by Schow, Ryan
He drew his gun, walked in, found the house empty, but no foul play. He holstered the weapon, then frowned. Climbing back in the Blazer, he drove to the one place he was sure his brother would be. Clay found him at Miranda’s grave, sitting on the overgrown grass next to Rowdy’s car seat. He sat down beside him.
Clay didn’t look at Boone; Boone didn’t look at him.
He glanced over at Rowdy, ran his finger over the child’s dimpled knuckles. Rowdy smiled, his little grin and gums on display.
Clay had let the dog off the leash, but looking at Rowdy now, he understood why he let the dog off the leash. The children needed to survive this world with their humanity. They were humankind’s future.
“There’s nothing we could have done,” Boone said, “right?”
His brother seldom spoke more than a few words when he was there, so the fact that he was speaking at all surprised Clay.
He looked at his brother, saw the tears standing in his eyes. Boone’s hair was long, and he had a beard he should have cut down two months ago. His fingernails were uncut and dirty, his clothes had that unwashed, mildewed smell, and he needed to brush his teeth. Clay never knew him to be like this. It was painful to watch.
“This isn’t the last of our troubles,” Clay said. “One day it’s going to be me, or you, or Otto, or any of us. Maybe even Rowdy.”
“Between those bees, the homestead and her chickens,” Boone said, wiping his eyes, “Stephani has plenty to do.”
“Stop this stupid train of thought,” Clay said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but brother, you need to be present in your life. You can’t be an absentee father anymore. Or an absentee brother. We’re all we have left of family in this life.”
He dropped his head, shook it slightly, then looked up at his brother with one eye, miffed. “Are you for real right now? Did you just say that?”
“What I didn’t tell you earlier was that Noah, Logan, Ryker and Skylar are going into California this afternoon. I thought it was tomorrow, but they’re going to check on the well first, then go. That means you and I will have to take a more active role in town. But you need stability in your home and in your mind if you’re to be right in the head when we need you.”
“And you’re right in the head?” Boone challenged.
“Of course not,” Clay said. “But I don’t have compassion. That’s what this long line down my face is. It’s the constant reminder of a broken brain.”
“Your brain isn’t broken,” Boone said, backing off a bit. “It’s just toughened up a bit.”
“Like a two dollar steak, or grandma’s gums. You remember those? She could take down cinder blocks with those things!”
They shared a much needed laugh as a slight breeze washed over them. The two brothers then sat in silence for awhile, Clay refusing to leave him, even though he could be other places, helping the way a good Sheriff should. When Boone stood up, he stood up. Instead of speaking, Boone turned and hugged him.
“We can’t forget our humanity,” he said.
“That’s why we must protect it to our very last breath,” Clay responded.
“I love you, brother,” Boone said.
“Love you, too.”
Clay wasn’t used to affection like this, so he wasn’t sure what to do with it. They were not close like that as kids, not with their parents, and not with each other. But for a moment, the proximity of family spurred a feeling inside of him that almost became whole. Then Boone let go and it was gone.
“Why are they heading down into California?” Boone asked as they walked to the vehicles.
“They need to see what they can find down there,” Clay said. “Hopefully they’ll find something of use—old vehicles, farming equipment, maybe just odds and ends stuff. I don’t know.”
“You think it’s smart of them?” Boone asked. “Going down there like that?”
“We talked about it a few days ago. They’re taking Noah’s old Geiger counter, too. We’ve all been afraid to address the issue of radioactive fallout, but I guess we’ll have it when they get back.”
“Do they have hazmat suits?” Boone asked, knowing the answer. Clay shook his head, still not sure how he felt about them going. “This isn’t very smart. And can we really afford to have them leave town?”
“Staying here and not knowing what kind of bombing run that was a few months back isn’t smart either,” Clay said. “If we’re already infected, we need to know about it. And if not, we can rest easy, at least on that front.”
