Gray (Book 3)

by Lou Cadle

“Sure, I understand,” said Coral.

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  “Okay,” said Coral, hoping she wouldn’t live up to that promise.

  After Victoria left, Coral went upstairs. As she fell asleep, she was inventorying all the people she’d met in Boise and deciding which of them had the skills or attitude to survive the life Coral had been living—the life they’d all have thrust upon them when the food and fuel ran out a month from now. She imagined very few of them would survive. The scavenger teams, probably they could, if they lucked into finding game or stored food.

  But she could too easily imagine those few she had come to like—Doug and Abigail and Edith—not making it.

  Over the next two days, Julie improved and Coral sent her home. Coral was able to switch from feeling anxious about Julie to worrying about Benjamin, who was due to return that day.

  And then there was Abigail. She had been patient while Coral focused on her surgical patient, but lines of worry were etching themselves on her face, and before dinner the day she’d gotten Julie settled in bed two floors above the kitchen, Coral reassured Abigail that she was looking for a solution.

  “I’m getting morning sickness now. I’m a hundred percent sure I’m pregnant.”

  “I could give you a pelvic exam,” Coral said. “But I’ve never given one. If an experienced person could tell you’re a couple weeks pregnant from feel, I couldn’t. I have nothing to compare it to.”

  Maybe something would happen that Abigail wouldn’t want to terminate her pregnancy. If a miraculous food find happened, something like a whole train, a hundred cars long, full of canned food, she could carry to term, and before she left Coral would recruit the most experienced mothers to be midwives, Abigail and her baby would be fine.

  That was all fantasy, of course, beginning with the unlikely discovery of food. If Benjamin and Kathy’s scavenging party did find something—even a fully stocked Super Walmart—it would only delay the inevitable end. The world as it was could not sustain a town of three hundred for long. Eventually, they’d have to break into small bands, move out in different directions. A few of them with the right skills might find game or fish. Most of them would die of starvation.

  It reminded her of another reason that she and Benjamin had to be gone well before that natural end occurred here. They needed to be the first searching out the new areas, and well ahead of the main exodus from the town. A twinge of guilt at her selfishness bothered her—but it would not bother her enough to forfeit her and Benjamin’s survival when the time came.

  She wished he’d get back. As she held her series of dining-hall meetings that night about folk medicine, natural remedies, and donating any random pill or mint they might still have, her thoughts kept drifting to Benjamin.

  She ate alone, at the end of a long evening, eating only because she knew she had to. It was some mystery meat stew, watery, with not enough salt, and with some dried herb floating in it she didn’t like the taste of. Coral ate it quickly and then took her bowl back to the last two people in the kitchen, who were putting away clean dishes.

  She hadn’t ever seen the kitchen area this empty. She knew it was locked at night. If she and Benjamin were to leave soon, they would need food. She needed to keep a closer eye on the kitchen and figure out how to smuggle some MREs from the pantry. She wouldn’t take many—they couldn’t carry many—but enough to give the two of them a fair chance at finding fish or game or a small town grocery store that hadn’t yet been looted.

  At home, she sat in the living room, hoping Benjamin would show up, but he didn’t. For the first part of the evening, she had company. Doug had a book with him, a Jane Austen novel. They hadn’t talked Levi into assigning him to the task of hunting for medical tidbits, but he was taking it on anyway in his spare time. From time to time, he’d read aloud a few paragraphs, none of it particularly useful. Gout wasn’t likely to appear in post-disaster Boise. And while Doug might well have an attack of the vapors if he learned of his wife’s pregnancy, Coral thought he’d recover quite easily from them without a whiff of vinegar.

  The content of what he read was useless as medicine, but it helped in another way. It took her away, for a moment, to a different world, one were ash did not fill the air, where people could change their clothing every day after servants had washed and pressed it, and where people had time to worry about nonsense like ballroom etiquette rather than survival.

