by David Peters
Daniel reached down and held up the stringer of trout, “Oh ya, they always bite here, best spot there is. Bet this one here is close to four pounds.”
With brief quick turns, Dylan pulled the spinner back across the river. He felt several strikes and on the third he set the hook and started the fight. The rod pulled hard as the trout raced back and forth in front of them. Several times he let the fish pull several yards of line out instead of breaking the light test. The trout would leap clear of the water as it fought with Dylan.
“There you go Dylan, take him man, looks like a monster!”
After another five minutes Dylan was able to maneuver the fish close enough for Daniel to net him, “Look at that bad boy, nice catch! Six pounds at least!”
Dylan put his first fish on the stringer and placed it back in the water. The spinner looked undamaged from the long fight so he sent it back out into the river.
They fished side by side in silence for another twenty minutes, casting out and reeling in several times. Dylan had several hits but was always just a tad late to set the hook. Finally Daniel broke the silence, “You know it wasn’t your fault, right?”
“What’s wasn’t my fault?” Dylan looked at him with confusion.
“Me getting killed. Shit happens man; you couldn’t have stopped it even if you knew it was going to happen. I zig’d when I shoulda’ zag’d. It really is as simple as that.”
Dylan nodded absently and then looked at his brother next to him, “That doesn’t make it any easier you know. I miss you every day man. I think about what I might have done differently, how I should have planned better. You have no idea how much time I’ve spent at your stone wondering what I could have done better. How I could have made it end differently.”
“Well cut it out,” Daniel said with a smile. “I’ve seen how much time you’ve wasted at a rock. I’m not even buried there man. Listen, I would say it’s time to move on, but you have already done that. What you need to do is let go and stop blaming yourself. Forgive yourself.”
Dylan shook his head in agreement but said nothing. He flicked his wrist and sent his lure back out into the water.
“I’m proud of you ya know. What you have done, what you are going to do. You’re a good man.”
Dylan looked at his brother and smiled, “That means a lot Daniel. It really does.”
“Do me a favor, will you? Tell Niccole I said ‘howdy’ and that I miss her.”
“I’ll do that.” Dylan pulled his lure out of the water to change it. He finished tying the new leader on and sent the spinner out into the river. He looked around at the scenery then at his brother fishing next to him, “This is all a dream isn’t it?”
Daniel shrugged, “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter? Everything you can imagine is only as real as you want it to be.” He let his lure drift for some time as he leaned back and looked up into rolling fields surrounding the river, “Look at those hills of wheat. The sound of the wind moving through a field, the smell right after harvest, I just never get tired of that. Just breathe in that air man.”
The rock underneath him felt as solid as any he had ever felt. It was warm from the morning sun and had an unpolished roughness that he could plainly feel as he ran his hand over the stone. He could smell the river with its ever so slightly brackish scent. Overhead he could hear the ‘kree kree’ of a circling hawk as it looked for a morning meal. He felt Daniel looking at him and turned to meet his older brother’s eyes. They smiled at each other and nodded an unspoken agreement. Whether it was real or not simply didn’t matter. He would enjoy it either way.
In the cabin with the blue door in the remote mountains of Eastern Oregon, Dylan Murphy rolled onto his side and pulled the blanket tight under his chin. Even though he was sleeping deeply a smile crossed his face and a small tear rolled down his face.
Epilogue
Dylan finished nailing a wooden shingle onto the peak of the cabin. He was kneeling on the roof of a new row of cabins that would be the permanent houses for the last of the military folks that hadn’t yet found places to live. Dylan rolled off of his sore knees and sat back on the steep roof. He soaked some of the sweat off of his face with his shirt and twisted the cap off of his canteen. From this vantage point he could see nearly the entire town. There were still several guards walking the walls even as they headed into autumn. They had seen several Hunters prowl by over the preceding months. They were usually pretty lean looking and hoping to find an easy meal. They were the rogues that didn’t seem to have a home anymore, or maybe scouts coming to find out what happened to the Sumter hive. No one knew but nearly everyone had a guess of their own.
