Coyote (7 page)

The guy and the girl, though, they seem different. I don’t know if they really know what they’re doing, or they’re just as delusional as the rest of us, but at least they’re moving—doing something. It’s better than sitting here.

The guy seems to do all the talking. He’s a skinny guy, all quick twitches and never still. Even when he’s sitting down to a meal he’s moving and fiddling around. His mouth’s the same—always moving. Seems like a nice enough guy though, even if he’s a bit rough around the edges.

The girl and the dog seem like a matched pair. I don’t know how long they’ve been together, if the dog was with her before the Fall, or if they met sometime after, but they go well together. The girl talks just about as much as the dog, and neither one seems like they would be much fun at a party. They’ve got a dangerous air about them though. Not like they might turn on you or knife you in your sleep. But the “I may suddenly kill you if you cross me” kind of danger. I’d hate to be the bully that tried to take her lunch money, or the guy that tried to take that dog’s bone.

With her odd way of talking and her anti-social nature, the girl’s the kind of person my friends and I would have quietly made fun of in the cafeteria at school. Now, though... It seems like that’s all past. Now I’m volunteering to go where she’s going just on the hunch that she’s got what it takes to live in this fucked-up world.

I hope I’m right.

They set off walking. Close by the warehouse they had spent the night in, they stepped into a country store at the edge of the road. It was pretty well picked over, but they split up to search the store anyhow. She did find some bulk oatmeal and a shelf almost entirely full of canned vegetables. Once she opened the lid of the barrel for it, the dog seemed to enjoy the oatmeal, so she let it eat its fill. She then scooped some more into plastic bags and put them in her pack. She took four cans of vegetables and added them to her pack as well.

The man and the teenage boy wandered over and started grabbing some of the canned vegetables as well.

“Here you go,” said the man, tossing one can to the teenager.

He caught it, then looked at it in horror. “Oh, god! Beans!” He actually skipped back from the offending can and gave a little shudder, causing the already giggling man to double over with laughter. Even she smiled, before she turned back to the shelf to select what she wanted. She heard the man walk away to explore other aisles, while the teenage boy stayed, carefully selecting canned vegetables that looked nothing like beans.

When she had all she needed, she looked over at him. She saw him filling his pack with cans until it bulged. She smirked at him as he lifted it, his eyes bulging at the surprising weight.

“Too much for you?”

She could tell he didn’t want to look weak in front of his new companions. “It’s all right,” he lied. “I can carry a pretty heavy load.”

She looked at him. He was big, but soft. The frame of a football player but the padding of a video game player. She didn’t think he would last.

“Good,” she said, and placed three more cans into an exterior pocket of his already-full pack. “Who knows how often there will be so much food?”

Then she stepped back, looking at him. “Like a mule,” she said, turning away and making her way out of the store. She had meant it as an insult but for some reason the boy smiled.

The others followed her, man, boy, and dog, exiting the store and heading generally east on a winding rural highway. Except for that break, it was steady walking until afternoon. She tended to walk a little in front of the other two, as the dog took turns sometimes walking near the group at the side of the road and sometimes moving off into the fields to carry out its own investigations of the land they passed. Twice that morning the dog stopped in front of her and growled, looking at a house some distance from the road. Both times she detoured off to the other side of the road, tromping through neighboring fields to give a wide berth to whatever the dog sensed before returning to the highway. The others grumbled a bit, but followed. They gave the houses wary looks as they passed by, but nothing ever came of it and it and the houses soon passed from view.

As they moved east, they moved away from downtown Portland, and into more open country. By late morning they had passed through the tiny town of Damascus,
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whose biggest offerings were a Safeway on one side of the road and a Bi-Mart on the other side.
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She did not stop. She offered no reason, but neither did her followers ask for one.

As they walked, the man and the boy carried on a conversation.  The man did most of the talking. She ignored it. She did not enjoy pointless talk.

In the afternoon, having left Damascus a few miles behind them, the highway passed by farm fields, nurseries, and the occasional cluster of two or three houses. At one point, marked by nothing different than any other, she stopped, setting down her pack and taking a drink from her canteen.

