by Amy Briant
I took a deep breath. I knew how bad it was to be out of control like this. We had no margin for error left.
“Look, we both want food, water, fire and shelter. Right? So just tell me what you want to learn and I’ll show you.”
But she was still too angry to be reasonable. And her anger always made her cruel.
“Oh, I’m supposed to learn from you, but you have nothing to learn from me?”
That again. I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. I stared at her for a moment, then looked away, stung by her words.
At school, sometimes I thought I was the only one who ever read the books which had survived the bombing of the university campus. I was surprised then to find a group of the older girls surreptitiously passing around a tattered paperback held together with string. They didn’t notice me noticing, but they hid it from the boys and the teachers. An empty-headed junior left it in her bag one day and left the bag behind at lunchtime. The shabby little novel went home with me that weekend, where I showed it to Gran.
“Of all the damn things to survive the end of the world and we got Fabio,” she said, laughing her head off.
The book made about as much sense as Gran did. It was supposed to be about love, but it was all messed up, I thought. When I made up my own stories in my head about true love, the people were a lot less irritating.
A heck of a lot less irritating than Elinor Eastman.
Dinner that night was dandelions and a little lizard I roasted on a sharpened stick. Outside the dancing flames, the darkness was absolute, the chill and starry sky immense above us.
“And this is better than rabies stew,” I heard her mutter to herself as I offered her one half of a petite and well-done reptile.
Of all the damn things to survive the end of the world and we got sarcasm.
Chapter Thirty-seven
One For Her
Before I opened my eyes the next morning, I experienced those wonderful few fleeting seconds of simply being. No thoughts, no worries, no nagging emotions or sensations—just free-floating existence inside my head. I was alive. I was awake. I was me.
Then, those pesky thoughts and sensations crept back in. Gnawing hunger. The frosty nip in the air. I opened my eyes to see a new hole in the tent wall. I’d have to find a way to patch that. Although just about everything I owned, including my boots, had holes, so why should the tent be different?
I put on a few more layers of dirty clothes and my holey boots, trying to find something positive to think about. Maybe one of my snares had captured some breakfast. East was already out of the tent—not having to face her first thing in the morning was a plus. At least it was quiet.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
I nearly leaped out of my skin at the unexpected and violently loud sounds of nearby gunshots. I tore out of the tent like my hair was on fire—probably not the smartest move, but sometimes instinct takes over. East was a hundred feet away, calmly aiming a gun—my gun—at a small and inoffensive tree downslope.
“East!” I screamed.
She swung around, which meant she was pointing the gun at me. I dropped to the ground.
“Put the gun down!” was my next scream. In my head, I added the words you stupid fool!
She put the gun on the ground. I got up and ran over to her at top speed, thinking there was so much wrong with this scenario I hardly knew where to begin. One, she was using up precious ammo. Two, she was calling unnecessary attention to ourselves—any predator, human or beast, within half a mile or so must have heard those shots. Not to mention frightening any nearby game. Three, she had scared the shit out of me. And all of this before breakfast!
“What the fuck are you doing?” I demanded, angry and aghast. The fact that she was smiling and apparently self-satisfied only stoked my ire.
“You’re the one who told me to be more self-sufficient. Fine. I’m learning how to shoot the gun. Look—I think I hit that tree down there!”
She was proud of herself.
“Check it out,” she continued, bending down to pick up the weapon. I put my boot on it before she could reach it.
“Hey,” she said, irritated.
It was all I could do not to punch her in the face. My hands curled into fists at my sides. East noticed and backed up a step.
“Whoa,” she said. “Hey, I’m just trying to learn stuff like you said.”
“We have very little ammunition,” I said with my teeth gritted. I spoke slowly and with each word evenly spaced in an attempt to control the rage I was feeling. Rage that threatened to spill out of me if I wasn’t careful. “We can’t afford to waste it on target practice. Not to mention you just advertised our presence to everyone and everything within earshot.”
