It wasn’t nearly as good as getting a pig, but at least they wouldn’t return empty-handed.
16
Elly flexed her fingers, stiff from gripping the pole braced on her shoulder, the other end across Sean’s shoulder as he walked ahead of her. A young deer, probably a yearling according to Sean, hung from it upside down. They’d lashed its hooves together at the ankle and threaded a pole between the legs. She chuckled that Hunter had lived up to his name, but mused that it would have been nice if he had killed the animal a little closer to the boat.
This morning they had docked and walked across a bridge in town, then headed south. They hadn’t had to go far before they spotted a small herd of deer, but getting close enough for a shot had been a different matter. It had taken hours of trailing the herd as it grazed through several meadows and farmland before the herd halted to graze long enough for them to catch up. Hunter had crept through the woods to get close enough to use his bow when Sean’s shot missed and sent the herd fleeing towards Hunter.
Now, they took turns at each end as they transported the kill back to the boat. She hoped Cole’s group had been successful, too. This deer was small and wouldn’t go far.
“Do you think you can re-use the arrow?” Elly glanced at Hunter who was getting a spell now. He had carried it farther than either of them, so she didn’t begrudge him the break.
Hunter still held the he’d arrow, retrieved from the body of the deer. He examined the tip, and then held the arrow in front of his nose as he sighted down the length of it. “I think so. It’s still straight and I don’t see any cracks in it.”
Sean called over his shoulder, “That was a helluva shot, Hunter.”
Elly and Hunter exchanged a look, and Hunter smiled in surprise at the rare compliment.
“Thanks, Uncle Sean.”
“I didn’t realize you knew how to handle a bow like that.”
“I learned when I was little. I don’t remember what age, but I competed a bit—but it was all target shooting. I never shot anything living before—at least nothing we could eat.” The last bit was mumbled and Elly tried to catch his eye and give him a smile. Hunter had told his dad the story of what he’d had to do to rescue Sophie, but she didn’t know if it was common knowledge, so she remained silent.
“Well, your dad could take a few lessons from you.”
Hunter stiffened at the comment and Elly was surprised at the tone Sean used. He’d sounded almost derogatory, but she didn’t know why.
“My dad? What do you mean?” Hunter sent Elly a puzzled look and she raised her eyebrows in response, unsure what Sean was getting at either.
“He sucks at all of this. He’s an okay marksman, but he can’t do much of anything else. I’m getting the windmill ready to go, and your dad has been digging ditches. Not much skill in that.”
“He’s doing what needs to be done. Didn’t you say we needed to bury the pipe from the holding tank so we could have running water?”
“Yeah, but without me, we wouldn’t have a windmill.”
“You’ve been doing a great job, Sean, but I think Cole is doing his best too.”
“His best at what?”
“He organizes everything.”
Sean laughed, the sound loud and harsh on the empty street they crossed as they approached the bridge. Out of habit, she shot a look around to see if any cars were coming. She shook her head. Of course nobody was around. The habits of a lifetime were hard to break.
“So, he’s a natural middle manager. A lot of good that does anyone out here.”
“It was my dad’s idea to go to the island.”
“Yeah, and look at it now—we’re having to haul shit back and forth. We should have just moved into some place around here.”
Elly couldn’t bite her tongue anymore. “If we hadn’t moved to the island, chances are we’d all be dead of the virus. And isn’t it his island?”
Even with the deer pole resting on his shoulder, Sean was strong enough to let go with one hand and give a dismissive wave. “Like that really matters now? Ownership means nothing anymore. I could claim half the state and there’d be nobody left to dispute me.” His laughter rang out again and Elly flinched.
Hunter stopped and took a deep breath, resuming when Elly came abreast. “Here, Elly, I’ll take it now.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got it.”
“Yeah, I know, but if I don’t have something to do, I might do something I regret.”
She glanced at his face, recognizing the restrained anger. He looked a lot like his father with the same dark hair and hazel eyes, and now, the same look of anger. “Sure, Hunter. Hey, Sean, I need a break.”
