by Wade Adrian
He continued gathering feathers. He had a second bag going now, the first tied to the tool cart. The woods provided quite a few more, almost to the point he was able to be picky, trying for flight feathers instead of whatever he could get. Most of them were brown or black. Not exactly great for finding the arrows again in the underbrush, but beggars, choosers, and all that. Maybe he could dye them or something.
They passed a line of old houses close to sunset. Baron called a halt. Ross didn’t argue, but he didn’t seem overjoyed either. Walls were walls, though, so it was hard to disagree. They had passed the place by without a thought last time, but they had been moving faster before. They had been fresh and well rested.
Camp was set up inside one of the more sturdy houses. It had a fireplace and a living room with two couches. Luxurious accommodations aside from the broken windows and bits of fire damage here and there.
There was still some light, so Smith wandered into a few of the other houses while the hunters were out doing their thing. Garages were filled with nothing or complete junk, as expected. World is going to shit, you get the heaviest tool you can find to whack people. If you don’t have any, you go to your neighbors garage. Repeat until nothing is left.
Fortunately that didn’t matter. He was stalking kitchen drawers. Most of them still had knives and silverware. Not even an afterthought when the world was burning. He gathered up all the spoons he could find.
“You’ve always been a bit odd, but that’s downright crazy.”
Smith looked up to see Morei leaning against the door jamb to the little kitchen. The living room of this house, visible over a counter, was open to the sky. He must have wandered in from there.
Smith shrugged and stuffed more spoons into his pockets. “Super important, I assure you.”
“Clearly.” He tilted his head. “You missed a few.”
“Those are silver.”
“Great. We’ll make werewolf bullets.”
“There’s a lot of things wrong with that statement.” Smith shook his head. “So I’ll skip explaining those by explaining these.” He held up a spoon before shoving it into his pocket. “Arrowheads. Minimal effort. Flatten it, trim a bit with snips, sharpen it. Stainless means it won’t corrode as fast as normal steel. These,” he picked up one of the silver spoons, “are useless to me. Silver is too soft to hold an edge.”
“Right. I forgot you make crazy shit. My bad.”
“Available resources.”
“Come again?”
Smith rolled his eyes. “I make things from available resources. It’s what one does anymore. Hardware stores, even the one we raided, are done. Gone. We picked up scraps. I can make bows. I can make arrows. But I’m not going to find a sporting goods store with screw in arrowheads or replacement flights, so I have to make those things. Or at least functional facsimiles. Thus spoons and feathers.”
Morei chuckled. “Just giving you a hard time, man. Chill.” He held up his rifle. “But I’ll take this any day.”
“How many rounds do you have left? You haven’t been pocketing your expended brass. No more blasting caps. No powder.” Smith held up a spoon. “I can make arrows. Bullets are a whole other bag of snakes. Very specialized parts. And the last thing you would want to do is load a round in there you weren’t sure of.”
The scout frowned a bit as he shouldered his rifle again. “I guess. But I’m not so great with a bow.”
“Practice makes perfect.”
“Thanks dad. It didn’t help with my clarinet.”
“You play the clarinet?”
“If you can call it that. My band teacher said I was abusing it.” He started for the open end of the building. “Come on, grubs up. Then we’ll need to bed down. Ross wants this shit show on the road as soon as there’s enough light.”
Smith closed the drawer… out of habit, really. Not like anybody would care. He picked his way over fallen bits of house as he followed Morei. “Winter is on its way. Days are going to just keep on getting shorter.”
“Yup. Expect the lunch breaks to get shorter right along with them, and the other rest breaks to stop existing.”
“Oh, good.”
“Just keep telling yourself we’re only a few days out.”
“How far out are we, really?”
“At this rate?” Morei shook his head. “We’re only a few days out.”
“I see.”
“Maybe a week. Probably a few days.”
“Huh.” Smith stumbled a bit getting out of the house. As far as he could tell, the night had taken every last shred of heat from the world. “Thought we were closer.”