She glanced around, but seemed unconcerned. “No, no, it’s cool,” she insisted, smiling again—almost smirking. “I got it covered.”
Her bag was on the ground nearby. She knelt down to rummage through it, then turned to me, holding up a small box.
“See? We’ve got plenty of ammo.”
I grabbed the box out of her hands. “Where did you get this? When, I mean?”
“The night we left Tres Hermanas. Remember, we went by my tent to get my jacket? Buffalo had an emergency stash under her bed. You were so hyped up to leave, I couldn’t think what to take. So I just grabbed the bullets and some jerky and then we split.”
“You’ve got jerky?”
A pause.
“Well, no. I ate it. A while back.” She looked away.
She had hidden the jerky from me. And she was sharing a tent with Buffalo…
I shook my head like there was a flea in my ear. Shook away the unwelcome thoughts.
“Get up,” I told her. I all but threw the box of bullets at her feet.
“But, Kell…”
I could tell she didn’t get why I wasn’t excited about the ammunition. But she got I was pissed. “Take another look at the box, East. Wrong caliber—wrong size.”
“There’s different sizes?” She stared confusedly at the box while I checked the number of rounds left in the gun.
Two bullets left.
One for her. One for me.
Chapter Thirty-eight
An Old Friend
The gently sloping foothills became steeper foothills divided by wide and windswept valleys. A great fire had swept through the region in the not-too-distant past, leaving it barren and dismal. There was no smoke, no heat. Indeed, it was bitter cold and gusty with the land stripped bare of vegetation. The animals, even the insects, had fled the area. The occasional cawing of a crow was the only indicator of life besides us.
I grimly kept to my north-in-the-morning, east-in-the-afternoon schedule, but it was only because I had no other idea what to do. There was no question of trying to walk around the area that had burned—from the tops of hills, we’d seen it went on and on as far as the eye could see. So I stuck to my north/east plan. Slower and slower we paced the imaginary grid each day. The only destination we seemed to be nearing was starvation. Population zero.
Ever desolate, ever upward, the hills were leading us to a high ridge. Another half hour—make that an hour—and we would top it. I decided we would take our morning break there and see what the vista revealed. If the blaze had gone up and over the ridge for more than another day’s worth of walking…Well, there was no point in thinking about that. We were a good three days into the burn zone. Too late to turn back.
Our last meal had been the night before last—cattails from a small stream that replenished our water bottles.
Bottles that were close to empty now.
East had taken to wearing Mr. Giovanni’s stretched-out wool sock on her head as a hat. The chill wind tore the warmth from our bodies like a bird ripping meat from a carcass. The beautiful girl I remembered from school was barely recognizable. She must have lost twenty pounds on a frame that started out slender. I’m sure I looked no better. Gaunt, dirty, shivering. Cracked lips and matted hair.
The
wind was brutally raw at the top of the hill. There was little cover to protect us from its bite. East and I huddled amid the ruins of a stand of pine trees, somber charred fingers stretching toward a morose gray sky. The temperature had steadily dropped in the last forty-eight hours to below freezing at night and not much above it during the day. At least we hadn’t seen much snow. Yet.
There was no food left, but we each took a sip of water, neither of us speaking. There was nothing to say. What with the hunger pangs, the cold, the sheer mental fatigue of the never-ending parade of cheerless days—it was hard enough to think, let alone speak.
The panorama before us was bleak. The same stark desolation as was behind us. The fire that had raced through here days—weeks?—before had killed everything, erased it with smoke and flame and cinders.
The hill descended steeply to another meadow with its heather gray blanket of ash. Occasional rocky outcroppings dotted the slope. Another burnt-out hill lay beyond. The icy wind stirred the ashes at our feet into tiny dust devils. Dancing little dervishes, mocking us with their frivolity.
I had hoped, time and again, that the next ridge would show us the end of the fire’s destruction. The next ridge. And then the next one. That we’d be back to greenery and game. Food and water. Life.