The others, who had been following a few paces behind her as they chatted and walked, approached, looking curious.

“What’s up?” asked the man. “Did we arrive?” He smiled, indicating that he was making a joke.

She looked to the teenage boy. “Mule. Turn around.” He frowned in perplexity for a moment, whether at the command or at his new name she was not sure, but then complied.

“Heh, Mule.” The man’s laughing eyes looked at the younger man. “Can I call you Ass?”

Embarrassed again, the Mule simply looked to the ground.

She reached up to unlace the top of his pack (his meek manner kept making her forget how much taller he was than her) and pulled out six cans at random. Unsurprisingly, none of them were green beans.

“Ah, lunchtime,” said the man, catching on. “Good thing, too.”

She squatted down, digging into her own pack for the can opener she had found a few weeks ago. Finding it, she opened all the cans and set them out on the pavement. The dog had trotted over, sensing food, and she let it investigate the cans. It sniffed at each one, and even gave an experimental lick to a can of peas, but didn’t seem to want any of them. She wondered if dogs ate vegetables at all, and figured it probably would if it got hungry enough.

She then doled out two cans to each of the others. There was some grumbling from the man when he got the peas that the dog had licked at, but it didn’t last. They were all hungry, and anyone who had survived the weeks since the Fall had learned to eat what they found. She ended up eating a can of kidney beans and a can of mixed fruit. The fruit was sweet and syrupy, normally a thing she would have turned her nose up at, but she knew she needed the calories and she pushed it all down her throat.

Stopping for lunch seemed to be the cue for the man to try and get her talking again. It seemed talking was an obsession for him.

“So, where to?”

She simply pointed in the direction they had been walking.

He sighed. “I know we’re headed that way, but what’s the long-term goal? What’s the plan?”

She didn’t feel like sharing her vague theories though, so she simply said.

“Like she told the Mule, earlier. There is no plan and you will both likely die.”

That shut him up for a few moments, at least. She enjoyed finishing off her last can in silence.

Finished eating, she stood, shouldered her pack, and started off again. As before, they all followed. She still wasn’t sure why.

---

As evening fell, they were still walking on the same highway. It had been a peaceful, uneventful afternoon. It was probably the first uneventful afternoon she had experienced since the Fall, and it was making her jumpy. Perhaps this thought was why she decided to seek shelter for the night a little earlier than usual. That, and the coincidence that as soon as she decided to look for shelter the perfect location came into view around a bend in the road.

On the left side of the road, amongst the endless array of farm fields they had been passing, was a gravel drive that led past two greenhouses and a large, red barn. It then continued perhaps another hundred yards to a farmhouse. The farmhouse was unremarkable, like many others they had passed during the day. But it was the barn that peaked her interest. It was a barn out of a storybook: big, red, solidly built, and with a large set of double doors at the front big enough to drive a tractor through. It had no windows or other doors that she could see on the sides, and only one shuttered window over the large doors at the front. She presumed that led to a loft. With only the one set of doors at the front, and perhaps another door at the rear, there were limited ways that anything could get in and get at them during the night. And the loft with its windows (she was guessing there would be another window looking out the back) would provide a good view of the rolling fields that surrounded the barn.

She turned onto the gravel drive, intending to investigate more closely, but soon the dog was scrambling in front of her, blocking her way. It gave a low growl, looking between her and the buildings down the driveway.

She stopped, briefly, to consider. The others had been walking several paces behind her, finally growing quiet as their legs grew weary toward the end of the day. The Mule looked especially sweaty and tired, struggling under the large burden of food he had picked up earlier in the day. At least he wasn’t giving up.

Soon the others caught up to her and stopped too, glancing at each other but both knowing that asking questions wouldn’t get them much.

She had followed the dog’s warnings so far, but was not eager to follow this one. This barn was the perfect place for them and she didn’t know what else she might find before nightfall. She took another step forward, but the dog’s growl got louder.

She looked down, annoyed and distracted.

“Ticho” she said absently.

“What’s that?” asked Mule.

“She said to be quiet.”

