Gray (Book 2)

by Cadle, Lou

  “No. Shouldn’t risk the noise.”

  Coral was glad to hear her thoughts confirmed. She had missed that so much, talking things through with him.

  “Cave first. Let’s see if we get that far. Then we’ll talk more.”

  A thin blue light flicked on, and Coral realized he had a flashlight. He went ahead of her, and she fell into step. He turned the light off, but in a few minutes flipped it back on for a second. He did this twice more, and it let them move more quickly by not drifting off the trail. When they were close to the compound, he left it off and whispered, “take hold of my jacket.”

  In silence, she followed him as he took a turn through the pitch black night, and another. In another hundred paces, he risked flipping on the flashlight again. They were on a different path, one Coral wasn’t at all familiar with.

  Using occasional flashes from the torch, they walked up an incline, and soon found themselves at a rock formation similar to the one where they’d found the suicides further east.

  He flipped on the flashlight and shone it into a dark spot on the wall. “Took too long getting here. We need to get away,” he said. As he talked, he tore away at the flashlight, and the light grew stronger. She realized he’d found duct tape and had taped the end so that only a thin beam of light was visible. Now that the light was full, it was shockingly bright in the night. He pushed through the entrance and into a space perhaps ten feet wide, thirty feet long, and she followed.

  “No way could they all have survived in this,” she said.

  He pointed the flashlight toward the back of the space. “There’s a low hole there, see it? And another space beyond, and a third one. That’s where they waited it out. But everything we need is right here.”

  “How did they force the donkey in there?”

  “No idea.” He set the flashlight on a crate and began pushing things around. Without looking back, he said, “Our old stuff is still getting sorted. The rope is over there, I think, on the floor near the entrance.

  She turned and found a number of their things—a few picked-over tools, blankets, the nylon rope she’d grabbed at the Walmart, the plastic water bottles, and her fishing gear. She made a noise and lunged for the pole. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Yeah, grab those, too. He tossed a stack of empty burlap bags over. “Pack however you can for now. We’ll get it done better tomorrow morning.”

  “Right.” She checked her fishing line, then broke the rod down and made a compact bundle of it. The tackle box was here, and after snapping it open to make sure everything was still in there—it was—she pushed it into the bottom of one of the burlap sacks. “Blankets?”

  “Roll them all up and tie them. Make straps, so I can wear it, would you?”

  “Where are the backpacks?”

  “Up at the landing site, so forget them.” The tone he put on the words let her know she’d been an idiot to ever consider that he might have gone over to the cult. “Toss me a sack, would you?”

  She tucked away the last of the bottles and brought him a sack.

  “Hold it open, please.”

  She did, and watched as he took a handful of dark red paper cylinders, in bunches of six, that looked a lot like giant rolled coins, and dumped them in the sack. But then she caught sight of the fuses. “Uh, Benjamin, are those dynamite?”

  “Yeah. They mostly used C4 up there to blast out the rock. That’s what the cabins are made of, you know, the rock from the blasting.”

  “No shit.” They may have been crazy as bedbugs, but you had to give them points for organization.

  “But there’s also this, and this might help us get away.”

  “How? You going to blow up the men’s cabin?”

  He stopped and glanced at her, his eyebrows raised. “Hadn’t thought of that.” His eyes drifted away as he considered it. “No. We’ll take it with us.”

  “How big a blast will it make?”

  “No idea.”

  “Great.” But she was smiling as she said it. Things were back to normal. To New Normal, at least, with her and Benjamin on the same side, blundering along and surviving.

  “I was thinking about the donkey. What if we let it out of its pen? If a couple of them had to chase it down, that would be a couple fewer chasing us.”

  “And the goats, too.”

  “How many are there?”

  She was surprised he’d never seen, but then, the sex segregation was strict, so there’d have been no reason for him to go down the path to the animal pen. “Two. Both female.”

  “I was thinking we’d kill the goats for meat.”

