night I was havin’ a look for anything useful and I saw that their old football team was called the Hillmen. Now they live alone out in the deep woods mostly, but they still think of themselves as some old football team from before the bombs . It was how they told the difference between them and strangers. Crazy, huh? But not really—makes more sense than some of the other tribes.”
The fire popped and the aroma of roasting meat caught the night’s breeze as sparks rose into the dark sky.
“Not much fat in lion,” noted Escondido.
Then …
“I’ll miss this place for the rest of my days.”
The mule honked at some ground squirrel. Escondido watched the forest for a long moment, his coal-black eyes wide in the dancing light of the fire.
“So, if you could ride with me, I don’t think you’d make it. Or more to the point, I don’t think yer horse’d make it. So I’m leavin’ you. Sorry. That’s the way it has to be.”
When the Boy failed to protest, his face calm, almost asleep in the firelight, Escondido said, “I’ll show you a few things in the morning, maybe even some bushes that’ll help with the healing. If you get to work on a shelter, you’ll be ready if them tribes come back lookin’ for me. Most likely they’ll take to you more than they ever did me. They’re tribal like you. Don’t like city people like me. Hate the Chinese, they do. Hate ’em. But you, you’ll be fine I suspect.”
They ate the lion and fell asleep near the fire. The night came on cold and the Boy dreamed of faces in windows. His last thought before he closed his eyes beneath the broken crystal of night was of faces. He remembered faces, though he did not remember who they belonged to. What was Sergeant Presley’s face like? He wondered and for a moment he could not remember its shape. But when he thought of the Sergeant’s rare smile, the face came back to him. And he was asleep.
Chapter Twelve
SNOW FELL AND had been falling since they first woke. Now it was coming down steadily. High above, white clouds had replaced the startling blue of morning. Escondido, on the far side of the river and rounding the curve of the old highway that wound its way up across the pass, did not turn to see the Boy one last time, and then he was gone.
The wind rushed through the pines and made the only sound of the place where once Escondido’s hunting lodge stood.
You got to prioritize, Boy!
And he did. The Boy knew he had to get moving. There were three things to do.
Make a shelter.
Gather healing herbs for Horse.
Find food.
But for a long moment he stood there. It was so quiet in between the thundering gusts of wind that shook all the pines at once that he could hear snowflakes landing on the ground all around him. Or so he thought.
Escondido left him with a simple knowledge of the area’s herbs and inhabitants. The lions wouldn’t come up this far and they didn’t like the cold anyway. There were some wolves. But wolves were wolves. There was a way to handle them. Then there was the bear: a mother brown bear, one of the worst kind. Two seasons ago, Escondido related, she had two cubs. This year he didn’t see the cubs. But the bear lived in a cave upriver at the top of a small conical hill. A small mountain even.
“You’d be wise to steer clear of her altogether. The brown are the worst. Man-eaters.”
Horse was on his side now. His large dark eyes were weak and milky. Often he would raise his head to make sure the Boy was near. But even that act seemed too much for him.
So what do you do first, Boy? Make a plan. Get moving. Get to work. Do something. Make a decision. If you don’t, circumstances will decide for you. The enemy loves to tell you what to do.
It was the voice of Sergeant Presley, heard over a thousand camps at morning, in the frosty nights of Michigan when they’d barely survived. Down South, crossing the big river, he’d heard the Sergeant plan and tell him to do the same.
It’s all you got now, Boy!
The Boy gathered herbs. He found most of them not far from the river. Most of them were dying as winter came on.
Will that affect their potency?
Don’t matter, Boy. It’s all you got right now.
He spent the rest of the morning mashing the herbs and slowly adding water until all became paste. He boiled the paste for a while, per Escondido’s instructions. He applied the hot paste after having taken Horse to the river to clean the wound once more in the icy water, in which Horse’s legs gave out for a moment and he stumbled, casting a look at the Boy as if they were both embarrassed to the point of death. After, when the paste was hot and goes on Horse’s wounded flank, after Horse lay down, his eyes resigned to the smoking fire, the Boy murmured, “I didn’t see that. Let’s just forget about that.” The Boy covered him with his only blanket.
Afternoon, thin and cold, settled across the little river. There was no warmth left in the big stones and a breeze could be seen in the pines atop the surrounding mountains.
The Boy began to hack at the burnt lumber of Escondido’s lodge, salvaging any useable beams for shelter. There weren’t many. Near the river, he found fallen trees and in dragging them, he was soon exhausted.
If I had Horse right now this would be easier.
When night fell, what he had was little more than a two-sided lean-to. The open side faced the mountain wall that rose above their camp. Moving Horse within the lean-to, the Boy built a fire. Later he gathered loose wood from the forest floor and brown grass for Horse.
It was night now and he didn’t mind the dark or the forest. He had known such places his whole life.
Chapter Thirteen
IN THE NIGHT, keeping the fire high, face burning hot, body and back cold, the Boy sat staring into the shifting flames. Occasionally he simply watched Horse. He tried to make a plan for the coming morning beyond this endless freezing night.
Fishing in the river.
Food.
Traps.
How to improve the shelter.
The snow was coming down thick and silent. It hissed as it fell into the fire.
Even with the fire, it was cold. But Horse slept and that was good. Or at least the Boy hoped it was good.
On nights like this, when it was too cold, Sergeant Presley would talk, telling him things, teaching him. Sometimes they would break camp and simply walk to keep warm. The Boy remembered walking in the freezing rain outside Detroit.
Later he remembered the heavy warmth of late summer when they finally reached the Capitol in Washington D.C..
Sergeant Presley’s Mission, he’d called it.
They’d come upon the old Capitol the day before, broken buildings overgrown by blankets of green. Cracked highways had fallen into swampy water thick with flies and insects.
“I got to go in there, Boy, and there ain’t no use you comin’ in with me,” said Sergeant Presley on that long-ago day.
It was hot and sticky in the late afternoon. Summer. It had been raining for much of the week.
“Let’s make camp and then I’ll go in and look for what I got to find—what I know won’t be there. But I’ll go in all the same.”
They’d been living well that year. They’d fought for Marshall and his men the spring before. A range war in Pennsylvania. When the war was over, they’d been granted permission to move on into Maryland. When they’d gone from the warlord Marshall and his expanded kingdom, they’d had good clothes and supplies. They’d found nothing but wild people