He was desperate to get his weight back; he'd lost 10 pounds over the last few days. He drank as much of the water as he could without being gluttonous or wasteful. The Saltines were gone, but he took in fingerfulls of salt from the caky Morton's container.
He needed to find game, with his crossbow. He needed real food to get well; quality protein. Animal fat, cooked over a fire.
If he was dead weight, he was prepared to stay at the house and let them go on, now that he knew Luca could split the mountain bike riding, dragging the wheeled canoe behind, with Mikaela.
###
At about noon, he stood by the swing-set and watched the floodwaters, as Amy swung higher behind him. She was getting by, he thought, on the pitiable scraps they'd found for food, only because she was a kid who didn't know any better.
They'd also found about a quarter can of cocoa that was so old that they had to chip parts of it off with a flat knife, and melt it in water. Mikaela mixed the cocoa with flour, no butter of course, to make a crude kind of cookie. Their last meal had been cookies, dried-out peanut butter, and Saltines. It was prison fare; and a good thing they were moving on.
The clouds and vapors had parted before a pallid sun. Like a rip tide just offshore, tearing into a placid sea, he could see whitewater not a quarter mile away. It had already submerged the woods they'd crossed to get here. It had made its way to the lid of the lahar; he thought it was just a matter of time before it migrated across the lahar's surface, like a puddle along a cement floor.
Luca sat on the porch nearby. Cooper yelled out, half thinking out loud, "We're going to have to go southwest, not just due west. Avoid these waters."
They'd both found hats; Cooper a camouflaged, wide-brimmed hunter's hat with half the brim crushed to the side; Luca a Seattle Seahawks cap in the baseball design.
"You want to go hunting with me?" Cooper said. He'd fortified himself minutes ago with cocoa and coffee mixed.
"Sure."
"I figure that flood might be driving animals out of the woods, to this side."
"It's worth a try. Wish I had a rifle."
"You a hunter?"
"Yeah, you bet. Deer and moose and once, black bear."
"I'm not. At least at home."
"Then what are you doing with that crossbow?"
"Sport…"
"And you brought it with you, what, for that climb you were telling me about? Guides don't bring crossbows with them. Not that I'm second-guessing you…"
"It makes me feel ready; secure. It was part of my bug-out gear, if you know what I mean. I always had my kit and my crossbow ready."
"I gotcha. I kept a handgun in the glove compartment."
"Licensed?"
"Sure. Not proud of it, though. Just a sign of the times. I wish there were fewer guns in the world. We'd all be better off. But I'm like you. I like to be ready."
"Let's tell Mikaela we're going."
They told Amy to keep swinging and don't go anywhere, and that Mikaela and Beatrice were in the kitchen. Then they headed on foot north, in pursuit of game, the nearby floodwaters casting mist and spray that stayed up in the air like light rain.
CHAPTER 36
Each night when the sun went down, an inky darkness befell the land. All the electricity in the region was gone, except for distant pools of light, mostly a few fires left to burn, in the few places in the valley that weren't buried beneath 30 feet of dried-out slurry. The batteries for the flashlights they were using had died. The fire they lit by the house would die down soon.
As soon as the sun set behind an ocean they could only imagine, the blackness would blanket the earth, the ash plumes blotting out the starlight. You could barely see the hand in front of your face. Luca and Cooper had to get back to the house before sundown.
Despite the vapors that blotted out the sun, the lahar became parched, rock hard, like a Martian surface. Nothing moved, or appeared alive on it or grew, but them. It seemed laughably difficult to locate any live game on the lahar itself. Yet, they still needed food for the days ahead. The pickings were slim.
The muddy floodwaters raged nearby, filled with tree trunks and limbs and other debris not buried by the lahar itself. At one point they saw a car float by, half submerged on its rooftop.
Hearing only the gritty crunch of their boots, they had consigned themselves to returning empty handed. It was nearly dusk; the horizon glowed a fiery orange, of an incomparable beauty next to the scoured, ugly landscape.