This was it. It was too far to go back to where we’d entered the fire zone. We’d never make it. Our food was gone with no way of replenishing it. We had less than a day’s worth of water between us.
I had gambled and lost. I had killed us.
My legs suddenly gave way and I found myself on my knees in the ashes. Mumbling. Sobbing.
“I never should’ve brought you with me. Should’ve left you at Tres Hermanas with Nancy and Marta. You wanted to stay and I made you change your mind.”
East was staring at me with a mixture of shock and confusion. Like what are you doing down there, dumbass? Get up.
“Jesus Christ, East,” I cried. “Can’t you see we’re going to die out here?”
She clutched the collar of my jacket and yanked me to my feet so fast I thought I had levitated. And then promptly pushed me so hard I fell right back down.
“Don’t you dare,” she yelled at me. “Don’t you dare say that to me, Kell Dupont. It was my choice to come with you. MY CHOICE. Don’t you even think of giving up now, you little shit!”
She was towering over me, angrily shaking her first in my face. I scooted backward on my butt through the ashes, trying to find enough purchase to regain my feet. My hand brushed against a rock. I grabbed it and jumped up, holding it like a weapon.
I stared at East, her face distorted with rage, so haggard and thin. She looked like a stranger to me. But then an image of her flashed through my mind as I’d seen her on the school bus that day so long ago. Swaying down the aisle, trailing her fingertips over the backs of everyone’s seats, giving me just the glimmer of a nod…I looked at her, then down at the rock in my hand. I opened my fist and it fell to the ground.
East sank to her knees, much as I had a moment before. I could feel the Arctic wind in my eyes, in my lungs. It seemed particularly awful to know we would die in such a barren and frozen place, never to be warm again or see the ones we loved. I stumbled over and threw myself down beside her, my arms around her as tight as I could make them. A tear ran down my cheek and onto my neck. I didn’t know if it was hers or mine.
She said quietly, “I’m not stupid, you know. I know you think I’m stupid, but I’m not. I knew this was the only chance I had to ever see my brother again.”
“Oh, East,” I said, my heart aching. “I don’t think you’re stupid. In fact, I think you’re kind of wonderful.”
She leaned back to look at me.
“Kind of?” she said pointedly. Which brought a smile to my lips. And then hers.
“Kind of,” I said, shrugging. “In a way.”
“You ass, Dupont.”
She took a handful of ashes and released it over my head like confetti, then slowly climbed to her feet.
“I’m going to pee behind those rocks and then we’re going to go on, all right?”
“Okay,” I said, bent over trying to shake the ash out of my hair.
What else could we do?
Even in the few minutes we’d lingered there, the weather had worsened. An ominous mass of gray-white clouds now dominated the western horizon. Where had that come from? Overhead, smaller, darker clouds had formed. A few flakes spiraled down from the sullen sky. I put my tongue out. Hydration.
“Kell,” East said from behind the rocks. Her voice sounded odd.
“What?”
“C’mere.” Still that odd, flat tone.
As quietly as possible, I pulled out the gun. I warily approached the head-high rocks, dropping down to peer around the corner from ground level.
But there was no death awaiting me on the other side—at least not my own. East stood there, motionless, her arms hanging down by her sides as if she’d forgotten they were there. Staring down at something on the ground, her face looked drawn and white beneath the layers of grime. The pallor of shock.
A small plateau had been carved into the side of the hill with the rocks as its backdrop. It might have once been a pretty little spot, overlooking a green meadow. Maybe there were wildflowers. I tried to imagine it. Soft grass underneath our feet, lush trees, a view of the rolling hills surrounding us.
Now all was ashes. Wind and stone.
East stood staring at a grave. A stone marker that even the fire could not destroy. Someone with some skill had hammered an inscription into it: Sola Sanchez. Years of birth and death. Our teacher, our friend, it said. A horseshoe was affixed to the stone.