“Cargo train is slower than men on foot. Go figure.”
The house provided a great night of peaceful rest. Rawlins and Timms got the couches, but cushions from other furniture were easy enough to drag up. Smith slept like a king in front of a fire, on a soft bed, under a warm blanket.
It ended all too soon.
The next three days were long and painful. Smith’s legs felt like jelly when they stopped. The leantos and tarp tents didn’t so much as threaten the cold, fires or not.
Morei’s answer never changed. A few days out. Two days later? A few days out. It was possible he really didn’t know, but Smith was pretty sure everyone but him and Timms knew exactly where they were and how long it was going to take. Probably a morale thing.
It wasn’t helping his morale. It was starting to piss him off.
When they had been traveling a few days, only a few days out apparently… a halt was called unexpectedly. Smith was leaning on his cart, trying to see what the scouts and hunters were huddled around.
They were talking about something. Raised voices. Disagreements. Huh. That was new.
“Tracks.” Rawlins muttered.
“Tracks?” Smith glanced around. “I don’t see any tracks. And I’m pretty sure no trains are running on time anyway.”
“Animal tracks.” Rawlins shook his head.
“Oh, right. Guess I got civilization back in my head. Sorry.”
Timms frowned. “Why would tracks bother them?”
Rawlins eyes swept the area. “Only reason I can think of is they don’t recognize them. Or they do, and it’s something bad. Either way, bad for us.”
Smith scratched as his beard. “I dunno. I could go for something a little more filling for dinner.”
“Yeah, that’s what the thing out there is thinking, too.”
Smith frowned. “Wait… a green eyed thing?”
“Maybe.”
Timms glanced back and forth. “Green eyed?”
Rawlins scoffed.
Smith just shook his head. “No one has seen one close enough to say what they are, really. I’ve seen eyes and claws a few times. Couldn’t tell you what they look like beyond that. Furry, scaly, bald, no clue.”
Timms blinked. “Jungle cats from a zoo, perhaps?”
Rawlins was watching the hunters and scouts. “That would explain one or two, but there’s lots of them around. Tracks are wrong for cats, too. Wrong for wolves. Wrong for bears…” He shrugged. “If we had any clue, we’d be calling them by a familiar name.”
A high pitched squeal escaped from Timms.
Smith patted him on the shoulder. “No worries. We’ve got a plethora of outdoors men. I’m sure they can handle it.” He cast his eyes at Rawlins, trying to make plain that he didn’t want the point argued. He was trying to help the little guy, not scare the life out of him.
Rawlins shrugged. “Maybe, yeah.”
Not exactly helpful, but it could have been worse.
The huddle broke up, scouts and hunters splitting up and wandering off at compass points and secondary compass points.
Morei gave a nod as he walked past them, his rifle in hand.
Baron and Ross stopped beside them. The hunter inclined his head toward the vague path they had been following. “Keep it moving. We’re with you. Eyes front for now, mind the road. Plenty of eyes watching everything else.
”
Rawlins nodded and got his cart moving again. Timms’ cart made ruts in the dirt, but it moved. Ross helped him.
Smith’s didn’t give him any trouble, but it was quite a bit lighter. The hard rubber tires were missing some chunks at this point. No more replacements to be had.
It was the longest day he could recall. There was no lunch break, just gnawing on dried meat as they trudged along, and no one to swap out pushing the carts. Baron and Ross wandered in and out, always close, but they had no time for such trivial things as pushing a cart. Smith spent part of the afternoon pushing his with one hand and helping drag Timms’ with the other. It was slow going… but they didn’t get eaten, so there was that.
Timms collapsed when a halt was called. Rawlins was a bit more dignified in simply slipping to the ground. Smith leaned on his cart like it was no big deal. In truth, he couldn’t feel his legs and didn’t trust himself to walk anywhere without the cart to hold him up.