###
Then they they spotted a profile on the horizon; it was impossible to miss, given that nothing else existed but a flat, empty plateau that rolled on for miles. It was a horse, still as a statue. They both looked at each other silently and walked toward it. Sturdy, chestnut-colored, and saddled, its head was bowed with a noble weariness. The profile reminded Cooper of an iconic statue or painting he'd seen in one of Telluride's lodges; possibly "Pursued" by an artist named Proctor.
The animal looked like it was purposely built as a statue to honor the glory of the sunset. When they got closer, the horse, which had a bridle in its mouth, glanced at them and nodded its head, as if to say, "Yeah I'm stuck out here like you."
It lifted up its foreleg and pawed the ground, blew air out of its lips, as a kind of warning. "Easy boy," Cooper said. He hadn't much experience with horses, even though he'd been around them a lot at home. He was surrounded by horse women back in Colorado. The reins hung free by the side of the saddle. They'd gotten within about five yards, but the horse walked away from them, then stopped. Wary, not spooked.
"Why don't you stop," Cooper said to Luca.
"Pretty animal," Luca said, then he glanced at Cooper's crossbow and looked away with a guilty glint.
Don't you dare, Cooper thought. He wasn't killing this beast for its meat. Not yet; they weren't quite starving to death. Besides, the horse was transportation, if he could catch it.
"Easy…easy," he said, holding out his hand. He crept closer.
"Wish we had an apple, or a fist full of grass," Luca said from a distance. Not 50 yards away, waves of white and brown water sloshed and bucked along the rocks. The disappearing sun burned titian against the sharp lid of the lahar. The breeze blew through the horse's mane, and Cooper could smell the musky hide; the sweat. "That-a boy," he said, now nearly at a whisper. The horse's head hadn't moved, but the eyes watched him in a sidelong manner. When Cooper got near enough to reach for the reins, the horse threw its head to the side haughtily and exhaled. Its hoof pawed away awkward clumps of debris-clogged ground.
"Easy boy easy boy, I'm your friend," Cooper cajoled softly. "Where did you come from? All the way out here in the middle of nowhere, without a rider? Must have taken a lot to get where you have got." Then instantly he had a grip on the reins and was petting the soft mane up and down, more friendly cajoling. The horse lifted its hooves in place and a quiver moved through the auburn sheen of its muscles, like a wind through western grass.
"You must be one of them horse whisperer types," Luca said. "A natural."
"Not really," Cooper said. "Just watch, if I try to ride 'em. We gotta get back, and I hope he'll come."
"Got a veritable zoo now," Luca said. "A dog and a horse."
The saddle was leather and as sturdy and traditional as the horse. Cooper could at least imagine himself sitting on it, but he didn't want to completely spook the animal.
"Let's get back to the house. It's getting dark. I don't have a clue how he got here, but it makes me think there's another way over that river."
"The river from hell," Luca said. "The River Styx."
"That's right. The River Styx. The River Stinks."
They walked back along the floodwaters, toward the tiny dot of the shimmering flame. It was still going, by the house. The horse didn't fight the reins as Cooper pulled him gently along. He felt like crap again, and thought of hitting that couch when they got back. First they'd search the horse; there was a saddle pack and a rope hooked onto it.
Only the heavy, clip-clop sound of the hooves, then Luca said, "Where there's a car, maybe something else has washed up. It follows, I mean, maybe it's worth a chance if junk like cars are washing up." He walked over closer to the river and they ambled along it another 100 yards.
The rushing water got louder and louder, until Cooper couldn't hear what Luca was yelling, standing beside the temporary shoreline in veils of mineral mist, waving his arms.
CHAPTER 37
The deer head was lodged up against a rock, with the flood funneling on either side of it. The eyes propped open and lifeless. A prominent set of antlers stuck out of the water. Violent rapids poured around the body, up to the shoulders.
Cooper and Luca stood looking at it a minute; it was tough to get to, but at least they had a rope. Darkness settled in; they could see the dark profile of the house and the small flame about a quarter mile away.
"It's going to be there in the morning," Luca said.
"We don't know that. We don't know that at all." His stomach growled. "It's a big one, maybe a couple hundred."
