list of chores assembled in her head made Lynn feel better. The weight of purpose and responsibility helped to erase the feel of Mother’s frozen hand glancing against her hair as Lynn pulled her into the smokehouse.
“‘
The sight of trampled ground around the perimeter of the pond brought her rifle to the ready, safety off. Large coyote prints crisscrossed freely, brave and confident. Smaller tracks littered the shallower bank, where raccoons had been. Among them all, standing out sharply, was a pair of boot prints. Lynn stared at them, fear rising in her throat. By the depth of the print, he’d stood there a while.
Anger joined the fear as she imagined him surveying the property, dragging his eyes over her house while she lay injured and grieving in the basement. She heard something behind her and whirled, frightening a rabbit that had come to drink. The wildlife had become bold with no one to defend the pond, no shots ringing out over its placid surface.
Lynn made the trek to the barn and retrieved her buckets. Pain shot through her foot at the extra weight of ten gallons of water but she struggled up the bank in spite of it, teeth gritted. There was no one to cover her, so she strapped her rifle to her back and hoped that she could be quick if the man returned.
Water seen to, she went back to the basement, unhooked the hinged window, and tossed wood through the hole until her arms couldn’t take it anymore. With two people, the job had never felt hard. But Lynn was alone and injured.
She gathered blankets, extra ammunition, and a pillow. While the weather was warm, she would stay on the roof. Keeping a continuous watch would be impossible, but she could at least make her presence known. The man had been alone, of that she was sure. Whether he was only a traveler come to fill his bucket, or a scout sent by the party that had tried to overwhelm her and Mother, she did not know. Whoever he was, she would be ready if he returned.
Instead of men she saw dogs, and she blew the head off the first coyote that came to the pond for a drink. Boredom had taken a toll as she waited for the return of the mysterious man, but the still-kicking corpse of the coyote filled her with satisfaction. The second coyote came to investigate hours later, and she took him in the rear leg. He made it nearly a mile from the house before collapsing, which brought others out to him. She made short work of two and picked off the slowest ones as the pack bolted away.
It became an obsession, a twisted revenge for the needless death of Mother. The body that had fallen near the pond she dragged out into the field. None ventured any closer. The stink of surprise and death that it had sprayed in its dying throes was too powerful for animals to ignore. When the coyotes learned to skirt the western field, she picked them off in the east, and the buzzards swarmed.
Gathering water became a function she performed out of habit, not the task that used to fill her with a sense of urgency. She ate quickly and tasted nothing, but her real prey never showed his face. Lynn killed fifty coyotes in a few days, but never saw Big Bastard. Her bullets flew without thought for size or guilt, or even the ammunition that Mother had always warned was precious. By the fifth day, the smell of rot filled the air. The only thing that cut through it was the tang of gunpowder when she took another down.
Lynn’s eyelids were growing heavy, her cheek resting against the warm rifle stock when a dark cloud of buzzards rose from the field, cackling anxiously about their disturbed meal. A man was coming across the field from the southwest, a handkerchief across his face to ward off the smell of the dead. Lynn squinted into the scope, watching as the he skirted the corpses scattered in his path. His left leg dragged, the foot turned awkwardly inward.
Recognition startled Lynn. The loss of Mother had struck her so deeply she’d forgotten there was one other person she could name in the world—Stebbs. His halting pace slowed as he came toward a boulder that rested in the middle of the field. He rested on it, mopping his neck from the strain of walking the distance from his cabin.
Lynn studied him through the scope. The twisted foot she remembered from years of watching him lope back and forth on his daily routine in the woods. The red handkerchief she’d seen before too, often tied around his head if he was sweating, which seemed to be always.
He pulled something out of his pocket and held it up in the air. A piece of paper fluttered brightly in the wind. Lynn turned her barrel slightly into the setting sun so that rays flashed off it. He saw her signal and set the paper on the boulder, using another stone to weigh it down. Then he turned and slowly made his way back to his shack in the woods.
Lynn debated. Going out would be difficult. Without Mother, even trips to the pond were a test of nerves. With no one to cover her back, every step felt like a reprieve from death, each silent second without a sniper’s bullet an unprayed-for miracle. The walk itself wouldn’t be easy. Her ankle was much better, but the boulder was a half mile out. She tightened the laces on her boot as she thought through her options. Anyone watching the house would take it now, while she was gone. There would be no chance for her to sprint back and defend it, in her condition.
She slid behind the wheel of the truck cautiously, careful not to bang her ankle against the running board. The old engine fired to life and she backed out of the pole barn, sick at the thought of leaving the house even for a moment. She drove through the field without bothering to swerve around offal, oblivious to the riddled coyote bodies underneath her tires. When she reached the rock she left the engine running, moving as quickly as possible to get the note and drive back home.
She didn’t open the folded paper until she was back on the roof. When she did, she snorted with unexpected laughter.
“Can you read?” it asked.
Lynn wrote her response. “Yes, I can.”
She thought a second, then added another line.
“Asshole.”
Lynn’s war against the coyotes had caused a complication. Deer wouldn’t venture within her range. After dropping her response to Stebbs at the rock, she tried to ignore the blooming hunger in her belly. Long months of vegetables for breakfast, lunch, and dinner lay before her. There was still a chance that she could hunt, take down a small deer sufficient for herself. If she wanted meat for the winter she’d have to leave the roof.
She lay prone, silently watching everything around her. Stebbs had not come for her note yet. Lynn bit her lip as she watched his red bandanna moving through the woods as he went through his evening routine, as familiar to her as her own. Smoke bloomed to the east and the south, and Lynn looked at both pillars with suspicion.
She had come to think of the people to the east as the Streamers, which was a nicer name than Mother had used when they kept burning green wood. The lone boot print at the edge of the pond strayed through her mind. It could have been a Streamer, but what use would they have for her water? If it had been one of the men from the southern camp she doubted he would’ve overlooked the chance to take the house while it was unguarded. Stebbs was not in doubt; never in all her life had he approached her pond.
The white smoke of the Streamers dispersed into the evening sky, sending out a gray pall over the fields. There was no breeze; the smoke hung densely in the air. An evening fog rolled in from the west to join the haze, making the boulder stand out in stark contrast. As Lynn watched, a figured appeared beside it. She raised her binoculars to watch Stebbs.
She thought she detected a laugh go through his shoulders as he read her note. He scribbled an answer on the same piece of paper. Lynn didn’t dare venture out until morning. The fog that had formed was becoming thick, and she might get turned around in the night. She pulled the quilt tighter around her shoulders. There was a chill in the air, enough that she gathered up her rifle and descended the antennae.
A night’s uninterrupted rest would be welcome. If she couldn’t see, they couldn’t either. Lynn settled into her cot, oblivious to the complete darkness of the basement. When Mother had been alive, they would light the oil
