With that knowledge stabbing at the back of her mind, the hatred in her eyes melts away. Chris watches the transformation with glee. He’s finally won a battle against her and she knows it.
She says, “Nice to see you have a backbone.” There’s no menace in her voice and Chris realizes this is actually a compliment. Had she been testing him this whole time? Pressing him to see if he can actually protect her?
He can suddenly see the situation from her point of view. He doesn’t believe she knows how to hunt or survive on her own. Until recently, she had to have been relying on someone else for protection—and that’s gone now and all she’s left with is a scrawny loner that’s barely reached manhood.
He still doesn’t like her, but he does have a new appreciation for her situation. Just like him, she’s trying to survive—it’s just that her methods are different from his.
* * *
He takes a deep breath and holds out his hand to Remy. She reaches up to grab it, but before he pulls her up, he has something else to say to her. “Just so you know, Remy… I can survive on my own and I’ve come to realize that you can’t. You need me a lot more than I need you.”
“So…” She looks down, not really knowing what to say. She takes a deep breath and continues, “So why keep me around? Why not just kick me out?”
Chris pauses long enough to formulate a response. Why does he keep her? He decides honesty is always the best response. “Because I’ve been alone for several years now… maybe I realize that I need some form of companionship…”
She finishes his sentence for him, “… even if it’s me?”
He nods and pulls her to her feet. He says, “But know this, if you continue to test me…”
He leaves the threat unfinished. Her eyes search his and he can tell by the set of her gaze that she understands where he’s coming from. It’s her turn to nod.
“Good,” he says. “Now, grab a knife and come help me. We have a lot of meat to cook.”
Chapter Twelve
It doesn’t rain again until winter cold descends on the tiny peninsula along the Snake River. The fresh-water barrel Chris uses to collect rainwater is almost empty. He didn’t want to have to drink muddy river water, but he’s afraid that’s what is going to happen. The problem is, if the fish are tainted, are carriers of this disease, could it also be in the water?
All through the fall, he and Remy prepare the hut for winter. He teaches her how to make rope out of vines and how to use some of the rudimentary tools his father left him to make wooden beams and planks for the exterior and roof.
Remy brings her own skills to share: she shows Chris how to use a mixture of mud, clay, and leaves to make bricks. Working together, they cut a hole in one wall of the hut and erect a fireplace with a large enough opening to smoke meat.
For the most part, there are only a few Tainted to deal with during those cold winter months, and that is okay with Chris. He spends most of his days working on the hut or hunting, and Remy helps clean and prepare the food. When the first signs of cold weather come, they have a stockpile of dried meat, a stack of new pelts to keep them warm, and a refurbished hut to keep them dry—not to mention the new fireplace to keep the place warm.
However, Chris is far from comfortable. Outwardly, Remy has turned into everything he could want in a companion. She lets him screw her whenever the need arises—and he reciprocates when the desire takes her. Their coupling is by no means loving, but more like two wild animals acting on instinct. More often than not, a hint of violence and aggressive lust overshadow what should be passion.
But there are other things he has noticed about her than keep him on edge—just little things, but they are significant enough to worry him. He first takes notice when she begins taking an uncharacteristic interest in hunting and trapping. She wants to go out with him, beyond the Picket Fence, and have him teach her all that he knows. He convinces her to wait until spring. He needs to spend the next few weeks before winter gathering as much meat as possible and there is no time for teaching.
She agrees, but on several occasions, when he brings back meat and they both work on cutting it into strips, he glances over at her. She stares down at the knife as it catches the sunlight and reflects it back upon her face. Her eyes are unfocused—as if in her mind, she is somewhere far, far away.
At first, he doesn’t think anything of it, but he starts seeing her do this on many more occasions—as if she were daydreaming about using the knife on something other than dead flesh and cooking. What makes him think this way? On more than one occasion, she comes out of her fugue state and catches him looking. She immediately turns away, but not out of embarrassment. No, she isn’t embarrassed by her hidden thoughts—she is afraid he will read her homicidal mind and catch on to what she is doing.
She is using him to learn how to survive. Once she believes she knows enough to do it on her own, she’s going to cut him loose—and probably use one of his own knives to do it. Outwardly, they remain completely civil—inwardly, Chris knows there will come a time (probably sooner rather than later) where he’s going to have to make a life-or-death decision.
* * *
They huddle together in the cold, wrapped in layers of fur, hands extended to the new brick hearth.
“Where did you come from, Remy?” It’s a question that has crossed his mind on more than one occasion—but with the tension between them, the need to stock up for the winter, and days upon days of repairs to the hut, he never felt the time was right to ask. The past couple of days have been relatively civil between them so now seemed as good a time as any to ask. Her response confirms something he had suspected already.
“We came south from a little town called Carson’s Crossing… it’s a little over half a day’s walk from here.”
“We?” he prompts.
