by Shows, Greg
She swiveled the rifle to look out at the thick stand of dead trees.
It was sad how all the trees had thrown off their dust-covered leaves. But the bright spot—if you could call it that—was that she could see deep into what must have been a decent-sized forest sometime in the past.
Maybe it would be again.
And maybe there’d be a few humans alive to see it.
Or not.
Sadie sighted along the length of the forest, seeing nothing at first, then catching a movement among the dead gray tree trunks.
“Got to love intuition,” she said, and moved her rifle. Almost immediately she saw a quick flash of fur, and then another.
She heard a barely audible “yip,” which was answered by another “yip.”
After scanning toward the sounds, Sadie saw two more fur flashes that disappeared behind a tight knot of tree trunks.
Sadie moved her rifle to her right, continuing to scan south to where the tree line ended. A second later they broke free of the trees.
They were half a mile away, crouching low and running with long loping strides that carried them quickly across open ground to a stand of scrubby brush and an old farmhouse with a collapsed roof.
Next to the house were three collapsed barns. More dead trees stood beyond the barns, and beyond the barns lay an open field that had once grown crops. Now it was a dead gray dustfield.
Sadie counted six coyotes before they disappeared behind the barns and scrub. She waited, moving the rifle back and forth, scanning the area. More yips were followed by a howl and a bark. Four more coyotes came loping in from the south, joining the first six.
“Great,” Sadie said, and turned to face the road ahead. She was being hunted.
Again.
The last time she’d been hunted the hunters had been humans. Three men in ski masks and gray camo had followed her trail outside Ravena, New York. She didn’t know what they wanted with her.
She didn’t want to know.
She had them in her rifle scope and could have shot one of them down from two hundred yards out, but the other two would have returned fire before she could get them. So instead of engaging in a gun battle she wasn’t certain of winning, Sadie had used what her grandfather taught her about tracking and counter-tracking, taking the three men into the woods and stalling them with false footprints and dead-end trails that slowed them enough for her to escape.
Coyotes were different.
They could smell her. That meant all the visual tricks of counter tracking wouldn’t help one bit. It wouldn’t have mattered in the pre-Crisis days. Coyotes rarely stalked or killed humans.
But things were different now.
With their food sources disappearing, they’d be desperate, which meant they’d be dangerous. Especially with ten of them hunting her. They’d feel strong enough to come right at her. And if she got into a rundown with them, they’d pursue her in waves, trading off the lead with one another until they could tire her out.
Then they could take her down.
If she let them.
Trying not to worry too much, or show any fear, Sadie turned back to the road and started walking, looking for someplace to shelter.
She passed by the first two farmhouses she came to since both were back from the road and looked like people might be inside—people who’d likely shoot her down if she got too close.
You could tell that because of the rifles sticking out of upstairs windows.
She kept walking, counting to herself, routinely turning and sighting behind her every twenty seconds or so. Each time her count got above fifteen she felt a chill run up her back.
Another howl went up, this one a quarter mile ahead of her. It was followed by more yipping, and was answered by a howl from behind her.
Sadie’s stomach clenched and she snapped her rifle up to her shoulder. She saw another four coyotes coming from the south. A coyote army was forming, and if she didn’t put end to it, she might actually get killed here.
She turned and scanned the trees behind and to the east of her. Then she saw them, breaking out of the dead forest and running for the road, dipping down through the ditch, then angling up onto the dusty asphalt.
“Great,” she said. She reached for the bolt and pulled it down and back, slamming a shell into the chamber. A quick click of the safety and she was ready to fire.
The coyotes, less than a hundred yards away, were yipping at each other as they ran, taking turns at the head of the pack.
Sadie sighted on the coyote currently in the lead, a female with yellow eyes and a lolling tongue. Her face was cute and her eyes looked intelligent, even if she was skinny and her rib bones were sharp and distinct against her tawny hide.
Even as she fingered the trigger, Sadie felt regret.
She loved animals.
Always had.
But she didn’t love animals so much she was willing to feed herself to them. So after steadying herself and taking a few calming breaths like her grandfather had taught her, she sighted on the second coyote—a male whose jaws were snapping shut then opening again, spraying big globs of spittle as he went.
He did not look cute or intelligent. Instead, he looked like a dumb, vicious killing machine whose only mission in life was biting into prey animals’ throats.
When the coyotes were at seventy-five yards Sadie squeezed the trigger. The rifle boomed, and the .30-06 bullet tore into the right shoulder of the male. Almost instantly he went down, rolling over and over, yelping as he went.
Mayhem ensued as blood sprayed into the air and the other coyotes turned away, some streaking off the road and down through the ditch, others reversing direction and running back toward the Corolla. The lead coyote turned back to look at the male briefly. She gave a sniff then turned and shot straight toward the woods to the east.
In seconds, the wounded male was alone on the road, yelping as he tried to stand up. Sadie worked the bolt again, and fired, putting the second bullet into the male’s skull.
“Sorry, boy,” Sadie said as the male went still.