  She winced.

  “You haven’t gotten attached.”

  “No. Or yes, but that’s okay. I’d rather have the meat than the pet. We can kill them.”

  “There’s still some meat here, in the second chamber, hanging up.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer this—also, it won’t squeal when you kill it.”

  “I figured killing the goats would make life harder for them, is all.”

  “It might. They were planning on doing it anyway, when they felt the grain-milk equation was no longer on the goats’ side.”

  “We’ll leave from here, then, forget the animals. Probably easier to lose ourselves in the rocks to the east than go west, past the animals, to lower ground.”

  West. Boise. “Benjamin, I talked to a guy on the radio.”

  He was done loading the dynamite, or as much of it as he wanted, about a third of a sack full. “Where’d they put the damned hatchet?” He looked around, then glanced back at her when her words had registered. “What radio?”

  “There’s a shortwave radio in a room behind the kitchen. Run off a battery, and a stationary bike.”

  “And you got it working?”

  “The night they left me in there without a jacket. The night they shaved my head.”

  “Bastards,” he said, tossing gear aside with more force.

  “Don’t worry about it. I don’t give a shit about my hair, and it let me talk to this guy in Canada.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Something about Boise, but the interference was too strong…and then I lost him.”

  “Anything else of use?”

  “He said it—The Event—was meteors, two of them, maybe one split into two, bang-bang.”

  Benjamin glanced at her. “Could be right. But how would we know for sure? It’s not like you can flip on CNN and verify it.”

  “I know. We still have to survive somehow, no matter what caused it.”

  “I think we can be sure it wasn’t super-intelligent aliens reaping their brethren.”

  “I’m with you on that.” She still felt better for having an explanation, though it didn’t help her eat or stay warm.

  “Aha!” he said, standing up and holding out the hatchet. “Cut me off a piece of rope so I can tie this to my belt loop. It may be the only weapon we have, except for the dynamite.”

  “I have my pocket knife, still.” She reached in and drew it out, slid out a blade, and cut him off a foot-long length of rope. “And there are kitchen knives, as well as the drugs, if we go back to the cabins.”

  “No. I want to move, and now. I’m going to cut down a chunk of meat, and please get the blankets set up as a backpack for me. Pack away anything else you see of use. Five minutes, we’re gone.”

  She turned and looked at the supplies, much messier now that they’d been digging through them. “Do you know where our saucepan is?”

  “No.” He took the flashlight and went back to the rear of the cave, bent, and crawled through the hole to the inner chamber.

  She lit her candle and, with her knife, the nylon rope, and the blankets, rigged up a bedroll that would fit on Benjamin’s back. She did the same thing for her backpack. By the time she was done, Benjamin had taken two trips in and out of the back cavern, bringing up a bag of carrots, and a whole quarter of an animal, surely over a hundred pounds worth.
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br />   “How are we going to carry that?”

  He took the hatchet and swung it sharply, aiming at the fat end. A chunk of meat fell, and he tossed it to her. “Eat it.”

  Raw? Well yes, raw, idiot. Not as if they had four hours to fiddle around with making a stew. She used her knife and cut bite-sized pieces off.

  Benjamin chopped off another piece, a few pounds’ worth and said “Throw that in with the dynamite and cut me another piece of rope, a couple feet long.”

  She did. It left a hank of rope much thinner than it had been, but still probably twenty or thirty feet long. “Is that all the rope you need?”

  “Yeah, I think.” He caught the rope length she tossed over and tied it tight around the meat, then knelt down and pulled his blanket roll over and shrugged into it. “Keep eating.”

  She took a piece of meat and offered it to him.

  “Stick it in my mouth, would you?”

  She did and took another for herself. It was cold but not frozen. She’d much rather have it cooked, but she knew why they were doing this, to fuel up for a race away from the cult.

  Benjamin was adjusting the straps of his bedroll. He tried it on again, gave a grunt of satisfaction, and then set about lashing the meat to it.

