Gray (Book 2) (22 page)

As the men trooped into the main cabin for dinner, Brynn pulled away Coral’s scarf and hood to expose her bald head to the view of all of them. Benjamin looked briefly at her, but his expression was unreadable. She didn’t play attention to the rest of them. They were nothing to her.

Coral was shunned at dinner by the other women, though she caught sight of Ellie throwing her a sympathetic glance as she sat down. She was happy to have the privacy of her own thoughts, as she ate quickly, trying to be the first to get seconds and make up for the calories missed the previous day.

After dishes were done, she accompanied Brynn to the women’s cabin but immediately said she needed to go to the outhouse. Brynn made a sound of irritation, but she gave a sharp nod and motioned her back outside. Coral took the opportunity to count her own footsteps. Trailing her hand along the cabin’s stone walls, she began counting right footfalls. Call it a thirty-degree turn from the corner of the cabin, then at forty-one steps, a sharp turn, not quite ninety degrees, to get on the path to the outhouse. At two hundred paces, she glanced back. No, she should go further before risking a light. She looked all around, thinking it through. If she drifted off path, soon enough the deeper snow would tell her. Best to hold off on the light until she reached the outhouse itself.

Twice more before dark she asked to go to the outhouse. When Brynn complained, she said, “Upset stomach. Stress of last night.”

The lie that she was stressed about the previous night seemed to mollify Brynn, and Coral realized it provided her with another opportunity. She’d go out to the outhouse again, alone, in the middle of the night, on a dry run, and have the built-in excuse if someone discovered her. Brynn would have to back up her claims that she was sick.

She managed two trips to the outhouse that night. The first time, neither Brynn nor Polly woke at her departure or return. The second time, she took a candle and matches, and risked lighting them halfway along the path. No one else was out, but tomorrow, anyone could be, of course, legitimately out to use the facilities. They hadn’t set a guard, though.

She returned to the women’s cabin to finish the night’s sleep. Brynn stirred as she was peeling off her jacket, and she crawled into the cot, boots and all, going perfectly still. Brynn made a noise, turned over, and fell back to sleep. Coral quietly untied her boots and eased them onto the floor, and she lay back, feeling satisfied with her night’s rehearsals. Tomorrow was the day, so she needed to sleep the rest of this night through.

* * *

She woke to Polly shaking her.

“You need to hurry up,” the girl said. “Or Brynn will be mad.”

“I’m up, I’m up,” said Coral. As Polly swept through the door, she could see that dawn had arrived. It was the last day—either of her captivity or her life.

She was set to the task of stirring oatmeal. There was plenty left for the women, so she stuffed herself with seconds and thirds. Had to be well-fueled for tonight’s activity. After dishes were cleaned up, she was assigned cleaning duty for the main cabin, scrubbing floors, with Ellie. They finished the kitchen and dining room floors, but they still needed to scrub the tables and countertops.

“I need to dump the water and get fresh,” said Ellie.

“I can do it.”

“No, I’m not supposed to let you out alone. Stay here.”

That was fine by Coral. She waited until the woman was gone, and then she went back into the kitchen and began opening every drawer and cabinet there, checking their contents. She had to climb on the counter to reach the highest shelves. She wasn’t really expecting anything good, but there, on the left-hand side of the uppermost cabinet, were pills: generic aspirin, Benadryl, and Immodium. Nothing strong, nothing prescription, but life-savers, all the same.

The front door opened, and Coral shut the cabinet door and slid down to the floor, closing the open drawers as quickly and quietly as she could.

“Coral?”

“Coming,” she said.

“Oh. Okay, let’s finish in here and then do the kitchen last.”

“Sounds good,” Coral said. Her mind was on the pills. Could she risk taking them now? Risk taking a few from every bottle? Wait until before dinner, after dinner? Would she get another chance at them?

It might be best to wait until night and try her lock-picking skills at the front door here. Going for the pills would be a risk, though.