  She stayed up alone in the dark though she knew the scavenging party would not be coming back. Then she slept restlessly, half-listening for the sound of Benjamin’s return.

  The next morning, she woke to find herself still alone in bed. It was barely dawn, too early for breakfast. She dressed and went out to walk the perimeter of town. Blake, a man who she had treated at the clinic for a cut her second day there, was on duty. She asked him if she should worry about the scavenging group being late.

  “Stuff happens. If they found something, they could be moving slowly. Or if someone sprained an ankle, that’d slow them down.” He looked across the river into the distance where the ruins of the city faded away into the fog of ash particles. “Do you think that Army group is going to attack us?”

  Coral had nearly forgotten about the brouhaha she’d started by mentioning the encounter at the train so long ago. “If they haven’t found you yet, I think not. Maybe they had an internal fight and killed each other. Or disease ran through them. Or they found enough food to settle in for the winter and don’t have to scavenge.”

  “You saw them? I heard there were dozens of armed men.”

  “Only two that I saw,” she said. “But they referred to others, and those two had some serious-looking guns.”

  Blake’s hand slid along his own rifle, caressing it. “M-16s I hear. Man.”

  “If Parnell isn’t worried, I wouldn’t be either. He seems to know his stuff.”

  “Maybe we should be hidden, not standing out here like this.”

  “But you have to patrol a pretty long stretch, right?”

  “I guess.”

  She couldn’t think of anything to say to reassure him. The border guard patrolled in two-person teams, each team covering a quarter to a half-mile. They were sometimes within sight of the next team, and usually in motion. Coral didn’t think a big group could sneak in, but enough temporary gaps were in the line to let her and Benjamin sneak out at night.

  To get in unseen, an attacking force would have to creep up on a pair of sentries and kill them. Looking around at the bare area outside the perimeter, Coral didn’t see how that was possible during the day. At night? Maybe.

  She said, “If you’re worried, why not take a couple others and talk to Parnell about it?”

  “Huh,” he said, in a tone meaning he wouldn’t. “Well, anyway, I’m sure Kathy and them will be back soon—probably today.”

  “I hope,” she said. If they weren’t back by tonight, she’d be up all night worrying. If they weren’t back by tomorrow morning, she’d load up her gear and follow them—if she could find out what direction they had gone.

  Chapter 23

  After checking on Julie, she went to breakfast and watched Abigail pick at her food. When Doug asked if she was okay, she said yes, and bent to eat her rice porridge. Coral could see the disgusted look on her face and hoped she didn’t puke it right back up. None of them were getting many calories, and Abigail needed them more than most. Her body would be doing everything it could to nourish the fetus, and if that meant stealing nutrients from Abigail herself, that would happen. One of her fellow students in physiology had called pregnancy a parasitic invasion, and while some of the other women in class seemed horrified at his saying that, Coral thought there was evidence to support that view. Abigail’s health would suffer for every week she stayed pregnant in these conditions.

  Coral hadn’t gleaned anything useful from her town-hall meetings with people, and she hadn’t wanted to ask directly about triggering miscarriages, for fear of alerting peop
le to the fact that one of the town’s women was pregnant. Once people started looking for clues to who it was, their attention would quickly fall on Abigail.

  All morning, treating patients, her attention kept drifting off, occasionally to Abigail’s problem, but mostly to worrying about Benjamin. The smell of wood smoke on one person triggered a memory of being alone with him at the fire, eating fish bone soup. She hadn’t appreciated what she had had with him. She hadn’t known then that she was content all those hard months. Well, she knew it now.

  Where the hell was he? Had his team run into trouble? Was he hurt?

  About mid-day, Doug came into the clinic, coinciding with a lull in patients “I thought you’d want to know that Benjamin’s back.”

  The weight of worry lifted, and she felt lightheaded in its absence. “Where are they?”

  “Reporting to Levi at the library.”