  “Good thing there aren’t bears any more. You’re walking bear bait.” She cut open the sack of vegetables he’d dragged out—carrots—and tossed a few handfuls in her sack.

  “I wish I had been able to get to a rifle,” he said. “I’d make myself bear bait if I thought we could get a bear’s worth of meat.”

  She swallowed another chunk of half-chewed meat. “I can’t eat more.”

  “Toss the rest in your bag. Get ready to go. We’ve taken too long at this as it is.”

  She didn’t see how they could have taken any less time—not if they wanted to survive out there. As it was, she was going to miss an awful lot of their stuff she hadn’t found. She hefted her sleeping bag onto her back, made sure her boots were tied tightly, and as Benjamin finished with his job, took his flashlight and looked around the cave one last time. She was hoping for their cooking pot, but she didn’t find one. How would they melt water? Food, maybe she could eat raw. But all the water out there in the world existed as ice, except for a few hot springs, and there was no way they could count on ever seeing one of those again.

  She finally saw something that might be useful—a stack of aluminum cake pans, those disposable things—and went to check them out. The top one had dried something or other in it, something for construction, maybe. But at the bottom of the stack were two that were pretty clean. She took them and tossed them on top of her sack, just as Benjamin was tying his own sack off.

  With a grunt, he lifted it and slung it over his shoulder. “Can you manage the flashlight?” he said.

  She nodded. Blowing out the candle stub, she pocketed it and hefted her own sack, doing as he’d done and tossing it over her shoulder.

  “Ready?” he asked. When she nodded that she was, he said, “Let’s leave this awful place.”

  Coral was more than ready. She led as they climbed the path leading away from the compound. Looked like the guys used an area back here as a second latrine, with patches of yellow snow dotting the edges of the path.

  To her left were more rocks, rising to well above head height. To her right, the ground sloped down again. She shone the flash up. “Think we can climb up that?”

  “I think it’d be good to try, maybe confuse the trackers. But let’s get out the rope again. We can tie it to the sacks, and haul them up. You go first. Take the rope.”

  Coral let her sack drop to the ground and handed over the flashlight in exchange for the remaining nylon line, which she wound around her waist, under her jacket. “I’ll do my best. Stand back, in case I fall.”

  “You won’t fall,” he said, shining the light on the rocks. The rock face was shot through with diagonal lines, weathered cracks in the rock. The rocks themselves were well worn, light gray in color, with an occasional line of glittery white stuff running through them. It wasn’t a cliff, but if she fell at the top, there’d be twenty or thirty painful feet of fall, bouncing off rock along the way.

  Better to die that way than stay here and be captured, though. She began to climb. The first ten feet were easy—and not only because she knew a fall from only this high was survivable. But as she went further, there were fewer handholds. Finally, she leaned into the rock, took her gloves off with her teeth, and then shoved them in her pockets.

  “What are you doing?” he hissed.

  “Better to risk frostbite than falling,” she said. She jammed her fingers into a crack, just long enough to pull herself up another foot to a better handhold. When she yanked her fingers out, she felt the skin being scraped off. The cold air began to numb the minor pain almost immediately.

  The next few steps were easier, but as she neared the top, the rocks were smoother, with fewer handholds, and harder to get a grip on. The flashlight wasn’t as bright up here, and her own body shielded most of the light.

  “Are you okay?” he said, his voice far below her now.

  “Great,” she said. She lifted her right foot and let it scrape down, until her boot caught a small crack. She patted the rock as far overhead as she could reach, trying to find a small crack, a ledge, anything. Her left foot was secure and she hated to give up that solid perch.

