“He’s alone in there.”
“Yes, he is,” she agreed.
“He’s going to starve in there. He’s going to die.” Medic’s voice cracked as she said the words.
“Yes,” she agreed again. Her voice betrayed no emotion. “He is going to die.”
“We have to get him out,” said Medic, beginning to look desperate again.
“No,” she said. Medic stared at her, uncomprehending. “No, he does not have to come out. He has chosen.”
“But…” Medic didn’t even know how to argue her point. The pain was evident in Medic’s face, but she could not express it.
The boy had chosen. He did not want to come.
“But nothing,” she said. “Come on, it’s time to go.”
Medic pulled away. “No! We can’t leave him! We have to get him out—take him with us!”
Medic turned to begin pounding on the door again, but she stepped in front of her.
“Stop it,” she said. “Stop it now. No more noise, no more yelling. That boy has chosen. Yes, he will die in there. Maybe he knows it, and maybe he does not. But he will die out here, too, and he does not want to come with you. What will you do? Will you break into the house? Will you take him by force?”
“I might.” Anger flared in Medic’s eyes as she spoke.
She stepped forward, almost nose to nose with Medic. Medic was maybe an inch shorter, but seemed to shrink even more. She spoke in low and precise tones.
“And what will you do once you take him from here? Will you drag him down the street, crying and yelling the whole way? How long until the noise attracts something else? How long until his noise attracts any of the things we have seen, all out to kill us? Will he run fast enough? Will he keep up? Are you strong enough to carry him?”
Medic had no response. She just looked back, scared and desperate.
“He will not keep up, and you cannot carry him. He has made his choice. He will stay. Now, you must make your own choice. Will you stay here, on the porch, banging on this door until either he lets you in or something finds you? Will you die here with him? Or will you go now? She is leaving, and now you must choose. She thinks you should come. But everyone must make their own choice.”
The rest of the group had stood silently by during this exchange. Everyone, even the Professor, who seemed ready to engage in any debate, felt out of their depth. No one spoke up.
She turned, heading down the porch steps, and out to the street. Soon Bait, the Mule, and the Professor followed in silence. Then, with several glances back at the porch, Medic turned too, following the silent group across the front yard and down the street. Tears still ran down her face, but she came.
Medic jogged a few steps and had caught up with the group by the time they were into the street and turning to walk away from the house. The Professor put a hand on her shoulder, but nobody spoke.
Several paces out in front of the group, she began to guide them back to the highway, taking a long detour away from the school they had run from last night. Turning back to look behind them, she saw the curtains twitch in the house they had left behind.
Nobody else seemed to have noticed. She did not tell Medic and the others that the boy was watching them leave. They never saw him again.
It was a quiet group that tramped through the town of Sandy that day. They spent a good part of the morning scavenging, sneaking through town and into stores that looked likely to have things they might want. They found one gun store and two general department stores that had some camping and survival gear. Those that wanted were able to trade up to better backpacks, and they also found a good selection of rope, knives, matches, light-weight dishes and other items they judged they might need. Some of them had hoped to find better weapons, as in the whole group the only guns they had were her hunting rifle and the revolver from the farm that the Professor had stuffed into the bottom of his backpack. When questioned why it was under everything else where he wouldn’t be able to get at it, he admitted that he wasn’t comfortable with guns, and didn’t know if he could use it. Still, when others offered to take it and use it, he kept it—just in case.
All the guns were gone from the gun store, though, probably scavenged by survivors that had been through the stores in those first few, chaotic days. They did find enough ammunition for the two guns they had, but still she worried about how they would defend themselves—either from creatures or from humans they might encounter.
In a local ski shop, a few of them took nicer sleeping bags, but none of them wanted the warm coats or other, heavy cold-weather gear on display. Winter would come and they would need these things, but for now it was warm and nobody, not even the Mule, wanted to carry the extra weight. There would be other stores, later on.
The ski shop did give her one idea, though. She wondered how the monsters they met would deal with the cold of winter, especially on the slopes of Mount Hood, where winter was a snowy, frozen thing that even the most hardy adventurers only experienced in convenient day-long bursts of snowboarding, snowshoeing, or other winter sports, all of which ended with a hot meal and an evening in the lodge or back at home.
She was already headed for the mountain. But perhaps it would become a more purposeful and practical destination as winter approached. Again, though, it was warm now, and this seemed like a thought for later weeks, if they survived to those weeks—if they even survived the day in this eerie, empty town.
Usually people felt better in the day than they did while out in the darkness of night. Here, that was not the case. The eerie feeling of emptiness was even more pronounced now in the daylight. Not only did they not see another living sole that morning, but they did not see any sign of whatever had taken the population of the town, either. All morning the dog was quiet, too, not sensing anything in the area that inspired a warning growl. The sign at the edge of town had claimed a population of just under 10,000 people, but it seemed that the population was now just the six of them, if you counted the dog. Seven if you counted the boy hiding in his house. There had been hundreds of bodies in the school gymnasium—maybe thousands. But there hadn’t been ten thousand. Where were the good people of Sandy?