  Coral glanced at Edith, who smiled. “Go on. I can handle it here. I did for months, after all.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She grabbed her jacket and gloves and patted Doug on the arm, going outside and heading at a jog for the library.

  She was almost at the doors to the library when Martin emerged. She grabbed his sleeve. “Everyone okay? No one needs medical attention?”

  “We’re fine. Didn’t find any medical supplies for you, though.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  Martin gave her a smile that said he knew who she was really worried about. “It was entirely routine. They’re still debriefing, though. You should probably wait out here.”

  “Why? Did something go wrong?”

  “Nothing at all. But don’t push, you know. Let Parnell do his thing up there with Levi.” He said it kindly.

  Coral watched Martin’s slim form walk away, wondering if he had just said something she should be worried over. She tried to remember how the returning group had been treated when she first arrived here. They hadn’t needed to turn in their finds at the library. But they had reported in.

  She paced in front of the library. It seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time. Maybe it was crazy of her to be more worried now than she’d been the past few days, but she was, the tension in her feeling like a rubber band being wound tighter and tighter. She walked out to the street, hiked up onto the berm of shoveled snow, and turned in a circle, looking at the city. The sights were familiar to her now. The brick buildings, the broken glass, the vague line of the river to the north shaped by the buildings and ruins around it. The physical plant smokestack. The well-worn paths. People in coats and scarves walking in ones and twos. A light snow falling over it all.

  Familiar, yes. But none of it was home. Benjamin was home.

  She turned back to face the library and the door opened, and there he was, his rifle still on his shoulder. Her heart lifted at the sight of him, and the tension that had her twisted up all day unwound. He was smiling and talking to Kathy. Kathy stopped, threw her head back and laughed, then smacked him on the arm. Then she turned down the path and began to walk away, but a few steps later, she spun to say one last thing to him.

  Benjamin nodded and waved.

  The whole time, Coral had a terrible feeling, and when Benjamin stood for a minute to watch Kathy walk away, it dawned on her what the feeling was. It was jealousy.

  There was such an intimacy between Kathy and Benjamin. Of course, they had been together for three or four days. They’d have had adventures together, bonded. That was to be expected. But something about how Kathy was acting, some tilt of the head or something else had told Coral it was romantic. On Kathy’s part, almost certainly. On his, too?

  Standing up on the rise for all the world to see, Coral felt vulnerable…and more alone than she’d felt since she and Benjamin had left his house together, pulling the sled through what was, back then, only a few inches of snow. How could she bear to lose him? After all this, how could she let him go?

  But how could she be so selfish as not to be happy for him, if he had found someone he cared about? It was a cold and brutish world. They were unlikely to last many more months in it. Every day was a gift. If there was joy or pleasure to be had today, a person should grab it. Right?

  He caught sight of her then, and came toward her, taking long strides. She walked to meet him, her own steps small and uncertain. Her head was still reeling, and she didn’t know what to say to him right now. But he was coming closer and closer.

  “I was worried,” she said.

  “Nothing went wrong.” He closed the distance between them and slung an arm around her shoulder as he kept walking. “Walk to the apartment with me?”

  She already was, pulled along by the pressure from his arm. “Sure. Edith has the clinic under control right now.”

  His arm dropped from her shoulder. “Good. How’s Julie?”

  “Home. Resting. Okay.” She was still feeling weird, uncomfortable with him, not wanting to ask him about Kathy, but unable to think of anything else. He didn’t seem to notice anything was amiss. She tried for a normal tone. “So tell me all about it. Where did you go? Find anything?”

  They walked along, and she was grateful he couldn’t see her face. He chatted about the trip. They’d found a good stand of downed trees for fuel, far enough away to take some work to haul into town, but close enough to make it worth the effort. No significant quantities of food. No medicines. No greenhouse supplies. No ammunition. No sign of the army group, either. “They’re really worried about that.”

  “That makes sense,” she said.

