Whiteside reached for his rifle, propped up against the wall next to all his gear. He didn't trust these fuckers to not steal his shit, even if they did seem like genuinely nice folks.
The old man and the son stood up.
"Let's go see what we got," the old man said.
"You be careful out there," Moseley said, halting his conversation with Tejada briefly before returning to it.
They exited the house, flashlights in their hands. The son carried a big lantern, and they walked through the remains of the snow. There was less of it now, but what remained had a crunchy surface, frozen by the night's kiss. Whiteside saw his breath steaming in the glow of the lantern light.
They crept forward in the night. Then they heard the growls and the grunts. One of the Annies was hung up in the fence, trying clumsily to force its way through the barbed wire.
"You want the honors?" the old man asked Whiteside.
"Nah, I've killed enough of these things."
The old man held a wooden club, his own rifle slung over his shoulder. That was smart. The sound of a rifle shot carried loudly out here over the rolling fields. He watched as the old man knocked the shit out of the Annie, its head snapping to the side. It took two or three such blows to fully bash its brains in, but it fell to the ground eventually.
The old man turned to head inside. "Ain't you gonna check its pockets?" Whiteside asked.
"Be my guest," the old man said. "I'm freezing my ass off. Gonna head back inside."
Whiteside knelt down and looked at the dead Annie. It had been a man once. Large, rough hands. It wore a pair of bloodstained overalls. He began fishing in the man's pockets, coming away with nothing more than a wallet and bunch of folded-up dollar bills. He kept the dollar bills and put the wallet back in its pocket. He didn't want to know who the man was, didn't need to put a name to the man's face. That would make him sadder than he already was.
He stood and trudged inside, hoping that his luck would change.
****
In the morning, they said their goodbyes, leaving behind the family. Allen didn't care so much. He was ready to move. He was ready to get to the beach and be done with all this bullshit. Maybe he could find himself a fishing rod and become a master fisherman. Hell, maybe he could become a sailor.
Either way, he was looking forward to getting to the destination.
The two groups wished each other well, and then they were back on the road. He walked next to Walt, who was unusually quiet. Internally, Allen smiled.
"You missing your girl already?" he asked Walt.
"That obvious?" Walt asked.
"Shoot, we all been there. Was that your first time?"
Walt nodded, looking around sheepishly.
"Don't worry. If you can get it once, you can get it again."
The boy did not respond.
"She ask you to stay?"
He nodded again.
"What did you tell her?"
He chewed on the inside of his lip and then said, "I told her you guys needed my help and that I couldn't leave until we got to where we were going."
Allen laughed quietly. "You dog. You promised her you'd come back, didn't you?"
Walt shrugged his shoulders. "Didn't seem like it would be wrong to just tell her that."
They walked on, crunching through the snow, the sun shining down on them.
"Are you gonna come back for her?"
Walt laughed. "If I got nothing better to do, why the hell not?"
"Spoken like a true libertine," Allen said.
"What's a libertine?"
"Never you mind," Allen said. He slapped Walt on his shoulder and hurried to catch up with Brown.
Chapter 19: Into the Snake Pit
Tejada smiled. The going had been easier on the mountain roads, and the weather had improved somewhat. They had walked twenty miles in three days. He figured they were almost at the halfway point to the coast.
His calves burned with every step, and his hip still ached, but he could walk on his own now, though he wouldn't be running any races any time soon. The snow, combined with the steady, gradual rise in elevation, had slowed their pace a bit. But the lack of Annies crawling all over the place more than made up for it.
The nights had been painful, though. Every night, about an hour before sundown, they stopped to make camp in the middle of the road, clearing out snow and pitching their tents in a circle around the campfire's flames.
The men spent that last hour of daylight foraging as much wood as they could find and chopping down branches for kindling. Then they took turns trying to light the fire in the howling wind of the mountain.
Once the fire was going, they would huddle around it, trying to warm their bones. He didn't know if anyone else was able to ever get warm from the fire, but he knew for himself that he always felt the ache of chill in his body. Whatever side was facing away from the fire would inevitably fall back into freezing, forcing him to alternate between standing with his back to the fire and standing with his face to the fire.
In addition to the cold, Tejada didn't think there was an inch of his body that wasn't chapped. If he had it to do all over again, he would have sent one of the men to find all the Chap-Stick they could when they had run through the last grocery store. His hands bled in his gloves; his lips were cracked in several places. He even felt like the small wrinkles around his eyes were chapped. He didn't want to think about what