"Okay…" Luca said, determined but not knowing how to do it. He put his foot up on a rock beside the rapids. There were chunks of stones and congealed mudflow around the torrent of water and marooned buck, but no safe way to get to it. One slip up and it was a drowning death.
Cooper knew knots; you have to when you guide people. He got the rope down from the horse, which had lowered its head, sniffing the ground in vain. He felt sorry for the handsome beast. The rope had been coiled professionally and tied at the end; once again, he wondered after the horse's owner.
He uncoiled the rope, about a three-quarter inch one, and tied one end of it to the saddle horn. He struggled to remember, through the fog of his illness, but then worked the other end into a Honda knot. It felt like hard work. Nevertheless, if that knot didn't work, he had others.
"You're going to have to hold on to these," Cooper said. Luca took the reins in one hand, and stood off to the side to watch.
Cooper held the slack of the rope in one hand, then spun the loop over his head and hurled it toward the deer's antlers. It fell far short, then it was carried away limply downstream. He reeled it in, shook some of the water out, and tried again, swinging it around like a lasso.
The floodwaters generated its own stiff breeze that caught the knot, as if it was hurled against an invisible wall. It fell back into the water. "Goddammit!" he screamed above the pounding brown surf. He reeled it in and tried a few more times; failure. The horse was getting antsy; it stepped backward and threw its head against the reins.
"I don't know how long I can hold onto this thing," Luca said, grimacing and wary, nervous with horses. Especially this one, which could just rip the rope out of his hands if it was so inclined.
The deer corpse shifted in the rapids, the gelid eyes staring in a different direction.
"Wait. Hold on. I've got an idea." Cooper fetched his crossbow, removed an arrow, and sat down with the rope in his other hand. He was wasted. Food, he thought. This is good food, no more no less. He needed the nutrients, craved them, as much as any of them. He bound the rope tightly just above the feathered end, then he armed the bow with the roped arrow. He stood up and took aim at a muscular part that he could completely penetrate.
He needed the arrow to hold. He really wasn't far at all. He aimed for the thick part of the neck that was still above water, then fired. The arrow flew across angry waters and sunk into stiff flesh and hide. Bingo. He pulled the rope taut, praying it would hold. "Yeah!" Luca yelled behind him.
"Okay!" Cooper said, his heart lifting with a marginal victory. He stepped back and took the reins from Luca. "Let's go!" They started slowly walking with the horse, the rope stiffening above the water and against the saddle. The horse, at about 700 pounds of bone, sinew, and hide, didn't even notice that he was pulling something. Cooper was afraid the rope would break, so he took it slow. Darkness fell on the vacant, treeless grounds like a pitch black downpour.
He led the horse gently toward the tiny flame in the distance. "C'mon boy," he whispered.
Luca stood by the rapids and watched. Apparently the deer was deeply wedged in a rock; the rope was as tight as a metal cable, the buck's neck stretched and resisted. "There it goes…there it goes!" Cooper heard the other man, but couldn't see him. The rope took off downstream as the body was carried by the flood. He led the horse, inexorably, hardly thinking about the dead, water-logged weight on the other end. "It's out!" Luca cried. "It's out!"
Luca strode over to the carcass and yanked at the head and neck to pull it farther onshore. "Jesus it weighs a fuckin' ton!"
Cooper stopped, began to gather up the slack of the rope, then he rewound that and tied the slack against the saddle horn. Now there was only about ten feet of rope and the buck behind them.
Cooper dropped the reins for a moment, went back to inspect the buck. It was intact. He felt like a wet rag, wavering in the darkness. On his last legs. "Let's drag it back," he said.
CHAPTER 38
The strong, unbelievably savory smell of roasting fat and meat filled the night. The flames rose around a splintered chair that they'd taken from the kitchen and used to feed the fire. They'd draped all four of the recovered buck's legs, the haunches, plus the organs–liver and kidneys–onto the fire. The grill and hiss had them all starving; it was like torture, waiting for it. Except that Mikaela had found an old wine bottle in the basement.