“No you didn’t.”

She turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow.

He wouldn’t look her in the eye still, but he held his ground. “You said ‘chico’ or something.”

“Oh,” she said, understanding. “Ticho. It is code-switching. English is not her first language. Sometimes other words slip out.”

He laughed, as if this was not news to him. “Well the dog seems to like it.”

“What do you mean?” She looked down at the dog. It was quiet now, looking at her expectantly. It still glanced nervously at the barn and the greenhouses now and then, but most if its attention was on her.

She decided to try something else. “Sedni.”

The dog sat down in the road, its attention now completely on her. She stepped forward again, towards the barn and the greenhouses, and the dog’s growling started anew, though it remained sitting.

“Ticho. K zemi.” The dog ceased its noises and crouched low to the ground. She took a few steps then crouched down behind a low stone wall that bordered the property while she considered her options. The dog followed, low and silent, crouching with her behind the wall as she looked at the greenhouses and the barn. The way the dog obeyed her commands was interesting, but she had more pressing matters to consider. It was enough now that she knew it would stay low and stay quiet.

Soon the others followed the dog and her, crouching behind the wall. She had made her decision. It was going to get dark soon and this barn looked like the only available shelter nearby. They would have to take a risk.

Turning away from the wall, she walked a few steps to a nearby brush pile, selecting and hefting a stiff branch about the size of a baseball bat. The Mule did the same, selecting a somewhat bigger branch.

He turned from the brush pile, a question in his eyes. She pointed to where the wall continued on the opposite side of the driveway. “The Mule will be behind the wall there. Stay low, but stay ready.” He moved across the driveway and got down behind the wall, nodding to her.

The man looked on, puzzled.

“Wait a minute, now. The dog growls and so we leave, right? That’s been the pattern so far. I don’t like this place, man. Let’s go.”

“No,” she said, simply. “This is your shelter tonight.”

He looked ready to argue for a moment, but soon gave a roll of his eyes and stepped to the brush pile, searching for his own weapon.

“No,” she said again.

He stopped, looking up. “What, the Ass gets to defend himself but I don’t?”

“You say you can run, right?”

He smiled, giving an energetic little bounce, apparently having already forgotten that he had been walking all day. “Like the wind. I like that plan. Let’s run away.”

She unslung her rile from her shoulder as she spoke, sliding the bolt half-way back to make sure there was a round in the chamber, then seating it home again. “No. Run past the greenhouses and the barn.”

“What?!”

“You are the bait. Run past the greenhouses, see what happens. Then keep running, go around the barn, and circle back here.”

“What? No way. What about the dog? It can be bait.”

They both glanced at the dog, still lying low, looking tensely toward the barn and the greenhouses.

“If you can explain to the dog what it must do, then it can be bait. Until then, it’s you.”

“Ah, uhh… I don’t know. What if something happens?”

“Run quickly.”

“Uhh…”

She looked him in the eye as he stuttered at her. She took a step toward him, lowering her voice, but adding a threatening tone. “Run. You are the bait. Run!”

Swallowing, he set down his pack, took one more look at her as if making sure she wouldn’t change her mind, and ran.

He took off right down the middle of the driveway. And he really could run. Not as fast as the wind, maybe, but certainly very fast. He pumped his arms and legs, accelerating away from her and down the driveway that led past the greenhouses.

For the first few moments, it looked like this might all be for naught. He ran, the quick slap of his footsteps getting quieter as he got further away from her, and closer to the greenhouses. There was nothing else to be seen or heard. Then, just as her shoulders were beginning to relax, it happened.

From the second greenhouse, two silver forms burst through the glass walls, tumbling in a confused spray of bodies, limbs, and broken glass. As they pulled themselves up and began to sprint after the running man, she could begin to make out their shape. They ran on four skinny legs, making clicking, scraping sounds on the gravel of the driveway, and had powerful torsos that lunged and stretched as they ran. The clicking of their legs on the gravel was soon joined by two high-pitched, shrieking calls as the beasts tore off in pursuit of their prey. They were running away from her so she could not see what their heads looked like.