“So these guys are leaving town, and you think Quan and maybe even Longwei and his men might be heading to Yale,” Boone said. “Does that mean it’s just going to be you and me keeping the lid on this place?”
“I was thinking we could run people through the Bronx murder scene,” Clay suggested, trying on an idea. “Let people sit with that as a sort of valium to everyone leaving. We don’t need any more villains in this town.”
“It’s not the town I’m worried about,” Boone said. “It’s the Chicoms. If they come back, are they going to take Rowdy from me next? You? Will they take me from Rowdy? I mean, if I die, he’s never going to know his parents.”
“I know,” Clay said, trying to calm him. “But if we don’t see what California looks like, if we don’t find out what the hell the state was bombed with, we might suffer the long term effects of radiation.”
“What does Noah’s Geiger counter say about us now?” Boone asked.
“So far, we’re clear.”
“So we’re probably fine then,” he said. “Make them stay here.”
“It was planned a few days ago,” Clay said.
“Well then, you might as well open the front doors and just let anyone in,” he groused.
“Kind of like you did to your own home?” Clay challenged.
“What?”
“You left your front door wide open,” he said.
“Oh.”
“Pull yourself together, brother.”
Chapter Nine
Felicity pedaled her bicycle away from the city of Roseburg, her lungs tightening, her thighs and calves warming up to a burn. She moved quickly, glad to put distance between her and the Chicoms, but she also felt sick thinking she was leaving her parents in a cage under communist control as well.
Looking over her shoulder at the trailer attached to her bike, she checked on her gear. It was all there, packed tight: a sleeping bag, a canvas, a yoga mat, the bug spray and the quick-setup pup tent. She also had hiking boots, a parka in case it rained, a few sticks of kindling and waterproof matches. She’d separated some of these items with a mostly clean cooking grate her parents had on their Webber grill out back. She’d also stashed as much food and water as she could both in the trailer and in the backpack she wore.
She wasn’t sure about the terrain ahead, or the state of her muscles on a long distance ride. Within an hour though, the strain in her muscles began to ease down. And it didn’t hurt that she had a long stretch of level ground. Or that the interstate was deserted, just as she prayed it would be.
After she and Clay walked the I5 from Salem to Roseburg with little interruption from the Chicoms, she prayed she could make it to Five Falls just as safely. With the exception of a few wild animals and a harmless transient, the day went slowly, but it also passed without incident.
She ended up having to stay the night just off the highway, up in the trees between Galesville and Wolf Creek. She thought she might be able to reach Wolf Creek and find shelter, but she remembered what her father said about staying out of populated areas.
Climbing up into the forest, away from the freeway, she unpacked the bike trailer, getting out what she needed in the order she needed it. First up was the Quechua two-man pop up tent. It was ultra compact and waterproof, and it stood forty-eight inches tall and had a mesh front so she wasn’t cut off from the outside world.
She opened it up and staked it, then set up her bed. It was a decent sized tent, with just enough room to
stow her bike and trailer inside. Sleeping would be cramped, but she wanted the things that mattered most at arm’s reach and in sight.
Before the last light of day burned off, she holstered her pistol next to her, kept her knife in a sheath on her other hip, then dug out a fire pit with a compact camp shovel. She made a circle of rocks around the pit, then found a large stone she could brush off and sit on.
Felicity quickly made a fire from some nearby timber, drank a little water, and sat back to take a load off her feet. Her calves and thighs hurt most. A hot bath would feel great right about now, she thought, but the promise of a good night’s sleep sounded just as good.
As she warmed herself by the fire, a memory popped into her head. She remembered sitting with Clay like this as they came down from Salem. She thought about him quite a bit after he left, never thinking she’d see him again.
