“Cool,” Dinah said with little enthusiasm.
Dinah gave Michelle one of the carrots. Michelle rubbed it clean and ate it. Dinah ate the other two. They had no crunch to them and little flavor but the dust. Now she wanted water even more.
“Are we stopping here?” Michelle asked, but she looked down toward the valley as if she knew the answer.
Traveling off-road would mean pushing through lots of scrub and moving across broken and rocky ground. They stuck to the road. After walking for an hour, they came across four more homes. The sun now began to stir the fog aside, and the temperature was rising. They approached the closest house.
The structure had been built with scrap bricks in need of some real mortar in place of the crusted mud that filled the gaps between them. Dinah worried that a stiff breeze might send the entire place crashing down on top of her, but in spite of that she went inside. It was much the same as the first house, except the patterns in the dirt suggested something had recently made the place its den. There were chewed bits of rat bones and a depression in the dust in one corner. The air had an aroma of mustiness suggesting old, dried urine.
Michelle busied herself checking the bricks for hiding places. She pushed and prodded and pulled out broken pieces, but found nothing. She went to one of the windows and checked to see if the sill was loose. When the entire window shifted, she left it alone.
Dinah stuck her head into each room, but there was nothing. Then something caught her eye. Over at the neighboring house a small figure moved past the doorway. She waited, but whoever or whatever it was stayed out of sight.
“Someone’s watching us,” Dinah said.
Michelle came over and looked outside. “I don’t see anything.”
Dinah pointed. “In that house there.”
They waited for a few minutes, but saw nothing.
“We should go,” Michelle said.
“You’re probably right. But if that’s one of the hunters after us, why are they hiding? I’m going to go check it out. You can stay here.”
Michelle followed Dinah as they crossed a dirt field to the other home.
“Hello?” Dinah called. She saw footprints that might belong to a child. She knocked several times on the doorframe. “Hi, I’m Dinah. Me and my friend are passing through. We won’t hurt you.”
Inside, the house was cleaner than the last two. She didn’t see an obvious spot where anyone had been sleeping. There was a solid-looking stone chimney in the main room, an upgrade from either of the other places. She found the remains of a small cooking fire placed just in front of the fireplace on the floor. She poked the ashes. Slightly warm. There had been a fire here perhaps that morning, big enough to cook something small, small enough to not smoke out the house. But why build it just outside of a perfectly good fireplace and risk smoke inhalation?
“If there really was someone here, they’re gone now,” Michelle said as she emerged from one the bedrooms.
Dinah stepped into the fireplace. When she checked the stones at the base where the fire would normally be laid, she saw dirty fingerprints from small hands. One stone was loose and free of mortar. It pivoted easily enough, revealing a tunnel descending into the dirt. When she looked in, she saw a hand-sewn doll made from socks lying in the tunnel, no doubt recently dropped.
“Hello down there!” Dinah called. No one answered, but a long-unwashed body is a hard thing to hide. The smell reminded her of the goat pens. The tunnel wasn’t deep. If it didn’t take any turns, there was only one feature of the property in that direction.
“Don’t go down there,” Michelle said.
“Go outside and watch the outhouse.”
Michelle looked perplexed, but Dinah had made up her mind and didn’t bother trying to explain. Michelle gave up and went outside.
Dinah climbed down into the hole. “Please come out. We won’t hurt you.”
She could hear something scrambling away in the darkness. The walls of the earthen tunnel felt cool to the touch. She would have to elbow crawl to move forward. For a moment she just listened. From ahead came a faint scraping sound, and then Michelle was yelling something. The scraping sound came again. Michelle returned to the hole in the fireplace and said, “There’s a little boy in there.”
“Keep watch. I’m going to see if I can get him to come out.”