Sean stopped and turned half-way. “Good. I’m getting tired of taking the lead. At least Hunter is tall enough to take up his share of the load.”
Hunter took the end of the pole from Elly. “I don’t know, Uncle Sean, I think with the way the weight was distributed, how it angled down, that poor Elly was carrying the lion’s share.” He shot her a wink. She hid a grin.
When they reached the boat, the other group wasn’t there yet, so they stowed the deer, washed their hands, and ate some cold potato cakes they had carried in their packs. Even cold, they tasted good. She never would have eaten anything like it before—especially after carrying it around all day. She’d have been too worried about bacteria breeding but now she sniffed and if it smelled okay, she ate whatever was put in front of her. With winter just around the corner, and nights downright cold now, the fear of food-borne illness had lessened but next spring, they’d have to deal with it again.
Sean scanned the shore, his arms crossed. “What’s taking them so long?”
“I hope everything’s okay.” Elly shaded her eyes from the late afternoon sun as she swept the north bank.
“I could go look for them.”
Before Elly could answer, Sean said, “No. If they’re not here in the next fifteen minutes, we’re leaving. They can bunk down with the horses if they need to.”
“We have another hour of light left.” Hunter’s eyes narrowed at Sean. “I’m not leaving any of them. What if they’re in trouble?”
“Oh, like he might get shot? Again?” Sean shook his head. “I still don’t get how that happened. There’s, like, nobody left in the world, and your dad gets shot by someone? What was he doing that they shot him?”
“He wasn’t doing anything. We weren’t doing anything except scavenging. What are you saying?” Hunter’s chest puffed out as he moved closer to Sean. While leaner than his uncle, both men stood a little over six feet.
Elly moved between them. “Hey, now. We’re all tired. We’ll wait and, if we have to, we can leave a note for them and tell them we’ll be back first thing, but we have at least an hour before we have to leave.” She glared at Sean. “I’m not sure what your hurry is. We said to meet at about four, and it’s only three-fifteen.”
“It gets dark by five. I don’t like to cut it so close.”
“We’ll be fine.”
Sean raised his hands in mock surrender. “Yeah, okay. We’ll wait.”
Hunter backed down, but he turned away from Sean. “I think I’m going to check on the horses.”
“Listen for your dad. I don’t want to have to come and look for you, too!”
“What the hell is up with you, Sean?” Elly stood, arms akimbo, glaring at Sean as Hunter leaped to the dock and strode away.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been making snide insinuations about Cole all day, and then pretty much just said he wasn’t pulling his weight.”
Sean rubbed the back of his neck, his gaze shifting. “No, I didn’t say that. I know he works hard; it’s just that he acts like he’s the leader. But of all the people on the island, he’s one of the most expendable.”
“Expendable? Are you serious?”
“Listen, Elly, it’s not that I want anything to happen to him. Cole’s my brother. I love him, but you have to admit that if
we survive winter it’ll be because of me, not him.”
She rubbed her eyes for second as she tried to form an answer. If not for Cole, Sean and all of his family would most likely be dead. He should know that already. “Cole went to you first with the idea of moving to the island. It’s horrible that Trent died, but it could have been even worse—it could have been all of you if not for your brother.” Sean sucked in a breath as if she’d just slapped him.
The instant the words were out of her mouth, they seemed to hang in the air like angry speech bubbles. She shouldn’t have mentioned Trent, but it was the truth. Cole had made sure they all had a place to stay that was safer than anything else available to them at the time.
“Yeah, I guess I should thank him that I only lost my son.”
She stepped forward, her hand extended, palm up as she tried to offer comfort, but unsure if it would be accepted. “I’m sorry, Sean. I only meant that he thought of your family first. If Cole could have done something to prevent Trent’s death, you know he would have.”
Sean sighed. “Yeah. Of course he would.”