As she finished scrubbing the kitchen counters, she tried to keep herself from glancing up at the top cabinets. She wanted those drugs.

And if she broke in here to get the drugs, she could grab the biggest knives they had. That wouldn’t do any good against rifles, but it could be useful later. And something metal—saucepan, a large metal cup—to cook in. She had that metal cup in the cabin, but it wasn’t more than twelve ounces.

Damn. Water bottles. How were they going to replace those? Even a couple of empty twenty-ounce bottles, or a canteen for each of them would be necessary if they were to stay on the move. She hadn’t seen anything like that in the kitchen.

The more she thought about trying to replace even a fraction of their old gear, the more despair she felt. They needed gear to survive in this harsh environment, and yet without the sled, they could only carry so much. If Benjamin didn’t come, and were Coral escaping alone, she wasn’t sure she could carry a big enough load to keep herself alive.

Anything is better than staying here.
The thought calmed her. She’d take what she could, and if she died out there, insufficiently supplied, it’d still be better than what awaited her here.

“Coral!” It was Ellie, breaking into her thoughts.

“Sorry. Drifted off. I’m sleepy.” She wondered if she said it enough to everyone today, if they’d let her nap in the afternoon. It’d keep her more alert tonight if she could catch an hour of sleep today. She let out an exaggerated yawn. “Are we done?”

Ellie handed her off to the next woman, and that one to the next, and no one she worked with that day expressed sympathy when she said that she needed a nap. Though Coral kept an eye out all day, she didn’t come across any other potential supplies for travel. The cave must be the repository for most of it. The rifles, she never saw. Either they were in the men’s cabin—though she couldn’t imagine they were just sitting there, where Benjamin could get to them—or they were stored elsewhere.

She found herself back in the kitchen in late afternoon, peeling root vegetables for stew. There was still so much she didn’t have, and so much she didn’t know—the worst of her ignorance being Benjamin’s mental state—but in eight or nine hours, she was leaving here anyway.

After dinner she said, “I’ll do dishes.”

Brynn shot a look at her.

Coral tried to put on an innocent, repentant face.

After a minute, Brynn gave a sharp nod. “Fine. Mondra is with you.”

Not the stupidest of the women. Though when a bunch of people believed a load of nonsense like these did, it was hard to pick out the smart ones. Mondra had grown unfriendly since the fight and head-shaving.

Though Coral looked for an opportunity to snatch the drugs before they all retired to the cabins, none presented itself. Mondra was more vigilant than ever, and they did dishes together and dumped water together, never giving Coral a moment alone in the kitchen.

Mondra escorted her to the cabin through a light snow and, when Coral said, “good night,” she did not return the sentiment. No matter. It’d be the best night ever for Coral, good wishes or not. Tonight, one way or the other, she would be free.

She sewed as instructed, making sure she drank all the water there was in the cabin’s pitcher. She was going to try to sleep for three or four hours, and a full bladder would wake her up in time to meet Benjamin. Before lights-out, she carefully noted the location of candle and matches on the crate, and she pushed her boots to a spot where her hand would easily reach from bed.

But when the lights were out, she was far from sleep. She lay in bed and went over and over her plan of action in her mind. Candle, boots, sleeping bag, pick the main cabin’s lock—shit. No, she needed her knife for that. So to the outhouse, see if Benjamin was there. If not, grab the knife and come back and get the drugs, a sack, and the biggest kitchen knives.

She rehearsed the actions in her mind over and over, until she was sure she’d know what to do. If she made it that far, to the outhouse, everything else depended on if Benjamin showed up or not.

She turned over and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. A couple hours of sleep was still possible, and the more she could get now, the longer she’d be able to run without rest once she got away.

Fitfully dozing, she tried to stay aware of the time, but without clock or moonlight or any other marker, it was hard to guess the hour. She finally decided to rise when she had been wide awake for what she judged to be nearly an hour, and she could stand waiting no longer. Her nervousness was making her want to toss and turn, and that might wake Polly or Brynn. Whatever time it was, she should get up now.