Flickering light from the flames teases the skin of her face and he catches a brief glimpse of her watering eyes before she palms the moisture away.
“We’d lived there for years… more than twenty of us. But one tragedy after another took the others one by one.” She turns to look at him. “Have you ever been that far from here?”
He shakes his head. “No, my father warned me against it.”
She turns back to the fire, pondering his response for a few seconds. “He was probably right in doing so… we were almost out of food and none of us knew very much about growing vegetables or hunting. We lived for years on canned food from a large grocery store.”
“Grocery store?” he asked.
She looks at him again, but this time there’s humor in her gaze. “You really need to get out more.” She shakes her head and the half-smile disappears. “A grocery store is a place where you can buy food. People like you bring meat from the woods, or vegetable from their gardens… the grocery store buys them then resells the product to people who do not have the capabilities to hunt or farm.
“Anyway, if you’ve never been beyond here, the land surrounding the town is quite different. About halfway between here and there, the trees end and there’s nothing but grassland.” She cocks a thumb over her shoulder to the east. “It’s a little like the floodplain on the other side of the river, but to the west of Carson there’s not a single tree for days.
“We survived, just the three of us—Austin, Mary, and myself—for almost a year. The three of us took turns stationed as lookout on the water tower near the center of town. From there we could see for miles and have plenty of advanced warning… you know… if any of the Tainted came for us.
“I still remember the day it happened… as if it were yesterday. Night was coming and my shift on the tower ended at sunset. Austin came to relieve me but I decided to stay with him for a few minutes before climbing down. At first, we thought it was a trick of the light. To the west, just this side of the horizon, a dark stain seemed to cover the ground.
“The next morning, Austin burst into the house where Mary and I were sleeping and started throwing together supplies i
n a blind panic. He’s shouting for us to get up… to wake up… that we have to get out, now!”
Remy’s voice cracks as she relives those events. She takes a deep, shuddering breath and continues, “We rush out of the house. I’ve never heard such a sound before: thousands of shuffling feet, the moaning, the groans… all echoing from the western edge of town.
“We made it out of town and started heading east on the road but before long, we started seeing more walking corpses coming from that direction too. Austin killed at least a dozen of them before finally realizing that there were two more for every one that he killed.
“We lost Mary on that road.”
Chris’s ears perk up. Something in her voice changes at the mention of Mary. Remy tries to hide it by snorting and wiping her eyes, but even by the dim fire, Chris can see the deep, shadowed crease between her eyebrows and the dancing eyes. He’s seen that look several times before—it’s a look that he’s grown to associate with Remy’s dark side… the side of her that tried to leave him in the forest that first day… the side of her that forced him to have sex with her—to steal his innocence. Whatever she has to say about Mary, he’s certain that it’s a lie. He files the information away in the back of his mind, saving it for a later day.
She sniffles again and continues her monologue: “They swarmed on Mary’s body like bees to honey, giving us time to run south toward the trees. If they followed us, they gave up or lost interest once we were concealed by the forest because we didn’t see another one for three or four days… the day you found me.”
“What happened to Austin?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know… he took off in the opposite direction to try and lead them away from me.”
Again, Chris can’t help but think she’s lying. If someone she knew for so long had tried to save her, why not mention before now? If she were truly concerned, shouldn’t she have told him after the Tainted ones were gone—that she would have pleaded with him to go look for him? That maybe, just maybe, he was able to survive the horde of corpses.
No. She never mentioned it once. Chris has a feeling she did to Austin exactly what she had tried to do to him—leave him to die while she made her escape. He’ll probably never know the whole truth to her story, but there’s enough there to cast a shadow of doubt—a shadow he won’t soon forget.
* * *
“What about you?” she asks.
He chuckles. “This is it. This hut, this river, this forest… it’s everything you need to know about me.”
“What about the people in the pictures?”
“Don’t know any of them. I assume they’re all family… at least, the two women in the picture are... but I’m not completely sure. For as long as I can remember it was just him and me.”
“You never asked your dad about the pictures?”
“I found the pictures long after he was gone… he hid them—buried them under a tree.”
He tells her about how he found the red box under the great oak tree on the edge of the river just before the tree fell.
“Damn,” she says.
“Yeah, damn,” he echoes.
She pulls him close and he doesn’t resist. The action sparks a memory of something his father once told him about making enemies: Keep them close.
Did his dad foresee something like this happening? Until he met Remy, Chris was beginning to believe that he might be the last truly living person on earth. He puts his arm around her and she puts her head on his shoulder.
Yeah, he thinks, I’m really going to have to keep one eye on Remy at all times.
* * *
Despite the snow, he has to go check the traps even though he knows they’ll be empty. He has to maintain hope. For years now, it had only been himself he had to fend for, now there were two mouths, and the food—what would have been plenty for him to survive on—is being depleted faster than he would have thought possible. Actually, more often than not, the traps are empty and he speculates that maybe something, or someone, other than him is taking their food.