“It’s true you have fantastic handyman skills, but Cole is decent with tools. He’s been working on a miniature generator to power small lamps, but he’s also a handyman in a different way. He wants to fix everyone’s problems. He’s the first one up in the morning, and I’m pretty sure, the last to go to bed at night. He volunteers for the dirtiest jobs, digging ditches, emptying the fish guts onto the garden, or the most dangerous like going out with Hunter and bringing back all the supplies.” She remembered Sean had balked at anyone going, and certainly hadn’t volunteered.
“You mean the supplies that burned up in the shed?”
She gave him a sharp glance at the snide tone. “Not exactly—you know what Cole brought back was mostly tools and clothing, not food.”
“So he should have found more food.”
“And maybe he would have if he hadn’t been shot.” She could no longer contain her anger, and the other hunting party’s absence at the meeting point had her worried for Cole again. “And did you know that Cole found a lantern in the ashes? Just like the one you used to have in your work shed.”
Sean glared at her, then moved to the back of the boat and bent over as if to examine the engine at the waterline. He reached down and dislodged a piece of seaweed.
She sat facing the dock and scanned the distance for the other hunting party. Her fight with Sean didn’t sit well. He was Cole’s brother and she worried it would put even more of a strain on Cole’s relationship with him. Her revelation about the lantern wasn’t hers to reveal—it was Cole’s if he chose to tell anyone else. He didn’t suspect anything other than an accident in regards to the fire. Sean had brought in the vegetables for that night’s dinner.
She offered an olive branch. “Okay, Sean. I’ll admit you probably have more skills.”
He turned and sat in the seat next to the engine. “Really? You’ll admit it?” He looked skeptical.
“I do, but what would you have done differently? Or would you have done anything at all?”
He opened his mouth as if to reply, then snapped it closed and turned away from her. “What the hell is taking them so long?”
Elly crossed her legs, her hands folded in her lap. “Yeah… I thought not.”
They had passed a farmhouse not very far from where they had parked, and Cole had made a note of it. If they had time on the way back, he’d wanted to investigate it. He glanced at his watch. There was still a little time before they had to rendezvous with Sean’s group. Was there enough to look? Cole glanced at his watch. If there was food, it would be worth it to take the time.
The house was a quarter mile off the road with a long winding driveway. His idea was that farmers were more likely to have put up stores of food than people in town and more likely to have taken precautions to safeguard those food supplies. The mouse and rat problem had become bad in town—with so much food available, the population had exploded. Most of the food stores in the houses near the horses, unless they were stored in metal or glass, were ruined. Cereal boxes, powdered milk, even cake mix, were all contaminated by the rodents. What they hadn’t eaten, they’d spoiled with droppings. Even some plastic containers weren’t safe if a rat was determined.
Cole called a halt. “Guys, take a quick break. I’m going to run up to the house and see if I can find anything useful.” Maybe since it was so far from town, rats hadn’t discovered it yet. He also wanted to see if there was anything in the barn that might come in handy.
“You want me to go too, Cole?” Jake offered.
“No, I’ll only bring what I can carry, and if there’s anything more, we can hit it up tomorrow. You two just take a break, stay out of sight, too.” He motioned to a copse of trees bordering the drive entrance. “I won’t be long.”
They quickly transferred the cattail roots he had in his pack to Jake’s so he’d have room for whatever he might find.
Cole kept to the edge of the driveway and the cover of the weeds. It would be easier walking on the asphalt of the drive, but he’d be a sitting duck for anyone firing from the house. He could cross the distance in only a few minutes, but he took his time, looking for any signs of recent activity. An old pickup truck was parked in front of a faded red barn, while a small tractor sat in the middle of what must have been a garden in the early summer. The edges of the garden were still discernible and some of what had been planted had grown, but it was choked by weeds. He scanned the house. A porch, littered with leaves, wrapped around the home. The sudden flap of a white plastic bag caught on a shrub startled him.