Dinah grabbed the doll. It was made of pilled-up cloth and had no remaining facial features. A few strands of thread hung loose from a seam down its center where buttons might have once been sewn. It had had eyes and a mouth at one time, but now it was a stained shadow of a human, a bipedal echo of a mother, father, or friend. She crawled forward into the dark, doll in hand. Small rocks jabbed at her elbows and knees. Movement was slow, and if she had to back up it would be very difficult. She expected at any moment to smell the outhouse, but whatever business had transacted there was far in the past.
She heard raspy, panicked breathing in front of her.
“Hi,” she said. She could see nothing. The darkness was absolute. “We wanted to see if you’re okay. It’s just me and my friend Michelle. There’s no one else with us that will hurt you.” When there came no change in the breathing, she added, “What’s your name?”
No answer. She had cornered this feral child in its den, and she started to doubt the good sense of this action. Even young humans had teeth and fingernails.
The breathing began to slow down. She heard something shift and come toward her. She began to back up. Her butt hit a low section of the tunnel that she didn’t remember being there, and for a moment she couldn’t move. Panic flooded her mind, making her want to move faster away, to flee toward the light, to strike out. She held her breath and forced herself to count numbers. Too easy. She needed something harder. What was 131,576 divided by 54? The numbers lined up. Her mind unfogged.
“I have your doll,” Dinah said.
She held the doll out in front of her. It was snatched from her grip. She sensed the child wasn’t far away, but not close enough to touch. She heard more shuffling, followed by a sucking sound. It took a moment to identify what it was, but it could only be one thing: the child was sucking its thumb.
“There, there,” she said. “See? I told you I wouldn’t hurt you. I’m going to back out of here and leave you alone. If you want to come up and say hello, we’ll be upstairs for a little while. Maybe then you can tell me your name. If you don’t want to talk, that’s okay too.”
No answer. She stretched her legs carefully behind her and was able to move back. Returning to the fireplace took even longer than she expected. Michelle helped her out.
“Are you okay?” Michelle asked. “Is it…is there…”
“I think it’s just one scared little boy. Maybe a girl. But he won’t come out right now. I don’t know if there’s anything we can do to help.”
Michelle nodded and gave the interior of the main room an appraisal. “Then there’s nothing here for us.”
Dinah glared at her. She found that she hated Michelle being right.
***
The last two homes were all picked through. The sun shined bright, and the remaining fog was settling into a low thin band down into the valley. Dinah saw a large circle of crows flying about in the distance. She had never seen so many birds in one place. Other larger birds weaved in the sky among the crows. By their droopy wings she identified them as vultures.
“Nothing good,” Dinah said.
Michelle watched the birds and looked worried. “The device you have. Can it tell us anything?”
“It doesn’t do that.”
“Then we should wait for dark before we keep going.”
Dinah considered the view and wanted to agree. “No. I’ll go scout it out. There’s enough of a tree line that I can hike further down with good cover and see what’s up. You can stay here if you’d like.”
This earned Dinah a disapproving look. Michelle said, “I’m not staying here.”
They left the road, trave
rsing about a mile of thick brush and rocks under cover of trees. More than once Dinah wanted to get back on the road and walk on level ground. Stickers bit into her ankles. Thorns tore at her arms and face. Both of them tripped several times. With each misstep, Dinah knew that they were making enough noise to attract attention if anyone was listening. They found no water. Dinah showed Michelle which grasses might have moisture, and they sucked on them and spat out the pulp. She browsed some depleted berry bushes and peeled the bark from one promising dead tree in search of grubs but came up empty. A couple of beetles were hiding under a rock, but Michelle wouldn’t touch them. Dinah ate them both.
Dinah could hear the chorus of flying crows before she could see anything. The staccato bird calls were the only sounds that broke the silence. The tree line terminated at a dilapidated low wooden fence. She had been to this village before when traveling with Karl. The villagers had several good common wells that supported their farms and which produced enough surplus for trade. Karl traded on his expertise in plumbing and water collection, as well as anything they couldn’t barter with their closer neighbors.