When the sky was dark enough to bring out the starlight, she found herself nodding off. Finally, she crawled in the tent and slipped inside her sleeping bag, and then she set her pistol on her right side and the unsheathed blade on her left. She didn’t like sleeping next to an open blade, but she wasn’t one to toss and turn at night, so she decided to keep both weapons ready, just in case. As she lay there in the dark, listening to the sounds of the night and feeling so alone, so far away from home, she didn’t imagine she’d ever fall asleep, until she did. It didn’t last, though. Sometime later, she was jolted from her sleep to heavy rustling sounds outside.
With her ears perked up and her hands on her weapons, she listened to the noisy sounds of wildlife. Whatever was creating a ruckus was in her camp. Turning over and focusing on the soft light of the remaining embers, she estimated that an hour or so had passed. Quietly pulling herself forward for a better view, she turned over on her belly and brought the gun forward.
Her eyes adjusted to the light, her focus on the nearby creature. She was looking at something like an oversized American bulldog. It was sniffing around the camp, but this was no bulldog. This ugly little mutant thing, she realized, was a feral pig, or a wild boar. She started to worry. If it found its way to the tent, she could be in serious trouble. As it was, the creature was pushing its snout around in the dirt and headed her way.
Swallowing hard, a light sweat broke out on her brow, under her arms, and all along the nape of her neck. She slid her knife up front, pulled herself up to her elbows. Getting a better look outside, she wondered if she could scare the animal. But would the noise make her a target? The creature lifted its snout out of the dirt and wandered over to the embers.
That’s when her suspicions were confirmed.
This was a wild boar with a pair of gnarly looking tusks on either side of its flat snout. It shoved its nose back in the dirt, used it to kick up a stick, then sniffed around some more. The occasional popping of embers didn’t seem to scare it, but its curiosity peaked, as did Felicity’s anxiety.
Boar had poor eyesight; instead of their vision, they relied on their sense of smell and hearing. Felicity knew this, and that’s why she was moving slowly, ever so cautiously. Crossing her knife arm under her shooting arm, she used one for the other, balancing her weapon on a steady enough surface.
Her pulse doubled because she knew the crack of gunfire was going to hurt like a mother. The instant she lined up the shot, she must have set her feet wrong, for the sleeping bag rubbed the wrong way, alerting the boar to her presence.
The beast’s head shot up, its attention squarely upon the tent. Kicking up an immediate dust storm, the snorting demon charged around the fire and headed straight for the side of the tent. It moved so fast, she could hardly track it.
Scrambling for position, she was too late. The thing slammed into the side of the tent like a wrecking ball. It tore through half the fabric, falling into the side of the bike, half its fat body landing on her with thrashing front feet and the most insidious squeals.
It was destroying everything. Was one of its legs caught in the frame? Fortunately the bike created a barrier between her and the boar, but it wouldn’t be enough to slow this Tasmanian devil and she knew it.
She managed to get the pistol lined up right, and just as those flaying front hooves and knees started really taking a toll on her already kicked body, she fired two rounds into the thing.
It continued to squirm and squeal, but she couldn’t risk expending another round. The deafening blast rattled her brains, threw her equilibrium off. Instead of shooting it again, she struggled to free her knife from underneath her.
Trapped in a fetal position, she wiggled and pulled at the blade, the still wailing beast making any movement awkward and nearly impossible. With the smell of pig blood filling the tent, and the thing crushing her bones, she finally managed to catch the right angle. Jerking the blade free, she somehow managed to trace it over her thigh in the process. She felt the cut immediately. It was deep, but it wouldn’t stop her.
She quickly fell into a stabbing frenzy that would have made any prison inmate blush. She only stopped when the outburst sapped the last of her strength. The claustrophobia and the fear fueled her mania, for common sense told her you didn’t need to pin-cushion the thing to death, not as it was already in its death throes.
Reaching out, she felt along the length of it. She found its shoulder, moved her hand behind it, then raised the pistol one last time and shot it in the heart. It finally stopped moving. When she was choked with the rich stench of the dead animal’s blood, she made an attempt to wriggle out from underneath it and the toppled bike.
