Chapter 2

An hour before sunset, he took a haunch of roasted dog meat and set out for the girl’s nest. She was there this time, he caught a glimpse of her running figure as she disappeared into the trees. He tossed the meat on her blanket and left.

The next day he did the same, and the next. He was leaving fresh dog jerky by then. The next day he killed a rabbit and he left her the whole portion. He thought each time she stayed a little longer before running away, and by the seventh day he saw her stop, and watch him from a few hundred feet away. He tossed the meat into her nest and waved to her before going back to his cabin.

The day after he spent a few hours down the mountain a ways, calf-deep in freezing water. He re-learned how to cast, and to his surprise the fish were biting eagerly that day. He caught two nice-sized trout and tossed a few small ones back in. He had a fine meal of fried fish that evening and took the girl what he now thought of as her share.

Two weeks later he was still feeding the girl and he had no idea why. She seemed comfortable with their distance by now. He’d tried to bribe her by leaving a blanket at her place, but he wasn’t sure what he’d hoped to get out of her. The cabin was finally in the shape that he wanted, and he’d even carved out his emergency exit, and started the tunnel, made difficult by his lack of a shovel. He was eating well, his snares were working, and he had located wild berries and even some apples. The game in this area was just unreal. Fearless. It was almost a crime to shoot or snare the rabbits even.

One day he was out, exploring the surrounding area, when he happened onto another deserted cabin less than two miles away. He watched it for a day or two and then broke into it. He was pleasantly surprised, he found tools, including a shovel and a full sized ax, and even some canned fruit that wasn’t too rusted. Everything was covered with an inch of dust so he didn’t feel too bad about looting the place. He had to make two trips just to carry everything back to his place. He even found a few bricks of .22 ammo, but sadly, no gun. He wanted a .22 bad, to hunt with. It didn’t destroy the meat, and it was fairly quiet, and wouldn’t attract attention like a big bore would. He took the bullets, anyway.

He returned to the cabin, just to see if anything salvageable was left. Behind it, he got another pleasant surprise. Someone, long ago, had planted a garden. He found wild potatoes, last years crop, and several other vegetables. He harvested what he could, and gathered some of the plants to transplant at his place to start a garden of his own.

He returned, fried some rabbit in a skillet and took the girl her dinner. To his surprise, he found her home. If her little lean-to could be called a home.

He approached, slowly. She lay wrapped in her blanket, and he could see her shivering from twenty feet away. He drew closer, holding the meat out for her to see. He was just going to drop it and leave, but when he was ten feet away, he could see that her face was deep red and feverish. She shivered violently beneath the blanket. She regarded him at close range with what he thought was pure terror, but she didn’t run. He realized she was just too sick to run. She finally just closed her eyes as if she were giving up. It was like she was saying, go ahead. Do whatever.

He set the meat down, and knelt beside her.

“What’s the matter, girl,” he said, surprised at how rough his voice was. He was out of practice. Those were the first words he’d spoken out loud in a month at least.

She opened her eyes, and then closed them again. She didn’t move. He carefully reached down and tried to pull the blanket back from her a little.

No one, he thought later, no one had ever taken him by surprise as well as she did. When everything stopped, he was frozen, extremely conscious of the knife at his throat. She was sitting on top of him, holding a butcher knife on him. And she was still sick, her breathing labored, pain written all over her face. But she was ready to kill him. He didn’t move.

She moved slightly, and winced. He looked down, carefully, slowly, and saw the torn, bloody leg of her jeans. At least no bone showed through he thought. She couldn’t have moved that quickly with a broken bone. She seemed to have all the symptoms of a massive infection. He could feel her hand on the side of his neck and even it felt hot. Burning hot. Something was wrong with her, that was certain.

He didn’t really know what to do, from there. She didn’t seem to, either. At least she hadn’t slit his throat immediately. He hoped that his gifts of the last month had convinced her he meant no harm. He realized with surprise that he wanted to be her friend, he wanted to help her. And not just because she was cute and female, he wanted company. He wanted someone to help him, and someone he could help.

“I can fix that,” he said, nodding slowly at her leg. “If you let me, I can make you better.”

She just stared at him from the side, holding the knife at his throat in her trembling hand.

“You are sick,” he said, trying again. “I have medicine. I can make you better. Let me help you.”

“Laaaugh...” she said, a wordless moan. He wondered if she was touched, or retarded. He had never heard a sound like that from another person. She stopped, and tried again.

“Lee...” she said. She stopped. Again. “Leave me alone,” she finally said, firmly and distinctly. Good, he thought. She can talk.