Perhaps her nervousness was a part of her urge to keep moving instead of settling down in one place as many others seemed to be doing. If she kept moving, she could delude herself that around the next bend, over the next hill, or in the next town she would find her normal, familiar world instead of this ghostly remnant of what once was.
That morning, she almost would have preferred if some many-legged, slavering thing had jumped out at them, or chased them out of a store. The waiting and wondering was eerie, and it affected them all. Walking through the streets they could hear every crunch of the gravel under their feet, and nothing else. In all the other towns and neighborhoods that she had passed through since the Fall, there had always been something: a barking dog, bird-song, or perhaps occasional signs of other humans—a slamming door, a walking figure seen in the distance, or even once in a while a scream or gunshots that made her turn and walk the other direction. Here, the dead silence made the town feel unreal.
The feeling was made worse by knowing that there were supposed to be sounds—the sounds of cars driving by, people talking, dogs barking, televisions and radios projecting their noise out of open doors and windows. These were the sounds that every town had, always. Instead, here there was nothing. They were all glad when they came to the edge of town and, following the same highway they had entered the town on, left the silent, brooding buildings behind them.
It was close to noon, probably, when they finally left town. They were well stocked and all a little more loaded down with the canned and dried food they had picked up. It amused her to note that the Mule, once again, had overloaded his large backpack and was already sweating under his load. He looked back at her defiantly, almost as if it was a point of pride.
No one had an urge to stop for lunch anywhere close to the town, so they all pulled thin
gs out of their backpacks and ate as they walked. Her lunch was some beef jerky sticks and half a box of crackers, shared with Bait. Even he was quiet as they ate and walked. The empty town had gotten to all of them.
As they walked, the Professor caught up to her at one point. She studiously ignored him, but he broke out into conversation anyway.
“I heard what you said to Medic last night, about not apologizing for being a woman, how she needs to stand up for herself in this new world.”
She did not respond, just looked ahead as she walked.
“I think you’re right. The Fall was a disaster, but maybe some good things can come of it. Things like maybe we don’t have to define people’s roles by their gender, or what they look like any more,” He trailed off for a moment.
“Anyway, thanks for what you said about her needing to stand up and be confident in herself. Coming from another woman, I think it really helped her.”
She considered continuing to ignore him, but wanted to make her motives clear. “She was not being helpful. She was just tired of the silliness. If a person is timid, or weak, they will die.”
“Still,” he replied with a wry smile. “It was helpful. Even if it was an accident.”
She frowned, and he gave her a satisfied smile, allowing her to pull away to the front again.
---
They were probably three or four miles outside of Sandy before the group started to relax a little. They kept alert and the dog stayed out front searching for danger, but nothing came of it. If they hadn’t known what each had been through in the past weeks, it might have felt like a pleasant afternoon hike.
At one point in the afternoon, she found herself walking next to the Mule. They had been walking along silently, which was how she preferred things, for quite a while when she happened to glance at him as her eyes roved over the woods to either side of the road. He was looking at her, but shifted his eyes forward quickly when she caught him. She continued to watch him, and he continued to stare forward, with only the occasional glance at her.
“What?” she finally asked. She was learning there was a limit to how much a person could avoid conversation when traveling with a group.
“What, what?” he responded.
“You’re looking at me, wondering something,” she said. “What is it?”
He walked along for a while, still looking ahead, looking like he was pondering his answer.
“What am I wondering about you?” he said, almost to himself. Then he spoke louder, addressing her directly. “OK, how about this? Back there, outside that house with the boy in it, and then last night, too, you stopped both the Professor and Medic from leaving our little group.” He stopped there, looking at her.
“So?” she asked.
“So? Well, so you haven’t seemed excited about any of us tagging along with you so far. And yet, when a couple of us wanted to go off on our own, you convinced them not to. Why?”
She looked at him for a moment, considering her words. “They are useful,” she said.
He arched his eyebrows, looking like he wanted more. But what more could there be? The Professor knew things, and he was a thinker. Maybe too much of a thinker sometimes, but still, it seemed a good thing to have around. And Medic had her medical training and her medical kit with her. What more, in the world they lived in now, could a person be other than useful? What higher compliment could there be?
She could see, though, that the Mule didn’t understand this, and she had no wish to explain herself to him. There was nothing she liked less than explaining herself—giving somebody that little window into her private motivations. She lengthened her stride, pulling away from him, and he let her go. He had gotten all the answer he was going to get.
By the end of the day, they were several miles down the road, had passed a few tiny, roadside towns without incident, and had moved into the Mount Hood National Forest, according to a brown, wooden sign by the roadside. There was another sign that said fire danger was moderate and that open fires were only allowed in designated camp sites, but she didn’t imagine there was anyone enforcing those rules today.