Quickly Sadie scanned the tree line, looking for the remaining coyotes and not seeing them. When she scanned the land ahead of her it looked quiet and dead.
What would probably happen now is the coyotes would wait until Sadie was gone, then return to the road and eat their fallen pack mate. They’d still be hungry when they’d finished cannibalizing him, but Sadie would have put enough distance between them to get away.
She hoped so, anyway.
Chapter 3
Sadie checked her map. Four hours had passed since she’d shot the coyote, and though she kept turning and checking her back trail, she saw no sign of the pack.
A few miles ahead the old farm-to-market she was on would cross I-80.
After tucking her map into her back pocket she picked up her pace, walking so fast that any further addition of speed would send her into a jog.
As she strode forward, Sadie tried to concentrate on not tripping and falling over any debris she might chance to step on. At the same time she remained aware and focused far ahead, scanning the gray horizon and the landscape out to her left or right.
This was hard work.
The dull, pewter landscape offered little visual stimulus, and the human mind was just not built for a monochrome environment. Humans had evolved in a world of vibrant colors and constant movement and prevalent threats from various feline and canine and hominine predators.
Hundreds of sources of danger had honed human survival instincts to a sharp edge, and despite the dulling of those instincts by civilization and its minimized dangers, the human nervous system needed stimuli.
The stillness and dull gray landscape she’d faced for days was definitely lacking that. The sameness was beginning to wear on her, nibbling at her sanity like teeth nibbling the last of a gooey Rice Krispie treat.
Fifteen minutes later she broke the silence.
“Toothbrush,” she said. “And toothpas
te.”
This was a mental note she kept making and then ignoring anytime she arrived some place that might have a new toothbrush or toothpaste available.
It sucked, but every time she’d found herself facing an abandoned or looted drugstore or supermarket or residential dwelling whose roof hadn’t collapsed under the weight of dust and ash, she’d forced herself to weigh the danger of entering a dark building against the reward of a toothbrush and toothpaste.
Every time she’d opted to keep moving—alive with bad breath instead of dead or bleeding out with a red tube of Close-Up clutched in her fingers.
“I’m going crazy myself,” she said, and giggled a little as she strode along the road.
She stopped long enough to sight her scope west along the Interstate ahead, thinking about all the cognitive science lectures she’d heard at college—lectures that explained how the human psyche begins to break down in isolated and dangerous environments.
“Just call me Missus Sleeping Bag Maniac.”
The image of the crazy guy on the pink bike leapt into her mind, only instead of the crazy guy on the bike, she saw herself.
“Focus, Sadie,” she said when she found herself atop the overpass crossing I-80.
How did I walk two miles without even noticing it?
Sadie walked to the breakdown lane of the overpass. She un-slung her rifle and sighted toward the west, looking for movement behind the dusty windshields in the long line of abandoned cars on I-80. She saw what looked like mummified bodies through some of the windshields—those that for some reason weren’t coated with dust.
Other windshields were blotched with a black fuzzy mold, a sure sign the bodies inside had sprayed blood or worse over the car’s insides.
After a minute of looking she walked to the other side of the overpass and sighted east along the line of cars. Still her mind wouldn’t stop running old movies, and after only a few seconds she gave up trying to check out each car windshield.
It was a mistake, since she had a great vantage point here. Despite the constant flickering lightning and drifting gray dust, she could see for several miles in all directions.
To the south, the Youngstown skyline rose up, its hazy buildings wreathed in lightning and dust. To the west and east, lines of cars seemed to stretch out forever.
She should take time to thoroughly search the horizon in all directions.
To be safe.
To be cautious and meticulous, like her grandfather and professors had taught her to be.
But her nerves were ragged. Her mental focus was slipping.
She was getting weak from constant undernourishment and living on the verge of dehydration. She was reaching the point where some days she had trouble caring. Despair, they used to call it a few centuries ago. In the twenty-first century they called it “depression.”
It was a hazard of living alone, which she’d done for a long time now.
Maybe she’d been too cautious so far, she thought.
Maybe she should have taken a few more risks in exchange for moving faster.
“Doesn’t matter now,” she reminded herself, and continued along the dust-choked road, descending the ramp over the Interstate, then slowly leaving the Interstate behind.
A mile or so later she came upon a line of abandoned cars on the farm-to-market. She was on the outskirts of a town called “Hubbard.” The cars were buried so deeply in dust Sadie would have had to spend too much time digging them out if she wanted to scrounge them.
She wasn’t willing to take the time for that. The road had narrowed and was bordered by dead, dust-choked trees that seemed to loom over her like gray, shambling monsters. Now all she wanted to do was hurry.
She picked up her pace again, moving to the center of the road, taking longer steps as she half walked, half-ran between the two lines of car. She tried to keep her focus out in the distance while at the same time remaining aware of the cars she was passing.
This was dangerous.
Possibly deadly.
If she tripped and fell she could hurt herself bad enough that she’d die from the injury. Broken skin or broken bones. Either could kill her.