He climbed the three steps up to the backdoor, his footsteps on the wood sounding as loud in his ears as firecrackers. Before he tried the door, he peered into a window, scanning what he could see of a large kitchen with stainless steel appliances. Despite the farmhouse’s apparent age, the kitchen looked as if it had just been remodeled in the last year or so. If anyone was here, they hadn’t been in the kitchen for a while from the scattering of mouse droppings on the granite countertops. A box of cereal lay on its side next to the sink, a spoon beside it. A trail of crumbs and droppings circled the box. Even as he watched, a mouse darted out from behind the toaster, crossed the counter and dashed into a hole on one of the oven burners.
Confident the place was abandoned, Cole tried the doorknob. Locked. Undeterred, he found a rock in the flower bed and used it break a pane in the door. Before reaching in, he dug a mask from the side pocket of his pack along with a pair of gloves and reached in twist the doorknob.
“Hello?” He figured if anyone was around, they would have come to investigate the sound of breaking glass, but didn’t want to surprise anyone just in case they didn’t hear it. “Anybody home?”
Cole edged in and looked behind the door. Instead of a wall, the other side was a dining room. A hutch filled with dusty crystal glasses stood along the wall opposite him.
He turned back to the kitchen and checked all of the cabinets, finding bottles of aspirin, antacid, and some medication he recognized as a diabetes medication. He checked the name on the label. Dennis Vogel. The prescription was dated last May. He counted how many were left versus how many had been prescribed. Dennis hadn’t taken a pill after late May. He frowned as a wave of sadness washed over him. He hadn’t expected to find survivors, but confronted with the proof that the homeowner probably wasn’t alive still felt like a blow. He took a deep breath and reached for another amber bottle. This one contained medication for high blood pressure.
Cole didn’t know if they’d ever use it, but Jenna might want it for something. Pushing aside drinking glasses, he found a couple of partially-full bottles of antibiotic pills. By the dates, both bottles should have been empty by the time the diabetes medication had been obtained. He shook his head. “You’re supposed to finish it all or you’ll create a superbug.” He grunted at the irony and tossed the bottles into his pack.
Another cabinet contained spice
s and he emptied those too. Rodents had left them untouched. A bottle of orange flavoring had spilled at some point and he surmised the scent had kept the rodents away.
He opened a door and found a large pantry. The stench made him cough and draw back. When he grew accustomed to the smell, he stepped into the small room. A few dead rats, broken glass from jars, and splotches of dried up red stains from what he guessed must have been marinara sauce made the pantry resemble a crime scene. It looked and smelled a lot worse than it was as cans of tuna, pink salmon, baked beans, and soup still stood untouched. A jar of strawberry jam lay on its side next to a jar of peanut butter. He grinned. Some droppings dotted the tops of the tuna and salmon cans, but Cole brushed them off and dropped them in the pack. It wasn’t the haul he’d been hoping for but it was better than nothing.
He didn’t have much time to explore the rest of the house, but took a few more prescriptions from the bathroom medicine cabinet as well as an unopened bottle of mouth wash. One bedroom looked like a guest room, with a neatly made up bed, but the other one on the first floor appeared to be a master bedroom. The bed was unmade, but as he rifled through the dresser, he noted that all he found was men’s clothing. The dresser had only two items on the top, one of them a humidor. He flipped it open, surprised to find a handful of cigars. Beside that was a framed photo of a man he assumed was Dennis, his arms around a woman who grinned up at him. Cole guessed the woman had either passed away well before the virus or they were divorced since he had spotted nothing he’d label as belonging to a woman. He’d put a bet that poor Dennis had been a widower and felt a pang of empathy.
Feeling a kinship with the man, Cole used care when he looked through the top dresser drawer. Just socks and underwear. They weren’t too desperate for those to take used. His hand hit something hard, and he set aside a roll of socks, and uncovered a Zippo lighter. The man’s initials were engraved on the front. Beneath it, he found a gift set with lighter fluid, extra wicks and flints. Tucking them into his pack, he hesitated when his gaze snagged on the humidor. Cigars weren’t a necessity, but on impulse, he took it too. Christmas was coming.
Sympatico Syndrome Trilogy Box Set Page 41