She took her boots in one hand, grabbed her sleeping bag in the other, and tiptoed to the door. She eased them to the ground just outside the blanket door. Then she turned back to get her jacket and the candle and matches.

Brynn snorted and turned over in her cot.

Coral froze, her hand still clasping the matches. She waited, but Brynn made no more noise. Coral stood in place, counting to a hundred, listening hard to the sound of breathing from Brynn’s cot. When she heard a low sound from the woman’s throat, it sounded normal, relaxed, the almost-snoring of a sleeping person.

Shoving the candle and matches into her pocket, she padded as quietly as she could to the door and pushed out quickly, not wanting a gust of cold air to waken the sleepers. She sat on the cold packed snow and put on her jacket and gloves, pulled on her boots, tied them tightly, and then felt around for her sleeping bag. She rolled it up and used the attached laces to tie it into a manageable roll.

Holding her breath, she sat for a moment, listening. Nothing stirred. With all the animal life dead, all the trees gone, there were none of the soft night sounds you could hear pre-Event. The world was dead, the nights silent as a grave.

She was alone.

Good. She trailed her hand against the cabin until the corner, made the turn toward the path to the outhouse, and walked on. When her toe hit a soft patch of snow, she knew she was off track. She took three steps back, yanked off her glove, reached down, and felt the snow. It was packed down here, so she was on the trail. She adjusted her direction a few degrees left and took slow steps, feeling for the slope of the worn path. When she thought she had it, she sped up. A few minutes later, once again, her boot came down in soft snow. She repeated the procedure of getting back on track and when she next stumbled, this time over a rock, she thought she could risk light.

She struck a match, the sound piercing in the quiet night, and looked ahead. She was on the path to the outhouse, and further along it than she had hoped. A few snowflakes danced in the matchlight. She hurried on, lit by the tiny flame only, until it burned out. Then she kept on in the dark until she thought she must be getting close. She lit another match, and there was the outhouse, not twenty feet ahead. She pulled out the candle and lit it.

Treading as lightly as she could, she approached the little building. Benjamin was nowhere to be seen. She went in, used the toilet, and then climbed up and felt the ledge for her knife. Her fingers hit it and knocked it to the ground. She jumped down and grabbed it.

Now, back to the main cabin and get the drugs. She’d come back here, and if Benjamin wasn’t here, she’d hide behind the outhouse and wait for him. If he wasn’t here in what she judged to be an hour, she’d have to convince herself to go on without him.

She blew out the candle, opened the door to the outhouse and hard arms grabbed her. Gasping, she pulled away, bracing for a fight.

“Shh. It’s me.” Benjamin’s voice.

Immediately she stopped struggling and threw herself at him, putting her arms around his neck. “I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered. She was fighting back tears, then lost the fight. Until that moment, she didn’t know how worried she’d really been, how hurt, how terrified. The relief his voice brought was overwhelming, but it was the other, bad feelings, let free from their bonds, that had her momentarily a wreck.

His arms tightened on her for a moment, then he pushed her away. “We need to move.”

“Right,” she managed to say. Her bandana was around her neck, and she yanked it up to wipe away tears before getting it back in place over her mouth and nose. “There’s aspirin back—”

At the same time he said, “We need to get to the cave.”

“Knives, simple over the counter drugs, empty sacks, back at the cabin.” She was speaking in a near-whisper, and so was he.

“We can’t risk running into anyone. Bad enough we have to get close to get the path to the cave. Besides, no key.”

“I’ve learned to pick locks.”

She felt him grab her arm and squeeze it. “You’re amazing. But there’s more at the cave. We have to get going before one of the men wakes up. Jim already went out about an hour ago to the outhouse. Who knows who’s next?”

“What about the donkey? I was thinking he might carry us faster than we could run.”

“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.

“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.