He believed he had set an adequate rationing for the two of them, however, the food is almost gone. Is she eating it all while he’s gone? Is she deliberately sabotaging that which he worked so hard to preserve? Too bad these thoughts hadn’t occurred to him two months ago—even one month ago. At least he could have been keeping inventory on the dried meat he had stored away. However, the point is moot now that they are almost out.
For some reason, he doesn’t blame himself, but puts all the blame on his dad. Since Remy arrived, his dad has barely spoken a dozen sentences to him. His dad would have warned him about this and told him how it could have been avoided.
He wished to be rid of his father’s voice, but now that he’s been quiet for so long, Chris wants that wish back. He’d much rather deal with his dad’s dead voice than be constantly looking over his shoulder at Remy, wondering what she’s planning or worrying that one day, she’s going to fly off the handle.
The weight of the snow pulls at his feet with every step. If this year proves to match the last few years, the spring thaw will be here in a few weeks—maybe a month. When that happens, Remy is going to start asking about the traps again—about how to hunt. Once she feels comfortable that she’s learned all she needs to survive, his days will be numbered.
So why teach her anything? He asks himself that all the time and he’s still unable to answer his own question. Probably because she’ll turn on him faster? Kill him in his sleep once his usefulness is satisfied? Run away and leave him there?
No, he thinks. She won’t leave me alive.
If his suspicions about her past are correct, when she’s through with him, it will be a bloody end and he’ll probably never see it coming.
His father’s voice startles him, So why don’t you strike first, Chris? Be done with her before it ever comes to that.
Chris has asked himself that question as well, and the only conclusion he can come up with is that he can’t bring himself to kill another living person without just cause. So far, all his thoughts and fears toward her are unfounded speculation. Yes, she has done some things to him physically that are wrong, but were they worthy of death? No, he couldn’t do that. There are too few living in this world (and only two that he knows of) to try to justify killing off half the population.
He’ll just have to watch his back.
* * *
The round trip from the first trap to the last takes him twice as long as normal. The snow, the wind, and the penetrating cold make walking difficult. Near the end of the circuit, a surprise waits for him at the next-to-last trap. The struggling rabbit is thin and won’t have much meat, but at least it will provide enough food to fill their bellies.
He kills the rabbit, resets the trap, and then starts back toward Homestead.
* * *
The next few weeks are a study in suffering. Both he and Remy spend half the time cramping from hunger, and the other half huddled together in the hut, as close to the fire as possible. The snow has stopped, but icy winter winds gust relentlessly from the north.
Finally, there comes a day when the insulating gray cloud cover breaks and a brilliant patch of blue sky exposes itself above. The morning is still achingly cold, but as the day wears on and the clouds dissipate, the sun brings relieving warmth to the afternoon. That very afternoon, Chris brings down a deer with an arrow. The carcass weighs him down, especially in his weakened condition, but he isn’t going to leave any of that meat behind as he did with the large boar back before winter. No, he is bringing this kill home.
Remy won’t be expecting him back so soon and for the first time in a while, he looks forward to seeing her. He's killed a deer and they’ll be able to eat off it for at least a week. However, when he passes through the Picket Fence and edges by the female Guardians (who try their best to sink their teeth into the deer’s flesh) he hears something that perks his ears and tickles his curiosity. It is a sporadic thumping sound followed by a met
allic tinging noise—like metal striking a glancing blow across a piece of wood.
Despite the heavy load, he creeps down the trail and through the thin line of trees and underbrush. As he rounds the corner, the little hut comes into view. Remy is there, her back to him. In her left hand are several shiny, thin objects. She transfers one to her right hand, lifts it by her ear, and then throws it at the flat side of a log. The knife hits the center of the log with a solid thump. There are three more knives—the next two hit the target and stick, the last one hits the log awkwardly and falls to the ground.
Chris waits until she is gathering up the knives before speaking, making it appear as if he hasn’t seen what she’d been doing.
“Hey, Remy! Can you give me a hand?”
She jerks up, surprised at the sound of his voice. Chris stumbles under the load—making a good show of how much the carcass weights him down. She rushes over to help.
When she helps him get the heavy deer off his shoulders, Chris notices that the throwing knives are nowhere to be seen, hidden somewhere within the heavy pelts they’ve made these past few months.
Chapter Thirteen
She’s hiding something. There’s no other explanation. The knives are just the beginning and Chris suspects more.
They smoke and dry the entire deer that afternoon, not stopping even after the sun has long gone to sleep beyond the western horizon. While most of the meat smokes, he throws several thick cuts on a wire mesh. Attached to each corner, four metal poles help keep the meat suspended well above the flames so it won't burn.
They relish each bite, filling their bellies then shoveling in more on top. When their portions are gone, they settle onto their pelt bedding and just lie there, rubbing their swollen, cramping bellies.
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