When Dinah had last seen it, the center of town was a collection of bright two-story wooden buildings of newer construction. From the tree line, the buildings were dark shadows in the haze. The smell of smoke reached them, mixed with the unmistakable odor of cooked meat.
Michelle stopped to sit against a tree. She was trembling.
“This is just like what we saw happen back home. We need to leave. They could still be here.”
Dinah suppressed her own fear. The smell was almost too much, bringing back everything that had happened at the farm. Running and hiding was an option. They could evade the hunters. They could kill the bird. Michelle could be taught to survive, and they could leave this valley behind them. But the horror would follow her. She knew that in her heart, and more would die.
Dinah put a hand on Michelle’s shoulder. “Wait here. I’ll just take a quick look and come right back.”
Michelle grabbed her hand. “Don’t go.”
Dinah pulled away.
9. Before: The Farm
Dinah didn’t hate Rosalyn and was sure that at least at some point Rosalyn hadn’t hated her. When Uma first accepted Dinah into her home, Rosalyn shared her own clothes and her room and showed Dinah around, not that they ever got much time to lumf about like lollygaggers.
“Goats go there,” Rosalyn said as they walked past the doe pen.
“Aren’t we supposed to be milking them?”
“Later. There’s a stream down this way with frogs and lizards and turtles.”
She was right. They found a turtle after about an hour of searching the banks of the small muddy stream. The water had flowed occasionally for the first two years after Dinah’s arrival. The turtle was a rare find. Dinah had only seen animals like this in books, but here was one that was alive and moving.
Rosalyn liked to place the turtle on a rock and watch as it wiggled about trying to dislodge itself. After a while, it would tumble off. Often this would result in the thing winding up on its back where it was completely helpless. Rosalyn let out a peal of laughter every time that happened. When Dinah went to help it, Rosalyn would snatch it up and put it back on the rock.
Its little legs pedaled at the air and its head bobbed and jerked with the strain of going nowhere. Dinah reminded Rosalyn again about the goats, but Rosalyn announced she was going to kill the turtle for the soup Uma always had going. Her knife was already out.
Dinah grabbed Rosalyn’s hand. Rosalyn shot her a look that she would come to know well. It promised pain and retribution if Dinah didn’t yield. She let go of her.
“If you kill it and bring it home, Uma will know you were down here and not doing chores.”
Rosalyn thought about it. The knife turned in her grip. She considered the blade and the turtle. “She’d only know if you told her.”
“I won’t tell. But she’ll know you added it to the soup. Just leave the turtle. It’ll be here later. Let’s go do the milking, and we can come back this afternoon.”
Rosalyn held the thrashing turtle at eye level. Then she put the knife away and pitched the turtle into the deeper part of the stream.
“I’ll find it later,” she said.
“Good idea.”
Dinah could hear the goats’ bleating before they could even see the pen. She would learn that this was their way of saying, “Hey, I’m ready for my milking. Past due, even.”
Rosalyn showed her the shed next to the goat pen. She took out a pair of buckets. The shed also held bins with dried feed, hay, and anything else that could be fed to the goats. True, they ate anything, but Uma preferred the milk goats to have guidance with their diet.
Plenty of junk was stored in the recesses of the shed. Dinah started to look through what was there. She found a metal folding table, golf clubs, bicycle wheels with worn rubber tires, some bright tablecloths well preserved in plastic bags, a leather cowboy hat, croquet balls in a carrying rack, a plastic keyboard, a typewriter with a plug, antlers, and a tube of plastic feathered balls labeled “shuttlecocks.”
Dinah opened the tube and threw a shuttlecock at Rosalyn. It bounced off her head.
“Hey!” Rosalyn said with a snarl.
Dinah threw another. Rosalyn swatted it out of the air, picked up the first one, and threw it back. Dinah’s new stepsister started laughing.
“What are those things?” she asked.
Dinah threw one low. Rosalyn caught it.
“Shuttlecocks,” Dinah said.
Rosalyn whooped and snorted. “Shuttle. Cock?”