Beatrice, Mikaela, Luca, and even Cooper were handing the bottle around and pouring the wine into old tin cups. Anything was going to make him feel better, at least for the moment. His attitude, due to the virus, was devil-may-care; he was taking it about an hour at a time.
The meat, the wine, and the horse made them feel like they were more than merely surviving, clinging to life. Beatrice stood and pet the horse, Amy watching off to the side with Turk, who'd they'd given one of the deer bones. The horse was tethered to the swing-set poles, still saddled. They'd given him some water. They patched together a treat made up of flour, molasses, and crackers, which he chomped down in seconds with his huge incisors. They had no more food for him, but Tacoma was only a day's ride and, Cooper figured, with a little luck, their ordeal would be over.
Using the knife, Mikaela sliced off bits of the roasted meat and passed them around. They quietly and ravenously consumed them by firelight. The wine was a lush, old red with a faded label. Drinking it fueled an illusion that they were safe and could spend several more days at the house, brought on by the comfortable internal glow they felt after a couple of sips. Eat the deer meat; get some sleep. Relax, chill out. It was tempting. Cooper was getting hammered on the equivalent of one glass. The wine was fruity and tasted as strong as brandy.
He was the only one to eat the liver, so far. And the kidneys.
"I never could stand liver," Mikaela said. "It always tasted…"
"Don't say it," Cooper said.
"Pissy, sorry…but I'm glad you're enjoying it."
"Yuck! Liver!" Amy said, coming back to the group and sitting cross-legged, eating a piece of venison that looked like dark turkey meat. She pealed some of the blackened skin off.
"Eat the skin," Luca said, watching her, like an uncle at a family dinner. "It's good for you."
"No! You can have it!" Amy, so sure of her tastes, thrust a piece of the skin straight out to him over the fire, a bed of pulsating coals.
"Well sure, okay captain. I love skin," he said, taking the offering. The air was cool, like sitting by an ocean bonfire in the sea breeze. Cooper wondered whether it was cold spray from the burgeoning floodwaters that made an August night feel like October. The relentless waters flowed out-of-sight, out-of-mind, but only temporarily, because they'd have to think about them hard in the morning.
"Well," he said. "Here's to liver. Liver…I love you. I really do. I feel better already." He raised his glass, drained it. Cooper felt like a wino hanging out under the highway overpass, chewing the fat
(literally) with his wino buddies. With the buzz layered on top of the virus, he felt a little bit like everything, anything, but himself.
He kept filling his belly with the meat, liver, and kidneys, which he'd mixed in a tin bowl into a delicious ad hoc stew, including the juices. It beat year-old peanut butter. The effect was uncanny; no headache, no overwhelming fatigue. Just a vagrant, tremulous energy that coursed through his arms and legs.
"Do ya good…" Luca muttered, refilling his glass.
Amy eyed them with a precocious air of disapproval. "Wine's weird."
Next to her was a glass of powdered milk with a little molasses mixed in.
"Do you like your milk?"
"Birthday cake's better…"
"I agree," Luca said.
Drinking the wine had given Mikaela a weary, artificial wisdom, some distance from the insanity of the last week.
"I didn't tell you what I found in the saddle bag." She reached down at her feet and held up a bottle with a red bow tied around the lid. The bottle had a wide lid and amber contents; no label. In her other hand was a folded piece of paper. "I was saving it."
"What is it? In the bottle?"
"Just wait a second."
She opened up the letter and read it out loud.
Dear Drake,
If you have the saddle bag out I figured it must be an important ride. More than a gallop with Napoleon through the heather…
"Napoleon!" Beatrice gasped.
"That's the horse's name!" Amy said. "Hey, Napoleon!"
"Shush!"
…This is just a small token of my love; I hope you don't take it the wrong way, like a girly thing. I know you love honey and this is the real thing, from some local bees and beekeepers. I figure you can stop along the ride and both you and the steed can enjoy it. We don't see enough of each other, and the years go by so fast–and there are so many distractions, bad things happening around us in the country–for two people to forget what they once had. This is a reminder that you're my honey.
Devastated Lands: A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Page 12