One by one the scouts and hunters trickled in, each of them setting to work making the camp into something presentable. The carts were used as the basis for the tent this time, tarps on top to make a canopy and hanging down to cut some of the wind. It provided a good bit of room. A rake from Smith’s cart held up the center beside the fire pit. Sort of like an old circus tent.
It was strange how close everyone stayed. Most of them came back with small game for the fire. Rabbits and a few large birds. Water was getting scarce, but Ross assured him it would hold out. Not like there was a choice.
Noise was kept to a minimum, voices low and only when necessary.
Timms was white as a sheet.
Rawlins was already asleep.
Smith scrawled notes. The day was interesting and different, if a bit imposing. He sat with his back to his cart, the tarp tent overhead, the fire before him.
He was exhausted, but still as he could be, sleep didn’t come.
Most of the scouts were bedded down inside the tent. Three were outside. One by a second external fire meant exclusively to keep animals away, and another two doing rounds as a pair.
Baron and Ross were discussing something in hushed whispers when something rapped against the cart behind Smith.
34
His gun was in his hand faster than he would have thought possible. He clutched it tight. Only training drilled into his head as a child kept his finger off the trigger.
Baron held an empty hand up toward him. Stop, or wait, or maybe “calm down.”
Ross ducked out of the tent. Baron followed.
Smith sat a moment, unsure. Timms’ eyes were wide as saucers as he rocked back and forth, knees clutched up under his chin. Rawlins hadn’t woken up. He snored a bit.
Smith followed the others out, his gun still in hand.
The night was pitch black. No stars. No moon. Clouds overhead stole all the light away, save what little their fire provided. The tent behind him was lit from within, the little fire painting shadows on the inside that showed through.
Morei stood with Baron and Ross by the fire outside. Smith joined them. Safety in numbers and all that.
Baron gave him a nod. “We’ve got a visitor.”
“Or two.” Ross scoffed.
Smith frowned. “What?”
Morei pointed. “Watch the tree line there. You won’t see much. We never do. But it doesn’t seem to mind us knowing it’s out there.”
Smith tried to focus his eyes on that particular bit of darkness. It took a moment for them to adjust.
It all still just looked like darkness on darkness… until something moved.
Smith jumped back a step, his gun held up before him.
Baron gently laid a hand on his arm. “Lets not do anything we might regret.”
Ross nodded. “Pack hunters have a tendency to let you see one, give you something to focus on while others close in.” His eyes were not on the place Morei had pointed out, rather they swept the whole of their camp site. “It’s clearly not afraid of us.”
Smith tried to speak, but his voice didn’t come out. It took him a few moments to recover, and his voice was raspy when it did. “Will they attack?”
“Attack?” Ross raised an eyebrow at him. “They’re hunting, not storming a beach. It’s not the same thing.”
Baron chuckled softly. The sound was strange to Smith’s ears. They were pounding as his heart raced. “Right now, we’re fine. It sees us. We see it. Fear only benefits them, so calm yourself, Smith.”
“Right.” Smith nodded a few times, trying to take deeper breaths. “Right.”
“Grab some wood.” Ross tapped Smith on the shoulder and knelt down to pick up a thick branch from the fire. “Lets get another fire or two going. Let them know we’re onto them and we’re not going to make it easy. Best bet to keep them away is to be too much work.”
Smith did as he was told, snatching up an armload of firewood from the pile beside the tent. He set it down where Ross indicated, the opposite and rather dark side of the tent… before Ross casually knelt and rearranged the wood before setting it alight. Smith was preoccupied with sweeping his eyes around the dark. The sudden spark of light hurt his eyes.
Fire had always been Smith’s friend in his work, but now he realized it was a better friend than he had ever known. Light. Heat. Pain to the unwary. No wonder it was something man mastered so early on. By and large, they had taken some steps backwards toward that darker time of late, but fire was still with them.
The new source of light revealed green eyes watching their progress from the darkness opposite where they had spotted something before.
Smith scowled out at the darkness. “Yeah, I see you, asshole. Fuck off.”