It was tough, her leg was now hurting, and the boar pretty much destroyed the tent. Pissed off, hurt, she grabbed hold of the sleeping bag and the yoga mat and yanked them both out in the dirt. After careful appraisal in the light of the glowing embers, she found most of the pig blood had soaked her clothes rather than the sleeping bag. Thank God! When she threw a decent sized piece of wood on the fire, she used the increased light to assess the carnage on the tent.
“Freaking swine,” she said under her breath, disgusted by this grotesque creature who just ruined her tent and what could have been a good night’s sleep.
Without thinking of her cut open leg, or wondering what she was dealing with there, she pulled the boar off the tent, wrestling with the impossible weight of it. In the dirt near the fire, Felicity turned the pig on its side, deciding it shouldn’t die for nothing.
She went into the forest, found more wood near a deadfall, then kicked and tore it loose and hauled it back to the campfire. The wood caught fire, the flames rising to the occasion. She then cut open the tent and pulled out the bike and trailer. From the trailer, she got the grill grate and set it up above the flames. Pulling the pig closer to the firelight, she let her eyes adjust, and then she went to work gutting it.
She cut the animal from neck to anus like her father taught her. Pulling back the skin, she ignored all the blood leaking out of its snout and mouth, and all the blood collecting inside the hide. Turning for a second, she dry heaved. Then, swallowing her stomach, she sloshed the blood out of the carcass with a cupped hand, giving her room to work. She turned and heaved a couple more times, but mostly because she didn’t have gloves, a proper flashlight or her father to help her with this. The reality of this situation was what had become truly horrifying.
Standing there before this half-opened pig, she felt the wetness in her thigh where she’d cut herself. The wound was bleeding freely, and really starting to hurt. She knew she needed to assess the injury, but her father would tell her to prioritize.
“One crisis at a time,” she muttered to herself. That’s what he used to say, and that’s what he’d say to her now.
When she peeled the boar’s skin back, she cut the windpipe, and then she sawed away the connecting tissue around the anus. Holding down the protein bar she ate for lunch, she grabbed the trunk of it and ripped it a bit here and there, loosening it up. Pushing through the revulsion, she returned to the windpipe, pulled it back, then jostled and jerked the
bag of guts away from the ribcage.
She stood up, looked at the thing, her eyes watering, her hands bloody, her leg throbbing with pain. Shaking her hands, trying to warm them up, Felicity started to cry. All she could think of were her parents, and how this shouldn’t be happening.
“Get back in there,” she muttered to herself.
Gingerly kneeling back down, she cut along the sides where the flesh was being stubborn. The work she put in further loosened the sack of guts. Kneeling forward too quickly sent a razor sharp bolt of lightening up her leg, forcing her to stand up straight.
In one determined burst, she ripped the entire bag of guts loose and tossed it up the hillside behind her. Off balance and pissed off, she staggered backwards a step and fell down on her butt. There she sat, huffing, bloody, on the edge of crying again. Looking down, illuminated by the firelight, she saw the gore all over her hands and clothes.
Something happened in that moment.
There was no way to truly say what happened, or why, but she started laughing at the absurdity of it all. But then the laughing quickly devolved into a fierce crying jag, one that didn’t last long because little girls cry and she told herself she wasn’t a child anymore.
“Get it together, Felicity,” she said, her nose stuffed, her cheeks stained with tears, her eyes swollen. Standing up, wanting to run away from all this, she looked down at the damn pig carcass and realized there was no where to run. She managed to calm herself enough to think straight. Every part of the animal mattered, right?
Every part matters.
Swallowing hard, she cut into the pig along the spine, went straight for the tenderloin. This being a good sized boar, the tenderloin was ample. She pulled off only what she was going to eat. Turning to the fire, she flopped the slab of meat on the grille, the blood sizzling in the embers.
While she left the meat to cook, she went and picked up the guts by the anal tube, walked into the forest twenty yards away, then tossed the squishy, stinking mess as far as she could.