The town of Sumter, which was now called Lake Sumter, had been slowly lowering in radiation after the initial month long spike. The case that had originally contained the backpack also had multiple detecting and testing tools. Everything they did showed that the water was just slightly higher than background radiation levels but Doc didn’t think they would see any fish with three eyes because of it. The lake had grown in size and now encompassed nearly the entire area where the town used to sit. No one wanted to think about what was happening down river where the water flowed into larger rivers and lakes. Dylan shook his head at the thought and moved on.
Somewhere down below the sound of a baby crying could be heard through an open window. He saw Erica and Travis walking hand in hand across the town square. They seemed to be together every opportunity they could find and Dylan was happy for both of them. Erica had a spring in her step that he hadn’t seen before. Looking towards the hillside he could see Niccole walking down the trail with Jen. It looked like they each had large baskets of corn from the new terraced fields up near the radio tower. He wasn’t sure how much longer it would be before his wife began to show. Doc said she was at least three months along already and healthy as a horse.
He took another long drink from his canteen and smiled. He could watch her laugh for hours. Jen was already beginning to show and she was just a few weeks further along than Niccole was. He smiled to himself again when he remembered the look on Cap-Cap’s face when he told Dylan the good news.
Niccole had been able to make contact with quite a few new groups of survivors since getting the new antenna working. It seemed like there were quite a few townships like Paradise Falls that had managed to carve out a life far to the north. Food was tight and the winters were brutal but the Corrupted weren’t nearly as numerous. The future finally had one spot of hope for mankind. There hadn’t been a death to anyone that lived inside the walls in over four months. They had the occasional patrol that would come into contact with Hunters but they were rare and hadn’t yet resulted in anyone getting killed or even wounded.
People would still trickle in occasionally. A few from the surrounding hills that had been in hiding and had seen smoke from the cabins or heard the radio calls offering assistance. They even had a few from some of the nearer colonies make the dangerous trip but more often than not those that set out from distant places were never heard from again. No one from more than a hundred miles away had made it to the front gate since the previous year.
There most recent arrival was fallowing Jonathan around as he showed the newcomers where everything they needed was and who to talk to in case there was a problem. True to his word Travis had built him a very low slung wheelchair with large rubber tires in order to get around when the ground got soft. Dylan’s name must have come up in the conversation. Travis pointed at him and the young couple waved to him. He waved back and tipped his hat at them. Any survivors were welcome news and received with open arms.
They now had fairly regular communications with some of the townships. It hadn’t been as easy as Dylan had hoped to send out the word about the flowers and how to make the agent from them. Without a way to send instructions trying to use the radio was both taxing and confusing. There was talk of combining forces but it was simply talk. What may have been a ro
ad trip of several days a year and a lifetime ago was now a major journey that could take a month or more. The shelf life of gasoline was reaching an end and several of the stations they had made trips to now had water leaking into the tanks. Their diesel fuel was holding out better. Daniel had always been big on additives that prolonged shelf life but even with that, they were almost out. For the most part that didn’t even matter. They were using candles for light much more now and there simply wasn’t much need for the gas in day to day life.
He thought about the child he was bringing into this world. He didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl and he honestly didn’t have a preference. He simply had a hope that maybe, just maybe, they had carved out a home safe enough to live out a happy life. A life that had a future.
Dylan lifted his baseball cap and ran his hands through his hair. A broad smile crossed his face as he stood on the roof of the new cabin. They had nothing in the terms of wealth used in the old world. But what they had now was more than he could ever have hoped for and he felt like the wealthiest man in the world.
Dylan knelt back down and grabbed another shingle. As he tacked the wood into place he thought about hope and the future. It occurred to him that they could never be excluded from each other. Without hope, there is no future, without a future, there is no hope. He had both now and it made him smile.