“I can help you,” he said again, wondering how to convince her. She shook her head fiercely. She opened her mouth to speak and then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed onto him. The knife tumbled away. He stood slowly, and looked down at her. She was out cold but still breathing, at least. He wondered if the violent head shake had jarred her fevered brain and she’d knocked herself out. He tucked the knife in his belt, put the rabbit in his shirt and stooped, picking her up into a fireman’s carry. Lord, I’m out of shape, he thought. She was heavy. He figured she weighed one hundred pounds, at least. She was a fairly large girl, within a head of his height. He set off for his cabin.

He was exhausted by the time he got her home. He started to do his usual survey for enemy activity but finally just went on in, hoping for the best. No one was there. He lay her on one of the downstairs beds close to the fire. He put some water on to boil and took his knife and slit her jeans from hip to heel. Something had bitten her it looked like, something had chewed her up pretty good. That was not good, animals usually had dirty mouths. He went through his backpack and fished out a bottle of antibiotics for when she woke up.

When she woke up ... that might not be good ... she might go berserk, being indoors, in what she saw as captivity ... he wished he could tie her up, but that would just make it worse. He made sure that all sharp objects were hidden away and he even pulled the .45 out of his waistband and hid it atop a cabinet. The water boiled, he let it cool, and then began to clean her up. Time passed.

The first time she woke, her eyes were unfocused, and she just seemed to draw further and further back into the blankets. She seemed more like a little girl to him than a big girl. She wasn’t that big, he figured, he guessed her age to be fourteen to seventeen, maybe, judging by what he had seen of her body when he had undressed her and cleaned her. How on earth had she survived, out here, by herself? he wondered. How had she done it?

The second time she woke up, in late afternoon, she was very aware. Her body tensed, and she suddenly threw the blanket off. She seemed ready to run, but then she suddenly seemed to realize that she was naked, and she grabbed the blanket and burrowed back beneath it. He wanted to laugh at the expression on her face but he also felt a great tenderness for her and didn’t want to offend her or make her mad.

“Listen,” he said. He just stared at her and she finally met his eyes. “Listen. When you are well, you can go back. But you need to stay here and recover. I will not touch you. I am an old man. I am no danger to you. Please let me take care of you, and then you can go back. Understand?”

She just stared at him. I heard her speak English once, he thought. I know she understands me. She couldn’t have forgotten the language that quickly. He wondered how long she’d been out here living off the land, living on her own. He was amazed that a child could survive. She had shown signs to him, signs that she had been on her own away from civilization for a while.

When he’d first stripped her down, her ass had been filthy. She’d just had on a pair of jeans, and no panties. Panties were a luxury item nowadays, as was toilet paper. Anyway, her bottom was filthy, and he’d spent a fairly enjoyable fifteen minutes cleaning her up with a rag and warm water. He had thought long ago that he was done with sex, but he felt a definite stirring from his nether regions as he scrubbed her cute little bottom. At my age, he thought, any bottom would look cute. But this one was pretty cool, pretty goddam cool. Tight, young and firm. He had spread her cheeks and cleaned her asshole, glad that she was conked out. He’d even turned her over and scrubbed her pussy clean, pausing for a moment to lean down and sniff it. It smelled pretty good for a feral pussy, he thought. Pleasant. Like he remembered pussy smelling, in the good old days. Nobody had told the pussy that civilization has died, he thought. It’s still going on, just being pussy. Good thing, that.

All that notwithstanding, she was beautiful, he realized. Even if he’d just been allowed a single glimpse of her face, he’d have thought she was beautiful. Her skin was dark and smooth, and positively glowed, in spite of or possibly due to her living outdoors in the elements. Her eyelashes were long and would have cost hundreds, if you could buy them made that well. He remembered her eyes were brown, and he had hungered to see them open again. Black pupils and brown eyes, a good combination, he thought. It just looked like a dark ocean, to lose yourself in. He knew that most girls didn’t like their brown eyes but he hoped this one did. Brown eyes were beautiful, to him.

Anyway. His mind returned to the present. She was still looking at him like she was afraid of him. Like she’d stab him if she had her knife. He wondered if she was mad at being naked, at it being so obvious that he had stripped her down.

“Girl,” he said, thinking. “I didn’t touch you, when you were out cold. I could have, but I didn’t. Like I said, I’m an old man. I’m over that, now. You just lay there until you recover. Are you hungry?”

That was true, he hadn’t touched any more than necessary to clean her. He’d sniffed her, true, but he hadn’t touched her. And he wasn’t that over it, not really. Seeing her naked and examining her as closely as he did when he washed her had awoken his libido. But, she didn’t have to know that. He wasn’t going to slobber over her ... at least not when she was awake.

He had carefully cut up a ragged blanket he had found, and made bandages for her leg. The bite marks no longer looked that bad after he washed them. Still ... infection, he thought. In the old days infection was fairly easily controlled. These days, infection killed people.