in front of him. Charlie leaped to his feet and stared.
“Oh my God, how is that possible? I don’t believe it.” He rushed forward toward the horses. “Jack, oh God, Walker. Oh, look at you guys.” He began patting them all over checking to make sure they weren't a vision. The two draft horses were thin, thinner than any of their horses, but they had somehow survived, and Gus had found them and brought them home. Journey cried while hugging Gus and telling him how great he was. As soon as he had enough attention, he turned and jogged to the foals and nuzzled them all over as if inspecting them.
One of the bay geldings wandered in behind Charlie’s, and Gina searched for the last two, but they didn’t appear. She felt a brief sadness, but the recovery of Gus and the two big horses softened the blow of losing all of them.
Journey inspected the three horses and doctored the scrapes and cuts that covered their bodies and legs, but declared them sound. They were thin, but would recover if they could find them some food. The other horses since their release from the cave had been stripping the bark from the trees and while the humans couldn’t imagine them surviving on tree bark, the horses ate it as fast as they could peel the strips off. As if wanting to show the newcomers how it was done, Sailor whinnied and pulled a branch down.
Gina sniffed and put an arm around Journey, “As much as I hate to admit it, I missed that guy. I didn’t understand how we could have lost him between the front of the cave and here. He must have smelled them or something and went to bring them home.”
Journey shook her head, “I didn’t realize how incomplete I was until he brayed. What an ass he is!”
They all laughed at the reference and moved back to the fire.
“Is it possible the snow was only here?” Joe asked.
“No way,” Sam told him. “As surreal as this whole experience has been, I can’t believe it only happened right here.”
“Well, it doesn’t make sense that Jack and Walker and that gelding could have survived as deep as the snow was here…. and the temperature? How did they live through it?”
They discussed the horses surviving the harsh winter they had experienced, and no one came up with a plausible explanation. The horses had survived, or at least some of them had, but they had no way of knowing how. The horses couldn’t tell them what had happened to them, but they were there, and that had to be good enough. They would never know the how or the why they had survived.
The fire was built up to ward off the chilly temperature, and one by one the people found their places to bed down. The women still crowded under the two sleeping bags, and the men spread out around the fire. They had decided it would be their last night in the valley and they were eager to move out.
Gina lay on the outside of Abby and felt her shoulders shake. She slid one arm around the girl and pulled her close. It appeared as if Abby was crying in her sleep and Gina’s heart broke for the girl. Gina was still trying to deal with her own feelings with Lucy’s death, and all that kept running through her mind was that she hoped it was fast and painless. Lucy had already had to deal with more pain, both emotional and physical during the last few years than some people ever experience. She had given her limb for her country and had been treated like a second-class citizen when she had come home an invalid. Lucy had been dealing with her depression long before she’d met Ben. Gina had never seen Lucy as animated or happy as she had been the last ten months and now she was gone.
Gina almost jerked her hand away when she felt someone's fingers grope for and then grab her own. Journey was three bodies away from her, with Abby, Sherry, and Olivia between them but Gina knew it had to be her. They had yet to talk about Lucy’s death, and while Journey was always ready to talk something to death when the opening arose, she had stayed away from this conversation.
Every one of them had lost someone close since this whole thing started and for a change, Journey was silent. Maybe like her, Journey wasn’t ready. Gina didn’t think she would ever be ready and it was all she could do to think about their losses without tearing up. With that thought, Gina turned her back to the others and slept.
Shaking woke her and Gina was ready to jump up and run until she realized it was a hand that was shaking her and not another quake. She sat up and blinked herself awake. Sam was kneeling in front of her with his finger to his lips. He tipped his head as if he wanted her to follow him and moved away. Gina pulled the covers back up over Oiliva and sat up. They had taken to leaving their clothes on, because it would be too hard and would take too long if they needed to move in a hurry, to find their things in the dark. The idea of removing her boots with as long as she’d been wearing them and the same socks would be offensive to not only her nostrils, but she was sure for everyone else too.
“What’s up? You couldn’t sleep?” She asked, walking up behind Sam who stood to look at the horses who were busy pulling at the brown grass.
“I did for a short while, I think. I can’t seem to shut my thoughts down long enough for sleep to do me any good.”
“And you wanted my company?”
He chuckled softly, “I did. I kind of got used to you sleeping beside me.”
He settled his arm across Gina’s shoulders and for the first time in days, Gina relished the comfort it gave her. With the turmoil of the last few days, she hadn’t realized how much she had come to depend on Sam to be there for her. Gina had always had a difficult time with relationships since losing her husband and daughter and then to find herself married to a man she’d barely just gotten to know was confusing at times. She still wondered how it had happened so quickly.
She stared up at the moon and thought about the eclipse, “Am I the only one who wasn’t freaked out at the eclipse? I still haven’t figured out if it was one and if not, what exactly was it.”
Sam shook his head and looked up, “I sure thought we’d seen the last sun that day, and for it to have lasted for as many days as it did, I thought we were done. I can’t explain it. Maybe the earthquakes knocked the earth off its axis, and this last quake knocked it back in line…something happened, but I guess we’ll never know.”