  “We went toward that military base—the Air Force one. No hint of repeated travel—or of any travel, except our own tracks on the way back. They might not have ever been there at that base anyway.”

  “I was talking about it to one of the guys on patrol. Maybe they’re dead. Or maybe once they found the soup, they settled in there and quit scavenging for a while.”

  “Could be.” He jostled her shoulder. “You been okay?”

  “Busy with Julie. Then worried about you. And worried about another patient.” She hadn’t told him about Abigail, but she wanted to. She wanted to tell someone, and Benjamin was the only real friend she had.

  That’s what was hurting her. All these other people—even the ones she liked—they weren’t very important to her. They didn’t know her. Hell, they thought she was married to Benjamin, for one thing. They thought she was a doctor, and that was a lie, too. They thought she was older than she was. They didn’t know a thing about her fishing skills or her having fought her way through to crafting a bow and learning how to use it. They hadn’t seen her cry over killing a dog. Those things—those things were her. What she did in town was mostly an act.

  They didn’t know the real her at all. And if she tried to tell them about all that, they still wouldn’t know her. Benjamin had been there. He had shared experiences. That was an entirely different order of knowing than listening to someone’s story about something that had happened in the past.

  At the apartment, he went in and walked upstairs. She followed more slowly. When she came in the bedroom door, he was leaning his rifle in a corner.

  She leaned against the door jamb. “They let you keep it,” she said.

  “I was given exactly five rounds, and they have plenty more they could have given me. So it wasn’t a total vote of confidence. But Parnell says they need me to have it to walk the perimeter.”

  “What if someone attacks you out there at the border?”

  “They’re going to pair me with someone who carries extra ammunition for me.”

  “Couldn’t you jump that guy and steal it?”

  “Sure I could. But they aren’t thinking that way.”

  “They aren’t paranoid enough. Most of them aren’t going to survive the collapse of the city.”

  “I know.” He frowned. “Did things get bad while I was gone? Any reason that’s on your mind?”

  “Not really. I caught sight of a pantry. They’re running low on food.
And I’ve been giving some thought to who would make it and who wouldn’t. Most won’t. It reminded me not to like anyone too much.”

  “I think everybody out with me the past few days could last—if they could find food.”

  “And didn’t run into a superior force.”

  “True. But they’d do okay. As well as you or I have done.”

  “Do you think that when we leave, we should take some of them with us?” She had to push the words out past a tight throat.

  “Do you?”

  “I…” She shook her head. She felt like an idiot, but she also couldn’t help what she was feeling. She felt oddly betrayed. And frightened. And lonely. Her heart hurt.

  “Is something wrong?” He stood but didn’t come toward her.

  She rubbed her eyes. “I think I’m tired. Worn out from the stress.” She wanted to ask directly about him and Kathy, but she was afraid she’d start crying if she did. She forced a smile. “I’m so happy you’re okay.” That, at least, was a truth.

  “Are you?” When she met his eyes, he was looking strangely at her.

  “I’m fine. I need to get back to the clinic, though.”

  He studied her. She could see him decide not to press. “Yeah. And I need to get a bath.”

  “See you tonight?”

  “At supper.”

  “Great.” She turned her back and trotted down the steps, then made her way back to the clinic, trying to straighten out her thoughts. She’d been childish, really. Why not ask him straight out if he was having a thing with Kathy? Stupid, stupid, stupid. She was acting like she was still in middle school. Next thing you knew, she’d be passing him a note. Do you still like me? Check yes or no.

  A seven year old boy came in with a broken finger, and that kept her mind off her own worries for a half-hour. It was dislocated as well as broken, and the kid’s caretaker—not a blood relation—and Edith had to hold him still while Coral got the bone back in place. He screamed and fought them, but finally Coral had the bones lined up. She used her knife to cut a pair of splints off some firewood, taped them to the broken finger, and then wrapped the broken finger to the two on either side of it so it had a chance to knit.