Dinah nailed her in the face. Rosalyn threw two back at the same time. Dinah dodged them both and began pitching them as fast as Rosalyn could return them.
“Shuttle! Cock!” Dinah screamed.
“Don’t hit me in the face! With your shuttle cock!”
While dodging an incoming missile, Dinah collided with the shed wall. The rusting frame of a wheel-less bicycle came crashing down. Rosalyn only laughed louder. She was beet red and doubled over. Dinah pushed the bike away and collected all the shuttlecocks at her feet. She rose to throw and stopped.
Uma stood just behind Rosalyn. She wasn’t smiling. She took Rosalyn by the hair and dragged her away. Rosalyn screamed in pain. “Ow! Ow! Ow!”
Dinah heard the slaps. She hurried to follow, pushing the junk out of the way.
“Uma, I’m sorry!” Dinah said. “It’s not Rosalyn’s fault!”
By the time she made it out of the shed, Rosalyn was on the ground, a bright mark darkening the side of her face.
“I was the one playing,” Dinah said.
Uma still had Rosalyn by the hair. She raised her from the ground like she was a puppet. Uma’s hand swung a low arc and struck Rosalyn on the bottom.
“Get to the kitchen,” Uma said. “Start cleaning.”
Uma turned to Dinah. She leaned close.
“It wasn’t her fault,” Dinah said with a whisper.
“Clean up this mess. And get the goats’ milk. You should have finished that hours ago.”
With that, Uma turned and followed Rosalyn inside the house.
The next time Rosalyn threw something at Dinah, it was a rock. Not a very big one, but it struck home.
10. Broken Places
For every bird that circled above, two more were down on the road and buildings. Dinah crawled in through the back of one burned structure. It stank with blood. Pieces of furniture lay smashed and damaged by fire, and black soot lined the ceiling and walls. The place had been put to the torch but the fire hadn’t completely taken or had gone out. She looked across the street at the center of town where the structures were crowded together. The fire had gutted everything, leaving only the skeletons of blackened wood whereupon the crows now sat. Buzzards waddled about on the street, jockeying for position around heaps of bodies.
Dinah winced. How could the same people that had murdered Uma have already moved thi
s far up the valley? And for what purpose? The scale of this was beyond just looking for Dinah. At least a few hundred people had lived in the village. Now it looked like everyone was dead.
It took an act of will not to flee.
Better to stay hungry than to face this.
But instead of running, she removed her device. She knew what it would say, but she checked anyway.
“Are you here?” she whispered.
The red light blinked. No green light. The device beeped. She put it away.
She kept low, scurrying to a mostly unburned house, and searched. She found an intact larder with a few jars of fruit and some dried meat, and hanging herbs of various kinds. She took it all.
“Did you hear something?”
She froze. He was close. The voice came from just outside the kitchen window. She looked around, but she doubted this kitchen would have any kind of hiding place. There was only one door that led back into the main room of the house.
A head poked through the window. The man wore silver goggles and had a beard shaved with a zig-zagging pattern that ran down either side of his face. His nose and cheeks looked puffy and red. For a moment, they stared at each other. Then she smashed one of the jars into the man’s face. The glass shattered, and he fell back with a thud. Pears and juice splashed everywhere.
She raced out the kitchen and through the front door. A second man came around the corner of the house.
“Hey!” the man shouted. He got caught up in a low fence.
Heading back would mean covering too much open ground. Instead she sprinted forward and ducked into one of the ruined buildings, jumping over and ducking under the remaining beams of its blackened frame. An explosion of startled birds flew up, their beating wings a hurricane around her. They cried and cawed and squawked. She saw a few seagulls among the vultures and crows and these too screamed in annoyance. She leaped over a trio of bodies that were only torn remnants of whoever they had been. Some of the more brazen carrion birds only hopped a few feet away as she passed through them. They had gore sticking to their beaks. One swiped at her and raised its wings.
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