“Don’t you wonder how it would have ended if it hadn’t changed back? Do you think we could have survived it?”
He glanced at Gina, “No. I think we would have been a statistic someday, just like the dinosaurs. Someday, sometime in the future, someone would have found our bones and speculated as to what had killed us off just like we do when new bones are discovered.”
“Someone? You mean like aliens?”
“I mean something…how the heck can I know what species will be alive, a hundred thousand years from now, not even ten thousand years from now. Do you remember that song…I think it was by a duo called Zager and Evans,” he paused, thinking and then grinned, “It was called 2525, and I think it made number one on the Billboard chart for a few weeks.” He saw the puzzled look on Gina’s face. “Oh…I guess you weren’t even thought of in 1969.”
Gina pushed him, “Neither were you.”
“That’s true, you’re right, neither was I, but my mom had all these great 45’s from back then, and John and I about wore them records out listening to them. The lyrics from that song were almost a prediction of everything that’s happening or happened in the past few years. There was another one by the Rolling Stones, called, Mother’s little helpers. When I think of all the truth in either of those songs, it makes me wonder if this wasn’t some kind of a genetic cleansing.”
Gina laughed, “Now you’re starting to sound just a little paranoid. A cleansing? And perpetrated by whom?...God? The government? Who?”
“The way this is playing out, i
t wouldn’t be so hard to believe it was either or all of them, but think about it, pills to sleep, pills to wake up, pills to keep your heart beating and to turn kids into zombies. Test tube babies, cloning and GMO foods.” Sam was beginning to pace as he spoke and his voice had risen several octaves, “Computers do everything for us, including operate on us and build cars that we don’t even need a driver for. Hell, our children were so dependant on calculators they couldn’t do a math problem without one.” He stopped and faced her, “Do you realize that Sherry and Lucas knew how to operate a cell phone before I did? Every word of what has been happening is in those old songs.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sam, settle down before you wake everyone else up. They were just songs, not predictions of the future. Someone got lucky with their imagination when they were writing them is all. Look at some of the movies and books…imaginations wrote them all. This is coincidence and nothing more.”
“That may be, but one of us is right, and maybe we should be keeping a diary of what’s been going on here. Someday, someone might want to read about this, because everything would sure as hell would be newsworthy and thought-provoking. Hell, I don’t believe half of what happened. Unless we document it, the next generation or generations won’t have a clue how we got in this position or how to prevent it from happening again.”
Completely stressed out by his own words, Sam sank to his knees and turned his face away from Gina. By the shaking of his shoulders, he was crying without sound. Gina didn’t know which was the right thing to do, pretend she didn’t see him or offer comfort. She knelt down beside him and wrapped her arms around him. The comfort she could give, ignoring something as profound as Sam showing her his private hell, was not something she was prepared to do. It seemed as if the burden that Sam had been carrying around had finally found a release.
Gina had no idea how long they knelt there, but the first rays of the sun were coming over the top of the hill when Sam finally wiped his eyes and sat up, pulling away from her.
“Sorry, I don’t usually react like that with a pretty girl around. But damn, I sure do feel better.”
“Hey you two…come and eat, so we can get out of here.”
They turned and looked back. Everyone was up and busy doing something, whether it was sitting and sharing from the pot or packing their few possessions into the nylon bags.
The horses had wandered close, led by Sailor and Gina addressed something that had been on her mind, “We can’t ride those horses. Seeing them in the light of day makes me realize how thin they are and Charlie’s couldn’t carry any weight for very long.”
“Willy and Charlie already brought that up last night, and I agree. We’ll put halters on some of them and herd those that don’t follow. We need them, but for now, we’ll all walk.”
“Maybe when we get further south we’ll find grass for them or find out this storm was a localized event.”
Sam shrugged, “I hope you don’t expect me to have an answer for that because I don’t. The speed in which it set in and the speed it left has already boggled my mind, and right now, my mind is fragile…” He laughed at his humor.
“Yeah, about as fragile as a cactus,” Gina returned. As she walked, she thought about his words and realized he had admitted his own weakness. He had said it laughingly, but his words were the truth, and it pertained to all of them. They were all fragile and would be so for a long time. No one had had the chance to digest the changes in their world or the losses they had all sustained. She would try to remember when problems arose and tempers flared to act as compassionately as was dictated by the situation. If they all made an effort to be forgiving and charitable to each other as they expected to be shown them, their lives would be easier for all of them.
Chapter Seventeen
The few halters they had managed to pull from the rubble of the cave were distributed among the horses and lead ropes or twine attached. The two saddles they had were put onto Joe, and the Appy Sam had ridden and the bags tied across them and with the leather strips hanging down. When Journey tried to clip a lead rope onto Gus, he had pinned his ears and trotted to the back of the pack of animals. He bit Snowflake on her rump and brayed as if to say, “I’ve got this covered, lead the way.”
Sam and Willy started off while the rest of them dropped in wherever they wanted to walk. Gina stood to the side with Charlie and watched their sorry group of animals and people walk by. “We look like a troupe of traveling gypsies,” she said under her breath.