Miss Sanchez, the math and Spanish teacher who had joined Gabriel’s group as their Educator, chosen even more for her skill with horses than her undeniable knack for imparting knowledge. A woman of many talents. A young woman, now gone.
But they had been here! The first feeling of shock was passing quickly. They had been here! How long ago? A month? A year? I looked around desperately for any other hint of the group, but there was nothing. Not even a clue as to what direction they’d taken.
East knelt to brush the ashes away from the stone.
“It’s Miss Sanchez,” she said in a small voice.
“I know, East,” I told her gently. I reached down and put a hand under her elbow, easing her back to her feet.
“She was nice…”
“Yeah, she was. Come on, we gotta go.”
“But look, Kell—look!”
She pointed to where she’d cleared around the base of the marker. A tiny and tentative little sprout. Green life pushing upward from the ashes.
“Maybe it’s a sign,” she said hopefully.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, taking her hand and pulling her with me away from the grave, down the hill.
I didn’t believe in signs. My grandmother had taught me to believe in things that were real, things that meant something—a hot meal, a good book, a hug from someone you loved.
I believed we were going to die. Soon.
We camped that night halfway up the next ridge. Our energy had flagged mid-afternoon. We were out of water. The few snowflakes that had fallen were just that—few. Not enough to quench our thirst. We’d been unable to find any firewood, not even the half-blackened stumps that had sufficed so far. The numbing cold, the fierce wind and the steep terrain all conspired against us in our sorry state. We pitched the tent and huddled together inside for warmth. The wind was noisy, ripping and roaring through the night. East wanted to talk, but my exhausted silence finally shut her up.
I found a grim amusement in imagining Gran’s exasperation.
“You mean you survived all those bloodthirsty critters and crazy bastards just to poop out now?” she said in my head. “Just to die from…from nothing?”
I was miserable and ashamed and too tired to sleep.
Chapter Thirty-nine
The Compromise
We got
a late start the next morning, but what did it matter? For a fleeting moment, I thought about leaving the tent and all our gear behind. There almost didn’t seem to be any point in continuing to haul the extra weight. But then I caught East’s questioning eye. She was obviously curious as to why I wasn’t doing my usual pack-it-all-up-and-go routine. I couldn’t stand the thought of having to explain it to her, so I packed it up. Slowly. Every movement seemed to have its own aches and pains now, every breath a conscious effort.
There was less to pack than before. After the ammunition fiasco, we’d sat down one night to go through both packs together and take a careful inventory of our meager supplies. A few rotting or busted items well beyond repair got tossed. East wanted to start carrying the gun. We argued, then compromised. One of us would carry the tent and sleeping bags, the other would carry the gun, cooking gear and other implements, and the few clothes we weren’t wearing. The next day, we would switch.
It was my day for the tent and bags—I automatically made certain they were securely attached to my pack. It was good not to have them bouncing and banging against me as we picked our way up the dangerously steep incline, careful amongst ash and loose rocks. One wrong move and it would be a quick slide to disaster. It was no less cold than the day before, but the skies had cleared again to a delicate pale blue.
At the top, I was panting and faint with exertion, my mouth parched, my stomach twisting and empty. I leaned against a boulder, struggling to catch my breath. East lagged wearily behind, clearly hurting with each step. I reached out a shaking hand to pull her up the last stride. She looked wretched.
There was nothing but the sound of the wind and our heavy breathing for several minutes. Finally, she said, “It’s another burnt valley.”
“Yep,” I said, my head still hanging. It was an effort just to speak.
“We’ve gotta keep going,” she said. I didn’t bother to answer.
“I’m heading down,” she told me, tightening the straps of her pack. “Maybe there’s a creek in this valley.”
The fire hadn’t had much to feed on on this hill. It was mostly bare rock with a scruffy weed here and there clinging hard to its windswept face. The wind must have carried sparks and embers from the valley behind to the one in front of us, setting it alight as well.