Even a sprained ankle could get her.
And if someone stepped out from behind one of the vehicles and swung a machete or a bat or a pipe wrench at her she’d be dead.
All her caution and careful planning and difficult journeying would be for nothing.
She’d never make it to Texas, or reach her grandfather’s land, or see her parents alive again—if they were still alive.
There was no guarantee of that. She hadn’t talked to either of them in eight months, since the early days of the Crisis, when the satellites began to go down and order began to break down and the telecommunications grid collapsed.
Seven months ago Sadie had called her mother’s cell phone on a whim. She’d gotten to the voice message box—farther than she’d gotten in months. But before she could leave a message the call was dropped.
Sadie couldn’t get through after that, and it nearly killed her. She’d cried for more than an hour, dialing the number over and over, getting the error message every time, until what was left of the charge on her smart phone finally ran out and she was left staring at its dead black face.
Sadie remembered the pain of that experience—the near hopelessness that had descended upon her. Even now the feeling was so real and clear and vivid that she had to fight to keep from descending into it again. She became so focused on the fight that she stumbled and dragged her right thigh along the dented front fender of a Ford Ranger. The mishap tore a rip along her camouflage pants and dug into the flesh beneath.
“Come on!” she said. She strode with more purpose and care—for a while. She made a hundred or so yards before she felt the blood trickling down over her knee, and the pain beginning to mount.
Sadie stopped walking. She bent and pulled the rip in her pants upward until she could see the wound beneath. She was relieved to find a minor scratch.
Still, it slowed her down.
She had to pull off her pack and get out the four ounce bottle of isopropyl alcohol. As quick as she could, she dropped her pants and poured the alcohol over the scratch.
“Ow,” she said, clenching her fist against the sting, then wrapping a strip of sterile gauze around her leg and taping it off with electrical tape.
She almost wished she’d elected to ride a bike. Since dumping her car she’d come across several good ones. Road bikes and mountain bikes much better than the Sleeping Bag Maniac’s junker.
She’d been tempted to take one, especially the mountain bike she’d seen on the bike rack back in Salamanca. But riding a bike was riskier than walking or running. Sadie was a good shot, thanks to her grandfather’s training, and she could snap off a rifle shot in a second while on foot. But shooting a deer rifle off the back of a mountain bike could only be done in a circus.
“Best to take it slow,” she heard her grandfather say. “Getting in a hurry can get you killed.” And since he’d spent decades making specialty fireworks for a living without blowing himself up, she was fairly sure he’d known what he was talking about.
At the sound of her grandfather’s voice in her head, she snapped her attention to the present and slowed down. As soon as she reached the next gap between cars she moved to the side of the road and slid down into the ditch, stretching out full length on her back like a soldier hiding from an enemy.
She’d been walking without thinking again. The Swiss Army watch on her wrist had told her that the last time she checked—what seemed like only minutes ago. But something inside told her it had been more than minutes.
I’m losing it.
When she looked up at the narrow ribbon of sky between the dust-covered trees, all she saw was a thick wall of gray fluff that pulsed and glowed white from distant lightning. Not even a faint hint of the sun was there, like she’d seen a couple of times in the last month. Just those little glimpses of the pale disk in
the gray sky had helped her hold onto hope, had reminded her that the distant ball of warming fire was out there, and that someday, as the earth began to heal itself, it would be visible again.
But the disk was gone now, and she had an irrational fear that she’d never see it again. Every day henceforward would be a nightmarish monochrome vista the color of galvanized pipe.
Sadie fought down panic. Her head felt like she’d taken too much cold medicine. For an instant she wondered if she was back in her old wood-framed house in Boston, sweating out a fever and a Nyquil overdose.
But then a fork of lightning reached down and struck one of the buildings in the skyline of Youngstown—which seemed so much closer than it had from the I-80 overpass.
Briefly, she wondered if she’d see the sun again before she died, but cut the thought off with her mantra: “Doesn’t matter.”
A chill rose up her back and spread to her whole body, not from fear, but from the sweat that had soaked her underwear and t-shirt. She was going to need a fire or some kind of heater tonight when she got past Youngstown.
If she got past Youngstown.
She summoned the courage to look at her watch.
“Crap,” she said. The watch read: 3:06.
She tried to remember the last time she’d scanned the road behind her—or ahead. She’d been hemmed in by the two rows of cars, hurrying through what felt like a tunnel, fighting off the urge to panic and run by letting her mind wander, remembering her college friends, and her job search, and her grandfather and his land.
Escapism bordering on dissociation.
And it was suicide.
Someone could be stalking her right now and she wouldn’t know it.
Rolling over and uncapping her rifle scope, she slithered up the bank of the ditch. She sighted the road behind her. She was at the top of a rise, so when she stood up and rested the rifle on the roof of a car she could see for a long way back.
Nothing was moving against the gray landscape.
The car she’d slept in was long gone, as were the few topographical markers she’d seen around it. The road had curved south and west for miles.