“More like homeless people without benefit of shopping carts or nomads,” Charlie said.
Gina chuckled and dropped in behind Gus. Sailor followed her with Charlie leading Jack. Walker, refusing to leave Jack’s side crowded close.
“Sure do wish you guys could talk,” Charlie mumbled.
“I think I’m glad they can’t, but it would be nice to know what happened outside the valley because something did. There’s no way those horses should have survived if the conditions were the same as we experienced.”
“I know. No one was more surprised than me the day they walked into camp. I didn’t expect to ever see them again.”
By the time the sun was overhead, they had passed through where the rock walls had once closed off their valley. There was no longer a drop-off or mountains blocking the way. Where they had expected to find a creek running, the same one that had drained the valley there was nothing, but gently rolling hills. The landscape looked more like the prairies than the Rocky Mountains.
Sam stopped, stared and waited for the rest of them to straggle up. He had no idea which way to go. They still hadn’t talked about exactly where they were going except they had all voted for going south. He wished for the dozenth time for a state map or even one of the cheap Wal~Mart map books, to show them the way. He hadn’t expected to see roads or highways, and he wasn’t disappointed, but there was nothing. No forests, no roads, and no familiar landmarks to give a direction or provide any indication where they were.
He laughed quietly when he realized the map wouldn’t tell them anything that he didn’t already know. The changes were dramatic, and landmarks had been erased or transformed to such an extent that a map would be useless. He figured they couldn’t count on the roads that had previously traversed the mountains and valleys across the state, to be where they were supposed to be if they still existed at all. He felt like Lewis or Clark must have felt, but at least they had an Indian guide to show them the way. All that his group had was the trajectory of the sun to show them east and west.
They hadn’t made it far, and already they were strung out for over half a mile, but Sam and Willy waited patiently for them to gather. Sam watched them move closer and shook his head. To Willy, he said, “We need to find fresh food. We won’t survive on the little jerky we have.”
“We got those damn chickens. Maybe it’s time to finish them off?”
Sam shook his head, “We need more sustenance than they could provide. And trust me, listening to Gina bitch if we killed them would not be something any of us would not want to put up with, and maybe she’s right. Someday we’ll probably be glad we have them. We need protein and carbohydrates, meat and vegetables, and so far we haven’t seen anything to shoot. This land used to be filled with Deer and Elk, Pheasant and Grouse.”
Willy scratched his chin, with the last of their razor blades long gone, he like the rest of them had given up shaving. He said his whiskers were a constant irritation and had taken to hacking them off with his pocket knife. “Do you think they all died off with the cold?”
“Charlie’s horses and the gelding didn’t. I still have no explanation for them being alive unless the frigid temperatures were contained inside the valley. When we escaped out the other side of the cave, there wasn’t any snow…I mean there was, but nothing like we experienced in the valley.”
Willy nodded, “that would have been impossible, unless, as we all know that cold air settles and what if all of the frigid air settled at the lowest poin
t? Maybe that point was the valley…”
Sam laughed, “Do you hear yourself? That is the most unlikely explanation I’ve ever heard.” He frowned and his expression changed. He pursed his lips and looked down, his chin tightened, “At least I think it is. Isn’t it?” He sighed as Lucas and Matt walked up.
“How do the two of you feel about hunting?”
Matt raised his head up and grinned, “Sure! What are we hunting for?”
Lucas shoved him aside, “Anything we can find stupid. Geez, Matt, use your head.”
Matt pushed him back, and Lucas stumbled. Before the situation could escalate, Sam stepped between the boys, “Enough.” He said holding his hands up. “Maybe we need to have Charlie and Joe do it?”
Lucas’s eyes widened and his face flushed, he glanced back to Abby. Lucas wanted to go hunting, but he’d rather take Abby with him. Not only was she a better shot than Matt, she knew how to be quiet. He and Abby had tried to give Matt and Olivia instruction on the art of sneaking, and while Oliva had caught on quickly, Matt hadn’t. He stepped where he shouldn’t and always forgot and raised his voice when he talked. Abby and Lucas liked to use the sign language that Willy had taught them, but Matt still hadn’t figured it out.
Sam seemed to have read his mind, “Sorry, it’s you and Matt this time.” He pulled his Glock from behind his back and held it out to Lucas.
“I’m good,” and patted his pocket. He was still carrying the 357 that Lucy had given him. She had told him he could use Gina’s ammunition as well as hers. While he could use the 38 bullets in his gun, Gina couldn’t use the 357 ammo in hers. Lucas had gladly taken it and kept it on him at all times. Sam had drilled that into all of them, so he had been surprised by the lack of firearms they now carried. He had understood not carrying the rifles in the cave, but didn’t understand how had anyone left their handguns off their person. He, Matt, Abby, and Olivia had made a habit of checking each other at the start of every day. They used to sit in the dark at the base of his flue and plan out scenarios where they would have to save the rest of their group from invaders.
Beyond the New Horizon: The Last Sun, Page 16