Dusk fell earlier in the forest than it did out in the open country, and just as she was noticing a growing dimness in the air, they came to a sign announcing a campground coming up on their right[12]. There was no sign of any useful houses around to take shelter in, so perhaps they would try out the camping gear they had picked up back in Sandy earlier that day.
“Ooo, camping!” exclaimed Bait, when he saw her turning in to the campground. “I like camping! Hey, did anyone pick up marshmallows?”
He looked around the group, but no one responded. They were all weary from a long day of walking.
“What, nobody?” he asked.
The dog trotted ahead of the group, putting its nose to the ground and sniffing around in the first few campsites, lifting his leg on the occasional bush or fern, and then moving on to the next site. The campground was laid out in a circle, with one paved road making a loop around which fifteen or twenty sites were scattered. The forest was thick here, tall fir trees looming over them with a mixture of ferns and other bushes on the ground, and she couldn’t see far into the trees. She did see what looked like a trailer or two in a few of the sites to the right, but there was no sign of other people.
The others filed into the campground, letting out weary sighs and beginning to remove their packs from their backs. She had her own pack half-way off of her back when suddenly she heard the dog barking in the distance. She pulled the pack back on, turning to squint into the growing dimness of the forest, but she saw neither the dog, nor what it was barking at.
She turned back to the group. “Backpacks on,” she ordered. “Get ready.”
Get ready for what, she didn’t know. But they listened, all beginning to stand up and shoulder the burdens they had just dropped.
A moment later the dog came tearing back, not coming down the camp road, but bursting right out of the underbrush in front of them. It must have gotten all the way to the other side of the campground before it found whatever had upset it. The dog skidded to a halt, spun, and began barking in the direction it had come from. It stood with its front legs spread out and its hind quarters raised, ears back flat against its head. Before the point where the dog’s neck hair disappeared under its armored vest, she could see its hackles were raised.
The others now stood again, all their weariness forgotten. They looked at one another, wondering what to do. Soon she could hear a crackling in the woods, as if something was moving through the forest—something large. It was getting louder, coming closer. The dog’s barking had increased in pace and volume, becoming almost one continuous roar, punctuated only by its need to stop for breath every few seconds. Still the noises from the forest grew louder, until they began to drown out the barking.
She turned to others, yelling “Run!” intending to head back out to the highway they had come from. But at that same moment something came crashing out of the inky dimness of the forest and across the camp road.
She couldn’t get a good picture of what it was. All she had was an overall impression of bigness. It thundered out of the forest, pushing whole trees over into the road as it went, moving across the road and ending up between the group and the highway. It was large—larger than anything she had seen before. That was all she saw as she turned away from it.
Glancing over her shoulder, she still couldn’t process what she was seeing. There was something odd about the anatomy of the thing—something off. Between the falling trees, the chaos of their flight, and the sheer strangeness of what she was seeing, her brain couldn’t make sense of what was pursuing them. It was incredibly large and thick, seeming to be the size of a small house. There were several great, thick legs propelling it along, and it was dark in color, either black or a dark brown. There was no time to study it further. There was only time to run.
“Run!” she yelled again, now turning away from the highway, and moving down the
camp road, deeper into the campground. Mule had already been on that side of their camp site, and was ahead of her now. After only a few steps, Bait came tearing by them both, speeding down the road and away from whatever was behind them. Turning to look over her shoulder, she saw the rest of the group running after her, and the dog still behind them all, now standing on the camp road facing what she could only call a beast, as it lumbered in his direction.
“Dog, come!” she yelled, but the dog only glanced back at her, then turned again to face the beast. Anyone could see it was a hopeless challenge. The dog was no bigger than one of the many feet that propelled the beast, and that would soon crush the dog if it didn’t move.
“Come!” she yelled again. “Dog! Run!” then with a sense of inspiration, “Ke mně!” At that the dog turned tail instantly, running back towards her and catching the group quickly. Soon it was jogging at her side, casting worried looks back at the beast as it lumbered after them.
“Běž!” she yelled then, and the dog tucked its ears back, lowering itself and lengthening its stride, passing them all and disappearing down the camp road. Good enough, she thought.
They all ran pell-mell down the camp road. Coming to the other side of the campground, she saw Bait, bouncing nervously up and down at the edge of the road. The dog stood beside him, and both were looking back to her as if for directions. From there the road curved back toward where they had entered the campground. Bait pointed off to his right.
“There’s a trail here!” he yelled. “The trail or the road? The trail or the road?”
“The trail!” she yelled. The beast seemed to be gaining on them a bit on the open road. Perhaps the forest would slow it some.
Bait took off down the trail, with the dog loping at his heels. She had just come to the start of the trail herself, when she saw Bait skid to a stop ahead of her, and turn back.
“Not a trail!” he yelled. “Just an outhouse!”
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