  She couldn’t stand here all night dawdling. She jammed her right foot down on the crack, pressed up and stretched one arm up, reaching, reaching, finally finding something, a lump really, a smaller rounded node on the larger rock. She grabbed it and pulled, hauling herself up. Her left foot wasn’t finding any good place at all to land, and her arm was aching as she hung on. Her other hand found another bump of rock and grabbed it. She glanced up and saw the dim light above her hands disappearing, realizing that the rocks were sloping away. She was almost to the top. She shoved her free boot against the sheer rock face and pushed hard, at the same time pulling with all her might.

  Her teeth clanked against the rock as her right foot lifted off its small ledge and she pulled for all she was worth, scrabbling with both feet, getting a two-inch boost from it, and finally getting her chest up to the point where the rocks sloped back more. She wriggled forward like a worm, until half her weight was on top, and then she reached out and found a new grip, yanking herself forward the last crucial foot.

  “I’m up,” she called down.

  She couldn’t see much at all up here, but she felt around until she had a mental picture. There was a good-sized rock where she could brace her feet when she hauled the bags up. She unwound the rope, put her gloves back on, and called down, “Rope coming.” Then she tossed one end out over the rocks.

  The flashlight flipped back on and she leaned over as far as she could dare, shaking the rope out to keep it from catching up on a rock.

  “It’s about eight feet too short,” Benjamin said.

  “Can you carry the sacks, one at a time, up to the rope? It’s pretty easy climbing the first few feet.”

  “I’ll try,” he said.

  She heard his grunt as he hefted a sack, and then the sound of him beginning the climb. “Don’t fall,” she said.

  “Mmmb nnn,” he said, and she realized he must be holding the flashlight in his mouth.

  She waited, impatient, feeling the seconds tick off, and worrying about what was happening back at the cult compound. Had someone awoken and noticed her or Benjamin missing? Snow had continued to fall, but lightly, and she feared they could be tracked by footprints in the new snow.

  Another flashlight-caused mumble came from below and she felt the rope move. He was tying the bag on.

  “Got it. Haul away,” he said.

  She braced herself and hauled hand over hand, as quickly as she could, pausing once to coil the rope around her arms, taking up the slack. The bag slithered over the lip of rock and she pulled it a few feet away from the edge, untied the rope, and tossed one end
down again.

  She wondered, belatedly, which bag had the dynamite in it. Could you bang the stuff around and blow yourself up, or was it pretty stable? She had no idea. She supposed she’d find out.

  Benjamin had the second bag tied on in no time, and again she hauled it up.

  When it was halfway up, she heard him say, “I’m coming.”

  “No,” she called. “Wait for the rope. It’ll be easier at the top if I can help you.”

  He mumbled something that sounded like a complaint, but he waited for her to untie the bag and toss the rope back over.

  “Tie it around your waist or under your arms,” she said. “Do it now, before you get to the hard part.”

  She leaned over and watched as he started the climb. As he neared her, she wrapped the rope securely around her wrists and took hold, not pulling yet, but keeping the slack out so that if he fell, it wouldn’t be the whole way down.

  “Mmm,” she heard him say.

  “You to the hard part?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Okay, I’ll start hauling you in ten, nine, eight.” She kept up the countdown and braced her legs, then began to pull.

  He was a good deal heavier than a sack, but he was helping when he could, taking some of his weight off the rope. Her arms were killing her, but she refused to give in to the pain and kept hauling, grunting with the effort.

  The flashlight’s glow grew stronger, and then she could see his gloved hands appear, reaching, gripping. He pulled himself up the sloped section and the stress on the rope disappeared.

  He spat out the flashlight. “Jesus, how did you get up those last few feet alone?”

  “I was highly motivated,” she said.

  “Thanks for the help.” He untied the rope and took the coiled part from her, opening a sack long enough to toss it in. “Let’s move. Take the flashlight and go first. We’re looking for higher ground, a ridgeline.”

  Coral picked a line through the rocks, which looked like stone mushrooms peeking from the snow. She had to go several hundred feet before she had a sense of where the ground was rising, slightly right of the line she had taken, and she shifted their course that way.