Ross chuckled as the fire grew. “Very calm, good work.”
“Hey, you cope your way, I cope my way.”
“As long as your way doesn’t involve firing randomly into the woods, I’m okay with it.”
“I wouldn’t want to disrupt anyone’s beauty sleep.” Smith kept his gun trained on the green eyes, just the same. “How many do you think are out there?”
“A minimum of two.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Ross dusted off his hands as he stood up. “No real way of knowing. Not without piling up their corpses in the morning. More than a few and the tracks get muddied and unreliable.”
Smith frowned. “Wait, don’t we have people out there?”
“We do.” Ross nodded. “But they know their business.”
“Stuff like this happened, I used to just climb trees.”
“That works too… if you don’t mind being stuck in one place all night with nowhere to go when something finds you.”
“It sounds like a bad idea when you put it like that.”
“It is a bad idea.” Ross drew his own sidearm. “Sending our scouts out with the new rifles probably wasn’t bright either. Nobody’s perfect.”
Morei and Baron had a second new fire going, making three bright points of light surrounding the glowing tent. The scout had his rifle in hand. Baron held his bow at the ready.
Smith tried to take slow measured breaths as he kept an eye on the darkness. Green eyes continued to stare back, glinting with firelight, but that was all he could see out there. “I don’t like this.”
“You’re not supposed to.” Ross prodded the fire, making it spark up a bit taller. “They’re trying to unnerve you. Get you to make a mistake. A lion toying with a gazelle.”
Smith pulled his heavy bladed kukri with his left hand. “I don’t intend to go down like a gazelle.”
“Good.” Ross sat down, is back to one of the carts that made up the tent. “Might be a late night, though.”
Smith kept on turning, trying to see every direction at once. A spot of light caught his eye… from his cart. He moved a step closer and shifted the tarp a bit.
The solar lights were on. He stared at them like he’d never seen one before. He’d forgotten all about them. He plucked one up and moved his hand to cover th
e light sensor. The bulb lit up, almost bright enough to hurt his eyes.
“Heh.” He smiled at it. “Well, cool.” He moved his hand aside and let the bulb die down again, the firelight plenty to turn it off. “Think we can line the place with these?”
Ross looked up from where he sat. He tilted his head at the object in Smith’s hand. “Huh.” He stood up and took the light from Smith. “Definitely worth a shot. How tough do you think these are?”
“I dunno. Why?”
Ross hauled his arm back, Smith couldn’t move fast enough to stop him before he tossed the light. It sailed through the air, twisting end over end.
Bright light sprang from the bulb once it was free of the firelight. It landed a few feet from the shining green eyes watching them.
All Smith saw was gray fur before the thing moved away from the circle of light, its shining eyes vanishing in the gloom.
“Peekaboo.” Morei had his rifle pointed at the distant light, the scope up to his eye. “Lost it. Damn.”
Baron snatched up another light and tossed it out towards the first thing that had caught their eye. It was already gone when the light lit the ground.
Smith frowned. “You know, I’m not sure I can fix those… didn’t exactly pick up a soldering iron.”
Morei handed off his rifle to Ross and snatched up an arm load of lights. He walked away from the camp, at the edge of the firelight, and started making a circle by jamming them into the ground before returning to the tent empty handed.
“Lets see them sneak up on us now.”
It wasn’t exactly lit up like daylight, but they could certainly see for a good distance now, with no gaps to speak of. At least not large enough for one of those things to sneak through.
The scouting team returned a few minutes later, scratching their heads at all the new light. “Nothing to report, sir.”
Baron scoffed. “So they’re in it for the big score.”
Morei tilted his head. “Or they know what assault rifles are.”
Ross rolled his eyes. “Don’t be dense, they’re animals.”
“Just saying man, I bet lions out on safari learned to avoid guys with rifles.”
“Hmph.” Ross took one of the rifles. “Turn in. Morei and I have this.”